2019 Horror Part Twenty-Two

SVAHA: THE SIXTH FINGER

Dir - Jang Jae-hyun

Overall: MEH

For his second full-length behind the lens, Jang Jae-hyun goes big with the silly-titled Svaha: The Sixth Finger, (Sabaha); a supernatural yarn that throws numerous religious prophecies and practices into an overstuffed blender.  Christian, Buddhist, and other fringe ideologies, (some well researched by Jang and others his own authentically ominous concoction), make for an interesting framing device where three and a half separate arcs are bounced between for roughly ninety minutes before the last act finally has them all converge together.  This gives the plot a lot to chew on and makes for a showy finale that while clever in its long-winded trajectory, also causes persistent pacing issues and an air of incoherence.  It has too many characters, too many call-backs, and too many detours that ultimately prove unnecessary and only muddle up a story that is already epic in scale.  Jang increasingly leaves the more comedic elements behind as things slowly move forward, which creates tonal issues when looked at as a whole.  Thankfully the performances are good and cinematographer Kim Tae-soo captures the winter setting in both its rural and urban bleakness, at least making it look and feel like an intense thriller that questions the silence of god, even if the narrative could afford some streamlining.

THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE

Dir - Danishka Esterhazy

Overall: WOOF

The film that could be credited with jump-starting the animatronic slasher mini-boom, The Banana Splits Movie is a groan-worthy and mostly frustrating horror interpretation of the Hanna-Barbera TV show that ran for two seasons in the late 1960s.  Taking an early gen-x property and re-imagining it as an R-rated bloodfest some fifty years later has an air or scrapping the barrel laziness to it that never lets up in the finished product.  Gore fans are an inherently desensitized bunch and none of the violence is clever or hilarious enough to impress those who are clamoring for large stuffed-animal monster robot mayhem.  Both the plot and the kill scenes are awkwardly staged, like a guy standing and screaming after getting his face blow-torched, two people made to stumble around a slopsticale course, and the man in an obnoxious YouTube influencer couple getting sawed in half in the most yawn-inducing of manners.  Speaking of obnoxious, every one-note character here is unlikable and the sensitive moments between them are as hackneyed as they come, which the first half exclusively focuses on before the just as boring, not-at-all-kid-friendly stuff takes center stage later on.  Who the audience is for such nonsense is anyone's guess, but it is a poorly-conceived and executed waste of ninety-minutes all the same.

 

ROH

Dir - Emir Ezwan

Overall: MEH

Deliberately minimal on story yet immersed in its supernatural gloom, Roh, (Soul), is a promising full-length debut from Emir Ezwan.  Simple, period-set Malaysian folk horror about an Islamic iblis that pics off victims deep within the forest, it features zero comedic elements and a six person cast who wrestle with death omens, mysterious visitors, distrust, and children come back from the bed.  Bypassing conventional scare tactics, the majority of the events play out in sweltering broad day light during an undisclosed time period where families were left to their own devices, (as well as the influence of supernatural entities), with no other means of survival to fall back on.  It is not just the woodland demons that Farah Ahmad and her two kids have to worry about, but also anyone else who crosses their path that may or may not decide to do unwholesome things to them.  While the viewer is more hip as to who is pulling the strings here than the characters are, the primitive backdrop proves ideal for what is just a an old fashioned, ominous fairy tale.  Unfortunately, the pacing is arduous and the story is so simple that it becomes too one-note and barren of freaky set pieces, but it still accomplishes a good amount with its minimalist presentation.

2019 Horror Part Twenty-One

LITTLE MONSTERS

Dir - Abe Forsythe

Overall: GOOD

 

A quasi-musical/rom-com/zombie hybrid from Australian filmmaker Abe Forsythe, Little Monsters has an adorable premise and enough of a wacky juxtaposition between cutesy schmaltz and gore-ridden profanity to give it an edge within the tired walking corpse genre.  Filmed in Sydney with a couple of original ditties as well as ukulele renditions of Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", (that latter mercifully omitting the dreaded "bah bah baaaahhh" sing-along bit), it uses its musical components narratively as a kindergarten teacher and student's deadbeat uncle try and keep the children upbeat while a horde of undead surround them during a family farm field trip.  Both Alexander England and Lupita Nyong'o turn in wonderful performances as the type of desperately opposite characters that only find true love in the movies.  Unfortunately, Josh Gad's nonredeemable scumbag television personality is dreadfully unfunny and gets way too much screen time, only serving the purpose for the audience to revel in his inevitable demise by way of a zombie with a sock-puppet.  Thankfully though, everything else that transpires is a hoot, from genuinely well-behaved and likeable kids to some laugh-out-loud dialog and set pieces that do not flinch on either the violence or the filth.

