Whalefall (2026)

OCTOBER 20, 2026

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

When I first heard the plot of Whalefall, I wasn't even sure how it would fill a short film runtime, let alone a feature. Then I heard it was based on a novel, and I was even more confused. "Surely there is more to it than this?" I said aloud, prompting the person next to me to change seats. But anyway, I eventually learned that it's only half the story - the other half is devoted to flashbacks about how our hero Jay (Austin Abrams, who can't catch a cinematic break) learned the skills he will need to survive from his hardass, emotionally abusive father. Dad stuff AND what amounts to a body horror story but where it's the poor whale with something going wrong (accidentally swallowing a human that's still alive, in this case)? Hell yeah, sign me up! (I also bought the book a few days later for good measure.)

Unfortunately few other ticket buyers seemed to agree, and it's probably not even playing in any theaters near you by the time you read this, because it's October and I take forever to write and even longer to post something. With Resident Evil doing so well, I thought Abrams' appearance and the wacky plot would entice more people to show up, but alas - as of this writing it hasn't even managed to top the woeful box office totals for The Dog Stars, which was one of the year's biggest flops. That little bit of trivia has gotta sting for poor Josh Brolin, an actor everyone seems to like but outside of his Marvel stuff rarely seems to find himself in financially successful movies. He plays the dad, and he is as great as always, but your mileage will vary with these scenes depending on whether or not you have your own conflicting relationship with your own dead dad (raises hand), because.... all due respect to Mr. Brolin, but we are here to see a dude inside of a whale.

As for HOW Jay gets inside the whale, it's fairly plausible (I guess; I mean I have little experience with the digestive systems of whales): he's deep sea diving and accidentally gets tangled within the tentacles of a large squid that is about to become whale dinner. After an incredibly tense sequence where the squid (already going down the whale's throat) is dragging him along and he's thisclose to escaping-a remarkable feat for director Brian Duffield since we know Jay can't escape being that it's the plot of the movie, yet you never stop hoping he will somehow get out of his predicament-he ultimately goes down along with the fish, relying only on his oxygen tank to keep him breathing and the things his dad taught him to know how he can possibly get out. Naturally I won't say whether or not he makes it, but I can say that he goes through pure hell along the way, with more gnarly injuries than I've seen in a PG-13 film in quite some time.

It's also claustrophobic as hell. This is not an issue I have myself, but I started feeling that way during a few key scenes, with his cramped "living quarters" and the constant tossing and turning (in mostly darkness to boot) giving me an uneasy feeling that I assume will be pure hell for those who already have trouble with elevators and such. The set or whatever they used for the interior is a disgusting marvel to behold; constantly pulsing while squishing our poor hero who naturally has no idea what is happening outside to cause the whale to be doing what it's doing. And you end up feeling a bit bad for the whale, too - I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Jay eventually uses a knife to keep a grip on his surroundings before sinking deeper into its system, and I would have to assume having a living thing essentially wandering around inside you (at least babies stay fairly still!) would not be pleasant. Granted a whale is massive, but I would estimate it'd be like a mouse or something running around inside the human body - probably wouldn't feel that good, right? So you're rooting for Jay, obviously, but it doesn't take long to start worrying that he's going to have to kill the innocent beast in order to escape it.

I also enjoyed seeing one of these things on the big screen again. I missed Fall 2 last month, but honestly I didn't make too much of an effort, given that I didn't love the first. And yet, I will always be a sucker for these "What would you do?" survival thrillers, and in this case it was a ridiculous scenario that was presented as seriously as possible, which I quite admired. And as an added bonus, at no point could I say "Oh you idiot, just [do that]!" because A. I can't even swim, so I'd never be in this situation to begin with, unlike some others (Frozen's ski lift, Quicksand's forest setting, etc.), and B. his options are so limited that he was doing things I never would have thought of anyway, again because I have zero knowledge of this activity. So when you add in the dad stuff, which again might not be for everyone but hit me directly in my psyche (there's a scene where Brolin is angered his son wants to go hang out with his friends instead of engaging in a sport with his dad; the specifics changed, but definitely lived through that myself), I was truly kind of stunned at how fully engrossed I was in this movie that I thought I'd be kind of laughing my way through, given the absurd premise.

Plus Jane Levy showed up a few times as Jay's sister! That's always another plus. And Jay's mom / Brolin's widow is played by Elizabeth Shue, giving us a Hollow Man reunion in the rare occasions we see them together. Cinema! Hopefully people find this one on streaming and the like; it's a solid thriller and a reminder that no idea is too silly to make for a good movie as long as everyone is committed to doing it right.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Long Walk (2025)

AUGUST 29, 2025

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)

I’ve never pinned down an all-time favorite book the way I have for movies (Halloween), albums (Bat out of Hell), sandwiches (Italian) and evil Canadian children (Cathy). But I have a rough idea of the contenders, and I have certainly *read* The Long Walk more than any other novel, so that tends to be my answer when pressed.* I read it for the first time when I was 15 or so, via the Bachman Books, then read it again about two years later, and then I read it several times when I adapted it into a screenplay along with my buddy JB, a bit of personal attachment that is relevant. Not exactly a bias, but I'm certainly invested in a "Hey, did they pull it off?" kind of way that I wouldn't be for any other novel I read before seeing the adaptation (it's usually the other way around for me).

I can't find the whole thing anymore (probably for the best!), but I do recall it was around 200 pages and was more or less a straight transcript in screenplay form, but we added some bits and condensed some of the dialogue exchanges into one chunk. I was only 19 (fitting!) at the time but I was aware that both the rigors of film production and also the demands of cinematic storytelling meant that the book would be hard to film *and* watch as presented on the page, because it’s just an endless walk down a road. Stephen King (né Richard Bachman) could write “hours passed, and three Walkers got their ticket” and then resume a conversation more or less where it had left off prior - that wouldn’t work on screen, so we tried to make it more movie-friendly without changing/losing all that much.

Did we succeed? I don’t know. Partly because all but a handful of pages have been lost to several moves since then, partly because... you know, it was never filmed, obviously. But while I can’t speak for JB, I know I am not as talented a filmmaker as either JT Mollner (Strange Darling) or Francis Lawrence, so it’s safe to say that their movie, while imperfect, almost certainly turned out better than ours would have. And again, while it didn’t all work for me, I know all too well from that experience that the book may be incredible, but it is not as easy to turn into a movie as some of King's others, so its few blemishes are eclipsed by the fact that it exists at all, and that it's pretty damn good on top of that.

For those uninitiated, the story centers on 100 teenaged boys who volunteer for an annual walk that starts in Maine and makes its way down through the rest of New England. But it’s no ordinary stroll; they have to maintain a speed of 4 MPH at all times, and if they drop below that speed they are warned. If they get three warnings, they get “a ticket,” which as we horrifically learn about seven miles down the road from the start line, means the young man will be executed on the spot. The walk continues until all but one Walker has been ticketed, at which point that literal last man standing will receive untold riches.

The novel is a grueling, harrowing journey, one of King’s darkest books in fact. The boys feel compelled to form friendships with their fellow Walkers, but of course, this just means making it harder when they are ticketed (or, as is often the case, trying to help them when they start slowing down even though it’s in their best interest to thin the ranks). Some die from sheer exhaustion, others from bad luck (one poor sod gets diarrhea and can’t pick up his speed fast enough after letting go, dying in his own excrement), and a handful go out in an act of defiance. But what really makes it unsettling, at least for me, is the fact that our heroes eventually grow numb to the violence, barely pausing in their conversations as unnamed Walkers around them meet their end.

