2023 Horror Part Fifteen

POOR THINGS
Dir - Yorgos Lanthimos
Overall: GOOD

 

The latest from the innately quirky filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things fuses his singular brand of boundary-pushing singularity with Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel of the same name.  In development for nearly a decade and a half, Lanthimos continues his partnership with screenwriter Tony McNamara, cinematographer Robbie Ryan, and actor Emma Stone, the latter who turns in a showy and transformative performance as a sexually promiscuous science project with a childlike ignorance and stubborn curiosity for independent enlightenment.  The fact that her character has the body of a pregnant woman who committed suicide and the brain of said pregnant woman's unborn infant implanted inside of her is just one of many ridiculous details to a series of hilarious events that escalate as a bizarre coming-of-age/Marry Shelley's Frankenstein/feminist parody hybrid.  Aesthetically, it is a tour de force for Lanthimos and Ryan, who shoot a sprawling, steam punk Victorian London with gorgeous flash, making every nuance pop off the screen like a demented and lush fairy tale.  It is an expansive oddity that intellectually examines the human experience of both men and women, all while matching the pretentiousness of the materiel with a presentation that pokes fun at itself as much as it provokes.

STOPMOTION

Dir - Robert Morgan

Overall: MEH

For fans of British stop motion animator Robert Morgan, his apply titled, full-length debut Stopmotion will arrive with a certain degree of anticipation.  After three decades of exclusively working in short films, his eccentric, grimy, and disturbed aesthetic is finally brought to ninety-three minute life with the assistance of co-screenwriter Robin King.  Yet even though it is a visual and atmospheric triumph that delivers on the promise of its singular filmmaker, it is still a frustratingly unfocused endeavor.  Concerning a struggling artist's decent into obsession and madness, (which are often times logical bedfellows for physiological horror such as this), Morgan sticks within his comfort zone by making the protagonist a stop motion animator herself, one who has lived in the shadow of her mother's lauded craft.  Aisling Franciosi creates a compelling performance in the lead, but the material that she has to work with seems to hint at something more profound than it ever arrives at.  This may be intentional; to present a surreal, nightmarish landscape where creativity can only truly manifest itself via emotional detachment and physical suffering to the point where the results are more due to a broken psyche than anything tangibly on point.  It has a bizzaro-world flare that rarely lets up, but the style is far more inciting than the narrative.

SISTER DEATH
Dir - Paco Plaza
Overall: GOOD

Pulling off a nifty M. Night Shyamalan maneuver in its final scene, Paco Plaza's Sister Death, (Hermana Muerte), is an ideally spooky nunsploitation movie that benefits from an intriguing, be it conventional supernatural mystery at its core.  Set in 1940s Spain as a newly arrived novice, (who is dubbed the "holy girl" in her youth for allegedly receiving a vision of the Virgin Mary), embarks on her teaching post in a former convent where something otherworldly is clearly afoot, Plaza slowly teases what appears to be your usual crop of arbitrary ghost encounters via nightmares, noises, and poltergeist activity that only occurs when the plot requires something scary to happen.  Thankfully though, the director and frequent Álex de la Iglesia collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarría's script switches gears abruptly in its last act, (broken up into three chapters here), which reveals some harrowing events via flashback that shed unsettling light on the proceedings.  Aria Bedmar is wonderful in the lead, suffering more than just the usual tests of faith for a cinematic nun and eventually undergoing a transformation that is both satisfying and emotionally ravaged.  There is nothing unique here and Plaza still cannot resist the urge for a predictable jump scare here or there, but its presentation is more sincere than schlocky and all the better for it.

