The Beatles: Get Back

THE BEATLES: GET BACK

(2021)

Dir - Peter Jackson

Overall: GREAT

Basically since 1964, The Beatles have perpetually remained the most lauded and famous rock group in the world.  Now more than fifty-two years after it was shot, footage has been presented that largely changes several of the most widely held notions concerning their eventual breakup.  The resulting The Beatles: Get Back is therefor a monumentally important document in the history of pop music in general.

While this may be an accurate assessment of the film, it is also a broad one.  For Beatles fans both casual and obsessive, Get Back is essential.  This is partly due to its extensive running time of nearly eight hours which represents the only footage of the band writing, rehearsing, and ultimately performing and recording their material, virtually from conception to finish.  This is the most penetrating, firsthand look into both their work ethic and personalities that has ever existed.  Such a deep dive is insightful by nature and since it is from a group with no rivals in cultural importance and influence, only those with little to no interest in music at all would fail to find merit in what is presented here.

John Lennon's face for the (wrong) people who do not like The Beatles.

Similar to everything in The Beatles history, the Get Back project has a fascinating backdrop.  The footage here was of course initially shot for what became director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 documentary Let It Be.  Said movie came to pass only after an initial television special conceived of by Paul McCartney fell through, partly because the writing sessions for the album were not ideally productive.  The Beatles shacked up in Twickenham Studios just after the new year in 1969 with a deadline looming for the end of the month to get roughly fourteen new songs in the can before Ringo Starr began shooting The Magic Christian in the same film studio.  The location proved uncomfortably cold and foreign, with previous tensions intensifying that had began to largely surface during the making of The Beatles, (The White Album), several months earlier.  These came to the forefront with George Harrison temporarily leaving the group mid-session.  A few days then went by with a failed band meeting between the four taking place, as well as further discussions as to how to proceed with the project, which even included a, (perhaps?), jestful idea by John Lennon to bring Eric Clapton in as a replacement.  Things eventually came back together once it was agreed to abandon the television special idea and relocate to their newly set-up studio in the basement of their Apple headquarters at Savile Row.  Here, a more positive vibe took over, Billy Preston joined the band as a session keyboard player, and they eventually settled on a rooftop concert to end what was now being planned as their third theatrically released movie.

This is all common knowledge of course and much of it was divulged in the Let It Be film.  Said movie did not see that theatrical release until after their break-up though, at which point both the band members and the public were various levels bitter and frustrated with certain aspects of their demise.  There is a reason then that it is the only Beatles movie to still be out of print, surviving solely on the bootleg front since the 1980s.  With such a massive amount of footage condensed then to a mere eighty-minute running time and emerging when it did, critics and fans alike largely saw it as a quasi-depressing document showcasing the breakup of the biggest band to ever exist.  The members both surviving and passed-on never thought too highly of the Let It Be movie considering the bad vibes that it unfortunately represented.  This all makes Peter Jackson's reworking of the material all the more uplifting in comparison.

The infamous "I'll play whatever you want me to play" argument was left in to fill the aforementioned "bad vibes" quota.

Jackson plus his creative/editing team behind the 2018 World Word War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old gained access to the sixty hours of video and one-hundred and fifty hours of audio materiel initially produced by Lindsay-Hogg, which had been sitting in the Beatles Apple Corps vaults ever since.  Painstakingly restoring, reconstructing, and editing the project took the better part of four years.  The end game of such an endeavor was initially planned to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the sessions, which was green-lit by McCartney, Starr, Olivia Harrison, and Yoko Ono.  "Thankfully" this little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic happened though and Jackson and co took the opportunity to elaborate on the final two-hour theatrical cut, ultimately resulting in the three part mini-series that Disney picked up for distribution.

There are more details surrounding the massive undertaking of the project if one wants to investigate further, but the main takeaway is how The Beatles: Get Back rewrites the long-believed narrative of such an era.  Most prominent is the overall amount of merriment on display.  While the group was certainly faced with a number of conundrums to work through at the time and they seem burnt out at regular intervals, they conduct themselves with the utmost level of professionalism and joy.  Whether this is a coping mechanism in some respects is a mute point since at the end of the day, each member's willingness to get the job done and make the best of their chemistry together ultimately shines through and is also ultimately what matters most.

Pictured: professionalism.

Many of the group's problems at the time are the result of their manager and ringleader Brian Epstein having died at the end of 1967's summer.  This footnote left the band largely aimless, which allowed them to indulge in costly creative and business ventures.  Meanwhile, McCartney's naturally enthusiastic, well-meaning though ego-driven demeanor put him in the de facto-leader position as Lennon let his power slip due to his elevated drug use that led to what he described as the "death" of his ego.  At the same time, Harrison's increasing creative confidence, newfound spirituality, and practical financial sense began to jive poorly with the comparative dominance and flippant tenancies shared by Lennon and McCartney.  Ringo of course stayed the consummate professional, showing up on time and before anyone, remaining largely quiet, and patiently sitting behind his drum kit ready to do his job at each and every instance that such a thing was required.

Though these are well-known details within The Beatles' dynamics, they are also still important in understanding the group's inevitable split.  The individual eccentricities and personalities of the band members undoubtedly contributed to their exceptional material.  Yet for many, many decades now it has been falsely surmised that such clashing of opinions and characteristics made for mostly miserable working conditions during the making of Get Back.  Wonderfully, this has proven to be false.  It is simply an exhilarating experience seeing John and Paul run through versions of "Two of Us" while either singing in foreign accents or jokingly clenching their teeth, watching George lovingly show enthusiasm and give assistance to Ringo's brand new song in progress "Octopus's Garden", seeing John take out a joint and then put it back in his pocket while making a silly face after remembering that the cameras are on him, and watching Ring notify Paul that he farted halfway through a serious business conversation and thought that it would be better to tell him than to say nothing.

