If you're just coming here for the first time, uh... you're late. The site is no longer updated daily (see HERE for the story). But it's still kicking a few times a month, and it's better late than never! Most reviews nowadays are labeled "FTP:" and you should read THIS PRIMER to understand why. Also, while they're marked nowadays, many of the site's older reviews (i.e. 2010 or older) do contain unannounced spoilers, so tread carefully! Thanks for coming by and be sure to leave comments, play nice, and as always, watch Cathy's Curse.
Smile 2 (2024)
OCTOBER 20, 2024
GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
In just about every way that matters, Smile 2 actually improves on the original film, which is a pretty good feat for any horror sequel, let alone one that’s following a movie that was itself a winner to begin with (comparatively, the reviews praising Winnie the Pooh 2 as an improvement on the original are not exactly saying much). But obviously, the novelty of its central gimmick has worn off some, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, I urge you not to make the same mistake I did and rewatch the original a day before, because the déjà vu won’t help.
And really, as long as you remember the concept, you don’t need a refresher anyway. The opening scene (presented as one long shot) gives us the only link the movie really has to the first one, with survivor Joel (Kyle Gallner) at the end of his 6-7 day curse and deciding to at least pass it on to someone who deserves to die (a meth dealer, in this case). Things go awry and the curse ends up passed to a guy who was at the meth dealer’s house to buy some for himself, and THAT dude passes it to our new hero: Skye Riley.
Skye is played by Naomi Scott, an actual pop star/actress, and her character is far more interesting than the original’s therapist, who was sympathetic enough but just not a particularly compelling character (the question to always ask is: would I watch a movie about this person even without the horror aspect?). Not the case here; Skye is a recovering addict who unfortunately messed up her back in a car accident that killed her famous actor boyfriend, and needs to go through shady local dealers to score Vicodin to deal with the pain, because she can’t get a prescription anymore. We spend a lot of time showing how draining it can be being a pop star; yes you’re rich and blah blah blah, but you also feel the weight of everyone who is relying on you to make their own living – if the back pain and, then, mental turmoil of being cursed by smiling ghost people no one else can see take enough of a toll that she has to cancel the tour, that puts so many people out of work, not to mention ruins her reputation within the business as a whole.
And similarly, the entire movie hinges on Scott, who (outside of Gallner’s opening) is in every scene and just about every shot within those scenes. There’s a brief exception that felt weird at the time and feels even weirder given a later reveal (more on that later) where she walks out of the room and her friend (Dylan Gelula) has a brief encounter with Skye’s mother/manager (Rosemarie DeWitt), but otherwise every single thing we see is from her POV. If she doesn’t hear it/witness it with her own eyes, we don’t see it either. This adds to the intensity immensely, so even though we are familiar with this demon’s tricks, it still manages to be quite effective in that department.
Those who are hoping to find out more about this entity will be disappointed, however. We don’t get anything new; if anything the script seems to be geared towards those who saw the original and have retained what little we learned there. At around an hour or so we meet a character whose brother was one of the previous victims that Rose and Joel tracked backwards from their own experience, and he just kind of quickly sums up the “After a week you kill yourself in front of someone and they will be cursed in turn” concept, but it’s a Cliffs Notes version that seems more of a quick reminder instead of a full explanation for those who might be newcomers. But that’s a good thing! Writer/director Parker Finn seems to understand that the more a monster is explained, the less scary it is, but there are always people out there who want those kind of explanations. So to them I say: stay home and be wrong there!
That said, the movie also lacks a moment as horrific as the cat scene in the original. For me, the most unnerving thing was a scene where Skye was in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV drip, and then the ghost thing showed up so she tried to escape. The repeated closeups of her tugging on the needle in her arm really icked me out, as not only am I petrified of embolisms, but when I was in the hospital the nurse messed up and caused some brief nerve damage in my arm for like a week, so the memories of that came flooding back as she yanked on this (apparently very secure!) needle in her own arm. Gah!
My other main issue requires a spoiler, so skip this and the next paragraph if you don’t want to know details about the movie’s ending. Before I get into it I will say that it mostly improves on the original’s ending (which borderline angered me), and the actual last shot is an all timer, so it’s not a total loss. However, it involves a reveal that a certain chunk of the movie was actually hallucinated, but doesn’t make it clear WHEN this switch occurred. And did none of it in that section actually happen, or just the more horrific parts? I’m fine with not explaining the demon’s origins, but I definitely would have appreciated a sort of Saw-esque montage explaining how things were really playing out all that time.
And (again, skip this one if you don’t want spoilers) as I mentioned earlier, this causes an odd thing with that earlier scene with Gelula and DeWitt, because one of the movie’s big reveals is that the former character was the entity in disguise the entire time, so it doesn’t make sense that she was able to interact with Skye’s mom, making it feel like a bit of a cheat on top the aforementioned disruption to the whole “all through Skye’s eyes” approach. Also, the reason Gelula’s BFF character isn’t actually around is because her and Skye had a major blowout a year or so before, and there’s never any real explanation for what caused their fight. Not that it’s essential to the proceedings, but it felt like something designed to be a reveal that never came. (That said, as someone who loves when old text messages actually show up on people’s phones in movies, their last messages to each other, capping off their fight, are HILARIOUS.)
Those quibbles aside, I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it, not even noticing that it was over two hours long (something I grumbled about prior to my arrival at the theater). As the first film was compared to The Ring, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where this was a total disaster like that film’s sequel was, so the fact that it actually improved on it in several ways is remarkable. And that the climax recalled another recent genre film of note (can’t say which one without spoiling them both, though I can say I really liked that one too but got too busy to ever get around to reviewing it) was a delightful bonus. Furthermore, for whatever it’s worth: Skye Riley > Lady Raven.
What say you?
Terrifier 3 (2024)
OCTOBER 10, 2024
GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)
Given their phenomenal success and my own status as an easy mark for slasher movies, it may surprise you to learn that I cannot count myself as a huge fan of the Terrifier franchise. There's a lot to appreciate in the first two, no doubt, but the tonal shifts, sluggish editing, and random plotting keep me at arm's length; I've never been the guy who watches a F13 just for the kills, but when I watch these films that's pretty much all I'm there for. But I also watched the first two films at home on Blu-ray instead of in theaters, so I figured that seeing Terrifier 3 with an excited opening night crowd, along with the series' biggest budget yet, would result in some "third time's the charm" kind of reaction.
Alas, it didn't make much of a difference. The tonal shifts have been reduced (Art is less torture-y this time around; no salt in the wound or cat o' nine tails action), but it's still got that "Are we watching the assembly cut or a final edit?" feeling. And while it's not too random with its plotting for the most part, the climax just goes way off the rails with nonsense; I don't want to spoil anything but I have to note that I was not expecting to suddenly be thinking about Return of the Living Dead and Passion of the Christ as this slasher movie reached its conclusion, not to mention an out of nowhere _____ (it's on the living room floor) tossed into the mix with seconds left in the runtime. Again, I didn't DISLIKE it, but I can't help but feel disappointed that the same issues were present yet again.
Part of the problem is that it takes forever to get going. In the first 20 minutes, we get an extended (and ultimately completely disconnected) kill sequence, a resolution of T2's epilogue shocker, and finally a scene that sets up the film's five year time jump. Then we catch up with Jonathan and Sienna, the former at college and the latter just being released from a facility where she has been presumably letting her mind heal. She's off to live with her mom's sister and her family, trying hard to be normal but still having flashes of her dead friends, and doing her best to be sisterly to her little cousin who is unaware of her past but keeps sneaking peeks at her diary.