HOWLING VILLAGE
Dir - Takashi Shimizu
Overall: MEH

J-horror mainstay Takashi Shimizu's first of three haunted village movies takes on another urban legend in the bloated though occasionally interesting Howling Village, (Inunaki mura).  Opening with some found footage to perhaps mislead any audience member who is going in blind, it quickly settles into a conventional supernatural enterprise from a stylistic standpoint, one whose narrative continues to pile on the ingredients until things are overflowing.  Taken individually, all of the ideas in Shimizu and co-screenwriter Daisuke Hosaka's script could have carried a film on their own, but instead, none of them are given enough attention as the running time swells towards a sluggish third act that indulges in genre cliches while it continues to just go on and on and on.  Characters stand perfectly still instead of running for their lives while screaming at obvious danger, other character's stubbornly refuse to answer questions that would easily clear a lot of things up, exposition dumps run rampant, little kids act all stoic like no kids ever do, and some of the otherworldly rules are strictly adhered to while others seem to be made up on the fly.

 

JESUS SHOWS YOU THE WAY TO THE HIGHWAY

Dir - Miguel Llansó

Overall: MEH

A madcap throwback of Euro espionage film, midnight movie WTFness, Cold War thriller, lunchador drive-in cheapie, absurdist comedy, and virtual reality sci-fi, Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is easily unlike anything else that was released in 2019, regardless of what country it was from.  A Euro co-production that was shot in Ethiopia and writer/director Miguel Llansó's second full-length, the plot line is as ridiculous and convoluted as they come, having something to do with CIA agents who are sent into a VR game to stop a Russian computer virus from corrupting the world with some kind of green goo.  Also, somebody claims to be the second coming of Christ, a president is dressed like Batman with the famous insignia blurred out for copyright reasons, (right?), physically deformed actor Daniel Tadesse wants to open a pizza restaurant while his hefty wife has dreams of running a kickboxing academy, plus the aforementioned virtual game is shown in stop-motion animation and with avatars wearing crude, cut-out masks of Richard Pryor, Robert Redford, and Joseph Stalin.  Weird for the sake of weird, making heads or tails of such nonsense will likely cause an aneurysm, but the viewing experience is enjoyable in parts due to how hopelessly wacky it all is, as well as for how many stylistic motifs accurately recall low-budget genre cinema from the 1960s through the 1980s.

2019 Horror Part Twenty

VELVET BUZZSAW

Dir - Dan Gilroy

Overall: MEH

Tonally singular, Dan Gilroy's third feature Velvet Buzzsaw is an odd satire of the contemporary LA art scene that doubles as a schlocky horror movie about supernatural forces reaping vengeance via paintings, and all with an A-list cast.  Reuniting Gilroy with Rene Russo and Jake Gyllenhaal from their previous collaboration in Nightcrawler, (a film which specifically examined the competitive perversity of exploitative news organizations), this one takes a sly look at the city from another direction, focusing on a pompous batch of characters that are using each other to get a leg-up in an inherently pretentious field.  How exactly this all pertains to the discovered/cursed portfolio of a recently deceased man who led a mysterious background is never direct, and Gilroy's script treats such a thing as more of a MacGuffin than anything.  With no one on screen being properly fleshed-out, a few of them abruptly abandoned at times, and the otherworldly elements following no rhyme or reason could all lead some to criticize it as unfocused and vapid.  This could be on purpose though in order to critique those who critique art and caress each other's egos enough to profit off of that art, but whether indented or not, all of these ideas are thrown in willy-nilly with each other.  The performances are enjoyable though, as is the quirky melding of tongue-in-cheek humor and B-movie camp.

