Dir - Christian Tafdrup
Overall: WOOF
The third full-length from Danish actor-turned director Christian Tafdrup, Speak No Evil suffers from an aggravating, implausible script and unnecessary unpleasantness, so much so that its admirable technical qualities fail to redeem it. Written by Tafdrup and his brother Mads, the plotting unfortunately resolves around an increasing number of glaring red flag to emerge that keep the characters in place so the movie does not logically end after the first or second act at best. It is even worse though that it all builds up to a predictable, obnoxiously miserable conclusion where the villain's eye-brow raising behavior is both pointless and stupid, only serving some sort of insultingly vague critique on middle class social niceties. The artful, mostly reserved approach ultimately shows an atrocious side of humanity for the mere shocking sake of it, begging the audience to care about something that is as far from thought-proving as it is tolerable. Each of the four adults are given some emotionally revealing moments though and the small cast deliver strong performances despite the material's inherent flaws. So for anyone who wants their night ruined just because why not, knock yourself out.
Dir - Ti West
Overall: GOOD
Aside from the director-for-hire gig Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, Pearl is the first of Ti West's films to utilize a different screenwriter besides himself and perhaps unsurprisingly because of this, it in effect becomes his first fully realized and downright exemplary work. Shot in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic and immediately following principal photography on X, this prequel to said movie finds Mia Goth reprising her role as the youthful version of the title character; a highly troubled farm girl with big Hollywood dreams and emotionally unsupportive parents. West's stylized direction here presents things at times like a demented Technicolor, Golden Age throwback and feeds into his career-long penchant for propping up genre cinema in a knowingly tongue-in-cheek fashion. His other trademark for well-executed suspense sequences is also thankfully on point, with his usual script blunders presumably sidestepped by Goth's involvement in the writing, which is a wonderful sigh of relief for those of us who have grown aggravated with various narrative faux pases in his films. Truly though, the movie belongs to Goth who delivers arguably one of the finest performances of the year. Her vibrant, determined demeanor for stardom comes with a constant caveat of the confused, rageful, and insufferable loneliness which she exhibits on screen by being simultaneously terrifying and sympathetic like only the best, most complex movie villains are.
Dir - Parker Finn
Overall: MEH
Highly formulaic yet occasionally freaky, Parker Finn's full-length debut Smile takes a primal, unsettling motif and several of horror's generic dramatic concepts to make something that is above average for popcorn munching schlock yet also something that should by no means be taken too seriously. The film is an expansion of Finn's own short Laura Hasn't Slept with Caitlin Stasey briefly reprising her role as a wildly distraught woman at a breaking point after relentlessly experiencing supernatural episodes that are hopelessly destined to pass on from witness to witness. As the main protagonist, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick's daughter Sosie excellently portrays a sense of cranked-up anxiety, distraction, and desperation brought on by the film's boogey man. Finn's script is anything but original and sticks very much to a point A to point B mystery where no one believes the main character, yet its common themes of bypassed trauma at least make said character's behavior, motivation, and rationalizing wholly believable, which is refreshing for a change. What is not refreshing is a ridiculous amount of jump scares and a loud, digital effects finale that is detrimentally out of place for the often trippy/occasionally creepy, slow boil atmosphere that came before it. The flaws are undeniable and many may find that it implodes under its increasingly campy attributes, but it pulls off a few nifty tricks and has some intelligence sprinkled in for good, respectable measure.
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