Dir - Sion Sono
Overall: GOOD
The relentlessly challenging headtrip Tag, (Real Onigokko), is filmmaker Sion Sono's adaptation of Yusuke Yamada's novel Riaru Onigokko which had also been cinematically made in 2008 as The Chasing World by Issei Shibata. Set to ethereal shoegazing music from Glim Spanky, the film starts off with a bang and then patiently meanders around with a handful of other left-field endeavors thrown in to up the strangeness. While it becomes increasingly difficult to put together in any conventional narrative sense, the film's themes about destiny and fate seen through a feminist lens seem to become that much more important. Even the way that the movie uses visually amateurish CGI appears to somehow enhance its otherworldly nature as it endlessly flows into one more dream state after the other. The culmination of events is not likely to spell anything out in plain English, (or Japanese in this case), but it leaves a lasting impact and is enticing enough to warrant repeated views to possibly grasp. Even if comprehension is a futile endgame, it is a bold and beautiful work that if anything else is thoroughly unique.
Dir - Matt Duffer/Russ Duffer
Overall: MEH
A year before launching Stranger Things, the Duffer brothers Matt and Russ made their halfway decent full-length debut Hidden. Direct parallels can be drawn from this and John Krasinski's more mainstream accepted A Quiet Place, which is either a good or bad thing depending. Some technical annoyances like an overly rusted color pallet, unnecessarily dark cinematography, shitty CGI, and a mumble-heavy dialog track do get in the way of a rather touching story of a traumatized family trying to protect themselves from a largely unseen menace. The fact that said threat is kept off screen for the majority of the proceedings does achieve two things. One, it lets the audience gain more sympathy for the desperate characters and two, it allows for an increasing amount of tension to be built up throughout a rather prolonged second half. Things are broken up along the way by flashbacks that stir up one too many zombie outbreak motifs seen an abundance of times which unfortunately give it a bit of a derivative quality. Similarly mixed feelings can be garnished from the finish as well which is both twisty and kind of sentimental-grabbing.
Dir - Stephen Cognetti
Overall: MEH
Another found footage outing ruined by justifiable criticisms often attributed to the sub-genre, Hell House LLC is the full-length debut from writer/director Stephen Cognetti who followed it up with two like minded sequels. It would seem that the premise is well equipped enough to justify the plot holes and standard, "stupid people in horror movies doing stupid things because they're in a horror movie" motifs, but sadly this is not the case. While arguing about how dangerous it is to be in the house of the title, numerous unexplained events are clearly caught on camera for the characters to review and they either never think to do so or seem completely unphased by them. The finished documentary presentation which is exponentially more difficult to pull off is understandably a far bigger blunder though. One of the benefits to the sub-genre is the naturalism with raw, unedited footage that is void of any post-production conventionalism. So when you take that bare-bones footage and edit it to smithereens, throw creepy music on it, and add loud sound effects to jump scares, you may as well have just shot it as a normal movie. Also, the interview segments are jarringly poor, not just because of the bad acting and weak dialog, but because even more unexplained things are captured even there which still make it into the final cut for everyone to see. It is worth a few freaky moments, but it is also heavy on the dumb.
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