Obsession (2025)

MAY 14, 2026

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Focus paid $15m for Obsession (which only cost about a million to make), so I assume they are betting that it’ll be a decent sized hit. And if so, that means that the crowds will almost certainly include a few misguided young (and not so young) men who will see absolutely nothing wrong with what the lead character does, and probably think “Sucks that this guy had to resort to making a wish just so that ungrateful b---- would see how good he was for her.” (We call these guys incels, just to be clear.) I would love to read their reviews.

But for now you’re reading mine, and I am here to tell you that this is a solid, if imperfect genre film that once again proves (as Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger have done to even greater extent) that comedians are really, really good at coming up with outside the box horror movies, even more impressive when you consider that at its core, Obsession is merely another "Monkey’s Paw" variant. A shy, mumbly guy ironically named Bear (Michael Johnston) is hopelessly in love with Nikki (Inde Navarrette) his coworker at a music shop, and can’t gather the courage to ask her out, even when she asks him point blank if he likes her (he denies it, the coward). So he does the next best thing, making a wish on a toy shop novelty item called a One Wish Willow, only to be surprised and then increasingly horrified when the wish comes true.

His wish, specifically, is “I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone else in the world,” setting up the poor phrasing that tends to be the undoing of anyone who makes these sort of genie/wishbone/penny in a fountain kind of movie wishes. Because by loving him more than "anyone else in the world” he inadvertently (we hope?) includes herself in that mix, and quickly realizes that she is now so attached to him that she has no agency of her own. At first he's a bit freaked out at her sudden change of tune, but then she insists to come over and they kiss a little, and then via montage we see that she practically moves in right away, and they do lots of cutesy things together in what looks like the montage from any romcom. But as we quickly learn, she also can’t function without him. Even a trip to the bathroom causes her to freak out, sounding like a dying tape recorder as she scream/shouts “Why don’t you looooove meeeee” kind of desperate pleas. In one terrifying/sad moment (which Navarrette nails; she is almost supernaturally good at the sudden physical/vocal shifts her character needs to take) he goes to work on her day off and she just stands motionless, wetting herself (and worse), unable to do anything until he returns.

It covers some of the same ground as Companion, actually, but with one key difference: the entire movie unfolds through Bear’s perspective. In fact we know almost nothing about Nikki, or her friendship with Bear prior to the film’s events. Mostly through inference we can tell a few things: she’s probably aware of his feelings but does not share them (early on he offers to buy her a drink and she quickly covers it herself), and also feels stuck, wanting to quit her job so she can focus on something she feels more passionate about (only for her well meaning but clueless Romeo to make her even more stuck than she already was). And Bear doesn't fill in those blanks; when his friend Ian asks why he "loves" her so much, he says "She's beautiful..." and then trails off before he can name another trait. It's a telling aspect to the script, and something that'll probably be lost on the MRA dorks in the crowd.

It’s also clear that his feelings keeps him from having the same kind of easy rapport with her that he has with the other two people he works with, Ian and cool girl Sarah, who we learn has her own crush on Bear himself. It’s not that he’s an awkward guy *all the time*, he just gets that way around her. It’s one of the story’s great ironies that he inadvertently makes her lose herself when he makes his wish, because he essentially loses *himself* around her to begin with. In the movie’s first five minutes his cat dies, which understandably upsets him, but he is unable to even tell her as much when she calls later asking about when he’s getting to their weekly trivia game. At first he lies about why he’s not going (saying he's busy with work instead of just admitting he’s upset about his cat) and then he goes anyway, despite not wanting to.

He is able to tell Sarah easily though, so you might wonder why he doesn’t just date her, if you’re still not getting the point. You can’t control how you feel (or don’t feel) about someone any more than you can control how they feel about you in return. Take away the silly “I made a wish” premise and you’re left with the answer to “What happens when you get what you wanted from someone who didn’t actually want it back?” Again, we don’t see much of the story from Nikki’s perspective, but on occasion her actual feelings come to the surface and she understandably freaks out, only to snap back to the lovesick version he wished for. You know when you’re starting to fall asleep and you have a thought that doesn’t make any sense at all and came out of nowhere, and you then kind of wake up and go “Wait what the hell was that?” Well that’s basically what Nikki is like throughout the film, only it’s inverted; her momentary “dream brain” is actually the real her, struggling to get back out only for the one controlled by the wish stick to take over again. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying to watch, and a sex scene where she lies there motionless (and he doesn't seem to notice/care) is the moment where you should realize that, despite his nice guy, puppy dog crush on her, he ultimately doesn't really give a crap about her feelings. Hell, even the stupid willow stick was supposed to be a gift for her, only for him to use it himself, the jerk.

Ultimately, the only reason he seems to be aware he did something wrong is because she starts acting scary and upsetting him. She watches him sleep, moves in a jerky, robotic pattern when stressed, and… well, without spoiling things, the movie’s R rating is well earned with a terrifying (yes, I actually jumped) attack scene that reportedly had the MPAA in an ‘80s style “Cut this back a bit or you’re getting an NC-17” tizzy. Writer/director Curry Barker did a great job with his script, letting us uncomfortably sympathize with Bear at first and gradually turn on him as he keeps merely hoping she will settle into her new role instead of recognizing how hard she is fighting it. I’m sure everyone in the audience (myself included) has had a "I wish they liked me back" thought on a birthday candle or when the clock struck 11:11, because, well, why not? The worst that can happen is nothing changes, right? The movie isn’t demonizing people who have unrequited desires, it’s just deftly (and occasionally, violently) explaining why it’s a thoughtless thing to do. Stick to wishing to win the lottery!

Barker is less effective as an editor, however. For example, at one point a character doesn’t believe that the Wish Willow is real and, in jest, wishes for a billion dollars, which promptly begin to rain down on both him and Bear. It’s a good sight gag, but later the character tells Bear “Hey it worked, I have a billion dollars!” as if Bear wasn’t there when it happened? And sometimes a thing happens that should have prompted action from the other characters, but he just cuts to later (to be fair, given the movie's low budget, it's possible he didn't get to film everything in the script and just did his best). It’s also occasionally hard to tell how much time has passed; the love montage suggests they have now been together for a while but the other characters react as if it’s only been like a day or two. Nothing deal breaking, but definitely had me scratching my head more than once, making me wonder if I had momentarily blacked out and missed a connecting scene.

Otherwise it’s kind of a knockout, and I’m glad I put up with seeing it with a Thursday night crowd (not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but around here they tend to be the worst) to get to it before anything got spoiled. Barker has been saying some dumb stuff about Texas Chainsaw Massacre (he has been hired to be the, what, 7th guy to “go back to the first one” with yet another reboot) but he has already shot another movie, so hopefully that one is of equal value and I can give him the benefit of the doubt for whatever he’s doing with Leatherface (not like the bar is set high for that franchise, as there hasn’t been a good one in 20 years). And I say that even though I'm still embarrassed about the little yelp I made during the aforementioned attack scene!

What say you?

