Dir - Daniel Myrick
Overall: MEH
Overall: MEH
After an eleven year break, Daniel Myrick, (half of The Blair Witch Project's creative team), returns with Skyman; a mockumentary styled UFO film that takes a sincere approach to its subject matter while only particularly justifying its found footage style. On the one hand, it is difficult to image the movie as being presented conventionally since the story revolves around a man who has a film crew follow him around as he attempts to reunite with extraterrestrial beings that he met thirty years earlier on his birthday. Remove the documentarians and much of the information would have to be explained via distracting expository dialog, though the fly on the wall intimacy could probably still be maintained with standard, handheld camera work. In either event, the casting of unknowns brings a level of authenticity to everything and the performances are fittingly natural. This helps make each character likeable and the inherent theme far more compelling of a startling childhood episode and troubled family dynamic shaping one's adulthood in an obsessive was. The alien encounter specifics are not very important, but that is also a problem since the entire movie then builds to an unsatisfying climax that leaves too little on the viewer's plate to truly dive into.
Dir - Jeremy Gardner/Christian Stella
Overall: GOOD
The second collaboration between filmmaking duo Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella, (with another such duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead serving as producers), After Midnight hits its themes rather on the head; themes of a troubled, well-meaning man struggling with his own relationship "monsters". Thankfully though, there is a lot of emotional weight that is both genuine and amusing. Taking place in a backwoods Florida town and dealing with two likeable people hitting a wall in their ten-year romance, it has various hallmarks of a typical breakup movie where half of the couple takes a sabbatical and the other half is left to relive happier days via flashbacks while wallowing in self pity and alcohol. Gardner's script throws a strange, otherworldly curve ball into the formula though which would serve as a bit too obvious of a metaphor if not for the fact that it is all grounded by excellent performances and a quirky tone that sprinkles its humor around without becoming overbearing. Stylistic choices such as a barrage of indie pop/folk/country songs and incidental music do become somewhat annoying to a point, yet the most important moments are given room to breathe, including a fantastic, very long take of Gardner's protagonist patiently taking in Brea Grant's grievances.
Dir - Hideo Nakata
Overall: MEH
Returning to the franchise that put him on the J-horror map, Sadako is director Hideo Nakata's first entry in the Ring franchise since 2005's American remake The Ring Two. Stepping away from the cursed video tape angle and ushering the story line into the modern, YouTube personality age, one could see the obvious narrative aspects that are bypassed as either a clever subversion of expectations or a missed opportunity. So no, the long-haired, title ghost does not come out of laptop screens or cellular devices after her cursed video goes viral, but what does transpire still manages to come off as a mangled mess that rehashes some of the same information without delivering any unique scares. A big thing that is missing this far into the series is any source of mystery, yet the story still plays out as if the characters need to get the the bottom of something. Such a tactic would be fine if there was a less conventionally chilling atmosphere maintained, genuine surprises, or engaging characters to root for. None of these things are the case though which makes it all a slog to sit through. Worse yet, when Nakata does bust out the spook-show set pieces, they not only seem to abandon most of the previous rules that were established, but also come off as silly since they rely largely on wide-eyed jolts and revved-up scary music that recalls dozens upon dozens of similar movies that were directly inspired by the initial Ring movies in the first place.
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