 

LUZ: THE FLOWER OF EVIL

Dir - Juan Diego Escobar Alzate

Overall: GOOD

 

Best described as The Witch if Terrence Malick made it with a warmer color pallet, Juan Diego Escobar Alzate's full-length debut Luz: The Flower of Evil, (Luz, la flor del mal), tackles the inevitable challenges brought on by devout faith and man's desperate need to justify their sins through divine intervention.  In a mountain commune taking place at some point where at least tape recorders have been invented, their broken leader swings for the fences after numerous false prophecies, preaching endless warnings of god and the devil trading faces to test their congregation as he raises his daughters as angels and kidnaps one boy after the other in the hope that they are the messiah come to finally rid his people of their tribulations.  A cynical interpretation could be that this is nothing more than just a lunatic brainwashing those around him and/or that the tragedy which befalls them is the inevitable byproduct of fanatical, self-serving dogma adherence, but Alzate presents the material in a continuously gorgeous and poetic manner.  Nicolás Caballero's cinematography creates a lush aesthetic even during the most grim sequences, with the beautiful landscape vividly popping off of the screen.  Though it never gets too overtly strange, the story maintains a mystical underlining and ends with a long sought-after glimmer of hope where the hardships of the past can be endured once those who choose belief can accept just what such a cruel world has to offer them.

IMPETIGORE
Dir - Joko Anwar
Overall: MEH

For his Rapi Films follow-up to the 2017 Satan's Slaves remake, writer/director Joko Anwar offers up an unsettling though inconsistent bit of folk horror with Impetigore, (Perempuan Tanah Jahanam).  In development off and on for eleven years, the production got underway in a remote village in Indonesia's Java providence, giving the movie its backwoods authenticity.  The highlight is a unique opening scene that should make any women nervous who works alone in a toll booth at night, and the first act in general teases at some creepy elements to properly set the dire tone.  Yet once Tara Basro and Marissa Anita arrive at the remote town where the only children present seem to be the ghost ones, the story begins to stagnate until dropping a mountain of exposition that officially does away with any of the previously established momentum.  This is a shame since the folklore elements would otherwise prove more interesting if the the specifics of them were not dumped on the audience in such a manner.  The aesthetic is grimy, the violence is plenty nasty, and the performances are solid, (including Christine Hakim who makes her horror debut here after a decades-long career), but the film feels much longer than it is and follows some expert mood-setting with a lackluster finale.

2019 Horror Part Nineteen

PARASITE

Dir - Bong Joon-ho

Overall: GOOD

 

An immediately renowned work from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, Parasite, (Gisaengchung), manages to morph away from its sly, comedic commentary on wealth and social iniquity by turning into something more potent and harrowing by its end.  Originally considered as a stage production, Bong and co-screenwriter Han Jin-won eventually worked it into the former's follow-up to his 2017, US/Korean co-production Ojka.  Fusing two different families together from polar opposite class structures, all of the characters are richly portrayed with both morally gray and sympathetic brush strokes.  In a story where everyone is a victim of sorts, the emphasis on economic inequality being the true antagonist is made unmistakable yet never rudimentary.  There are no science fiction ideas on display here to examine modern times through an exaggerated dystopia; instead, these are palpable issues based on feasible scenarios that are given a cinematic sheen and a suspenseful, calculated presentation from Bong.  The fact that the tone shifts between acts all seems natural and well-deserved as the bottom was tragically meant to fall out at some point and when it does, it hits that much harder while settling into a sense of melancholy that is cynical, (i.e. realistic), without being too down-trodden to endure.

BLOOD VESSEL

Dir - Justin Dix

Overall: MEH

 

Vampires, (eventually), run amuck on a boat in Justin Dix' sophomore effort Blood Vessel; a grimy cliche-fest that appears to take itself more seriously than any viewer should.  Life raft survivors who seek refuge on a mysterious ship in the middle of the ocean, (with presumably no one on board), is an age-old horror set-up, and further details like Nazi occultism, monsters easily duping and disguising themselves as their victim's loved ones, an innocent little kid who is not that innocent, and a character's gradual transformation into a creature of some kind are also cherry-picked from other genre fare.  While the combination of familiarity is not entirely egregious, the movie unfortunately has bigger issues.  Said grandiose, mugging undead do not arrive until fifty minutes in and once they do, the main baddie looks unintentionally ridiculous like a cross between Mickey Mouse and Max Schreck.  A schlocky tone starts to take over concurrently with the action revving up, plus the characters are either unlikable or just annoying bicker with each other, which seems intentional due to the World War II setting and everyone heralding from a different country as to make trusting each other exponentially more difficult.  The vampire's ability to telepathically control those who are bitten and feel the brunt of their infected blood-sucker's own injuries is at least an interesting tweak, but elsewhere, this is hum-drum stuff.