A (gassy) class act that Ringo.

The Beatles are consistently in a goofy mood yes, but since we also know that this was one of their more uncomfortable periods as a group, the fact that they spend such large chunks of time blowing off steam in a silly manor showcases their overall positive character that much more.  There are many times where they seem politely annoyed that they cannot agree on certain things or come up with any universally acceptable solutions to their problems.  Yet they believe in the music, believe in their ability to deliver when their backs are up against the wall, and generally seem to enjoy being together.  All elements of tension surrounding a cacophony of wives and girlfriends, technicians, friends, associates, engineers, filmmakers, and crew members being present while everyone is asking them where they are going to play live or what they want for lunch are bypassed by such jovial attitudes that win out each and every time.

At one point early on, Paul jokes that in fifty years everyone is going to say that The Beatles broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.  While this results in unanimous laughter from both those around him and probably anyone viewing the film, it is also cryptically telling of how self aware he and the group was even then about their own impending legend.  A paramount goal of Jackson's approach here was to unearth any revelatory information that he could find and numerous conversations are heard that exemplify this.  Paul and John have a chat with hidden microphones in a flower pot where they both honestly admit their own perceptions of each other's egos and how it has effected their current situation as well as George's unhappiness.  Yoko and Linda McCartney are seen having cordial conversations with each other and Linda's daughter Heather appears one day where everyone in the band seems to enjoy her childish tomfoolery.  George Martin, Glyn Johns, Billy Preston, and Mal Evans are show smiling and in lovely spirits throughout almost the entire production.  George Harrison explains to John and Yoko for the first time that he has enough songs ready to fit his quota for the next ten years of Beatles albums and that he would love to record them all on his own so that he can focus more productively on the group, a proclamation that both John and Yoko agree is a wonderful idea.

George of course would soon unleash all of those songs under the working title of Attack of the Garden Gnomes.

 

These are but a handful of moments and details that accomplish two very paramount things.  As discussed previously, they certainly debunk the fable of the band being overrun by egos and negativity, resulting in an uncomfortably strained relationship between them.  Perhaps even more importantly though is that it presents them as logical and compassionate human beings.  The Beatles: Get Back is extraordinary in that it showcases extraordinary people achieving extraordinary things, but it does so while grounding John, Paul, George, and Ringo to a mortal plane of existence.  For artists that have easily been perceived as mythical figures for more than half a century now, spending over eight, uninterrupted hours with them as they work out the kinks of their situation with unwavering respect and love for each other is something to cherish.

Along with the similarly expansive and sprawling Anthology series which presents a more complete picture of the band's entire existence together as opposed to just a twenty-one day period, Get Back easily stands as the greatest documentary on the Beatles that presumably will ever be made.  It is an overwhelmingly positive viewing experience and as ideal of a footnote to the band's most misunderstood era as could have been hoped for.  So, so many aspects of the group's history have been painstakingly documented and explored that for something this conclusive and outstanding to emerge after we have all assumed that there was nothing more to tell and nothing more to learn, well, here we are folks and indeed the story has only gotten more inspiring.

The audition has most certainly been passed.

2021 Horror Part Four

CANDYMAN

Dir - Nia DaCosta

Overall: MEH

 

Following up a beloved film almost thirty years after the fact, (regardless of whether or not it is in the horror genre or has inspired numerous sequels of its own), is certainly trendy with a barrage of nostalgia-pandering releases in recent times.  It is also, generally, doomed to fail in some capacity.  On that note, though screenwriter/producer Jordan Peele and director Nia DaCosta's Candyman collaboration is ultimately uneven, it is also far better than it easily could have been.  The elements that work here are largely credited to DaCosta.  A deliberate avoidance of tired-out horror tropes is consistently maintained.  There are no jump scares and especially considering that the plot relies heavily on seeing things in the mirror, countless opportunities would have called for such debilitating, hack methods in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.  The musical score by Robert A.A. Lowe is also excellent and animated puppet sequences by Chicago-based theater company Manual Cinema further enhance the movie's stylized aesthetics.  The problem comes in the form of the script itself which is almost disastrously messy.  As is the case with Peele's directorial efforts, the humor is awkwardly placed and often clashes with the rest of the tone.  Expository dialog sequences also come off as forced and there are many of them.  Things dip too liberally into schlock terrain at times, particularly by the third act which feels noticeably rushed.  It is unfortunate that all of these detriments ultimately undermine the movie's sincere, racially-driven themes revolving around gentrification and the like, but at least it is visually compelling and a solid testament to DaCosta's talents.

 

THE 8TH NIGHT

Dir - Kim Tae-hyoung

Overall: MEH

 

Bombastic and overtly schlock-fueled, Kim Tae-hyoung's The 8th Night, (Je8ileui Bam), does manage to provide some fun along its bumpy road.  The fairytale, "end of days" premise would fit snugly at home in any occult-tinged, mystical anime and the plot practically bombards you with a slew of supernatural rules that are difficult if still amusing to keep up with.  Stylistically, Tae-hyoung propels the film along at an alarming pace, often nearing the point of feeling as if it is playing out in fast-forward.  The script is persistently dumping expository dialog, flashbacks, and both visual and audible call-backs with a sweeping musical score that barely lets up.  All of this gives it a ham-fisted, over-the-top feel that at the very least is anything but boring.  For a movie that is essentially nothing more than silly, demon-battling nonsense, it contains a rather excellent, dramatically-wrenching performance from Lee Sung-min as a disgraced former monk.  While the film ultimately moves way too fast and presents itself way too goofy to take any of its emotionally-driven baggage very seriously, it is all ambitious enough to still be admirable.