2023 Horror Part Fourteen

KNOCK AT THE CABIN
Dir - M. Knight Shyamalan
Overall: MEH

As the second in a two film partnership between Universal Pictures and his own Blinding Edge Pictures, M. Knight Shyamalan chose to adopt another novel with Knock at the Cabin, his second such work in a row following 2021's laughably aloof Old.  Shyamalan reworked the sought-after script by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman based off of Paul G. Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World and while this is a comparatively better offering and thankfully void of many of the writer/director's usual foibles, it is still far from a home-run.  On the plus side, there are no head-scratchingly awful performances or aggressive plot holes.  In fact, Dave Bautista is downright excellent as a mild-mannered yet hulking second grade teacher who takes the thankless lead on a hopelessly persuasive doomsday task.  One of the minor problems is that even though the story focuses on a small number of people, they all seem underwritten which makes it difficult to relate to their decisions.  The movie is not just trying to convince Johnathan Groff and Ben Aldridge's couple to make an impossible choice, it is also trying to convince the audience that they would make that choice and this does not carry enough logical weight to work.  There is a certain level of ambiguity to the material itself that is balanced about as well as could be expected, but it still comes up short in the end.

 

YOU'LL NEVER FIND ME
Dir - Josiah Allen/Indianna Bell
Overall: GREAT

 

After a making a handful of short films, Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen deliver their full-length debut You'll Never Find Me as a successful tweak on familiar psychological tropes.  A movie that is suffocating in atmosphere, Bell's monologue-heavy script seems perfectly unnatural in such an also unnatural and claustrophobic environment.  Set entirely in a dingy trailer where a nameless woman arrives banging on the door to get out of the rain, its occupant is a solemn and humorless oaf who seems to be contemplating his entire existence when he is interrupted.  The first two acts play a riveting back-and-forth game between the two, each of whom seems as suspicious of the other as the viewer is of them.  Maxx Corkindale's cinematography turns the tight location into an endlessly oppressive one and the sound design makes the entire thing come off like our two protagonists are in the bowls of some sinister netherland, even if it is just some old mobile home in need of contemporary appliances and a paint job.  There is such a level of paranoia and dread that by the time that the twist arrives, few audience members will even believe that they are being presented with definitive answers.  Things only venture further into an ambiguous abyss of dark justifications and all-consuming inevitability from there, with Allen and Bell subverting an impressive amount of expectations along the way.

 

MOTHER, MAY I?
Dir - Laurence Vannicelli
Overall: GOOD
 
Writer/director Laurence Vannicelli's second full-length Mother, May I? is an interesting if still murky psychological horror film that gets points for its unique set-up and execution.  The genre pandering is kept to a minimum as Vannicelli takes a slow boil approach to his material.  It is heavy on the atmosphere while utilizing no jump scares, with conventional horror motifs like nightmare sequences and supernaturally suggestive visuals only appearing when necessary.  This turns out to be not very often as it is essentially a character study between a likeable couple who each suffer from deep-seated issues that only envelope their relationship in more dysfunctional ways as things go on.  Both Holland Roden and Kyle Gallner carry the movie almost in its entirety, each taking turns exhibiting closed-off, alarming behavior while the other one pulls their hair out in frustration; something that remains compelling even if it becomes implausible from a logical perspective at regular intervals.  Still, the eerie tone, beautiful cinematography from Craig Harmer, and both actor's commendable performances go a long way, plus enough low-key yet oddball surprises emerge as things progress.

2023 Horror Part Thirteen

EILEEN

Dir - William Oldroyd

Overall: GOOD

 

The sophomore effort from British filmmaker William Oldroyd, Eileen subtly weaves through a series of moods before arriving at a disturbed, black comedy destination that only slams home a likely delusional sense of newfound enlightenment for its title character.  Ottessa Moshfegh and husband Luke Goebel adapt the former's own novel for the screen; a novel that sees a lonely daughter of a retired, drunk, curmudgeon police officer and who is partial to flights of fancy, weaving through an inconsequential existence until circumstances arise that give her a means to escape.  Set at some point during the 1960s where the women's liberation movement was likely not even in its infancy, both Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway portray characters who are on the outskirts of accepted society; McKenzie's Eileen being more introverted in her independence, (or dreams of independence), while Hathaway' psychologist is more cocksure on the surface yet harboring her own frustrations.  Oldroyd keeps the atmosphere light yet grungy, toying with some of the taboos of the story's era before the plot makes an abrupt shift into the third act.  A couple of "only in screenplay" monologues aside that the actors handle as professionally as can be expected, the performances are delightful, with everyone busting out their best Boston accents and helping to give the material some charm amongst its more disturbing attributes.