THE MORTUARY COLLECTION

Dir - Ryan Spindell

Overall: MEH

Released the same year as the abysmal Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark adaptation, writer/director Ryan Spindell's The Mortuary Collection serves as a comparatively not-terrible variation to a similar anthology framework where glossy, CGI-whimsy meets macabre scenarios and set pieces.  The fact that it is unrated will delight gore fans as there is plenty of gruesome nastiness on display here; everything from a guy's hand getting mutilated in a meat grinder, another guy hacking up his invalid wife into pieces, and most bizarrely, a douchebag frat boy having unprotected sex and getting himself inexplicably pregnant with a mutant monster baby that enters the world through "the way it got in".  Like any omnibus series of stories, some are more memorable than others, with "Unprotected" and "The Babysitter Murders", (the latter of which was released individually as a short film in 2015), being more fun than the pointless "Segment 1" and uninteresting "Till Death".  Unlike most films of this nature though, the framing narrative is actually the one that we wish to return to since Clancy Brown makes a delightful Crypt Keeper stand-in and the inevitable twist ending surrounding Caitlin Custer's eager, funeral home employee hopeful is predictable yet amusing.  Overlong and uneven, (plus too stylistically cartoonish to be even remotely creepy), its redeemable qualities render it far from a waste.

2019 Horror Part Eighteen

IN THE TALL GRASS

Dir - Vincenzo Natali

Overall: MEH

 

In development for several years and finally heading underway as part of a series of Stephen King works to be adapted for Netflix, In the Tall Grass is an adaptation of the short story of the same name, itself the second collaboration between King and his son Joe Hill.  A passion project for filmmaker Vincenzo Natali and his first full-length in six years, it is a faithful enough reworking of the source material that boasts one of the author's trademark, expertly unnerving premises based on something so simple as to seem obvious.  The topsy-turvy narrative is intriguing to a point as two groups of people find themselves supernaturally lost in a country field full of grass, but it all gradually succumbs to a big messy pile of convoluted schlock by the time that the credits hit, (and this is not just because the characters are literally rolling around in the wet mud whilst fighting with each other).  Performance wise, everyone does their best with the inconsistent material and Patrick Wilson is particularly enjoying the scenery-chewing that is afforded him.  Though it conceptually bites off too much with a loosey-goosey plot that purposely goes everywhere but in a straight line, Natali maintains an ominous tone and the otherworldly specifics are thankfully left ambiguous.

 

THE LONG WALK

Dir - Mattie Do

Overall: GOOD

 

The latest from the husband/wife, writer/director duo of Christopher Larsen and Mattie Do, The Long Walk is a solid yet obscured work.  Once again shot and taking place in Laos, the story is set in the undisclosed future where people have been equipped with data chips in their arms to trade digital currency, though this sci-fi angle is barely touched upon and arguably inconsequential to the rural setting that exists in a ghostly limbo which is far removed from technological advancement.  As the unnamed old man who has the ability to both communicate with the dead and to time travel, Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy has a grief-weary demeanor that slowly unveils a type of selfish lifestyle brought on by his own traumatic past that he is unable to alter.  In this world, the dead may be comforted by the living and visa versa, yet neither are allowed to move on from either their physical or ethereal plane of existence.  Nearly two hours in length, some of the side arcs and ideas here could have been jettisoned to make the already deliberate pacing more agreeable, but the minimalist, low-key atmosphere and universally melancholic themes that it explores remain gripping.