But here's the thing: by the 45 minute mark we haven't really gotten much further than what I already said. Vicky is now immortal like Art, for some reason, and also more or less taking the place of The Little Pale Girl (who is MIA and never mentioned) but there's no discernible explanation for this suddent shift in her character. In fact, since she birthed Art's new head, having him be vulnerable now due to her inferior DNA or something would have maybe made more sense? To be fair she makes for a more interesting partner than LPG, but it felt more like a decision based around maybe that actress being unavailable and not wanting to recast, as opposed to a purely creative one.
And for a two hour movie, there really should be more to the plot than "Art's back and wants to finish the job by killing Sienna and Jonathan." A chance encounter with a drunk mall Santa gives him new duds for this adventure (this scene is probably the movie's best, thanks to fun turns from Daniel Roebuck as Santa and Clint Howard as his drinking buddy, plus Art's genuine excitement about meeting "Santa"), but the reveal is slightly underwhelming since we saw it already in the movie's cold open (which, again, never relates to anything else that happens, despite the sequence ending on a cliffhanger of its own). And he takes his sweet time getting to them; the film is actually about 15 minutes shorter than the previous one (thank you!) but at times it felt even longer due to Art having no real urgency to complete his mission and very little else to the narrative.
It also curiously leaves some scenes off-screen. Sienna returns to the Terrifer to find her sword, believing it can kill Art, but we don't see any of his occur; she just comes home with it along with some dirty hands to sell the idea. With so much of the movie set either on Jonathan's campus or Sienna's new house, the change in scenery would have been welcome. More troubling, however, is that two major kills occur offscreen entirely, one of which is done to try to delay a surprise, but it doesn't really land. Basically Vicky tells Sienna that a mangled head is ______'s, but after a couple minutes her and Art reveal that person is alive and the head is actually _____'s. But the issue is, their proof is still flimsy, so it feels like it's yet another ruse, only the person seemingly is really dead because they never return. Also the movie ends on the series' most abrupt cliffhanger yet a few minutes later, so it's just a completely ineffective way of sending this character off.
All that said, it's certainly firing on all cylinders when it comes to being a Christmas slasher; even though I didn't like it as much as I hoped I would, I'm sure I'll add it to my mix of holiday horror along with the three Black Christmases, the Silent Night Deadly Nights, Christmas Bloody Christmas, etc. In addition to Art's Santa suit, everywhere he goes is decked out in full force with lights and decor, the soundtrack's got a lot of the standards, and it's even got some snow, which puts it above every SNDN sequel (all of them were shot in LA and certainly didn't have the dough for fake stuff). I wish he had implemented some seasonally appropriate weaponry into the mix (come on, you know my man coulda done wonders with an icicle or even a fireplace poker) but it's hard to miss that sort of thing when he has brought a chainsaw, liquid nitrogen, and rats along this time around. The FX continue to impress, and there's a cameo from a certain makeup guru that feels like he's giving it his blessing, which must have been an amazing score for the creative team. And David Howard Thornton is giving a truly great performance as Art, who never makes a sound and yet has a complete and identifiable personality; his reactions and expressions rarely fail to amuse and his physicality is up there with Robert Englund in Freddy's heyday.
The acting from the supporting cast is also much better than the previous entries as well, thanks to having the budget for more professional actors. In addition to Roebuck and Howard, Jason Patric also pops in for a few scenes (don't want to say as who, it's kind of a reveal), and Bryce Johnson from Willow Creek does some nice work as Sienna's sympathetic uncle. Lauren Lavera has a lot more range to display this time around (it's actually surprising how little time she interacts with Art as they are basically in two different movies for the most part; it's akin to Halloween Ends on that level), dealing with her PTSD, being a surrogate big sister to her cousin, but also having some adult bonding time with her aunt (her mother's sister) and trying to keep close to Jonathan, who is away at school and just trying to live a normal life.
I honestly think that with some judicious editing that this could easily be the best of the three, thanks to all I mentioned in the last two paragraphs. With improved acting and character work, a more consistent tone, and the fact that I'm an easy mark for Xmas slashing, it's really just the at times interminable pacing that kept me from enjoying it as much as I probably would have if someone came in and got it down to 90 or even 100 minutes. Like, the opening scene is solid, but it also runs 10 minutes and without any connection to the rest, in retrospect you look back at it and realize it could have been cut in half, which would make it more effective in its job (which, as anyone can tell, is to give the movie an opening kill before a long chunk of getting the audience up to speed). With the film slated to maybe even top the weekend box office (which is insane and awesome) the 4th film is a guarantee, and I'll be there, but I will no longer hold out hope that the pacing (which has been an issue for all three films, even the mercifully-in-retrospect 84 minute original) will ever be more to my liking. Here's hoping they can at least keep coming up with good kills and funny stuff for Thornton to do to make up for it.
What say you?
P.S. The film was showing as part of an event to debut the new Ice Nine Kills video (which I thought was great but as their one time lawyer I'm a bit biased!). Since the T3 trailer spoils half the kills, I'm putting the video here instead, though you have to sign in to watch due to all the gore (!!!). Enjoy!
Salem's Lot (2024)
SEPTEMBER 25, 2024
GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)
It's amusing to me that Salem's Lot has been adapted three times, and while the first two were TV miniseries that got theatrical play*, this newest incarnation was meant for theatrical release only to be shipped off to streaming (Max, specifically). However, we were lucky enough to get a one-off showing here in LA as part of Beyond Fest, so we could appreciate the visuals and fine work from its cast on the big screen, without rebuffering issues or–if applicable–spending part of it looking at our phones if the movie failed to hold our attention. But in a weird way, maybe it'd be better to watch the movie that way, as we could assume all of the missing story beats occurred while we were doomscrolling.
For those who haven't read the novel or seen either of the other adaptations (Tobe Hooper's celebrated 1979 one, and Mikael Salomon's solid TNT take in 2004), the basic story is intact—no one's ever drastically overhauled King's 1975 novel. A writer named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman this time around) returns to his small hometown in Maine to get inspiration for his next book, targeting the town's obligatory "haunted" house once owned by a gangster named Marsten. Upon his arrival he learns that the house has just been purchased by a pair of mysterious antique store owners named Barlow and Straker, with the former man never actually seen as the latter handles all of the operations. Not long after their arrival in town, a body count starts to rise, and after a pooling of information between Ben, a kid named Mark, a teacher named Matt, and a local woman/Ben's love interest Susan, they conclude that the town has a vampire problem, and they go about trying to end it.
All of that is intact here. Writer/director Gary Dauberman doesn't change much from the original novel (even the period setting is retained; the 2004 one updated it for modern day but this is actually set in the novel's publication time of 1975); the most significant diversion is that the town has a new drive-in, and the climax is set there instead of in/around the Marsten house, with the story concluding there instead of an epilogue set years later (if I'm being honest, the ending of King's book wasn't very satisfying, and all three versions have done their best to improve on it). But perhaps he should have made more changes, or followed the path of the predecessors and pushed for a two part movie, because seeing this familiar story being told again albeit on double speed does it no favors.
A friend of mine said he went to a test screening of the film that ran around three hours, and I do not doubt it (it's around 110 min now including both credit sequences). Not only are there names in the credits for characters who do not appear (such as Ruth Crockett, daughter of Larry the real estate guy, who himself is given far less screentime than he did in the two previous adaptations), but it seems like the entire second act of the movie occurs off-screen. There's a scene where Alfre Woodard's character, Dr Cody (usually a male named Jimmy) goes to see the sheriff (William Sadler, always a delight) to ask for his help, and he replies something like "Look around you, you see what they're doing to this town!?" - and I burst out laughing, because NO, we haven't seen any of it! Characters are constantly popping up as if we should have met them already; hell, when (spoiler) Barlow kills Mark's parents, it's in the same scene where we met them for the first time. Right from the start it felt like a movie that was being sped up in the edit, as there's zero buildup to Barlow and Straker being in town and the guys are moving the coffin into the Marsten house basement at like the five minute mark. And, to be clear, my friend didn't tell me about this until days later; it wasn't information I had in my head all along. He just confirmed that the "this was cut to the bone" sense I got from it was 100% apt.
