Not that it matters, but I never really loved It Follows as much as most of my peers, to the extent that I never even bothered to see David Robert Mitchell's followup, Under the Silver Lake. It's fine, but it's one of those movies where once the concept was explained it kind of just repeated the same moves until a runtime was met instead of getting more interesting. And outside of whatever he contributed to Armageddon (he's one of the few of its dozens of writers that actually got credited) I can't say I love JJ Abrams' movie work all that much either. But somehow, this unlikely pairing paid off with The End of Oak Street, which combines Mitchell's off kilter sense of humor and almost preternatural ability to get the set/prop details right in his settings with Abrams'... well, his obsession with ripping off Spielberg.
Now, the plot, about a normal suburban neighborhood being overrun by dinosaurs that were sucked in through a wormhole (or was the neighborhood itself sucked into dinosaur times?) naturally lends itself to a lot of shots of people looking at something terrifying and/or awe-inspiring off screen, which is a standard Spielberg move but doesn't necessarily *belong* to him. But even the setting of the film lets you know it's intentional, as its set in 1982, the year of Poltergeist and ET. Our hero family, led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, live in a suburban town that might as well feature the Freelings or Taylors living next door*, and they even have the same kind of semicircle breakfast nook the latter family had. Plus there's some dad issues stuff (McGregor is depicted as a bit of a loser; Hathaway's character even writes a novel to work out her fantasies of leaving him), and since any dinosaur movie will undoubtedly evoke memories of Jurassic Park, you are left with a movie that might even inspire a young child to read the credits carefully to see if this was indeed an Amblin project.
(Some minor spoilers follow!)
But you know what we never saw in any of the seven Jurassic Park movies? DINO SEX! About an hour into the film, Hathaway and McGregor are sneaking their way through the neighborhood looking for their kids (who ran off in search of the family dog, and given how much shit poor Evil Dead Burn took, I assure you that the pooch makes it, but some cats do not) when they see two brachiosaurs (or something along those lines; Alan Grant I am not) mating up against a house. Since they're distracted and not carnivores anyway, Hathaway finds it funny enough to insist McGregor poses for a Polaroid, in a moment that helps kickstart them reigniting their fading love for one another. It's a very silly moment, but I loved it. Normally they'd just have one save the other and boom, problems are solved, but the idea that two people on the verge of divorce could reconnect again over a dinosaur getting railed against their (dead?) neighbor's house is incredibly funny and weirdly touching.
The other thing that won me over is how R rated this PG-13 movie is. In addition to two F-bombs (one being hilarious, the other in an emotional outburst from Hathaway to her kid that kind of broke my heart as a parent), there are a lot of brutal deaths and gory injuries, including a major character having half their leg bitten off. The Jurassics usually have one (1) pretty gnarly death (shoutout to the babysitter in Jurassic World!) and keep the rest rather tame but there's quite a few here that are seen in all the glory you'd want. It's also kind of genuinely scary in spots? There's a sequence involving a Titanoboa (giant ass snake) slithering its way through the family home, and it is a legitimately terrifying moment when it makes its first strike. And since we see (random) kids killed early on, there's a genuine sense of "no one is fully safe" that is missing from the Jurassics and similar films that helped keep this one engaging throughout its (hallelujah!) 1:40 runtime.
On the other hand, it can be very stupid at times. The characters frequently seem to forget about the dangers all around them and have heart to heart conversations (or arguments) without looking around, and for some reason despite the availability of cars everywhere, after their own is destroyed they seem to assume driving is a bad idea and they keep running around in open areas where a dino could get them. Even when they see a potential rescue point in the distance, they decide to proceed on foot, despite knowing from a previous encounter that there's a time limit on the thing (explaining what would be too spoilery). Hathaway's character can be abrasive as well; when McGregor tries to calm his children down by telling them it'll be OK, she gets angry at him for giving them hope? And it happens multiple times! I'm not one of those people who need the characters to be honorable and good for 100% of their screen time, but I feel she goes a bit too far into "unpleasant" mode on too many occasions, and it's only my affinity for the actor that kept me from rooting for the dinos. If it was Sarah Paulson or some reality star playing the role, I'd be BEGGING for her gruesome exit.
Otherwise it's just a good, breezy time at the movies, perfect for August when you're probably just there to get some A grade air conditioning and don't want to think too much. The plot could have been an Asylum movie but Mitchell and Abrams, along with the cast, gave it the A-grade treatment. Plus it functions as the sequel to Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom that the woeful Dominion failed to deliver (re: dinosaurs being on the mainland, specifically suburbia), so I appreciated that. I also appreciated that it teased out the appearance of the dinos (going in blind would be kind of awesome, because at first it's just "something big"), especially since they have feathers and such so if they showed up right away it might look kind of silly since we are so used to the JP versions (and in turn, if they delayed the appearance just to show us what we've seen before, it'd be like "Why?"). So some script stuff aside - and the weirdest continuity error I've ever seen involving McGregor's pizza delivery sign on the car - it's exactly what I hoped for when I heard the premise, and something I'll happily throw on from time to time just to enjoy the spectacle of Anne Hathaway stabbing a dinosaur repeatedly. Bonus: my kid really liked it!
What say you?
*honestly, the movie has so many random background characters being chased and/or eaten by dinos that I'm kind of stunned the VFX guys didn't intentionally style a group of their virtual dummies to look like either family as a gag.
Of all the random words they could use instead of a number for a sequel, I'm not sure why they went with "Rebirth", because Jurassic World Rebirth is actually coming along in less time than most of the gaps between entries (only the stretch from Jurassic World to Fallen Kingdom is shorter, by a week or so). And also, it's mostly the same old stuff, borrowing plot points from most of the previous entries (with Jurassic Park III being the surprise biggest influence) and adding almost nothing new to the proceedings. Rebirth of what? It's all the same and we haven't had time to miss this property! It's the first one to have a female lead, I guess.
Not that Scarlett Johansson's femininity has much to do with anything, as her character is the most generic one here. She's a mercenary/tracker/whatever for hire who is tasked by health tycoon Krebs (Rupert Friend) to get blood samples from the three biggest dinosaurs in order to make a new heart medication (because relatively few dinosaurs ever died of heart disease, so they figure there's something in there that will help humans - it's not a bad scientific mumbo jumbo plot for this particular franchise, in all honesty). And where do they get these samples? Yet another secret InGen island, of course! Granted I've never memorized any of the sequels, but I can't recall a single scene in any of them where we are shown a complete topical/aerial shot of the entire islands we've already seen, so why they couldn't just say "They had another lab on Isla (Whatever) that we didn't know about!" instead of expanding their global reach yet again is beyond me.
Anyway, she needs a weary tough guy named Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and his boat to get them to this island, and they also need a handsome dorky guy (Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Loomis, which delighted me) to collect the samples, and then there's a few other people on the boat who might as well be named Fodder 1, 2, and 3 (one of them is played by Ed Skrein, so I like that this movie gives us the replacement Transporter AND the replacement Hitman). This group is fine and even fun to watch, but as we know, if a Jurassic Park movie is made and doesn't feature a 11ish character, everyone who was involved in the making of the movie will be put to death, so out of nowhere we meet a family of a dad/widow, a little kid, an older teen, and her dummy boyfriend, who are sailing across this particular body of water. They run afoul of the Mosasaurus (who is the same one from the World movies, still out on the open water - he's the only returning character from any of the others) and are rescued by ScarJo and her team, as the Mosa is their first target.
Surprising no one on the planet, their boat ends up wrecked and they become stranded on the island they were going to anyway. A helicopter will arrive in 24 hours, so they just need to get their other two samples and fly home. To be fair, as far as stories go, it's one of the better ones a Jurassic sequel has offered, and the script (by returning vet David Koepp) at least gives us a few memorable characters in Duncan, Loomis, and Krebs, which is an upgrade from any of the other "World" entries. But Koepp also makes a fatal blunder when it comes to the two groups: he keeps them separate but intact once they get to the island! The family of four remains together on their own, and ScarJo's team sticks together elsewhere, carrying out the plot.
Therefore, every time they cut to this group of four definitely safe characters, all of the narrative drive AND tension goes out the window, because they are only trying to accomplish surviving, and we know they will. All of the wild card characters are also the only ones with a reason to be there, so their scenes deliver - honestly, without the family this might easily have been the best sequel. The scene where they get the sample from the Mosasaurus, set on the open sea, is the best this series has offered since the trailer/cliff bit in Lost World, but (as with that movie, which at least still had "Whoa, dinosaurs!" novelty going for it) we spend the next hour and change on a series of less exiting setpieces, most of which we've seen in the others. There's a convenience store scene that apes the kitchen scene from the original, pteranodon attacks swiped from JP3, and the final battle is pretty close to the one in Dominion, with the newest big beast (a "D-Rex") attacking everyone as they wait for rescue from a helicopter.
