The Hell of "Baby Invasion"

So, what has Harmony Korine been up to lately?  I ask this question, not because I enjoy Harmony Korine films, but because he's one of those directors who has consistently turned out interesting, challenging, and very topical work that is like nothing else out there.  I don't particularly enjoy his latest movie either, but it's going to keep me up at night.

The last Korine film that I watched was 2019's "The Beach Bum."  I decided to skip 2023's "Aggro Dr1ft," which was shot entirely in infrared photography, and was the first production of Korine's media company EDGLRD.  "Baby Invasion" is the second, which reveals that Korine has dived headfirst into the world of online gaming for inspiration.  You can tell this is the same filmmaker who gave us "Gummo" and "Spring Breakers," using minimal plotting and shoestring production values to tell his tales of alienated youth.  However, "Baby Invasion" is also a film that takes place inside fully artificial environments, and versions of reality subjected to so many filters and twisted gamification systems that it's impossible to tell what's actually real.  

 

We start with a brief clip of an interview with a game developer who never takes off her VR headset, telling us about how her planned "Baby Invasion" first-person shooter game was stolen, hacked, and loosed on the dark web.  Then we switch to the POV of one of the players of this game who is livestreaming.  They're only ever identified as "Yellow," and the actor credited as Anonymous.    The objective of "Baby Invasion" is to infiltrate the homes of the wealthy and rob them.  The players are heavily armed and have their faces digitally replaced with the faces of happy babies in real time.  From the opening clip, we know that the game has inspired copycat crimes, but it's impossible to tell if what we're seeing Yellow play is just the game, a real crime that has been gamified with Baby Invasion graphics, or something else.  

There's almost no plot to speak of.  We watch Yellow and their fellow players break into luxurious homes, terrorize the inhabitants, and collect loot and bonuses, which are helpfully highlighted with dollar signs or helpful neon signage.  There's a barely readable chat feed forever scrolling along one side of the screen, and heavy electronica music constantly playing, provided by British musician Burial.  Yellow's view is often partially obstructed by text boxes delivering instructions with odd syntax that seem to have been translated from a foreign language.  On top of that, the images of the victims Yellow sees often have overlays blocking out their faces or whole bodies, making them easier to treat as targets.  In the disturbing climax, a woman Yellow is interrogating has her voice muted, likely to remove sounds of screaming.  There are also occasional, hallucinatory videos of rabbits that keep appearing in parts of the landscape, perhaps indicating a glitch or serving as a reminder that this world isn't real.   

Whether the crimes are really happening or not is beside the point.  What Korine is interested in is the way that Yellow views the world through the game, and all the ways that the game enables their alienation and sociopathy.  "Baby Invasion" is very aware that gaming is now the dominant form of popular media, and Korine has spent a great deal of effort to capture the particular idiosyncrasies of gaming visual language in detail.  I don't play first person shooters, but I immediately recognized the targeting systems, the livestream display, and even the cutesy animation at the bottom of the screen that would occasionally show up to depict chibi versions of the players moving from one location to another.

Korine's provocative nature continues to shine through - there's one sequence where AI generated imagery is prominently used - but at the same time his aims have never been more accessible or transparent.   Unlike in his previous films, where the images of exuberant deviancy could be beautiful and even transcendent, the views of the "Baby Invasion" game offer only endless horror no matter how much it tries to contort itself into more pleasing shapes.  And as much as the game dehumanizes the victims, it dehumanizes the players even more so.    

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Reviving "Final Destination"

I don't count myself a fan of the "Final Destination" movies.  I know I've watched the first two, but don't recall much about them except the odd bits of trivia.  I watched the newest installment, "Final Destination: Bloodlines," not really expecting much beyond the well-established formula of photogenic teenagers cheating death, and then being dispatched by gory Rube Goldberg-style kills, one by one.  However, I really enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it enough that I started asking myself why I had enjoyed this particular "Final Destination" movie when I hadn't much liked any of the others, or the similar "The Monkey" from earlier this year.

First, the "Final Destination" franchise operates on the macabre premise that audiences like watching people die in creative and terrible ways.  For me, however, the kills by themselves are not enough, and presented in the wrong tone, I find them too bleak and nihilistic to enjoy.  I don't want to pick on "The Monkey," because feel-bad media has its place, but that was a movie that focused too much on the mindless, arbitrary nature of death, where the sick humor got downright disturbing, and the characters weren't fun to root for.  "Final Destination" is designed to be more conventionally entertaining.  The  series has always been very consistent about clear setups and payoffs.  Most of the deaths are either shown to be a deserved comeuppance or inadvertently caused by the victim themselves in some way.  We frequently see the action from the POV of death itself, a disembodied force that is never personified, but allows us a God's eye view to follow the design of the kills as they come about from seemingly random confluences of events.  So, it's less about who is going to die as much as discovering how the deaths are going to happen.

"Final Destination" exists in the same kind of hyperreality as Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, where cartoonishly broad characterizations and a certain amount of mental distancing from the consequences of the carnage are baked into the formula, the same way it is with older slasher films that kill off most of their casts.  What "Final Destination: Bloodlines" does a little differently  is to give the characters slightly more nuance by making them all part of the same family.  The main protagonist is Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who has nightmares of her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger in flashbacks,  Gabrielle Rose in the present) being killed in a mass casualty event in 1968.  It turns out that Iris was supposed to die, and has secretly been living in isolation to stave off her demise for decades.  Death hasn't just been killing off the intended victims of the event, but also their offspring, so this means Stefani, her brother Charlie (Teo Briones), and cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) and Julia (Gabrielle Rose) are marked for death.  The existing relationships and family dynamics add just enough intrigue to make the traditional collection of doomed teenagers a little more compelling to follow, and it's nice to have a reason for death coming after them in a specific order.  

However, the characters are still fairly flimsy horror movie creatures who we're never intended to have much emotional investment in, except as vehicles for black humor and irony.  A subplot that absolutely does not work is the awkward attempt to have Stefani reconnect to her estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt).  Instead, most of the film's resources are spent on those Rube Goldberg kill sequences, which are rendered with great care and attention to detail.  "Bloodlines" didn't cost that much more than any of the previous installments, but every aspect of the filmmaking feels like it's been upgraded.  The opening premonition scene with the mass casualty is thrilling stuff.  The directors, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, do a great job of playing with their audience's expectations, deploying fake-outs and misdirections, adding big doses of humor, and really amping up the anticipation for each terrible tragedy.  They have the viewers hyperfocused on pennies, shards of glass, and even an innocent game of Jenga, trying to figure out how it's all going to go fatally wrong.  