The adaptation doesn't quite aim for that level of eventual indifference; outside of the ones that occur during time jumps (it takes place over several days) every death is reacted to with appropriate horror and shock. Presumably due to budgetary and logistic concerns, the number of Walkers is dropped to 50 here, so it makes sense that they treat the majority with the same impact as the first. There are still anonymous deaths, but the film skips a hefty number of them at a surprisingly early point, wiping out over a dozen during a sequence where they have to walk up a steep hill (a harrowing sequence from the book that occurs much earlier here). Then a later point has our hero Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) doze off while walking and learn of several more deaths that occurred as he slept. The movie isn’t even halfway over by the time there are only about a dozen boys left, which means every death always counts. Worse, they get a bit repetitive; several times we see Ray and Pete (David Jonsson from Alien: Romulus) right in front of the camera, trying to maintain their composure as someone is ticketed in the background. Somehow they never get used to it, which may be the point, but since it struck me as one of the most memorable things about the novel, it felt a weird thing to drop.

Here I will note, once again, that this is why I prefer to watch the movie before reading the book, because I stand a much better chance of fully enjoying both as the book will almost certainly be better, anyway. Perhaps this wouldn’t even have bugged me. But I would still take issue with Jonsson and a few others’ casting; not that they’re bad or anything (quite the opposite; on a performance level Jonsson is astounding) but they are all noticeably too old to be playing these teenaged characters. There’s a character named Curly who is barely old enough to qualify, and he’s pretty much the only one played by an actual teen. It’s weird to go from Hoffman playing NBC exec Dick Ebersol around this time last year to someone who is supposed to be 17, and Jonsson is over 30! As with the “numb to death” thing, part of what made the story so horrifying is that these are essentially children, some not even legally able to drive yet, but here they’re all played by adult actors, which diminishes that aspect.

Outside of those two choices, the only other thing that bugged me was the ending, which I won’t spoil other than to say it was changed from the book’s and not to its benefit. Well, not ALL to its benefit - one change legit worked great for me! But after that one change they do another thing that felt more like a studio note, and I dunno. I coulda done without it, is all I’ll say on that matter for now. But if you’re a fellow book fan, just prepare yourself.

Otherwise I think they did a terrific job with what is not an easy story to tell on screen. Watching the core group (Ray, Pete, Olson, Stebbins, etc. - except for Scramm and Percy, every notable character in the book is present here and more or less in line with their original counterparts) bond and hold each other up throughout the story worked like gangbusters, and their ball-busting and camaraderie evoked the best of Stand By Me and even a bit of Shawshank Redemption (think the library or lunch room scenes). And Jonsson isn’t the only one who gives a great performance; in fact they pretty much all do, despite the weird aging up casting they sell the fearlessness that only teenaged boys would still possess.

It also doesn’t hold back on the violence. Apparently King (listed as an executive producer, which isn’t always the case for his adaptations) demanded an R rating, and it is earned. While there are a number of backgrounded or off-screen deaths as mentioned, there are also plenty of them that occasionally seem like the MPA wasn’t really paying much attention. I can only imagine the directors of the Friday the 13th sequels watching this and thinking about their kills - some of which weren’t as graphic as these are to begin with! - being trimmed down to barely a drop while this goes out on a couple thousand screens with no argument. If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably remember a certain character’s throat being harmed? Happy to report its kept intact (albeit slightly modified to use a tool instead of a bare hand).

In fact pretty much everything we see is taken directly from the book, but they do that thing where it might depict an event that happened on the page, but have a different character do it (The Ruins did this brilliantly). So as on the page, someone rushes at the soldiers and tries to take them out, but not the same character who did it in King’s original depiction. And the character of Scramm is MIA, but the sad reveal that he is married and the winner should do something for his wife is handed over to one of the other primary characters. I like this approach, because it keeps veteran readers on their toes, but without going so far off the reservoir that it becomes something to get potentially angry about. Does it matter WHICH character had a wife back home? No, but it matters that these guys will continue looking out for each other even after all but one of them have been executed.

(They also drop the speed to 3 mph, which King has admitted was a mistake on his part the first time around. I actually listened to the book again earlier this year while taking my own daily walks, and I felt pretty slow as I was barely hitting 2 mph or so. I'd be dead instantly in the book, but I think I could last a bit in the movie!)

There’s also some humor. Not a lot (and my favorite crack from the book, when a character quips “OK everyone, take five!” is sadly missing), but the levity is dished out when needed, often in the form of the guys just joshing with one another. That said, Lawrence and Mollner never let you forget how grueling this marathon is; even with the necessary flash forwards (especially in the third act; where it jumps past several dozen miles at one point) you feel how tired and broken these guys are, with some gnarly foot trauma on display to remind you not to try this at home. I got the idea that Lawrence wished he coulda gone harder in his Hunger Games movies (which, as you know, also depict a dystopian world where teens have to kill each other) and was relishing the freedom he had here as opposed to those PG-13 blockbusters.

So overall it works, but fell short of being truly great due to a couple of decisions that sanded down the intensity and harshness of the book. I’m sure they were unable to cast actual teens because of labor laws (I doubt this was a fun shoot for anyone except maybe Mark Hamill as the Major, who gets to sit in a jeep and bark his lines while the rest of the actors are constantly walking alongside an endlessly moving camera that they needed to be mindful of), but certainly the casting folks could have tried a little harder to find ones that at least LOOKED like teens, no? Still, as an adaptation of what is a tough sell to both audiences and executives, it’s remarkably faithful and checks off most of the boxes, and considering how long it took to get to the screen (Romero, Darabont, Overdal, and probably more have all come and gone over 30 years) the fact that they even made it at all counts as a win. That it’s an upper tier example of a King adaptation is just icing on the cake.

What say you?

*other ones: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Dark Tower (as a whole), and Sphere. All of which became middling movies. Long Walk is the first one I didn't walk out somewhat or mostly crushed!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Strangers: Chapter One (2024)

MAY 20, 2024

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Sometimes, a movie tells you almost instantly that you shouldn’t expect too much out of it, acting almost as a warning to discerning audiences that they might as well cut their losses and leave now. The Strangers: Chapter One is one such example; after a cold open where a guy is chased through the woods and then killed by the title characters, we are shown one of those overhead landscape shots along with an on-screen title saying “Somewhere In Oregon.” But in that same shot we see an exit sign for the town of Lime, Oregon, so despite the title’s insistence, we know *exactly where* we are. A nitpicky thing, sure, but it just suggests a certain halfassery, like someone (a producer most likely – and there are several of them, including Courtney Solomon, another warning I didn't heed) wanted to play up on the “middle of nowhere” cliché that’s so prevalent in these kinds of movies, even if it wasn’t accurate.

It’s also another example (some of which we learned in the trailer) that this movie, which for all intents and purposes is a remake of the 2008 film, missed the point of what made the story work so well the first time around. For those who can’t recall (the fact that it’s been sixteen years since it came out is mind-blowing to me), the central location of the 2008 movie actually belonged to Scott Speedman’s character’s family, so it wasn’t some random house in the middle of nowhere to him, it was HIS. That’s a big part of what made it scary, as it took elements from the classic home invasion scenario AND the “we’re miles from help” type stories that set up any number of horror movies.

The other thing that made it more interesting than so many others of its type is that the couple (Speedman and Liv Tyler) were not all lovey dovey; in fact they were in a very odd spot, as he planned to take her there as a celebration of their engagement, only for him to turn him down before they got there (even romantic movies sometimes can’t pull off a devastating moment like Speedman realizing he has laid out flower petals all over the place – awkward!). Even if the killers hadn’t shown up, I’d be interested in watching how the rest of their weekend went, you know? And then you can even consider things like "She just broke his heart, is he going to be all that invested in putting himself in harm's way to help her?" (There's an idea: the Strangers pick a house where everyone inside is more likely to kill each other before they have a chance.)

