Dir - Patrik Eklund
Overall: MEH
The second full-length from Swedish filmmaker Patrik Eklund, The Conference, (Konferensen), takes the office space horror comedy into the woods. Because so, so, so many slasher movies have been barfed out with an identical structure for over four decades now, one or two differentiating angles are apparently all that it takes to get another one greenlit. Not that Sweden cinema is as immersed with the slasher sub-genre as on the other side of the Atlantic, (or Italy for that matter), but besides the language that everyone speaks, the company retreat via Friday the 13th gimmick, and the gradual reveal that our killer bumbles his way through his murders as often as his schlubby victims get the better of him, this is the same slice and dice nonsense that has been done a billion times. Three of the corporate shill characters are eccentric douchebags, with Adam Lundgren being a more obnoxious villain than a fun one, plus the actual murderer refuses to talk and puts on a big stupid mask that he cannot possibly see out of, let alone have superhuman periphery vision in. Thankfully though, the finale showdown has the least-likely-to-survive minor players step up to the plate and they fend for themselves in a manner that is at least kind of intentionally funny.
SOMEWHERE QUIET
Dir - Olivia West Lloyd
Overall: MEH
Milking the "gaslighting women" cliche for all that it is worth, writer/director Olivia West Lloyd's Somewhere Quiet is the sixth horror film in a row to feature Marin Ireland and the second from 2023 where she ends up tied to a banister in a basement. Lloyd intentionally explores a post-final girl scenario where a woman tries to adjust to some semblance of normalcy after getting kidnapped, yet she bashes the idea that nothing is as it seems to the point of, (likely), deliberate frustration. Jennifer Kim is sufficient in the lead, coming across like a helplessly broken woman who painfully begins to realize that trust is no longer an option for her to bestow on anyone, least of all her husband who is either doing his best and feeling the weight of his partner's trauma or was behind that trauma the entire time. While it is not refreshing that Lloyd provides no answers, she also does not stage this as a hackneyed tale of a woman overcoming her PSD to face the world with newfound optimism and this gives the movie a grim edge over what it could have been under a more digestible framework. Still too unpleasant and nebulous to enjoy, but it captures a type of inescapable hopelessness that few films have the determination to stick with.
Dir - Takashi Yamazaki
Overall: GOOD
Seventy years and gallons of entries in, Toho's Godzilla franchise achieved its most lauded spectacle with Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One, (Gojira Mainasu Wan); yet another reboot that became the most globally appreciated perhaps in the series' history. No small feat for the title monster that will never die and this installment while imperfect still mitigates many of the given flaws in kaiju movies. Godzilla has a minimal amount of screen time yet again but Yamazaki's attempt to actually make him terrifying for once actually pays off, particularly in his first ocean appearance which is arguably the most nail-biting sequence that the series ever produced. The choice to focus the narrative on a single ex-kamikaze pilot just after Japan's rehabilitation from World War II is a stellar move, not just because it bypasses the lazy and boring concept of military people and scientist trying to concoct one failure of a Godzilla-killing plan after the other, but because Ryunosuke Kamiki's antagonist is beautifully compelling. Yamazaki's script dips too much into Spielbergian syrup in its closing act where every side character and previous set-up gets delivered with a popcorn-munching roar of approval, but even with its cornball sentimentality in tow, the themes of post-war trauma and the relentless sacrifice and suffering endured from the Japanese perspective is something that no other Godzilla movie has delved into so deeply.
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