The one person in the film who is not disposable is the coroner William Bludworth (Tony Todd), a recurring character in the franchise.  The filmmakers have treated him with great care in order to give Tony Todd a proper sendoff, which came across well, even though I didn't remember Bludworth from the previous movies at all.  Apparently there are a lot of Easter eggs and references in the film for "Final Destination" fans, but they're subtle enough that us normies wouldn't notice or feel like we're missing something.  I still have no interest in going back to watch the other "Final Destination" movies, but I'd be happy to have a look at the next one if they keep going in this vein.        

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"The Ugly Stepsister" Has Her Day

I'm so glad that body horror movies are coming back into vogue, and that we're getting some really interesting female body horror movies specifically.  "The Ugly Stepsister," the first film from Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt, is everything I want from this kind of movie.  It's a subversion of a familiar fairy tale narrative that takes the opportunity to aim a few blows at terrible female beauty standards, toxic family dynamics, and false idols.  Also, the performances are very effective and the gore is really gross.  

"The Ugly Stepsisters" is built around one very good idea: "Cinderella" from the point of view of the stepsisters is a horror story.  Blichfeldt uses the original Brothers Grimm version of "Cinderella," with all the gruesome bits about how to get a foot to fit into a tiny glass shoe, as her starting point.  Plain Elvira (Lea Myren) is the older daughter of the ambitious Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), who marries a man named Otto (Ralph Carlsson) for his money.  Alas, Otto drops dead almost immediately, leaving Rebekka with debts instead of riches, and a new stepdaughter, the beautiful Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss).  After learning that the local prince (Isac Calmroth) wants a bride, Elvira and Agnes become rivals for his attention.

Watching Elvira destroy herself in the pursuit of beauty and the false hope of a happy ending is like watching a magnificently orchestrated car crash.  The physical horrors of the barbaric beauty treatments that Rebekka pushes on her are bad enough, but the real damage is caused by Elvira's growing resentment toward the effortless physical perfection of Agnes and an increasingly anxious fixation on besting her.  While the original "Cinderella" story plays out it full over the course of the film, here it's on the margins of Elvira's miserable tale of endless suffering and disappointment.  Its perfect fairy-tale moments linger just out of her grasp as a half-hallucinatory ideal that she desperately wants to attain.  Instead, she has to contend with months of starving herself, a beautician that wields a chisel and hammer, and dancing instruction that doubles as ritual humiliation.  And the film makes it clear that through her choices, she brings much of her misfortune on herself.  

Some interesting shadings are also added to the other characters for some additional nuance.  Agnes is neither pure nor good - she doesn't love the prince and only wants him to get herself out of a bad situation.  She antagonizes Rebekka and Elvira as much as they antagonize her.  Elvira's younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) is too young for marriage, and she has no interest in the prince or her mother's machinations.  She's a lone voice of reason in the film that Elvira chooses to ignore.  Rebekka is the terrible stepmother we all expect, but more self-interested than malicious.  Her choices are few and she has to be pragmatic.  Then there's the prince, who Elvira has fallen in love with via a volume of his published poems.  A chance encounter with him early in the film reveals that he's a venal boor, but Elvira is so lovesick that this doesn't dissuade her at all.     

For lovers of body horror, there are several impressive sequences of squirm-inducing nastiness.  One involves self-mutilation.  Another involves tapeworms.  The worst for me, however, was a brutal cosmetic surgery procedure that went from zero to off the charts terrifying in seconds.  Due to the themes and the genre, there are some similarities to last year's "The Substance," but "The Ugly Stepsister" is playing with different tropes and ideas.  I found the production very impressive.  The film  was made on a modest budget, but it never feels like any corners are being cut due to skillful filmmaking.  The performers also deserve no small amount of credit.  Lea Myren does much of the heavy lifting in Elvira's transformations from unfortunate frump to rising ingenue to damaged monster.

I've always had a fondness for dark fairy tale films, and this is definitely one of the darkest and most satisfying.  It reminds me of something I might have stumbled across in the '80s, especially the way the gore is so stylized and achieved mostly with practical effects work.  They manage to make eyelashes in this movie sinister, and it's fantastic.  In short, horror fans, this is not one to miss.

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Thank Goodness for "Sinners"

I have dutifully watched black struggle movies every year for awards season, and supported the work of the black filmmakers who feel compelled to make so many miserable period dramas about the African-American experience.  Though I admire many of these movies, I don't particularly enjoy them, and most of the time they leave me feeling depressed.  "Sinners" starts in similar territory, set in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, where the local black community is very poor and under the thumb of rich white landowners.  However, the movie is definitely not operating like prestige cinema.

"Sinners" has a lot to say about race and prejudice and the historical roots of some persistent American social ills, but at the same time it does a fantastic job of being thoroughly entertaining.  The trailer heavily suggests, but doesn't spell out exactly what kind of film "Sinners" is, and not knowing the specifics is probably the best way to go into the film.  If you want to preserve the surprises, you can stop reading here, and I'll just say that the film is an excellent combination of several different genres, with a magnificent soundtrack, and well worth your time. 

Still with me?  Let's get into some details.  Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, "Sinners" is a total original, somehow a musical, a horror movie, and a quasi-western action flick all at the same time.  It is enthusiastically R-rated, not just for blood and gore, but plenty of sensuality and non-explicit sex scenes on the way there.  Michael B. Jordan stars in a double role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who have returned from working in Chicago with a wagon full of illicit goods and plenty of cash, intent on opening their own juke joint.  They recruit their younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a preacher's son and gifted musician, Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), local blues player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), field worker Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller), and Chinese shopkeepers Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li), to help them with their grand opening.  Two unexpected arrivals threaten to throw wrenches in the works.  First, there's Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), Stack's jilted lover who is the wrong color to be hanging around the twins' new enterprise.  Then there's Remmick (Jack O'Connell), an Irishman of malevolent intentions who is new to the area.

"Sinners" is a musical in the same way that "O Brother Where Art Thou?" and "Lovers Rock" are musicals.  While it doesn't follow the structure of a classic song-and-dance spectacle, "Sinners" is a movie where musicians and musical performances play a big part in the story, and are vital to the tone of the entire piece.  The first half of the film meticulously sets up the big night.  We learn all the ins and outs of community, and characters are introduced and brought into the story one by one.  Once we get to the juke joint, however, the musical performances start to drive the action and shape the structure of the film.  A singer named Pearline (Jayme Lawson) appears on the scene as a love interest for Sammie.  The most important set piece of the film is not an action sequence, but Sammie taking the stage and playing the blues so transcendently that it summons visions of the past and future.  Shortly afterwards, Remmick is at the center of another arresting number, featuring Irish folk music. Ludwig Gorransson takes the opportunity to pay tribute to the era's music and culture in many different forms.      

The mix of different traditions is great to see in "Sinners," which has taken pains to include not only the Caucasian and African-American communities of the Mississippi Delta, but also historically accurate Chinese characters, Native Americans, and allusions to other minority groups.  It all helps to create a more complex, nuanced picture of the Jim Crow South than we usually see in movies, and highlight the commonalities in the diverse characters.  While they inhabit a dangerous world full of unseen pitfalls and sudden cruelties, Coogler emphasizes that joy and optimism can exist here too.  Parts of the third act are a little indulgent, with a sharp turn into traditional horror movie territory, and Michael B. Jordan showing off his badass credentials, but it's awfully satisfying to watch.

"Sinners"  is long and winding and full of little digressions, but the journey is worth every step.  I appreciate the extra time given over to making the characters full, well-rounded personalities.  I love the cinematography, which plays with aspect ratios and spatial relationships in delightful ways.  The sound design is fabulous.  I don't feel I can single out any of the performances because the cast is so good across the board, but Miles Caton is one to watch out for.

And I haven't been so thrilled and entertained by the ending of any film in ages.  

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"The Last of Us," Year Two

I want to state up front that I haven't played either of the "Last of Us" games.  Spoilers for the first season, but not the second ahead.

"The Last of Us" is one of the HBO shows that has been the most affected by the WGA and SAG strikes, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil going on at Warners.  The second season is only seven episodes, down from nine in the first season.  It's based on "The Last of Us 2," but apparently covers less than half of the story from that game.  I suspect that these issues would have already been testing the patience of the audience, even before we got into the various adaptation decisions that irrevocably changed the nature of the show.  In short, this is a risky and difficult season of television, but it's not without some rewards.

Without getting into too many details.  Season two of "The Last of Us" is a transitional year, where Ellie eventually emerges as the main character of the series, and a lot of new characters are introduced.  We open on Ellie and Joel living in Jackson, Wyoming with Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel), in relative safety.  Other members of the community include Ellie's love interest Dina (Isabela Merced), her ex Jesse (Young Manzino), Tommy's wife Maria (Rutina Wesley), a therapist named Gail (Catherine O'Hara), and her husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano).  New villains include Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), members of a paramilitary group based out of Seattle.  There are still plenty of the Infected around, and they're as significant a threat as ever, but the major antagonists this year are all human.

There's a time skip between the seasons so Joel and Ellie aren't quite the same as when we last left them.  Their relationship has become much more complicated, as Ellie is now an adult who is doing her best to distance herself from Joel for a variety of reasons.  The events of the season one finale are a major component of the rift, and both of them are still dealing with a lot of guilt and trust issues.  Revenge is another major theme for several different characters, but most prominently Abby, who has connections to last season's Fireflies.  I understand that she's supposed to be one of our new POV characters, but she doesn't get as much screen time this year as I was expecting.  Neither does Pedro Pascal as Joel, which really leaves a void.  Bella Ramsey is a solid performer, but she's better when she's playing off of Pascal, and pairing her up with newcomer Isabela Merced for so much of the season instead is a significant downgrade.

Still, there are a lot of great moments this season.  I love that there's room for some of our veteran character actors like Wright, O'Hara, and Pantoliano to have some extremely affecting moments.  Nothing is quite on the level of Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett's episode from the first season, but the potential is certainly there.  "The Last of Us" has an extremely deep bench of talent, and I kept spotting familiar actors like Hetienne Park, Ariela Barer, and Danny Ramirez in minor roles.  It's impossible to predict where any episode is going to go, and even who's going to survive the next five minutes.  The shrinking episode numbers aside, "The Last of Us" still boasts a large budget and prestige television production values.  A massive scale Infected siege on Jackson is one of the major highlights of the year.  And yet it's nowhere near as impressive as an episode later in the season, made up almost entirely of intimate dialogue scenes.

However, there's no getting around that the season ends prematurely, and it feels like the show has turned a corner into much dicier territory.  Like "House of the Dragon" last year, the lower episode count is definitely a problem, but I suspect the real issue is that both series are trying to stretch out the life of their available source material.  "The Last of Us" could make it work with the talent that it has, but it'll be an awfully long time before we find out - maybe too long for some fans.  Season Three won't be here until 2027 at the earliest.  

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"Presence" and "Love Me"

Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp are collaborating again, this time for a movie told from the POV of a ghost.  It's a tiny production, filmed entirely in a suburban house, with each scene comprising a single long take.  Like the recent "Nickel Boys," the whole film is shot from a first person perspective.  Despite what the marketing might lead you to believe, this is not a traditional horror film.  It's about a ghost, but a ghost who has to figure out its own identity and why it's trapped in this house, watching over the lives of a typical family of four.  

For most of "Presence," events play out like a non-supernatural domestic drama.  Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) move into the house  with their teenage children, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday).  The family dynamics are difficult.  Chloe is mourning the loss of a friend.  Rebekah is unsympathetic, heavily favoring her son Tyler, who is an insensitive jock.  Chris is more empathetic, but often frustrated in his attempts to communicate with his wife and children.  Tyler becomes friends with a boy named Ryan (West Mulholland), who becomes close with Chloe.  All five of them start experiencing strange phenomena in the house as the ghost becomes more active.

"Presence" feels like the kind of experimental low-budget movie that a couple of promising first-time filmmakers would make.  It's got a few big twists and some awkward dialogue that don't quite come off as well as I was hoping they would, and the first person camera takes some getting used to, especially when it starts whip-panning in some of the later scenes.  Like many of Soderbergh's recent films, it feels like he's mostly interested in playing with the cinematic visual language - specifically the use of certain camera techniques and the first person perspective.  Not all of these experiments have been very watchable or entertaining, but I thought that everything paid off in "Presence," especially the ending.  And I really appreciate seeing Lucy Liu in a relatively straight dramatic film role for once.  I really wish it happened more often.  

On to "Love Me," which I'd been keeping an eye out for since it premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. Brothers Andy and Sam Zuchero have made a romantic comedy about two AI - a weather buoy and a satellite - who gradually gain sentience after humanity goes extinct, and eventually develop a relationship with each other.  It's extremely high concept, very experimental, and I don't think most of it works.  However, it makes for a fascinating thinkpiece and I enjoyed watching the film come up with different ways to portray the different stages of Me (Kristen Stewart) and Iam (Steven Yeun) becoming more and more anthropomorphized over the passing aeons.   

The biggest problem with "Love Me" is that it jumps into the romance before it establishes who Me and Iam are as characters, and blunders a lot of the character development.  It also relies on tropes and meta commentary very heavily, and the fact that the film is self-aware about this doesn't help much.  Me, the buoy, who eventually self-identifies as a girl, is initially the pursuer.  She creates a fake persona for herself by borrowing heavily from the social media of a real couple, Deja and Liam.  Her idea of being in a relationship is copying what she likes.  This means endlessly acting out scenes from existing videos, repeating other people's words and actions.  The message about performative online interactions couldn't be plainer.  It takes some significant conflicts and self-discovery to get our two AI on the right track.

The visuals shift from screenlife text messaging and search engine results to virtual world animated avatars, to finally the live actors interacting physically in the last act.  Frankly, none of it looks very good, but the attempt to piece all this together coherently is admirable in and of itself.  I also do not believe Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun have any screen chemistry together at all, which may have been the point.  In any case, this is a weird little movie, but innovative and earnestly trying new things, and the filmmakers deserve nothing but encouragement in their future endeavors.  

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The Third "Nosferatu"

"Nosferatu" isn't quite the same as "Dracula," despite a copyright lawsuit that nearly removed F.W. Murnau's silent film version from existence in 1922.  Count Orlock is a less human kind of vampire than Count Dracula, a long-fingered folkloric creature who brings the plague with him when he comes to take up residence in the German town of Wisburg.  The female lead, Ellen Hutter, is a much stronger, more proactive character than her counterpart, and willing to sacrifice herself to stop Orlock's evil. The climax is primarily framed as a spiritual battle between the two of them, though the usual vampire hunters are still very much in the story.  Only three filmed versions of "Nosferatu" have been made over the past century, the most recent one by Robert Eggers.

I like this new version of Nosferatu," though it's not my favorite.  I absolutely respect Eggers' commitment to making this a horror film first and foremost, and it's an effective one.  The slow, creeping, dread is evoked with chilly nightmare visuals, and the screen is kept so dark and oppressive that what you don't see is often as important as what you do.  Orlock is played by Bill Skasgaard under an array of prosthetics.  He's in equal parts transfixing and repulsive, a palpable threat and a potent symbol of death.  He doesn't seem remotely human or pitiable the way his predecessors sometimes did - the guttural, ghastly vocals are particularly impressive -  and it's quite a thing to behold.  This is a very distinct Orlock from both the Max Shreck and Klaus Kinski versions.

The first part of the film where Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) journeys to Transylvania to meet the strange nobleman who wants to buy property in Germany, is a slow burn, easing us into the film's rhythms and visual language.  The disjointed narrative here follows a lot of dream logic, with occasional glimpses of shocking things.  It's great for the horror, but not so much for the characters or plot.   I've never liked this section of the original story much, and that didn't change this time.  "Nosferatu" is much more fun when Orlock arrives in Germany, and all the rest of the characters come into play.  In addition to our leading lady Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), we also meet the family friends she's staying with, Friederich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor Johnson, Emma Corrin), plus our primary vampire hunter, Professor von Franz (Willem Dafoe).   I like Hoult and Depp as our protagonists, but I was happiest to see Willem Dafoe when he showed up around the midpoint.  The film seems to snap into focus when he appears, finally offering some helpful answers and a tension-breaking comedic energy. 

Most of the attention from critics, however, has rightly gone to Lily-Rose Depp, who replaced Anya Taylor-Joy as Ellen.  This is easily her most high profile role to date, and she makes a good case for staying in the spotlight.  Visually she's a perfect scream queen, and is excellent at playing someone who is living in perpetual fear and uncertainty.  Ellen is a very physical role, as Nosferatu's influence manifests in sleepwalking, illness, bad dreams, and an increasing paranoia.  In this version of the story, she is also a very sexual presence, representing life and love.  Depp doesn't have the magnetism of Isabelle Adjani, who played the corresponding female lead in Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre," but she has no trouble at all taking charge of the screen, even when Ellen is at her weakest and most vulnerable.  

    

The filmmaking is what I've come to expect from Robert Eggers - monochrome, visceral, venal, and very visual.  There are, as expected, little homages to the F.W. Murnau silent film everywhere, from character names to a few fabulously creepy shots of Count Orlock's invading shadow gliding across the frame.  The pacing, however, is what kept me from fully embracing Eggers' "Nosferatu."  The film runs well over two hours, and unfortunately drags in some places.  I also wish I could have seen it in a theater setting, which might have ameliorated some of the technical issues I had with low light and volume levels.   I enjoyed "Nosferatu" in the end, but I have to conclude that it really isn't to my tastes.  I prefer my vampires a little more tragic, and my mise en scene a little less bleak.  The film is a significant achievement, and I recommend it wholeheartedly, but personally I'll stick to the older "Nosferatu" films.

