After scoring a massive hit with Longlegs last month, I'm sure Neon was hoping for a little more than $3m for the opening weekend of Cuckoo (indeed, it barely outsold Longlegs itself, on its 5th week). But it's a little less audience friendly than even that was, and lacked the curiosity factor that drove Osgood Perkins' serial killer opus to such unexpected success. Still, I was happy to see that my crowd was fairly full, even if that meant I had to change seats because the dipshit next to me kept using his phone; I go to the movies partly because I like the crowd experience (especially for horror films) but I do wish I could, I dunno, maybe pick that crowd myself.
Anyway, while Cuckoo wasn't exactly the usual multiplex fare, it was Marvel-level inviting compared to Tilman Singer's first film Luz, which despite only being 70 minutes long managed to bore me into "how much is left?" territory by its halfway point. That one was another of these "vibes horror" movies that are coming along with increasing regularity, and as I've mentioned before, I don't really connect with such films. I wouldn't say Cuckoo is a complete departure from that kind of thing, but felt more like a happy medium between similar movies (which include Skinamarink and, well, the other movies from Osgood Perkins) and a more traditional story.
Indeed, I don't even know if I could accurately summarize Luz ("a possession tale involving what appears to be a hypnosis session to find a missing person" is about as specific I can get) but Cuckoo has, on the surface, a pretty normal, even somehwat familiar story: a rebellious teenager (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move to a new home with her father and his new wife, along with a stepsister she doesn't care much about. But as she starts to explore the ground of said new home (in this case a resort hotel in the Alps) she discovers creepy goings on, which her father and stepmother seem oblivious to (or... PART OF?), forcing her to take matters into her own hands and maybe save her innocent step-sibling along the way. A movie with the same sounding plot could have been a Screen Gems movie circa 2009 starring Adrianne Palicki or Leighton Meester.
But the devil's in the details of course, and it doesn't take long for the off-kilter stuff to kick in. First off the resort is run by Dan Stevens, so you know whether he's good or bad he's gonna be WEIRD; despite his handsome romance novel cover appearance the dude seems to be from whatever planet we got Burgess Meredith from. He always finds a way to make his characters left of center, even in big budget junk like Godzilla x Kong, so you know damn well he's not gonna just be some boring villain. No, he's going to talk about birds and play a little whistle and spray victims not with chloroform or pepper spray but pheremones. It's just the Dan Stevens way, and I love that this is his THIRD genre movie in this year alone (after GxK and Abigail), for a guy who could have parlayed his Downton Abbey and Beauty and the Beast success into "the next Hugh Grant!" territory but instead has, well, taken more after current day Hugh Grant (who is awesome) instead of the blander one we got during his '90s heyday.
And while he is as good as always, the movie really belongs to Schafer as Gretchen. I do not watch Euphoria* so I have zero familiarity with her, but she is an absolute gem here, keeping her "I'm over it" attitude juuuust short of crossing the line into unlikable territory, so that you're right there with her as she rolls her eyes at the various goings-on and (naturally) root for her to triumph when things get scary. Her reaction to one of Stevens' creepy lines (I won't repeat it here just in case, but it's in the trailer) is so good that I almost wish the movie had leaned more into that kind of irony, though given its strange nature it's probably for the best that they didn't risk turning more audiences away by going full horror comedy. It's got a sense of humor, but it's not a "funny" genre movie.
It's also not a body horror movie, despite what one of the blurbs on that trailer claim. Unless you count a nasty cut to the head (injury from one of the movie's few traditional scare scenes, a chase that ends in a glass door) and a very uncomfortable looking cast after a car accident, nothing really happens to Schafer's body, and the other targets in the film are left alone when it comes to that sort of thing as well. Without spoiling things, for this to be considered a true body horror movie, it would have to be told from the perspective of Gretchen's stepmother or something. Just my two cents and maybe a warning for anyone excited for a new Cronenberg-type film. I feel that quote was setting up a particular sect of the fanbase for disappointment.
That said, it did remind me of The Brood at times, with a little bit of Phenomena and A Cure For Wellness thrown in for good measure. But it's got enough of its own personality that the reminders never distracted me all that much (or worse, made me wish I was watching those instead), so don't get me wrong - it's not one of those movies where a filmmaker homages so many of his influences that he doesn't have room for any ideas of his own. I would guarantee that no one on the planet could possibly guess the motivations behind the villains' actions even after the first half hour or so; indeed if you WERE a fan of Luz you'll be happy to know this movie shares its ability to never once get predictable. It's just here it worked for me, whereas in Luz it did not.
That said there are a couple of minor wrinkles. One is that it appears to be edited down from a longer version at times; there's a scene where the villain is about to shoot a victim, and Schafer runs in to stop it from happening, only the villain is completely elsewhere by the time she arrives. But it's not played as a "Oh crap, where did he go?" kind of moment; Shafer doesn't even react to his absence, as if she already knew he had left (i.e. during a scene that was removed). And at one point her and her only ally (Luz's Jan Bluthardt) are both wearing big can headphones around their necks; we can infer why (the villains use a weird sound to disorient victims) but their sudden appearance suggests a scene where they figure out that they could wear them to protect themselves. Nothing crippling, but noticeably jumpy editing means there's probably a few trims we didn't pick up on in the moment (I'd be willing to bet there was more with Astrid Bergès-Frisbey's character Ed, too, as she basically disappears for all but one scene of the second half).
There's also a time loop thing that's never clarified. And I don't mean "HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?"; I don't care about that. No, the issue is that it's not entirely clear that the characters realize they're in a timeloop when it happens, except for one time that it almost certainly does. It's a weird point of reference, but what it needed was a moment like in NOES 4: Dream Master, when Dan starts noticing the deja vu and repeats Alice's line along with her to snap her out of it and let us in the audience know they caught on. Here, it happens I think four times before a character makes a "Hey, didn't I already do that?" kind of face, but then the loop ends before they can use the knowledge to their advantage. And then it just never happens again anyway. The inconsistency, coupled with what is a very odd plot point (even by this movie's standards) makes it stick out as just random for the sake of being random. If those other scenes were lost to keep the runtime down, I feel chopping these out would have been a better way to get that done.