Alas, this time around it’s the usual thing; the couple is on a cross country trip for a new job and their car breaks down after they stopped in a random little town to get some food. And instead of being in that awkward position of “I don’t want to marry you but I don’t want to break up, either”, it’s just a standard lovey dovey couple where the girl wants to get married but the dude hasn’t had the stones to ask yet. So it’s a setup you’ve seen a million times, with a couple you’ve seen even more. And that’d be fine if the movie was doing something different, but these alterations (which, if I haven’t made it clear, make the movie less interesting) are pretty much the only parts of the movie that aren’t directly swiped from the original. From then on it’s pretty much the same: the guy leaves on an errand, the girl smokes and doesn’t notice a killer walking around behind her, he accidentally kills someone who came to help, they go out to a shed next to the house, the Strangers ram the car they try to use to escape, etc, etc.

So that’s what the experience is like for anyone who has seen the original. Will it work on folks who HADN’T seen that one, or maybe even those who only saw it the one time in theaters and forgotten about it? Well for those it’s certainly a decent enough timekiller, I suppose. It’s never all that tense (even without the flash forward this time), but there are some decent jump scares and a suitably creepy moment where the girl is playing piano (“Moonlight Sonata” of course, because again: effort was not anyone's priority when it came to crafting this take on the story) and we realize via dim reflection in a frame above her that the Man in the Mask (sorry, Scarecrow now for some reason) is sitting behind her watching her play. The obligatory attack on the girl is also surprisingly brutal, which isn't exactly a selling point on its own, but after the tedium of some other genre films this year (i.e. Night Swim, which offered a premise that essentially guaranteed no one would ever even get hurt let alone killed), I guess it was nice to see one that wasn’t afraid to actually bang the heroes up a bit.

There are at least a couple of brief sequences that manage to get the pulse racing a little more, to its credit. At one point they realize the house has a crawlspace under it, so they go under there to try to make their way to safety, only for some rats to scurry past/over them and then the girl drives her hand right through a nail, both things leaving them wanting nothing more than to shriek/scream but having to remain quiet and not give their position away. And the shed scene has a quick flash of intensity when one stranger attacks the girl through a window with another advancing on her from inside. Also, while they do some dumb shit for sure, they actually circumvent one cliche in a way I haven't seen before; our male hero is asthmatic and of course drops his inhaler, so I immediately thought he'd have an attack at the worst time and be unable to help or the gasping would give his position away or something. Instead, when he realizes it's gone, he fashions a makeshift one out of a water bottle! Not sure if that's scientifically possible, but at least it showed some quick-thinking skills.

If you’re a fan of the original who is thinking “I don’t remember things like that happening?” you are correct – these moments are among the only times that they carve their own path. But whenever it starts to actually have its own identity, the movie quickly resumes its copycat nature, once again reminding any fan of the original that they’ve seen this all before, only better. Christ, they even have the two Mormon kids on their bikes handing out fliers and the climax (once again in the early morning light) where the two protagonists are tied to chairs while the three Strangers (in the same order no less) stand over them. It’s one thing to pay homage to an earlier film when doing a remake, but copying the same beats over and over, for a story that wasn’t all that complicated in the first place, is just remarkably pointless to me.

And that’s sad, because I was legit excited when they announced Renny Harlin was directing this (and the two already shot sequels that will follow). I don’t think he’s ever made a completely great movie (Cliffhanger probably comes closest), but he’s certainly made a lot of really fun ones over the years and given his early days in supernatural horror (with a few trips back since, like Exorcist: The Beginning) I was excited to see what he’d do with a more grounded slasher type. But his wealth of experience—far and away the most of any Strangers director thus far—was no match for the stretched-thin budget (less than the original even without inflation) and far too basic/uninspired script. They honestly could have hired anyone and I’m confident they would have ended up with roughly the same level of quality.

As for the sequels, well obviously I’m not too excited to see further adventures of our survivor, as she didn’t exactly scream “The new Laurie Strode!” to me (hell, she barely even hits the levels of “The new whoever the girl in Final Exam was!”). That said, if the very clumsily implemented setup for the next one* is an honest depiction, it’ll be set in the hospital where she’s been taken for her injuries, so at least it’ll be offering new scenarios and locations simply by default. But per Harlin, the three movies together tell one complete story, so Chapter 2 will be the middle, which is traditionally the least interesting of the three acts of a traditional narrative. So again, yeah, can’t say I’m refreshing the AMC page to find out when I can buy tickets for that one (as of now, the plan is to release the next one sometime this year and part 3 early next year). But hey, kudos to them for a decent opening weekend, proving that this IP still has some pull (it actually opened higher than Prey at Night did, in a pre-pandemic, pre-“everything is on VOD in three weeks” world). So at least the next chapters are coming out to an audience that might actually want to see them, though I think they’ll really have to offer a knockout part 2 for anyone to still be interested by the time part 3 comes along.

What say you?

*It seems this section of the film got reworked some, as the “cast in order of appearance” lists some people at the end who don’t actually appear. I also have to assume that they didn’t hire Richard Brake to just be in this one movie without any lines (he’s the sheriff, seen watching them at the diner and doing absolutely nothing else) and that he’ll return in the others. But if not, that means they likely re-edited the first act as well. Amusingly, if I'm right then that just makes it even more like the original, which also got overhauled in the post process. But at least there it paid off.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Out Of Darkness (2022)

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Having never seen the trailer*, I only knew two things about Out of Darkness when I sat down for it: 1. That it was, alas, not based on the book by Sidney Prescott, and 2. That friends who saw it described it as "boring." But that's not a particularly enlightening description, and it's subjective af to boot. I also know people who think Session 9 is boring, whereas I'm the guy sitting there wishing it was longer. And yet I have found the last couple Michael Bay movies interminable, even though they're certainly not lacking for action sequences. A slow paced movie can reel you in or turn you off depending on so many factors (your mood, the vibe of the crowd, even the presentation) that "boring" is about as useful as identifying the font in the end credits in determining if a movie will be for you.

At any rate, I didn't find it boring. Indeed I was really into it for the first hour, despite the fact that-yes-there weren't a lot of traditional action or scares in that chunk of the film. The plot concerns a group of six nomads in the year 45,000 BC, searching for a new land because the one they left was cursed. They arrive on the shores of this new world looking for strong shelter and game to hunt, only to find it suspiciously barren and the nearest caves a few days' walk away from the beach, a daunting task when they have no food (and one of the two women is pregnant to boot). Will they survive long enough to get there? Should we put too much thought into the fact that the main couple of the group is named Adem and Ave?

That alone could be a compelling tale, but before long it's clear that there's something out there watching them, and eventually it grabs the youngest member and vanishes into the darkness. Since he is the boy's father, Adem (who is also the group's leader, a position a couple others in the group are starting to doubt he deserves) wants to follow, but is convinced to wait until the daylight so that he isn't lost (or worse) as well. As the film proceeds, his role as "heroic leader" begins to diminish, becoming a borderline villain at one point, so again even without the (monster?) out there the movie could have a compelling thrust. The idea of an alpha male being broken down by the pressure of being the leader, his own ego, and his inability to protect that what matters most is certainly something that I could watch for 87 minutes.

(Side note: yes, that is the actual runtime. A glorious gift from the cinema gods. Even with trailers I was home two hours after the start time!)

But no, there is obviously something out there reducing their number, and the movie unfortunately lost me when it was revealed (spoilers ahead, though it's kind of obvious after the second attack scene). It is not an animal or a monster (or a demon, as one member of the group seems to think) but merely Neandrethal people who were there first, and they don't even mean harm. They took the boy, yes (and it's unexplained why they did it in the manner they did; why not wait until daytime and present yourself in a less terrifying fashion?), but not to kill him--they actually brought him back to their shelter and fed him. Our main group's paranoia and mistrust is what gives the movie its body count, so ultimately it's a MESSAGE MOVIE with the rather well-tread idea that maybe we shouldn't just assume "the other" means us harm, and that ultimately we're our own worst enemy. Not that that is an inherently bad idea, but even with the acknowledged/appreciated short length it retroactively makes the movie feel long when it all boils down to the same moral of any dozen Twilight Zone episodes that were an hour shorter.

