Dir - Brandon Cronenberg
Overall: GOOD
Sometimes the apple does not fall very far from the tree. Brandon Cronenberg is, (you guessed it), the spawn of none other than David Cronenberg: The Godfather of Body Horror and Brandon's own filmmaking debut Antiviral clearly proves that father and son are artistically tickled by very similar interests. It is indeed difficult not to compare this movie to those of Cronenberg Senior and also a bit unfair to do so as Brandon is following in such large, lingering footsteps. Yet simply acknowledging that Antiviral is a similar beast to Videodrome, eXistenZ, Crash, or Dead Ringers to name a few is enough so moving on from that, you can look at the movie on its own turf. Brandon Cronenberg certainly cultivates a persistent mood here. In fact, one could argue that it may even be TOO consistent as we watch a mumbling Caleb Landry Jones, (who is already naturally creepy to behold), be violently sick for nearly two hours in a dystopian setting where celebrity worship has been perverted beyond anything sexual and into something even more bleak and unsettling. The concept is strong and though the execution may be a bit too relentlessly cold for some, it is an impressive outing that shows more than enough promise for future works.
Dir - Jon Wright
Overall: GOOD
Big, dumb monster movies usually have a hard time standing out enough amongst the herd. Which is what makes Irish filmmaker Jon Wright's sophomore full-length Grabbers all the more impressive. It has a small coastal town getting besieged by an alien menace and two main characters who are nothing alike that initially despise each other only to of course find true love in each other's arms. Yet it is that rare occasion where the premise has a hilarious enough twist and then actually delivers on it to kind of make the stock bits not an issue. If the movie did not continue to bust out funny, exciting monster battle gags after it introduced that the best defense against it was for everyone to get pissed since alcohol seems to be deadly to said blood sucking, giant octopus things, then all would be for naught. Even before it gets laugh out loud funny in its third act though, the small crop of characters are made both incredibly likeable and interesting with Wright cruising things along the whole way through. It has got to be one of the better movies to playfully toy with the "working class Irish folk sure love to drink" stereotype and pitting it against squishy tentacled sea creatures ends up being quite the hoot.
Dir - Don Coscarelli
Overall: GOOD
Dropping a Masters of Horror episode in between, Don Coscarelli's otherwise follow-up to the solid Bubba Ho-Tep is the ludicrous adaptation of David Wong's webserial-turned-novel John Dies at the End. An almost tireless headtrip, it is recommendable to give up on following the incessant, arbitrary weirdness from the get-go and simply give into it instead. Striving on pure imagination, Wong's story is not about coherence or really anything at all besides just having fun with as many insane, hallucinatory, time and dimension-bending shenanigans as possible. The fact that the narrative is told primarily in flashbacks and that the title makes as much sense as anything else happening, (meaning none), is all part of the charm, playing further with the audience every step of the way. Even the Troma-level, laughably bad green screen and CGI seems to be there on purpose and fits right at home with a hot dog cell phone, a naked totalitarian society wearing animal masks, alien bugs, an amputee ghost hand, and Paul Giamatti thinking he is black. It is yet another example that when Coscarelli is not making his appallingly terrible Phantasm movies, he does some pretty damn good work.
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