Dir - Jan Cheol-soo
Overall: GOOD
The directorial debut from South Korean filmmaker Jan Ceol-soo, Bedevilled, (Kim Bok-nam Salinsageonui Jeonmal, The Whole Story of the Kim Bok-nam Murder Case), is a brutal and unmistakable feminist-themed nightmare. A deliberately difficult watch at regular intervals, we witness a poor woman get surrounded by the worst husband and immediate family members known to man who consistently disregard and abuse her to a foreseeable breaking point. It is more of an endurance test than a tension building thriller in this sense and it honestly just gets more and more miserable as the bloodshed revs up in the finale. That said, the examination of such horrifying, sad, unrelenting, (and worse yet), acceptable neglect towards women makes for a powerful statement since it also leads to some serious comeuppance that makes the victim the villain in a wretched cycle of abuse. There are other films out there that take their nasty subject matter to more unwatchable heights than this, but the balance is maintained here to make for a harrowing and substantial experience for those that can tough it out.
Dir - Matt Reeves
Overall: GOOD
The Americanized version of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In is a curious thing to come to terms with. Going into production from the resurrected Hammer Studios almost immediately upon its Swedish predecessor having been released to unanimous acclaim, Matt Reeve's take here titled Let Me In only exists to give Western audiences something more user-friendly and digestible. This is not to say that it is merely a PG affair without subtitles as in some ways it is even more horrific than its foreign counterpart, or at least on par with its gruesome tendencies. Aesthetically though, it has a more watered-down look and feel. There are absolutely atrocious digital effects in a number of scenes, plus it spells things out more plainly than the original which was less concerned with spoon-feeding the audience and more wonderfully focused on creating a haunting, melancholy atmosphere. It sticks to the previous adaptation's plot line almost verbatim and in this respect, it is understandable that coming a mere two years apart from each other, comparing the two is unavoidable. Still, one could argue that two solid and faithful reworkings of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel are better than one.
Dir - Panos Cosmatos
Overall: GOOD
Blurring the lines of comprehensibility in an aggressive fashion, the debut Beyond the Black Rainbow from Greek-Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos is an impressive if ultimately meandering exercise in avant-garde, semi-throwback horror. The rather razor-thin story is besieged by a series of lavishly designed, hypnotically structured set pieces. The laboriously deliberate pacing does in fact become a problem by the third act which grows underwhelming under the exhaustive weight of the film's lava-lamp-esque flow, but the movie's significant qualities are a plenty. The lead performance by Michael Rogers is intensely creepy as he exhibits a constant rage and psychosis both clearly noticeable and desperately restrained all at once. Then visually speaking, the movie is gorgeously stylized. Its futuristic-via-retro design hearkens back to an array of notable art and commercial films and while the claustrophobic cinematography is at once uncomfortable, nearly every image therein is bizarrely captivating. It falls short of being a masterpiece, but it gets by plenty on its thematically dark, challenging, and flashy sensibilities.
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