 

WEREWOLVES WITHIN

Dir - Josh Ruben

Overall: MEH

Josh Ruben and screenwriter Mishna Wolff's adaptation of the Werewolves Within video game is a largely obnoxious movie that collapses under its forced quirkiness.  A general rule of comedy is that any crop of weirdos should be balanced by characters that act in a more agreeable fashion.  The Marx Brothers and Ace Ventura only work when everyone around them behaves either nonchalantly towards their buffoonery or represent some sort of reasonable voice for the audience to feel grounded with.  The first act of Werewolves Within introduces us to an ensemble of annoying, rural townsfolk who all have to have some sort of neurotic or goofy attribute to them and then the plot ultimately pits their eccentricities off of each other.  While this could somewhat be justified narratively, it does make for an exhausting viewing experience where every frame of the film seems to be trying way, way too hard to be wacky and clever.  Worse yet, the gags and twists become either increasingly predictable or just nonsensical due to the underwritten nature of the script.  Throw in a handful of hackneyed jump scares, loud, moist sound effects, and virtually no actual werewolf moments until the very end and the movie even drops the ball as clever horror send-up.

2021 Horror Part Three

THE POWER

Dir - Corinna Faith

Overall: WOOF

As the first full-length from writer/director Corinna Faith, The Power is a bold, blatant stab at feminist empowerment that is absolutely destroyed by its own insulting, cliche pandering.  In an era where more and more female filmmakers are emerging with intelligent, thought-provoking works, it is a complete shame that crucial themes such as child molestation and the silencing of women's voices in general get tossed up into a thoroughly miserable and obnoxious movie such as this.  Faith chooses to consistently undermine her substantial intentions with an incalculable amount of jump scares to the point that this film can qualify as a torture device for people burnt out on them, (which should include every single movie-goer by now).  The soundtrack is either blarringly loud or completely silent, with deafening, screechy punctuations happening about ten times more than when actual dialog shows up.  Every character save two are shown to be deplorably awful people and the visual presentation is one of comedically overdone bleakness that is meant to be atmospherically creepy.  Speaking of laughable, a twist ending literally erupts into more ear-piercing screaming and is just the final jab after a bombardment of  over-the-top genre tropes.  Faith clearly has something to say here, but unfortunately it is all impossible to hear underneath all the tired, tired noise.

THE DJINN

Dir - David Charbonier/Justin Powell

Overall: MEH

 

Writer/director team David Charbonier and Justin Powell reunite with child actor Ezra Dewey for their considerably sub-par The Boy Behind the Door follow-up The Djinn.  Set in 1989 for no other conceivable reason than to justify the throwback, synthwave soundtrack, the movie is hardly brimming with originality.  Jump scares are as detrimentally predictable and over-used as in any modern horror film, the supernatural tomfoolery follows no rhyme or reason, and even oddly specific, minor cliches pile up annoyingly like a moody kid not wanting to eat, not knowing how to properly use an asthma inhaler, going for a knife that is just nearly out of reach, and hiding under beds to await yet another "Gotcha!" moment.  In setting their story in a single location on a single night with basically Dewey carrying the entire movie on his lonesome, Charbonier and Powell are utilizing a less is more approach that unfortunately wields monotonous results.  One particular flashback feels like it is used virtually every fifteen minutes and by the time it delivers as an emotional climax, we are then simply waiting for the inevitable twist to wrap everything up.  Done in such a meandering, trope-adherent style, it is about as forgettable as they come.

TILL DEATH

Dir - S.K. Dale

Overall: MEH

The full-length debut Till Death from director S.K. Dale is a pretty tight and mostly engaging thriller for the most part.  Ending its first act properly with a rather alarming curveball, Dale kicks things into high gear and even though he basically plays a one-note game throughout the bulk of the film, the pace is kept up at a considerable cruise.  This stops it from becoming monotonous even as the plot seems to be going for a world record as far as close calls are concerned.  The story has a unique combination of borderline silly yet still fun nuances, just enough in fact to elevate its rather straightforward production values and overall presentation.  Despite the movie's polished and successful attributes, it is unfortunate that Megan Fox is unavoidably stiff in the lead.  Whatever cosmetic work the actress has had done to her already picturesque face renders her consistently incapable of emoting and she comes off wooden almost exclusively for this reason.  Lacking a more fittingly robust, main performance then, the movie does not quite pack the most effective wallop it otherwise would have.  As an exercise in high taut tension though, Dale certainly proves that he has the chops for such a thing.

2021 Horror Part Two

IN THE EARTH

Dir - Ben Wheatley

Overall: MEH

 

The latest horror outing from writer/director Ben Wheatley is another captivatingly photographed yet ultimately misguided, pretentious mess.  In the Earth was filmed in fifteen days during the COVID-19 quarantine and certainly seems to be an answer to the pandemic.  Set during a viral outbreak where scientists are working on some form of a cure in the woodlands outside of Bristol, the movie plays out like a mother nature nightmare where Pagan mythology, hallucinations, madness, survivalist instincts, and vague scientific hoopla co-mingle with each other rather jarringly.  The tone is utterly humorless, laying the groundwork for equal levels of uncomfortable incoherence.  Wheatley's genre films linger in a frustratingly half-baked narrative landscape more often than not and a similar case of paddling against the waves with no obtainable destination is once again readily apparent here.  The cast is earnestly committed and the very tripped-out optical effects are gorgeously put together for such a low-budgeted, rough, rushed, handheld camera affair.  Sadly, Wheatley's guerilla-style, mystical ambitions amount to a considerable chunk of nothing despite such deliberate efforts to come off as profound.