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Weapons (2025)

AUGUST 9, 2025

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I never wrote a review for Barbarian, because so much of that film’s strength relied on its constantly surprising, chronologically jumbled narrative. So writing about it seemed counterproductive - literally everything I said, despite how positive it would have been, would just weaken the reader’s experience (given that this site started as a way to discuss movies after seeing them, with no regard for spoilers, I find that evolution kind of amusing). But Weapons has a bigger marketing push behind it (since its studio actually believes in it, unlike Disney for Barbarian), so its premise is more widely known and in turn it’s easier to talk at least a LITTLE bit about how good it is.

(That said, if you haven’t seen a trailer yet, I’d still encourage seeing the movie first, with the knowledge that I am jealous of you! If you HAVE seen the trailer, I will only be sticking to things that they show, with one minor exception that I will be noting again when it comes up.)

But even if you're still unaware of any details whatsoever, the movie doesn't take long in spelling it out-the premise is explained through voiceover in the first scene, more or less the same as it is on its poster. One night, at 2:17 am, all but one of the children from a particular elementary school class walk out of their homes and run off into the night to some unknown destination. Naturally, given the only thing the kids all have in common, suspicion falls on both the teacher for their classroom (Julia Garner as Justine) and, to a lesser extent, the one child who kept on sleeping (Cary Christopher as Alex). As you might expect, the movie spends its remaining runtime (just over two hours, most of which races by) solving the mystery of a. Where they went and b. Why it happened in the first place.

Obviously you won’t get the answers to those questions from me. At least, not here. (I’ll tell you at the bar or something if you ask, sure.) What I WILL say is that writer/director Zach Cregger has publicly cited Magnolia as an influence on his story, and it’s pretty apt. The film is broken up into chapters that are titled after a particular character, including the two I mentioned along with Archer (Josh Brolin) as one of the fathers of the missing children, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) as a local cop who had a previous relationship with Justine, etc. Each new segment usually answers a question about the previous one while adding new mysteries of its own, and occasionally we see events happen again with the new context that we didn’t have before.

It’s the sort of thing we’ve seen in other genre movies (Strange Darling comes to mind), and I love it because it seems to be a giant F U to the unfortunate trend of movies being written for people who are barely paying attention to them. Creator friends have told me about producers demanding they modify their scripts/edits to remind viewers (“viewers”) of information that was already explained in earlier scenes, so that the people who are only half watching while they look at their phones won’t get too lost, and it depresses me. But there’s no such hand holding here - it’s not exactly a complicated story, but if you’re not paying attention, you won’t understand why the movie works. Many of the reveals and payoffs aren’t even spoken aloud; there’s a shot of a paint can that explains an earlier scene without anyone actually commenting on it, and that’s the sort of thing that makes this movie such a rewarding experience.

I also loved how these characters aren’t bad people by any means, but all have some kind of flaw that makes them targets for those who love to criticize anyone who isn’t as perfect as they believe they are (kind of like Magnolia!). There’s an alcoholic, a cheater, a drug addict… the self righteous among us will deride these people as “unlikable” or “hard to root for” or whatever, but I didn’t see any of them that way. And the one that comes closest to being a traditional "bad person" is the same one who does more to help the missing kids than anyone else has up to that point in the narrative. Finally, a modern horror movie that doesn’t equate “trauma” with “interesting character” as so many others have done!

Another thing that worked in its favor, at least for me: it almost seemed like it could have been a period piece. The suburban setting (Pennsylvania somewhere) gives it an Amblin/Stephen King vibe, which of course speaks to the '80s and '90s, but a handful of Ring camera shots (of the kids running away) and a Fury Road poster clearly establish that it’s set in the modern day, more or less. Even cell phones barely appear; there’s a few texts between Justine and Paul and I think that’s about it for their usage. I can’t even remember any computers beyond scanning the Ring-cam videos; hell, Brolin’s character is an architect and uses a printed out map and a ruler to figure something out, same as anyone would have done in a 1987 film. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some version of this script that was indeed set 20-25 years ago and the subsequent rewrites simply failed to erase all of that DNA.

On the flip side, there are a few things that nagged at me a bit, and the second one is a spoiler concerning a character death, so please skip it if you haven’t seen/are sensitive to such things! One is that there are around 20 kids missing but we only meet the parents of two of them, and if you take away Brolin the others’ combined screen time is maybe four minutes. This might just be my own overactive protective parent gene talking, but it felt a little weird to me that the movie barely even mentions what is likely to be a group of very upset people. Since the King vibes were so strong, it almost felt like this was adapting a book that DID include all those other folks in supporting roles, and the movie version opted to trim them out to compress time. (SPOILER WARNING AGAIN!) I also found it somewhat unfortunate that the story introduced two gay characters and then gave them the most graphic deaths other than the villain or villains’ own demise(s). Not that the movie felt homophobic or anything, but it gave me that same feeling I get whenever I see a movie where the Black Guy does indeed die first, like “Can’t we do a little better, here?” Especially considering the body count wasn’t as high as the “lot of people die” trailer promised.

But neither of them were crippling flaws, and for the most part it got everything at right, at least for my sensibilities. It’s very funny at times (a reaction to a Willow DVD damn near killed me, and the climax is the sort of thing that will have revival audiences giving standing ovations for years to come) and the constant give and take of reveals kept it far more engaging than I’ve come to expect from a lot of modern horror. The actors are all great (always nice to see Ehrenreich; damn Solo for derailing what probably would have been a bigger career by now), there are a couple of jolts that got me good, and Cregger’s established “no one is safe” approach to his horror films meant it was tense down to the last moments. An ideal horror film, and another winner for WB, who hasn’t exactly been the favorite studio for filmmakers in the Zaslav era, but between this, Sinners, and FD6 are certainly on a roll with the scary stuff.

What say you?

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Companion (2025)

JANUARY 31, 2025

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Fangoria's weekly newsletter came today and it was titled "See Companion with a companion" or something to that effect, but alas like 90% of the movies I see, I saw it by myself. I only live near two of friends, both of whom have wacky work schedules, and I myself tend to keep weird hours, so I've just gotten used to not bothering to coordinate schedules, opting to go off on my own when the showtimes are in my favor. It's not a bad thing, really; the only time I feel self conscious is if it's a comedy, because laughing alone just makes me think someone behind me is going to think I'm a budding Max Cady.

(SPOILERS AHEAD! Slightly more than even the trailer gives away! If you haven't seen the trailers, particularly the second one that they only released a few weeks ago, perhaps do not read until you've seen the movie or at least the trailers. Consider this a warning for the entire review, not just the next paragraph.)

But I, and probably a lot of people, have a friend who I kind of wish I saw it with, because the core of the movie is about Iris (Sophie Thatcher) finding her voice and standing up to her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) when she realizes he sees her as nothing more than an object to boss around and use for his own pleasure when he feels like it, never taking her own needs into account. And my own friend is in this kind of relationship, where their partner practically admits that their only use to them is to take care of them without giving a crap about being a true partner in return. Naturally it's none of my business and I know from experience that if I as much as hint that they deserve better, they go on the defensive and offer "No, they do love me, they just don't show it" kind of explanations, so I just keep my mouth shut, settling for a sigh when I see my friend getting ignored and even occasionally insulted in plain view of their mutuals. (I guess we're supposed to assume they're much nicer at home with no one around? Seems backwards.) But I also know that inspiration comes from unlikely places, so I just hope that they (not a big moviegoer) someday sit down to stream what looks like a fun genre movie with the girl from Yellowjackets, and then are surprised to get their wheels turning when they see a bit of their own predicament laid out on screen. Maybe they'll even get inspired to start taking the steps to stick up for themselves like Iris eventually does? A friend can dream.