(Though given how much it feels like JP3, the fact that it *has* a climax is an improvement, I guess.)
Speaking of that lesser third entry (skip this paragraph if you don't want some mild spoilers) they also needlessly chicken out on killing off a character without showing HOW they survived, just as they did in 2001 with Allesandro Nivola's Billy. I won't say which one, but at a certain point one of them sacrifices himself to save the others, luring the D-Rex away so the others can get into a boat and make their way down river - it's a great, earned scene! But then a few minutes later they see a flare and find that the character is magically alive, with no explanation as to why the D-Rex suddenly ignored them. I don't know why these movies can't ever seem to commit to making these animals as dangerous as we are supposed to believe they are, but it takes on extra silliness here because the whole movie hinges on the facility being abandoned for 15 years because the D-Rex got out and everyone was so frightened, and yet it only manages to kill one major character, who we knew was going to die anyway because he was the film's obligatory evil human.
As for the 3D, it's pointless and I forgot it was there half the time. I only splurged because I had to; the AMC app glitched after I bought my tickets for a 2D showing, and by the time I realized my transaction didn't actually go through, the seats I chose were gone and all that remained were front row. And it was on the 4th, so we had barbecues and pool parties to get to, so it was either see it over a week later (my wife and son are currently visiting family; I stayed behind to watch the cats) or see it in a half empty 3D theater. It baffles me that they still bother with this, over a decade past the 3D heyday, but whatever. My kid was delighted a few times, so it was worth my extra six bucks or whatever the difference was.
Other than that, it at least looks spectacular, as Gareth Edwards does a much better job of directing than Trevorrow or Johnston (JA Bayona remains the champ in the "Well if it can't be Spielberg..." department). Some of them have been spoiled in the marketing, but he has a knack for fun shots where a character is oblivious to the dino action occurring behind them, and even with the needless back and forth between the two groups, he at least is able to keep track of his damn story from scene to scene, unlike his immediate predecessor. The movie is far from sloppy, and the dinos look great, but there's only so much Edwards can do with a script that shoots itself in the foot by keeping the two groups apart for the majority of their time on the island. If Ali's character had been stuck with the family, and maybe one of the kids with ScarJo, then it would keep the two groups invested in reuniting with the other, but at a certain point I started wondering why any of them would even care if they found the other team as long as they found their rescue ship.
Six sequels, and none of them better than "it was fine." I don't know why it seems so hard for them to even come close to the original's highs, but I also know that the movies still make a ton of money every time, so there's really no incentive for Universal/Amblin to try. It's a shame that they were really close to having something here with the main plot, only to torpedo all of its momentum every time they cut back to the dumb family, but that seems to be the series' main calling card: screwing up a can't miss pitch ("What if the park actually opened?" "What if the dinos got the mainland?" "What if we brought back Sam Neill and got you in and out of there in 90 minutes?") and coasting on a handful of decent scenes and our (by now) Pavlovian response to the John Williams theme. See you again in 2028, I guess.
One of the things that worked best about Quiet Place Part II is that it didn't try to repeat a lot of the same tricks as the first one. It was a little "louder" thanks to the soundproof tank and the opening flashback, came up with some new ideas for suspense (the villains tying noisy bottles to a hero in order to keep them from moving was pretty brilliant), etc. - despite the limited concept, it was (in my opinion) just as good as the original. But for Michael Sarnoski, writer/director of A Quiet Place: Day One, he was somewhat painted into a smaller corner. How do you surprise audiences who have seen this scenario twice now, and in a prequel where they don't have systems in place to help live among these creatures?
Luckily he figured it out: basically make it a survival drama with a few monster scenes! Our hero is Sam (Lupita Nyong'o), who lives in a hospice with much older people as she battles cancer. On a day trip into the city to see a puppet show, which she only agrees to join in order to get some proper NY pizza, the scenario we saw at the beginning of Part II plays out, albeit in one of the most recognizable cities in the world instead of an all-American small town suburb. Sam and Reuben (Alex Wolff), the nurse who chaperoned them on the trip, along with Sam's cat Frodo, make their way back to the theater, where survivors have huddled and quickly learned to stay quiet (they also figure out that the creatures are blind, somehow - the movie could have used a moment to show this, as it's weird that they just seem to know it). Some helicopters fly past announcing an evacuation at the harbor, so everyone starts heading that way.
Except for Sam (and Frodo), of course. She instead decides that she wants to get the pizza she was promised, specifically from Patsy's in Harlem. It seems like a pretty foolish endeavor that will certainly get her killed, on par with Jason Lee's obsession with getting a toothpick in Dreamcatcher, but luckily Nyong'o is one of those performers who can sell this idea and not only make it believable, but even kind of reasonable. I mean, yeah, if it seemed like the world was ending and my options were "try to get past a bunch of monsters and get on a boat alongside hundreds of people who are not being as quiet as they should" or "go get pizza with Lupita Nyong'o" I'd probably choose the latter, too.
And it seems Sarnoski knew many people would feel the same way, so he actually inserts a character around the halfway point who, without any real reason to do so, decides to follow her and get pizza too. His name is Eric, and he's played by Joseph Quinn, who we all know/loved as Eddie on Stranger Things but we may not all know (I certainly didn't) that he's actually from the UK, so he gets to use his natural accent as his character is from London and came to the US for law school. Lupita, however, doesn't get to use her own speaking voice, but she gets to hold Frodo the adorable cat for big chunks of the movie, so I feel it evens out. This allows Sam a way to explain why it's important that she gets some of that pizza, and given her declining condition and sudden lack of easily available medical supplies, it doesn't need to be spelled out that monster or no, she doesn't think she'll be around much longer and wants to have this one good thing before she goes.
So it's basically one of those "Before I die I want to LIVE!" type movies, albeit smuggled into "Monster Movie Part 3." As a fan of Sarnoski's Pig starring Nicolas Cage, I was curious why he'd jump into this for his next movie, but in some ways it feels more like *his* movie than it does the previous films in this particular series. Obviously they could have hired anyone capable of delivering 90 minutes' worth of solid monster scenes, especially with the Manhattan playground to play in, but they instead went the Alien route and let a filmmaker come in and make his kind of movie in their world instead of forcing him to go through the franchise motions. Which is to say, yes, it's not as scary or suspenseful as the others, and nowhere near as quiet (a heavy rainstorm allows them to basically talk for a while, and other city sounds let them whisper fairly frequently), it's by far the most emotionally gripping. There's a scene where the two heroes wait for thunderclaps to let out frustrated screams, and it's an incredibly moving moment that had me welling up a bit.
(Speaking of the non-quiet: the score by Alexis Grapsas—who also composed Pig—is also lovely and more prominently used than Marco Beltrami's work on the first two.)
Of course, the flipside is, if you WANTED 90 minutes of monster action, then you're probably going to be disappointed. As much as I enjoyed the human drama of it all (and thank Christ, seeing a platonic male/female friendship develop and play out), even I felt that the suspense scenes could have been a little more gripping, especially since there were so few of them. There are only really four people in the movie, one of whom is Djimon Hounsou, reprising his character we meet later in the timeline, and another who dies pretty early. So the "anyone can go" feeling that the first two films had is pretty much MIA here, and the large scale attacks produce a couple of jolts but nothing that truly terrified. This also resulted in a (somewhat amusing but still a "con" instead of a "pro") first for the series, at least in my experience: the movie didn't put that same hold on the audience where we also felt the need to be totally quiet. I had a thermos with me (it was an AM screening, so coffee time!) and when I put it back down after taking a sip it made a little clunk, and only once (during one of the few "all quiet" scenes) did I feel guilty for breaking the mood. The other times I didn't even think much of it, since the movie itself only got completely quiet a few times.
For me this wasn't a dealbreaker (a surprise, sure, but not a detriment), but I can understand how it might be for others. It's a risky gambit, and I must admit I'm kind of impressed Michael Bay and co. were all on board with it - this is the least Platinum Dunes-y movie they've ever made. Luckily the box office and reviews have been good (if a little lower than the others on the latter), so hopefully if they plan to continue the franchise they can keep hiring new/interesting filmmakers and let them bring their own sensibilities to the table. There's only so many times we can watch someone try to quietly make their way across a room or open a candy bar wrapper or whatever, but there are infinite human stories to tell within a world where doing those things can get you killed. I hope we can see some more.