 

CENSOR

Dir - Prano Bailey-Bond

Overall: MEH

 

An expansion on her earlier short Nasty from 2015, writer/director Pran Bailey-Bond's full-length debut Censor is a part throwback, part psychological, part heavily-surreal character study.  Set during the video nasty era in England and using such a jumping-off point to examine the fundamental concept of life imitating art, Bailey-Bond presents a film that is purposely stylized and deliberately intent on blurring its narrative components.  Visually, it is clearly influenced by Italian giallo color schemes and aesthetics while playing with aspect rations and film-within-a-film motifs.  The un-glamorized portrayal of conservative office buildings and grimy subways would seem to juxtapose such things, but the overall look is more consistent than not.  While it is steadily captivating to look at and Bailey-Bond's attention to visual detail is undoubtedly impressive, the movie falters a bit under its ambitions.  It bares many similarities to other ambiguous, experimental stories revolving around traumatized and increasingly unstable, central protagonists, but it becomes more frustratingly muddled than engaging as things progress.  Irish actress Niamh Algar is quite good in the lead and Bailey-Bond cleverly ties her mental decent into the setting itself where women were both exploited on screen and demeaned off screen.  There is a style over substance vibe that unfortunately becomes slightly detrimental to the whole though.  While imperfect then, it is still a promising debut from a respectfully challenging filmmaker.

GAIA

Dir - Jaco Bouwer

Overall: MEH

As a somewhat rare, South African ecological horror film, Jaco Bouwer's Gaia is low on introspective ideas, but has some inherent, ambiguous beauty to it all the same.  Written by Tertius Kapp, one could almost toss it off as yet another "tripping in the woods" story where characters find themselves both isolated and victim to mother nature's mysterious and mystical hallucinations.  Though plenty of evidence presents itself that otherworldly elements are indeed at play, the minimalist approach does not wield many narratively compelling results.  The cast is quite small and the dialog is sparse, neither of which allows for any proper understanding of what may be going on.  While this is not universally necessary, the film also grows monotonous and rather stuck in the mud after awhile.  Interesting visuals are introduced, (as well as some creepy, inventive creature designs), but the story lingers on three characters going nowhere throughout the bulk of it and the very little we do learn ultimately does not lead anywhere that enhances either the mood nor the story.  There are biblical nods, numerous dream within a dream sequences, plenty of visual, acid-trip flair, grime and grit, but it all results in mere arthouse aesthetics that are fun to look at yet vacant to ponder.

Dawn of the Dead

DAWN OF THE DEAD

(1978)

Dir - George A. Romero

Overall: GREAT

Many could view George A. Romero's enduring Night of the Living Dead follow-up Dawn of the Dead as a rare example of a sequel that surpasses its predecessor.  For a non-horror film, this is an impressive enough feat.  For an actual horror film, it is a bonafide impossibility.  A variety of factors play into such an otherwise impossibility where ten years after re-inventing the horror film via shocking drive-in movie-goers of the time and turning critic's heads to a new breed of independent genre filmmaking, Romero and another dedicated batch of collaborators made something that has once again stood the test of time.  Anyone labeling Dawn of the Dead as the quintessential zombie movie would be a difficult person to argue with.

After Night of the Living Dead was released, Romero tried for a few years to disassociate himself from the horror genre as to not seem like a one-trick pony.  His next film There's Always Vanilla was as far from horror as conceivable, being a straight-up romantic comedy instead.  Despite its title and certain elements of the premise, even the following Season of the Witch bares few similarities to conventional horror tropes.  The Crazies and Martin swing things much closer back though, with the former being zombie-esque as a viral outbreak movie while Martin remains one of the best psychological "vampire" films probably ever made.  Yet regardless of what thematic box any of these post-Night of the Living Dead movies can be placed into, none of them were commercially viable.  This is one of the prominent factors in his next project becoming an unequivocal return to not only horror, but to the the undead-munching-on-human-flesh-in-a-post-apocalyptic-landscape variety that proved ever so successful a decade prior.

 

Oddly he did not take the opportunity to make There's Always Vanilla about ice cream.

Before shooting could begin though, money had to be secured.  Which is where Dario Argento of all actually understandable people came on board.  An outspoken supporter of Romero's work as many other filmmakers where, (those who made horror movies or otherwise), Argento caught wind that both a Night of the Living Dead sequel was in the works and also that it was in need of financial backing.  He, his brother Claudio, and his producer Alfredo Como then reached out and offered to contribute funds in exchange for the European distribution rights, even going as far as to fly Romero out to Rome for a few weeks so that he could work on the screenplay.  By November of 1977, production was underway and shooting properly began.

As usual, the narrative inspiration for Dawn of the Dead came from yet another "It is who you know" scenario for Romero.  He just so happened to be old college friends with Mark Mason, whose company currently owned the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh.  While getting a behind the scenes tour of the place, Mason joked that one could hold up during a catastrophic event there, lighting the creative bulb in Romero's head as far as placing his protagonists in such a large, upscale shopping facility for his next zombie film.  Plus since he already had the personal connection, said mall became the actual shooting location as well.

Macy's and playplaces to the rescue!

With his cast and crew dedicating themselves to a vampire-esque schedule shooting between eleven PM to seven AM every day of the week during the mall's off-hours, they were given unprecedented free-reign of the place so long as everything was cleaned up and relatively undamaged once business resumed.  After taking a short break during the Christmas season as not to waste hours of time taking down and then putting back up holiday decorations, (a "break" in which they shot other location footage and Romero began editing what he already had), shooting resumed and was wrapped up by the end of February.

Much has been said about the premise of Dawn of the Dead and how, well, COOL it is.  It poses a question to the audience where if the world really was ending, what better place would you want to ride some of the apocalypse out than in an entire shopping mall, all to yourself?  Presenting such a vicariously stimulating prospect to the viewer is no accident.  The concept seems fun on paper and effortlessly draws the audience in to experience the more unpleasant, satirical aspects inherent in the story.  That is the deliberate, front and center commentary on mass consumerism and human depravity that clearly cohabitate within each of us.  Under the context of a zombie outbreak where society is no longer capable of functioning, the only thing left for us to do is to scream and argue at each other while finding temporary solace in superficial comforts.