Plus (still spoilers! Skip to the next paragraph if you want) it denies us prehistoric monsters (or even a badass sabretooth tiger or something along those lines)! I feel we've been really shortchanged over the past decade when it comes to normal sized monsters; we get plenty of Godzilla types but almost nothing when it comes to 10-12 foot long beasties, other than sharks which are way overused. The hints we got about the "creature"--the kidnapping of the kid, the discovery of some giant skeleton and what seems to be enough blood to cover a cliffside, a character's jaw torn straight off--don't really gel with what we learn about it later, so it feels like a cheat on top of a copout. And when it's in favor of a lesson we can get out of a few memes on Twitter (well, maybe not these days), I couldn't help but leave disappointed after such a promising first hour.

On the plus side it looks great even after the script takes a nose dive, and the cast does a fine job of quickly creating six distinct characters (when it's almost all dark and they're all wearing animal skins/furs, it could have been easy to get them mixed up, but I never did) while also speaking a made-up language called Tola, which is based on Arabic and Basque. Since it was on the same screen I saw Silent Night two months ago, I couldn't help but wonder if the movie would have worked just as well without any dialogue at all, leaving grunts and facial expressions as the sole mode of communication. Other than the story of how they got there and why, I can't think of a single moment that required dialogue to really grasp, especially when the dialogue is weirdly anachronistic (there's an F bomb!) or just clunkily spelling out its obvious message. Great score by Adam Janota Bzowski, who also composed Saint Maud (if memory serves the score was one of the few things I liked in that one).

So I get why people were bored, but I wasn't one of them. Instead I was just annoyed by the "twist", as it undid what was working about the movie while also giving me flashbacks to a certain sorta-horror movie from 20 years ago (you can probably guess the one, if not just go look at the box office for 2004 and you'll see it pretty quick), though the context was different (and that movie offered an even more annoying twist later). Still, it's always nice to have an original horror movie in theaters (a foreign one at that!), especially one that mostly delivers: it's nice to look at, has a couple of good jolts, etc. I just wish they hadn't tried to go all "elevated" in the home stretch, as if making a straightforward survival horror movie wasn't good enough and they were hoping to get picked up by A24 instead of a lowly major (Sony, in this instance). Felt weirdly insulting, honestly.

What say you?

*I had to laugh that I uncharacteristically went to the movies on a Monday, because for the past 3-4 months I have had to see the One Love and Madame Web trailers before every single movie I have gone to see, and therefore had to suffer through them again this one last time as both finally opened the following day. I was so close to never having to see them again!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Seeding (2023)

OCTOBER 8, 2023

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (BEYOND FEST SCREENING)

Sometimes I have the wrong idea of what a movie is about, but The Seeding was the first time I also had the wrong idea of where it took place. I THOUGHT it was a movie about a couple who run afoul of feral children in the Australian outback, but at least I was somewhat close on the plot (there are feral children, but the plot isn’t a Wolf Creek meets Them kind of thing). Turns out the movie was shot in Utah, and presumably just takes place there too since the main character is from Los Angeles, but I spent the entire thing thinking he was in Wake in Fright territory as opposed to somewhere that’s only like a 90 minute flight away. I think it’s safe to assume that I would do pretty miserably if I was ever on Carmen Sandiego.

Anyway, the movie is about a guy with the very silly name of Wyndham Stone, who is NOT the evil CEO in an ‘80s action movie but a photographer who is out in the desert to get a shot of a perfect eclipse (unlike the versions I always see, where it’s just covering like 1/4 at most of the sun). On his way back to his car he sees a kid who says he can’t find his parents, and tries to help him despite the kid leading him the opposite way of his car (which is on the road that could take them to someone who’d be able to help better than a rando guy who doesn’t even live there – Wyndham’s a bit of a dummy). After a while he gets sick of the kid seemingly leading him further and further away, so he tries to go back to his car, but gets lost as it’s now too dark to see his way. He then descends a very long rope ladder down into a canyon that has a house, and thinks nothing of how peculiar that is (this seemed less weird to me when I thought it was the Outback. Now that I know it’s just Utah, I think the guy is even dumber than I already did).

Living in the house is Alina, a quiet woman who seemingly opted for a life of isolation, but happily offers him food and a place to stay. The next morning Wyndham heads outside to presumably climb back up and find his car now that the sun is on his side again, but the ladder is gone. He tries to climb out, but falls and hurts his leg, and after Alina patches him up a bit, he sees some teens above who offer to help. Naturally, him being an idiot and a jerk, he not only secures himself to a rope they drop (without asking them to just put the ladder down) but starts screaming at them when they pull a little too hard and shake him up a bit. At this point our man finally catches up to the audience and realize he’s been trapped down there on purpose, and it only takes a moment of thinking about the title to know what that purpose might be.

Perhaps needless to say, this is a “slow burn” horror; it’s coming from Magnet but it’s very much like an A24 type of movie, so your mileage will of course vary depending on how patient you are with such fare. There isn’t much in the way of violence (two would-be helpers are dispatched off-screen) and he remains in the canyon for the rest of the movie. I thought for sure there’d be a sequence of him escaping and being chased down/returned, but nope – he tries to climb the rocks out but doesn’t make it that far, and the only other time his feet leave the ground is when he’s being tricked by the kids. And since he’s such a jerk it’s hard to really care if he gets out anyway, so you’re better off tracking Alina and wondering what her deal is. Scattered clues more or less tell us she’s been down there her entire life, without any entertainment or connection to the outside world, which is scarier than anything in the movie. At one point Wyndham shows her his camera so she can see the photos of the eclipse, and accidentally swipes to an older video that has a snippet of a hiphop song, and it’s obvious that she’s never actually heard music before, asking him to replay the brief clip over and over.

Things finally get a little more exciting in the third act, as we finally get our answer re: “Is Alina good or bad?” and events spiral out from there. The movie takes place over a surprising amount of time (passage is depicted by title screens saying what Moon is in the sky, and “Harvest Moon” comes up twice), allowing Wyndham’s mental state to deteriorate to the point of seeming feral himself, and that’s an interesting approach for what is at its core a survival horror movie, but I couldn’t help but feel a little restless at times, wishing the movie would kick into higher gear sooner (and then getting higher than it ever did). You know how in Talk To Me (spoiler) the last scene shows us how the protagonist eventually became one of the anonymous ghosts that people like her were conjuring up for their own amusement? It would have been interesting to go all the way and have Wyndham fully transform into one of the scary people kidnapping random tourists in the middle of the Outback Utah desert, but the movie doesn’t take things that far. The ending is pretty good as is, but it’s also like “Well, yeah, that’s exactly where I thought this would go.”

So I dunno. It’s well made and the actors are solid, and I liked how it flirted with folk horror a bit, but there’s not enough meat on the bones for a 90 minute movie – even those aforementioned “moon cards” seem to just be padding the runtime, playing out over a shot of some vegetables for a far longer time than it takes to read them. And the protagonist’s idiocy and prickly behavior keeps him from being very compelling (I don’t have to love the main character, but I should be invested in what they’re doing either way), so by the time Alina’s character came into focus I started wishing the movie was told from her perspective all along (doesn’t hurt that she gets the best line, though I can’t say it without spoiling things. It involves the C word though!). If you absolutely hate men you’ll probably be a little warmer on it, since it basically boils down to how useless we are, but there are ways to do that while remaining more engaging throughout instead of in spurts.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Saw X (2023)

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Let's get the most important thing out of the way first: the red dungeon logo is back! Lionsgate had phased it out in the early '10s, and since they basically stopped making horror movies it wasn't really an issue, but many fans (including me) were bummed that they didn't resurrect it for Jigsaw or Spiral. But this time they listened, and it really did go a long way into making Saw X feel like we were back in familiar territory after those aforementioned films went so far out of their way to welcome newcomers instead of catering to the hardcores.

