2024 Horror Part Twelve

HERETIC
Dir - Scott Beck/Bryan Woods
Overall: MEH

 

There is a stink, (Perhaps blueberry scented?), to the latest genre excursion Heretic from the writer/director team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, another theological thriller where the nature of faith and/or the lack thereof is endlessly pontificated upon.  As the characters themselves point out, culture continues to turn its back on religion, especially in the age of information where it is not only unhip to believe in a higher power, but also impractical.  Sadly, nothing profound is either discussed or discovered here since the movie has a conventional enough framework to merely offer up another lunatic who kidnaps people with a cartoonishly elaborate plan that dooms everyone on screen except for the obligatory final girl.  That said, there are several agreeable touches to the film.  Famed South Korean cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon pulls off some flashy moves, even if his setting has a type of textbook creepiness full windows that are too small to escape from, apocalyptic rain storms, rustic decor, timeworn books, and wet, dark, and stony basements that lead to even more wet, dark and stony basements.  By channeling his trademark stuttering charm, Hugh Grant proves ideally suited to be a sinister presence, with a calm demeanor and perpetual politeness that leads the hapless Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East to his nihilistic thesis.  The third act loses its momentum with revelations that unnecessarily confuse things, but Beck and Woods stage some tense moments and give their excellent actors plenty to do up until then.

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS
Dir - Alice Maio Mackay
Overall: MEH

 

Another neon-colored and admirable DIY genre work for Australian indie filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, Carnage for Christmas sees her throwing her hat in the holiday horror ring, an over-saturated sub-genre with an egregious amount of killer Santa movies amongst its heard.  In some respects, Mackay's film follows the bog-standard trajectory, where our main protagonist returns home for the holidays, only to find a string of murders being committed by a guy in a jolly ole Saint Nick suit that eerily resemble another string of killings that happened decades earlier.  It is in the details though that the movie differentiates itself.  Jeremy Moineau is a true crime podcaster and ergo the perfect person to be caught up in a small town murder spree.  She does indeed solve the mystery and has a cocksure attitude that is finely-tuned after having to deal with a lifelong string of discrimination amongst herself and her social circle.  This is because Mackay's films deal with the queer community, and the struggle that is faced by her trans protagonists is one that is persistently done in an empathetic and respectful manner, never painting everyone as mere victims who are helpless against the oppressive outside world.  The case is no different here, and it is easy to champion her movies not just for their unique point of view, but also because they are stylized, fun, and deliver the type of R-rated pizazz that genre hounds gravitate towards.  Sadly, the story here is persistently weak and bares too many hallmarks that Mackay has better explored before, but it is still something that is impossible to hate.

 

BLACK EYED SUSAN
Dir - Scooter McCrae
Overall: MEH

 

The latest from writer/director Scooter McCrae, Black Eyed Susan has a deliberately provocative agenda, yet it is undermined by embarrassing Skinimax production values and the type of stiff acting and cringe-worthy dialog that is found in such movies.  To be fair, the performances are more uneven than uniformly lousy.  Marc Romeo is terrible in all of his scenes, Damien Maffei is terrible in half of them, and newcomer Yvonne Emilie Thälker, (a dead ringer for Angela Bettis), is good in all of hers, which is fitting since such wooden enunciation and mannerisms actually work in her case, considering that she is playing a fully-functional sex robot.  There lies the crust of the story, which explores the darker aspects of AI technology, which in this case is being utilized to provide the most realistic punching bags for the most sadistic of clients.  It gets even more icky than that in the final act "twist", but through and through, the film has a bottom-barrel aesthetic that never gels.  Soft piano music plays uninterpreted throughout the whole thing, it is dialog heavy which showcases the bumpy acting, and we even get some wretched CGI fire in one scene.  If looked at as a full-length episode of Red Shoe Diaries meets The Outer Limits, then it can be seen as something that gives the ole college try at being provoking with its disturbing themes.  But in 2024 and up against so many other also independent and minimally-budgeted genre films, it is noticeably cheap and awkward and ergo must be evaluated on such a level.

2024 Horror Part Eleven

SMILE 2
Dir - Parker Finn
Overall: MEH

 

Writer/director Parker Finn returns to the Smileverse with Smile 2, a sequel that has enough conceptual juice to justify its existence, a knock-out lead performance by Naomi Scott, some inventive set pieces, and is an overall better movie than the one that came before it.  That said, it also suffers from the same problems as the first Smile, namely too many jump scares, (all of which are obvious, as jump scares inherently are), willy-nilly adherence to its own supernatural rules, and a sloppy ending.  The story once again follows a young woman who is increasingly plagued by hallucinatory episodes of people grinning at her, (amongst other things), that drive her to the point of full-blown madness, but the culprit this time is an already overwhelmed pop star, throwing in a differentiating layer to just more ambiguous demonic mayhem for ambiguous demonic mayhem's sake.  By being such an prominent celebrity, Scott's protagonist has only the most desperate avenues to turn to when her world is turned upside down, and the burden of everyone demanding her attention and professionalism to launch a comeback is something that successfully ups the ante for a movie that otherwise sticks to its creepy trajectory.  Finn seems to have written himself into a corner though since the topsy-turvy nature of the material has to escalate to such proportions that it becomes unavoidably messy, meaningless, and even silly.  Still, Scott handles the assignment wonderfully and Finn shows successful restraint here and there, just not as much as would be agreeable.

FRANKIE FREAKO
Dir - Steven Kostanski
Overall: WOOF

 

For people who hate comedy, the latest abomination from throwback filmmaker Steven Kostanski may be your favorite movie ever made.  Frankie Freako comes after such desperate-from-each-other outings as Psycho Goreman, The Void, and The Editor, and it fails right out of the bat with a "Huh?" premise that is the antithesis of funny.  Things only get more and more off the rails from there, and when your jumping off point is so flimsy and head-scratching, an uphill trajectory is set.  This is to say that the movie is relentlessly juvenile and in-your-face, trying to nail gag after gag that treat the audience as stupidity as it does its characters, scenario, and premise.  Kostanski is going for Gremlins, (or more accurately, The Garbage Pale Kids Movie), high jinks where it is supposed to be amusing in and of itself that tiny puppets cause endless mayhem.  Yet in order for this to work, everyone on screen has to behave as if they are mentally ill cartoon characters, as much if not more so than the cheap puppet monsters running around farting, cackling, and wanting to party.  There is nothing worse than an endless series of not-at-all-funny scenes that have a purposely tacky yet bombastic tone to them, setting up nyuck nyucks as if they are clever in-jokes or are so outrageous that any audience will just bask in their, well, outrageousness.  Instead, this is just an eighty-five minute, insufferably annoying trainwreck.

