Dir - Amat Escalante
Overall: MEHA curious, Mexican hybrid of Coen brothers styled, awkward violence and Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 landmark Possession, The Untamed, (La región salvaje), takes some bold chances with its opaque narrative. The horror elements are so underplayed as to become bizarre, at least compared to the central drama between a married couple dealing with all manner of dysfunction. Because there is no concise explanation as to the otherworldly presence or how it seems to be inconsistently affecting the lives of those who come across it, (and the fact that we are barely given an inkling to its existence until well into the film), it becomes difficult to understand what exactly writer/director Amat Escalante was going for by making this a genre film in the first place. It certainly deals with repressed, sexual frustration, but it would be cynical to think that the entire thing merely points to people doing questionable things just in order to fulfill carnal desires once given the opportunity. The movie deserves props for its unorthodox approach and the nuanced way that its troubling subject matter is handled, but it is also a bit too nebulous in certain eras to make its intended point, whatever that may be.
Dir - Dan Trachtenberg
Overall: GOOD
A tight, popcorn sci-fi horror film pigeonholed into the Cloverfield "series", 10 Cloverfield Lane works its low key thriller aspects well; thriller aspects which take up nearly ninety-five percent of the running time. Originally penned by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken as a spec script under the title "The Cellar", J.J. Abrams production company Bad Robot retooled it with screenwriter Damien Chazelle presumably as a marketing ploy to garnish significantly larger interest. Whatever the tactics, the results play off of audience's expectations while conventionally focusing on a single, claustrophobic setting where gradual layers are exposed to wrack up the tension. John Goodman does his usual stellar work as a bomb sheltered conspiracy theorist who persistently seems up to no good while simultaneously being a literal life saver, and the script weaves in numerous setups and payoffs that keep things on a steady, suspense-laden incline. People may have mixed feelings about the final set piece which was either always part of the plan or awkwardly tacked on to make good on the franchise connection, but it does throw a bit of a yawn-inducing, final punctuation to an otherwise gripping presentation. There is no rule breaking present here, but it is slick and intimate in the best possible way that genre movies with some studio backing can be.
Dir - Jiri Sádek/Matej Chlupacek/Michal Samir
Overall: MEH
A collaboration between filmmakers Jiri Sádek, Matej Chlupacek, and Michal Samir, the Czech folk horror drama The Noonday Witch, (Polednice), is unfortunately stagnant despite its sincere approach. From a technical perspective, all aspects are on point; Alexander Surkala's cinematography intimately captures the remote countryside during a particularly warm summer, Ben Corrigan's music is never overbearing, there are minimal to no overused genre tropes present, and the performances are strong with both Anna Geislerová and ten year-old Karolína Lipowská in particular making an emotionally sympathetic mother/daughter team going through a recent trauma. The problem lies entirely with the narrative then. Though based on a 19th century poem by Antonín Dvořák, its presentation here is never handled with any convincing menace or majesty. In fact hardly anything of any supernatural merit transpires at all until the very end when it becomes rather clear cut that what is happening is of a psychological nature. Before that, we are given too little information to relate to the characters and their plight, plus cryptic warnings by a local, wacky old lady are never investigated or taken seriously until they just randomly are with no proper build up. Something got lost along the way here to examine a mother's newfound hardships in raising her daughter as a single parent through some of the inherent metaphors or moral teachings of folkloric superstitions. Instead, we just get an aimless, underwritten series of events that is presented far more profoundly than it comes across.
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