Again if you've seen the trailer (or ideally, the movie itself in full!) then you know that Iris isn't a human being, but an AI companion (read: sexbot) for Josh, the tech bro douchebag. The reveal occurs fairly early in the proceedings (if it's even a full half hour I'd be surprised, though in a rarity for a modern movie, it actually felt a bit shorter than it was so I might be off), but even before then you could see how he treats her and think "It's like he doesn't even consider her a real person at all, let alone his girlfriend." There's a subtle bit early on, when they arrive at the isolated lake house that most of the movie takes place in, and we see him carrying his shoulder bag while Iris lugs both of their (much heavier) suitcases, and later during a bedroom scene we see him orgasm and then immediately roll over and go to sleep without as much as a final kiss (and, clearly, not making the effort to get her past the finish line). There's chivalry (carrying both bags/getting her an O first), and then there's equality (recognizing she is capable of carrying her own/use your imagination), and then there's whatever this is.

It's actually part of why I feel the trailer shouldn't have given the reveal away. If you go in knowing she's a robot, you might have a distance from his behavior, a sort of "Well who cares, it's her job to serve him!" But by spending 25-30 minutes with this person and seeing how hard they are trying to please their "perfect" boyfriend while he continues to belittle her with endless microaggressions, you're fully on her side by the time we find out she's not actually flesh and blood, and thus it doesn't matter. Robot or not, you deserve better, Iris!

Of course, Ex Machina already covered a lot of this material, but it branches off in a new direction thanks to Iris being reprogrammed to do ~something~ (THAT I won't spoil) and how this begins a chain reaction of... well, the sort of thing that makes this feel more like a horror movie than the earlier film. It's still firmly in thriller territory, but the deaths are far more gory than you'd see in your typical "people turn on each other" kind of story, and it has a Coen-esque spiral of violence that I couldn't help but appreciate. You will never look at an electric wine opener the same way again, I assure you.

But even through all the mayhem (and laughs; thanks to Harvey Guillén in particular the movie is very funny at times), first time director Drew Hancock-working from his own script-never loses focus on the core concept, which is that Iris may be a package of nuts and bolts tied together with programming, but she's still more empathetic and human than her narcissistic boyfriend. This is aided immensely by how good the two leads are. Quaid's charms (it's crazy how he inherited the absolute best qualities of his parents) are a perfect fit for this character, as we absolutely understand why she'd be drawn to him even before we learn she's actually programmed to. And even when we know what he's really like, there's still a sense of "I can fix him" that is unfortunately the reason so many people (not robots) are in these kinds of relationships in the real world. You WANT to like this guy, even though he repeatedly proves he's garbage.

And Thatcher is already genre royalty thanks to Heretic and Yellowjackets (not to mention Boogeyman, which is better than you'd expect for a PG13 King short story expansion), but this might be her best work yet. There's a scene where her programming has been switched to speaking German and she's desperately trying to communicate, and there's also some humor built into it because Iris is unable to lie (so when the cop asks her what's wrong, she answers truthfully, even though the situation would be better for her if she lied - but he can't understand her anyway!), and the way she toes that line where you feel sorry for her while also kind of chuckling at the irony of her answers is a marvel to watch.

Speaking of irony, it IS kind of a weird time to release a movie where we root for the AI robot, which is somewhat distracting. AI sucks, to be clear, and our government has been overrun with tech bros who want to go all in on it for whatever reason (well, money, duh, but it's very shortsighted even by their standards). At least when Ex Machina came out this stuff was still "in the future..." kind of material, but now it's killing the environment and threatening jobs *today*. Luckily they don't really even use the term "AI" all that much (if ever?), so you can kind of ignore it if you want to, but still. It's THERE, you know?

That said, the takeaway here has nothing to do with AI or robots. Maybe it's just because of my own personal connection to this sort of thing happening (though, again, I'm sure lots of people do), but as much as I was enjoying the movie I kept feeling a bit sad, wondering if my very human friend will ever learn to stand up for themselves the way Iris eventually does here, or if their own shitty partner will keep using them as a toy for their own amusement until they get bored and move on, having wasted the best years of my friend's life. It's a surprisingly hopeful movie in that respect, and another winner from the Barbarian team (Zach Cregger is one of the producers here, alongside his partners from that film). My only real issue? When Iris is delivered to Josh, he's listening to "Iris" from Goo Goo Dolls, and it's a good gag, but I woulda gone deeper with "Iris" from the band Live. Since the trailer is too spoilery and you should only be reading this if you've seen it, I'm gonna put that banger in the usual place.

What say you?

P.S. I know this is the first review in months. Don't get excited for a full return; I am, alas, still basically calling it a day here due to the fact that it no longer generates any income whatsoever and also I'm working on a new book which I'd rather focus my writing time on instead. But the whole "I wish _____ would see this!", something I never could have predicted before I sat down, kinda left me with a bunch of thoughts so I decided to put them down here instead of in a Bluesky thread. Plus it's kind of amusing that Lukas Gage is in this, because he was also in Smile 2, which is the last time I reviewed anything. I like a coincidence! From now on I vow to review any genre film he's in, at the very least.

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Speak No Evil (2024)

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If you’ve been to a movie in the past six months you’ve probably seen the trailer for Speak No Evil; if you go as often as I do you are probably more familiar with some of the film’s moments than you are with the faces of your own family members at this point. Which is kind of ironic, because it’s a remake of a film that isn’t all that old, and the film doesn’t really have much to it beyond its thrills, so the familiarity was a detriment to what was actually a solid nailbiter.

If you’ve somehow escaped the trailer (or, again, the original film – more on that soon), the plot is pretty simple: an American family (Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a daughter) makes the acquaintance of an English couple (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) who has a single child of their own. They hit it off, the kids enjoy playing together, and everyone has a pretty good time. Then the Americans go home (to London, having moved for a job that ended up fizzling) and get an invite from Paddy (McAvoy) to join them for a weekend in their country home. Wanting a change of pace, they decide to go, despite some hesitations re: not really knowing them all that well. The first day goes smoothly enough, but Paddy and Louise (Davis) butt heads over their differing lifestyles (he hunts with a rifle, she’s a vegetarian, etc.), forcing Ben (McNairy) to constantly try to play peacekeeper. Eventually they cross a line that’s too much for Davis and she decides that they need to leave early, at which point it becomes clear why this film might end up on a site covering horror movies.