What say you?
P.S. If you've been to literally any movie in the past six months, you've already seen the trailer. So instead, enjoy Michael Stipe singing this classic Dashboard Confessional track!
The 2010 film Devil (which I quite liked) was supposed to be the first of a series of films produced by M. Night Shyamalan but written and directed by others, which seemed like a good idea to me. Unfortunately those other films never materialized, and it’s only now, 14 years later, that we are finally getting another movie where the polarizing but never boring filmmaker is only hand as a producer. But he didn’t go far to find a filmmaker for his long-awaited sophomore effort as an exec, as The Watchers is directed and written by his own daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan. It's an odd choice, I must say, to make a debut under the shadow of a very famous (and again, polarizing) filmmaker that’s also an adaptation of a novel (a faithful one at that, best I can tell – more on that soon). It’s hard to gauge one’s abilities as a storyteller when they’re not only telling someone else’s story, but also doing one that’s right within the wheelhouse of the guy whose name put a few more butts in seats.
Then again, since the movie isn’t particularly great, maybe it was a smart move. It’s hard to blame her for its lapses when she was faithfully adapting another person’s story. I never read AM Shine’s novel (which came out only a few years ago, so I can assume the pandemic inspired its "trapped in a room" scenario), but I looked at a detailed synopsis online and the film keeps all of its beats—including the goofy ending—intact as written. From what I can gather, the main difference seems to be that the novel focused on a power conflict between the two main characters, and in the film that’s more or less just a couple of arguments early on. The plot, for those who haven’t seen the trailer 900 times over the past few months, concerns Mina (Dakota Fanning), an odd young woman who works in a pet store and goes out at night pretending to be someone else (complete with a wig) to initiate one night stands. Her boss tasks her with delivering a rare bird to a buyer who lives way off the beaten path somewhere, and since this is a genre movie, her car breaks down before getting to her destination. Attempting to walk her way to civilization, she is menaced by unseen creatures, only for an older woman to appear and tell her that she must join her inside a little bunker, “right now!”
While it’d be funny if Mina said “No thanks” and the movie continued following her through the woods without mentioning the bunker again, alas she does as instructed, and learns about her predicament. The creatures, aka The Watchers, can’t come out during the day but at night they want to watch the people in the bunker, who are seen through a wall that’s essentially a two way mirror. The older woman, Madeline, is played by Olwen Fouéré, so naturally it’s on her to explain a lot of this exposition, though the other two people in the bunker, a young guy named Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) and a 30ish woman named Ciara (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell), chip in from time to time. Naturally Mina doesn’t want to stay there and keeps trying to find a way out of the forest, but her plans are continually foiled and she eventually learns to listen to the others when they say “You can’t get out!” There are “point of no return” markers around the forest, and the idea is that if you cross one, there’s no way you can get back to the bunker before nightfall (that these markers exist even though another plot point concerns the days getting shorter is a plot hole we just have to accept). But with the forest so vast and without anything to help guide them, they can’t risk continuing to run straight past the marker and just *hope* to reach safety, so the markers keep them in place.
So the first half or so of the movie is just… that. They run outside and look for supplies, then run back and kind of hang out for the Watchers’ amusement. It’s not a very compelling story (I suspect on the page it’d have the internal monologues of its characters to at least flesh them out), so you’re just kind of waiting to get answers, even when you know they’re probably not going to be very satisfying. There’s an opening scene with a guy running through the woods and eventually being attacked that should have been saved for when Mina arrived, because then she could have learned at the same time we did what the stakes actually were. Instead the audience is ahead of her, so it’s rather frustrating watching her essentially catch up to what we’ve known before we even met her. To make up for it, we are teased flashbacks to why she's ducking calls from her sister and how their mother died, but I can't say it's enough to make her into a well rounded protagonist.
Once they (spoiler) find a secret room under their bunker things pick up. We meet a new character, get an info dump, a change of scenery, etc. But of course, once we start getting all of the information, the movie reaches a critical point, where you’re either going to go along with the reveals, or laugh them off the screen. I don’t want to spoil the particulars, but I was reminded of three movies that I’ll hint at: one of Shyamalan’s less loved films of the ‘00s, another Irish horror that’s fairly recent, and the sophomore film from a modern genre titan. If you can figure out which three movies I am referring to, The Watchers is basically a stew of all those, with a dash of Quiet Place for good measure (that one’s not a spoiler, you can tell as much from the trailer). And not for nothing, but they're all more interesting.
I mean it’s not BAD, really, it’s just very uninvolving. Our characters learn the truth from an info dump presented via video logs on a computer, so there’s not much of a feeling of discovery. The characters themselves aren’t very interesting, and their conflicts get resolved bizarrely quickly (at one point Daniel locks Mina and Madeline outside, but once he finally lets them in, there’s no real repercussion or continued antagonism, everyone just forgets it within minutes). And the last 20 minutes take place away from the woods entirely, so the confined/claustrophobic setup is long gone by the time the credits roll. Mina’s backstory is doled out through a few flashbacks, one of which is a terrific jolt, but what it tells us seems to be foreshadowing an ending that the movie (or book) doesn’t have, and it also breaks up the claustrophobic setting, so I’m not quite sure why it was presented in this fashion.
Ultimately, to me it felt like a movie that was designed more for a streaming service, which is to say: for people to half watch while looking at their phones. It’s all just kind of there, never really coming to life or paying off its occasionally interesting-sounding bits (there’s a line about extra fingers that had me thinking that it might be a takedown of AI, but alas, no such luck). The actors are fine, the scenery is lovely, and I appreciated the goofy final moments just on sheer spectacle alone (again, without spoiling, but when ______ suddenly has ______ as they make their exit, I nearly applauded at the randomness), but I guarantee if I didn’t write this review today, less than 48 hours after seeing it, I’d have trouble remembering much else this time next week.
Back in the day, I used to mix things up with what festival I went to in a given calendar year, but at this point I barely even consider the others, zeroing in only on the Overlook Fest in New Orleans. While I would love to go to Frightfest UK again, and... well, I would enjoy the company at Fantastic Fest since a number of friends go (I don't particularly want to support the company anymore seeing as how they laid my ass off at the very beginning of Covid, not even a "furlough"), I just have too much fun gallavanting around New Orleans for four days to really debate going somewhere else instead. Summertime fests are a possibility, but when my kid is in school, it's just too much of a hassle for my wife to do the parenting gig solo for the better part of a week just so I can watch some horror movies.
Some GOOD horror movies, I should say, and ones I might not get a chance to see in theaters with appreciative crowds again. I just looked at the films I enjoyed the most at last year's festival, and some still haven't even come out (Trim Season, which is finally hitting limited theaters and VOD in June) and the others, like Clock, were streaming movies. And Renfield, alas, never had any packed screenings if its depressing box office was any indication. Apart from the 2022 lineup, which I assume was very slim pickings on account of Covid, they've always delivered a solid mix of titles at the fest, and specifically horror (or close cousins like thriller or dark comedy), whereas FF dips its toes into pretty much everything.
And as I've done for the past couple years, I bought my own pass instead of trying to attend as press, so that I could just enjoy myself and not worry about filing reviews right away, or jotting down notes as I watched to make sure I was covering all my bases. But I figured it'd be nice to say a few things about what I saw, if for nothing else but to provide you folks with a few titles worth keeping an eye out for (and for me to quickly consult what I saw as time passes and I forget).
I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU
The official opening night movie was Cuckoo, starring Dan Stevens, but it was at a theater further uptown that required transportation and also a bit of optimism, as badgeholders aren’t always guaranteed to get into every screening if everyone has the same idea. At the main theater, there’s always another option, but at this single screen location a potentially pricy Uber drive away, you might end up seeing nothing. So I stuck around the main theater and checked out this dark comedy instead, and I’m glad I did so as I don’t know if I’ll get another opportunity to watch it with a big appreciative audience. It’s an absolute crowd pleaser in the same vein as Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, in which a couple (Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells) who are about to adopt a baby take a last “just us” kind of vacation to Italy. Unfortunately, the language barrier (Kroll is trying to learn the language via Duolingo) and some other standard mishaps result in them in a location that SEEMS like your standard Texas Chain Saw Massacre type house, and they act accordingly.