THE SOUL EATER
Dir - Alexandre Bustillo/Julien Maury
Overall: MEH

 

For their seventh full length The Soul Eater, (Le mangeur d'âmes), French director team Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury collaborate with outside screenwriters for the first time, (newcomers Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre, and Alexis Laipsker, respectfully), on a relentlessly dour and lifeless police procedural with equally subpar supernatural elements.  We have bodies being discovered that are mysteriously mutilated, a traumatized kid that speaks cryptically of a boogeyman, and two detectives that arrive on the case who have the personalities of dead fish.  What they uncover is plenty disturbing and ventures into the realm of the abduction and torture of minors, so it is no surprise that not one second of screen time is dedicated to anything within miles of humor.  As is always the case with anything in the New French Extremity movement though, (which some of Bustillo and Maury's past works indulged in more than others, this one qualifying as far as subject matter goes), the question is begged as to who a movie like this is for.  It is a miserable watch, performed by actors who seem like they would rather be anywhere else in the world than on screen under such conditions, and the puzzling thing is that this is fitting for the type of film that they are in.  It presents a dark and unforgiving world where evil festers, horrible things happen, and no one is remotely happy.  A few jump scares and creepy pagan masks hardly provide enough to either distinguish it from the herd or justify it as a worthwhile excursion.

2024 Horror Part Ten

THE DEVIL'S BATH

Dir - Veronika Franz/Severin Fiala

Overall: MEH

 

Sadly, the latest from Austrian duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala strives for and achieves the type of unflinching destitute that ends up being vapid in its noble attempts at period accuracy.  Set in early 18th century Germany, it deals with the common "suicide by proxy" practice at the time where mostly women would murder mostly children in order to be publicly executed after achieving the type of forgiveness that taking one's own life outright could never allow.  It is based directly on researcher Kathy Stuart's book Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation, and the filmmakers here have crafted a bleak and convincing aesthetic that offers no hope of blissful existence for those who are emotionally tormented by such an environment.  Anja Plaschg turns in a brutalized performance for such an austere protagonist that is either ignored or ridiculed by the few people in her life who are going through their days in just as thankless of a manner, yet are at least able to endure.  Franz and Fiala provide an authentic fly on the wall look into a bygone era of impoverished Eastern European peasant life, but what if anything else they were going for besides such miserableness is left impenetrable.

 

MADS

Dir - David Moreau

Overall: GOOD

 

A one-take gimmick movie from French filmmaker David Moreau, MadS pulls-off a gradual upclimb of chaotic suspense, even if it may prove to be nothing more than yet another slight tweak on the viral outbreak formula.  Starting in a remote house where Milton Riche scores some cocaine to take to a party later that night, it ends up following a linear trajectory through three different characters, one at a time and each of which come in contact with something that makes their eyes glow silver, removes their ability to speak, attracts them to bright lights, makes them twitch uncontrollably, causes mood swings galore, and ultimately results in uncontrollably bouts of rampaging violence.  Moreau's plot has a foreseeable apocalyptic outcome, but the details are difficult to predict, plus we are wisely left in the dark just as our increasingly confused and terrified protagonists are.  From a technical perspective, it is of course an impressive achievement since any cut cheats, (if there in fact are such things), are cleverly disguised, plus the intricate choreography throughout various outdoor and indoor locations, roads, and city blocks shows a tight attention to detail that only intensifies an already intense story.  What the world does not need is another goddamn zombie movie, but if we are going to get one anyway, at least Moreau has found an enticing avenue to go down in delivering the goods.

 

ALIEN: ROMULUS
Dir - Fede Álvarez
Overall: MEH

The first entry into the Alien franchise post-Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Alien: Romulus is member berry schlock that is at least done on an admirable scale.  This is a frustrating legacy sequel that seems ever-burdened by its predecessors, as if the ghosts of Alien past, (cough, Disney studio executives, cough), are breathing down the creative personnel at all times.  Set in between Ridley Scott's initial film and James Cameron's blockbuster follow-up, we are introduced to some young working class minors who are stuck in dead-end servitude to the always evil Weyland-Yutani company as they hatch a plan to escape that everyone watching not only knows will go wrong, but also knows exactly in what ways it will go wrong.  From a production standpoint, director Fede Álvarez and his team do exceptional work.  The sets are wonderfully lived-in and detailed, there is a large abundance of practical effects that modern A-movies rarely allow, and a conventional yet effective tone of mounting dread is maintained even when things become egregiously lazy.  Some may consider the script by Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues to be refreshing in its simplicity, (especially coming after Scott's pretentious prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant), but most of these characters are so clearly doomed and/or merely retreads of other ones from the series that the film never earns our investment.  Disney has clearly learned nothing since Rogue One, so we get yet more insulting deepfake rendering, famous dialog callbacks, and pointless Easter eggs that turn a good looking yet bland film into something more heinous and stupid.

2024 Horror Part Nine

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE
Dir - Michael Sarnoski
Overall: MEH

Many a franchise can spring forth from a terrible initial film and this is more the case in horror than with any other genre.  A Quiet Place: Day One is the latest in John Krasinski's series of movies that that pit the last remnants of society against an extraterrestrial race that sometimes come attacking at the slightest whisper and other times ignore much louder noises, depending on what the screenplay needs to happen.  In most respects, this prequel is a "same shtick, different movie" scenario, with more flimsy logic, nail-biting set pieces, and nuanced character-building moments sharing screen time with each other.  So in other words, it is bound to both please and frustrate those who either hated or loved Krasinski's original since three movies deep now, it strictly banks on familiarity.  The immediate trauma bond that our two main characters Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn undergo has enough heart-string-pulling glue to keep things together, which is helped by both actor's fine performances.  As before though, it is the egregiously stupid details that break things down, plus a lazy structure that offers nothing new to ponder.  It does everything that it is supposed to do and professionally at that, but what it is supposed to do is pointless at best.