HAUNT

Dir - Scott Beck/Bryan Woods

Overall: MEH

A flimsy yet inevitable premise HAUNTS, (har, har), Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' Halloween haunted house slasher Haunt, which is enough times in one sentence to use the word "haunt".  Throwing an obvious final girl and her mostly douchebag-adjacent friends into a scenario where maniacs in creepy masks deliberately play cat-and-mouse with them is all nothing new obviously, nor is setting it in a festive haunted house location as Bobby Roe's 2014 found footage film The House October Built likewise did.  Still, this is ideal material for a by-the-books horror movie and the predictable beats are all hit.  Obvious foreshadowing, inane dialog about "taking off" or "whats under" your mask, a laughably sketchy location that moronic characters willingly plow into, mortal wounds that people walk off, the ole "Oh no, I murdered my friend thinking it was one of the killers" gag, the ole "Someone is here to save us...oh never mind, he's dead" gag, and an ending that is meant to be badass yet comes off as schlocky audience pandering.  All of the complaints that one can launch at a movie like this are there by design, so it comes down to one's particular tastes and preference for everything following a not-at-all-challenging pattern.  So if your brain wants a break and nothing clever is needed for a night's ghoulish entertainment, this has you covered.

2019 Horror Part Seventeen

GIRL WITH NO MOUTH

Dir - Can Evrenol

Overall: GOOD

Frustratingly imprecise yet an interesting conglomerate of its influences, Girl with No Mouth follows up Turkish director/co-writer Can Evrenol's two absurdist, ultra-violent nightmares Baskin and Housewife with an entirely different agenda.  A coming-of-age, modern day fairy tale of sorts, it is equal parts Peter Pan, The Devil's Backbone, City of Lost Children, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, fusing childlike whimsy with unflinching, post-apocalyptic violence.  Not the most unique genre mash-up on paper, but the young band of "pirate" protagonists are easy to root for due to the cast who turn in compelling performances even with physical deficiencies in tow, (the mouth-less girl of the title, a boy with no eyes, one with no nose, and one with no ears).  Likewise, Mehmet Yilmaz Ak makes for an odious villain who rightfully proclaims himself as being heartless in a dilapidated world where his militant obedience has cost him his soul.  Sadly, the specifics of what exactly is going on within the dystopian backdrop are left vague, which would not be a problem if they were not persistently teased at.  We are lead to believe that there is some deeper significance to what everyone is going through, but perhaps deliberately, the exuberance and survival instincts of the children always wins out as they propel forward to some unforeseen and unexplained destiny.

 

THE WRETCHED
Dir - Brett Pierce/Drew T. Pierce
Overall: MEH

The second full-length from the sibling writer/director team of Brett and Drew T. Pierce, The Wretched only delivers the creepy during a small handful of subtle moments and is otherwise formulaic and bogged down by a logically flimsy script.  Obnoxiously loud, screechy, crunchy monster noises, characters introspectively staring at photographs, pagan twig altars, an internet montage of paranormal investigation, a douchebag bully that serves no necessary purpose whatsoever, oodles of jump scares, and boatloads of alarming behavior that is never reported to parents or law enforcement, it has much to roll one's eyes at.  There are small blessings in the fact that the brothers Pierce use some restraint early on, (hiding freaky images in the background without any off-putting punctuation on the soundtrack), but this is unfortunately abandoned by the third act when it steamrolls into its a grimy, deafening horror-by-numbers finale.  Wisely, any origins attached to the movie's otherworldly, woodland villain are kept minimal and it has all of the markings of traditional folklore, yet it is also nondescript enough to be chilling on paper since it plays off of visceral fears such as child abduction and manipulation.  With no surprises and such a stock presentation though, it is easily forgettable.

SATSUJINKI O KAU ONNA

Dir - Hideo Nakata

Overall: GOOD

Based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Kei Ohishi, Satsujinki o kau onna, (The Woman Who Keeps a Murderer), is a modern day pinku thriller with a hackneyed plot device of a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder.  Two graphic lesbian sex scenes emerge before we even get the opening title card at twenty-six minutes in and director Hideo Nakatal keeps up the naked, squishy, and aggressive exploits throughout, all of which are depicted in as much of a crestfallen manner as an erotic one.  The laws of physics are routinely ignored for the sake of depicting five different women who take over the physique of our tragic protagonist; a protagonist who was sexually abused as a child and is now living out a traumatic existence in the type of melodramatic fashion that only works in fiction.  Besides Kei Ohishi whose cartoonish portrayal of such an awful character presents some tonal issues within Nakata's otherwise melancholic treatment of the material, the performances are universally strong, especially Rin Asuka in the lead and Kenji Mizuhashi as her eager love interest who represents the stereotype of the nice guy who has come to rescue the broken women from tragedy.  Sort of a J-horror Last Tango in Paris, its purposely cruel and nihilistic feminist agenda towards male encroachment may not pack many surprises beyond its willingness to tantalize, but its haunting style is well-executed.