The truth is, of course, that the people there mean no harm, but their inability to properly communicate results in much comic bloodshed. Honestly it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time; the chemistry between Kroll and Rannells is dynamite, and the smart script gets a lot of mileage from the idea that they think they’re being targeted for being gay when in reality the people they encounter are actually quite accepting of it (one Italian word sounds unfortunately close to a particular gay slur, which doesn’t help). And the gore gags are well done, so even though it’s not really a horror movie by any means, anyone who might have felt “duped” by seeing it at a genre festival should have been sated anyway. Keep an eye out for this gem.
THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT
This was produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (writer/director Michael Felker is their longtime editor) so it automatically got my attention. And the plot sounded intriguing; a brother and sister pair rob a bank and then hide out in an isolated farm that has a time traveling closet on its second floor, which will allow them to transport themselves to another period in time, hide for two weeks, and then return to their own time when the smoke has cleared (at no point does anyone explain how disappearing for two weeks after a robbery is the best way to escape attention, but I guess if time travel is real in this world then maybe applying real world logic isn’t a sound idea). Alas, when the two week period is up, they find themselves unable to return, and they are instructed by someone in the future (or past?) via tape recordings that someone is planning to disrupt the space time continuum and they need to wait there and kill them when they arrive.
It’s at this point that things start to go awry, as the vague time travel mechanics, plus the overseeing time travel… police? I guess? (Very TVA from Loki, which Benson and Moorhead steered through its 2nd season) start to ask more of the audience than the film is seemingly willing to offer in return, resulting in a frustrating back half. And it doesn’t help that the film’s closing sequence presents an idea that is fascinating and perhaps should have been a midway or even end of act 2 twist, so that the rest of the movie could have had fun exploring it a little. Instead we just get endless scenes of the brother and sister staring out at the surrounding area of their farm waiting for their unidentified attacker to finally show (their identity, when finally revealed, shouldn’t surprise anyone, though there’s next to no explanation of how they got involved in all of this). There are some fun moments with time travel logic, like when the sister (Riley Dandy) opens a cupboard to find it empty, slams it shut in frustration, and then opens it again to find it fully stocked (thanks to someone in the future sending it back into the past), but for every cute moment like that there are a handful of plot points that are woefully underdeveloped.
TRIVIA
As always, I opted out of whatever movies were showing at the time to go offsite somewhere and participate in the annual horror trivia game that the fest (and Daily Dead) put together. Unlike our own horror trivia game here in LA, this one is always at a bar, so it’s nice to get progressively more and more tipsy as I search my brain for otherwise useless facts in order to win a Blu-ray. Sadly, while we did win a round (actually two, but to give everyone a chance to win stuff, you can only take prizes once), my hard-won copy of Smile (on 4K UHD no less) was later left behind in the theater. Oh well. I was really only playing for the glory of being, perhaps, part of the only team in the venue who knew the name of the actress who played Sr Margaret in Silent Night Deadly Night.
ODDITY
Finally, a legit horror movie! And a really good one! (Indeed, as I was writing, word just came in that it won the festival's audience award.) The story concerns a woman who is murdered at an isolated house that she’s in the process of restoring, seemingly by a former patient of her psychiatrist husband. A year later, her twin sister (who is blind and also a psychic) starts to wonder if the man being blamed is truly the murderer, and… well, that’s when things get into spoiler territory, so I’ll hush up.
I CAN say that the movie (which occasionally employs the use of non-chronological storytelling to let us know things when we need to know them) offers some terrific scares and suspense, including a jump scare that actually made ME utter a little frightened sound, which hasn’t happened in ages (usually at best I just jump a little). Those who enjoyed Talk To Me will be right at home here, as it has the same kind of tense moments and reliance on a strange haunted artifact, in this case a wooden mannequin that may be able to come to life. Also, without spoiling particulars, if you enjoy seeing terrible men get their just deserts, you’ll walk out fully satisfied. This was my favorite movie of the fest, and can’t wait for it to hit Shudder so more people can enjoy.
IN A VIOLENT NATURE
I’m always up for a deconstruction of my beloved slasher movies, but unfortunately In A Violent Nature’s “promising on paper” pitch - a Jason movie where you’re with Jason the entire time – doesn’t translate into a fully satisfying film. After being revived from the events of some previous adventure, we do indeed stick with the hulking Johnny (who also has mother issues and prowls the woods; unlike Leslie Vernon’s amalgamation of several slashers, Johnny is clearly just Jason) for the majority of the film’s runtime. But here's the thing: said runtime is 96 minutes, which is more than most actual Jason movies. And that’d be fine if there was more going on here, but I’d estimate a full 75% of the movie is just Johnny walking through the woods, with the camera pointed at his back. There are a handful of victims of course, and the edit gives us just enough to detect their basic archetypes and even a little bit of their customary drama (one guy is being a jerk to his girlfriend, another still pines for his ex who is now with another guy, etc), but let’s put it this way: if filmed traditionally this would be among the least interesting slasher movies we’ve seen in ages.
Personally, I think it'd be funnier/more interesting if the victim group was absolutely fascinating, and the movie denied us resolutions or context for their ongoing issues because Johnny himself wasn’t interested and opted to just wander away to find easier prey. That said the trailer is hardly misleading, as it (like the film) is mostly just shots of Johnny’s back, so it's not like they're hiding what the overall experience is like. And it does contain a nice surprise for Friday the 13th hardcore fans (a certain victim of yesteryear pops up as a Good Samaritan), so that was appreciated. I think it will go over well with the people who love the Terrifier movies, as those too are endlessly dull for a while before offering a ridiculous and well-executed kill scene (the yoga one here is an all timer, for sure). But if you. like me, aren’t just showing up to these things to see the kills, I don’t know how much entertainment value it’ll ultimately provide.
BLACKOUT
Over the years, Larry Fessenden has become one of the most reliable genre filmmakers, taking familiar tropes and monsters and putting his own “somber” (his word) spin on them. Here it’s the familiar werewolf tale; our hero Charley (Alex Hurt) has been cursed with lycanthropy and, sure enough, a new full moon is approaching. And when a friend of his is accused of a recent murder that he knows he committed while under its spell, he decides that he needs to put his affairs in order and capture his confession and subsequent transformation on camera, to clear his friend’s name and explain to his former girlfriend why he suddenly broke up with her. Honestly I may have liked the movie even more if it had a 25th Hour style setup and took place all in one day; a slow burn leading to his only transformation, or at least showing the other times as flashbacks. But I’m sure the distributor is happy to have something a little more commercially minded, and Fessenden’s couple decades of experience have allowed him to rope in a bunch of familiar faces for bit parts: Kevin Corrigan, Barbara Crampton, and Joe Swanberg all pop up for a scene or two.
But the real appeal is Alex Hurt, who was the son of the late William Hurt (who, via photographs, plays his father here) and is just as compelling to watch. There are only a few scenes in the movie he’s not in, and his performance allows the movie to pass the crucial test for a werewolf movie: you feel bad for him even though he’s technically a murderer. It’s honestly one of the best werewolf movies I’ve seen in ages, and the final scene suggests we haven’t seen the last of him just yet. Count me in.
SCREAM DREAMS
I took another break from moviegoing to attend a taping of the Scream Dreams podcast, hosted by Catherine Corcoran, James Janisse, and Barbara Crampton (her again!). Janisse wasn’t there due to a convention appearance elsewhere, but that was OK as it allowed Crampton to take a bigger role than she usually does on the show, where she only pops in during its final 15 minutes. The guest was David Dastmalchian, who is always interesting to listen to, and we all got a tote bag for attending. In a city that charges for plastic bags at the grocery store, a new tote is always a plus. The episode should be available soon for their subscribers, keep an ear out!
ARCADIAN
Nic Cage fighting monsters is an easy sell for me, but this "A Quiet Place meets Darkness Falls" exercise doesn’t utilize his talents, making me wish they hired someone a bit cheaper and maybe put more money into another action scene or fleshing out the ones they had. Cage gets top billing but I can’t imagine anyone will be surprised when he is seriously injured at the halfway mark and barely appears after that – it’s just how it goes with these things nowadays. Instead we spend more time with his twin sons (not identical), who he has been caring for as a single dad since the monsters arrived 15ish years prior. And that’s fine, but… it’s just not particularly interesting or novel to see them go through the motions. It’s also too vague; it’s obvious that the monsters do not like the light and only freely roam at night, but it’s not like they melt or anything like vampires do in the sunlight, so they’re just… what? Wusses? It’s clear someone said “What if Quiet Place but light instead of sound?” and never really developed it further than that.
