Dir - Gerald Robert Waddell
Overall: WOOF
The biggest problem with horror mockumentaries is the ever-present and two-fold question that it raises, namely "Who compiled all of this troubling and otherworldly footage together in such a cinematically inclined fashion, and also, why?". The ambitious full-length debut Project MKHEXE from Gerald Robert Waddell runs wild with this conundrum, and it does so for nearly two hours, which should be an illegal length for any found footage movie. Characters getting psychologically engulfed by conspiracy theories is a premise that has been explored ad nauseam, but each familiar detail here is played-out with aggressive melodrama that cheapens the entire presentation. When a young man's death is ruled a suicide, his brother decides to make a documentary about it, which allows for him to do ridiculous things like shove a camera in his grieving parent's faces while they sit down talking heads style to be interviewed, pushing them with accusations while he flies off at the handle about reasonable things like his parents having the audacity to send his now-diseased brother to a therapist at one point. What is this, the 1950s? He also interviews himself and a handful of his brother's friends before plausibility is officially jettisoned in the last act, which raises more verisimilitude-obliterating questions like "How did they get this footage and why was it filmed in the first place?". Jump scares, volume swells, rapid-fire editing, a monotonous structure that makes you feel all hundred and fifty-three minutes, an unlikable dipshit protagonist, and a story that is never remotely frightening or interesting, it is unfortunately one grievous error after another.
Dir - Felipe Vargas
Overall: WOOF
A prime example of what contemporary schlock horror looks like, Rosario is the full-length debut from director Felipe Vargas, and it is one that is overflowing with hackneyed style, plot points, and sentimentality. Calling a movie out like this for how insultingly predictable and obnoxious it is may be viewed as cruel or at the very least insensitive, but it is difficult to get behind something that desperately takes itself so seriously while having a bombarding tone what will induce endless chuckles from the audience. A continuous disconcerting musical score, continuous jump scares, continuous disgusting visuals, continuous disgusting sound effects, and continuous volume swells mix with an apartment setting that is so dilapidated and filthy that one has to accept the aesthetic choices on their own cartoonish merit as to not bail on the film ten minutes in. While the look, sound, and tone is a jacked-up yuck-fest of embarrassing cliches, Alan Trezza's script comes off just as unfortunate since its subject matter deserves an actual respectable presentation. In a time where immigration laws are as controversial as ever and discrimination towards those who are entering America for a better life is a major point of concern, having a genre movie try and balance these sincere themes while barrelling you with such loud, messy, and lazy goofiness is just unacceptable.
Dir - Ryan Coogler
Overall: GOOD
It is refreshing to see a filmmaker like Ryan Coogler swinging for the fences with a Jim Crow-era vampire film no less, but his latest Sinners is an overstuffed movie, bordering on a mess. That said, it also has an earnestness that forgives the handful of glaring things that do not work about it. The most glaring of these is the inclusion of vampires themselves. Coogler takes an hour to get to the story's main location; a sawmill-turned-hootenanny that is purchased with stolen mob money from Michael B. Jordan's hard-assed, dual twin, ex-soldier protagonists. Eventually, things go full From Dusk Till Dawn hold-off, but it seems more of an afterthought against a backdrop of permeating racism that seems inescapable in 1930s deep South. Gradually meeting our crop of disenfranchised characters during a single day and night where at least the illusion of bliss and freedom is achieved away from the ever-imposing hammer of oppression is where the film shines. Even when the blood-suckers show up though and Coogler has no choice but to uphold some of the schockier attributes of well-worn vampire tropes, he still offers up a significant tweak that ties into a world where joining a ravenous brethren of the undead almost sounds like a convincing trade-off as opposed to continuing to play in the brutal, discriminatory sandbox of the real world. A surreal musical number for the books, impressive and long tracking shots, and stand-out performances from everyone on board, (save blues legend Buddy Guy, who sadly exhibits the acting chops of a man who has never been asked to deliver dialog in any of his eighty-eight years on this planet), all further give this a respectability that it deserves, even if it is bursting at the seems with ideas that would be better left explored without fighting for screen time with each other.
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