Dir - Ruben Rodriguez
Overall: WOOF
A poorly done and ultra-low budget found footage entry from prolific indie filmmaker Ruben Rodriguez, The Death of April makes top to bottom mistakes and hits most of the faulty found footage beats. Done as a mockumentary with talking head interviews, on screen text, and scary music, it presents a scenario that grows increasingly implausible when a likeable young woman, (and we are told how likeable she is about seven thousand times by four different people), moves across the country to start her adult life as a teacher, only to become obsessed with a ghost that is doing ghost things in her apartment. First of all, Katarina Hughes' protagonist seems to have a camera running during every second that she is at home, even before such rudimentary supernatural shenanigans start happening. These include objects moving on their own, Hughes' entire personality changing as if possessed, her waking up to talk to disembodied voices, a seance gone awry, her brother's date arriving and having a psychic seizure attack, and other arbitrary events that lead Hughes to uncover that another woman around her age had been found murdered and also used to live where she now does. Conclusions are drawn only because the script says so, and poor Hughes is gaslit by every other character even when clear evidence of her ordeal is presented in camera. The film fails as an examination of mental illness since real paranormal activity is captured, the performances are uniformly weak, and all of the spooky gags are from the hackneyed grab bag.
Dir - Carlota Pereda
Overall: GOOD
The first solo full-length from writer/director Carlota Pereda, Piggy, (Cerdita), also serves as an expansion on her 2018 short film of the same name. This is a relentlessly bitter watch, one that hinges its entire persona on the "bullies be bullying" trope that is found in many a tragedy, be it horror, thriller, comedy, or straight-faced drama. Pereda's movie is almost entirely void of humor and instead stays in its miserable thriller lane, presenting us with a heavy-set and cripplingly introverted character who is bullied without end from her peers, while simultaneously being micromanaged, ignored, or also picked on at home by her mother, father, and younger brother, respectfully. It is a hopeless situation for Laura Galán's protagonist, the actor giving one of those fearless performances that asks a lot of her, yet still only a fraction of what her character must endure on the daily. Wisely, Pereda throws a kink into the mix, eschewing the mere Carrie comparisons in favor of something that dips its toes into torture porn and slasher motifs, yet also steers just clear of those loathsome sub-genre's gratuitous schlock and nihilism. This offers up a disturbing scenario where the brutalized go further inward than they already are, finding comfort in monsters who handle the vengeance for them. The film is a success for what it achieves, even if it is too wearisome to visit more than once.
Dir - Neil LaBute
Overall: MEH
Justin Long's typecasting as a doomed scumbag continues with House of Darkness, the latest from filmmaker Neil LaBrute. It is a movie that wields its one-note trajectory of comeuppance for the duration of its running time, pitting Long up against Kate Bosworth and her isolated Gothic castle after a night of hitting it off at a bar, though what part of America this is where such a spacious European abode is clandestinely located is never explained. Right from the onset, audience members need to gear-up for a relentless stream of frustrating dialog where every sentence that Long utters is twisted by the woman, (eventually women), whom he is talking to. As a guy that was just planning to have a few drinks and maybe get lucky under the sheets, Long is toyed with from the onset, stumbling over his half-truths while being playfully smirked at, all the while soldiering on like a clueless horndog who either thinks that he is reading the room perfectly or feels that his charm can win the day regardless. The problem is that every person watching this will see exactly where it is going, picking up on all of the clues and genre motifs, as well as the simple fact that we have seen Long in so many situations like this before. It is either perfect casting or awful casting in this regard, but at least any woman who has had to endure some "nice guy" awkwardly trying to get in their pants may get a kick out of its inevitable and bloody conclusion.
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