Otherwise, it's just a freaky fun time. It's not unpleasant or anything (rare for a modern day mad scientist movie, especially one touted as "body horror"); most of the violence (including the villains' demise) is off-screen, and gore is kept to a minimum as well. And the movie's weirdness never overwhelms the narrative; it's more of a garnish than the main course, which is the best way to go for me. It gives the movie a personality and lets it stand apart from its influences, but the main goal is telling a coherent story with a character you want to succeed - a perfect approach in my opinion. May all involved continue to walk that fine line.
What say you?
*My two favorite movies of the year are Immaculate with Sydney Sweeney and Challengers with Zendaya, and now this was a nice surprise after being so down on the director's previous film, while making me a fan of Schafer. So maybe I should just watch Euphoria? Its central cast certainly has good taste in scripts.
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.
One thing that frustrates me about the indie horror scene is how often I see things that really aren’t that much different from the big studio offerings, at least in terms of the stories they are telling. Sure, the films from the Screen Gems and Paramounts of the world will boast bigger stars and production value, but it’s nice when there’s a distinction re: what they’re about. Which is to say I can’t imagine a movie like Motivational Growth coming out on 3,000 screens with trailers for the newest Marvel sequel attached, and that’s exactly what I want from my indie horror. Not all the time, of course – there’s always some room for the generic slashers and possession tales at any price point! But it’d be nice if things like this movie were the norm, not the exception, when it came to very low budget genre offerings.
Because this is a movie about a guy named Ian who never leaves his apartment and has a talking mold growth in his bathroom that encourages him to get his life together, a plot that kicks off when his only friend, Kent, dies. And Kent is a vintage television set.
So, yeah. Weird movie, right? And admittedly, it’s not exactly one I’ll be pulling off the shelf all that often – it can be a bit repetitive, for example. Writer/director/editor Don Thacker comes from a short film background (and has made several more since) and that sort of shows; you can almost hear him wondering how to get things padded out to 90 minutes at times, especially given the fact that the film never leaves the confines of the apartment (save for some hallucinated scenes in which Ian sees himself as a character on some old (fictional) TV shows). So it’s a lot of “someone shows up and talks to Ian, who makes them leave before talking to The Mold for a bit before someone else interrupts” kind of circular plotting, and the film is even broken up into ten chapters, which we learn on the commentary was implemented in case he couldn’t get funding for a feature and had to break it up into ten shorts. There’s a plot, and it’s building toward something, so it’s not like you can just remove this or that chunk, but it still occasionally suffers from the weight of that episodic structure.
But it’s a movie about a talking mold! And said mold is voiced by Jeffrey Combs (somewhat misleadingly given name above the title prominence on the cover; he never actually appears in the film), who gives a terrific performance, injecting it with enough personality that you grow to like him/it while also retaining more than just a hint of malevolence. A phoned in vocal turn or one that was simply too far in either direction could have been disastrous for the movie, but Combs absolutely nails it. And it doesn’t hurt that The Mold is a practical effect, brought to life through puppetry and forced perspective type filmmaking as opposed to a CGI effect, which also could have made the movie less than bearable. It’s a perfect marriage of effect and performance, the likes of which we rarely see outside of, I dunno, The Muppets or something. Also, speaking of effects, it's a pretty goopy film at times; it's not EXACTLY body horror, but it skirts on the lines and wouldn't be totally out of place on a shelf with such fare. There's a decaying corpse that legit left me kind of icked out, which doesn't happen all that often.
And going back to the indie stuff, even if you were somehow left with the impression that this was a cynical cash grab, or the result of a few tech bros looking to double their crypto fortune by throwing together that looked good on a spreadsheet, the bonus features more or less all revolve around the fact that this was Thacker’s dream project, with everyone working to fulfill his singular vision. In interviews, behind the scenes pieces, and the commentary (where he’s joined by Combs and lead actor Adrian DiGiovanni), the filmmaker speaks of his influences, the biblical motifs he threaded throughout the narrative, the reasons he wanted to do The Mold practically and why he went to the trouble of casting/recording Combs first to make sure DiGiovanni’s performance would always be in proper tune with his. Even Combs admits he doesn’t understand everything in the film, and that’s a good thing! Better than showing up to rattle off a few lines as the unseen madman in some Saw knockoff, right?
So in short: more like this, please. Again, it’s not my favorite movie of the year or anything like that, but it was completely unique (even some mild comparisons to Little Shop of Horrors or Bucket of Blood type “kill to improve your life” stories are suggesting a very different kind of movie) and never left me in a position of “OK I know how the next five minutes are going to play out, let me look at my phone for a bit.” All I really want from this lo-fi stuff is to realize when it’s over, or even at some point during, that it’s NOT going to be one of those movies that I end up rewatching (and maybe even re-reviewing) in six or seven years because even if I was entertained, it was so “stock” (respect to Lars) that I’ve forgotten I’ve seen it. Short of a brain injury or some kind of degenerative disease, there’s no way I could forget having seen the talking mold movie with a random Game Genie reference. Well done, Mr. Thacker.
What say you?
P.S. Great chiptune score! Per the commentary it was actually recorded with an NES, somehow. Love it.
We’ve all been duped with a misleading trailer once or twice, but in the case of Skinamarink, I’m hard-pressed to think of a MORE honest promotion for a horror movie. Outside of the oft-repeated “in this house” not appearing in the film (I can’t tell if the trailer voice is meant to be, you know, TRAILER VOICE or if it’s trying to pass off the line as dialogue), the vibe of the trailer is exactly what the film is, albeit for 100 minutes instead of two. So if you watched the trailer and thought "OK, this is more of a teaser, the real movie can't be like that, right?" - you're not gonna be happy if you buy a ticket.
“But the trailer is just a bunch of random shots of ceilings and stuff?” you might be thinking, and yes, that is correct and that is also what the film offers for its entire runtime. There is some dialogue, but it’s delivered by off-screen characters and often so hard to hear that the film provides subtitles for the majority of it. There are four people in the cast (two kids and two adults) but they could have been sitting right next to me in the theater and I wouldn’t have recognized them, as we never see any of them that clearly. The film’s real star is a nightlight that appears several times (occasionally knocked around by the ghostly presence) or maybe the orange Lego brick separator that shouldn’t have existed in the film’s 1995 setting (I like to think it was another demonstration of the ghost’s powers, myself).
The plot, which is made more clear in the two line description on IMDb than from the film itself, is about a kid who sleepwalks and hurts himself a bit, waking up the other family members in the process. Over the course of the evening, their house begins to change – the windows and doors disappear, their toys start collecting themselves into a massive pile, and then the parents also disappear, leaving the two kids (4 and 6ish) alone with whatever supernatural force they’re being terrified with. It seems to all unfold over one night, but a late on-screen title suggests it's going for much longer, though without any exteriors (or characters, really) I guess it doesn't matter much.
Now, that probably sounds like a pretty straightforward haunted house movie; a sort of “Poltergeist but from the kids’ POV” effort that maybe would make good gateway horror for your own young’ns. But no: as I said, most of that plot is hard to suss out from what you see on screen, which is mostly hallways and floors and assorted toys. The camera rarely moves, the characters appear even less, and the lo-fi approach (super grainy, not always clear VHS type imagery, albeit presented in a 2.40 image) makes it hard to tell what you’re actually looking at on several occasions. Sometimes this is used for an effective scare, like a seemingly empty shot of a wall (or something similarly featureless) that slowly reveals the little girl (I think?) standing there, but most of the time it gives you that inclination to dart your eyes around the frame, looking for something that might appear in a corner or from behind whatever random object you’re looking at.
If you’ve gotten this far you can probably figure out if this is a “for you” movie or not, and alas I fall into the “not” category. I didn’t hate it or anything, and I admired the experimental nature of the effort (doubly so when you consider it was playing in multiplexes, with a trailer for Ant-Man 3 beforehand), but at 100 minutes I got pretty restless waiting for it to switch gears (spoiler: it never does). The problem is, for me, that the movie is basically – occasionally even effectively! – trying to depict the sensation of a bad nightmare you probably had as a kid, in an attempt to get under your skin and creep you out, and I am simply not easily susceptible to such things. I heard that the best way to watch the movie was all alone in your house in the middle of the night with all the lights off, and I don’t doubt it, but I’ve seen a number of films I found scary in theaters (including Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, both of which have been namechecked in the film’s hype), so it should more or less work on the big screen.
In fact, one of the things I was most taken by during my experience was how quiet the crowd was, and it was nearly sold out. A couple people walked out, unsurprisingly (I had to laugh when two girls finally gave up with maybe ten minutes left, something I saw happen at Inland Empire, which was a film I had already mentally compared it to), but no one expressed their frustration until the lights came up at the end, or checked their phones or whatever (at least from where I could see, about dead center of the auditorium). If anything, everyone seemed to be trying really hard to maintain the same sort of quiet intensity the film offered – at one point someone attempted to recline their seat, and the squeaking sound from the leather parts rubbing together had them stop almost instantly. The only other time I’ve seen that sort of commitment from an audience around here was during the first Quiet Place, and considering this was an AMC, with people laughing and cheering for the Nicole Kidman ad, I must say I was practically stunned at how well behaved everyone was and how they all seemed to be aware that they shouldn’t be disrupting the other patrons. More like this, please!
At any rate, I hope those who enjoy this sort of thing (though I can’t really think of anything else to compare it to) get a chance to see it in the most ideal circumstances possible. And again, I’m glad to see a multiplex take a chance on something like this at a time when even family-friendly Disney stuff is tanking because people are so accustomed to staying at home unless it’s a predetermined blockbuster like Marvel or Avatar. But I slept just fine when I got home (except for when my idiot cat woke me up because it managed to stick its head through the handle hole of a plastic bag, then proceeded to run around the house knocking into everything trying to get it off), sans nightmares or fears that my windows would disappear. Making it an experiment that failed, at least for me. But an interesting experience all the same, and if it's not playing near you, it will be on Shudder soon, as they are the co-distributors (which saddens me as it makes it much less likely that there will be a Blu-ray with commentary, as I'd be interested in listening to one if provided - UPDATE: my pessimism was unwarranted; it IS indeed coming to disc with commentary! I'll buy it on principle.). And yes, SOON, so please don't impatiently steal it.
One thing I truly miss about Birth.Movies.Death (RIP) was that it gave me a consistent outlet for writing about non horror things whenever I was inspired to do so. Now that it's gone and I have to scramble for freelance work elsewhere (and worse, actually pitch the piece/myself to get it approved, something I never had to bother with at BMD) I can find myself with something to say and nowhere to say it. And yes, I have HMAD to do whatever the hell I want, but I'd prefer to keep it "clean".
But given the genre-adjacent spirit of pretty much everything playing at Fantastic Fest (which I'm attending in person for the first time in five years), I figured I'd "dirty" up the joint a bit and give mini reviews to the stuff I saw that don't have a place to review in full elsewhere. Not only will it make the publicity people happy (extra coverage for them!) but it'll keep me from the increasing problem of seeing a festival movie, not putting my thoughts down in full, and then literally forgetting if I liked it or not when it comes along later.
So without further ado...
Movie #1: TITANE
Julia Ducournau's Raw was my favorite movie of the last Fantastic Fest I attended, so it was some nice serendipity to finally make my return and see her equally long-awaited followup right off the bat. The film won the Palme d'or at Cannes a few months ago, which I found fitting personally as my introduction to this prestigious award was when Pulp Fiction won it over 25 years ago (Jesus Christ...), and like that film Titane is a triumph in surprising storytelling. Our protagonist, Alexia, suffers a bad car accident as a child and gets a plate in her head (the title is French for "titanium" and - after hearing multiple variations - is pronounced "tee-TAHN"), but rather than fear cars she comes out of it... well, loving them. Like, really loving them.
She has sex with cars is what I'm saying.