In fact I almost feel bad writing a negative review, because there was probably a good movie in there before the re-editing robbed it of its soul. Dauberman has proven to be a dependable talent over the years, and again, the cast is great. I've always enjoyed Pullman's work since he was younger (he was the 18ish son in Strangers 2) and it's nice to see him ascend to leading man status here, and Bill Camp (as Burke) is one of those actors who seem to have been put on this earth to play folksy/endearing Stephen King characters. And while he didn't seem to be on the same page as everyone else tonally, I was delighted by Pilou Asbæk as Straker; the scene where he attempts to kidnap the Glick kids had me full on cackling as he just keeps staring at them after they turn down his offer to drive them home (and the subsequent scene where he does indeed capture one of them, played out in silhouette against a setting sun, is gorgeous). Barlow's design is a direct recycle of Reggie Nalder's from the Hooper version, which is a little disappointing, but it's still an effective visual.
Alas, the director is Gary Dauberman, not Zack Snyder, so I doubt there will be enough angry/petulant losers harassing HBO for years until they finally give him more money to complete his original vision just to shut the crybabies up. I'm sure a few years from now he will give an interview somewhere and talk about his longer cut and what was lost, but until then, all we have is this: a nice looking, well cast movie that tried to stay too faithful to a story that previous filmmakers couldn't even fully capture with nearly twice as much time to do so. Maybe those who are completely new to the story will find more to like, because those story beats won't be as familiar, but for me, who has seen/read this story before (three times, in fact!), it came across as too hollow to make much of an impact. And that's damning for a big screen showing (at Beyond Fest no less, where the crowd energy is always infectious). If I watched on Max, I can guarantee you I would have found some really funny memes on Instagram by the end of it.
What say you?
*Hooper's version was (irony alert) cut down and played theatrically in Europe. Both parts of the TNT one had a one night Fathom Events kind of theatrical exhibition the night before it premiered, which I remember because I went. And it played off a DVD at a time when 35mm was still the majority format, which tickled me: a dvd in a theater of a movie designed for broadcast.
Speak No Evil (2024)
SEPTEMBER 23, 2024
GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
If you’ve been to a movie in the past six months you’ve probably seen the trailer for Speak No Evil; if you go as often as I do you are probably more familiar with some of the film’s moments than you are with the faces of your own family members at this point. Which is kind of ironic, because it’s a remake of a film that isn’t all that old, and the film doesn’t really have much to it beyond its thrills, so the familiarity was a detriment to what was actually a solid nailbiter.
If you’ve somehow escaped the trailer (or, again, the original film – more on that soon), the plot is pretty simple: an American family (Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a daughter) makes the acquaintance of an English couple (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) who has a single child of their own. They hit it off, the kids enjoy playing together, and everyone has a pretty good time. Then the Americans go home (to London, having moved for a job that ended up fizzling) and get an invite from Paddy (McAvoy) to join them for a weekend in their country home. Wanting a change of pace, they decide to go, despite some hesitations re: not really knowing them all that well. The first day goes smoothly enough, but Paddy and Louise (Davis) butt heads over their differing lifestyles (he hunts with a rifle, she’s a vegetarian, etc.), forcing Ben (McNairy) to constantly try to play peacekeeper. Eventually they cross a line that’s too much for Davis and she decides that they need to leave early, at which point it becomes clear why this film might end up on a site covering horror movies.
That said, as far as violence goes it’s still pretty tame even for a thriller. The order of the day here isn’t racking up a body count, but seeing how far writer/director James Watkins can push the tension BEFORE it erupts into violence. And thanks to McAvoy’s towering performance, it actually works quite well, as you get the idea he can suddenly kill any of them just as quickly and casually as he lets out an inappropriate comment or putdown. If you’ve seen the trailer you’re probably familiar with the “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance scene between the two kids, but the full version is truly terrifying as he gets angrier and angrier with his son’s inability to keep time. He's obviously played villains before, but he's in next-level mode here; the sort of role that might get name-checked among "great psychopath performances" down the road.
Honestly, the whole thing really hinges on McAvoy’s performance. Everyone’s good (Franciosi in particular has a tricky role in that you aren’t sure until very late if her Ciara is a true partner to her more outwardly evil husband or another of his victims), but this is all his show as he walks that fine line of being juuuuust weird enough to understand why Ben and Louise might not want to stay as long as originally planned but without going so far that they seem like idiots for not leaving even sooner. Of course, people have still decried the two for their actions, saying “Any normal person would have left already!” or whatever, but the script showcases how both of them are kind of afraid to do anything about anything (Louise won’t jump into the water with the rest, Ben won’t let her have it about a brief affair she had), so it tracks that they’d probably feel they were being rude by leaving.
Also, as a parent, I want to assure non-parents who have seen it that yes, we absolutely would go back for our child’s sacred “Lovey.” There’s a scene in the movie where they DO decide to finally leave due to something Ciara had done that unnerved them, only to turn back when they realize they forgot their daughter’s beloved stuffed bunny named Mr Hoppy. And then, after they discover Paddy’s true nature and try to make a calm escape so as not to enrage him, they see he has thrown the doll on the roof, forcing Ben to climb a rickety ladder to retrieve it. I’m sure childless audiences feel this is insane and they would just drive away, but nope. You wouldn’t believe how long I spent in the dark looking for my kid’s beloved Elmo doll when he dropped it during a walk many years back, so the idea of merely turning around to grab it from the bedroom of a house owned by some people I didn’t really gel with is certainly within the realm of possibility. And the ladder scene is Paddy trying to call their bluff; if Ben DIDN’T go out of his way to get the thing, now that it’s been established over and over how much the doll meant to their daughter, Paddy would have known right away that they knew his secret. So TLDR: it's not as dumb as critics would like you to believe.
Which brings us to the whole remake aspect, and you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if you haven’t seen either version, as there are spoilers for both! Yes, surprising no one, this version is much tamer than the Danish original, in which the bad guys won. That doesn’t happen here, but I didn’t mind it, because ultimately it’s a different kind of movie. The original was your typical dark/grim European thriller, most of which end on a downer, and while there’s nothing wrong with those, to me personally they often lack tension. Once we know how far they’ll go (in that case, the Paddy character kills his own son) there’s precious little reason to believe anyone else will make it out alive. Here, by repeatedly putting the heroes in danger, Watkins gives the movie a suspenseful edge that the original somewhat lacked, because there's simply more uncertainty.
That said (again we are still in spoiler territory here! Skip to next paragraph if you must!), Watkins maybe plays things a little TOO safe, in that the family not only escapes intact but barely even sustains any injuries (Ben hurts his foot a bit, that’s about as deep as it goes). Sure, this helps with the suspense element, because the husbands tend to die in these things and so you’re thinking it’s not a matter of if but when, but… you know, he doesn’t die. None of them do. I get not wanting to make it as bleak, but perhaps Watkins went a little too far in the other direction. It’s a good thing that McAvoy is so scary in the role just with his mannerisms and expressions, because the script curiously keeps him from doing all that much to our heroes, so a lesser actor/performance would have left the movie without any real threat at all for the most part.
Then again the script DOES let him angrily sing The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and it might be one of the best things I’ve seen in a theater all year, so forget what I said about its shortcomings. It is evened out!
For real though, this has been the only Blumhouse movie all year that I enjoyed without any real reservations. Sure, it could have retained at least SOME of the original’s darkness, but I can’t completely dismiss a movie that kept me fully engaged and gripping my armrest, anchored by an all timer performance by one of our more interesting modern actors. So without going so far as to say it’s an essential view, it’s another solid entry on Watkins’ filmography, and another chilling reminder of why we shouldn’t make friends with whoever we meet on vacation.