At least the monsters are cool. Like all modern movie monsters they move too fast/blurrily to really get a good look at them, but they DO offer – a few times! – shots of their mouth/teeth, which basically operate like out of control staplers? It sounds goofy but it’s actually quite effective in practice, and the sequence where they finally cut loose (against some out of nowhere evil humans, as if someone rushed on set at the 11th hour and reminded the rest of the crew that any movie like this that doesn’t have a “but man is the REAL monster” moment will be susceptible to fines) is pretty great. It’s fine, just not befitting Cage’s talents, especially at a time when he’s talking about retiring after a few more movies.
SHORTS COLLECTION
At this time I was very determined to be watching Azrael, a film I did the opening AND closing titles for (usually I only handle the latter) and was thus excited to see them on the big screen. But alas (for me, not the filmmakers) they had to turn folks away because it was such a hot ticket, and I was one of the ones who didn’t get in. If I hadn’t stopped for a coffee…
But luckily, the collection of shorts I saw instead was pretty great! These things can be hit or miss, as I’m sure everyone who has ever attended a “short block” can attest, but even the weakest one (out of eight) was still pretty good. I particularly enjoyed “Zit” from Amber Neukum, in which an office manager hoping to get a promotion is dismayed to discover a pimple on her forehead that proceeds to grow and bleed profusely as the day continues. However none of her coworkers can see it, so the comedic thrust is seeing her increasingly frazzled state as she tries to keep it together and not blow her promotion. Hannah Alline is absolutely perfect in the lead role, and kudos to her for pulling the whole thing off with that disgusting makeup effect on her at all times. I also enjoyed "MLM" from Brea Grant, which took the ongoing cult-like pyramid scheme nature of these things and took it to its extreme while also taking shots at online influencers (the full subject of another short titled, yes, "The Influencer" - also quite good!). And it had Barbara Crampton as the president of the company they work for! She was everywhere!
I SAW THE TV GLOW
I was totally with this movie until its final ten minutes, at which point it… I actually don’t even know how to describe it, beyond noting it involves a time jump for the main character. But until then, it’s a lovely and haunting look at how our childhood nostalgia can inform much (too much, if I’m interpreting things correctly) of how we try to navigate young/regular adulthood. The two leads’ shared love of a TV show that seems to be equal parts Buffy and Twin Peaks is something anyone can probably connect to, and how such shared adolescent things can be a tether to that person as we grow up and apart, for better or worse.
Most people absolutely loved it; I would probably be in their company if it didn’t spend the last chunk of its runtime making me wonder if I had accidentally blacked out for a half hour and missed something. Not really horror per se, but the lead villain of the TV show is a damned freaky sight to behold. Great soundtrack too. I absolutely plan to watch it again, as maybe it will unlock some answers (often the case with something told out of order, and more so when you're watching on very little sleep), so I'll revise at the time. Either way it got me more interested in checking out We're All Going to the World's Fair, the previous film from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun.
INFESTED
My last film of the fest was also my only foreign language one (not counting one of the shorts and a few scattered lines of Italian in I Don’t Understand You). And if you’re arachnophobic, you’ll also probably consider it to be the scariest movie they showed there. Basically a spider-fied version of Attack the Block, our hero Kaleb sells stolen sneakers and is also a budding zoologist who collects reptiles and insects, so naturally he eagerly buys a spider off a dealer who warns him that it might be dangerous and brings it to his apartment home. Surprising no one, the spider gets loose and starts to breed, and at some point we learn that this particular type of spider can grow in size as a defense mechanism. And then those bigger spiders start laying eggs, and… well, you get the idea. Before long the building is… what’s the word, oh yeah, infested! by all sizes of spiders: tiny ones that can sneak through your vents and under doors, and bigger ones that you can’t just swat away. The police quarantine the building, but our heroes are determined to get out… not everyone makes it.
Again, if you harbor a deep fear for the creepy crawlies, this might be unbearable to watch, as they think of pretty much every single way a spider can ick you out and add in the (less likely) idea that it can also kill you. But it started to wear a bit thin for me after a while; the film runs 105 minutes and I really started to feel it after a certain point, particularly when the cops turn aggro out of nowhere. The final scene, which finally explains Kaleb’s movie-long opposition to making promises, brings things back and even got me a little touched, but I think if they found a way to speed things up in the front and stay a little more focused in the third act that this could be an all timer monster movie (like Attack the Block). But hey, pretty good and worth watching isn’t too shabby, either.
Overall it was a solid fest; as with last year I didn’t dislike anything I saw, and I saw a good mix of selections that were on my radar already (Infested, Arcadian) and films I knew absolutely nothing about (Oddity, I Don’t Understand You). I sadly didn’t get to do any of the immersive stuff this time around (they now require separate paid tickets for such things, and as I like to just follow my bliss and keep options open, I didn’t want to lock myself into anything), but trivia and the podcast taping kept the “more than just movies” vibe alive for me. Plus, let’s face it: the city is half the fun anyway. If they relocated the festival to, I dunno, Cleveland or Des Moines, I’m not sure I’d make it a point to go every year. But as long as they’re in a city that I can walk around with my beer and listen to buskers perform Dark Side of the Moon on a trumpet outside of a fresh beignet joint (and they keep it to spring, before the humidity there hits its awful stride), I’ll be there.
I normally don't combine reviews, but they more or less combined the productions of Critters 3 and Critters 4, so I feel it's fitting. And really I just don't have a lot to say about them, so they would be very short reviews on top of it. Least this way you guys are getting something that'll last your whole trip to the bathroom or waiting for your microwave meal to finish. A review that's too short will have you wandering over to Twitter or something. Can't have that.
Anyway, as fans know, these entries went direct to video after the 2nd film flopped in theaters but did OK on VHS, enough to show New Line that there was interest in more Krite adventures just not enough to warrant a big screen release. And at this time they were doing quite well for themselves with the Ninja Turtles movies and branching out into comedies with the House Party franchise, so (in keeping with the first half of the '90s Hollywood-wide declining interest in horror) it made sense to explore the direct to video market with a known but not particularly lucrative brand. Did it work? I dunno. Apparently not since there was never a proper Critters 5.
It didn't help that the first of the two releases was pretty bad even by franchise standards (sorry folks, I know they have their fans but even the first two are just OK to my eyes). The concept seemed like a winner; taking things out of the farm/small town locales of the first two and sending a new batch of Krites into a major city. Unfortunately with the budget they had, that major city (Los Angeles or New York; the people who made the damn thing can't seem to agree on the bonus features) is represented by a handful of generic establishing shots of some kind of urban environment before setting the entire movie in a single apartment building. Not a high rise, mind you, just a three story dwelling with a handful of apartments. Demons 2 it is not.
It's also incredibly slow paced, a problem that plagued the first two movies but is even worse here. Once again the body count is ridiculously low, as the furballs only kill a mere two people out of the eight or so running around the building (not to mention the possibilities since they're supposedly in a major metropolitan area). And that'd be fine if they were spaced out, but nope, they die almost back to back around the middle of the movie, leaving the rest of it to repetitive scenes of the people scurrying around the building trying to find a way out. At one point someone tries to get out by climbing down a cable outside, and they get their foot caught in the wire and spend the rest of the movie dangling back and forth trying to reach a phone booth. Not is this a weird thing to spread out for what seems like a full half hour, but it also just reminds us that they're not in any actual major city, because someone would have walked by and helped (or robbed them).
Besides a handful of decent FX from the reliable Chiodo brothers, the only thing about the movie that anyone will or should remember is that it features a young Leonardo DiCaprio in his first film. There isn't much on display to tell us that he'll go on to be one of the most in demand actors of his generation, but he's certainly got more presence than most of his co-stars and just the sheer novelty helps keep it somewhat watchable (at least, NOW it does. Not sure about in 1992 when few knew who he was). Sadly he barely appears in the climax, adding to the movie's inability to generate any excitement.
Despite being a back to back production, Critters 4 doesn't bring Leo or anyone else along for the ride outside of Terrence Mann (Ug) and Don Keith Opper (Charlie), who appear in all four films in various capacities. Mann technically doesn't really appear in C3 at all, since his lone scene is just a post credits thing that bridges this film's events with C4, which repeats the scene anyway. As for Opper, he basically has an extended cameo in 3 (showing up for one scene at the beginning and a chunk of the end) but has more to do in 4, though after the opening he disappears again for a half hour or so. The film also doesn't even take place in the same spot, setting its events in space instead of Earth.