But she has a more traditional movie character vice: she's something of a serial killer, murdering a guy who hits on her (yayyy!) and then a love interest (aw) and the rest of the people at the girl's house, and finally her own parents for good measure. And if you think I've just spoiled the entire movie, relax - that's just the first half hour, and I haven't even mentioned the top billed actor. That's why I compare to Pulp Fiction; when the girlfriend character is introduced (via the most hilariously gnarly "meet cute" I've ever seen, I think) it seems like she could be the film's co-lead, a calming presence for our psychotic lead that can maybe have her find her own peace... only for the poor girl to be dispatched just as suddenly as the would-be rapist. Instead, Alexia goes on the run and does what any woman would: cuts her hair short, tapes down her breasts, and batters her own nose (anyone who delighted at Emma Roberts' self-attack in Scream 4 - try this on for size) so that she looks like a young boy.
Specifically, a boy who went missing a decade earlier and whose father, Vincent, is still trying to find him. Believing that she is indeed him, Vincent takes "Adrien" (yes, the names were both used in Raw) home and tries to get him to readjust, as well as giving him a job with him at the fire department. With barely any spoken dialogue to establish this, it's pretty clear the man has been desperate to fill the hole his son left; one of the younger guys at the fire department has obviously been something of a replacement (and now himself replaced by "Adrien", whose story he doesn't believe), and as Alexia's ruse becomes easier to see through, Vincent just ignores the signs out of desperation, as if he knows damn well it's not his son but as long as he doesn't say it out loud he can keep on believing it.
In short (I won't reveal any more of the film's narrative; indeed I left out one of its primary plot points), what seemed like a mix between Crash (Cronenberg), American Psycho, and that documentary The Imposter ends up also tugging at the heartstrings as well, the final ingredient for the most deliriously entertaining cinematic stew I've seen in quite some time. As she did on Raw, Ducournau displays a knack for implementing pitch black or offbeat humor where you least expect it (wait til you see why "Macarena" makes an appearance) as well as getting fearless performances from her actors. It will be a divisive film for sure (one friend admitted to shutting off his screener), but for those of you who don't mind going for a ride that has no interest in standard movie conventions, I suspect you'll be just as enraptured as I was.
Movie #2: THERE'S SOMETHING INSIDE YOUR HOUSE
This one is definitely a traditional horror movie, so I COULD write a whole review but I just don't have too much to say. It's pretty good though, and has a great hook for a slasher mask: the killer wears 3D printed masks of his victims (said killer complaining about how hard it is to make the masks during the climax is a line/delivery on par with Stu's "My mom and dad are gonna be SO MAD AT MEEEE!"). Not only is it a creepy visual, but it actually ties into the theme, of people running away from themselves (our heroine is new to town after fleeing her old town thanks to being involved in a tragedy) as it operates as something of a widespread I Know What You Did Last Summer. The victims all have dirty secrets (hazing beatings, an anonymous racist podcast, etc) that establishes pretty early that this isn't revenge for any particular crime but someone with an axe to grind against the town's residents as a whole (which, along with the corn-filled Nebraska setting, made me think of the recent Clown in a Cornfield novel, which I recommend!).
Unfortunately even with this seeming surplus of potential villains, anyone with a GED in Slasher School will probably be able to figure out who the culprit is pretty early on, which dampened the fun a touch for me. But what it lacks in proper whodunit mastery it excels in making characters to care about who also seem real and - bless - genuine friends! There's like one little spat at around the hour point but otherwise our group of heroes (intentionally filling in stereotypes: a jock, a stoner, etc) spend all their time together in harmony - they literally put their heads together and look up at the stars at one point. It's also impressively inclusive but without making a big deal out of it, which (as I've said before) is the best way to go about it, by just doing it as if it didn't need to be spelled out or addressed from a soapbox - because isn't!
It's coming soon from Netflix, which is a shame as it means a sizable chunk of its audience will be watching it with one eye on their phone (though maybe it'll make the reveal more surprising?), but for those who fawned all over Fear Street 1994 earlier this summer, I hope you give it a proper viewing. For my money, it's doing a lot of the same things, but doing them better.
What say you?
P.S. My laptop - which I am using for the first time in over two years - is a piece of shit. The spacebar doesn't work well and it has a habit of shifting the cursor to some random spot, so I start typing my next word in the middle of an earlier, unrelated sentence, screwing up my train of thought to try to fix it. Needless to say there might be some weird typos in here that I missed, and I simply don't have the patience to try to format it (italics and such), so for that I apologize. I'll clean it up when I get back home.
One thing I love about outlets like Severin is that they are seemingly happy to cater to hardcore genre fans who enjoy challenging themselves, as opposed to going after big name titles that will assuredly sell better than the weirdo stuff that comprises the majority of their library (hell, Cathy's Curse is probably one of the more normal movies they've put out in the past few years!). And this year's annual crop of Black Friday selections were no exception, offering such oddities as The Theater Bizarre, Douglas Buck's grim Family Portraits, and Castle of the Creeping Flesh, which is possibly the strangest of the lot.
In fact, it's so odd it barely qualifies as horror, and it's worth noting that the original German title had a translation roughly "In the Castle of Bloody Desire", which is far more fitting. Another title was "Appointment With Lust", which also would have worked though perhaps suggests something more hardcore than what the film offers. That said, there's plenty of sex here (not all of it consensual), certainly more than anything traditionally "horror" - the bulk of that element just stems from its central location: an appropriately gothic and isolated castle that fits the scary movie bill (indeed, it was used in Bava's Baron Blood and the Nic Cage Season of the Witch). There is a mad scientist plot of sorts, but it's presented in a way that suggests it was added in later.
If that was the case, at least it's not as random as such things usually are - if I am understanding the included interview with the family of director Adrian Hoven, the heart surgery footage we see throughout the footage is actually footage of HIS heart surgery (indeed, he passed away from heart issues in 1981), which is a hell of a way to boost your production value, I must say. But the most is so horny that even these scenes are frequently interrupted by Janine Reynaud writhing in her bed or something, as if she was getting off to the idea of a guy performing open heart surgery in a dingy castle.