That said, as far as violence goes it’s still pretty tame even for a thriller. The order of the day here isn’t racking up a body count, but seeing how far writer/director James Watkins can push the tension BEFORE it erupts into violence. And thanks to McAvoy’s towering performance, it actually works quite well, as you get the idea he can suddenly kill any of them just as quickly and casually as he lets out an inappropriate comment or putdown. If you’ve seen the trailer you’re probably familiar with the “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance scene between the two kids, but the full version is truly terrifying as he gets angrier and angrier with his son’s inability to keep time. He's obviously played villains before, but he's in next-level mode here; the sort of role that might get name-checked among "great psychopath performances" down the road.

Honestly, the whole thing really hinges on McAvoy’s performance. Everyone’s good (Franciosi in particular has a tricky role in that you aren’t sure until very late if her Ciara is a true partner to her more outwardly evil husband or another of his victims), but this is all his show as he walks that fine line of being juuuuust weird enough to understand why Ben and Louise might not want to stay as long as originally planned but without going so far that they seem like idiots for not leaving even sooner. Of course, people have still decried the two for their actions, saying “Any normal person would have left already!” or whatever, but the script showcases how both of them are kind of afraid to do anything about anything (Louise won’t jump into the water with the rest, Ben won’t let her have it about a brief affair she had), so it tracks that they’d probably feel they were being rude by leaving.

Also, as a parent, I want to assure non-parents who have seen it that yes, we absolutely would go back for our child’s sacred “Lovey.” There’s a scene in the movie where they DO decide to finally leave due to something Ciara had done that unnerved them, only to turn back when they realize they forgot their daughter’s beloved stuffed bunny named Mr Hoppy. And then, after they discover Paddy’s true nature and try to make a calm escape so as not to enrage him, they see he has thrown the doll on the roof, forcing Ben to climb a rickety ladder to retrieve it. I’m sure childless audiences feel this is insane and they would just drive away, but nope. You wouldn’t believe how long I spent in the dark looking for my kid’s beloved Elmo doll when he dropped it during a walk many years back, so the idea of merely turning around to grab it from the bedroom of a house owned by some people I didn’t really gel with is certainly within the realm of possibility. And the ladder scene is Paddy trying to call their bluff; if Ben DIDN’T go out of his way to get the thing, now that it’s been established over and over how much the doll meant to their daughter, Paddy would have known right away that they knew his secret. So TLDR: it's not as dumb as critics would like you to believe.

Which brings us to the whole remake aspect, and you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if you haven’t seen either version, as there are spoilers for both! Yes, surprising no one, this version is much tamer than the Danish original, in which the bad guys won. That doesn’t happen here, but I didn’t mind it, because ultimately it’s a different kind of movie. The original was your typical dark/grim European thriller, most of which end on a downer, and while there’s nothing wrong with those, to me personally they often lack tension. Once we know how far they’ll go (in that case, the Paddy character kills his own son) there’s precious little reason to believe anyone else will make it out alive. Here, by repeatedly putting the heroes in danger, Watkins gives the movie a suspenseful edge that the original somewhat lacked, because there's simply more uncertainty.

That said (again we are still in spoiler territory here! Skip to next paragraph if you must!), Watkins maybe plays things a little TOO safe, in that the family not only escapes intact but barely even sustains any injuries (Ben hurts his foot a bit, that’s about as deep as it goes). Sure, this helps with the suspense element, because the husbands tend to die in these things and so you’re thinking it’s not a matter of if but when, but… you know, he doesn’t die. None of them do. I get not wanting to make it as bleak, but perhaps Watkins went a little too far in the other direction. It’s a good thing that McAvoy is so scary in the role just with his mannerisms and expressions, because the script curiously keeps him from doing all that much to our heroes, so a lesser actor/performance would have left the movie without any real threat at all for the most part.

Then again the script DOES let him angrily sing The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and it might be one of the best things I’ve seen in a theater all year, so forget what I said about its shortcomings. It is evened out!

For real though, this has been the only Blumhouse movie all year that I enjoyed without any real reservations. Sure, it could have retained at least SOME of the original’s darkness, but I can’t completely dismiss a movie that kept me fully engaged and gripping my armrest, anchored by an all timer performance by one of our more interesting modern actors. So without going so far as to say it’s an essential view, it’s another solid entry on Watkins’ filmography, and another chilling reminder of why we shouldn’t make friends with whoever we meet on vacation.

What say you?

P.S. You don't need the trailer again. Watch the Bangles video.

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Strange Darling (2023)

AUGUST 27, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Up until the moment Strange Darling began playing on the screen, I only knew two concrete things about it: that it starred Willa Fitzgerald from Scream: The TV Series and Kyle Gallner from Scream, the 5th movie, and that it was shot by Giovanni Ribisi. And that’s because every time I heard about the movie, the person stressed you should go in knowing as little as possible. So I did! The one time I had a trailer for it (before Cuckoo) I actually looked down at my lap until it was over. And I agree: this is a movie you shouldn’t know much about beforehand (and thus I won’t be saying much about its plot or character dynamics). But that being said, I don’t want to overhype it all that much in that department, as it’s not like it’s some kind of Cabin in the Woods style game-changer/meta movie. No, the reason that you shouldn’t know much is that the plot itself is actually kind of threadbare, and it’s more of the way the story is told that gives the movie its entertainment value.

Presented in six chapters told out of order (the first one we see is chapter 4), I think I can say without spoiling anything major is that it’s essentially about these two characters (Fitzgerald and Gallner) who seemingly don’t like each other all that much, and naturally when we see the earlier chapters we will understand why. Writer/director JT Mollner does a fine job of constantly changing our perspective on what we’re seeing once we have the proper context, and in some ways—even though this is not a slasher—it does a better job of deconstructing certain cliches than In A Violent Nature did earlier this year, and that was the whole point of that one.

Would the movie work if it was told in order? Hard to say! I know that the performances of Gallner and especially Fitzgerald would be laudable no matter what they did in the edit (I’m sure once it’s on video someone will recut it into sequential order, as they always do), and that alone makes it worth seeing. But again, there isn’t all that much to the story, and I can’t even really imagine watching it again other than to soak in their gutsy performances. Plus there was a scene that left me so rattled I don’t want to see it again just to ensure it doesn’t produce the same feeling a second time around. Without spoiling the particulars, Fitzgerald asks Gallner to do something he’s not entirely comfortable with, and you can see that he’s struggling with wanting to satisfy her wishes when he himself is miserable. It’s the exact thing I was once asked to do a long time ago and it still bothers me to do this day (for the record, I put my foot down and refused), and seeing it in action drudged up those feelings, of how conflicting the situation was and how upset it made me. But I had to laugh; this is a movie where (spoiler, I guess? I mean, I’m writing about it for a horror blog) people die gruesomely on occasion, and none of that bothered me, but what amounts to a conversation and a hand movement left me completely unnerved.

On the other end of that spectrum (and again, in a horror movie!) there’s a part that left me so charmed and even optimistic about getting old! There’s an “aging hippie” couple played by Ed Begley Jr and Barbara Hershey, and when they are brought into the film’s ongoing story they’re currently working on a jigsaw puzzle, COMPETITIVELY. Like every time you place a piece you get a point, I guess? And before that Begley makes a breakfast that uses more butter and eggs than I consume in an entire month. This is literally all I want out of my retirement years. Eggs and puzzles.