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"My Old Ass" and "Your Monster"

"My Old Ass" is a movie about a very specific time in life.  Elliott (Maisy Stella) is celebrating her eighteenth birthday by going camping with some friends.  She takes some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and suddenly her thirty nine-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) is having a conversation with her.  Older Elliott offers some advice, like staying away from the cute guy, Chad (Percy Hynes White), who is working for the summer at her parents' cranberry farm, and spending more time with her family before she goes off to college in a few weeks.  

Written and directed by Megan Park, "My Old Ass" is a movie that snuck up on me.  It's incredibly sincere, despite the fantasy premise and lighthearted characters.  The grown-up Elliott drops a few hints about the future, but in a sly way where you can't tell if she's joking or not.  Plaza's been in a few projects lately that haven't had the best idea of what to do with her, but she's perfect as the untrustworthy mentor figure here.  After the mushroom trip, teenage Elliott discovers she can still talk to her older version on the phone, because she added her number to Elliott's phone while Elliott was asleep, under "My Old Ass."  The two develop a relationship that initially seems one-sided, but becomes wonderfully symbiotic and mutually helpful.  Maisy Stella carries the film with ease, and I look forward to anything she wants to do next.  

There's a lot of nostalgia in "My Old Ass," despite it taking place in the present day, in Southern Ontario.  Park seems to have constructed her ideal of what her teenage years could have been like.  Elliott is a lesbian with a supportive family and friends, looking forward to striking out on her own.  There's a great little romance in the mix, with one of the silliest, most winning fantasy sequences I've seen on film in a long time.  The pacing is very unhurried, and the sunny visuals are lovely.  Elliott's family lives in a lakeside community where everyone seems to get around by boat, and we see her constantly surrounded by nature.  Older Elliott urges her younger self to enjoy her time there while she can, and the audience should take that advice as well. 

On to "Your Monster," which is also about a young woman who finds herself talking to a possibly imaginary aspect of herself.  Melissa Barrera stars as Laura, an acting hopeful whose career trajectory was interrupted by getting cancer.  Her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donavan) left her, and the musical they worked on together, with the expectation that Laura would play the lead role, is being produced without her.  Shattered by the breakup and recovering from surgery, Laura finds a literal monster (Tommy Dewey) living in her closet.  He's a grump at first, and wants her to leave, but eventually the two become friendly and maybe something more.    

Caroline Lindy wrote and directed "Your Monster," which turns out to be a unique combination of breakup movie and putting-on-a-show movie.  Laura decides she wants to be part of the musical, and crashes the auditions with unexpected results.  Barrera is the main event here, handily navigating the toxic relationship and rom-com tropes, and a few Broadway-style song numbers too.  She's a charming, lovable presence, even when she's deep in the breakup funk, crying through mountains of tissues.  I found the monster romance an interesting idea, but underbaked.  The visual of this quasi-werewolf guy cuddling with Melissa Berrera and sharing her Chinese takeout is fine, and the banter is cute, but I was hoping for a little more fleshing out of the monster as an actual character.  I don't feel like I had enough time with him to get to know him as well as I should have.    

"Your Monster" has some good ideas and takes its story to some unexpected places.  I like the  mix of multiple genres and the particular tone - very light and comedic, with just a few touches of horror and fantasy in the right places.  However, I wish the movie and its central metaphor could have given me a little more to chew on.  It's a fun watch with a great ending, but not very filling.      

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Taking "The Substance"

Spoilers ahead.  "The Substance" is one of those movies best enjoyed knowing as little as possible going in, and I highly recommend it to horror fans.  Its the best horror film in a year that's been great for horror.  However, it gets pretty gruesome, so be warned.  

I'm writing a spoiler review, because there's a lot to talk about, and I want to talk about all of it.  And I mean all of it.

Writer and director Coralie Fargeat has returned after far too long for her second film, "The Substance."  It's a body horror movie, about an aging actress named Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who is fired from her role as a television fitness host, because a network executive, Harvey (Dennis Quaid) wants someone younger.  Elisabeth is given a chance to access "The Substance," a mysterious drug that promises to create a better version of herself.  This better version is Sue (Margaret Qualley), a beautiful young woman who emerges fully formed from Elisabeth's flesh to become the new "It" girl, but she can only be active when Elisabeth is comatose, and vice versa.  They share a life, governed by strict rules, time limits, and mutual dependence.  Balance and respect are vital to making their double-act work, and of course things go bad very quickly.

You could treat "The Substance" as an elevated horror  film.  It's a new take on the "All About Eve" story with a fading star being replaced by an ambitious ingenue, with plenty to say about fame, aging, self-hatred, and internalized misogyny.  Demi Moore uses her status as a former A-lister in her sixties to stand in for everyone bitter about being past their prime, and all the women who are subjected to impossible beauty standards.  The most impactful scene is surely the one where Elisabeth is getting ready for a date and gradually goes to pieces because she just can't stop comparing herself to Sue's physical perfection.  Moore has never been more vulnerable and sympathetic onscreen.  And of course "The Substance" is also about substance abuse in the most unsubtle terms, with the viciously entitled Sue demanding more and more time and resources, to Elisabeth's detriment.  

I, however, am here for the filmmaking.  As a visceral thrill ride, "The Substance" is fantastic fun.  Taking place in a more overtly sleazy, bygone version of Hollywood, everything is deliberately heightened and stylized.   The hypnotic slow motion, the smash-cut juxtapositions, the '80s aesthetics, and the symmetrical frames had me unable to take my eyes off the screen.  And everything from the heightened sound design to the typography of the title cards is designed to elicit a very physical reaction from the viewer.  I can't remember the last time I experienced so much sensory overload while watching a movie.  Everything from a man eating shrimp to crinkling plastic bags to smeared makeup leaves a tactile impression.  Several pivotal scenes play out with no dialogue because it's totally unnecessary.  When the shock of blood and gore appear at last, it's almost a relief to be seeing more traditional horror images.

There have been some complaints circulating recently that you can't have female nudity in movies anymore without causing offense.  "The Substance" provides a strong counterargument.  I appreciate Fargeat's approach - both Moore and Qualley spend quite a bit of time in the buff, but it's never nudity for its own sake.  Their bodies soon become canvasses for needle pricks, gaping wounds, weathered skin,  mysterious lumps, and so much more.  Sue is sexualized constantly, but usually for comedic effect or to spur on Elisabeth's discomfort and resentment.  The aerobics program, notably, is constantly showing us crotch and posterior shots, but in such a way that is totally dehumanizing, until the female body parts look positively alien.      