LORD OF MISRULE
Dir - William Brent Bell
Overall: WOOF

 

A derivative folk horror outing from schlock-peddler William Brent Bell, Lord of Misrule may try and disguise itself with an earthy and gloom-ridden aesthetic, but it gradually unravels in an increasingly and unintentionally comedic manner.  The fact that Tom de Ville's screenplay pits Christian and pagan faiths against each other is merely one such primary swipe from The Wicker Man, with suspicious acting townsfolk in robes and animal masks, festive rituals that only seem joyous on surface level, endlessly ominous drawings that spell out all of the details in plain site, ancient books that also spell everything out, an ancient deity with antlers, no one on screen who is trustworthy, disturbing alters with twigs and animal parts, old people acting weird while pissing themselves, and innocent people being set on fire while the locals sing joyous hymns.  Added to this is Bell's hackneyed presentation that rarely lets the ominous tribal violin score shut the hell up, has scratchy noises signaling the scary jolts, and a rustic color pallet that gives it zero distinguishing visual characteristics from every other folky nightmare out there.  Granted Bell is hardly going for originality here and instead a type of post The Witch/Midsommar comfort food, but when the protagonist is the dumbest person in the room and the entire plot proves to be pointless upon its conclusion, there is nothing left to recommend besides Ralph Ineson's reliable, ground-rumbling baritone.

IMMERSION

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

 

Similar to the work of his J-horror contemporary Hideo Nakata, Takashi Shimizu melds vengeful spirits with modern technology in Immersion, this time exploring a virtual reality landscape that gets inhabited by a long black-haired ghost that is doomed to inflict her wrath on anyone within striking distance.  In keeping with Shimizu's later efforts, the final product overstays its welcome and could use a more streamlined approach to shave off about twenty-odd minutes from the run time, taking on multiple side plots that muddle up the "be careful what tech you wish for" through-line that is being worked out.  Thankfully though, the director's ability to maintain a melancholic and foreboding tone is as strong as ever, even if the chosen story fails to find any refreshing byways to differentiate it from others that pit young characters up against supernatural, folkloric forces.  The tradition musical score never becomes overbearing and the lush scenery of the island location is well-shot, evoking an isolated ghost land both within and outside of its digital avatar version.  It loses its way during the third act with an unnecessary and drawn-out second ending, but it is still well-made if not revolutionary.

2023 Horror Part Twelve

SALTBURN
Dir - Emerald Fennell
Overall: GREAT

 

An even more twisted cousin to Bong Joon-ho's South Korean, 2019, upper class take-over dark comedy Parasite, Saltburn finds ideal footing in the U.K. where traditional, separatist systems have persistently been in place to ensure that those of non-noble birth are kept at a distance from the table of the exorbitantly wealthy who have maintained that wealth thorough no accomplishments of their own.  Here lies the crust to Emerald Fennell's sophomore effort, which is a more ambitious work than her debut Promising Young Woman; yet another revenge film with gnarled and enjoyable results.  The trick that Fennell pulls off here is more nuanced and drawn-out, though the finale comes off as an uncorking of an inevitable bottle as opposed to a jaw-dropping twist.  As the anti-hero Oxford scholarship student with something up his sleeve, thirty-one year Barry Keoghan is obviously over a decade too old, but somehow this never becomes distracting or relevant since his small stature, celebrity physique, and naturally aloof charm rings perfectly as he pulls a spell over both the audience and the family, (or at least some of them), that he has set his eyes on.  Pathetic and manipulative all at once, Keoghan is one of several mesmerizing aspects to the film, all of which are used with stylized whimsy by Fennell who turns the country house of the title and its occupants into a coveted wonderland that only a prodigy child who "really does notice everything" would be able to divide and conquer.

