Dir - John Adams/Zelda Adams/Toby Poser
Overall: MEH
The latest from the delightful mother/daughter/father horror team of Toby Poser and Zelda and John Adams, Mother of Flies stays in their lane for better or worse. As usual, the Adams Family, (as they humorously dub themselves), craft some grimy and striking visuals, their own gloomy goth songs are solid, and the story where Zelda's young protagonist seeks out a woodland witch to cure her of a terminal tumor indulges in plenty of earthy folk horror motifs, the kind that they frequent at least to some extent in each of their movies. It also raises some interesting questions about the purpose of faith and the belief in the unbelievable when nothing else seems to be doing the trick. While Zelda and John effortlessly channel their own father/daughter chemistry, (even if John's performance is curiously weak), Poser comes off like an eccentric caricature. Her dialog is exclusively made up of Wiccan adlibs; long-winded poppycock that is vapid, overwritten, simple-minded, and pretentious, and she unfortunately gets a whole lot to say, her rhyming platitudes providing narration that is meaningless at best, maddening at worst. Such kooky mannerisms and some arbitrarily strange and grotesque sequences forgive the ridiculous prattling on, but the premise itself rests on shaky ground. Why a father would casually indulge his daughter partaking in such increasingly concerning shenanigans is a tough pill for the audience to swallow, and even though their script addresses these issues, it still undermines the film's nasty, unforgiving, and more impressive aspects.
Dir - Yorgos Lanthimos
Overall: MEH
Renowned Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos collaborates with screenwriter Will Tracy while taking on his first remake, Bugonia serving as an updated adaptation of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 oddball sci-fi black comedy Save the Green Planet!. Those genre labels apply here as well, filtered of course through Lanthimos' auteuristic eccentricities, reuniting him once again with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and even Alicia Silverstone to a lesser extent, (the latter given a minor part as a quirky mother, something she likewise had in The Killing of a Sacred Deer). Stone is outstanding as always, playing a corporate matriarch who comes off as perpetually manipulative and full of shit as she finds herself held within the clutches of Plemons' cartoonishly filthy peon employee and beekeeper who has a conspiratorial agenda for the books. What works is the intense back and forth between these two parties, (with first time autistic actor Aidan Delbis caught in the mix to provide some deliberate concern from the audience), as well as the suspense-laden dangling fruit as to the legitimacy of Plemons' allegations. Unfortunately, Tracy's script falls apart as it goes along, introducing plot gaps and inconsistent behavior amongst its characters, as well as arriving at a conclusion that is less annoying nihilistic than the work of Lars von Trier by comparison, yet still comes dangerously close. Lanthimos is such a singular voice and so expert as his craft though that even if this is technically a miss-step, it is just barely one.
Dir - Sajeed A.
Overall: MEH
A mess of schlock, forced found footage, animated exposition, dogshit CGI, demonic possession, and folk horror, Vadakkan is the first full-length from Indian filmmaker Sajeed A., whose career up until this point was primarily in television and documentaries. Authored by another fellow who only uses an initial for his last name, (screenwriter Unni R.), there are some interesting ideas here that deserve a less ambitious and in turn less faulty execution. Kishore portrays a stoic paranormal investigator YouTube personality with a vaguely troubled past who looks into another YouTube personality that had a type of Big Brother haunted house program go horribly awry on a cut-off piece of land that is home to much malevolent supernatural tomfoolery. The idea to have the second act be nothing more than Kishore watching episodes of the doomed program is a terrible one, namely because the blatantly otherworldly footage is all edited together with scary music, multiple cameras, and even ends with a long shot that is done in the conventional style as the rest of the film and ergo could not have at all been captured the way that it was. This faux pas is enough to sink the entire production, but the third act brings Kishore, his assistant, and his former love interest to the cursed island themselves for a lengthy climax that is sloppily handled, not at all frightening, and hackneyed. Everything is played straight and the main performers take their assignment seriously, but there are too many mistakes to forgive.
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