But at least she's enjoying herself, which isn't always the case as the movie offers a pair of rape scenes. They're not brutal, I Spit on Your Grave kind of scenes, thankfully, but instead just kind of sleazy, as both victims offer looks of momentary pleasure and, in one case, just sort of hangs out with her attacker after instead of telling their shared friends (including her fiance) what he had just done before they arrived. She even makes a joke about it! It's very odd, but that's par for the course for the film, which never seems to decide what kind of movie it is. It has all of the markings of a proper gothic horror, with a group of people arriving at a castle and discovering nefarious goings on, but once they arrive Hoven and his writers seem content to let everyone just keep hanging out and having (consensual!) sex. One guy gets out of the bed he is sharing with his lover, wanders into another room, and immediately begins having sex with the woman in that one. Later they're almost interrupted by another pal who has noticed one of their number has gone missing, but I guess he isn't too concerned because once he sees them going at it he quietly lets himself out. They can find her later, I guess.
It also offers one of the sillier subplots I can recall in one of these things. Seems the Baron's daughter was attacked by some men in the village, so he did what anyone would: set an angry bear loose in the area in hopes that it would kill the culprits (the bear would presumably ask around and make sure it was attacking the right people?). It's just a story we hear early on, long forgotten by the time one of our protagonists goes outside at night and, sure enough, runs into the bear. You'd be forgiven for forgetting the setup by the time it has a payoff, but honestly if the idea was never established at all and the guy simply got attacked by a bear out of nowhere it wouldn't exactly stand out as particularly odd in this movie.
Halfway through I started wondering if the film was an inspiration for Rocky Horror Picture Show, given its "people show up at a strange castle" plot and general randomness (and, again, horniness), a sentiment that was all but confirmed by the climax, where one of the villains takes the corpse of a loved one, climbs up a tower, and then falls to his death, just as Rocky and Frank did there - all that's missing is someone firing a laser gun. The two would make for a fantastic double feature, I suspect; three straight hours of unparalleled "No one involved is concerned with making any sense, here" entertainment. Did I mention the random voiceover that comes out of nowhere and says "KILL!" over and over?
Needless to say, if you want the movie that comes to your head when you hear the title, steer clear of this. But if you are a fan of Euro-sleaze and want something a little more memorable and outré, run don't walk to... well, the Severin site, and pick this up (if you're on a budget, a censored copy is on Prime for 99 cents). The disc doesn't have much for extras beyond the aforementioned interview with Hoven's wife and son (which is more about him than the film, though they do offer one hilarious sentiment about one of its actors: "He died a few years ago. He never got any big roles."), just a few alternate title/credit sequences with its other titles, and "different" ending that, best I can tell, simply holds on the final shot for a full minute instead of going to black. If a movie could ever use a candid historian track...
I wasn't planning on writing about Cats, because it's not a horror movie (no, I'm not going to joke around and dub it as one, even if the characters unsettlingly resemble humans with fur more than the cats they're supposed to be), but I changed my mind after I had a sorta nightmare about it after my viewing. Not a scary dream per se, but since I very rarely dream about movies I just saw, I found it interesting that my subconscious was still trying to process what I just saw. Indeed, the dream was basically about me being in the theater, trying to comprehend the film's narrative, at one point digging behind the screen where all the "gears" were (I mean, it was still a dream, so part of it made no goddamn sense) to make sure they weren't at fault for the weird nonsense on-screen.
When I woke up, I naturally had no better idea of what the point of the movie was, but it did get me thinking more about WHY the movie didn't work on any level. During my viewing I just laughed along with the rest of the crowd and struggled to get my bearings on the thing, without putting too much thought into why I was finding it so impenetrable, as I needed my complete brainpower just to keep up and even that wasn't enough. The dissection came later, at which time I realized that a huge part of the problem is that the movie never once calms down long enough to allow a viewer to step back and say "OK, this is what this world is, and this is how it works." Instead, you're just tossed into it (almost literally, as the closest thing the movie offers to an audience surrogate is introduced when its owner throws it on the street in a sack) and all of the movie's insanely high number of cats instantly start dancing and singing, and they never stop until the movie is over.
Yes, it's a "sung-through" musical, not one that has isolated songs between otherwise normal scenes. The longest pause (no, I will NOT say "paws", and damn you for thinking I would) is maybe 20 seconds, usually for a character to react to a song for a beat before starting their own. This can be a hurdle for any show if you're not prepared and have your ears properly tuned into the vocals, so perhaps people who are familiar with the stage version weren't as thrown off by the movie's idea of rhythm, but I, a total a newcomer, found it nearly impossible to focus on the lyrics. Why? Because Tom Hooper is a godawful director who never once makes the right choice with his camera and editing, so while a cat is singing about this or that, he's haphazardly cutting to other cats, moving his camera all over the place, and generally making it a god-level challenge to know exactly what we should be paying attention to, what's important, etc.
I should note for people who are just as unfamiliar with this particular show that there is no traditional plot on Broadway; from what I've gathered after reading up on it (again, in an attempt to understand it) is that the play basically has the same thrust as the movie, in that it's little more than a series of "scenes" in which a new cat is introduced, sings a song, and is then whisked away by the villainous Macavity (Idris Elba), who figures he can guarantee ascending to the "Heaviside Layer" (reincarnation/heaven kinda place, except one they all want to go to) by removing all of the other "Jellicle" cats from contention. That choice is made by Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), their leader I guess, and she isn't having much of Macavity's shit. So the cats have to stop him and get back so she can make the right call, and I assure you, the way I've described it makes it sound more involving than it is.
The movie bulks up the role of Victoria, one of the background cats in the play. She's the one being tossed off at the beginning, and for about 13 seconds it seems like the movie will be about her learning about this world, becoming something important, and maybe even being chosen herself, or at least having some part to play in the decision. That the play is so plotless that they felt they had to invent a main character for the adaptation was probably the first sign that maybe they shouldn't adapt it in the first place, but maybe it could have worked with a competent filmmaker behind it. Instead, they got Hooper, whose aforementioned directorial ADD undoes the material at every turn. Lead character or not, when you're at a play you have a fixed view on the proceedings, and stage lighting/the confined stage can assure you're focused and not being pulled in seven directions at once. You have no such ability here - Hooper can't even bother to keep from breaking the 180 rule, so their attempts at making it something accessible via Victoria fall completely flat, and after a while she's basically the same background player she was in the source material. When we first meet her she is told Cats have three names, their normal one (that'd be Victoria), their Jellicle one, and a secret one... and that's all there is to that, as she's never referred to by anything else.