 

NOSFERATU

Dir - Robert Eggers

Overall: MEH

It was inevitable that writer/director Robert Eggers would some day stumble in his otherwise consistently stellar oeuvre, and the long-awaited Nosferatu is his first frustrating exercise that misses the mark.  Originally announced as the follow-up to The Witch, (a movie so good that even if he only managed to churn out embarrassments afterward, such blunders would be forever forgiven), it instead arrives as his first unmitigated return to supernatural horror after two other films that were strikingly and effectively different than his auspicious debut.  One could never accuse Eggers and his well-suited crew of phoning it in, as the movie is suffocating with deliberate style and respectful adherence to a century's worth of vampire yarns, aside from the two other stellar Nosferatu interpretations that have come before, (F.W. Murnau's silent original and Werner Herzog's arthouse version from 1979, respectfully).  The problem is that Eggers' evokes more of a Bram Stoker's Dracula via Tim Burton vibe here, which is a polite way to say "unintentional schlock".  The sound design is atrocious, with ear-splitting volume swells arriving in insulting number and often times within seconds of each other, an equally bombastic musical score, and Egger's usual penchant for grandiose dialog is hit and miss in its tone-maintaining effectiveness.  Many moments simply come off as silly, (the aforementioned jump scare-adjacent tactics, bouts of absurd character behavior that spring up out of nowhere without proper context, scenery-chewing from nearly every actor, Bill Skarsgård's mustache, etc), and it is a shame that a project which was redundant by its very design, (as well as done by a filmmaker who has steadily proven himself to be a master of his craft), comes off as more of a mess than a justifiable and visionary re-imagining.

 

PRESENCE
Dir - Steven Soderbergh
Overall: MEH

 

For his first horror work since 2008's Unsane which was shot entirely on cell phones, director Steven Soderbergh utilizes a different gimmick, this time filming an entire movie from a first-person perspective.  It is a nifty angle to take when tackling something in the supernatural vein, and in this respects, Presence bares similarities to David Lowery's awful A Ghost Story except thankfully not awful.  The set up is one that has been done a billion times where a family moves into a new house that is too good to be true, only to come in contact with an otherworldly "presence".  Poltergeist activity takes place, one of the two teenage kids proves more sensitive to the ghostly goings-ons, a kind-of psychic lady makes a visit, and it has a gasp-worthy reveal that is far-fetched in those types of reveals that movie scripts love to have.  Screenwriter David Koepp is no stranger to churning out popcorn fare and has himself gotten behind the lens on a few supernatural thrillers, (most of which are not any good), so if there is one complaint that can be leveled at the end result here, it is in the script department.  That said, the small cast make the material seem better than it is, especially when it comes to moments that shine a subtle to blatant light on the family's growing dysfunction.  As far as frightening elements are concerned, there are zero present, but the viewpoint shift is the main attraction for anyone looking for a differentiating angle on a haunted house movie.

2024 Horror Part Eight

DADDY'S HEAD

Dir - Benjamin Barfoot

Overall: GOOD

 

British filmmaker Benjamin Barfoot's sophomore full-length Daddy's Head is one of many to deal with the psychological turmoil suffered by those whose beloved dead ones leave them behind.  In this case, it is a young boy's father that checks out after a brutal car accident, unintentionally sticking him with his well-intended yet also traumatized step mother who has never been able to connect with her stepson and now questions if she wants such a responsibility when in reality, neither of them are on board with it.  This provides Barfoot's script with a messy and relatable conundrum to spring from, and the weight of it is handled expertly by actors Rupert Turnbull and Julia Brown.  Thankfully though, the film also excels with its scare tactics.  Barfoot utilizes a low-key yet relentlessly ominous approach, keeping the already subdued musical score at bay and trusting some freaky visuals to work their magic without the use of excessive jump scares or hackneyed tropes left and right.  That said, there is still a sense of arbitrary logic to the behavior of the mysterious menace that Turnbull and Brown face, but the story wisely keeps the specifics nebulous and never breaks into unintentional schlock or heavy-handed sentimentality.  Instead, this is both grounded and otherworldly and that much more unsettling because of it.

 

DANCING VILLAGE: THE CURSE BEGINS

Dir - Kimo Stamboel

Overall: MEH

 

The latest from another one of Indonesia's current horror trailblazer's Kimo Stamboel, Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, (Badarawuhi di Desa Penari), also serves as a prequel to Awi Suryadi's 2022 film KKN di Desa Penari and is allegedly the first movie from the country to be shot in IMAX.  Given a wider release after the box office success of the previous installment, this one is at least comparatively shorter and manages to keep the pace up due to enough sinister moments inching things along.  Stamboel maintains a tone that is void of humor, and the only tenderness comes when young women are wailing away at the suffrage of their mothers, two of whom are caught up in some kind of supernatural illness brought on by the franchise's sinister dance trope demon lady.  There is some gnarly make-up on these unfortunate birth-givers as well as several deformed ghosts, (plus we get one sequence where a skinned monkey is uncovered), but most of the emphasis is on a relentlessly ominous mood as opposed to gore-ridden set pieces.  Prequels are inherently an unnecessary burden on movie-goers, but this one stands well enough on its own to not only follow, but to also get soaked up in its malevolent atmosphere, even if there is not much meat to the story and it could still afford to shave off twenty or so minutes.