 

IN ITS WAKE

Dir - Lee Foster

Overall: WOOF

 

For his second full-length In Its Wake, indie filmmaker Lee Foster fuses a throwback synth score with an uninteresting story, obnoxious characters, inane dialog, and several lousy performances.  A low-budget Canadian production set in the midst of winter even though we cannot see any of the actor's breath outside, (and few if any of them bother to even act cold), things get off to a rocky start with Elvis Stojko's punchable preacher delivering a long-winded sermon that merely suggests at what the rest of his biblical ramblings are going to be like.  Stojko is either nailing his pretentious character or ruining him with his wide-eyed, wooden, and blabbering mannerisms, yet in either event, the movie suffers detrimentally when he is on screen.  Elsewhere, completely unlikable assholes argue with each other within their own "friends" groups, let alone when they run into strangers who they immediately pick fights with.  Both parties cars run out of gas at the same time, we see some boobs, a whole lot more arguing happens, and then an evil baboon thing shows up well into the third act.  The film is competently shot by cinematographer Bryan Piggott, plus co-screenwriter Ryan Kobold's music sets a fun, eerie tone, but it all ends up being an awkward and snore-inducing mess with no one on screen to tolerate.

LOOP TRACK

Dir - Thomas Sainsbury

Overall: GOOD

While it fails to tighten up all of its loose ends, Thomas Sainsbury's Loop Track still proves to be a successful pairing of nature and psychological horror.  A New Zealand hike gone awry, Sainsbury plays the lead roll on top of writing, directing, and producing; this marking a sharp enough contrast from his otherwise strictly comedic works as a standup, playwright, and social media personality.  We are given a less than agreeable amount of backstory concerning Sainsbury's persistently downtrodden character who seems to be fleeing his family life for some reason, all in order to spend time in isolation.  Whether this is for repentance, self-examination, a mental recharge, or all of the above is not made clear, but his trek is quickly interrupted by a good-natured yet annoying fellow hiker who insists that they tag-along with each other, only to run into even more unassuming people while a gradual danger seems to be lurking in the bushes, just out of definite site.  It plays the common game of utilizing the protagonist's already-established emotional turmoil as a means for both the audience and other characters to not take his paranoia seriously until it is too late, but the final act is both alarming and intense, which is further heightened by some excellent practical effects.

2023 Horror Part Eleven

THANKSGIVING
Dir - Eli Roth
Overall: MEH

 

Sixteen years in the making, but Eli Roth finally unleashed his full-length Thanksgiving after dropping the hilarious faux-trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse double feature.  Bailing on the throwback vibe of the aforementioned trailer, Rodriguez' Machete, and Jason Eisner's Hobo with a Shotgun, Roth delivers a contemporary-set, formulaic slasher outing that is comparatively more in line with your Terrorizers or the late 90s abysmal teen horror boom than anything adhering to 70s exploitation.  Hinging on an over-the-top Black Friday fiasco gone deadly, the plot gets cooking in an appropriately campy manner, even if most of the actors take the proceedings more seriously than they deserve.  Though Roth's penchant for snarky humor that is either intentionally or unintentionally cringe-adjacent is as on point as ever, the practical, nauseating gore effects and kill scenes are delightfully ridiculous and worthy of some laugh-out-loud gasps.  Elsewhere though, this is painfully generic stuff that will hardly convert those who have long tuned-out slasher movies, holiday-themed or otherwise.  Its point seems to be in delighting the already converted though so in that respect, it gets the job done.

THE PORTRAIT
Dir - Simon Ross
Overall: MEH

 

Spearheaded by an emotionally exhaustive performance from Natalia Cordova-Buckley, director Simon Ross' full-length debut The Portrait plays a bog-standard psychological horror game that affords few surprises.  Scripted by producer David Griffiths, the artwork of the title is a self-portrait of Ryan Kwanten's odious ancestor who was a sadistic scholar and according to his wife Buckley, looks exactly like him.  There is plenty going on here as Buckley is wrought with guilt after having inadvertently caused her husband's permanent brain damage due to a domestic quarrel, rendering him mute and unpredictably violent, which is not helped by the unassuming painting in the attic that casts a sinister aura over a wave of frustrated trauma that is thick enough that it could be cut with a knife.  There is little doubt that the quasi-supernatural elements, (which are underplayed to begin with), are not entirely in the troubled psyche of our protagonist, which makes this more of a melancholy affair than anything since we are likely just witnessing the impassioned breakdown of a woman who only wants to make amends in a desperate attempt at a miracle that will ease her own grief.  It fails to challenge the tropes that have long been laid-out by similar stories, but Ross maintains a sorrowful tone which makes Buckley's commitment that much more powerful.