Another thing that made me laugh is how much Mollner tells you about the movie right off the bat, which should reduce some suspense but actually doesn’t. In the first few seconds, we learn that it’s six chapters and (via a TCM type crawl) in what location the story will end, but it never dampens anything. Also, in what I believe is a first, it touts “SHOT ON 35MM” at the very top like it’s a credit. Alas, I was seeing it at an AMC, which doesn’t even mask the screen, but even their subpar presentation didn’t take away from how lovely the movie looked. Weirdly, 2nd 35mm offbeat genre movie this summer with a female lead having a bandage wrapped around her head for a chunk of the climax (Cuckoo being the other).

I know this isn’t the most illuminating review, but that’s because I am trying to preserve as much of the experience for you as I was able to muster. In the trailer reel were the spots for Speak No Evil and Afraid that I’ve seen a million times by now – two movies I feel I already know the entire story (and no, I haven’t even seen the original SNE yet), before a movie whose sub-genre remained unknown to me. Again, I don’t think it’s the most exciting story ever written, but as an *experience* it was among the most surprising and enthralling I’ve been able to have at the multiplex in quite some time, and that ain’t nothing. Hopefully you’re able to go in equally unaware. It's far too rare we get these opportunities.

What say you?

P.S. In keeping with the whole "Don't go in knowing too much" sentiment, instead of the usual trailer I'm just gonna put in this music video my friend directed. Enjoy!

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Trap (2024)

AUGUST 2, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I cackled with glee at the first trailer for Trap, where the reveal that Josh Hartnett's seemingly dorky dad was a serial killer was saved for the end (if you haven't seen it yet, please go watch it first before reading, as the below is written on the assumption you know the premise). The second trailer didn't bother to hide it, shutting up all the "They gave the twist away!" dummies by showing us that the film wasn't treating this as a reveal; it's only about 15 minutes into the movie that Hartnett pulls his phone out to reveal the guy chained up in his basement, and the movie was more or less about how he tries to plot his escape while avoiding suspicion from his daughter. But of course, being an M. Night Shyamalan movie, we all assumed there was still another twist to go. What if the daughter was actually the killer? What if he was a DIFFERENT killer and ended up inadvertently helping the police?

(SPOILERS AHEAD! Old school HMAD review here, which means you should only read this if you've seen the movie already. Or just don't care about spoilers.)

Well, unfortunately, there isn't really any grander ambition here. Hartnett's Cooper is indeed the killer, no accomplices or anything like that. There's a minor "twist", for lack of a better word, involving how the police knew he'd be at the concert in the first place, but it's hardly a big reveal - it's basically just an explanation that might make you go "Ohhh... that makes a little more sense, I guess." It's a rare instance of the director's filmography working against him; we've gotten so accustomed to his wacky third acts that the fact that this movie ends on a fairly normal/basic note it almost feels like a disappointment.

But I could live with that. What really kinda knocks this into "It's fine" territory after a terrific first half is that they leave the concert, which is always a death curse for these kind of contained thrillers. It's nothing new for them really; Red Eye leaves the plane, Speed left the bus, etc. The difference is that they just run out of plausible scenarios and mix it up a bit for the finale. Here, however, they leave the concert at the movie's halfway point, which is a bit too early in my opinion. Some contrivances allow Cooper (and his still oblivious daughter) to exit the premises without being checked even though hundreds of cops are specifically looking for a guy matching his description, and it's at that moment the movie started to unravel for me. The real joy of it thus far was seeing him do kind of terrible things in order to sneak past a door or a guard (the trailer shows most of them, alas) while looking like a good Samaritan or bland suburban dad, but for this he basically just outs himself to someone and blackmails them into helping them exit.

Not that the back half is a total wash. There are still some good suspense bits (including one with the megastar singer in a bathroom attempting to use her fans to locate the basement guy) and Hartnett's performance is still a hoot, but it never fully recovers the tense "How is he going to get out of THIS ONE?" kind of thrills of the concert section (that one such later scenario, involving a limo, simply skips ahead a minute to avoid showing how indeed he was able to escape a situation, doesn't help). And then the lack of a gonzo twist just makes it feel even more of a letdown, as if Shyamalan just had a few writers from some CBS procedural knock out the script's last 30 pages or so. Also, a large chunk of the finale revolves around Cooper's wife (Allison Pill), but her character was never even mentioned prior to her 3rd act introduction, which leaves her contributions fall a little flat. I spent the entire movie assuming Cooper was a single or divorced dad, so when we learn he has a wife and another kid, I couldn't help but wonder why Shyamalan didn't work the mom into the story a little more, if only to really sell her role in the proceedings.

Especially since it kind of recontextualizes Cooper in a way that doesn't exactly help the movie. For 60 minutes or whatever, I thought I was watching a movie about a single dad who was struggling with the usual things single parents deal with on their own (the daughter has been bullied by some mean girls, he was a little late because he couldn't get off from work any earlier, etc.) while also trying to carry on as a serial killer, but turns out he's part of a traditional nuclear family. So what's the deal here? Did he lose a coin toss with his wife to be the one to pierce their eardrums to chaperone a teenybopper concert? Does he have these same kind of struggles when with his son? Or on date night? It's the rare Shyamalan "reveal" where I wished it was something absolutely ludicrous (he's a pod person! or something), because while it's a completely normal thing, it kind of awkwardly reframes the main character's whole deal.

Because honestly, I was super into the "A single dad is also a serial killer and he's trying really hard to be good at both" idea. Early on he makes dad jokes and tries to learn slang and stuff, and—especially considering how fully committed Hartnett is in the role—it would have been amazing to see that carried throughout the movie even after we learn he's "The Butcher." Seeing him try to avoid capture while also slipping into "Dad mode" could have resulted in an all timer for both Shyamalan and Hartnett, but the latter's whole "dorky dad" thing is essentially forgotten after about 40 minutes. There's a scene where his daughter gets to dance on stage for a song with the singer (Shyamalan's actual daughter, who is in reality a budding performer, but here is a sort of Taylor Swift/Beyonce kind of mega-idol to the tweens), and he spends the entire time just sort of eyeing the exits and such, not once acting like a dad who is stoked for his daughter. Snap a pic from your phone, bro! (And don't try to claim "It's just realistic, a sociopath wouldn't think of that" - the whole movie is built on nonsense, so we certainly don't need to stick to DSM-V definitions.)

All that said, if you just take it as a standard nailbiter thriller, it's a good enough time. The PG-13 rating means we never really get to see what makes The Butcher such a terrifying threat, but it doesn't really matter—it's clear that he's a BTK-type who can pass himself off as a normal family man and that this is the first time his secret has been so close to being exposed, which is all you really need for this story to work. And Hartnett is one of the few actors who possess that likability that leaves us kind of WANTING him to escape even though he's a vicious murderer. This movie doesn't work at all with someone with some questionable real life choices, but Hartnett has been a good boy as far as we know (that he's also in a the midst of a comeback after kind of shrugging off Hollywood for a while made me want to root for him even more). And who can totally dismiss a movie about setting a trap for someone and casting Hayley Mills as one of the trap's designers?

