Dir - Joko Anwar
Overall: MEH
For round two in what may turn out to be a franchise for the recently relaunched Rapi Films, writer/director Joko Anwar picks up three years after the events of the Satan's Slaves remake, delivering Satan's Slaves 2: Communion, (Pengabdi Setan 2: Communion), as an over-long and largely uninteresting supernatural trope fest. With the surviving characters from the first movie returning and setting them up in a creepy high rise apartment building that has seen better days, Anwar creates an ominous mood throughout the two-hour running time as well as utilizing the slow build approach with little action in the first act in place of introducing new characters and side arcs that prove unnecessary or are even abandoned. Unfortunately, the film basks in its mood for too long so that by the time that more and more arbitrary spooky stuff starts to actually propel things forward, there is little investment to be had within such a sluggish and weak story. This is a horror movie where individual moments are impressive if taken out of context, (an eerie opening with mummified cult members in servitude position, a ghostly voice down a garbage shaft, a woman praying where it goes Silent Hill topsy-turvy every time that she flips her shall, etc), but everything together just makes for a mediocre mystery that could use some editing.
Dir - Andy Mitton
Overall: GOOD
Writer/director Andy Mitton turns out a pandemic horror film two years after the fact with The Harbinger, which offers a thought-proving look at the initial COVID-19 paranoia that was still felt for months following the virus' outbreak. More to the point, the story attempts to dig deep at the lingering trauma that was suffered by people who took the strictest precautions and felt cut-off from their loved ones and the world as a whole. The real life backdrop of a recent time that is still fresh on the viewer's minds is fused with a familiar if still clever boogeyman story that utilizes the age-old concept of waking nightmares to explore the bleakest of outcomes, where people are literally forgotten after unwelcome forces have gotten them. This is a clear and on-the-nose metaphor for the multitudes of people who succumbed to coronavirus complications and have in some ways gotten lost amongst the still-raging politics and divisiveness surrounding such an outbreak, but thankfully Mitton's treatment of the material never gets heavy-handed at the cost of a compelling and dreary outcome. The supernatural concept is more scary than the presentation which does not elevate the bar for desensitized horror buffs, but the somber and often low-key atmosphere is a welcome change to many of the hackneyed genre tropes that otherwise could have offensively muddled up the proceedings.
Dir - Caye Casas
Overall: MEH
It is difficult to imagine who a movie like The Coffee Table, (La mesita del comedor), is for; the darkest of dark "comedies" that bites off an impossible task and leaves the audience exhausted and confused by what merit could be found in its horrendously bleak outcome. Co-writer/director Caye Casas's first solo full-length has a perplexing agenda and deserves props for how ambitious of a tonal balance it tries to maintain. Explaining the jaw-drop in the first act here would be egregious and such a move is what kicks things into gear when it is no longer cute to see Estefanía de los Santos and David Pareja's strained new parents simply bicker about the former buying a tacky coffee table after being promised that he could make such an interior decorating decision since his wife seemingly calls all of the other shots. Things go awry quick and they go awry hard, leaving the majority of the movie to sit with an increasing strain of uncomfortableness as we wonder how in the hell it is going to get itself out of such a mess. When we find out, the character's impossible tragedy has become overbearing so that we do not so much feel a sigh of relief as we do just sick to our stomachs. By trying to make the film's predicament simultaneously funny, Casas simply asks too much of the audience.
Overall: MEH
It is difficult to imagine who a movie like The Coffee Table, (La mesita del comedor), is for; the darkest of dark "comedies" that bites off an impossible task and leaves the audience exhausted and confused by what merit could be found in its horrendously bleak outcome. Co-writer/director Caye Casas's first solo full-length has a perplexing agenda and deserves props for how ambitious of a tonal balance it tries to maintain. Explaining the jaw-drop in the first act here would be egregious and such a move is what kicks things into gear when it is no longer cute to see Estefanía de los Santos and David Pareja's strained new parents simply bicker about the former buying a tacky coffee table after being promised that he could make such an interior decorating decision since his wife seemingly calls all of the other shots. Things go awry quick and they go awry hard, leaving the majority of the movie to sit with an increasing strain of uncomfortableness as we wonder how in the hell it is going to get itself out of such a mess. When we find out, the character's impossible tragedy has become overbearing so that we do not so much feel a sigh of relief as we do just sick to our stomachs. By trying to make the film's predicament simultaneously funny, Casas simply asks too much of the audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment