Dir - Damien Leone
Overall: WOOF
Mislabeled as a slasher throwback since A) slasher movies have unfortunately never gone away and B) this one is even more derivative than the lot of them, Damien Leone's Terrifier has inexplicably managed to elevate itself in the horror zeitgeist over hoards of other identically forgettable movies. Technically the forth in the Art the Clown franchise, (after two short films and the anthology offering All Hallows' Eve, all written and directed by Leone), this one was crowdfunded and focuses on one of the most boring cinematic serial killers in recent memory. A lunatic who refuses to speak, defies the laws of physics, has superhuman healing abilities, and is dressed like a "creepy" clown, Art comes off like a parody instead of a remotely menacing presence. The presentation looks its minuscule budget, shot digitally in a sparse amount of locations with front-to-back amateur performances, yet to be fair, the dialog is at least not as insultingly lame as it could have been. Still, it is a waste of time while adhering to beat-for-beat slasher plotting, throwing in a crazy woman with a baby doll, yawn-inducing kill scenes, victims leaving the killer's body on the ground after hurting him without finishing the job, cheap jump scares, the killer literally blowing his brains out yet still being alive, and too many other wretchedly lazy tropes to bother pointing out.
Dir - Daniel Scheinert/Daniel Kwan
Overall: GOOD
The full-length debut from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, Swiss Army Man defies genre classification and gets by on its singular boldness in spite of having one of the most absurd premises humanly possible. Pitched for years to various studios to no avail, (understandably so), it is a self proclaimed "fart drama" concerning a castaway on an island who comes across a dead body that gradually gains the ability to talk, emote, remember, and turn into an all-purpose tool that is propelled by flatulence and whose involuntary erections work as a compass. How such a film even got made is probably the biggest question to ask and the shock of its ridiculousness never lets up, which is probably why the Daniels approach their head-scratching material the way that they do. This is to say that it is presented as a quasi musical fairy tale with a strong emotional core that explores both social anxiety and norms, all in a gleefully demented and touching manner. Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe are charming as two utterly bizarre characters whose entire arc is a psychological tour de force that may or may not be taking place on any tangible plane. The movie knows that to give away too much would be to ruin the spell that it spends ninety-seven minutes casting, leaving behind a contemplative, inventive, hilarious, and surreal experience that pulls off a near impossible feat of being staggeringly unlike any other film yet made.
Dir - J. A. Bayona
Overall: GOOD
For his third full-length, Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona teamed up with screenwriter Patrick Ness on an adaptation of the latter's 2011 novel A Monster Calls; a digital effects-heavy fantasy that serves as a coming of age tale for a boy that many would agree is much too young to have the weight of inevitability come crashing down upon him. In a deliberate way, the plotting mirrors the audience's wishful thinking that the worst is not to come as both we and Lewis MacDougall's twelve year-old protagonist know full well where things are headed, yet find futile solace in the belief that fate will spare us insufferable tragedy. It is a fundamental yet powerful statement that is anything but an easy watch and Bayona manages to systematically handle the material while balancing a smorgasbord of CGI set pieces that in a lesser director's hands could have distracted from the pivotal theme of succumbing to unavoidable grief. While some of these spectacle-laced sequences look better than others and Liam Neeson's tree giant is simultaneously the least convincing and most important, the somber fairy tale tone never lets up. This allows for the full-on, medieval-tinged animation, computer-enhanced backgrounds, and anger-fueled destruction sequences to properly service a story that is told from the perspective of a distraught, imaginative child who is undergoing the trauma of his life as only such a child can.
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