Speaking of Shyamalan's casting decisions, as always he makes a cameo, but for a couple seconds I thought he was finally doing it "right." Even if this WASN'T his most Hitchcockian movie yet (besides the Rope-esque containment plotting, it goes into full on Psycho territory near the end), there's no doubt that he would continue contributing a cameo as he (and Hitch) always does. But whereas Hitchcock's appearances were usually blink and miss kind of affairs, Shyamalan usually gives himself dialogue and often plays some kind of important (if minor) role in the proceedings, like the guy who hit Mel's wife's car in Signs, or the dude who brings them to the beach in Old. But there's a shot of the crowd as Hartnett makes his way back to his seat, and if you're looking in the right spot you'd see Shyamalan as one of the venue employees. And I was like "Oh that's cute, for his most Hitchcock-esque movie he actually did a Hitchcock style cameo!" But nope, he plays the singer's uncle, who Hartnett speaks to in order to get his daughter on stage. That first appearance was basically just proper continuity.

Still, it more or less works. Basically, lower expectations for both a Shyamalan movie and a "contained" one and you will probably have a good time as long as you just go with it; it's just that this is kind of a standard request for his movies and it feels a little weird for one that's fully grounded in reality (and the other two exceptions, The Visit and The Village, are both shown under illusory presentations; the found footage aspect of the former and the "There are monsters!" plot of the latter, so there's still a sense of unreality that Trap lacks). For a polarizing filmmaker like Shyamalan, a movie that's basically just fine almost seems like a betrayal, but maybe he's looking to get out from under the weight of those expectations and make more grounded thrillers? And if that's the case, he's off to a decent start.

What say you?

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Maxxxine (2024)

JUNE 24, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

Both Pearl and X were profitable if not exactly box office smashes, but that hasn’t stopped A24 from positing Maxxxine, the 3rd film in this unique trilogy, as a potential major hit. The big July release date (the other films were released in early Spring and Fall), the marketing campaign, the bigger budget (which means some bigger stars)… it’s likely the film’s opening weekend take is more than either of the other films mustered in their entire runs. I point that out because that means it’s very likely that some folks will see this movie without seeing the others, and I’m not sure that’s the best idea.

To be clear it’s fine if you skip Pearl, since it’s not about the same character (for the uninitiated, Pearl was a prequel about X’s killer), but X, in which we met Maxine (Mia Goth, who stars in all three films) herself and a lot about what made her tick, is in my opinion a crucial film to see before checking out this newest adventure. I don’t want to spoil the particulars, but it’s almost a certainty that the killer’s reveal won’t be satisfying without the context X provides. And the character of Maxine herself isn't exactly re-contextualized here, so knowing what she's all about and what she's been through already will be extremely helpful.

For those that have seen the others, this new entry continues the traditions they set of being set in different horror sub-genres. X was more or less a traditional slasher, and Pearl aimed for something that felt more at home in the “hagsploitation” genre (despite its younger lead character), but Maxxxine-which is set in 1985-is a straight up giallo/Brian De Palma type of thriller in the vein of Body Double or the more recent Knife + Heart. It’s a risky endeavor since the rule for sequels is “Do more of the same!” and these are all pretty different in terms of tone and look (and time period!), but it’s mostly paid off, so good for Ti West and his crew for a successful experiment. I may have issues with this film, but I hope it's a huge smash if only to see what a '90s version of Maxine would be up to and what style it'd ape. A Dimension homage?

Anyway, it’s several years after the events of X, and Maxine has made it to Hollywood. An opening audition scene proves to be fruitful and she lands her first legit gig: starring in a sequel to a cult classic possession horror called The Puritan. But she’s got a lot to prove, because she’s a (seemingly popular) porn star and the studio has some misgivings about casting her. Ultimately it’s the no-nonsense director Elizabeth Bender (played by Elizabeth Debicki; not sure if the very similar name was intentional) who goes to bat for her because she sees something in her. During these early scenes of Maxine prepping for the movie, we are told a few times that Bender is an ice queen, very demanding, etc. which seems to be setting up a sort of power struggle between these two strong women. And we also have a scene where Maxine is stalked by someone as she walks home from work only for her to turn the tables on him (in a most painful way involving her heels and the man’s… well, use your imagination). So it seems to be setting up a “Maxine once killed to survive but now she is killing to get ahead” kind of story, which would have been a full circle kind of thing with Goth's character in Pearl.

But weirdly, this idea is mostly dropped after a while; there’s one other instance of her “no one will get in my way” attitude regarding a private detective played by Kevin Bacon (who seems to know about her involvement in the X murders), but that’s about it. Bender’s supposed “I suffer no fools” reputation never really pays off; in fact at one point she even warmly suggests Maxine take the weekend off to have fun so she’d be less stressed for her return to work on Monday. It's an odd shift that the movie never really recovers from; the first hour is uneven but all forgiveable if it's going to build toward a knockout finale, but instead the third act almost seems grafted in from a different script entirely.

Basically, right around a crucial point where we need everything to start coming together, the movie’s other plot completely takes over and the whole “Maxine Does Hollywood” angle is mostly forgotten. As the movie is set in Los Angeles in 1985, those who know their true crime history can easily guess that the infamous Night Stalker plays a part in the film’s narrative; news reports constantly mention him, and two of Maxine’s friends from the industry end up being murdered in ways that seem like they’re his latest victims. But two cops played by Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan are convinced they were killed by a copycat instead, and after a third victim with ties to Maxine is discovered, they begin following her to see if she’s the killer or merely his next potential victim.

It's not a bad plot by any means, but it never quite gels with the themes and character arcs established by the other two films, as Maxine is almost incidental in this stuff and she could have been working as a waitress for all it mattered to the story (let's not forget that the Night Stalker's victims were all randomly chosen and not even really near Hollywood anyway). It ends up making Maxine more of a traditional would-be slasher movie victim at times; hell, she spends part of the climax tied to a tree! And since we know that Maxine is NOT the black gloved killer responsible for her friends’ deaths (the killer goes to see her perform in a nudie booth in the first reel), it never manages to be much of a mystery either, as only those who hadn't seen X wouldn't instantly guess who it was (and again, the movie doesn't do a very good job of filling those viewers in for the reveal).

In short, the movie seems like the result of two different ideas: a new entry in the X-iverse, and an ‘80s-set homage to giallo thrillers with the backdrop of a real life serial killer (think Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, which was interestingly enough released 25 years ago almost to the day). And I’d be all for either idea, and to be fair I was never not entertained by the film nor did I find any one scene or character to be bad or a miscalculation or anything like that. But the two ideas never coincide in perfect harmony; the new serial killer plot distracts away from focusing on Maxine the fame-obsessed victim/killer and leaves her as another run of the mill horror movie heroine at times. It also makes the film feel a bit shaggy, which is perhaps the intention (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood feels like a potential influence as well; in fact they use the same Universal backlot set) but a marked departure from the tighter narratives of the other two films. Some characters, like Lily Collins as the other actress in The Puritan, basically only appear in a single scene, despite seeming like they'll play a bigger part in the proceedings.