 

THE SUBSTANCE
Dir - Coralie Fargeat
Overall: GOOD

For her sophomore full-length The Substance, filmmaker Coraline Fargeat goes full-on body horror, crafting something that is as demented as it is disgusting as it is ambitious.  Shot in a France which stands-in for good ole seedy LA, and running nearly two and half hours, the excessive length slowly builds itself up to a fevered pitch where the adoration of youth and celebrity becomes literally monstrous.  Wisely, Fargeat maintains a tongue-in-cheek tone since the premise itself is ridiculous, and the way that it unfolds only becomes more exaggerated to the point where any fans of Brian Yuzna's Society, Peter Jackson's Braindead, or anything that David Cronenberg has ever made will be standing up and applauding.  Several other famous cinematic works are referenced along the way, and Fargeat and her team have crafted something that is eye-catching in every frame, even when the things that are in that frame are cartoonishly repugnant, (cue Dennis Quad's hilariously awful TV producer sleazebag shoving shrimp in his mouth like a cave troll).  The dual performances of Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore are pitch-perfect as two women who forget that they "are one" along their quest for perpetual juvenescence, and it is a wise move that Fargeat chooses to paint them with such broad strokes.  This crystalizes the movie's superficial theme where outward appearances are everything when it comes to showbiz, and if the positive reinforcement game has not sucked one dry of humanity, then the desperation to perpetuate it sure as hell will.

2024 Horror Part Seven

AZRAEL
Dir - E.L. Katz
Overall: WOOF
 
Eleven years after his debut, (with plenty of steady genre work in between), director E.L. Katz delivers his sophomore full-length Azrael, which doubles as yet another film that continues the not good trajectory of screenwriter Simon Barrett.  Shot in Estonia because movies are expensive yo, this largely stays on the side of insulting.  A gimmick movie where every character, (sans a brief cameo), does not talk, but worry not, even though they all belong to some wacko cult who apparently remove their own vocal cords, they can still yelp and make noise when in a kerfuffle.  Speaking of which, Samara Weaving repeatedly gets the absolute ever-loving shit beaten out of her, clocked in the head by guns, fists, and a cast iron pan, gets in a head-on collision with no seat belt, has a gun fired right next to her ear more than once, and falls from a tree.  Not only does she not even walk with so much as a limp let alone exhibit any noticeable forms of blunt head trauma, but all of this combined injury which would permanently kill or cripple an actual person instead turns her terrified loner into a badass final girl who systematically wipes out her entire ex-tribe.  Throw in muck-covered monsters who do that hackneyed deafening screechy noise bullshit, said monsters sometimes running towards their victims at a single drop of blood and other times ignoring people covered in blood, and a painfully monotonous plot, and this just fails on all fronts.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Dir - Tim Burton
Overall: MEH

A legacy sequel in an era of legacy sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits the right stride in most respects, but the laughs are few and far between and the member berry adherence sucks out instead of breathes life into the proceedings.  As he did by putting on the Caped Crusader garb in 2023's The Flash, Michael Keaten oozes the type of charisma that even the most household name actors can only aspire to, effortlessly slipping back into the title character with the same demented glee that he did in 1988.  Likewise, the impossible to hate Catherine O'Hara and Winona Ryder know their respected assignments, the former as a still-pretentious modern artist who gets to lean into the scenery more than the latter, with Ryder accurately portraying what an 80s goth kid would be like in her fifties after botching her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and tossing her hands up as a corporate sell out with ghost-seeing powers.  Everywhere else, this is deliberately silly business which sees Burton relying more on practical effects, actual sets, actual locations, and oddball ideas than he has in decades.  Some of these ideas are charmingly weird while others are clumsily executed, and the movie works best when it is not shoehorning in callbacks to the original movie.  The plot is still bloated with too many characters and enough subplots to make Beetlejuice's head spin Exorcist style, but it wisely sidesteps any cringe-worthy sentimentality and just goes for ridiculous buffoonery.  It was unavoidable that such a follow-up would pail in comparison to its beloved predecessor, (especially arriving so many years later and after Burton has wallowed in CGI mediocrity for so long), but it certainly could have been a lot worse, which at the end of the day is not TOO egregious of a back-handed compliment.

 

V/H/S/BEYOND
Dir - John Downey/Christian Long/Justin Long/Justin Martinez/Virat Pal/Kate Siegel/Jay Cheel
Overall: MEH

 

The anthology franchise that refuses to die continues with V/H/S/Beyond, the seventh in the series which has a quasi-sci-fi agenda to each of the vignettes.  As always, the results are inconsistent, and the found footage framework is recklessly abused, not least of all because two of the segments literally end in outer space, which should make every viewer scratch their head in annoyance wondering how in the hell of fuck said footage found its way back to earth for us to watch in the first place.  There are many other such verisimilitude-obliterating moments throughout, and in order to enjoy anything here, one has to turn that part of the brain off that wonders how the footage was assembled, how the ones involving multitudes of people did not become front page news, and how the ones cobbled together from various cameras were edited in such a cinematic fashion.  If one can crank up the forgiveness and get through such lazy foibles, there are some nifty ideas here.  The linking segment is still the weakest, (a V/H/S series staple), but the five proper episodes pull off amusing tweaks on a POV/shoot-em-up zombie scenario, a dancing Bollywood monster, a GoPro skydiving extraterrestrial takeover, Justin Long from the director's chair redoing Tusk except with dogs, and one of the dumbest horror movie characters of all time venturing into an alien vessel and touching everything inside of it.

2024 Horror Part Six

GRAVE TORTURE
Dir - Joko Anwar
Overall: MEH

 

The latest from Indonesian horror maestro Joko Anwar, Grave Torture, (Siksa Kubur), is a full-length expansion of his 2012 short film of the same name.  An ambitious project that fuses over-the-top schlock with incessant musings on not just the Judeo-Islamic concept of "Siksa Kubur", but religion's place in society and how it motivates those to do selfless deeds for fear of eternal punishment.  It concerns two siblings who are recently orphaned after a suicide bomber becomes convinced that the grave torture of the title is in fact real, though how blowing up a ton of innocent people will cause someone NOT to suffer perpetual torment in the afterlife is anyone's guess.  This sets Faradina Mufti's grown protagonist, (played as a youngin by Widuri Puteri in the first act), to dispel such superstitious obsessions, herself becoming selfishly obsessed in the process.  The narrative bounces around with no establishing shots and slams home its heavy ideas for just shy of two hours, unfortunately becoming exhaustive and unintentionally ridiculous as it goes on.  Anwar embraces as many horror tropes as he can, (creepy ghost kids, jump scares, laughable CGI monsters and gore, grimy set design, arbitrary hallucinations, a tacky seance, etc), but his increasing attempts to be both profound and nail-biting miss their mark due to the overblown presentation.

