Saturday, September 25, 2021

2020 Horror Part Six

THE RENTAL
Dir - Dave Franco
Overall: GOOD
 
Actor-turned-director Dave Franco crafted a somewhat textbook though expertly done semi-slasher with his debut The Rental.  Co-scripted in part by fellow actor Joe Swanberg, (The Sacrament, V/H/S, You're Next), the story certainly has its foreseeable beats, but it is also unusually tight.  The minimal cast does admirable work and the dysfunction between each of their characters is believably portrayed.  It is a testament to both the writing and performances that the film manages to stay engaging before things kick into inevitable cat-and-mouse gear, which does not happen until a good ways into the third act.  For his first time behind the lens, Franco maintains an admirably suspenseful tone.  Sinister activity is teased throughout, but never in a pandering way and once it does go full-tilt thriller, it frighteningly delivers that much more as so much time was previously spent authentically building up the circumstances.  A bit nihilistic for some tastes maybe, but there are few faults to be found in its effective execution.

BLOODTHIRSTY
Dir - Amelia Moses
Overall: MEH
 
For her second full-length Bloodthirsty, filmmaker Amelia Moses once again teams up with actor Lauren Beatty, this time in collaboration with fellow Canadian singer/songwriter Lowell Boland who co-wrote the script and provided a handful of songs.  The result is rather clunky in the plot and dialog department to say the least, but the premise itself has some unique details present to off-set its more familiar horror tropes.  Played devoid of apparent humor, the movie could honestly afford to lighten up a bit as things eventually get a bit too absurd to take as seriously as they are presented.  It does not quite work as a whole, but its production aspects are well in place with excellent performances, unassuming cinematography, Boland's convincing music, and a persistently sinister tone.  A tighter script is the missing ingredient to properly elevated it, but its bloody, heavy-handed heart is in the right place at least.
 
LUCKY
Dir - Natasha Kermani
Overall: MEH

Things go oddly awry in director Natasha Kermani and actor/screenwriter Brea Grant's Lucky.  On paper, it is a bold and challenging move to exclusively dwell in social commentary with one's feature, non-documentary film.  Here, the message of women feeling hopelessly threatened by men's most violent, passive aggressive, manipulative, and neglectful attributes manifests itself as a quasi-parody of slasher movies.  The intention to make such themes as persistent as possible is impossible to miss, yet the film becomes detrimentally frustrating in its awkward presentation.  Undeniably surreal, the dialog and performances, (including that of Grant who is perpetually on screen), are so annoyingly unnatural that the (very) unnatural chain of events taking place becomes impossible to come to terms with in a cinematic sense.  Again, this is most likely purposeful, but various moments appear to be going for disturbed laughs while the execution of it all seems so ridiculous at times that virtually no tone whatsoever is maintained.  It could be seen as both a dark satire of simplified feminist empowerment and a simplification of male chauvinism in general, yet it is neither funny nor particularly thought-provoking in its off-putting, borderline pretentious form. 

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