It's ironic, then, that this movie also does that, but in a way that is still satisfying to the Saw faithful in ways those two were not. Once again they have designed a film for people who may have given up on the series along the way, but instead of making it a twist (Jigsaw) or just going off in a completely unrelated story that takes place in the same world (Spiral), this one just presents itself as an entry that takes place in between Saw I and II, something that's obvious right off the bat. If memory serves, Saw II took place six months after the first film, and at the beginning of II John "Jigsaw" Kramer is on an oxygen machine and needs help getting around, so anytime we see Kramer up and about, we know it's prior to that film. The only reason we know for sure this takes place after the first movie was given away in the movie's marketing, but treated as something of a reveal about forty minutes into this one, so if you haven't seen the trailers yet, you might want to steer clear if you want to preserve the surprise.

Still here? OK, so we know it's after Saw I because Amanda is shown to be helping John throughout this one, with her face healed up from her appearance in that one. This allows the film something we never really got before: extended scenes of John and Amanda talking, working as a unit, etc. In Saw II her being his accomplice was one of the twists, and of course in Saw III he was at death's door throughout, so it's only been a handful of flashbacks (in III and VI) that we've seen them together with all their facilities intact. And, again, they were flashbacks, so they were overshadowed by whatever was happening in the present day story. That's not the case here; even though it's a prequel story, it's ENTIRELY a prequel, without any present day scenes, no bookending or anything like that. For all intents and purposes, with the exception of "ruining" Saw II's twist re: Amanda (and a post credits scene I'll mention later), you could just watch this one directly after the original and then keep going after there - it's basically Saw 1.5.

It's also director Kevin Greutert's "revenge" of sorts for the untimely box office failure of Saw VI, which despite being universally agreed as one of the best entries, ended up being clobbered in theaters by both the reception of Saw V and the surprise powerhouse of Paranormal Activity. So it's nice to see this one getting healthy reviews AND box office, as once again the target is the healthcare industry. If you recall in VI (though this isn't necessary info to have beforehand, I should stress) John mentioned a doctor in Norway that had a radical treatment he wanted to try, only for his insurance to turn him down (hence why he went after the whole lot of them). This takes place, presumably, shortly thereafter, when John learns that the doctor's daughter Cecilia is also providing those rogue treatments, albeit in Mexico, and has an opening. John heads there, undergoes the surgery, feels optimistic, and then accidentally discovers that the whole thing was a sham, and he was just knocked out with anesthesia for a bit - they didn't even really cut into his head a bit to sell the ruse!

So naturally, he calls up Amanda and has her round up the doctor (Synnøve Macody Lund) and her accomplices, brings them to a fairly standard Saw-esque basement dungeon, and puts them through death traps. But he doesn't do this one at a time, or have them make their way through a building like the groups in II and V - they're all in one room the entire time, each locked into their own unique trap. So John and Amanda will talk for a bit, and then tell one of the four that their test is about to begin, at which point we get a traditional trap scene, and then the cycle repeats. There are some complications of course, primarily another victim of their scam who comes around wanting his money back but doesn't quite agree with Jigsaw's methods of refunding, but it's a refreshing twist to the formula, as most witnesses to trap scenes either have a good reason not to help (Jeff in Saw III) or have to inflict some kind of pain on themselves to do so (William in VI), but here they're helpless, chained to their own trap and rooting for each other to succeed as one getting free would presumably be able to help free the others or at least run for help.

And it really works well! The traps are impressive, with only the mildest deja vu reminding us of others (namely VI) as they're all medically-charged in some way - a self surgery, a radiation wave set to "melt", etc. The story also remains suspenseful even with the prequel element weighing it down some (i.e. we know John and Amanda will succeed/survive), as some new sympathetic characters are worked into the mix and could theoretically survive even though we've never seen them again (this series can retcon anything, so they're never painted into a corner in that way). And Lund is a wonderful antagonist, as her accomplices are a mix of losers that were posing as healthcare practicioners, but she actually has the background and know-how for what she claims to be doing, so when John is explaining the traps to them, you can almost see her smile at times, impressed with the science behind them and also not really caring if any of them die because it's one less person to split John's payment with. This series has always had trouble coming up with worthy adversaries for Kramer, so it's nice to see one who (if she survives) could be on his level but (for once) not a potential accomplice.

I guess at this point I should note it's a slower paced entry than the others; in fact it's the longest entry in the series but has the lowest body count (four, or five if you count the post-credits scene, which I'll get to soon, promise!). They even throw in a dream scene early on to provide the movie with some kind of Saw type moment in its first act, as it otherwise acts as a full on drama for the first half hour or so. Apart from the dream scene and a cutesy joke about what he does for a living ("You're sort of a life coach?" they ask, and he says "Something like that") there is nothing in that first chunk of the film to suggest this is anything but a drama about a cancer patient trying a new treatment, and Bell is clearly relishing having a chance to explore the character in ways we've only seen in brief flashbacks in the past. Telling a complete story, in sequence (the only flashbacks are the usual "here's footage from before now that you know something new" montages), is something the series has literally never done before, as they've all had two timelines or hefty uses of flashbacks (even Spiral), and it pays off in his performance. Shawnee Smith unfortunately doesn't get as much to do (and she's saddled with a hideous wig to help with her de-aging), mostly going through the same inner turmoil she had in III, but again, seeing her and John discuss matters as mentor/mentee (and a whiff of father and daughter) for more than a few seconds in a flashback is a welcome sight.

It could have been a little tighter, though. For example, Amanda makes her grand reveal (the trailer shot) when she helps John kidnap Lund's character, but then we get flashbacks showing how she was the muscle behind the kidnapping of the three accomplices, and we see her pull the mask off for each one of those too. I mean, not for nothing, but she gets them all when they're isolated and then walks around without her mask in front of them for the entire movie, so why she even needed the pig mask in the first place is beyond me, but we certainly didn't need to spend another 90 seconds of the movie watching her do it over and over. Even the trap scenes themselves run a bit long, which has a weird (presumably unintentional) side effect, in that they kind of seem unfair at times. One victim actually does as they're asked with regards to the self mutilation, with another minute (!) to go to put the gory stuff in the device that will unlock their shackles, but the tubing that runs them together is just slow I guess? So they die anyway? It's one thing if they're slow and are "too late" because the clock runs out just before they finish mangling themselves, but to go through all the work (i.e. choosing to live) and then die because the trap was being sluggish seems cheap.

And the post-credits scene (obvious spoilers here, so skip this paragraph if you haven't seen it yet) is one of those things that opens up other questions, and also seems to suggest another cheap move on John's part, as he's shown trapping another accomplice (the person who told him about the treatment) along with... Hoffman! Who we haven't seen since Saw 3D and is, in the current timeline, presumably still sitting in that bathroom. Neither of them are masked, so I guess they plan to just shoot the guy if he survives his trap, but being reminded of his other accomplices makes me wonder why, when going up against medical jerks, John didn't enlist Gordon and/or Logan to help out, as they'd presumably be better to have on hand to help with all these medically-centric traps than Amanda the heroin addict. And Hoffman's appearance is spoiled early, when John makes a phone call asking for help, and it could have been to Amanda (or at least, we could have just assumed it was) but he starts the call with "Detective", giving it away early that Hoffman might be showing up (the trailer didn't help, using his one line of dialogue and giving it away to anyone who recognized his voice). Didn't they learn their lesson in Saw 3D when literally no one was surprised to see Elwes pulling off the mask when he already showed up earlier in the movie for a nothing scene?

So there are a couple of missteps, but for the most part it's a fine return to form, offering the best entry since VI and succeeding where the previous two movies didn't quite measure up with regards to toeing that line between making a movie for newcomers and one that can also satisfy, well, the folks who actually keep asking for these things. Fans of Bell as an actor get his biggest showcase to date (even in II and III, when he was still alive, I don't think he's had this much screentime/dialogue), the series gets a formidable opponent in Cecilia, and, via the post-credits scene (a first for the series, save for one on the director's cut of VI), a suggestion that the ongoing story dropped after 3D might actually come back into the fold someday. And we get to see a guy drill his own brains out. What else can you ask for?