In the last twenty minutes the movie goes full gonzo splatterfest.  Monstro Elisasue at the New Year's show is a masterpiece of grotesquerie, right up there with the best visuals from "The Thing" and "The Fly."  I never thought I'd see a prosthetic monster like this onscreen again, and it was thrilling.  Even better was Fargeat's willingness to go so far over the top in the delightfully insane finale, pushing all the camp and monstrosity into the realm of glorious, gooey Grand Guignol.  There are references and homages to so many other horror classics from the likes of David Cronenberg, Peter Jackson, John Carpenter, Brian Yuzna, and Stanley Kubrick.  

And Coralie Fargeat is making a great case for herself as one of those horror greats.  May her next film make it to screens faster than this one did.

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"Alien: Romulus" Rebounds

Minor spoilers ahead.

We've seen the "Alien" franchise get all grand and epic in Ridley Scott's recent trilogy, and now it's dropping all the fancy philosophy and mythology in favor of getting back to basics. The newest "Alien" movie, "Alien: Romulus" is a haunted house in space movie, just like the original "Alien," where a group of unwary youngsters stumble across an old space station and accidentally unleash the most lethal killing machines in the universe.  And thanks to the efforts of director Fede Alvarez, and his talented cast, it's a pretty good time.

The first twenty minutes of "Romulus" are the most important, efficiently setting up all the characters and stakes that will get us to care about the other ninety-odd minutes that follow.  Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is an exploited worker on one of the evil Weyland-Yutani corporation's miserable space colonies.  She and her "brother" Andy (David Jonsson), a simpleminded salvaged android, are convinced by friends to take part in a foolhardy scheme - they plan to steal cryo-chambers from a derelict vessel that has entered their system, and use them to escape to Yvaga, the nearest planet with better conditions.  Along for the ride are Tyler (Archie Renuax), Rain's ex, his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), who is pregnant, their cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), a hothead, and Navarro (Aileen Wu), who is their pilot friend.       

Rain and Andy are the only two characters you really need to care about, and Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson are perfectly cast.  Rain is our new Ripley, full of empathy and painfully vulnerable, but capable of keeping her nerve under pressure.  Andy continues the franchise's long tradition of fascinating android characters, and there are all sorts of implications to our first non-Caucasian model being presented the way Andy is in this movie, with the character arc that he gets, that I'm going to enjoy unpacking later.  The other actors are solid, especially Merced and Wu, who are featured in some of the most graphic and upsetting horror sequences - have we had enough traumatic births this year? - but aren't really full characters the way that our leads are.  As with most of the "Alien" movies, the survival rate is not high, and we don't need to get too attached.    

 

I wonder if the most recent round of reboots and legasequels are best suited for more casual franchise fans who actually don't remember all that much about the original films.  I spotted several of the most distracting callbacks and homages to the original "Alien" in "Alien: Romulus," but I know I missed a few others.  I'm not sure why they bothered with the old one-liners and cameos, since "Romulus" is essentially one giant homage to the first two "Alien" films already, full of chases and fights on metal catwalks, viscerally scary alien creatures, and highly destructive weaponry.  "Romulus" gets top marks for its production design and creature effects.  The facehuggers and xenomorphs are as alarming as ever onscreen, and Fede Alvarez understands how to use them for maximum impact.  This one really  feels like the "Alien" movies I watched as a kid, not just because it's using old computer displays or getting out the puppetry rigs again, but because "Romulus" is a very simple, straightforward story.  Once the facehuggers are loose, everyone just needs to get out alive.     

So for the most part, "Alien: Romulus" is everything I want out of an "Alien" movie.  It presents some new monsters to have nightmares about, introduces some new heroes to root for, and delivers some really excellent chills and thrills.  If you're here to get your questions answered about the space jockey or the "Prometheus" Engineers, this is not the movie for you.  If you're here to scream at the monsters and root for the girl with the big gun to make it to the end, I recommend it.  Like "Twisters" earlier this year, the movie may be part  of a franchise, but it works because it gets the fundamentals right.  "Alien: Romulus" is genuinely scary, gruesome, exciting, and a great time at the movies.  Sequels are being planned, of course, but I'm only interested if they keep the scope limited and the stories dead simple.  For "Alien," you really don't need anything else.  

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About That Beetlejuice Sequel

I want to get two things about "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice" across.  First, it follows the usual template of one of these completely unnecessary sequels that happen decades after the original.  When it's not retreading old bits and playing the greatest hits, it's juggling way too many half-finished ideas and subplots.  The story is a mess, the characters are creaky, and "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice" doesn't hold a candle to the original.  However, the movie is still entertaining as hell, and the most its fun I've had with any Tim Burton project in a while.

Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) grew up to be the host of a spooky reality show about hauntings, much to the consternation of her teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who doesn't believe in ghosts.  After Lydia's father dies, Lydia, her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara), and Astrid return to the old house to settle affairs and hold the funeral.  Lydia's scummy boyfriend and producer Rory (Justin Theroux) tags along, hoping to manipulate her into tying the knot.  The demon Betegeuse (Michael Keaton) is thinking the same thing, re-emerging from the Netherworld to pursue Lydia again.  This time there's a ticking clock in the form of Delores (Monica Belluci), Betegeuse's murderous, soul-sucking ex-wife, who wants him back.  Also in the mix are Willem Defoe as a Netherworld detective who used to be a actor, Arthur Conti as Astrid's local love interest with  nefarious intentions, Danny DeVito as an undead janitor, and Nick Kellington as Bob the zombie.   Jeffrey Jones does not appear in this movie to reprise his role as the deceased Charles Deetz, but Charles does play a part in the story. Er, part of him plays a part.

If you're watching "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice" for some kind of coherent story, good luck.  Most of the plot revolves around Lydia, and as much as I love her, Winona Ryder is not the strongest actress and Lydia isn't a very interesting character this time out.  However, if you watch it for the vibes and the kitsch and Tim Burton proving he can still be funny, you won't be disappointed.  So much of the film boils down to Burton getting anarchic and letting his inner child run wild again.  We get animated sequences with good, old-fashioned stop motion animation.  We get an icky Netherworld populated by morbid walking visual gags, including all of Betegeuse's co-workers being those dudes with shrunken heads.  There's a minute or two of Mario Bava homage.  There's a climactic musical sequence, set to Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park," that goes on for way too long.  The Soul Train that ferries the dead to the Great Beyond is, of course, an extended "Soul Train" joke.   Many of the callbacks don't need to be there - the opening sequence is a direct lift from the original "Beetlejuice," and "Day-O" is shoehorned into the film in the most inelegant way possible - but there aren't that many to worry about.   

Even if the filmmakers don't quite know what to do with them, I love seeing Willem Dafoe get a chance to ham it up as a detective who needs cue cards for his hardboiled speeches, and Monica Bellucci stapling her scattered limbs back together.  Dependable Catherine O'Hara is still playing Delia as the artsy kook who will never compromise on her vision - but did learn to love her weird stepkid.  I don't feel like I got enough of Michael Keaton, but that was true of the original movie too, where Betelegeuse wasn't actually onscreen for very long.  We get some more backstory for him here, but wisely not too much.  Keaton's best scenes are where he's being the nasty funhouse freak, terrorizing the mortals and oozing used car salesman smarm.  

The art direction is epic stuff, and I love that it's so tactile and gooey. Does anyone else ever get nostalgic for good splatter?  I'm sure there's a lot of invisible CGI involved here, but there's also way more practical props and costumes and foam-rubber everywhere, to really make it feel like the '80s again.  Looking at the budget figures, none of this cost very much, but it doesn't feel like they cheaped out on the production at all.  To the contrary, watching Tim Burton get back to his roots playing with puppets and prosthetics is an absolute joy.  After years of Burton doing mediocre Disney films, it's such a relief to find out he's still got this kind of silly, sloppy Halloween hijink-fest in him.   

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Doubling Back on "Blink Twice"

Spoilers ahead.

I was not originally going to write a full post for  "Blink Twice," the directing debut of Zoe Kravitz.  I did a little capsule write-up as part of my post on 2024 summer thrillers and chillers.  This was one of the better ones, but not at the top of the rankings.  I found Kravitz's direction impressive, but you really don't want to scrutinize the mechanics of how any of the drugs or other mind-altering substances in "Blink Twice" work.  However, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie, so I feel compelled to write a little more.  Let's treat this as a post-viewing spoiler discussion.

I think the arrest of Sean Combs and the details coming out about his crimes had a lot of do with my continued interest.  I think watching a couple of interviews with Zoe Kravitz did too.  And seeing the film dismissed in some corners as "Get Out," but with #MeToo and anti-one percenter themes kinda riled me up to defend it.  Yes, all the themes in "Blink Twice" are familiar and topical, but Kravitz really tackles them in a way that not many other directors have.  There's a literal, prominent trigger warning at the beginning of the movie for a reason, but at the same time "Blink Twice" isn't difficult to watch.  There's a lot of humor, action, and smart framing of events to get the horror and depravity across while still being very entertaining.  The multiple jump scare sequence is one of my favorite parts, and I love the casual "what were we thinking?" banter when the women start putting the pieces together.  

I also keep noticing similar imagery in other media.  The private island vacation, the high end clothing, the beautifully plated food, and the luxury items in little gift bags are all things that you see again and again in modern media aimed at women, especially reality programs.  All the Cinderella narratives seem to involve shopping sprees and makeovers, and so many happy endings involve shots of lazing on a tropical shore.  Kravitz sets up these things as a trap, turning everything from the fancy drinks to the specifically designed clothing against our protagonists.  People have pointed out that Olivia Wilde did similar things with "Don't Worry Darling," where the perfect version of the '50s was supposed to be the draw to keep the victims complacent.  However, not very many people view the '50s as some kind of perfect ideal anymore - even the tradwife trend ditches the old aesthetics - and plenty of media from the last thirty years have happily subverted it.  "Blink Twice" hits so much harder because it's using current signifiers of wealth and privilege, all the things that people aspire to have right now.    

And let's not forget that Channing Tatum's Slater King is part of the package.  As we've seen over and over again in recent years, a man with too much money and too much privilege usually turns out to be a monster.  And yet, there's this terrible impulse to keep lionizing the people who win at capitalism, the Elon Musks and the Donald Trumps who have way too much control over our lives, even though they've demonstrated their total lack of decency and morality.  Tatum's over the top performance as this unbelievable narcissist would seem implausible if we hadn't seen this kind of behavior normalized by real people in the upper echelons.  And Haley Joel Osment and Simon Rex are there to remind you that even the harmless-looking funny guys can turn out to be predators.

I want to talk a little bit about the ending, which has attracted some controversy.  Frieda, played by Naomi Ackie, decides to turn the situation to her advantage rather than expose the truth.  She proves just as cutthroat as her subjugators, and just as willing to exploit her newfound power.  It's a dark turn, but a smart one.  I choose to interpret it as a reminder that women are just as susceptible to being monsters, and men can certainly be victimized.  And this kind of nuance is why I think "Blink Twice" comes across so much better than most of the socially conscious horror that I've seen recently.  If you want a happy ending for Frieda, it has to come with a price.  

    

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"Kinds of Kindness" Kinda Rules

Good grief, I can't tell you how much I appreciated a little Lanthimos this year. In a torpid summer season full of franchise reruns, a nasty anthology film from a weird European director was exactly what I needed. It's taken me longer than I'd like to admit, but I've really grown fond of the absurdity of Yorgos Lanthimos's work. If you'd told me fifteen years ago that I'd actually enjoy watching his characters' deadpan line delivery, frequent acts of self-mutilation, and warped attitudes toward sex, I'd have thought you were crazy.