APORIA
Dir - Jared Moshe
Overall: GOOD

 

An unassuming sci-fi drama that removes all of the aesthetic spectacle from the genre, Jared Moshe's third feature Aporia instead has a simple, emotional residence concerning the conundrum of undoing the past in order to negate traumatic episodes in our lives.  The pseudo-science details are wisely left vague, since dedicating more screen time to a plausible time travel explanation would have pushed things into unintentionally goofy terrain, not to mention the fact that Moshe's script is about its characters and not its tech.  Judy Greer, Edi Gathegi, and Payman Maadi are all wonderful in their respective performances as a husband/wife duo and their colleague who undergo a series of universe-altering experiments after each one proves successful.  Once things get going, none of their behavior is motivated by selfish impulses as the weight of their actions are persistently debated and mused over until they can justify removing a troublesome life in order to benefit many others.  It is a common quagmire for science fiction works to tackle, yet it is also thankfully one that is ideally suited to explore the type of deep-seated grief that comes with fate's cruel gut-punches.

2023 Horror Part Ten

IT LIVES INSIDE
Dir - Bishal Dutta
Overall: WOOF
 
Though it comes in just shy of being insultingly terrible, Bishal Dutta's full-length debut It Lives Inside frustratingly blows a rare opportunity to represent Indian culture and some of the trials that come with Westernized immigration.  Dutta's script has its heart in the right place, examining a teenage girl's struggles with complying to the customs of her foreign parents and the relationship with her best friend of the same ethnicity, on top of the usual tribulations associated with assimilation into normal, high school life.  It is nothing that has not been shown in films countless times, but the execution is especially lazy, particularly when the third act throws caution to the wind and bombards the audience with monotonous, laughable plot-holes and hackneyed sentimentality.  As far as the horror aspects are concerned, Dutta seems allergic to anything that could be accused of being a refreshing deviation, with endless jump scares, creaky-to-blaring monster noises, a CGI demon that looks about as scary as a Spirit Halloween decoration, and pathetic excuses to get characters behaving illogically at all times.  Not that the story properly establishes its supernatural details in the first place, taking a loose approach to its folklore that seems just as cut-and-pasted as all of the other genre films that it is constantly adhering to.

 

SUITABLE FLESH

Dir - Joe Lynch
Overall: MEH

Barbara Crampton's production company Alliance Media Partners makes the inevitable shift to Lovecraftian horror with a loose adaptation of the author's "The Thing on the Doorstep", which doubles as a spiritual successor to the work of Crampton's frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon.  Though nowhere near as gooey or laugh-out-loud ridiculous as the aforementioned filmmaker's Re-Animator or From Beyond, it still has some campy fun with the updated source material which hinges on a handful of actors sleazily portraying a body-jumping immortal.  The tone gets mangled here or there as it balances some schlocky sentimentality with more horny and violent silliness, plus the dialog is hokey and the plotting becomes cumbersome after awhile since the story runs out of things to do besides having the evil entity switch flesh suits over and over again.  Crampton, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, and Heather Graham seem to be having fun though, with the latter getting the most screen time, (and largely nudeless sex scenes), as the prerequisite, doomed Lovecfraft character that ends up with the short end of the stick as far as sanity is concerned.  Mediocre maybe, but it has the right amount of throwback passion behind it.

MY ANIMAL
Dir - Jacqueline Castel
Overall: GOOD

 

For her full-length debut My Animal, filmmaker Jacqueline Castel ventures into 80s throwback, lycanthropian lesbian terrain in a stylistically sincere manner that mitigates the would-be exploitative value of its premise.  Underplaying its horror elements to the point of being inconsequential, it unfolds more like a ticking time bomb of repressed frustration than it does a conventional coming-of-age story, focusing on Bobbi Salvör Menuez' protagonist who is isolated in rural Canada, has a dysfunctional home life, is gay, either bullied or neglected by both her peers and elders, shunned by her friend/the young woman who took her virginity, and is a werewolf.  With more on her plate than even the most dow n-trodden of teenagers venturing into adulthood can bare, it is no wonder that Menuez lets loose with an inevitable bout of fury at her hopelessly miserable situation.  The performances are top-to-bottom wonderful, particularly Menuez and Amandla Stenberg as her also troubled love interest whose blossoming relationship propels the first two acts before things go tragically sour.  Stephen McHattie is also memorable as the supportive yet somewhat aloof were-father, though Kids in the Hall fans will be disappointed by Scott Thompson's wasted three scenes, only two of which he delivers any dialog in.