What say you?
P.S. You don't need the trailer again. Watch the Bangles video.
Afraid (2024)
AUGUST 30, 2024
GENRE: TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
The nicest thing I can say about Afraid (stylized as AFRAID) is that when I was laughing at American Pie 25 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that the co-director (Chris Weitz) and the MILF guy (John Cho) would reunite to make a horror movie about technology that didn’t even really exist at that time. We’ve all come so far from those days! Except in quality. As dated/problematic as it is at times, rewatching American Pie for the 10th time would be a better use of your time than seeing this thing once.
To be fair I only have myself to blame for bothering to be curious, as the trailer didn’t even have enough exciting footage to suggest it would be anything but a snooze. After an OK enough opening that feels like a home invasion short film, we meet our core family (Cho, Katherine Waterston, and three kids), who are all dealing with the same generic problems every movie family has. The 10ish boy is glued to his iPad instead of making friends, the 17ish daughter is being asked for n00dz from her boyfriend, mom wants to go back to work instead of just being a mom… could a magical device help with all their problems?
Of course it can. Cho works for some kind of high end marketing agency and their new client is the company behind AIA, an Alexa/Siri type device that is programmed with the most advanced AI blah blah blah. In short, at first it’s doing things like ordering food boxes to help mom with dinner prep and letting the younger kid have a little extra screen time if he does his chores, but then it starts overstepping its boundaries. And (spoiler if you haven't seen the trailer) kills the daughter’s boyfriend when he leaks one of her explicit photos. That's pretty much the only "horror movie" thing it ever really does.
Seriously, those thinking it'd get into some HAL style shenanigans will be very disappointed (even more so considering they make HAL jokes early on. He actually did some stuff!). It never puts the family in any danger, it just basically weirds them out enough that they try to get rid of it. It barely even oversteps its boundaries; when the product arrives Waterston says she doesn't want its cameras upstairs, and... well, it never has cameras upstairs. Things in this movie aren't foreshadowed as much as they're mentioned, quickly resolved, and dropped entirely. You'd think as the movie proceeded it would grow in power, Lawnmower Man style, but nope. In fact, for the climax it’s not even AIA like, sending Teslas after them to run them over or anything like that - she just convinces the people from the opening scene that Cho has kidnapped her daughter. Which suggests a better movie, where an AI device turns everyone against each other, like The Thing where the monster is a “harmless” device on the counter, but it’s the only time it feels like something dangerous could happen (and it's riddled with confusion, such as where the daughter *actually* was). Even for a PG-13, there’s a shocking dearth of genuine terror in the movie, which barely hits an 80 minute runtime to boot.
It also bizarrely uses swatting in a positive manner. For those unaware, swatting is something mostly online gamers do when they get mad at another player or a developer who does something crazy like makes the main character a girl. They get the address of whoever they’re mad at, then call the cops and tell them that there’s a hostage situation or something going on at that address. So the cops/SWAT show up and scare the hell out of the people there, who are of course innocent of any real crime. Anyway, here the kid basically swats his own home in order to get the cops there and arrest the people threatening his family. So uh… yay swatting? I guess? Weird choice.
The only time the movie ever came to life, really, was when David Dastmalchian popped up on occasion as one of the owners of the AIA technology. His character was spaced out/weird enough to give the movie some zest in those fleeting moments he was on screen, and honestly they should have bulked up the role once he was hired. It’s never clear if he had evil intentions or just let the AI tech get away from him, which is another reason the movie doesn’t really work: it’s far too vague about the tech and the people behind it to make up for the fact that AIA herself is barely doing anything malicious. I mean, Demon Seed is nearly 50 years old at this point and it had plenty of scary stuff – how is this modern day movie, at a time where AI is becoming a genuine threat to certain jobs and our ability to believe what we see online, somehow far less terrifying or even interesting?
Anyway, I hope Cho and Waterston got nice paychecks.
What say you?
Strange Darling (2023)
AUGUST 27, 2024
GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Up until the moment Strange Darling began playing on the screen, I only knew two concrete things about it: that it starred Willa Fitzgerald from Scream: The TV Series and Kyle Gallner from Scream, the 5th movie, and that it was shot by Giovanni Ribisi. And that’s because every time I heard about the movie, the person stressed you should go in knowing as little as possible. So I did! The one time I had a trailer for it (before Cuckoo) I actually looked down at my lap until it was over. And I agree: this is a movie you shouldn’t know much about beforehand (and thus I won’t be saying much about its plot or character dynamics). But that being said, I don’t want to overhype it all that much in that department, as it’s not like it’s some kind of Cabin in the Woods style game-changer/meta movie. No, the reason that you shouldn’t know much is that the plot itself is actually kind of threadbare, and it’s more of the way the story is told that gives the movie its entertainment value.
Presented in six chapters told out of order (the first one we see is chapter 4), I think I can say without spoiling anything major is that it’s essentially about these two characters (Fitzgerald and Gallner) who seemingly don’t like each other all that much, and naturally when we see the earlier chapters we will understand why. Writer/director JT Mollner does a fine job of constantly changing our perspective on what we’re seeing once we have the proper context, and in some ways—even though this is not a slasher—it does a better job of deconstructing certain cliches than In A Violent Nature did earlier this year, and that was the whole point of that one.
Would the movie work if it was told in order? Hard to say! I know that the performances of Gallner and especially Fitzgerald would be laudable no matter what they did in the edit (I’m sure once it’s on video someone will recut it into sequential order, as they always do), and that alone makes it worth seeing. But again, there isn’t all that much to the story, and I can’t even really imagine watching it again other than to soak in their gutsy performances. Plus there was a scene that left me so rattled I don’t want to see it again just to ensure it doesn’t produce the same feeling a second time around. Without spoiling the particulars, Fitzgerald asks Gallner to do something he’s not entirely comfortable with, and you can see that he’s struggling with wanting to satisfy her wishes when he himself is miserable. It’s the exact thing I was once asked to do a long time ago and it still bothers me to do this day (for the record, I put my foot down and refused), and seeing it in action drudged up those feelings, of how conflicting the situation was and how upset it made me. But I had to laugh; this is a movie where (spoiler, I guess? I mean, I’m writing about it for a horror blog) people die gruesomely on occasion, and none of that bothered me, but what amounts to a conversation and a hand movement left me completely unnerved.
On the other end of that spectrum (and again, in a horror movie!) there’s a part that left me so charmed and even optimistic about getting old! There’s an “aging hippie” couple played by Ed Begley Jr and Barbara Hershey, and when they are brought into the film’s ongoing story they’re currently working on a jigsaw puzzle, COMPETITIVELY. Like every time you place a piece you get a point, I guess? And before that Begley makes a breakfast that uses more butter and eggs than I consume in an entire month. This is literally all I want out of my retirement years. Eggs and puzzles.
Another thing that made me laugh is how much Mollner tells you about the movie right off the bat, which should reduce some suspense but actually doesn’t. In the first few seconds, we learn that it’s six chapters and (via a TCM type crawl) in what location the story will end, but it never dampens anything. Also, in what I believe is a first, it touts “SHOT ON 35MM” at the very top like it’s a credit. Alas, I was seeing it at an AMC, which doesn’t even mask the screen, but even their subpar presentation didn’t take away from how lovely the movie looked. Weirdly, 2nd 35mm offbeat genre movie this summer with a female lead having a bandage wrapped around her head for a chunk of the climax (Cuckoo being the other).