 

LITTLE BITES

Dir - Spider One

Overall: MEH

 

The third full-length in as many years from Powerman 5000 frontman Spider One, Little Bites tweaks the vampirism as addiction metaphor to a unique place, throwing in the trials and tribulations of motherhood with mixed results.  Premise wise, pitting Krsy Fox' already troubled single parent against an undead fiend who chooses to torment her by slowly munching on her in exchange for her daughter's safety properly allows the story to explore its themes.  What would a mother do to protect her young and how would she handle dealing with the world when a literal demon has invaded her home?  It all sounds crazy and those around her certainly smell the crazy, and this is only based on outward appearances.  While Fox' ravaged performance is appropriate and it is always nice to see Heather Langekamp and Barbara Crampton in anything, (plus Jon Sklaroff looks nice and monstrous as the blood-munching fiend), some plausibility is stretched to string things along.  Bonnie Aarons, (not in creepy monster make-up for once), is ridiculous and cartoonishly unreasonable as Fox' mother, some Child Protective Services investigating comes off as sketchy, and the "Huh?" ending leaves much to be desired.  The finale does not so much as undermine everything that came before it as it does confuse things, leaving behind something that has sincerity in spades, yet still makes a mess of itself.

 

IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE

Dir - Greg Jardin

Overall: GOOD

A close cousin to Halina Reijn's Gen Z-lambasting nightmare Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, It's What's Inside plays the same game of reuniting old friends who have unresolved issues witch each other in a large neon-lit mansion, except it trades off the murder-fueled mayhem for psychologically examining those issues with some sci-fi tech that does not go dangerously awry until an hour in.  Once the inevitable predicament transpires, things get more ugly and less funny for a bit until we reach an ending that could only be migraine-inducing in its disastrous complexity.  Writer/director Greg Jardin's script is plenty clever, and one of its best assets is how it takes a bunch of annoying millennial stereotypes, never makes any of them likeable, yet still presents them as relatable, complex, and flawed to the point where we can laugh at both the misfortune of some and the reap-what-you-sow-vengeance of others.  It rides a thin line tonally, cutting to the core of people who have and continue to make mistakes and only feel empowered to express themselves fully when inside of another's body, (its a long story), but by carefully upping the havoc, Jardin allows us to vicariously enjoy where such disaster leads.  It is like scratching a primordial mean kid itch, and the film's over-the-top scenario and sprinklings of goofiness make it go down easy enough where we do not feel so bad about ourselves, (or our own bad decisions), in comparison to the hapless saps on screen.

2024 Horror Part Five

ODDITY

Dir - Damian Mc Carthy
Overall: MEH

 

The sophomore effort Oddity from Irish filmmaker Damien Mc Carthy is brooding with atmosphere yet flimsy on narrative fortification.  Shot at the same converted barn which hosted his debut Caveat, this is a natural cousin to said film, with Caveat's harbinger of doom toy rabbit even making a cameo, plus Mc Carthy's script once again hosting its fair share of implausible character behaviors.  It achieves its goal though to put the viewer at persistent unease by trapping its characters in a single location with textbook creepiness.  Here it is an isolated and square-shaped country house that looks more like a fortress with a wide open courtyard in the center of it.  Spooky things happen inside of its walls, the timeline jumps ahead from the intro, Carolyn Bracken plays a set of siblings, (one of whom is blind), Gwilym Lee works at an insane asylum with some naturally sketchy patients, there is a life-sized wooden doll that looks like a cartoonish outdoor Halloween decoration, ghosts are captured in camera flashes, etc.  Once we get the full explanation as to who murdered who and for what reason, the story becomes less interesting than it promised, but for viewers that are in the mood for a goosebumps-ridden mood piece, there is plenty here to get a kick out of.

MILK AND SERIAL

Dir - Curry Barker

Overall: WOOF

Found footage has long proven itself to be a genre that anyone with a camera can dip their toes into, churning something out with a nifty premise and next to no budget that if things go well, can get some solid buzz going for it and maybe even make a career for the person behind it.  Milk and Serial is the full-length debut from actor/filmmaker Curry Barker, and while he comes off as no less ambitious and well-intended as your Oren Pelis, Tom Fanslous, or Turner Clays, his work here does everything not only wrong with the sub-genre, but also dumb with it.  Serial killers chronicling their own escapades has been done in Man Bites Dog, The Last Horror Movie, and Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, plus having a premise of YouTubers going for likes while putting themselves in peril lends itself naturally to the sub-genre and has been done in at least Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum and Deadstream.  Lack of freshness aside, Barker takes a page right out of Patric Brice and Mark Duplass' worst of the worst Creep by insulting the audience with a lack of plausibility from about fifteen minutes in until the finish line.  Adding insult to injury even there, Barker's antagonist is both relentlessly obnoxious and a moron, with a master plan that can only be written off as "crazy" due to how illogical it is.  The movie is a grating mess and primarily focused on awful people, with nothing clever to say and only mean-spirited stupidity at its disposal.

CUCKOO
Dir - Tilman Singer
Overall: MEH

A mess of a movie that weaves its singular premise in confounding directions, writer/director Tilman Singer's long-awaited second feature Cuckoo does as many things wrong as it does right as it does wrong again.  Set in the Bavarian Alps, it teases at a mystery throughout its first two acts; one whose outcome not even a single viewer would be able to predict.  This gives Singer's script a solid and head-scratching hook, but it also sets the film up for failure.  We are treated to bizarre scene after bizarre scene, many of which become repetitive as both quirky comic relief and gut-wrenching trauma are dished out by the performers.  Hunter Schafer is marvelous in the lead as an emotionally destroyed seventeen year-old girl who is forced to live in a foreign land after her mother's passing, only to find herself getting routinely and severely injured, not believed by anybody, and both annoyed with and being annoying to her family.  Meanwhile, Dan Stevens hams it up as a sly villain with a German accent and a language that anyone unfamiliar with his recognizable mug would swear was his native tongue.  We eventually get an explanation as to what is going on and it is a disappointing one, namely because it is both stupid and underwhelming.  Tilman still seems to be enjoying the act of toying with the audience's grasp on his aggressively strange narrative choices, (though nowhere near as aggressively or strange as he did with his debut Luz), but his efforts get tonally blundered for this round.

