Dir - Romola Garai
Overall: MEH
The debut, directorial effort Amulet from British actor turned filmmaker Romola Garai is an exercise of mood over substance, for better or worse. It is admirable that for a first time behind the lens, Garai tests the audience's patience tremendously, exhibiting a sense of confidence in her material that while ultimately unfulfilling, certainty emphasizes a heavy atmosphere of something dark and disturbing that will eventually let itself be known. While this eventually happens, the trek there is tremendously stagnant and the payoff just seems half-cooked instead of efficiently shrouded in a challenging, macabre sense of ambiguity. On every technical level, it is well put together with strong, somber performances, intimate camerawork, a haunting musical score, and some garish, icky gore which thankfully fails to come off as tasteless for mere shock value's sake. That said, the overblown finale while memorably stunning in some respects, still does not match the rest of the melancholy tone and leaves a psychologically messy aftertaste.
Dir - Emerald Fennell
Overall: GOOD
Emerald Fennell's solid, topical directorial debut Promising Young Woman brings the rape and revenge sub-genre into the #MeToo era with unavoidably dark yet carefully orchestrated humor. Allegedly sold to Margot Robbie's production company LuckyChamp Entertainment merely based on the synopsis of the opening scene, the balancing themes of complacently, victim blaming, self-serving denial, vengeance, and forgiveness surrounding a med school rape are given substantial weight in a quasi rom-com parody framework. What is most impressive though is how Fennell's script stays respectful to these issues even when the tone steers heavily towards the comedic. Whatever jokes are made serve a purpose of highlighting the obvious wrongful acts committed by people who try and regard such atrocities with endless excuses. Carey Mulligan's protagonist encompasses the complexity of it all as logical points can be made to her finding happiness by "moving on", though such a thing is at the cost of justice failing to be served. The casting of known male actors with a public likability to them is a deliberate move to show the dangers that women-targeting atrocities can be committed under heavy guise, but it also showcases the flawed thinking of those very same men who see themselves as "good guys" in the grand scheme of things. An intelligent work that skews several thriller motifs while using others to its well-intended agenda, this is commendable stuff.
Dir - Christopher Smith
Overall: MEH
The latest from British filmmaker Christopher Smith, The Banishing is a predominantly unremarkable haunted house movie that fails to justify itself amongst hordes of other near identical ones. Set in England during the cusp of World War II, things start off pedestrian as a woman, her daughter, and her new Vicar husband all move into an, (of course), creepy, giant house with an, (of course), creepy past. Supernatural stuff occurs almost straight away, stuff that characters refuse to mention to anyone or just shrug off as soon as they are distracted. Such hacky familiarity is bad enough, but the story contrived from David Beton, Ray Bogdanovich, and Dean Lines is surprisingly lackluster despite its multitude of spooky-on-paper details. It certainly takes more this day and age for hooded figures, walking nightmares, scary dolls, cults, and arbitrary, "mirrors do freaky things" gags to come off as anything but painfully derivative without an inventive, engaging narrative behind them. Sadly, this particular movie has no such narrative and despite one or two somewhat freaky shots and decent performances all around, one is likely to forget that they even watched it as soon as the title credits roll.
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