Dir - David Cronenberg
Overall: GOOD
While stilted in parts and not incumbent to conventional horror tactics, (even of the "body" variety that David Cronenberg became a household name in pioneering), his latest The Shrouds still fits snugly in his filmography and channels the themes that he endlessly frequents. Arguably Cronenbergs's most personal project as it was inspired by the long-suffering cancer and ultimate demise of his wife of over four decades, the filmmaker explores questionable grief tactics along with how obsession integrates itself into our lives though various means. Set in modern day yet given a slightly futuristic slant where technology is maybe only a year or so ahead of us, Vincent Cassel plays Cronenberg's stand-in who has designed a means of monitoring loved one's decomposing bodies once buried, offering up such services to wealthy costumers and foreign investors. When his enterprise is vandalized, it leads to a series of ever-morphing conspiracy theories, as well as Cassel eventually facing his romanticism and, (especially sexual), attachment to his late spouse, engaging with other characters who have their own quirks and coping mechanisms in place. None of the subjects here are dealt with in a judgemental fashion. Instead, they influence each other through endless conversation and interaction, until we arrive at a place where there are still more questions and a lingering aura of uncertainty. Such is life though and such is grief. Some of the performances seem wooden at times and there are eccentricities in place that could be seen as unintentionally comedic, but Cronenberg is such a master of his craft and the material here is so unmistakably linked to his own exploration that most likely, any of the movie's "faults" are anything but and are only there to enhance the whole.
Dir - Dean Puckett
Overall: MEH
Filmmaker Dean Puckett's full-length expansion of his 2018 short The Sermon has some of Robert Eggers' The Witch and M. Knight Shyamalan's The Village mixed together on a noticeably smaller scale with sincere yet lackluster results. The Severed Sun tackles the age old theme of zealous servitude backfiring on itself as we meet a mostly miserable crop of villagers who adhere to one leader's pious proclamations of righteousness which his own daughter Emma Appleton inadvertently recoils from. Naturally, this sets Appleton and her lover apart from the diligent heard and into the arms of some all-black and mysterious woodland creature that looks like a kid's drawing of an all-black and mysterious woodland creature. Villagers panic, point fingers, get seduced, and get desperate, and it all leads to turmoil which is preordained from the relentlessly dour mood, as well as nearly every character behaving as if the word "joy" is foreign to them. Of course it is the heathen ex-members of the commune who exhibit the only signs of relishing in their newfound freedom, be it briefly before the first stones are cast and everything goes to hell. The sound design is appropriately ominous, as is the musical score by the collective appropriately dubbed Unknown Horrors. There is nothing refreshing here to the ole folk horror shtick though, merely an adequate and low-key production with swell performances and a sufficient monster lurking in the foliage.
Dir - Takashi Shimizu
Overall: MEH
A sequel to the previous year's Sana, Sana: Let Me Hear, (Anoko wa Daare?), is a mostly redundant experience that slightly expands yet mostly retreads what we have already seen in the last installment. One could make an easy joke that it also retreads what we have seen in countless other J-horror films that have come down the pike, (many of writer/director Takashi Shimizu's to be sure), but we are specifically witness to a barrage of exact scenes that where not only repeated in the first movie, but are shown even more frequently here. Be prepared to stare at a staircase leading to a door and a woman falling to her doom from a school rooftop upwards of a couple hundred times. Also, the cursed melody that sometimes hypnotizes people and sometimes does not is also bound to get stuck in your head, as it does the head of the characters. Shimizu goes for an odd soft hazy filter through almost the entirety, perhaps intentionally to invoke some kind of ethereal ambiance that goes along with the cumbersome pace. As was the case with its predecessor though, the film has a few of Shimizu's patented odd-ball set pieces, the best and oddest of which is a lengthy scene where a character tries to get the title ghost out of one of those drop the hook arcades.
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