2023 Horror Part Five

BROOKLYN 45

Dir - Ted Geoghegan

Overall: GOOD

 

Film publicist-turned-director Ted Geoghegan's Brooklyn 45 is another in a continuous stream of horror movies and an impressive yet imperfect one at that.  A period piece dealing with the complex PTSD suffered by the men, women, and bystanders following the end of the second World War, Geoghegan collaborated on the project with his own father who was a disabled Air Force veteran and history teacher.  Staged almost exclusively in a single room, it recalls famous teleplays Glengarry Glen Ross and 12 Angry Men, both of which became legendary cinematic works in their own right.  This comes down to the copious amounts of tasty dialog and a limited ensemble of layered characters whose desperation with their dramatic, (and in this case, otherworldly), plight steadily heightens the intensity where more and more personal and traumatic truths are revealed.  While it remains riveting, the minimalist plot and some of the wordy monologues do get repetitive.  Geoghegan's screenplay does a fine job in deeply fleshing-out its flawed characters, but Ezra Buzzington's Major is too unwavering in his bigotry to stomach, even if this is likely intentional.  Besides its inventive premise and some fancy, spookshow window dressing that is conservatively scattered about, the film is a triumph as far as its performances go, with the small crop of character actors bringing their A-game to a solid B-movie.

 

COBWEB

Dir - Samuel Bodin

Overall: WOOF

 

The first full-length from director Samuel Bodin and follow-up to his 2019 miniseries Marianne, Cobweb is insultingly derivative both in its script and execution.  From its opening moments, Bodin adheres to a muted color pallet and a subdued atmosphere that fails to generate any tension or chills due to its cut-and-paste nature from virtually every contemporary film in the genre.  Chris Thomas Devlin's script was included on the 2018 Black List and it would seem as if he was pulling a prank on people who have already sat through gallons of movies with old, creaky houses that look seven times larger on the inside than on the outside, a "thing inside the wall" premise, scumbag parents with a dark secret, a stoic/friendless kid with no friends who gets picked on by a bully that no adult anywhere does anything about, said friendless kid being condescended to by his parents for his overactive imagination, and plot hole-ridden set pieces one after the other.  Though Bodin only seldom utilizes a heightened, surreal sense of style to emphasis the children's point of view, (ala Bob Balaban's superb Parents), he mostly presents everything in a deadly straight, humorless manner that seems to want the audience to take some of its child abuse themes seriously, even with a schlocky finale that just leaves a big stupid mess to shake your head in annoyance at.

 

THE PASSENGER

Dir - Carter Smith

Overall: GOOD

An occasionally brutal, metaphorical thriller and the latest from director Carter Smith, The Passenger is one of several 2023 films to feature a lead performance from actor Kyle Gallner who goes on an unhinged, impulsive killing spree of sorts while forcing his cripplingly sheepish coworker Johnny Berchtold to tag along and face his own psychological blocks.  The duality between antagonist and protagonist is the driving force here where each is an exaggerated opposite of each other, both bonded by separate childhood traumas that have snowballed into a barrage of pent-up aggression and introversion, respectively.  Some of these elements are made explicit while others are suggested, giving the story some dynamics that fuel the audience's investment.  Gallner and Berchtold's well-matched and occasionally showy performances also help.  The violence is sporadic yet brutal and shocking when it appears, particularly in the first act which breaks up an awkwardly uncomfortable scenario and sets off the narrative's chain of events.  Though not as minimalist or gay-centric as Smith's Swallowed from the previous year, there is still such a subtext present and the noticeably small budget works for the dingy, small-town setting where synchronicity and chance can logically line up in each character's parallel undertaking.