What say you?

P.S. Minor spoiler here, but they had an opportunity to tie up a series-long loose end re: how John could afford all this stuff but also needed his insurance to cover his treatments when John finds the doctor's loot, and blew it by having him give it to someone else. Sad!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Beast (2022)

AUGUST 27, 2022

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

When I saw the trailer for Beast, I had two thoughts:

1. Idris Elba punching a lion in the face is prime cinema.
2. "I bet the poachers are the real threat throughout the movie and they're overselling the lion stuff."

Well, I was right about the first one, of course (Idris Elba punching anything is usually pretty good cinema at the very least), but ironically, I merely WISH I was right about the second one, because while the lion was a suitable horror/thriller villain, the movie never really put anyone beside Sharlto Copley in actual danger. Elba plays a doctor whose ex has recently passed, and he's now the sole provider for two teen girls. As is always the case, he's not ready to be a full time father, he's a bit out of touch with their interests and passions, etc. So naturally, the movie is about him proving that he can be the father they need, whether it's helping them grieve and move on with their lives, or stitching up a wound they got from a crazed lion while in the middle of the African Bush.

All well and good, but... we know he'll make it, because a studio movie isn't going to orphan two teenagers, and also because it's his story from start to finish. I think if the story unfolded from the girls' perspective, showing how maybe the older one (who is 18, the other is about 12) is capable of taking care of them both and maybe don't really need their dad, then maybe Elba's fate could be more of a question mark. Likewise, there's no way either of them are going to be killed, and there are no other characters of note out there with them, so that only leaves Copley, as their honorary uncle/best friend to both parents. He's a nature lover who takes care of the animals in the area (a scene where a lion plays with him like a cat might is both astonishing to watch on the technical side of things, and just plain adorable) and is also an anti-poacher, i.e. someone who will resort to extreme measures to protect the animals from those who are after their fur/bones/etc. Making him the movie's most interesting character.

Naturally, he gets a major wound almost instantly, so there really isn't much suspense to his fate either - a "when, not an if" kind of deal that nonetheless gives the film its most suspenseful moments. There's a scene where Elba is walking him through a quick patch for his wound via walkie talkie, with the lion's location unknown, and you're constantly wondering if the lion is heading to finish him off, or if it's about to pounce on Elba and the girls and interrupt the impromptu medical advice. The movie could have used more of that sort of thing, because once Copley's out of the picture you're just sort of watching it roll along until it hits the 90 minute runtime.

As for the poachers, their appearance in the trailer (surrounding Elba and co. with guns, attacking him) is pretty much their entire role in the movie. The lion shows up and makes quick work of them, once again leaving us only with the people we know the lion won't actually get. Copley's assistant is introduced early but then returns back to their base or something, making him a non-entity, and hell even other animals don't even show up to mix things up. There's a scene of Copley tracking the lion when he sees a gator (or croc, I can't and never will be able to tell them apart) wading past, but that's all we see of it - give us a lion v croc scene, dammit! It's admirable to strip a movie down to its bare essentials, but sometimes they go too far and as a result the movie gets too uninvolving, generating about as much suspense as a movie you've seen a dozen times.

Incidentally, the last trailer before it was for Jaws, which is being re-released on Labor Day weekend in both 3D and Imax. I've watched that movie 30 times and I still hope Chief can hold on to Quint long enough for the shark to swim away or something, so it's even more disappointing that this first time viewing didn't inspire even half that much intensity for any of its scenes. Luckily, the lion itself looked terrific; I never once doubted it was real (it was entirely CGI from what I can understand; no animatronics or whatever) and they thankfully didn't make it a mutant or anything - it's just severely pissed off. That said, I'm curious about the film's R rating, as nearly every bit of violence is off-screen (they find a village that it wiped out; most of the poachers are also dispatched under the brush or while we watch someone else react to it). The parents guide on IMDb says there are two F bombs, but I don't even recall those - it really just felt like a PG-13 movie throughout. Not that that's a bad thing, but when you promise an R and everything is pretty tame, it's hard not to feel like you got sold a bill of goods.

Basically it's a movie that is just aggressively fine. Elba and Copley's chemistry was good, the scenery is of course gorgeous, Steven Price's score is effective, etc, etc... but it just never really got my pulse pounding the way these things should. Director Baltasar Kormákur (who made the incredibly fun 2 Guns and has some survival movie experience with Everest) favors long takes for many of the film's big moments (and even smaller ones, like the girls seeing their mother's house for the first time), and I can't help but wonder if some traditional editing could have given them a little more oomph. It's the sort of movie I often found myself watching at the drive-in during that first covid summer (i.e. stuff that would have debuted on streaming in normal times), where it was generating just enough excitement to make me think "Well at least I'm not sitting in the house", but precious little more.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Fall (2022)

AUGUST 14, 2022

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I do not really have a fear of heights; I've been on top of the Empire State Building (well, the platform part of it, not the *actual* top) and didn't feel any different than I did on the ground. However, I DO have a weird fear of ladders, one that even extends to video games - I'm fine with climbing them, but when it comes to getting back on them to climb down I freak out. So while the primary "scary" part of Fall didn't really get my pulse racing, the reason they're stuck made up for it - their ladder broke apart when trying to climb back down! My apparent worst fear!

For those who haven't seen the trailer or heard the premise (likely, since Lionsgate barely advertised this thing), the movie is about two 20somethings who climb a decommissioned 2,000 foot electrical tower in the middle of the desert for their own personal reasons. Hunter is doing it for her Youtube channel, Becky is planning to spread the ashes of her husband who died a year earlier on a mountain climb (the three loved doing these sort of extreme adventures). They get to the top OK and achieve their personal goals, but are then stuck at the top due to the aforementioned accident. They only have fifty feet of rope, so rappelling down isn't an option, and the smooth pole gives them nothing to use as footholds or whatever. And in a rare novel use of the obligatory "no cell" plot point, they actually had a signal at the bottom (despite being in the middle of nowhere) but now are merely too high up for it to work.

So it's one of those movies like Frozen (Anchor Bay, not Disney) or 247°F where you in the audience is constantly thinking "Why don't they do this?" and then, more often than not, the screenwriters have it covered by showing exactly how that won't work. But there's a sort of dark humor to these experiments you know will keep failing until the movie hits the 90 (or so) minute mark; for example, when Becky (Grace Caroline Currey, who was one of the girls in Annabelle: Creation) tries to charge their drone by using an outlet at the very top of the tower (about 30 feet above their tiny platform), she isn't having too much trouble hanging on and keeping the thing connected - but she IS constantly being menaced by a vulture who is attracted to the nasty cut she suffered earlier. And when they realize that a well packed phone can send a message from the ground, they use up their socks and a shoe to give it a little "box", only for it to be not be enough. But we don't see that at the time, they just show us the phone in pieces later, as if to say "Oh yeah by the way that was a waste of their socks."

Unfortunately, it's also a modern genre movie about two women, so before they even get to the tower we get hints that Hunter (played by Halloween '18's Virginia Gardner) has slept with Becky's husband (Scream 5's Mason Gooding - so much genre sequel cred here!). To be fair, it's not just throwaway "drama" as it often is - the affair left Hunter feeling even worse about it when the husband died, unable to be supportive to her best friend... but it's still the 4000th example of this plot point in the past 15 years or so. The Descent did it perfectly, and I understand why any survival horror movie would want to try to reach that movie's heights, but this one steals it wholesale (the guy dies, the friends drift apart, then reunite due to their shared love of dangerous adventure), complete with the "other woman" having something with the man's favorite saying, tipping off our heroine.

SKIP THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS TO AVOID MAJOR SPOILERS!

