Dir - Tucia Lyman
Overall: MEH
Writer/director Tucia Lyman's full-length debut M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters is a nasty viewing experience by design, a heightened and frequently absurd look at an impossibly fractured dysfunctional relationship between mother and teenage son. Done as a found footage movie, Lyman makes some faulty decisions along the way, mainly how the scenes shift from a screenlife perspective to conventional editing tactics at random intervals. There are not enough of these blunders to render the film an all-out disaster as many others in the found footage/mockumentary mold are, but they do undermine the sincerity behind the subject matter. The movie directly addresses the lose-lose situation that parents with troubled kids find themselves in, where they are naturally inclined to protect and love them, but inevitably meet an impasse where healthy communication is long off the table and further disturbing behavior will only increase a parent's paranoia, not to mention the mounting trauma of the entire household. Watching this unfold for nearly a hundred minutes is a daunting task, and if anything, Bailey Edwards' performance as the sixteen year-old with lifelong sociopathic tendencies is TOO perfect, since he has an infuriating smugness and encapsulates narcissistic, entitled, disrespectful, manipulative, and volatile personality traits to a tee. That is the idea of course, but it seems ill-fitting in this sensationalized gimmick format.
Dir - Anvita Dutt
Overall: MEH
The directorial debut Bulbbul from screenwriter/lyricists Anyita Dutt suffices as a popcorn fairy tale with a patriarchal revenge agenda, but it is also undermined instead of enhanced by a showy presentation and ambitious structure. Set during the late 19th century Bengal presidency where near toddler-aged women were married off to lords and subjugated accordingly, it utilizes the airborne female wood demon chudail as a surrogate for empowerment against longstanding imperial traditions where women were second-class citizens at best. The arc that Tripti Dimri's title character undergoes is a horrific one, but Dutt intentionally cloaks it under CGI landscapes, manipulative and sentimental music, plus a non-linear plot that bounces between time lines clumsily. It is often difficult to even decipher where we are in the narrative, even though everything clicks into place conventionally by the finale. The horror motifs are limited to stylized treks through crimson forests that are too fanciful to be sinister, coming off as distracting against the plight of its female characters and Avinash Tiwary's well-meaning younger lord who strives to break the rigid cycle of folkways that he was born into. Its aspirations are commendable, (as are all of the performances), but its melding of genre and historical hardships do not land as well as they deserve.
Dir - Chris Baugh
Overall: MEH
For his second full-length Boys from County Hell, Irish filmmaker Chris Baugh stretches out his 2013 short of the same name, but the results are tonally curious to say the least. This is one of those movies that is kind-of-not-really a "comedy" on paper since the characters argue and use a lot of profanity in the face of supernatural bombardment, but nobody acts like they are in a comedy, and instead go through a heart-wrenching ordeal equipped with emotional breakdowns, tears, and the loss of numerous loved ones along the way. There is a nugget of a good idea here with a premise that utilizes the Irish folklore legend of Abhartach; an undead fiend that inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula and is seemingly only bested when its body, (or the body of any resulting undead), is buried under a cairn. In other words, stakes through the heart, sunlight, and even beheadings prove ineffective, and once turned, these blood-suckers lose all sense of the human personalities or intellect and turn more into 28 Days Later rage zombies than Anne Rice style brooding romantics. Baugh does nothing interesting with these ingredients though, instead making a clumsy, never funny, and largely miserable watch full of bland characters who you are either bored with or just feel sorry for.
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