For example: the aforementioned high heels scene. It’s a great scene! I winced at the denouement! But it also has no connection to anything else, nor is it mentioned again. Even with the subplot of the two cops who think she’s involved with some other murders, there’s never any “And where were you when this dude got his balls annihilated by someone matching your description?” type questioning. So the scene, while good, could have easily been removed without it affecting anything about the plot. OR it needed a few more instances like it to make it clear that Maxine is now a woman who will kill any perceived threat, which poses a problem when [whatever else happens]. Instead it just ends up feeling like filler. Entertaining filler, yes, but filler all the same.

It also seems to be missing a few bits of exposition at times. During the climax, the killer is seen to have a group of followers out of nowhere, and they also mention something like “These are the victims' family members!” Victims of who? The Night Stalker? Pearl/Maxine? I talked to someone later who was actually somewhat convinced that the Night Stalker and Maxine’s pursuer were one in the same; it was clear to me that they were not, but it was also so spottily conveyed that I’m not surprised that there was some confusion (I dread the takes from people who watch on streaming when they’re not even paying full attention). It’s amusing; my main complaint about some of West’s earlier films was that it felt like they had to be stretched to hit a bare minimum runtime, but the problem here is that it seemed like the movie needed another half hour to let some of its ideas come together.

Again though: it’s not a bad movie! Overall I enjoyed it, particularly the first hour. The recreation of ‘80s Hollywood is spot on and well thought out (personal fave touch: the tracking/warbling effect on the opening credits) and the soundtrack is recognizable without relying on the most overplayed hits like many ‘80s period pieces do. I loved how Maxine’s flashbacks play out like moments from a VHS tape, tapping into her psyche in ways a line of dialogue or something wouldn’t be as satisfying. And how can anyone on the planet dislike a movie where Kevin Bacon chases Mia Goth into the Psycho house (only to get caught by Larry Fessenden)? There’s a lot of really good stuff here and those who love “vibes horror” will absolutely love it. But I couldn’t help but think that if the script had better payoffs for some of the things that were set up (both in the previous films and in this one) that it easily could have been my favorite of the three. Maybe a director’s cut will resolve some of those issues, if there is one to be had. For now, I'd say as long as your expectations are kept in check (maybe impossible after all this pre-release hype), you'll have a good time and, like me, be interested in a possible fourth film when all is said and done.

What say you?

P.S. Since it’s set around the production of a horror movie and it’s 1985, a Fangoria popping up wasn’t too surprising but I did love that it was the one with Friday the 13th Part V on the cover. A little love for my man Roy is always good to see. And it's a bit of a tip of the hat, perhaps, as that film and this one deal with a new killer who is aping a more famous one.

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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.

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Blu-Ray Review: Funeral Home (1980)

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

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

Today marked the 17th birthday of Horror Movie A Day, and fittingly I spent part of it watching a Blu-ray of a movie that I saw back in the early days of the site. Funeral Home (aka Cries In The Night, which is the title that appears on the film itself but not the packaging) was part of the legendary 50 Chilling Classics set that provided me with such faves as Devil Times Five, Scream Bloody Murder, and of course, my beloved Cathy's Curse. It unfortunately is not as good as those; in fact I actually labeled it "Crap" at the time, which I reserved for movies with no redeeming values whatsoever. But even then I said it probably didn't deserve the same scorn as some of the other movies in there, and it doesn't. I've certainly seen worse.

Funeral Home's main problem isn't even its own fault. It was shot in 1979 and meant to be a thriller, but by the time it was released the slasher sub-genre was kind and so it was marketed (and retitled) to make it seem like one of those. And yes, it has a few deaths committed by an unseen stalker, so in a few scenes it very much feels at home with the Friday the 13ths and such that were so common back then. But it's really more of a Psycho riff, so "proto-slasher" would be more apt, and even on that level it's not particularly exciting. In fact it actually feels a lot like a TV movie from that era; Wes Craven's Summer of Fear came to mind a few times.

But the Psycho lifts get to be a bit grating, especially when the whole movie builds toward a nearly identical climax of the crazed old lady (an actual old lady this time, not her son in a dress) freaking out in the cellar next to a mummified corpse. There's nothing wrong with borrowing from this or that movie, certainly (Halloween took some stuff from the same one, in fact - and I prefer that one!), but you gotta make it your own and add a little flavor, which this movie doesn't actually do. Outside of the four kills (two of which are simultaneous - a couple in a car that the killer pushes over a conveniently adjacent cliff) the movie is just an endless series of scenes where our young heroine Heather (Lesleh Donaldson from Happy Birthday to Me and Curtains, another thing that doesn't help this movie's "not a slasher!" existence) gets suspicious about someone disappearing in the middle of the night, hears an old story that seemingly confirms her suspicions, then readily accepts her grandmother's explanation. It gets to the point where the grandmother NOT being the culprit would have been interesting, but since it sure seems she is (and, you know, she IS), it just leaves the main character - our surrogate - looking like a dope for 90 minutes.

The most suspenseful the movie gets is a scene involving the great Alf Humphreys as the town deputy, who also seems to be the only cop that's concerned about all the people who disappear when they stay in this small town. He's kind of a goof and not taken seriously (real Dewey vibes; he even has a sibling who mocks him), and then late in the movie there's a scene where he insists on seeing the room that the car couple stayed in, with the grandmother accompanying him and by this point not even trying to hide that she's evil. So you spend the whole scene worrying about poor Alf, offering the movie some tension the rest could have really used.

However, as I've learned over the years, every movie is someone's favorite movie, and even if I hated it I'd be the first to champion a remaster, because no movie deserves the fate it previously had. Like most of the transfers on that Chilling Classics set, Funeral Home was a cropped, murky mess, to the extent that I can't even quite place the screenshot I offered in my old review (I was going to do a "then and now" kind of thing but I literally can't tell what the image was). Indeed, I was surprised to see it's actually a fairly good looking movie courtesy of Mark Irwin, who at that point was already working with David Cronenberg and continued to do so for another 5-6 years. And it's also got a great score by Jerry Fielding, a frequent collaborator with Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood, something the cruddy transfer wouldn't have allowed me to appreciate either as my ears would be exclusively focused on trying to make out the dialogue. There's a bit of a weird color shifting going on (more noticeably in the daytime scenes) that's probably due to print damage, but otherwise it's a fine transfer and I'm glad that the movie's fans won't have to suffer that Mill Creek version anymore.

Scream Factory has also assembled a pretty extensive collection of extras as well, including an audio interview with Donaldson and the film's 1st AD (offered as a commentary in the setup menu, so don't look for it in the extras), plus traditional interviews with Irwin, some of the set folks, and Brian Allen, whose father was executive producer Barry Allen. His is probably the most interesting interview, since he explains how the movie came to exist and why it ran into the distribution issues that it did (no movie ends up on a Mill Creek pack unless someone got screwed financially along the way). And he owns drive-ins now, which amused me as I can only imagine how many children were conceived in backseats during showings of this movie thanks to it failing to hold the audience's attention. Mike Felsher also stops by the house that's used as the titular home, showing how part of it has stayed pretty much the same almost 45 years later. I'm always charmed by those kind of videos so it was a nice addition.

