Dir - Ivan Kavanagh
Overall: GOOD
Another solid genre offering from Irish filmmaker Ivan Kavanagh, Son treks through very psychologically dark terrain while managing to offer up some disturbed surprises. Tonally, things play out very straight as the story mainly focuses on a woman's emotional downfall as she is trying to care for her ill son while simultaneously venturing back to a diabolical past that she had only until recently been able to leave behind. The old "woman that everyone thinks is insane" trope usually gets old before it can even get off the ground, yet even as it becomes more abundantly clear which direction things are and have been heading here, Kavanagh successfully plays such a card while balancing between supernatural nastiness and emotionally ravished trauma. Occasionally, some of the performances fail to land and/or come off as too melodramatic for such a dour presentation, but Andi Matichak carries things through well enough in the lead at least. Though it is tricky to throw some humorous elements into something with such heady, occult subject matter, said humor dashes are handled appropriately to allow the audience one or two, (probably). necessary chuckles along the way.
Dir - Pierre Tsigaridis
Overall: WOOF
Easily one of the worst horror films in many years, Pierre Tsigaridis's debut Two Witches is an incessant bombardment of baffling tonal issues, ridiculous plotting, and only the most hacky tropes that the genre has to offer. The glaringly broadcasted, loud jump scares are criminal in their abundance and apparently Tsigaridis is six years old in thinking that quick shots of wide-eyed women either smiling, mumbling, or opening their mouths are really creepy. Narratively, it is structured like two different movies with half of their scenes missing and the script by Tsigaridis, producer Maxime Rancon, and actor Kristina Klebe embarrassingly jumbles head-scratching schlock with ambiguity. It would be impossible to believe that something so relentlessly stupid was not intended to be a comedy, but the tripe presentation is so insulting and confused in its agenda that all of the intended humor evaporates right into the ether since it is made abundantly impossible to care about anything happening at any time. This is the type of anger-inducing trainwreck that most sane viewers will turn off within the first nine-minutes while the rest of us gluttons for punishment will finish the whole thing while cursing the fact that the medium of cinema exists in the first place.
Dir - Gigi Saul Guerrero
Overall: MEH
The debut from Mexican/Canadian filmmaker Gigi Saul Guerrero and the fifth installment in the Welcome to Blumhouse series, Bingo Hell has some heart and chuckles, yet it eventually turns into a barrage of simple-minded schlock. Predominantly headed by a multi-racial, senior citizen cast, Guerrero and fellow screenwriters Shane McKenzie and Perry Blackshear use a knowingly silly premise for laughs, a premise of a flashy bingo hall run by, (probably), Satan to feast off of the desperation and disappointment of a downtrodden community. The "we are all a family" themes are pretty pedestrian and rev up to a hokey finale, but until it becomes a borderline embarrassing series of old people delivering cliche one-liners while curb stomping Richard Brake's over the top creepy bad guy, there are some sticky, neon-colored fun to be had. Visually it is quite fetching in its quirkiness, playing with some demented, eye-popping moments that keep the violent yet heart string-pulling tone very much on the comedic side. Most of the humor stems from the committed performances who make for a fun group of elderly badasses cracking endless jokes on each other, with the "Batman and Robin" duo of Adriana Barraza and L. Scott Caldwell particularly standing out. Likeable to an extent, it shows some promise for Guerrero to deliver some flashy full-lengths in the future and judging by her body of work so far as well as her appearance in In Search of Darkness: Part III, it also seems likely that she will stick with horror.
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