Of all the horror franchises that went to space it's the only one that has a natural reason to do so (being that the Krites are aliens and Ug and his pals are intergalactic bounty hunters), so it's a shame they waited until they only had a nickel and some plywood to sell the concept, but honestly it's not that bad (at least, compared to 3). It's got a solid cast: Brad Dourif, Eric DaRe from Twin Peaks, Anders "Radu" Hove, and even Angela Bassett (a year before What's Love Got To Do With It) populate the spaceship that picks up Charlie's floating pod in deep space and brings him - and the Krite eggs he's got with him - on board while out hunting for salvage.
It's also got some much needed humor, another thing in short supply in the third one. Dourif as always brings some kooky readings and mannerisms that are worth a smile, but the real godsend is the idea that the obligatory all knowing/all controlling ship computer (voiced by Martine Beswick!) only responds to reverse psychology, so they have to keep saying things like "Don't open the door to Pod B" in order to get her to do it. It's silly but damned if it didn't make me chuckle every time. I also enjoyed that instead of a nonstop countdown during the (also obligatory) self destruct sequence, she played a song that lasted the three minutes. It was like a low key Douglas Adams kind of gag that I appreciated.
Also, while the Critters don't appear as often as they usually do, they at least make it count when they do, with two gnarly deaths of main characters and a handful of brief attacks on some generic stormtrooper types who accompany Ug when he finally shows up in the last 20 minutes. There's also an F bomb and some gunshot deaths (also with some blood) making me wonder if this one actually got an R rating, but it apparently still managed a PG-13 like the much tamer earlier entries. So yeah, no giant ball of Critters or even much in the way of Gremlins-esque chaos, but at least they upped the body count to make up for it.
Both films have 20ish minute retrospectives with Opper, Mann, writer David J. Schow, the Chiodos, the DP, and some others, along with a commentary track. 3's track, with Opper and his brother Barry who produced them all is just as boring as the film, as neither man seems particularly excited about doing it (they also did tracks for the first two movies on this boxed set, so maybe it was one long session and they were worn out?). They skip part 4 but instead we get one with the director, Rupert Harvey, who also produced the first and third films (he missed out on Critters 2 because he was producing The Blob - good call!). Unfortunately, he's moderated by Michael Felsher, who (as is nearly always the case) doesn't seem to care much about doing a track for the film itself as much as he is covering the person's entire filmography. Which is probably fine if you happen to be a big fan of theirs, but if I sit down to watch a commentary on Critters 4 I don't particularly care about hearing about the MPAA's issues with the Nightmare on Elm St 5 poster. It's one thing when he's with a supporting actor who isn't in every scene anyway, but it's insane to me to have the director of a film for a commentary that doesn't even specifically mention that film for over an hour into its runtime. Somehow you learn more about its production from a 20 minute piece with some assorted cast and crew than you do with a 95 minute track spotlighting the one person who was involved in every aspect of its making.
Anyway, I don't think I'll be keeping this set, which has been sitting there unopened for over five years waiting for reappraisals on the first three and my first time viewing of the fourth (I rented 3 on VHS back in the day and remember disliking it then. I was only 12! You like everything at that age!). Except for 3, none of them are particularly bad, but they're too uneventful to warrant repeat viewings, and I can have those itches scratched with other, better movies (tiny creatures? Gremlins! The wizardry of the Chiodo brothers? Killer Klowns! Intergalactic bounty hunters coming down to earth? I Come In Peace! etc.). My boxed set shelf is overflowing and most of them (F13, Halloween, Universal Monsters) get pulled off repeatedly or at least contain movies I genuinely love. This series just never really won me over, despite my efforts, and I know it'll just sit there untouched for decades now that I've gone through it all. Though I also have the 2019 reboot Critters Attack somewhere, so I guess I"m not COMPLETELY done with the franchise.
Once upon a time, I got invited to press screenings and also went to more festivals, which meant I got to see newer movies before hearing too much about them. Which was great, because I’m (sadly) easily swayed by the hype (or the rumblings) and then end up feeling the opposite way, because my expectations have been skewed in one direction or the other. It’s something I try to avoid as much as possible, but it’s kind of unavoidable, especially when by the time I end up seeing something it’s from buying a ticket to the Sunday night showing of its opening weekend (by which point reviews have been going around for a week or two). But every now and then there’s a movie like Godzilla Minus One, where all the praise turned out to be pretty on the mark.
I should preface the rest of this review by noting that I’m hardly a Godzilla expert, but more of a casual fan at best. I’ve liked most of the ones I’ve seen (not too many; counting the new Monsterverse types I put the total at 12, including this*), but apart from the original and King of the Monsters I wouldn’t say any of them are movies I’d want to watch a second time (even though I have ended up revisiting a few for various reasons). Not that they’re bad movies (well, Emmerich’s is) but it’s just not my thing – I am entertained by them and then kind of forget about them a few days later. So me saying that Minus One might be my absolute favorite of the lot – or at least tied with the original – may not carry as much weight as a die hard aficionado saying as much (and I know some of those types who have indeed declared this their favorite), but hey, it should count for something, right?
Part of why it works as well the OG is because, well, it’s a period piece set around the same time – actually a few years before. Our hero is Shikishima, a WWII kamikaze pilot who is too afraid to carry out his suicide mission and flies to an island where planes are being fixed, claiming a maintenance issue with his aircraft. He’s barely just arrived when Godzilla stomps his way onto the island, killing all but one of the mechanics while Shikishima once again is too afraid to engage in battle. The only surviving mechanic, Tachibana, blames Shikishima for their deaths, and then the poor sod gets an even worse heaping of guilt when he returns to his hometown and discovers his parents have perished in an air raid that might have been prevented if he had committed to his duty as a kamikaze pilot.
It’s an intriguing and utterly messed up take on the “hero needs to atone” story, because basically everyone is mad at this guy for not committing suicide, and he himself feels bad about it. And thus as Godzilla continues to stomp and smash his way around Japan, Shikishima is basically on a path of “I need to kill myself to feel better about all the deaths I might have prevented!”, leaving us in the audience in the odd position of either hoping he continues to be a coward so that he won’t die, or egging on his demise. I kept thinking of the end of Armageddon, when Billy Bob Thornton is basically screaming at Bruce Willis to “push the button!” when pushing said button means killing himself – it’s basically that kind of weird moment stretched out for two hours.
Luckily, it’s not as grim as that sounds. In fact, it’s kind of a charming movie at times, particularly in the middle chunk of the film when it’s essentially Jaws but with Godzilla instead of Bruce. A few years after returning home, Shikishima gets a job on a boat that goes out on the sea to find and deactivate all the mines that were planted in the waters by both Japanese and US military during WWII, only to find G out there as he makes his way back to land. There’s a riveting sequence where they’re trying to use one of the mines they’ve collected to blow him up that is akin to the barrel scene in Spielberg’s classic, and the camaraderie among the four guys on the boat has elements of the Quint/Brody/Hooper dynamic as well. Honestly I would have been just as happy, perhaps even more so, if this was how the rest of the movie played out, with these four guys (each with their own reasons for being there) trying to stop Godzilla before he got back to the mainland, but eventually their boat is proven to be too small for the gig and more military/scientist types come to the rescue for a grander final act.
In fact if I had one minor complaint about the movie, it’s that the waterbound climax lacks the same kind of tension a land-driven one would provide. Sure, the crew of the two big battleships (plus Shikishima in a fighter plane) is at stake, but one of the things about the movie is that he keeps getting bigger, and that scale is hard to judge when he’s just surrounded by water instead of people and buildings. I also find myself puzzled in this sequence, as he appears to be just standing in the water in many shots but the plan involves using the two ships to tie a massive weight belt around him and sink him to the bottom of the ocean below, so he can’t be touching the ground where he is. I guess he’s just really good at treading water? All that said, it’s worth it for their plan B, which is that if sinking him to the bottom doesn’t kill him (from the pressure), they will remotely trigger some inflatable things on the same belt that will make him skyrocket back up and basically kill him from the bends. Again, I haven’t seen all of these movies, but of the ones I HAVE seen, the method of stopping him has never been from something Thom Yorke sang about back when he could still write coherent songs.
The other thing that the water prevents is G moving around with as much force, which is a bummer because he is legit terrifying in this one. The opening sequence with the mechanics is actually full on scary in ways that giant monster movies rarely are – the original Jurassic Park might be the last time I found myself really tensed up from a giant monster scene, as it really delivers on him being a MONSTER as opposed to a force of nature of some sort. Like, yeah, one swing of his tail can knock over a building and kill hundreds, but there’s something far more unsettling about him seeing a person and eating him or deliberately using that same tail to swat him hundreds of feet through the air and let him die when he lands. And by keeping the movie’s giant monster population to just one (another thing it has in common with the original), it avoids any kind of “Well he’s more of an anti-hero because we need him to stop this other monster” angle that too many others rely on, though I understand that the series would get quite stale if it was just “Godzilla is here/back, we have to stop him!” every time. It's a double edged spiky tail.