I know this isn’t the most illuminating review, but that’s because I am trying to preserve as much of the experience for you as I was able to muster. In the trailer reel were the spots for Speak No Evil and Afraid that I’ve seen a million times by now – two movies I feel I already know the entire story (and no, I haven’t even seen the original SNE yet), before a movie whose sub-genre remained unknown to me. Again, I don’t think it’s the most exciting story ever written, but as an *experience* it was among the most surprising and enthralling I’ve been able to have at the multiplex in quite some time, and that ain’t nothing. Hopefully you’re able to go in equally unaware. It's far too rare we get these opportunities.
What say you?
P.S. In keeping with the whole "Don't go in knowing too much" sentiment, instead of the usual trailer I'm just gonna put in this music video my friend directed. Enjoy!
The Crow (2024)
AUGUST 22, 2024
GENRE: REVENGE, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Sometimes a movie tells you instantly that it's going to be a mess, and unfortunately Rupert Sanders' The Crow is one such film. Because after the usual laughable number of production companies at the top of the film, we are then treated to something like 25 executive producer credits - BEFORE the cast or "A Rupert Sanders film" or anything like that! I have never seen anything like it (and as someone who makes credits for a living, I tend to notice these things, so you can take my word here) and it told me right from the start that this is a movie that's been studio note'd and "what if we also do this?" until any semblance of a soul it once had was completely washed away.
At least it otherwise starts off OK. We don't know specifically what put Eric (Bill Skarsgård) into a fancy rehab center in the middle of the woods, but we know that he's a quiet, troubled loner type in a facility that forbids fraternizing between the female and male patients. So naturally, when the equally broken Shelly (FKA twigs) arrives, we know they're going to disregard this rule (not that it matters, no one on staff ever intervenes) and find in each other the love they've been denied throughout their shattered lives. So, you know, OK! Their chemistry isn't all that great, but on paper I buy it, and you want things to work out for them.
Of course there wouldn't be much of a movie if it did. Shelly got sent to this facility after being caught with drugs while trying to escape some people who were trying to kill her, and it isn't long before they catch up to her and murder her and Eric (via suffocation, which is always a brutal thing to watch). But then Eric wakes back up, not dead, and with seemingly immortal powers for good measure. A mysterious man named Kronos explains some of this to Eric and sends him back to the overworld, where he can track down the men who murdered him and his love to set their souls at rest. But unfortunately for the movie, we already know why they were killed and who did it, so there's no sense of intrigue to his journey. Before we even meet Eric, we meet Shelly and also her friend, who are in possession of an incriminating video of wealthy socialite named Roeg (Danny Huston, in a role he could play in his sleep by now). So our hero is a few steps behind us for a while, which is never a great method of hooking in an audience.
Weirder, Eric isn't even the first character to have supernatural powers. When we meet Roeg, he explains that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for immortality, with the deal being he has to send fresh innocent souls down to Hell (he notes that rapists and murderers won't do; it's the closest the movie gets to giving him any dimension as a character). He then demonstrates this power: he whispers some sort of (not English) curse in their ear, at which point they commit a graphic suicide. An appropriately terrible villain move! Alas, he only uses it one other time in the nearly two hour film, which otherwise seems to forget he has immortality at all and just comes off as yet another all-powerful rich asshole.
But at least that's SOMETHING, as the other villains don't even get that much. There's a blonde lady, a guy with a scarred eye, an RFK Jr. looking guy (blonde lady's husband, I think?), and a dirty cop who is the first to go, even though there's some potential there. Oh and then a whole bunch of security guards, who I guess we have to believe are all evil and not just a bunch of dudes doing their job, because Eric wipes all of them out with a sword in the movie's centerpiece action scene, mowing through them at an opera house in what seems like a parody of the John Wick series, because (again: he's immortal) he gets shot dozens of times but barely reacts. There are some fine gore gags in these and the film's other two (very brief) action blowouts—I particularly liked when Eric is impaled through the back with a sword and then pushes the point of said sword into a guy's face—but Sanders never finds much rhythm in these scenes. A cool moment or visual here and there, sure, but nothing that ever gets the pulse racing. Worse, during that opera house lobby massacre, he occasionally cuts back to the ongoing performance, and here and there Eric's ballet-esque violent acts mirror the moves of the performers, but it happens so intermittently that it seems like something coincidental the editor noticed as opposed to a fully designed back and forth mirror sequence.
And I'm not exaggerating about the movie's curious low energy. I was fine with it at first, because we are meeting our heroes and watching them fall in love (albeit quickly, more soon), but even once Eric dies and is reborn for vengeance, not a lot of exciting stuff happens for a while, and when it does happen it tends to be brief. If the reported budget is accurate, this movie costs more than John Wick 2, which delivered nearly nonstop thrills (and a more famous cast), so along with the Bulgaria shooting location—a go-to location for a movie looking to get more bang for their buck—I have to wonder where that money went, because it sure as hell wasn't on big thrills. Perhaps that $50m it reportedly cost includes all the years of development? This has gone through a number of incarnations over the years, with actors like Bradley Cooper and Jason Momoa starring as well as directors like Stephen Norrington and Corin Hardy (this also probably accounts for why so many people are listed as executive producers); if the movie succeeds at anything, it's evidence of unbreakable persistence on the producers' part to see this thing through despite all the setbacks.
Some of those earlier versions sounded promising (or at least, baffling enough to draw my attention. Bradley Cooper???) but there's certainly nothing wrong with Skarsgård as an actor. Unfortunately he's let down by a script (or at least, the editing of said script in post production) that leaves far too many things unexplained. How long are he and Shelly together before they're murdered? It's unclear; it seems it's only been a few days but later flashbacks inform us they've seemingly been together for much longer. And if that's the case, what took Roeg so long to find them? They're in the same (nameless) city and not hiding at all. Similarly, at a certain point they have a group of friends, but where did they come from? Were they friends of one or both of them before they went to rehab? Given Shelly's backstory, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for her to hook up with her old crew (i.e. people who could tell Roeg and his minions where she is in exchange for some money and/or a fix), but their whole thing was that they felt abandoned by the world at large. So again: who are these people? Eric seems to have a close bond with a tattoo guy, but when (spoiler) the dude is executed by the villains, Eric just sits next to his corpse in a playful manner as if he was another villain, and certainly not a person he cared about (not to mention that it's basically his fault the guy is dead). It's fine to focus on the character work and love story over action, but when all that stuff is leaving the audience underwhelmed and even confused, it's not exactly the best tradeoff. Better to be drowned out with noise, especially when the villain himself is superpowered and yet does nothing with it.
So alas. All this time spent trying to make this movie (Norrington's version was announced in 2008!) and this wet fart is what they ended up with. There's a handful of nice visuals (absolutely loved the super wide shot of Eric trying to swim down to Shelly's corpse after the villains tossed them in the water) and some amusing touches with the immortality, like Eric snapping his broken leg back into place after being run over by a car during a chase. And around the end of act 2 (spoiler here) there's an interesting idea involving his immortal powers and how he can lose them, but instead of turning it into a sort of crisis of faith that drives the rest of the movie and his actions within it, he basically just shrugs it off and the movie proceeds toward an ending that is, at best, idiotic (and inches into the sort of ending that no genre fan ever wants to see, though I can't be more specific without spelling it out). And that's the movie in a nutshell, really: 110 minutes of uninteresting or downright bad ideas, peppered with occasional moments of inspiration that suggest at some point this might have been at least a decent timekiller.
What say you?
Alien: Romulus (2024)
AUGUST 13, 2024
GENRE: ALIEN
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)
I started collecting vinyl about two years ago, and for the most part I basically just buy up the discography from my favorite bands/artists (obviously this all began with Meat Loaf, of course) and scores I enjoy. But I skip over greatest hits type albums for the collection, because I know I won't ever actually sit and listen to it. Why would I? If I love the artist, I don't need their radio hits all in one place, since those are the ones I probably need to hear less of in the first place. Greatest Hits packages are for people who just want familiarity and a series of dopamine hits.