 

Superficial comforts such as what carpet color to choose from when they are all on sale.

To further slam such unflinching cynicism home, there is a clear message present that human nature stays in respectful line only under the confines of unchallenged normalcy.  Dawn of the Dead is about how human beings are really only OK when things are OK.  Present us a situation where our jobs, our lifestyle, and our relationships no long fit into a functional society and the ever-present fear of death is relentlessly upon us, and people stop playing ball.  Furthermore, most people are shown to not have a clue how to actually play ball in the first place.

In the finale of Night of the Living Dead, we were briefly shown a twisted "survival of the fittest" mockery where the only people not only left standing but even seemingly enjoying themselves were large parties of good ole boys loaded up to their asses in firearms.  Out of the four main characters in Dawn of the Dead, only the two SWAT officers show themselves as being capable with weapons in the beginning.  Steve "Flyboy" Andrews and his pregnant girlfriend Fran Parker behave like either bumbling buffoons or deer in headlights when under siege from the undead.  Yet it does not take too long for such stereotypes to be broken.  Peter Washington spends the entire film trying to keep it together, coming within a split-second of permanently cracking by the end.  His well-trained partner Roger DeMarco snaps much earlier, recklessly yee-hawing his way towards getting bitten by two different zombies which ultimately seals his doom.

 

The lesson being, just because you tell yourself that you got this by the ass, that does not in fact mean that you have this by such an ass.

What Romero does here is present the inevitable downfall of those people who are similar to the gun-totting rednecks in the first film, (who make another appearance here in a montage to the tune of the Pretty Things "'Cause I'm A Man").  For some, the only way to hold-off insanity in such dire consequences is to not take the experience that seriously.  Yet by doing so, eventually our very fragile psyches will no longer be able to cope with the severity of what is truly going on and when that happens, accidents happen.  The conclusion of Dawn of the Dead features a reckless biker gang raiding the shopping mall while throwing pies and spraying water in the zombie's faces.  At the same time, Flyboy, (who has now learned to fend for himself with his own arsenal), becomes prideful and possessive of what he and his cohorts have fought and even died for.  By doing so, he fires at the motorcycle thugs, gives away their position, becomes a zombie himself, and forces the surviving Peter and Fran to flee their no longer fortified sanctuary.

Saying that George Romero is simply making a statement that all humans inventively suck under extreme, traumatized circumstances is obviously selling the man's vision and his film short.  If anything else, the 1970s were simultaneously a time of excess, a time of relying on modern conveniences, and a time of overall cynical distrust.  Both Vietnam and the Watergate scandal to name but a few instances had proven that our presumably noble politicians were leading us astray.  The late-60s counter-culture/free love movement had given way to rampant pre-AIDs sex and cocaine use, both of which were seemingly and incorrectly void of consequences.  Shopping malls just like the one in Monroeville were popping up everywhere to allow middle-class suburbanites enough comfort to ignore everything morally questionable around them.

Did someone say "Ignoring the things around them"?

With one independently-financed yet aggressively ambitious film shot in Pennsylvanian, George A Romero got to shine a bloody light on such things.  He also had the good sense to emphasize the right components to that film, namely the humor and the gore.  Whereas Night of the Living Dead had enough jokes to count on no hands, Dawn of the Dead makes its comedic elements hard to miss.  There are numerous scenes of either bug-eyed or comatose-looking zombies stumbling around a mall, falling into fountains, going down escalators the wrong way, getting trapped in cars, or ravaging department stores while jovial music plays around them.  Even our heroes get to let loose in a number of ways; robbing a bank, playing arcade games, ice skating, drinking olive juice, or doing practical things like learning to fly a helicopter and getting target practice on mannequins.

 

Just as funny are the practical yet occasionally over-the-top make-up effects from Tom Savini.  Now synonymous with such a trade, this stands as the first major work that would catapult his career, and rightfully so.  Whether it is cutting a zombie's head off with helicopter blades, blowing up another one's head in an apartment building, jabbing a screwdriver into another's skull by way of his ear, or having one guy get ripped out of a blood pressure machine while another gets his intestines forcibly gorged upon, the gross-out moments are both horrifically funny and memorable.

 

Even more amazing is how Tom Savini has managed to look exactly the same for several decades.

Romero is wisely aware that his entire concept here is somewhat ridiculous and he also knows that a bunch of blue/grey/green zombies spewing bright-red blood is going to produce more chuckles than frightened gasps from his audience.  Instead of pretending that such silly ingredients are not inherently there, they are embraced in total enhancement of the film's tone.  Dawn of the Dead is less horror and more of a tongue-in-cheek action movie that just so happens to have walking corpses munching on people.  The fact that these waking corpses are not actually the film's true villains is exactly the message that Romero intended to come through.  The zombies represent unavoidable, uncontrollable surrender to their natural existence.  They have no choice in their fate.  It is the people who have yet to turn over to the zombie side that are consistently their own worst enemies.  They are humbled, terrified, and stubborn all at once, and their own inability to cooperate and problem solve simply makes the flesh-eating ghoul catastrophe at hand seem helplessly perpetual.  Like much great art, Romero's film is timeless since it should be obvious today as much as any era how such naturally flawed human characteristics still run rampant among us.

 

The vision on display here is not obnoxiously nihilistic though.  After all, Fran and Peter do indeed live to fight another day and even manage to convey somewhat of a quasi-optimistic, "Well, we're still alive so fuck it, what's one more day gonna hurt?" attitude as they fly off into the sunrise.  The likelihood of them making it much longer may be understandably nil, but that is not the point.  The point is that we are all people and warts and all, we all want the same thing; to survive.  How we go about achieving such a thing and how we treat each other in doing so is what we need to work on.  As the film clearly demonstrates, we need to do this even more so when our chances of success are detrimentally compounded by the universe throwing us a cuvre-ball.  That universe in this case simply having "No more room in hell".