The problem with using this device in a studio release (one that was very obviously edited from an R to a PG-13 for commercial prospects; enjoy lots of "freaking") is that we now know Hunter will die, because there's still a puritan "Hays Code" kind of rule in play for like 95% of the movies you see in theaters. Had the two of them just been normal best friends without any drama, there would be more suspense to the proceedings, as while Becky's survival was basically a given, Hunter was a wild card until we discovered this guilty secret. Then it just became a matter of when, and that in itself wouldn't be so bad if (reminder, SPOILERS!) the movie decides to steal once again by ripping off 47 Meters Down (so, even if you read *this* paragraph, skip the *next* one if you haven't seen that one either!).

In that movie, the nitrogen narcosis led to one character hallucinating a happier ending for her and her sister, only for her brain to rewire itself properly and realize that the sister got eaten by a shark several movie minutes earlier. They do the same thing here (though it's just a regular ol' mental break); at a certain point Becky has a suggestion that requires Hunter's other shoe and Hunter says it's not going to work because the shoe is "down there." Becky looks down and sees Hunter's corpse, and she/we realize that an earlier fall - which she supposedly survived by grabbing their rope at the last second - was actually fatal, and Hunter's last 20-25 minutes of screentime has been imaginary. I mean, nearly every genre movie has some kind of "borrowing" in play, but it's rare to see a film swipe major plot points so specifically from others in the same "women are stuck!" sub-genre (one from the same studio no less). The goal of any movie like this is to distinguish itself from others in the sub-genre so it stands out, and this one manages to have more of its own identity in its early scenes, only to start reminding us of other movies at a time we should be fully sucked into this particular situation. Even Tim Despic's score sounds like Descent's (composed by David Julyan) at times, as if they thought that going up really high instead of down into the earth would be enough for no one to notice the similarities.

But outside of that, it gets the job done. Seeing the plans seemingly work only to fail due to an unexpected last second development never stopped amusing me, both actresses were appealing and funny (affair aside, their sisterly bond is strong, and thus they're quick to tease each other as only besties can), and it's only on a very brief occasions that the illusion of their predicament was spoiled by some dodgy FX. The survival elements could have been handled better (they're up there for two days or so with one bottle of water and no food; and there's no shade whatsoever during the day/no protective clothing for the harsh night, but none of it seems to matter much), but director/co-writer Scott Mann manages to keep things visually engaging despite their limited space to move (and he thankfully only cuts to the ground/other characters when absolutely necessary, keeping the camera on them otherwise nonstop).

Plus it was nice to see one of these on the big screen for a change, as it's rare to get the chance unless there's a shark involved. Frozen's release was pretty tiny, and most of the others I've seen went straight to DVD/streaming, with only scattered festival appearances to give folks the opportunity to tense up together. Not that there was much of that with my particular crowd (I eventually moved my seat after the lady in front of me straight up just started watching TikTok videos), but I'm guessing it'll play even better with an audience that's sucked in instead of looking at their goddamn phones. I read that this WAS indeed going to be a streaming debut but some good test screenings had Lionsgate change their mind, so I'm glad taking a chance on theaters is still a thing that can happen (though the box office suggests it wasn't exactly a home run decision). Hopefully the eventual Blu-ray will have the R rated version so we're not stuck with the laughable "Let's get off this FREAKING tower" forever.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

GENRE: SLASHER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

This new film is titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which you might think "again?" but it's actually the first one by that title, as it drops the "The" and restores the "Massacre" that was left out of Texas Chainsaw 3D, the last one that was allowed to be a box office hit. Its followup and now this film have largely bypassed theaters in favor of a streaming service, which lowers expectations, though in both cases they weren't designed for VOD - one has to wonder what sort of stuff they'll do if not encumbered by the need to fulfill mainstream expectations or the looming threat of the MPAA. Here's hoping that if this proves to be successful enough for Netflix, a tenth film is commissioned where the filmmakers know they can go for broke right from the start.

Once again billed as a direct sequel to the original (same route taken by Return/Next Generation and TCM 3D, and hell even 1990's Leatherface seemed to be ignoring TCM2), this one has Leatherface as an old man who is apparently living a kill-free life with his adoptive mother (Alice Krige) in a different Texas town. But said town is dying, and some internet startup types have apparently worked to buy what's left of it and auction the buildings off with the intent of turning the main street into a gentrified hipster haven; one girl wins a building and says she'll turn it into a brunch spot. "I love brunch!" says her friend, and thus we quickly understand that when Leatherface inevitably starts killing them all, it'll offer the same sort of glee we got when he took on the two preppy jocks in the opening of TCM2.

In fact, we're practically supposed to feel sorry for him, as he enters the story when Krige has a heart attack after the influencers force her to leave her home, claiming they have bought it just like all the other buildings. She claims she settled the matter with the bank and is still the rightful owner, and only a drunk child will be surprised to learn she is correct, and our "heroes" just forced a woman out of her rightful home. She eventually dies from her heart failure, which naturally pisses Leatherface off enough to start killing again, though first he makes a new mask out of his beloved ma (why he uses her face instead of one of the two cops he murdered immediately after, I don't know. Weird tribute, my man). Then he makes his way back to town, digs out his chainsaw from where it's been sealed up (yes, it's basically a John Wick "I'm thinking I'm back!" kind of moment) and starts killing everyone else in the movie.

Honestly, all of that would be enough to give the movie a pass; there are some nice gore gags (he breaks one guy's arm and uses the protruding/shattered bone to stab him in the throat), it's paced reasonably well, and basically it all just feels like a leaner, less obnoxious do-over of TCM3D, complete with the dumb idea to omit the other family members and let Leatherface be a solo act, i.e. just another generic slasher. But because this is a modern franchise movie, we have to have TRAUMA!!! And we get it in the form of Lila (Elsie Fisher), sister to one of the town-buyers who has tagged along for their road trip. As we learn just before Leatherface has his reawakening, she has survived a school shooting and is thus naturally hesitant around guns/violence. This idea isn't terrible in itself, but the filmmakers bungle it so badly it becomes downright distasteful, because when the big lug starts swinging his 'saw around the bus full with all these anonymous influencer jerks (most of them aren't even credited or given names), Lila, crouching on the floor, starts to mentally compare it to her school shooting experience - an incredibly tone deaf idea for a scene where they've gone out of their way to make us more or less root for Leatherface. That, plus the fact that she eventually has to learn to trust and use guns, makes the whole thing just incredibly icky, and I am baffled that no one on the production thought to point out how misguided it is in its depiction.

They also totally screw up their big selling point, which is that this film brings back Sally Hardesty as Laurie Strode. I'm not really joking; the whole franchise horror genre is built on some level of copycat-ism, but this takes it to another level, giving her the same hair that Jamie Lee had in Halloween 2018 and even making her say "I've been waiting for him for 50 years" as Laurie did (and, no surprise, she's obsessed with but he doesn't even remember her). Maybe it'd work with Marilyn Burns actually returning to the role instead of a new actress (as Burns passed away in 2014), but even then I'm guessing that (big spoiler here, fair warning!) it'd still leave us with a big "Why did they bother?" feeling when Sally is killed almost instantly, without really doing much and being such a limited part of the movie that she could practically be removed from it entirely without it making any difference.

Of course, if they did that the movie would be even shorter, as it's only about 75 minutes without credits, so I've basically left nothing out in my four short (for me) paragraphs worth of description. The only thing of note I haven't mentioned yet is Richter, a local redneck type who drives an exhaust-spewing pickup and carries an assault rifle, so we are supposed to look at him as another antagonist, but (big shock here!) he turns out to be not all that bad of a guy at all. He is far more interesting than any of our protagonists (and he looks kind of like Stephen Dorff, which is amusing re: franchise history), so naturally he doesn't last long - yet another dumb decision in a movie that is positively stacked with them by the time its over, nearly all of its goodwill completely undone by said bad calls.