Alien: Romulus is a Greatest Hits package in the form of a movie, right down to the one token new song (idea) to get you interested.
Which is to say, there's not a lot that's technically BAD about the movie (though one thing is very bad, and I'll get to it later with a spoiler warning), it's just bland and familiar more often than not, and that seems to be counterproductive for this particular series. Prior to Ridley Scott returning with Prometheus and Covenant (and producing this one; REAL producing, not a token "Executive Producer" credit), the first six movies—and yes, for this particular point I'm including the two Predator fights— were each directed by a different person who brought their sensibilities to the table, and that was a good thing. Do I love AVP? Hell no, but I like that we got to see what a Paul WS Anderson Alien movie would look like. The filmmakers were never lost to the IP machine the way they can be with other big franchises, which made each new entry something to look forward to, even if they rarely rose above the level of pretty good.
But unfortunately, Fede Alvarez, who directed and co-wrote this one, ended up taking the safest route possible, which in modern terms means "It's loaded with a bunch of callbacks for people who love the other movies." I truly don't understand why this seems to be a popular way of making sequels lately; like, we all love Aliens as much as (in many cases, more than) the original film, but does that have a bunch of repeated lines and scenarios? No! It's entirely its own thing outside of Ripley and the monster itself. But here, after a fairly original (if not particularly interesting) first hour, Alvarez feels content to start loading the film up with references to the other movies, reaching its nadir with someone actually saying "Get away from her you bitch!" (Salt in the wound, as a friend noted after: given that this film chronologically takes place before Aliens, that means if you're watching the whole series in narrative order, Ripley's version is now the repeat.)
To be fair, I was actually pleasantly surprised that a plot point actually ties into Prometheus and Covenant. Since the latter ended on a cliffhanger we're likely never going to see fully resolved with another Michael Fassbender-centric entry, at least this gives a little hope that its storylines can at least be acknowledged should there be another sequel. I'm all for that sort of thing, but when you have star Cailee Spaeny riding up an elevator with an air blast hitting her as she wields a space gun before going into battle (Aliens), or turning her head to the side and screaming as a Xeno gets right up in her face (3), or—I can't believe this is real—literally going through the same kind of climax as Resurrection, I kind of lost patience with the "we have no ideas of our own so let's just restage the other guys' big moments" approach.
But maybe it'd go down easier if I cared enough about the characters going through these all too familiar motions? I would guess that the script and maybe even a first edit of the movie had a longer first act, as we are introduced to our characters in a manner that suggests we should have either met these people before or gotten to know them a little more before they blasted off into space. We meet Spaeny's Rain and her droid "brother" Andy (why not Eddie or Eli? They messed up the alphabetical naming structure of the droids!) on a mining facility, where she believes that she has come to the end of her mandatory work period (5-6 years) and can go home. However, the Company decides she needs another 10,000 hours of service there before being allowed to return to her own system, crushing her spirits. But then, moments later, she gets on a ship with a bunch of people she has a history with, and they rope her and Andy into joining them for a heist of some ship parts at a decommissioned Company space station, needing Andy's droid skills to access them.
This transition is very weird, seeming only minutes have passed between Rain getting the bad news and then getting this incredible opportunity to make it not matter. And it seems pretty easy for her to just leave after hearing that she was going to have to work another half decade there, making me wonder why they even bothered with this setup in the first place. Surely they could have just been bored with their life there and taken the opportunity for a little adventure or something? Or they could have shown Company personnel tracking her down before she "escaped"? It just really felt like they lopped a chunk of backstory out for the sake of getting into space earlier, and I get that sentiment, but it just makes the first ten minutes seem completely pointless (i.e. we could have gotten there even SOONER). Similarly, it's hard to get much of a grasp on the four space pirates they join up with; one seems to be a former love interest (but as we know from Twisters, god forbid anyone kiss in a movie anymore) and another is pregnant, but that's about all I could tell you about their group. Andy is far and away the most interesting character, a glitching droid that comes off as autistic with his endless bad pun jokes (one of which made me laugh, and I was ashamed) and inability to read the room. Once they arrive at the space station they realize that they need to upgrade him in order to access certain things, and from then on you see his struggle with his more human big brother identity and his "Company man" version that came with his upgrade, and it's the closest the movie gets to being fully engaging on a character level. Everyone else, including Rain, is just stock fodder.
There is a 7th character in the movie, however. Their name is Rook. If you don't want to know any more about Rook, who is absent from marketing thus far and the movie's big halfway point reveal, I'll just note that I don't care for Rook's presence in the movie and ask you to skip the next paragraph.
OK, for those who are still here, I'm going to bury Rook's identity a little further just so the people skipping past don't see it right in their peripheral. But without that detail, I can say their appearance involves some kind of body double/CGI/probably some AI voice nonsense hybrid to recreate an actor who would be much older now than they were in 1979 if they weren't also deceased. If you were horrified by the CGI Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, then be prepared for what I feel is an even worse resurrection here. Their first appearance is fine; with the face confined to shadow and long shots making it hard to tell for sure but any die hard fan (or anyone who just watched the original, more on that soon) could tell it was another Ash model. But after a few minutes of that, they put this ghoulish recreation front and center, and each time we were treated to Ian Holm's PS3-ass looking face, I checked even further out of the movie. And he plays an important part; in fact given the Covenant plot thread Rook goes with, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to get Fassbender back for this role and couldn't for whatever reason, so settled for this instead. Whatever the thinking was, it did not work AT ALL for me, and considering the movie wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders for me at that point to begin with, it basically cemented that this movie wasn't going to recover with a better second half.
OK it's safe again!
On the plus side, there are some pretty good sequences, like a fun bit (if video game-y af) where Spaeny triggers some anti-gravity thing in order to shoot a bunch of Xenomorphs without their acid blood causing a hull breach, as they're on the bottom floor of the station so any blood that spills would run out of juice long before it floated all the way up to the structure's roof. And as always, we get facehuggers before Xenos, but this time there are like a dozen of the things, which scamper after our heroes and produce the film's one legitimate scare moment. Also, as a sucker for real time, I'm pretty sure that a 40ish minute countdown actually plays out in that exact amount of screen time, so that was fun.
Fans of Alvarez' other films should be happy with the handful of gore moments, too. The curiously small cast (including Rook, there's just the seven - one less than the Nostromo since there's no Jonesy to mix it up) means they don't happen all that often, but when they do he makes them count. It's also got its fair share of squeamish moments, which I can appreciate; for anyone who wished they could just pull the thing off of Kane's face all those years ago, you'll get your wish here. And on that note, there's a real attempt at going into more body horror territory with the chestburster stuff, and... well, as I noted earlier, one character is pregnant. It's not just a throwaway detail. Use your imagination.
But it just never really comes to life as a whole. Showing it right after the first movie didn't really do it any favors; that one's not exactly a roller coaster ride itself, so to instantly watch another movie without any real threat for close to an hour felt a bit taxing on the patience of a lot of people in the crowd (you could almost feel the energy throughout the first 45 minutes). And then when things finally get going, it's mostly just a lot of stuff we've seen before (for better or worse, Alvarez pays tribute to every entry in one way or another) but to characters we had more reason to be invested in. At times (and someone else said this later) it felt to me like it was a pitch reel for an Alien themed maze at Universal Horror Nights as opposed to a movie we were supposed to get really pumped for or tensed up by. And with so few genuine IDEAS at play (not to mention building toward one of two endings: an open ended one that leaves some room for our survivors to explore before Aliens, or, well, going right into Aliens), there's just simply not much here to latch on to unless you are easily swayed by seeing actors do and say things you've seen other actors do across 45 years/eight other movies.