2024 Horror Part Four

IN A VIOLENT NATURE
Dir - Chris Nash
Overall: MEH

 

The world has not needed another slasher movie since John Carpenter made Halloween, and four plus decades later, Canadian filmmaker Chris Nash at least had the good sense to do something unique with what is arguably horror's most tired formula.  In a Violent Nature not only plays out almost entirely from the supernaturally-charged killer's perspective, (a killer who is Jason Voorhees in all but name), but it does so with a subdued arthouse agenda.  There is no dramatic music, no narrative emphasis on any of the victims, and the pacing is still and deliberate.  At the same time though, Nash's script has all of the cliches in tow, at least on paper.  This makes it an experimental work in its presentation alone, one that offers up an alternate perspective on what is otherwise consistently stale storytelling.  In other words, it is junk, but cleverly disguised junk.  Lingering yet gratuitously gory, it can be argued that many moments overstay their welcome and provide no decipherable purpose, but just when you think that it is spinning its wheels without any wherewithal, an underlying theme of spontaneous danger emerges.  By emotionally distancing the viewer from everyone on screen and simultaneously letting things play out in real time, it unveils a type of sitting dread that the sub-genre is fundamentally and usually never able to convey without resorting to schlock.

MAXXXINE
Dir - Ti West
Overall: MEH

Opening with potential and then continuing with a slam dunk for its second instalment, Ti West and Mia Goth's X series, (hopefully), closes out with Maxxxine, unfortunately arriving as a mess that is both convoluted and lackluster.  Sticking with the throwback aesthetic of both X and Pearl, (each of which frequently recalled the decade in which they were set), this one finally thrusts us directly into a seedy ole 1980s Tinsel town itself, full of every cliche imaginable.  There is cocaine everywhere, VHS stores, cheap horror movies being made, sleazy private investigators, self-righteous protestors, coin-operated peep shows, neon galore, 80s hits on the soundtrack, pretentious filmmakers, porn being shot behind strip clubs, good cop/bad cop partner teams, Hollywood agents in bad wigs, Richard Ramirez on the loose, and a Bible-quoting nut job who is overacting as if he has a gun to his head.  At the heart of all of this is Goth's title character who is still hellbent on being a star at all costs and up until a point, West's story seems to be leading somewhere ghoulish with its tongue still in cheek, as was the case with the previous two films.  The director's shortcomings as a screenwriter rear their ugly yet again though, flying off the rails in the third act with a lame killer reveal and an ending that says nothing profound and instead puts Goth in the passenger seat of an arc that she previously led with cocksure abandon.

LONGLEGS

Dir - Oz Perkins

Overall: MEH

 

Oz Perkins continues his auteur trajectory with his forth full-length Longlegs, a movie that is suffocating with unhurried and dread-fueled style yet unremarkable from a narrative stand-point.  Benefiting from a cryptic marketing campaign that all horror movies should utilize, (as well as the unfortunate hype-machine that at least one genre film a year suffers from), it still proves to be a singular work in its presentation.  Perkins has consistently favored still pacing and pristine cinematography, and this is an exemplary-looking work, capturing an early 90s, unassuming, Oregon autumn full of wood paneling, slow zooms, and inventive camera angles.  While its tortoise-like flow could afford some agency, the tone is relentlessly sinister and odd, as if anything horrible can happen at a moment's notice.  This brings into play the film's faux pas in that it does not deliver much in the way of left turns, despite the expectations that it consistently raises.  Fusing the FBI procedural with some scatter-brained genre cliches works up until a point, but the plot is ultimately predictable and even lackluster in its revelations.  While Maika Monroe is her usual emotionally void self, (appropriately so here, mind you), the involvement of Nicolas Cage is a mixed bag since even under heavy guise and with his always consistent thespian chops in tow, he essentially turns in a Nicolas Cage parody performance, going over the top with a part that demands eccentricities yet may have been better suited for an actor who is not so universally known for such eccentric performances.

2023 Horror Part Twenty-Six

IN FLAMES

Dir - Zarrar Kahn

Overall: MEH

 

A troubled full-length debut from Pakistani/Canadian filmmaker Zarrar Kahn, In Flames is a rarity in the horror genre as hardly any come out of the former country, yet it is also a movie that does not belong in that genre.  Shot and set in Karachi where a mother and daughter find themselves in the unforgiving throes of a patriarchal society after the man of their home has died, the film brings up a concerning trend among up and coming writer/directors who frequently find themselves venturing into the only genre available that has a slight chance of getting some commercial eyes on their work.  This is to say that horror elements are so vaguely and gingerly sprinkled throughout Kahn's film that they seem unnecessary at best and distracting at worst.  There are no supernatural ingredients at all for almost the entire first half and enough to count on one hand after that, but the oppressive tone is well-suited to the material which shines an all-too-real light on the brutal conditions that women in Pakistani society have to endure.  Sadly, the viewer is left asking "Why are there random kind of/not really ghost moments popping up here?" where we should instead be solely invested in the plight of our characters.  Performance wise it is strong, and Kahn's intentions are all-too admirable, but it is unfortunate that in a cinematic era where independent debuts have an impossible time gaining any notice, filmmakers have found themselves at the mercy of shoehorning in horror tactics that would be better left alone.