And I looked, but failed to find any nods or connective tissue to the other films, so I am guessing producer Fede Alvarez was merely doing some damage control/spin when he said that while the film is only directly referring to the original, "I wouldn't say it skips everything. I think it's up to you to decide when and how the events of the other movies happen." Well, all due respect sir, but this film posits that after the events of the first film, Leatherface was taken in at this orphanage run by Alice Krige's character and he's been quietly living there ever since, with Sally living not too far away and dedicating her life to finding him. Seems anywhere from one to four other major attacks over the years would have, if nothing else, given her more to work with in order to track him down, no? She arrives on the scene of this incident within about an hour of being called, so it's not like she's let her self apointed avenger duties slide. So how could any of the other films have ever happened? Even if we assume Sally was just lazy, are we to believe Leatherface simply left his ailing mother from time to time to join other random families, do his thing, and then come home? "Ma, I'm back! Killed some kids coming back from prom, god they were annoying. Vilmer says hey!". Re-cementing up the wall to hide his chainsaw again every time must have gotten exhausting!

Basically, it's just a big ol' "It is what it is" affair. I didn't sit down expecting anything even on the level of TCM3 or The Beginning, nor did I receive it. The handful of good gore gags (for what it's worth, it's the first entry in the series that has "Massacre" in its title and an actual massacre in the film), brisk pace, and hilariously mean spirited final scene (which utilizes a Tesla's autopilot mode in a most delightful way) kept me from hating it, but the sheer number of poor decisions, lack of any real suspense, and completely worthless revival of the series' most beloved survivor meant I didn't actually LIKE it either. It's just there, another entry for our most inconsistent and mismanaged franchise, providing another excuse for the next team to hit the reset button again in a few years. It's about the only consistent thing this franchise can offer anymore.

What say you?

P.S. Don't put too much stock in John Larroquette's return - he's actually just narrating an Unsolved Mysteries kind of special about the first film's events that Lila sees on TV. It's about half the length of his others; he probably just recorded it himself at home and attached the .wav to a text.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021)

OCTOBER 5, 2021

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Something seemed "off" when I saw Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions in theaters over the summer, primarily that it didn't really open up any more about the world of Minos than was seemingly promised by the (overlong) conclusion of the first film. Not that I expected a full rundown, since it seemed Sony would love to have a new genre franchise and thus would need to space out such reveals to keep the story going, but it often felt more designed for people who hadn't even seen the first one, with a lengthy recap at the top (not just a repeat of the final scene like Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3, it's a full 90 second TV style refresher, missing only the announcer saying "Previously, on Escape Room!") and what amounts to a status quo reset, as if a third film could double as part 2 for anyone who skipped this one.

So I wasn't entirely surprised when Sony announced that the blu-ray would have an extended opening and ending, totaling 25 minutes of new footage. However it only ended up eight minutes longer than the theatrical version, so some stuff (and at least two characters!) do not appear in the longer version. This review will assume you have seen or at least have read a thorough synopsis of the theatrical version, so if that's not you, I'll just say that a. both versions are on the disc if you want to compare and b. the new cut is improved, though the film as a whole isn't as interesting/exciting as the original, due to both the usual sequel hurdles and an utterly baffling plot setup that goes far beyond my limits of acceptance for movie logic.

And alas, that doesn't change at all in this version: our "champions" are still coincidentally trapped on a public subway car that is disconnected and sent off track into a Minos labyrinth. That would have been fine if it was another group of random people, but the fact that they're all selected to have been there (they've all beaten Minos before) is just ridiculous even by these movies' standards. We see how returning heroes Zoey and Ben are lured there by a pickpocket, but what about the other four? Also, what if someone else was in that car? It was just a normally operating subway during a busy New York day - it's not only silly that these six champions were the only ones on it, but it's also kind of a missed opportunity. It would have been great to have five experts and one rando who had no idea what an escape room even was, let alone how to solve this one's much more difficult puzzles. Not only would it have been fun from a narrative standpoint, but it'd also allow them to meet us halfway with the giant leap of logic we're asked to take. Also, not for nothing, but wouldn't this have been a good idea for Escape Room 6, an Avengers-style meetup of all the previous films' survivors? The other four people are just random to us (and to Ben and Zoey), so their "champion" status ultimately doesn't mean anything. Zoey's still the one solving everything.

The rooms are pretty good; nothing as eye popping as the first one's upside down room, but the electrified subway car has a pretty good puzzle at its core (pulling the stop handles that correspond to each letter of the alphabet to solve a game of Hangman) and the laser-trapped bank vault are exciting and benefit from being the first two, when you're unsure who will die first. It's kind of a tradition to quickly kill off excess survivors in a sequel (think Dream Master wiping out Joey and Kincaid in the first reel, and then again in Dream Child with Dan), so Ben making an early exit wouldn't be a big shock, adding immensely to the suspense. Sometimes they rely a bit too much on the characters just simply knowing things off the top of their head (like what kind of plastic wouldn't melt with acid), but they are each great little setpieces and thankfully none feel like rehashes of the first film's games.

That said it just feels too similar as a whole to the first movie, which is where the lack of "inside Minos" stuff hurts a bit. Even the first film had more, technically, with the betting board and what not, backroom glimpses we don't get at all in the theatrical version and only get briefly in the alternate version. (Again, I am assuming you've seen the theatrical if you've read this far, so turn back now if you don't want any of it spoiled!) In the extended version, the film opens completely differently (except for the recap), showing three new characters, an unhappy couple and their daughter, with the mom (Tanya van Graan from The Empty Man, completely uncredited) seemingly wanting a divorce from the husband, who appears to be designing Minos escape rooms and is neglecting her and the daughter as a result. Mom is then trapped in one in her own home (a sauna puzzle that cooks her when she fails to solve it), and then we flash forward to the present day with Ben and Zoey planning their New York trip.

But in place of Zoey's psychiatrist scenes (the shrink doesn't appear in this new version), we get the grown up daughter, now played by the Orphan herself, Isabelle Fuhrman. Now she's seemingly trapped by her father and having to design games, and if you've seen the movie already and thinking "Wait, isn't that what Deborah Ann Woll's character was doing?" you are correct, and then you'll be sad to know that Woll doesn't appear either (despite still being credited). Fuhrman more or less fills that same narrative spot - meeting up with Zoey and asking for her help to design puzzles so that they can both be set free (with Ben once again trapped alone, albeit in a different one - he's in a sauna kind of like the mom instead of the flooded room), which I guess means if this is the canon version of the story going forward (if there is a 3rd film), Woll's Amanda is still dead.

It's an interesting choice to look back at; at some point they decided to omit Fuhrman and her family, and all the new wrinkles that came with their characters' reveals (the ending has a little twist to it I won't spoil here), and instead bring back a "dead" character for a movie that seems more designed for people who hadn't seen the first one anyway? Naturally, none of the disc's three brief bonus features shed any light on this decision, so we may never know why they decided to toss over a quarter of the film in favor of something less interesting, not to mention adding a pretty dumb epilogue (the plane scene, with Zoey hearing her psychiatrist's ringtone, was also added later and thus not in this extended version). They took a B grade movie and turned it into a C+, for... reasons?

At any rate, again, both versions are on the disc, so you can decide which one you prefer. I think the extended one is better, but that also leaves me in the undesirable position of saying "they weakened this movie by adding Deborah Ann Woll," i.e. someone who should be in every movie as far as I'm concerned. The aforementioned featurettes are all fluffy nonsense that you can live without, and if you've already seen the movie the new stuff doesn't drastically change the overall "eh, it's fine" feeling of it as a whole, so a rental to check out the long cut will probably suffice. If you haven't seen it yet, watch the extended one, then watch the theatrical and tell me which you prefer - I'm curious if I'm alone in thinking they should have gone with the one with Fuhrman all along. It definitely dips into more horror territory (in fact I could almost stretch this into another sub-genre! Hint hint!), so there's something that should appeal to anyone reading this.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...