So I dunno. Apart from "Rook" I can't say I DISLIKED any of it really, but in some ways I'd almost rather there were more bad ideas and terrible things like him just so it would be more memorable. I can't remember any of the other character's names outside of Rain and Andy, I wouldn't be able to pick their ship out of a lineup, and I certainly couldn't tell you how this particular version of the Xeno differed from the ones in other movies (that said: save Rook, the FX were all solid, at least). Two good sequences (facehugger chase and zero grav shootout) and another interesting droid character to join David, Ash, and Bishop (sorry, Call) does not make up enough for the lame callbacks and perfunctory characters and storyline. They raced through all the "let's meet our heroes and see what they are about" time in order to get to the alien stuff quicker, and then didn't really do anything all that interesting when it got there. Say what you will about the last few entries (not counting the AVPs in this case), at least they were trying to invoke the "sci-fi" part of the sci-fi/horror blend. Going back to a more purely action/horror blend like the first three isn't a bad idea on its own, but it's gotta deliver the excitement and scares in that case. And Romulus, alas, does not.
What say you?
Cuckoo (2024)
AUGUST 11, 2024
GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
After scoring a massive hit with Longlegs last month, I'm sure Neon was hoping for a little more than $3m for the opening weekend of Cuckoo (indeed, it barely outsold Longlegs itself, on its 5th week). But it's a little less audience friendly than even that was, and lacked the curiosity factor that drove Osgood Perkins' serial killer opus to such unexpected success. Still, I was happy to see that my crowd was fairly full, even if that meant I had to change seats because the dipshit next to me kept using his phone; I go to the movies partly because I like the crowd experience (especially for horror films) but I do wish I could, I dunno, maybe pick that crowd myself.
Anyway, while Cuckoo wasn't exactly the usual multiplex fare, it was Marvel-level inviting compared to Tilman Singer's first film Luz, which despite only being 70 minutes long managed to bore me into "how much is left?" territory by its halfway point. That one was another of these "vibes horror" movies that are coming along with increasing regularity, and as I've mentioned before, I don't really connect with such films. I wouldn't say Cuckoo is a complete departure from that kind of thing, but felt more like a happy medium between similar movies (which include Skinamarink and, well, the other movies from Osgood Perkins) and a more traditional story.
Indeed, I don't even know if I could accurately summarize Luz ("a possession tale involving what appears to be a hypnosis session to find a missing person" is about as specific I can get) but Cuckoo has, on the surface, a pretty normal, even somehwat familiar story: a rebellious teenager (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move to a new home with her father and his new wife, along with a stepsister she doesn't care much about. But as she starts to explore the ground of said new home (in this case a resort hotel in the Alps) she discovers creepy goings on, which her father and stepmother seem oblivious to (or... PART OF?), forcing her to take matters into her own hands and maybe save her innocent step-sibling along the way. A movie with the same sounding plot could have been a Screen Gems movie circa 2009 starring Adrianne Palicki or Leighton Meester.
But the devil's in the details of course, and it doesn't take long for the off-kilter stuff to kick in. First off the resort is run by Dan Stevens, so you know whether he's good or bad he's gonna be WEIRD; despite his handsome romance novel cover appearance the dude seems to be from whatever planet we got Burgess Meredith from. He always finds a way to make his characters left of center, even in big budget junk like Godzilla x Kong, so you know damn well he's not gonna just be some boring villain. No, he's going to talk about birds and play a little whistle and spray victims not with chloroform or pepper spray but pheremones. It's just the Dan Stevens way, and I love that this is his THIRD genre movie in this year alone (after GxK and Abigail), for a guy who could have parlayed his Downton Abbey and Beauty and the Beast success into "the next Hugh Grant!" territory but instead has, well, taken more after current day Hugh Grant (who is awesome) instead of the blander one we got during his '90s heyday.
And while he is as good as always, the movie really belongs to Schafer as Gretchen. I do not watch Euphoria* so I have zero familiarity with her, but she is an absolute gem here, keeping her "I'm over it" attitude juuuust short of crossing the line into unlikable territory, so that you're right there with her as she rolls her eyes at the various goings-on and (naturally) root for her to triumph when things get scary. Her reaction to one of Stevens' creepy lines (I won't repeat it here just in case, but it's in the trailer) is so good that I almost wish the movie had leaned more into that kind of irony, though given its strange nature it's probably for the best that they didn't risk turning more audiences away by going full horror comedy. It's got a sense of humor, but it's not a "funny" genre movie.
It's also not a body horror movie, despite what one of the blurbs on that trailer claim. Unless you count a nasty cut to the head (injury from one of the movie's few traditional scare scenes, a chase that ends in a glass door) and a very uncomfortable looking cast after a car accident, nothing really happens to Schafer's body, and the other targets in the film are left alone when it comes to that sort of thing as well. Without spoiling things, for this to be considered a true body horror movie, it would have to be told from the perspective of Gretchen's stepmother or something. Just my two cents and maybe a warning for anyone excited for a new Cronenberg-type film. I feel that quote was setting up a particular sect of the fanbase for disappointment.
That said, it did remind me of The Brood at times, with a little bit of Phenomena and A Cure For Wellness thrown in for good measure. But it's got enough of its own personality that the reminders never distracted me all that much (or worse, made me wish I was watching those instead), so don't get me wrong - it's not one of those movies where a filmmaker homages so many of his influences that he doesn't have room for any ideas of his own. I would guarantee that no one on the planet could possibly guess the motivations behind the villains' actions even after the first half hour or so; indeed if you WERE a fan of Luz you'll be happy to know this movie shares its ability to never once get predictable. It's just here it worked for me, whereas in Luz it did not.
That said there are a couple of minor wrinkles. One is that it appears to be edited down from a longer version at times; there's a scene where the villain is about to shoot a victim, and Schafer runs in to stop it from happening, only the villain is completely elsewhere by the time she arrives. But it's not played as a "Oh crap, where did he go?" kind of moment; Shafer doesn't even react to his absence, as if she already knew he had left (i.e. during a scene that was removed). And at one point her and her only ally (Luz's Jan Bluthardt) are both wearing big can headphones around their necks; we can infer why (the villains use a weird sound to disorient victims) but their sudden appearance suggests a scene where they figure out that they could wear them to protect themselves. Nothing crippling, but noticeably jumpy editing means there's probably a few trims we didn't pick up on in the moment (I'd be willing to bet there was more with Astrid Bergès-Frisbey's character Ed, too, as she basically disappears for all but one scene of the second half).
There's also a time loop thing that's never clarified. And I don't mean "HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?"; I don't care about that. No, the issue is that it's not entirely clear that the characters realize they're in a timeloop when it happens, except for one time that it almost certainly does. It's a weird point of reference, but what it needed was a moment like in NOES 4: Dream Master, when Dan starts noticing the deja vu and repeats Alice's line along with her to snap her out of it and let us in the audience know they caught on. Here, it happens I think four times before a character makes a "Hey, didn't I already do that?" kind of face, but then the loop ends before they can use the knowledge to their advantage. And then it just never happens again anyway. The inconsistency, coupled with what is a very odd plot point (even by this movie's standards) makes it stick out as just random for the sake of being random. If those other scenes were lost to keep the runtime down, I feel chopping these out would have been a better way to get that done.
Otherwise, it's just a freaky fun time. It's not unpleasant or anything (rare for a modern day mad scientist movie, especially one touted as "body horror"); most of the violence (including the villains' demise) is off-screen, and gore is kept to a minimum as well. And the movie's weirdness never overwhelms the narrative; it's more of a garnish than the main course, which is the best way to go for me. It gives the movie a personality and lets it stand apart from its influences, but the main goal is telling a coherent story with a character you want to succeed - a perfect approach in my opinion. May all involved continue to walk that fine line.