 

T BLOCKERS
Dir - Alice Maio Mackay
Overall: GOOD

 

Another indie-queer genre excursion from Australian filmmaker Alice Majo Mackay, T Blockers fuses a little Buffy the Vampire Slayer, John Waters, Gregg Araki, David Cronenberg, Kevin Smith, and Ed Wood together into its quirky, neon-colored, punk rock aesthetic.  Best and most important of all though, Mackay, (herself transgender), channels the all too real trials and tribulations of the LGBTQ community into a story where people are just trying to be people amongst not only the rising tide of conservative oppression, but also a nasty parasite that turns already testosterone-fueled men into rage zombies.  The horror elements are treated humorously and are even half-baked, but this is not a bad thing since it lends the story to focus more on its likeable band of characters who form a vigilante force to handle the otherworldly predicament.  It all hits purposely close to home for the trans community, and there is a moment where our lead protagonist Lauren Last breaks down in defeat at the hopelessly unaccepting state of the majority of the populous who will make the life of her and others like her endlessly more difficult no matter how many parasite-ridden bigots they stomp out.  These are the touches to Mackay's film that are the most paramount and immediate, and even if it bum-rushes through its horror elements and inescapably low-end production values still rear their head from time to time, it is still an impressive work that champions the more noble efforts that single-voiced DIY movie-making can offer.

 

HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON
Dir - Ariane Louis-Seize
Overall: GOOD

 

Many familiar tropes and themes run through Ariane Louis-Seize's full-length debut Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant, Humanist Vampire Too Sensitive to Kill); a French-language Canadian coming-of-age dark comedy with a benevolent hipster point of view.  It immediately recalls Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In with its undead members having retro vinyl collections, being solemn outcasts, and/or connecting to equally lonely humans who they form a touching bond with.  Seize's script never takes every last one of the elements from such an array of contemporary, cinematic blood-sucker revamps, (pardon the pun), but it fuses its ingredients together around a story that is more compassionate than poignant.  Its two leads in Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard turn in likeable performances even if they lean into quiet, melancholic, and anti-social teenager stereotypes, and this could be said about the entire movie that forgoes offering up any surprises in the plot department in place of a refreshing tone that never lingers in cynicism.  Sometimes it is just nice to see two young, (or comparatively young as far as vampires go), people bond together and live, (in a manner of speaking), happily ever after.

2023 Horror Part Twenty-Five

SORRY ABOUT THE DEMON
Dir - Emily Hagins
Overall: WOOF

 

Sometimes one feels cruel when shitting on a movie that appears to have the best intentions, and writer/director Emily Hagins' Sorry About the Demon is just such a movie.  On paper, this is an innocent and adorable horror comedy about a down-on-his-luck schlub who is likeable, also on paper.  Yet everything that happens here adheres to a type of cutesy and obvious shtick that grows wearisome immediately, and shoehorning in endless jump scares and haunted house/demonic possession cliches that are played for nyuck nyucks makes for a persistently annoying experience.  At the film's core is a story about lamenting a failed relationship, second chances, and coming-of-age as a grown man, all of which are admirable traits that should give the movie enough emotional baggage to forgive the lame-brained humor and lazy horror tropes.  With everything combined though, (plus a bloated running time that passes the one-hundred minute mark), it overstays its already rocky welcome by undermining its heartfelt agenda with the worst kind of quippy and mugging goofiness; the kind that tries and then fails to be funny.

THE BEAST

Dir - Bertrand Bonello

Overall: GOOD

Jumping off from Henry James 1906 novella The Beast in the Jungle, French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello crafted an uncompromising tableau of impending doom and fate running rampant with unavoidable cruelty.  The Beast, (La Bête), bounces between three timelines as Léa Seydoux' solemn protagonist wrestles with an unshakable fear that has permeated through all of her past lives, past lives that can potentially be purged of their emotionally baggage by future technology.  Along the way, Bonello stylistically and thematically channels the two Davids, (Lynch and Cronenberg), presenting a world of aloof characters, cold technology, psychological playgrounds, a Roy Orbison song, and quirky yet bleak humor.  At nearly two and a half hours, the film takes its time with numerous recalls, including verbatim dialog exchanges and immediate flashbacks from different points of view, all of which slam home a persistent theme of, well, persistence.  In this wold, (as in our own), anxiety is often justified by life moving along without our permission, throwing chaos into our midst as we wrestle with what we want and what we are inescapably drawn to.  Bonello's film deals with such things both precisely and ambiguously, letting us enter the shifting headspace of Seydoux' character as if she is passing through a nightmare that we are all equally a fly on the wall to.

 

HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE
Dir - Dominic O'Neill
Overall: MEH

For anyone who really enjoys 1992's seminal BBC mockumentary Ghostwatch and is curious to see what a less good carbon copy of it would be like, writer/director Dominic O'Neill's Haunted Ulster Live has you covered.  The entire structure and presentation is so derivative of the film that is is paying homage to/ripping off that it is bound to make many an eyeball roll, and this is ultimately what undermines its potential as either a spoof or a bit of genuinely hair-raising found footage.  O'Neill tries to do both at various times, setting the story in 1998 to give it some throwback charm and dated references, but it becomes difficult to tell if the performances are tongue-in-cheek or just subpar.  Twilight Zone elements gradually reveal themselves as it inches towards the finale, but its ghostly camera glitches, urban legend boogeyman, unconvincing spooky photographs, kid acting creepy during a seance moment, and student art film montages of weirdness have all been done better in, well, better movies.  With no unique ideas of its own and no way to combine what it has into anything either funny, compelling, or scary, the movie just deserves a C+ for effort, even if its heart is in the right place and it never outright insults the audience.

2023 Horror Part Twenty-Four

BLACKOUT

Dir - Larry Fessenden

Overall: MEH

 

Indie horror mainstay Larry Fessenden continues his solemn, modern day Universal monster reworks with Blackout, this time updating The Wolf Man to go along with 2019's Depraved, which was his version of Frankenstein.  This is specifically a cinematic adaptation of one of Fessenden's Tales from Beyond the Pale podcast episodes which throws back to old timey radio serials of the horror variety, but he takes a more relevant approach by fusing daddy issues and small town politics together.  It is an interesting angle to familiar tropes and material, but there is a tonal issue present in how much of the movie wants to be introspective and timely and how much of it also wants to be unabashed schlock.  The performances are a mixed bag; sincere yet stuck within dopey dialog, forced expository information dumps, and simple-minded character traits that would be fine if it all did not take itself so seriously.  From a production standpoint, Fessenden has been in the game long enough to turn in a professional looking film on a meager budget, and the cinematography, location setting, werewolf make-up, and gore all look splendid.  In order to work though, the story deserves a screenplay that is both less-on the nose and trimmed of its unintentional goofiness.