If anyone knows one thing about Cats it's probably "Memory", but what they might not know is that the character who sings it is barely seen beforehand (at least, that's the case here - the movie is only 100 minutes whereas the stage show is over two hours, so some stuff got lost), so the song is really doing the heavy lifting there, because it's not particularly moving with regards to the character since we have such a minimal connection to her at that point (it'd be like if Audrey and Seymour sang "Suddenly Seymour" before Audrey II even showed up). Ironically, one of the few other bright spots is Victoria's "Beautiful Ghosts", a new song written for the movie - I can't help but wonder if the thing would have worked if they had taken the basic concept and the best songs and basically started over with a collection of new tunes and an actual plot to tie them together. Instead it's mostly just noise, with occasional moments of relative high quality. Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, the best songs are near the end, by which point you've probably long given up. Sure, it's good that the most intolerable numbers (Rebel Wilson's and James Corden's) are gotten out of the way early, but when you add that to the aforementioned "you're just thrown into this thing" problem it might be too much to recover from for the average person.
The other huge problem is that the scale of the cats keeps changing, and none of the incarnations ever make any sense. I thought it was just a world run by cats (like how Pixar's Cars is run by cars), but an unseen human drops Victoria off, and later a pair of "bad" cats have her join them as they break into a house, only for the absent owners' dog to realize they're there and try to burst through the door of the bedroom they're ransacking. So they're essentially the same as housecats, but their size compared to the household objects and furniture is closer to that of mice - which is made even more confusing by how big they look compared to the actual mice (also humans in suits) when they show up a few times. Again, the movie never lets you understand how it works on a base level; it's one thing to have specific questions about how this or that would play out in this strange world, but to be kept in the dark about all of its "rules" is simply insane.
Long story short, it constantly feels like you missed the scene before the one you're currently watching, and that continues until the very end, which is actually impressive but doesn't make the movie good by any means. But it's not "so bad it's good" kind of stuff like The Room or Birdemic, either; apart from a few botched FX (yes, even in this upgraded version you still see Judi Dench's ring in a few shots) it's competent on a technical level, and actually doesn't have too many laugh out loud moments that spring from terrible decision making. The performers give it their all (Ian McKellen in particular nails it) despite their hideous costumes and some of the songs are actually catchy, but it can never settle into a groove, because Hooper is too terrible a filmmaker to reign anything in and find one. Exhausting maybe is a better word for it. Again, I suspect it might work better for those who are familiar with the story/songs already and just want to see what it's like in a different format, but I think everyone can agree that this was a misguided project at best. I'm glad I saw it for myself, but it's not even really worth ironic "let's laugh at this" kind of viewing - it's like an actual car crash in that you maybe can't look away but in reality wish never happened in the first place and hope only the guilty parties (Hooper, in this case) suffer from it.
What say you?
P.S. Hilariously, the Drafthouse showed an old PSA about safety from the cast of the Broadway show, and it's possibly a bad idea as it just shows how much better the usual costumes are than whatever it is Hooper was going for here.
A couple months ago, a friend of mine who had just installed a home theater with 4K and 7.1 and all that jazz had a few of us over to marvel at it, but this friend isn't exactly a blockbuster kinda guy, i.e. the movies you'd want to demo a high-end home theater with. I brought a couple of my 4K discs, but what we ended up watching was Blood Beat, a full frame, probably mono film that had been recently released on standard Blu-ray. I mean it probably never looked or sounded better in its nearly 35 year old life, but I can't say I was blown away by the home theater's capabilities (though he did relent and let the rest of us watch a few minutes of Fast and Furious 8, and then I could confirm that I really need to have a proper home theater someday), making it a peculiar choice to show the system off. So I just focused on the movie itself (a novel idea, eh?), but alas I was tired before it even started so I passed out halfway through and when I woke up I had no idea what was going on, vowing to watch the rest later that week.
Well two or three months later, "later that week" is finally here! Obviously I just rewatched the movie from the beginning, because my vague recollections were of no use - "Hunters, a samurai, and I think a painting" was not enough to write a review or even find where I left off. But if you've seen Blood Beat you know that I could watch this movie a thousand times and still not make much sense out of it, so I guess it didn't really matter in the end. For those uninitiated, the film focuses on Gary, a standard Wisconsin man (read: a hunter) who is dating a woman that would rather sit inside and paint all day. Her grown children are coming to visit for Christmas, and when they arrive she immediately gets weird vibes from her son's girlfriend Sarah, and the feeling is mutual. This puts her in a rather antisocial mood, so the others all instantly go hunting, at which point the horror stuff starts happening.
And by horror stuff I'm sure you know what I mean: the ghost of a Samurai that is bathed in blue light and makes sounds that the subtitles refer to as "Mystical Boinging". I mean the movie is actually kind of a slasher in general terms - the samurai ghost thing starts offing people one by one with his sword, but it's all so damn bizarre that it never really gives that slasher vibe. For starters, we don't really see the samurai until the last 20 minutes, so until then it's more of a "presence" than a flesh and blood stalker, and either because of the film's low budget or the director's incompetence (both?) the kill scenes are hardly anything one could refer to as a highlight, which is kind of the whole deal with slashers (especially by 1983). And in one of the film's many unexplained elements, Sarah's orgasms seem to be linked to the killer, so if she's flicking the bean or riding her boyfriend, the kill scenes are intercut with her doing that, making them even harder to follow. I can't even tell if her sexual energy is giving the samurai some life, or if she's psychically turned on by his killing spree. Either way they're having fun doing their thing, I guess.