2023 Horror Part Nine

WHEN EVIL LURKS

Dir - Demián Rugna

Overall: GOOD

 

The latest from Argentine genre filmmaker Demián Rugna, When Evil Lurks, (Cuando acecha la maldad), is an unflinching downer of a demonic possession movie and one that utilizes fairy tale logic with zero humor or any semblance of redemption.  Notable as Shudder's first Spanish-language production, Rugna's screenplay won the 2021 runner up prize at the Sitges Pitchbox event which was hosted by the Sitges Film Festival and Filmmaker Hub, and the resulting movie is hardly for every viewer's tastes.  The supernatural evil here acts as a disease that is more akin to zombie fever than straight unholy entity body-jumping and the story can clearly be seen as a metaphor for how overpowering sickness ruins a family from the inside out.  These characters are fueled by their understandable yet reckless impulses under such an otherworldly strain; impulses that lead to a spreading vileness that meticulously consumes yet leaves standing only the ones that have suffered the most, all so that they can suffer even more.  Such a nihilistic approach could be either refreshing or unbearable depending on the audience member, but as it steers far enough away from flat out torture porn, Rugna therefor deserves props for sticking to his guns and delivering something that is still uncompromising in its sinister brutality. 

 

V/H/S/85
Dir - David Bruckner/Scott Derrickson/Gigi Saul Guerrero/Natasha Kermani/Mike P. Nelson
Overall: WOOF

The V/H/S series has had its ups and downs since the first entry emerged in 2012 and eleven years later, V/H/S/85 represents an unmistakable nadir not just for the franchise but for anthology horror in general.  Shot back-to-back with the previous year's V/H/S/99 which had all new personnel on board, this one brings back David Bruckner who contributed "Amateur Night" to the initial movie, yet his framing narrative "Total Copy" here is just as ill-conceived as every other segment.  This is the main problem in that each premise is either asinine or poorly executed, from a magical lake that grants immortality/meets a Caucasian family that has a tradition of murdering people for no reason, to an earthquake that brings forth Mayan cannibal gods or something, to an obnoxious performance artist who gets killed by a virtual reality demon, to a Goth kid who videotapes his dreams of his dad murdering people.  Plot holes are rampant, nearly every character on screen is an unintentional parody of a "dumb person in horror movies", no justification is given as to why anyone keeps on pointing the camera at things once they go haywire, it is all edited like a conventional movie instead of a convincing found footage one, and it also all results in a lazy mess that throws caution to the wind with its lousy ideas from a crop of filmmakers who have all done far less embarrassing work.

 

NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU
Dir - Brian Duffield
Overall: MEH

 

A gimmick film with only one line of dialog uttered at an hour and nine minutes in, No One Will Save You serves as the second directorial effort from screenwriter Brian Duffield.  Playing within alien takeover stereotypes where the quasi-adorable look of the wide-eyed, yoga-posing extraterrestrials, their flying saucers, their twitchy motions, and the aggressive monster movie noises that they make are all painfully formulaic, Duffield focuses on other ways to tweak such conventions in the presentation itself.  We are given vague clues as to what trauma Kaitlyn Dever's protagonist has undergone and why she both lives alone and is aggressively shun from the other townsfolk, with such a revelation predictably arriving during the finale since Dever literally has no one to talk to the entire time.  Even when such an opportunity presents itself, the script keeps finding loose enough ways for her to remain silent and that coupled with the monotonous cat and mouse nature of the plotting is something that works against the movie's would-be suspense building.  Laughably unconvincing CGI is another detriment as the cartoony aliens pose absolutely zero visual threat, but Dever thankfully remains compelling throughout even if the story cannot come up with anything for her to do besides look terrified and hide.