What say you?
*My two favorite movies of the year are Immaculate with Sydney Sweeney and Challengers with Zendaya, and now this was a nice surprise after being so down on the director's previous film, while making me a fan of Schafer. So maybe I should just watch Euphoria? Its central cast certainly has good taste in scripts.
Trap (2024)
AUGUST 2, 2024
GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
I cackled with glee at the first trailer for Trap, where the reveal that Josh Hartnett's seemingly dorky dad was a serial killer was saved for the end (if you haven't seen it yet, please go watch it first before reading, as the below is written on the assumption you know the premise). The second trailer didn't bother to hide it, shutting up all the "They gave the twist away!" dummies by showing us that the film wasn't treating this as a reveal; it's only about 15 minutes into the movie that Hartnett pulls his phone out to reveal the guy chained up in his basement, and the movie was more or less about how he tries to plot his escape while avoiding suspicion from his daughter. But of course, being an M. Night Shyamalan movie, we all assumed there was still another twist to go. What if the daughter was actually the killer? What if he was a DIFFERENT killer and ended up inadvertently helping the police?
(SPOILERS AHEAD! Old school HMAD review here, which means you should only read this if you've seen the movie already. Or just don't care about spoilers.)
Well, unfortunately, there isn't really any grander ambition here. Hartnett's Cooper is indeed the killer, no accomplices or anything like that. There's a minor "twist", for lack of a better word, involving how the police knew he'd be at the concert in the first place, but it's hardly a big reveal - it's basically just an explanation that might make you go "Ohhh... that makes a little more sense, I guess." It's a rare instance of the director's filmography working against him; we've gotten so accustomed to his wacky third acts that the fact that this movie ends on a fairly normal/basic note it almost feels like a disappointment.
But I could live with that. What really kinda knocks this into "It's fine" territory after a terrific first half is that they leave the concert, which is always a death curse for these kind of contained thrillers. It's nothing new for them really; Red Eye leaves the plane, Speed left the bus, etc. The difference is that they just run out of plausible scenarios and mix it up a bit for the finale. Here, however, they leave the concert at the movie's halfway point, which is a bit too early in my opinion. Some contrivances allow Cooper (and his still oblivious daughter) to exit the premises without being checked even though hundreds of cops are specifically looking for a guy matching his description, and it's at that moment the movie started to unravel for me. The real joy of it thus far was seeing him do kind of terrible things in order to sneak past a door or a guard (the trailer shows most of them, alas) while looking like a good Samaritan or bland suburban dad, but for this he basically just outs himself to someone and blackmails them into helping them exit.
Not that the back half is a total wash. There are still some good suspense bits (including one with the megastar singer in a bathroom attempting to use her fans to locate the basement guy) and Hartnett's performance is still a hoot, but it never fully recovers the tense "How is he going to get out of THIS ONE?" kind of thrills of the concert section (that one such later scenario, involving a limo, simply skips ahead a minute to avoid showing how indeed he was able to escape a situation, doesn't help). And then the lack of a gonzo twist just makes it feel even more of a letdown, as if Shyamalan just had a few writers from some CBS procedural knock out the script's last 30 pages or so. Also, a large chunk of the finale revolves around Cooper's wife (Allison Pill), but her character was never even mentioned prior to her 3rd act introduction, which leaves her contributions fall a little flat. I spent the entire movie assuming Cooper was a single or divorced dad, so when we learn he has a wife and another kid, I couldn't help but wonder why Shyamalan didn't work the mom into the story a little more, if only to really sell her role in the proceedings.
Especially since it kind of recontextualizes Cooper in a way that doesn't exactly help the movie. For 60 minutes or whatever, I thought I was watching a movie about a single dad who was struggling with the usual things single parents deal with on their own (the daughter has been bullied by some mean girls, he was a little late because he couldn't get off from work any earlier, etc.) while also trying to carry on as a serial killer, but turns out he's part of a traditional nuclear family. So what's the deal here? Did he lose a coin toss with his wife to be the one to pierce their eardrums to chaperone a teenybopper concert? Does he have these same kind of struggles when with his son? Or on date night? It's the rare Shyamalan "reveal" where I wished it was something absolutely ludicrous (he's a pod person! or something), because while it's a completely normal thing, it kind of awkwardly reframes the main character's whole deal.
Because honestly, I was super into the "A single dad is also a serial killer and he's trying really hard to be good at both" idea. Early on he makes dad jokes and tries to learn slang and stuff, and—especially considering how fully committed Hartnett is in the role—it would have been amazing to see that carried throughout the movie even after we learn he's "The Butcher." Seeing him try to avoid capture while also slipping into "Dad mode" could have resulted in an all timer for both Shyamalan and Hartnett, but the latter's whole "dorky dad" thing is essentially forgotten after about 40 minutes. There's a scene where his daughter gets to dance on stage for a song with the singer (Shyamalan's actual daughter, who is in reality a budding performer, but here is a sort of Taylor Swift/Beyonce kind of mega-idol to the tweens), and he spends the entire time just sort of eyeing the exits and such, not once acting like a dad who is stoked for his daughter. Snap a pic from your phone, bro! (And don't try to claim "It's just realistic, a sociopath wouldn't think of that" - the whole movie is built on nonsense, so we certainly don't need to stick to DSM-V definitions.)
All that said, if you just take it as a standard nailbiter thriller, it's a good enough time. The PG-13 rating means we never really get to see what makes The Butcher such a terrifying threat, but it doesn't really matter—it's clear that he's a BTK-type who can pass himself off as a normal family man and that this is the first time his secret has been so close to being exposed, which is all you really need for this story to work. And Hartnett is one of the few actors who possess that likability that leaves us kind of WANTING him to escape even though he's a vicious murderer. This movie doesn't work at all with someone with some questionable real life choices, but Hartnett has been a good boy as far as we know (that he's also in a the midst of a comeback after kind of shrugging off Hollywood for a while made me want to root for him even more). And who can totally dismiss a movie about setting a trap for someone and casting Hayley Mills as one of the trap's designers?
Speaking of Shyamalan's casting decisions, as always he makes a cameo, but for a couple seconds I thought he was finally doing it "right." Even if this WASN'T his most Hitchcockian movie yet (besides the Rope-esque containment plotting, it goes into full on Psycho territory near the end), there's no doubt that he would continue contributing a cameo as he (and Hitch) always does. But whereas Hitchcock's appearances were usually blink and miss kind of affairs, Shyamalan usually gives himself dialogue and often plays some kind of important (if minor) role in the proceedings, like the guy who hit Mel's wife's car in Signs, or the dude who brings them to the beach in Old. But there's a shot of the crowd as Hartnett makes his way back to his seat, and if you're looking in the right spot you'd see Shyamalan as one of the venue employees. And I was like "Oh that's cute, for his most Hitchcock-esque movie he actually did a Hitchcock style cameo!" But nope, he plays the singer's uncle, who Hartnett speaks to in order to get his daughter on stage. That first appearance was basically just proper continuity.
Still, it more or less works. Basically, lower expectations for both a Shyamalan movie and a "contained" one and you will probably have a good time as long as you just go with it; it's just that this is kind of a standard request for his movies and it feels a little weird for one that's fully grounded in reality (and the other two exceptions, The Visit and The Village, are both shown under illusory presentations; the found footage aspect of the former and the "There are monsters!" plot of the latter, so there's still a sense of unreality that Trap lacks). For a polarizing filmmaker like Shyamalan, a movie that's basically just fine almost seems like a betrayal, but maybe he's looking to get out from under the weight of those expectations and make more grounded thrillers? And if that's the case, he's off to a decent start.
What say you?