It occurred to me during the film how many of these "regional" productions are totally insane, and I have to wonder if it's intentional or just an unfortunate side effect of people making a film when they don't really know what they're doing (it's a good a time as any to note that the writer/director of this film never made another, and didn't realize the film was full-frame until he was halfway through shooting). I can tell you from experience that ideas that make perfect sense to you don't translate to the screen and can leave others confused, so I have to wonder if movies like this, or Things, or Disconnected, or any of the other random ones I've found over the years were intentionally vague or forced to be that way because of how they were made. I mean there's gotta be some train of thought that puts the ghost of a samurai in the middle of the Wisconsin woods, right? Unless they were just using the ol' idea balls in the manatee tank (Google it), I have to assume there was a scene explaining it that got cut due to damaged film, or maybe they ran out of time/money and never got to shoot it in the first place.
Anyway, the movie has JUST enough of that sort of inept insanity to make it worth a look. The Samurai talks in a weird computer voice, there's an out of nowhere argument about juice between two equally out of nowhere characters, and the "Samurai vision" and other random effects are almost impressive when you consider when/how the movie was made. But those moments are often separated by long stretches of people just repeating their banal dialogue, long pauses, walking around, etc. so it's fairly dull more often than not. There's a hunting expedition that goes on forever, and I think we spend more time watching two of the characters play Monopoly than we spend watching the samurai in all his/her glory. Plus the disconnect renders a lot of it less fun than it should be - sure, it's awesome when the kitchen goes haywire and we get cans of Tab flying around, but since it's so unrelated to everything else (and barely mentioned after) it doesn't generate that kind of kitchen sink insanity that Evil Dead or Hausu ramps up throughout their respective runtimes. It also ends on some of its most confusing notes (a major demise is suggested while we look at a static shot of a door for ten seconds) and the surviving characters calmly walk out of the house while putting on their coats as if they were going to run an errand instead of escaping a nightmare scenario that left some of their loved ones dead.
I suspect it'd be more fun with a midnight crowd, perhaps during one of those all night festivals where your sleep deprived brain has you thinking you're hallucinating some of this stuff anyway, and the baffled reactions of your fellow moviegoers can generate enough energy to smooth over its rough patches. If you've never seen this sort of thing before, I guess it's a good place to start before you get into the really insane likes of Don't Go In The Woods or MST3k fodder like Manos. But as I've had more than just a taste of these things, I dunno, this one didn't have that je ne sais quoi that'd have me excitedly recommending it to like-minded fans unless it was on the big screen. It was just OK, and that's not the reaction I'd expect from a movie with a synopsis that included the phrase "possessed by the spirit of a Japanese samurai warrior". I actually preferred it when it was just focusing on its poorly acted characters yelling at each other - if it focused entirely on that juice couple, this would be a much more excited review. Oh well.
I don't read as much as I'd like, but even if I had all the time in the world I probably wouldn't read the Bible, as I got enough in (Catholic) grade school to know the basic gist, even if some of those particulars are fading in my memory. And I certainly wouldn't read the sort of publications that inform you about celebrities' current dating/marriage status, because there is literally nothing in the world I can imagine caring about less than where anyone besides myself sticks his dick. But if you want to get the most out of Mother! (I'm not doing the lowercase) I might suggest reading up on both, or at least the former while also knowing that director Darren Aronofsky is now dating Jennifer Lawrence, as it helps clarify some of the autobiographical details he has laced his heavily allegorical film with. Though I should stress I didn't know they were dating until after I walked out of the theater, having enjoyed what I saw despite not knowing the current history of its filmmaker.
SPOILERS FOLLOW! The ad campaign has been vague and therefore pretty much any detail counts as a spoiler, but I'm gonna get into it because otherwise there wouldn't be a lot for me to say. You've been warned!!!
If you choose to ignore any deeper meaning or symbolism in the film, you might enjoy it just for its sheer insanity, as this is possibly the nuttiest goddamn movie ever put on over 2,000 screens - and that includes Aronofsky's previous film, Noah, which had giant rock monsters helping to tell the story of the famous ark. It starts off like a low-key home invasion movie of sorts, with Lawrence and her husband (Javier Bardem) enjoying their quiet life in their isolated home when Ed Harris shows up, claiming he thought the place was a B&B and asking to stay the night. Then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up and Lawrence starts getting a bit weirded out, as Pfeiffer is a bit too forward (it seems like only ten minutes go by after their introduction that she's asking them about their sex life) and Bardem is being way too accomodating. Then more people show up. Then more. And then even more. If nothing else, this movie must have the largest cast for a single location movie ever made, as the camera never leaves JLaw's face for more than a second or two, and her character never leaves the house. But even if no one ever showed up besides Harris and Pfeiffer, it'd still be a terrific exercise in creating tension; from the film's first minute or two we're already made uneasy by how people treat Lawrence, and even though nothing particularly chilling is happening to her, you'll probably start hoping for any break in the anxiety and dread Aronofsky manages to build up with almost nothing happening.
Oh and I'm not calling the characters by their real names out of laziness - they aren't really given any in the film. Bardem is "Him", Lawrence is "Mother" (not "Her", tellingly), Ed Harris is "Man", etc. There's no way to know them until the end credits, so they don't really matter in the long run, but if you missed the biblical connections in the film, crediting Harris and Pfeiffer's children (yep, they show up too) as "Oldest Son" and "Younger brother" should remind you of Cain & Abel, and you can start filling in the others from there - depending on how well versed in the bible you are, of course. It reminded me of Antichrist (a movie I damn near hated), which credited the leads as "He" and "She" and dealt with similar plot threads (marriage, misogyny, etc) while also being the kind of movie that will likely cause walkouts at your screening, though I only saw one (maybe two? I saw two people leave and not come back, but one was sitting in front of me so it was more noticeable that they didn't return - I might have just not seen the other re-enter) at mine. I mean, even though the ads were very WTF? and Aronofsky has never been a "multiplex" kind of filmmaker, folks might STILL find this a bit too much.