 

No more room in hell, yes.  Room to appear in lots of Rob Zombie's movies, also yes.

George A. Romero managed to make the entire thing knowingly entertaining from a pure popcorn horror standpoint for the era, be it an aggressively button-pushing and violent one.  His ever-present social commentary is as on-the-nose and sly as it was in Night of the Living Dead, but this is a remarkably different movie.  It does not so much as explore the exact same themes as it does expand upon them with a more dominant nod and a wink.  Zombies are still everywhere, humanity is still doomed, and audience members still had to be uncomfortable in their seats at the time of its initial release.  While delving deeper into such an apocalyptic scenario and witnessing how we are all seemingly programmed to continue to jack it up if we stick to our naturally ill-equipped methods though, it sure comes off as a lot more fun that it logically should.

 

As mentioned earlier, for a single director to accomplish such a thing once in a career is largely unheard of.  For it to happen twice?  Well, there is a reason Romero is considered not only the godfather of the modern zombie but also, (and far more admirably), one of the horror genres most cherished and outstanding filmmakers.  Night of the Living Dead changed the game, but Dawn of the Dead set the bar in that very game.  Zombie make-up and gore effects may have gotten more realistic, the zombies themselves may have gotten faster and more aggressively terrifying, we may as a cinematic culture be utterly burnt-out on them as a go-to movie monster, yet none of this diminishes the impact that George Romero's other masterpiece still very much has.

You sir nailed it.  Both times.

2020 Horror Part Seven

COME TRUE

Dir - Anthony Scott Burns

Overall: MEH

Narratively speaking, filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns' Come True is a misguided mess despite its stylistic integrity.  Prominently featuring a synth-pop score from Toronto-based duo Electric Youth and filmed in a deliberately intangible manner, visually it combines expressive cinematography with unnerving, black and gray dream representations of sleep paralysis shadow men or night hags in a traditional sense.  The ambitious, tranquil presentation matches the subject matter rather ideally, very gradually guiding the audience through a stream of increasingly confusing and disturbing set pieces.  This is both a good and bad thing.  Burns seems very much in control of the material in a visceral sense, but at the same time, whatever he is going for psychologically gets lost along the way.  Some of this can be "explained" with a twist-ending, but such a thing seems more of a throw-away than a convincingly thought-provoking tag to finish on.  Too many elements are glossed-over to excuse the unfocused plot, which is a shame in that everything else is rather flawlessly executed from a production standpoint.

VIOLATION

Dir - Madeleine Sims-Fewer/Dusty Mancinelli

Overall: GOOD

 

The full-length debut Violation from Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli takes a somewhat pretentious stab at the feminist revenge sub-genre though mostly in a successful way.  In addition to co-directing, co-writing, and co-producing with Mancinelli, Sims-Fewer stars as a deeply troubled and traumatized woman who seems to both invite and become victimized by dysfunction.  The script wisely refuses to paint her in one-dimensional colors, which plays psychologically on the audience.  Making a protagonist's horrific acts also sympathetic to varying degrees is always an ambitious trick and the very earnest presentation helps pull it off.  The film is also bold in its non-chronological narrative and frequent detours into artful, slow motion close-ups, plus a harrowing musical score conveys an appropriately uncomfortable amount of dread.  This is not to say that the movie relies exclusively on suggestion as it is bluntly explicit in its violence and nudity, neither of which is played for exploitative effect.  Some of the characterizations can afford to be less impenetrable, but despite its heavy-handed nature, it remains primarily thought-provoking and admirably fearless.

 

THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW

Dir - Jim Cummings

Overall: GOOD

For his second full-length behind the lens, actor/filmmaker Jim Cummings crafts a genuinely quirky horror comedy with The Wolf of Snow Hollow.  Also serving as the penultimate screen appearance of Robert Forster, the film has been described as the closest available to the Coen brothers making a genre film.  Set in rural, snow-covered Utah and centered around a father/son sheriff team in over their heads with a slew of grizzly murders and frustrated townsfolk, Cummings' dry, purposely dark humor is cleverly delivered due to the off-beat structure.  Various montages, anger-fueled outbursts, and frustrated bickering are played for comedic effect even as the narrative circumstances are predominantly bloody and disturbing.   The film could be accused of being overtly bitter in some instances if not for a genuine, heartfelt undercurrent which is greatly benefited by consistently good performances.  There are some cliched plot elements, a twist ending that is not entirely necessary, and for a werewolf movie, it is in fact rather short on lycanthropian escapades.  All that said though, the character-driven emphasis makes such shortcomings rather unimportant.

2020 Horror Part Six

THE RENTAL

Dir - Dave Franco

Overall: GOOD

 

Actor-turned-director Dave Franco crafted a somewhat textbook though expertly done semi-slasher with his debut The Rental.  Co-scripted in part by fellow actor Joe Swanberg, (The Sacrament, V/H/S, You're Next), the story certainly has its foreseeable beats, but it is also unusually tight.  The minimal cast does admirable work and the dysfunction between each of their characters is believably portrayed.  It is a testament to both the writing and performances that the film manages to stay engaging before things kick into inevitable cat-and-mouse gear, which does not happen until a good ways into the third act.  For his first time behind the lens, Franco maintains an admirably suspenseful tone.  Sinister activity is teased throughout, but never in a pandering way and once it does go full-tilt thriller, it frighteningly delivers that much more as so much time was previously spent authentically building up the circumstances.  A bit nihilistic for some tastes maybe, but there are few faults to be found in its effective execution.