Naturally, as is always the case despite some erroneous claims to the contrary, a hefty portion of the movie is devoted to human drama, though as with Godzilla himself the material is well above average. Shikishima is a sympathetic hero and his relationships with the other characters are just as compelling as any of the effect-driven scenes. He has a neighbor who lost her children to the air strike and blames him for their deaths, though she slowly warms to him as he does his best to care for a survivor named Noriko, who is caring for a baby (Akiko) whose parents also died. It’s endearing to watch this little makeshift family come together, and I also enjoyed the strained relationship he has with the other guy who survived the opening island attack. Shikishima feels enlisting this man to help him fix the plane he needs to take out Godzilla will help make up for his cowardice then, and so the other man is given his own dilemma: help the man he despises, or do nothing and risk more deaths from the actual threat? So many of the ones I’ve seen have had rather corny human elements (the love triangle in Raids Again comes to mind, or the dull business dealings in Mothra vs Godzilla), so I liked that not only were these more interesting, but actually tied into Godzilla as well. It’s not that they have to put aside their differences to stop him – he’s the root cause of their differences in the first place!
Oh and the music is terrific. I damn near cheered when the main theme really kicked in at a key point during the climax. It was like the “Brothers in Arms” cue in Fury Road in how pumped it got me for the already exciting action on screen.
Honestly, unless you demand a certain number of buildings to be destroyed in these things, I don’t know how you can walk away disappointed with this one as long as you understand that these movies are always at their best when they have compelling humans on the ground that Godzilla stomps upon. Sure, it’s not as destructive as some others (including Shin Godzilla, which was also well received but I found rather average) and those accustomed to the monster brawls might be taken aback by the lack of another kaiju for him to fight, but it’s clear everyone involved wanted to truly get back to what made the original such a classic, and (quite impressively) giving it a modern spin despite the period setting. It really just works on all levels, and I suspect will be the go-to influence for any number of series entries over the next few decades. And I’m stoked it was given a proper US theatrical release, something that’s eluded the series for quite some time (Shin was given a limited release in art house theaters, and Godzilla 2000 was a recut version); since it’s been successful I hope the trend continues from here on out. It should always be just as easy to see the big foreign films here in the US as it is for them to see Marvel and Minions movies there.
What say you?
*The others being the original, Raids Again, King Kong vs, Mothra vs, vs Biollante, Emmerich, 2000, Shin, and the three WB/Legendary ones.
I didn't start writing about horror movies until 2006, and at that point, The Last Voyage of the Demeter was already on its second round of rewrites after the initial version started falling apart. Since then a series of directors have come and gone, and considering the final version has seven known writers in addition to Bram Stoker, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the film feels hollow; whatever original spark may have existed in its original draft has been sanded (rewritten) away, so all that's left is a technically proficient and occasionally engaging monster movie, but without any genuine excitement or obvious passion. It's just THERE.
The concept is fine: taking the Demeter chapter from Stoker's Dracula (which, I hope I don't have to explain, depicts how he got from Transylvania to London) and expanding it to a full length feature, pitched more or less as "Alien but on Dracula's boat" (a scene where the ship's men fret about their bonuses seems to be a direct tip of the hat to Ridley Scott's classic). But not only is it not as novel as it might have been once upon a time, since they basically already did that in the second "episode" (basically a movie) of BBC's Dracula from 2020 (which is terrific and should be seen by anyone reading this, if they haven't already), but it also lacks the mystery of that film. The crew of the Nostromo didn't know what they were dealing with, and neither did we - we learned along with it. Here maybe our heroes don't know who/what Dracula is, but we in the audience do, so we're always several steps ahead of the characters, several of whom are fairly anonymous (there are two mates who I literally couldn't tell apart), unlike Scott's memorable crew. A better comparison might be Alien 3, where there were a few standouts (including a Game of Thrones guy! Charles "Tywin" Dance there, Liam "Davos" Cunningham here) and a bunch of glorified extras (prisoners, in that case).
Also, Alien's timeline made sense, whereas this film's month long journey is shown to be doomed almost from the start, when "something" (read: Dracula) kills all of the livestock meant to serve as the crew's food. After two weeks Drac starts helping himself to the crew, which would be fine if there were like 30 guys on board, but there are a total of ten, one of whom is a victim already stored away in one of the Count's wooden crates and thus not in any danger until she gives off her obligatory exposition. The first victim is explained away as possibly drunk and fell overboard, but it's not long until most of them have seen the creature, at which point the movie should be basically one non-stop hunt, right? Like in, er, Alien? Nope, they keep going as normal, with the Captain (Cunningham) demanding two men take each watch at night, an amusing line because at that point there's only like four left anyway. And it's not a particular big boat, so why they can't find him in a single day (when he's sleeping, of course) is just silly, let alone after several. Since the whole "Bulgaria to London by boat" aspect doesn't make a lick of sense anyway (look at a map if you're confused as to why), there's clearly some huge liberties with geography, so why make up the arbitrary month-long time it would take when it just weakens the story?
Part of what got me excited for the film was the comparisons to Hammer movies, but I'm not sure which ones they were watching because two of the issues I had would never happen under Terence Fisher's watch. One is that the film is too damn long, running just under two hours when most Hammer movies had the good sense to come in at 90 or less. Sure, all movies are longer now, but usually there's a story that demands such length. Here the plot is "Dracula is on a ship and kills everyone", a mystery that even a complete novice wouldn't have a chance to see unfold because it (sigh) starts at the end, with the doomed ship already crashed on the shores of England, crew dead/missing. There's no real point to any of this material (there's no real twist to the other end of this framing device), and lessens the impact of the boat crashing on the rocks when it happens.
The other thing is that Hammer movies notably, at times even laughably ended as soon as the monster was dispatched; if credits weren't already rolling more than 60 seconds after Dracula or Frankenstein's Monster met his (temporary) end, something was amiss. Here, we get an extended and very obnoxious scene where the film's lone survivor (I won't spoil it because I guess it technically counts as a surprise as to which one it is, when you consider the rest of the cast) has voiceover explaining that they're not finished with Dracula and blah blah blah setup for The Second Last Voyage of Demeter or whatever you'd call a sequel to a film with such a definitive title. Even if the film hadn't tanked at the box office, ensuring no sequel would ever exist, it would have been a pretty weak way to end the film, and again goes against whatever "Hammer style" approach they were taking. Those movies all ended definitively and would be retconned or explained in a sequel IF ticket sales encouraged them to make one! At some point they got it backwards, and it sucks.
On the plus side, it was cool to see Dracula as a monster again, as opposed to the usual handsome guy (especially since Universal already had one of those this year with Renfield, a far more inspired film). He talks a little, and it's an actual actor in makeup as opposed to a CGI creation, but there is nothing typically *human* about their appearance, and director André Øvredal uses it sparingly, sticking him in shadows and lightning-strike glimpses even in the third act. And the R rating is fully earned, with very gruesome throat gouges, a couple icky demonstrations of what happens to vamps in the sun, and other bloody showcases (he sure wastes a lot of his food, but whatever). Luckily, Øvredal doesn't apply that sense of showmanship to the animal deaths - they're all killed offscreen (including a dog, just fair warning). Tear a guy's head off, sure, but do not show us a pig being bitten!
And the cast was fine; Cunningham is always a pleasure to watch, as are Corey Hawkins (as the newest member of the crew and also the doctor) and David Dastmalchian (first mate), all of whom commit to their performances and keep things lively even when they're repeating beats from previous scenes (sometimes it feels like Dastmalchian's character merely forgot about earlier events whenever a new body turns up). I didn't recognize anyone else, but the script didn't give much for anyone else to really work with; even the lone female doesn't particularly stand out beyond, well, being the lone female. She's tasked with some of the exposition and thankfully spared a romance with Hawkins (or decidedly less consensual attention from the rowdier mates), so it could be worse, but at one point Noomi Rapace was cast in this role (assuming the basic plot was always the same across twenty years of development) and it's clearly not a role she'd have much interest in, considering how thin it was. Bear McCreary's main theme was pretty good too, though I can't deny I wish Thomas Newman had stuck with the film (yep, even composers came and went on this thing), as he doesn't do a lot of genre work but one of the few exceptions was The Lost Boys, so it would have been interesting to see him return to vamp fare with another 35 years of experience to draw from.