But I love crazy, even if I'm not always sure the meaning behind any of it happening. Sometimes it's just kind of awesome to see an Oscar winning actress storm around her house that's been gradually overtaken by insane fans (Bardem's character is a bestselling poet who is mounting a comeback), tearing apart her walls and setting up club equipment for a mini rave in her living room (told you, it's weird). Better, smarter writers than me will write 1,200 word essays on these kind of moments and find fascinating explanations for their inclusion - I on the other hand was just stoked to see character actor extraordinaire Stephen McHattie show up, as I don't think he's been in a wide release from Hollywood in several years (Immortals, maybe? from 2011) and it's nice to see him in something besides some TV show or junky Canadian horror flick. I also had no idea Kristen Wiig was in the movie, so when she showed up I was just as surprised as Lawrence's character, who by that point was having trouble of finding new ways to make a "What NOW?" kind of face as more and more people kept barging into her home and making it their own.
See, even if you ignore the Bible stuff, the movie kind of works as a heightened tale on how difficult it is to share the love your life with his (or her) fanbase, as these people mean well but can be rather intrusive. Bardem points out that he needs to connect with these people to get ideas and be able to create, something he can't get from sitting at home alone with his wife all the time, and Lawrence is devastated that she can't be enough no matter how hard she tries to fulfill his needs (during the movie's few quiet moments she is usually trying to restore his family home, which was largely destroyed in a fire and she is now rebuilding it). This has been read as Aronofsky admitting (defending?) his apparent penchant for being in relationships with his actresses, relationships that haven't worked out, but as a minor creative type I think it's more universal than that, and not even just to men - to all creative folks. Bardem's not wrong - maybe some people can conjure fantastic stories (or whatever their chosen medium may be) without new experiences, but he's not one, and his wife is seemingly devoted to recreating the past and afraid to try anything new (she turns down a drink of some exotic alcohol after insisting she likes to drink, for example).
In fact, if not for a pregnancy plot that takes up the film's second half, I feel the roles could probably be swapped and you could have a healthy chunk of the same takeaway (plus maybe if the roles were swapped it might make me feel less guilty for all of the times I went out to see horror movies so I could write something instead of staying home with my wife). I don't have to deal with it often, but even on my very minor level of (lack of better word here, trust me) fame I occasionally encounter people who just assume we are friends because they follow me on Twitter or whatever, and it feels fairly intrusive if I'm with my kid or even with a few other friends - yet I feel guilty if I just mumble a "thanks" and walk away. The push and pull is, like everything else in the movie, exaggerated to an insane degree, but the same point is being made - anyone in a position to have fans needs their support, and when they overstep their boundaries it can be difficult to tell them to back off, and therefore they're never sure when they've crossed the line. But at the same time we might not inform them of this, so it's not their fault that they are unaware they were off-putting. So in this movie's batshit version of the world, Bardem creating a baby with his wife is no different than creating a new poem to be read - his fans want it, Bardem doesn't want to create conflict with the people who adore him, and that's where the film REALLY goes off the rails.
(Oh, and keeping with the Biblical theme - he's God, by the way. So there's that, but I don't know enough about Aronofsky to make any assumptions with what he's saying there, so let's move on, with respect.)
Indeed, the baby's birth and what happens in its life shortly thereafter is probably where the movie lose the most people. The first half is the buildup to the conception, and the second half is when she's about to pop (it's not "nine months later" per se - the movie is just as vague with time as it is with names, and given that it's not a particularly realistic film by any stretch, it could be the next day for all we know), and once again her home is overrun by strangers (the first batch, with Ed Harris and the rest, are scared off by a burst pipe - i.e. driven out by a flood, in keeping with the biblical ties). If nothing else, you gotta appreciate how much action Aronofsky is able to cram into this damn house - we get raves, riots, shootouts, masses... it kind of reminded me of Snowpiercer in a weird way, with each room of this house being a microcosm not unlike each train of the car was one (hey, Ed Harris was in that too - maybe let's double feature this with that instead of Antichrist). At a certain point it becomes kind of obvious that Lawrence is never going to leave that house, so I kind of love that they staged five action movies' worth of stunt men and scenarios into it instead - I hope like hell the Blu-ray has a production design featurette, if nothing else.
In fact a lot of what I liked about the movie ended up being on the technical side of things as opposed to its characters (ciphers) and narrative (a mish-mash - by design! - of biblical themes and personal struggles). For starters, it's actually shot on film (16mm, I believe), which is such a rarity these days I momentarily thought something was wrong with the projection before I realized it was just film grain. And even though I'm not exactly a huge fan of Jennifer Lawrence, I love the fact that we never leave her POV even for a moment, and she's probably in 90% of the movie's shots, if not more (even cutaways to other characters are frequently over her shoulder or something) - we're never made privy to a single detail that she didn't catch herself, easily making us as uneasy and paranoid as the character. There's a scene where Harris is puking, seemingly naked, and (Bible alert!) sporting a fresh wound near his ribs - she wasn't there when he got the injury (or took his clothes off), so we're never informed what the hell that was all about. I love stuff like that, which goes a long way toward keeping me engaged in the film even though I couldn't tell you what was going on and/or necessarily caring about anyone on-screen in the usual way.
Ultimately, it falls into that category of movies I "appreciate" more than I traditionally "enjoy", like Kidnapped or Martyrs, albeit for different reasons (apart from the aforementioned beating, which lasts only about 20-30 seconds, there's nothing "hardcore" about the film's violence). I'd much rather read other people's interpretations, even ones I disagreed with, than watch the film again, though I still encourage folks to check it out if they think they know what they're in for (and no, it's not really anything like Rosemary's Baby, despite what the posters seemed to be suggesting at one point - though it was a nice misdirect for the early goings on). I suspect it will get an F Cinemascore, which puts it in good company with the likes of Solaris, Bug, and Killing Them Softly (the only F Cinemascore movie I DON'T like is Darkness, in fact), and probably won't do anyone's careers any good, but who cares? It's a remarkable achievement both in the "hey, you've never seen anything like this before" way and also the fact that Paramount put up a lot of money to make and release it wide, instead of dumping it in limited release/VOD. The idea that some suburban soccer mom (or even better, her Katniss Everdeem loving daughter) will walk into their local mall multiplex and see this makes me super giddy, and that's more than enough to qualify it was a win in my house.
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