The best extra, however, is the historian commentary by Jason Pichonsky And Paul Corupe, as they offer the usual bits of insight about the film and its players, but mostly spend the track discussing Canadian horror of the time and also how the films were given 100% tax rebates by the government, which is how we ended up with so many wacky movies at that time (including Cathy's Curse, though they sadly don't mention it by name). They also spend a good deal of time discussing director William Fruet, who had an interesting career that began in stage productions and dramas before finding success in the horror genre (he also gave us Spasms and the incredible Killer Party). Since he either couldn't be located or simply wasn't interested in contributing an interview or commentary of his own, it more than makes up for his absence by covering his biography pretty extensively.

So it's better than I remembered, but not by much (even Donaldson laughs about how boring it is, so I know it's not just me). But still, I'm glad I gave it another shot (and will go back and remove the "crap" tagging from my old review to be fair), though not as glad as I am for its fans that they finally have a decent way to watch it. And it's always nice to see a legit new title from Scream Factory, as they've pretty much burned through everything they are able to access and most of their recent releases are either 4K upgrades of movies they've already done, or "Who asked for this?" special editions of modern horror movies like the Child's Play remake. This felt like a golden era release!

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Cobweb (2023)

JANUARY 8, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (HULU)

It’s been a long time since Lionsgate took the time to make a horror movie with notable actors and then just randomly burned it off on a few screens with no advertising, so the makers of Cobweb can take solace in that they’re reviving a tradition! It joins the likes of Blood Creek, Haunting in Connecticut 2, Repo, and probably others I’ve forgotten, except the key difference is that I wasn’t able to make it out to one of those random screenings when it opened last July against "Barbenheimer" (a very busy time for whatever reason; it took me a month to see Oppenheimer and I still haven’t seen Barbie). I toyed with the idea of making it a blind buy a few times, but now that it’s popped up on Hulu I saved myself the 20 bucks but also actually used my Hulu account for something besides What We Do In The Shadows, so it’s a real win win.

Especially since, as it turns out, it’s not a movie I need to see again, so that Blu-ray would have gone back for 9 cents in trade-in value. It’s a pretty good movie and worth watching, but it’s also one of those movies that presents a “Are they evil or not?” mystery that, once you know the answer, renders it less interesting to rewatch (on that note, I threw it under "thriller", but only because the specific sub-genre is also a spoiler). It also has a terrible final scene that knocked it down a peg (read: Letterboxd star) for me, so that didn’t help. But your mileage will vary, of course – a number of friends called it among the best horror films of the year, and (spoiler) I’d never want to turn folks off from seeing a horror movie that actually has the stones to kill a kid.

The plot is pretty simple and straightforward: a bullied kid named Peter (weirdly, same kid from Last Voyage of the Demeter, which was released around the same time and where HE was surprisingly killed) hears noises in his room and his strict, clearly “off” parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) keep chalking it up to an overactive imagination. But given their hesitance to let him go out much beyond school, or have people over, and other odd behaviors, it’s clear the parents are hiding something and that the noises – which eventually become the voice of a girl asking for help - are probably in fact very real, but the movie doesn’t come right out and say so. So, while it often works as it should in keeping you in suspense, it’s a movie where the would-be antagonist can never really go too far into villain territory because then we’d know they are indeed evil, nor can they just explain what’s going on because then there’s no movie.

And so for an hour we watch scene after scene of the parents acting mildly threatening but never outright BAD, until the runtime reaches a point where we can learn the secret of the noises in the walls and what, if any, the parents’ involvement is with them. I was slightly disappointed that it ends up being a variation of the reveal in another genre movie from 2016 (the title of which will be too much of a spoiler, but if you want a hint: it had a sequel that I disliked!), but the villain is a memorably creepy one all the same. Plus, it makes up for the first hour's balancing act by decimating a group of bullies who came to torment Peter, including an offscreen but still somewhat startling beheading (we see the aftermath via the still walking body). There’s some unfortunate CGI in these moments that hampers their effectiveness a bit, but it’s forgivable when you consider how much the movie decides to earn its R rating after a full on PG-13 first hour.

But man, that final scene. Without spoiling its particulars, it basically feels like there was a five minute epilogue of sorts that they decided to cut down into 60 seconds with narration by the villain. Why they’d do that I don’t know; it’s not a very long movie and the credits run at a crawl to pad it up to (almost) 90 minutes, but it really does a disservice to the film. It’s hard to tell if the images we’re seeing are imagined or an actual future for the hero (we see him in a different bedroom, so it seems he moved to a happier environment), and it also weakens the “I’ll be back someday” threat the villain is attempting to make. WILL it be back? Or is it just leaving the kid forever scared at the idea it *might*, like some kind of boogeyman? It’s unclear, but the credits run long enough to debate it with whoever you’re watching with!

(Fairly clear evidence that this was a re-edit is given right at the top of the film, as we see two editors listed with the second being Kevin Greutert, who when he’s not making Saw films is basically the horror industry’s go-to editor for reworking movies that are coming up short with test audiences.)

Otherwise: pretty good little creeper! Caplan and Starr do a fine job of walking their fine line between “strict parents” and “possibly murderers”, and along with Castle Rock (amusingly, the reason I got Hulu in the first place) serves as a fine reminder that Caplan is a terrific actress, since she's best known for being hilarious and charming in things, but can adapt to genre roles with uncanny ease. And as a Last Man on Earth fan I was happy to see Cleopatra Coleman in something, playing the kid’s obligatory “teacher who notices something is wrong and oversteps her boundaries” (I got some real Antlers vibes at times, in fact). The score, attributed to “Drum & Lace” (Sofia Hultquist) is quite good, and perhaps best of all, it’s a Halloween-set movie but without going overboard with it or dropping in overt homages to Carpenter (a bully does smash a pumpkin, but it doesn’t play like a tribute to Tommy’s). Given the “lonely kid trying to help a possible ghost” plot, I think it’d pair nicely with Lady in White, in fact.

Ultimately it’s not hard to see why Lionsgate buried it; with violence toward kids and a plot that doesn’t give them much to market it around (i.e. an action figure-ready villain), it was probably never going to be a big theatrical hit anyway, though I always wonder why it is they make these movies in the first place – don’t they know from the script that it’s not going to be something the mainstream masses will latch on to? And it’d work just as well at home to boot, so: sure, let’s get it onto streaming services as quickly as possible. But with the strikes and lingering production slowdown from the pandemic, you’d think any finished movie would be worth giving a shot to just in case it connects, plus horror fans don’t exactly get spoiled by a glut of movies throughout the year and would probably show up out of curiosity if they knew it was there. I just wish I could give it a fully committed endorsement, but that final 90 seconds and maybe a few too many “if they just say ______ the movie would end so they’ll be vague and weird for no other reason” moments keep it in “Yeah it’s pretty good, go ahead and watch it if you have Hulu” territory, but not as "background viewing" the way so many streaming films are. It's worth your full attention!

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