Dir - Raúl Cerezo/Fernando González Gómez
Overall: GOOD
The first collaboration between directors Fernando González Gómez and Raúl Cerezo has a fun genre hybrid premise of a goofy, character-building road movie with a slimy, extraterrestrial monster parasite, all taking place off the beaten-path in Spain's countryside. It is a similar mishmash as far as the script goes, which was originally written by Javier Echániz and Asier Guerricaechebarría and then reworked by Luis Sánchez-Polack some time later, though thankfully it does not have the feel of too many cooks in the kitchen. Cerezo and Gómez have to balance a tricky tone where characters must act rationally traumatized when people die around them, but their joke cracking after the fact seems well-earned due to the casual comradery build-up between the two likeable leads in Ramiro Blas and Paula Gallero, plus the simple fact that when being chased by an alien creature inhabiting your mom's body, what else can you do besides chuckle in order to psychologically cope? At least that is the plausibility pill that we are asked to swallow and enjoyable performances, tense/schlocky set pieces, and some predictable yet clever set-ups and pay-offs help it all go down smoothly.
Dir - Charlotte Colbert
Overall: MEH
Sadly, artist/filmmaker Charlotte Colbert's full-length debut She Will gets lost in its own psychological weeds, telling a potent tale of decades-overdue vengeance through a murky display of busy music, nightmarish astral projection, and CGI witch ashes. As she is perpetually cast to play, Alice Krige is a creepy old lady who is also the victim this time; a recovering actor that is still reeling from the sexual abuse that she suffered at the hands of a movie director decades older than her. Look at it as a fictionalized, supernatural re-imagining of the Roman Polanski and Samantha Gailey scandal, with Malcolm McDowell standing in as the odious perpetrator who chalks up his icky, underage fling as something that "made her career", took place "in a different time", and that Krige's thirteen-year old sufferer "knew exactly what she was doing". Potent material to look at in a post MeToo landscape to be sure, but Colbert's stylized vision takes a rambling trek to get there. Clint Mansell's score is occasionally unorthodox and trippy, but it also propels things along without letting any of the surreal images sink in properly; images that are captivating sometimes and unimaginative at others. A finale involving digital black stuff swirling around McDowell's bewildered frame is unintentionally funny and recalls Jan de Bont's The Haunting, which is the worst remake ever made and ergo something that one should never be reminded of.
Dir - Axelle Carolyn
Overall: MEH
There is nothing extraordinary in writer/director Axelle Carolyn's old folks home creepshow The Manor; a cliche-fest that steers shy of being insulting yet is also instantly forgettable in the process. The eighth installment in the Welcome to the Blumhouse series, it is a sufficient enough staring vehicle for Barbara Hershey whose seventy-plus age is made the driving narrative factor for a character that willingly checks herself into a swanky manor house for the elderly. From there, it is all predictable plot points involving gaslighting from everywhere, CGI monster nightmares, panic-stricken residents giving vague and ominous warnings, passive aggressive staff members, weird occult things, a clue in a photograph, and Hershey's protagonist following an arc trajectory that a five year old could predict. Carolyn keeps things moving enough even though every avenue that her story ventures down is well-trotted terrain, plus Hershey is her usual solid self even if she seems to have her tongue-in cheek most of the time, (which, who could blame her?). The ending is unintentional schlocky silliness, but it is also satisfying for a movie that plays by the horror movie rules in the most disciplined sense.
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