2018 Horror Part Eighteen

TUMBBAD

Dir - Rahi Anil Barve/Adesh Prasad/Anand Gandhi

Overall: GOOD

 

Several years in the making, Rahi Anil's full-length debut Tumbbad is an ambitious Bollywood/Marathi genre offering that weaves a horrific tale of all-consuming greed in a fashion that is epic in scope and consistently sinister.  Barve initially wrote the script back in 1997 when he was a teenager, with numerous production companies jumping on board only to back out before shooting finally began in 2012 with producer/star Sohum Shah attached.  It was then re-written and re-shot yet again, being completed in 2015, at which point another three years of post-production commenced.  Such blood, sweat, and tears comes through in the final folk horror tale which utilizes unique mythology told in three different chapters that follow one man's arc of overcoming an ancient curse in order to gain exorbitant amounts of wealth around the time that India was working towards its independence during the first half of the 20th century.  Largely filmed in natural lighting with Anand Gandhi and Adesh Prasad serving as co-directors, it has a rich, earthy aesthetic where the location of the title is depicted in a constant state of monsoon season.  Some of the CGI work is less than acceptable, yet both the creature and set design of its lair are memorably fleshy and unsettling.  Touching on other cultural themes, (particularly both women's and children's places in a male-dominated hierarchy), it all feeds into a fundamental, "greed is bad" agenda that is clear-cut without being condescendingly infantile.

WEREWOLF

Dir - Adrian Panek

Overall: GOOD

Beginning where World War II was officially ending at least on the European front, the Polish/Dutch/German co-production and filmmaker Adrian Panek's sophomore effort Werewolf, (Wilkolak), is an unavoidably bleak viewing experience, putting its characters in the devastating seat of trying to survive after they have been "saved" by Allied forces.  A rag-tag group of concentration camp refugees manage to find transport to an ill-supplied, isolated mansion in the woods which besides having no electricity, running water, or enough food to eat, is also besieged by pillaging Russian troops and, (as the title would allude to), a pack of German guard dogs who trap everyone inside Cujo-style.  So as things go to catastrophically bad to also bad, the film depicts an all too real and all too harrowing moment in the 20th century where there are devastating effects of not just the Nazi takeover, but the aftermath of the party's collapse.  The cast of unknown youngsters look appropriately ravished and traumatized, plus Dominik Danilczyk's cinematography is naturalistic and bleak, creating more of a fly on the wall aesthetic despite some soaring musical accompaniment and suspenseful set pieces done in slow motion.  Grim and not to everyone's tastes of course, it is still a commendable work.

THE NIGHTINGALE

Dir - Jennifer Kent

Overall: MEH

Serving as writer/director Jennifer Kent's comparatively superior follow-up to her debut The Babadook, The Nightingale is a relentlessly unpleasant period piece that is meant for few tastes yet has a pivotal historical backdrop that is impossible to ignore.  Set at the on-set of the Black War on Van Diemen's Land, it depicts a brutal landscape where both immigrants and natives are hopelessly denied justice against British colonization.  There are no winners here and no good guys; just miserable individuals living out their miserable existences in an era that only temporarily favors those who rape, murder, and exploit.  Such unwholesome examples of this are both many and unflinching as Kent grants the audience the same mercy that she grants her characters, meaning none.  At the core of such atrocities lies Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr's desperate partnership.  As the film's two most unequivocal victims, they find common ground through the oppressive mistrust and bitterness of their surroundings, ultimately achieving some meager sense of freedom at the cost of what little humanity and compassion that they can still hold onto.  Things end on as much of a downer as they begin, but the film is richly photographed and flawlessly acted.  Kent can be amended for her accurate depiction of a loathsome time in her native Australia's history, but it is also a fair critique that the results are too much to bare.