I get sort of sad when a movie like this comes along and doesn't grab me, because on paper it's the very thing I wish to see more often: an R rated monster movie designed to actually be scary. And I'm a sucker for contained location horror, plus it basically unfolds like one of my beloved slasher films. But it just never really came together for me, always feeling like it was just putting its pieces into play before stepping things up, only for that escalation to never really come. There are some inspired moments, such as Hawkins' heartbreaking reveal that the reason he, a Cambridge-trained doctor, was in Romania looking for work is because he was hired based on reputation only to arrive and be shunned because he was Black, and a funny little bit where Dastmalchian questions how his education could be any use at the sea, but those moments are a. few and far between and b. notably not part of the horror-driven scenes. Øvredal knows how to make suspense in confinement work (Autopsy of Jane Doe is an all timer), but he never managed to really raise my pulse here - there was more tension in the damn Nun II trailer beforehand (that magazine flipping bit) than I ever felt on this Voyage.
I was recently talking to someone about why sequels are such a tough nut to crack, because a movie's grosses aren't equal to the people who actually liked it and will return for more, but common wisdom means spending *more* money on a followup, meaning you have to earn new viewers (and then some) to make up for the ones who won't be fooled again. And also, everyone who loved a movie did so for different reasons, and unless you're making the exact same movie it's impossible to satisfy all those needs; having more of one thing means having less of another. So it's a shame I hadn't already seen Meg 2: The Trench at the time, because it was a perfect example of that very dilemma. If your favorite thing was Jason Statham, you'll be stoked to learn he's even more Statham-y in this one! But if your favorite thing was Li Bingbing or Ruby Rose, I got some bad news! And if your favorite thing was the sharks themselves... well, they're back, of course. Lateral move there.
The first film was a surprise hit in 2018, so naturally a sequel would follow (Statham's busy schedule and covid made it take longer than it presumably would have), but one concern is that despite the grosses, it wasn't a beloved movie. The main issue folks had (including me, though I mostly still had a good time) was that it took far too long for the shark to get to a populated area, and its PG-13 rating kept it from being as carnage-heavy as you might as well be when it's a big/dumb/loud summer movie. So how do you do a sequel that addresses those issues for those who had them, but apply the "if it ain't broke" rule for those who didn't have any problem with the pacing or gore levels?
Turns out they just kind of played it safe in every department except for the choice of director. The first film was directed by Jon Turteltaub, a perfectly serviceable guy who makes normal/enjoyable movies like the National Treasures and Phenomenon; an odd choice for a killer shark movie to be sure, but the exact guy you need for a megabudget film that can more or less appeal to everyone. This time they got Ben Wheatley, who is the complete opposite of Turteltaub, in that his films serve very niche audiences and are even hit or miss among those folks (I like Kill List and High-Rise, but found Free Fire and In The Earth to be rather interminable), making him an equally odd choice for this kind of movie but for very different reasons. Alas, Wheatley didn't make a movie for his fans; there's a few inspired touches here and there (the practical mouth chomp seen in the trailer among them) but if you told me it was Turteltaub again I wouldn't have doubted it. But hey, Wheatley makes interesting things and if taking a paycheck gig like this means "from the director of Meg 2" secures funding for something he and his fans are more into, that's fine with me.
Anyway, as the title implies, our characters spend more of the movie in the trench this time, having designed some new submersibles that allow them to quickly penetrate the thermocline layer that keeps the trench's inhabitants from going up to the surface, without leaving the big hole that allowed the Meg to escape last time. But once they're down there they discover an illegal drilling operation, and the evil guy running it sets off a few bombs to try to kill Statham and all his pals, which naturally fails but the explosion manages to cause a giant hole in the thermocline, allowing even more stuff to get through. But it also broke our heroes' submersibles, so they have to walk to the drilling operation's base and find a different way to get to the surface. All this stuff takes up around a third of the runtime, and while it's exciting enough on its own (it's like a cross between The Abyss and Poseidon Adventure), there is precious little shark action within it, so if you felt the first film didn't have enough of that sort of thing, I have to warn you that they offer about the same exact amount this time. There are more Megs, sure, but it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, and they never do anything together besides provide overhead shots of their fins traveling across the screen. There are little "Raptor Sharks" to allow for some on-land action (I don't know what they are exactly, but they swim like fish but can run around on land too and there's a "the grass parts as they approach the humans" scene straight of Lost World, so "Raptor Sharks" is my term!), but this stuff is rarely anywhere near as satisfying as seeing the big one do its thing.
But like I said, if you are a fan of Statham, they have upped the "Statham movie" quotient considerably. In the first film his role coulda been anyone believable enough to swim/drive boats/occasionally fire a weapon, but this one seems tailored for his usual screen persona. In the opening scene he sneaks onto a ship that's been illegally dumping toxic waste into the ocean and gets to kick a few asses, and then once they get to the drillers' base he gets an extended one on one fight with the bad guy that could have been in any big action movie from the 80s and 90s. And then the movie settles into full on Die Hard mode for a bit, as the bad guys take control of Statham's company base and it's up to him and a few others (including Cliff Curtis, among the handful of returning cast members) to take them out. Shark? What shark? I'm having fun with all this stuff! But I can definitely see it being a make or break moment, especially for those who were hoping that the sequel status plus a genuine horror guy with Wheatley would mean more chompy chomp.
Finally, the sharks all beeline to a populated area, this time something called "Fun Island" which is a destination resort for partying 40 year olds, it seems. They get around the obvious geographical handicap by having what seems like a half mile long bridge out to a quartet of tanning/pool/tiki bar type "pods", i.e. somewhere the sharks (and the giant octopus, whose appearance is barely longer than it appeared in the trailer; I'm not even sure if Statham is aware of its existence) can logically swim to/under in order to claim victims who are too far from the beach to just run to safety. The body count SEEMS higher, but it's like Cropsy doubling his count in The Burning with the canoe massacre - a shark eating five people at once doesn't make up for the time it could have been eating people one by one. And Wheatley seems afraid to kill off many named characters; I don't think a single "good guy" character dies in the second half of the film, saving all the carnage for bad guys (duh) and anonymous beachgoers.
Then again, maybe they just wanted to ensure they had options for returning characters for Meg 3, since a few of the folks who survived the first film are MIA here. Bingbing's character is killed off without explanation (a memorium photo is the extent of it) and her brother (Jing Wu) steps in to fill her duties at the company (we are told he was off trying to find his own path prior to this film, hence why no one mentioned him before). But Ruby Rose's character is gone, more or less replaced by Skyler Samuels, as is Statham's ex wife (Jessica McNamee), though we get a suitable replacement with Melissanthi Mahut as Rigas. Bingbing was originally announced as returning, so I'm not sure what happened there, but there are moments in the film (that I can't spoil, but vague hints for those who have seen it, Samuels' involves a video call and Mahut's involves a choice near the escape pods) that would have landed much better with Rose and McNamee's characters intact instead of these "find and replace the name" substitutes we have no history with (Mahut even has a line suggesting she WAS around last time). Nothing against the performers (indeed, as a Scream Queens stan I was happy to see Samuels), but I'd be willing to bet that the first draft(s) had the OG characters in these spots and not much time was spent differentiating them when the actresses couldn't/wouldn't return for whatever reason. Cliff Curtis gets more to do though, so that's nice.
As for the 3D: it was OK, nothing essential. I wanted to see it in 4DX for full ridiculousness, but after hearing so many disappointed takes from like-minded pals who saw it earlier, I decided I'd settle for standard 3D at an AMC, where I could A-List my ticket rather than drive all the way downtown for a full priced ticket. Now that I've seen it, I can't say I regret my choice, but I wouldn't have been angry either. It was a pretty good movie, just like the first. I assume it's a catch 22 kind of thing; the FX are terrific and thus the movies cost a lot, which means they can't go R or they'll have no shot of getting their money back. But the FX on an R-rated movie budget would suck, and then we'd complain about that too. So, at least for me, the decision to go full on action movie to fill time is a good one, as you get a different (cheaper) form of excitement. It's a shame a lot of the money shots are in the trailer, but there's one part that isn't, involving a Statham one-liner, that made the entire thing worthwhile to me. I guess it comes down to whether you want shark action, specifically, or just B-movie nonsense of all kinds. If the latter, I think it's an improvement on the original. If the former, I can definitely understand why folks feel let down that this followup has nearly all of the same issues in that regard.
HMAD-ing is actually somewhat expensive! If you can, help BC pay for his various movie-getting services (Netflix, Amazon, buying used DVDs, etc.)! Thank you!!!
Horror Fans