FROGMAN

Dir - Anthony Cousins

Overall: WOOF

Predictable, obnoxious, and ergo insulting, Anthony Cousin's full-length debut Frogman is another lazy found footage entry that could have been a fun parody if not for a barrage of mistakes made along the way.  As is almost always the case with these movies, finding justification for the characters to keep the cameras rolling proves to be an insurmountable task, and here we have three unlikable dipshits who go to a town that milks their local frogman legend for tourists.  One of our protagonists caught the creature on a camcorder when he was a kid and now is determined to prove that what he saw was genuine.  While this is a stock if acceptable jumping off point, Cousins and co-screenwriter John Karsko's script piles on the hackneyed tropes, plus the presentation can never decide how serious to take things.  Our three main characters who joke around and film private moments that have no business being filmed, Nathan Tymoshuk being a mopey loser who is desperate to capture the title creature yet insists on doing it with his grainy low-def camcorder from the 1990s, locals being interviewed, the footage becoming indecipherable when the "good stuff" finally shows up, a diabolical twist that a two-year old could see coming, and the list goes on and on.  Instead of evoking genuine Blair Witch scares or taking the piss out of the formula with amped-up ridiculousness, the movie just clumsily rides its line and recalls countless other films that have done the same thing either worse, better, or just as bad.

 

LAST STRAW
Dir - Alan Scott Neal
Overall: MEH

 

After three short films, casting worker-turned-director Alan Scott Neal delivers his first full-length Last Straw; a nasty revenge thriller of sorts that takes a few clever divergents along its route.  As a tale about over-wrought young adults who spiral down a rabbit hole of bad decisions during a particularly stressed-out evening, it gets by to a point, particularly in its first act which focuses on Jessica Belkin's protagonist who gets one tough break after the next while working in her dad's remote roadside diner.  Yet when the plot takes an about-face twist midway through, the plausibility wheels start to get loose and this leads to an inevitably messy finale that sees people behaving in too barbarous of a manner to buy into.  Performance-wise, everyone does acceptable work and Neal forgoes stylistic embellishments for stark brutalism, but there is little to no humor present to make the over-the-top spiral go down smoother.  Instead, the movie becomes increasingly ugly, which does not jive with its narrative implausibility.  It short-changes itself in the end, but the attempt is at least noble.

2023 Horror Part Twenty-Three

RED ROOMS
Dir - Pascal Plante
Overall: GREAT

 

True crime fixation and voyeurism make natural if disturbing bedfellows at times, and the latest from Quebec-based filmmaker Pascal Plante examines the darker aspects of sleuthing and more importantly the detachment that is necessary to truly initiate oneself amongst the most depraved.  Red Rooms, (Les chambres rouges), is a calculated thriller to say the least.  From its opening twenty-minute single shot of a courtroom briefing where we meet our main character and are immediately struck by her impassive demeanor, the film never lets its true agenda reveal itself.  This is mirrored in Juliette Gariépy's stunning performance and the protagonist/antagonist that she portrays, who is so emotionally barren that we are constantly fixated on what and where her curious motives are coming from.  All of the film's suspense stems from this fixation since the man who has presumably committed the story's horrendous crimes is already on trail from the onset, so the focus lies instead on those who are drawn to sensationalized atrocities and what murky waters this unwholesome pull trudges through.  Several moments are startling in their intimate disturbingness, punctuating the movie with surreal jumps that somehow only intensify the spell.  Anything that goes down the rabbit hole of snuff films and the dark web is icky stuff that is never for the squeamish, but Plante's work here ventures into this abyss in such a controlled and evocative manner that it only ends up challenging the viewer in the most rewarding of ways.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Dir - Thomas Cailley
Overall: GOOD

The second full-length from French filmmaker Thomas Cailley, The Animal Kingdom, (Le Règne animal), takes a concept that has been explored in David Freyne's zombie drama The Cured as well as the entire saga of the X-Men, but the presentation is unique and cuts right to the bone of the fears of "the new norm".  Here, human beings have begun to start morphing into animal hybrids, ones that have violent tendencies that are both inescapable and brought on by the rest of the world's understandably terrified reaction to them.  Complicating an already hopelessly complicated matter is that life goes on.  People still have bills to pay, jobs to get to, school to attend, college to think about, love interests to nurture, family to protect, and communities to integrate into.  The last thing that humankind needs is their teenage son turning into a wolf, losing the ability to communicate verbally, and inevitably having to find a new home amongst their mutated brethren instead of their old civilized existence.  Cailley keeps up a no-nonsense pace and utilizes some of the better CGI effects in recent times, helped significantly by excellent practical makeup and visual tricks as well.  Best of all, the film is not a nihilistic downer that offers no hope for such a harrowing outcome.  In fact, the strange turn of events are only disturbing if grief and fear overcomes all who are involved.  Embracing the "new norm" on the other hand, (with compassion and acceptance), leaves a much-needed glimmer of hope.

BOOGER
Dir -  Mary Dauterman
Overall: MEH

For anyone who cannot stand Rupert Holmes "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", (which should include every human on earth), writer/director Mary Dauterman's debut Booger should come equipped with a severe warning since such an abysmal yacht rock staple shows up in various forms throughout.  An aloof grief comedy that falls short of hitting its mark, the film plays its quirky components close to the vest which is nice for a change, but it does lead to unrealized results.  Grace Glowicki's portrays a young woman whose best friend and roommate has just died while also, (and more puzzlingly), transforming into their missing stray cat of the title.  The audience understands what is happening early on if not why it is happening, and in fact we never get any answers to such a question, but several characters here point to the fact that Glowicki is side-stepping the whole mourning part of her buddy's death.  The problem is that this is not convincingly conveyed.  Instead, Dauterman indulges in gross-out moments, people saying wacky things once in awhile, and Glowicki not so much as avoiding her emotions about her friend as to not having many to begin with.  There is no profound revelation, just the movie going about its oddball business until it is time to wrap itself up  At this point we have entered into murky psychological terrain and Glowicki seems to be ready to be happy with those around her again, yet it is through no fault of anything that has transpired.