BLOODTHIRSTY

Dir - Amelia Moses

Overall: MEH

 

For her second full-length Bloodthirsty, filmmaker Amelia Moses once again teams up with actor Lauren Beatty, this time in collaboration with fellow Canadian singer/songwriter Lowell Boland who co-wrote the script and provided a handful of songs.  The result is rather clunky in the plot and dialog department to say the least, but the premise itself has some unique details present to off-set its more familiar horror tropes.  Played devoid of apparent humor, the movie could honestly afford to lighten up a bit as things eventually get a bit too absurd to take as seriously as they are presented.  It does not quite work as a whole, but its production aspects are well in place with excellent performances, unassuming cinematography, Boland's convincing music, and a persistently sinister tone.  A tighter script is the missing ingredient to properly elevated it, but its bloody, heavy-handed heart is in the right place at least.

 

LUCKY

Dir - Natasha Kermani

Overall: MEH

Things go oddly awry in director Natasha Kermani and actor/screenwriter Brea Grant's Lucky.  On paper, it is a bold and challenging move to exclusively dwell in social commentary with one's feature, non-documentary film.  Here, the message of women feeling hopelessly threatened by men's most violent, passive aggressive, manipulative, and neglectful attributes manifests itself as a quasi-parody of slasher movies.  The intention to make such themes as persistent as possible is impossible to miss, yet the film becomes detrimentally frustrating in its awkward presentation.  Undeniably surreal, the dialog and performances, (including that of Grant who is perpetually on screen), are so annoyingly unnatural that the (very) unnatural chain of events taking place becomes impossible to come to terms with in a cinematic sense.  Again, this is most likely purposeful, but various moments appear to be going for disturbed laughs while the execution of it all seems so ridiculous at times that virtually no tone whatsoever is maintained.  It could be seen as both a dark satire of simplified feminist empowerment and a simplification of male chauvinism in general, yet it is neither funny nor particularly thought-provoking in its off-putting, borderline pretentious form. 

2020 Horror Part Five

MEANDER

Dir - Mathieu Turi

Overall: MEH

 

The ambitious, quasi-Cube re-working Meander, (Méandre), by writer/director Mathieu Turi has some clear detriments though it manages to remain predominantly nerve-wracking at least.  Carrying virtually the entire film on her lonesome, Gaia Weiss is excellent as a terrified yet determined woman trapped in a brutally unforgiving maze.  The production design is quite effective as well, creating a chilling, otherworldly environment.  Turi maintains a relentlessly tense atmosphere with set pieces that rear close to torture porn territory without succumbing fully to unwatchable miserableness.  While the movie assuredly succeeds in the suspense category, (with plenty of gross out moments for horror genre purists as well), the story is quite hackneyed.  The premise easily recalls the aforementioned Cube series as well as Shinya Tsukamoto's short film Haze, but the emotional link of Weiss' character overcoming the traumatic loss of her daughter is quite pedestrian and undercooked.  It is a shame that the film's overly-simplified narrative and somewhat derivative concept undermine the elements that do indeed work, yet for those simply in the mood for a deliciously claustrophobic, nintey-minute nightmare, this one will easily suffice.

THE STYLIST

Dir - Jill Gevargizian

Overall: MEH

 

With several short films under her belt, (including the one for which this is expanded and based upon), Jill Gevargizian unleashed the tensely odd full-length The Stylist.  Centered around a severely unhinged introvert, the film is disturbing in its very nature even as it never bothers to delve very deep into the origins of Najarra Townsend's alarming behavior.  She is attractive, well-dressed, lives in a large house by herself, has a hip job, appears quiet yet friendly enough in social encounters, yet her devastating struggles in keeping such upward appearances seem arbitrarily in place.  The same goes for her obsession with one of her long-term clients, which more or less springs up out of nowhere. This narrative aloofness keeps the movie from being as engaging as it otherwise would be since the focus is on a character so impenetrably off that it is more of a voyeuristic experience for the viewer and one that borders on frustration.  Still, Gervargizian's vision is remarkably stunning as the movie is wonderfully shot and as a thriller, she pulls off a number of nail-biting moments that are worth taking note of.  The pay-off may be a bit standoffish, but then again, this may be intended as that seems to be a primary theme here in general.

MY HEART CAN'T BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO

Dir - Johnathan Cuartas

Overall: MEH

 

For his first full-length, writer/director Johnathan Cuartas takes a sobering and dour look at one of the horror films most abundantly used "monsters" and a handful of its tropes.  Shot with virtually zero flash and utilizing a screenplay with virtually zero humor, My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To has a deliberately stark quality to it.  The characters dwelling here exist in a perpetual state where their humanity continues to be drained away.  What joy they do experience is found purely out of desperation, (a pawn shop karaoke machine, the by-the-hour attention of a prostitute, celebrating Christmas multiple times a year, etc), yet such sanity-maintaining measures have all but completely failed them by the time they are introduced to us.  The movie is relentlessly depressing because of this and very often difficult to sit through.  The minuscule cast does admirable work with such heavy material and there are no stylistic genre cliches anywhere to be found, both of which are good things on paper.  What mild comforts it may offer are persistently dampened though and it all comes with an overbearing aura of life being brutally unforgiving and hopeless.  It is as far from a feel-good movie as you can get then and such a warning should probably be given to those who wish to venture here.

2019 Horror Part Ten

VFW

Dir - Joe Begos
Overall: GOOD

Boasting an ideal premise for veteran tough guy actors, (plus George Wendt), VFW delightfully fuses "back in my day" boomer posturing with gore-ridden mayhem.  Director Joe Begos was approached by producer Dallas Sonnier with a script from Max Brallier and Matthew McArdle that pays respect to the American veteran's code while giving them a justifiable enemy in for the form of an opioid crisis that has ravished their community with gang violence while simultaneously reducing its addicts to the equivalent of rage-fueled zombies.  Stephan Lang heads a cast of macho thespians from yesteryear including William Sadler, Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, Martin Kove, and David Patrick Kelly, all playing aged-out military men who instinctively jump right back into action when both their safe haven bar and a millennial with a valid vendetta are threatened by doped-out hordes and drug-dealing scumbags.  Isolated to a single, red and purple-tinged location and following a standard structure where one character gets picked off at a time as the stakes grow that much more dire, it becomes monotonous after awhile, but Begos handles the heady subject matter admirably while still keeping a deliberately campy and ultra-violent tone.

THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC

Dir - Kimo Stamboel

Overall: GOOD

Indonesian director Kimo Stamboel's remake of the 1981 movie Ratu Ilmu Hitam, (The Queen of Black Magic), is a pretty nasty and effective updating, produced by the same exploitation-focused company that did the original, Rapi Films.  Largely focusing on a number of gruesome, self-mutilating set pieces such as a woman slicing her body fat off, a guy stapling his mouth shut, another woman puking up crawling insects, and numerous characters smashing their own heads open, the film plays such arbitrary, supernatural components quite seriously.  Such a schlock-less approach could otherwise be detrimental considering how borderline ridiculous much of this seems on paper, but Stamboel maintains an effectively dark, eerie tone that undermines any potential, unintended chuckles.  The script is not particularly tight nor chock-full of originality and the occasional CGI is pretty lousy, but the handful of narrative cliches never become particularly insulting.  Instead, they are knowingly unsettling and for what is essentially a ninety-nine minute excuse to gradually indulge in over-the-top, ghastly creepiness, it succeeds quite swimmingly.

LA LLORONA

Dir - Jayro Bustamante

Overall: GOOD

The third feature from Guatamalian filmmaker Jayro Bustamante La Llorona, (not to be confused with Michael Chaves' more genre-pandering and schlocky The Curse of La Llorona from the same year), takes a very sobering approach to the Latin American folklore from which it loosely draws upon.  The majority of the film adheres to virtually zero horror tropes of any kind and centers around the family of a disgraced, former General who has been tried and convicted of orchestrating the Guatemalan genocide of 1982-83.  Bustamante weaves the story's supernatural components into the proceedings both sparingly and solemnly.  Comprised largely of long, single takes, a very deliberate mood is created where both the dread and heartache suffered by the characters escalates at a barely decipherable degree.  Even with those unfamiliar with the mythology surrounding the "Weeping Woman", no real mysterious elements seem to be at play.  Instead, it is a meticulously slow pondering on those who are put in the position of remaining complacent towards the horrendous acts of their loved ones.  In the case here, such otherworldly vengeance seems both an inevitability and a relief and the heavy-handed tone is quire admirably appropriate.

90's John Carpenter Part Two

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

(1994)

Overall: GOOD

For his third entry in the broadly described Apocalypse Trilogy, John Carpenter goes full Lovecraftian insanity with In the Mouth of Madness.  Studio executive/producer/screenwriter Michael De Luca provided Carpenter with his script several years prior, though the director only became interested and on board after two other filmmakers dropped out.  The end result easily remains the oddest work in his filmography, delivering one mind-melting set piece after the other as the plot goes deliberately off the rails.  Once again collaborating with composer Jim Lang whom he had done Body Bags with the previous year, the "Enter Sandman" inspired main theme goes along with Carpenter's usual synth music and helps set the loud, over-the-top tone appropriately.  The story of a man trapped in a surreal, film-within-a-film loop where the written word becomes horrified reality is all quite difficult to follow.  Considering though that this is the exact point and the numerous H.P. Lovecraft, (with a side of Stephen King), references are no accident, it comes about as close as a movie can to portraying the unspeakable, macabre lunacy that Lovecraft's works almost exclusively explored. 

ESCAPE FROM L.A.

(1996)

Overall: MEH

 

Well deserving of its lukewarm reputation, Escape from L.A. is essentially the same movie as Escape from New York except not good.  A quasi-vanity project for Kurt Russell, (who besides returning as Snake Plissken, also co-wrote and co-produced), he and John Carpenter make an attempt at striking lighting twice, an attempt that comes off more desperate than successful.  The plot follows the structure of the first film so closely that Carpenter could theoretically sue himself for plagiarism, except this time the set pieces are prominently more ludicrous than bad-ass.  Whether Russell is hang-gliding into action, surfing with Peter Fonda, or shooting basketball against the clock, it all comes off as a cringe-worthy parody of schlocky B-movies instead of a cool B-movie itself.  Speaking of cringe-worthy, this is a solid contender as having the worst digital effects in any theatrically released film and worse yet, there are quite a number of such effects.  Practically every character is easily bamboozled, least of all Plissken who looks like a buffoon more often than not.  The same can be said for all parties involved who may understandably be embarrassed by having such a crud rock on their resumes.

 

VAMPIRES

(1998)

Overall: GOOD

After two duds and two more duds on the way before unofficially retiring, John Carpenter got to make the flawed though mostly fun and enduring Neo-western horror hybrid Vampires.  Based off of John Steakley's book Vampire$, the project was set to go into production with director Russell Mulcahy and Dolph Lundgren in the lead, both of whom would instead make Silent Trigger after disputes with Largo Entertainment fell through.  Carpenter's version cobbles together elements from two different scripts and he brought on James Woods who makes a more convincing, action hero bad-ass than one would expect.  Hardly any of the characters are oozing with likeable qualities and the film balances its quasi-grim, misogynistic tone with schlocky plot points, groan-worthy dialog, (Wood's incessant boner jokes become more grating as they go on), and some scenery-chewing performances, particularly from Thomas Ian Griffith as the head undead.  For what is essentially a loud, silly, conservatively budgeted B-movie, Carpenter shows off his well-honed skills within such a framework.  It is well-paced, has plenty of gruesome gore, and works as a popcorn action movie above all else.  Considering that it seems hell-bent on delivering such a thing, it can fairly be labeled a success.