Yet here we are. "Kinds of Kindness" is a rare anthology film, featuring three stories all with the same cast playing different characters, with one exception. Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone each play the lead of one story, and jointly share the narrative in the third. In the first story, Plemons plays a man whose life is totally controlled by his micromanaging boss, and attempts to resist. In the second, Plemons plays a cop whose wife, played by Stone, returns home after being lost at sea. Finally, Stone plays a cult member in the third story who is searching for someone who can resurrect the dead. Other members of the ensemble include Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, and Mamadou Athie, who play different roles in each story. There is one minor character in common, known only as R.M.F (Yorgos Stefanakos). He has no lines, but is a vital piece of each plot, and the stories are titled "The Death of R.M.F.," "R.M.F is Flying," and "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich."


All of the stories follow the style of Lanthimos's earlier absurdist films like "Dogtooth," "The Killing of Sacred Deer" and "The Lobster." Each explores personal relationships and human impulses through allegory, pushing the characters to wild extremes. I think that these shorter pieces, co-written with Efthimis Filippou, actually work a lot better than some of the full length feature films. The time limit forces the filmmakers to be more efficient in their storytelling, and the bizarre concepts don't have the time to grow stale. I also like the use of the same cast in each story. The characters are unconnected, but there are echoes of the same behaviors and characteristics from one performance to the next, especially because everyone's dialogue shares the same particular cadence and phrasing.


It's been a while since I've seen a film that so clearly invites interpretation. I don't want to say anything definite, except that the stories seem to be ordered by how straightforward they are. The one where Willem Dafoe is controlling Jesse Plemons' life has a pretty clear theme, and the simple premise is taken to its logical end. The next with Stone returning from the sea feels like the modern day adaptation of a folk tale, using dream logic and instances of surrealism. The final story is the most complicated, with some concepts like the cult taking longer to set up. I'm still working out my feelings towards it. Crucially, however, none of the stories feel unfinished or that they should be longer than they are.


I really enjoy all of the actors involved in "Kinds of Kindness," especially when they're able to find the notes of humor and whimsy in the madness of Lanthimos's cruel universes. Emma Stone has a celebratory dance in the last segment that is perfect in its strangeness and intensity. Jesse Plemons gradually unraveling in the first segment is a joy. Lanthimos sticks him in more and more uncomfortable parts of the frame until you can just feel him ready to explode and run amok. And after everyone's antics in "Poor Things," the one graphic sex scene in the film felt more like a punch line than anything disturbing.


The only element that feels very un-Lanthimos is the soundtrack, especially the opening with The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." It's oddly on-the-nose, almost spoon feeding the audience the premise of the first story. Still, it made for an excellent trailer, so I'm not inclined to complain.


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"Knowing" is the Strangest Disaster Film

Spoilers ahead.

Alex Proyas is a talented director, best known for making two of the best genre films of the 90s, "The Crow" and "Dark City."  His later films got middling to bad reviews, and I know I skipped "Knowing" because of the terrible critical reception.  I read the spoilers for the ending at some point, which just reinforced my decision.  However, recently I stumbled across the Nicolas Cage action film "Next," where he plays a magician who has precognition.  I remembered that people frequently got "Next" mixed up with "Knowing," where Nicolas Cage also wrangles with precognition, so I thought it might make for a fun double feature.  And maybe I could get a post out of it.  It turns out there is plenty in "Knowing" for a whole post by itself.

"Knowing" was released in 2009, the same year as apocalypse movies "2012" and "The Road."  All three seemed to be building on anxieties about the impending Mayan apocalypse while processing some of the lingering fallout of 9/11.  Nicolas Cage plays a widower with a young son, who stumbles across a list that predicts a series of fatal disasters, culminating in the end of the world.  The first hour of "Knowing" is an excellent supernatural thriller, full of creepy revelations and building suspense.  Cage decodes the list and tries to prevent the disasters, but fails every time.  Meanwhile, sinister figures dubbed "The Whisper People" keep showing up, looming over Cage's son.  There's a good argument that "Knowing" should be considered a horror movie, with occasional jump scares, smash cuts, and some of the most spectacular kill sequences ever put on film.  The plane crash and subway derailment sequences are still jaw-dropping to watch, among the best I've ever seen.  However, it's the bleak tone and paranoid atmosphere that really set "Knowing" apart, where the hero is helpless to do anything except witness the carnage.  At times it feels like a repudiation of the Roland Emmerich style disaster films like "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow."  

The second half of the movie is about the discovery of an apocalyptic event coming to wipe out all life on Earth, and how the characters respond.  The final disaster is solar flares destroying the atmosphere, and this is scientifically pure bunk, but that's not really the point.  Suddenly the movie shifts to more spiritual and existential matters, as Cage is forced to confront his own faith, and the Whisper People are revealed to be benevolent creatures, interceding to save some of the children of Earth from annihilation.  There are visual indicators that they might be aliens or they might be angels, but it's left ambiguous on purpose.  This is the material that left so many viewers dumbfounded, and in some cases very upset.  The impact on me was blunted by the fact that I had read the spoilers, but I agree that these elements should have been set up better than they were, since many viewers clearly weren't ready or receptive to them.  The ending is a perfect illustration of tonal whiplash, as we're treated to a view of the total destruction of life on Earth, immediately followed up by shots of the rescued kids running through an Edenic alien landscape, ready to start over.  

However, "Knowing" turning out to be part Biblical allegory, and pivoting to a different genre in the last act felt familiar and oddly nostalgic to me.  "Dark City" had a similar reveal, though that one showed its hand earlier, and the dark sci-fi tone was still pretty much the same throughout.  The answers to supernatural mysteries in films like this are frequently so insubstantial or incomplete that it was a wonderful shock to realize that "Knowing" was giving us something completely different.  Suddenly I was watching a "Twilight Zone" episode, where I was being asked to accept an answer that was much bigger and stranger than I had been anticipating.  It was Revelations all along!  And as silly as it sounds on its face, this is a satisfying answer, even if the sequence of events to reach it is shamelessly contrived to fit the demands of a suspense thriller.  I want to make it clear that I'm not Christian and have no particular attachment of affinity for Christian mythology.  However, I respect and appreciate the writers of "Knowing" incorporating this kind of material in a thoughtful way.

"Knowing" turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, and it now gives me a third Alex Proyas film I can wholeheartedly recommend.  It's not a great film, and will not work for everyone, clearly, but the parts and pieces are so interesting that I think it warrants further consideration.  Roger Ebert certainly thought so, devoting multiple pieces to "Knowing" and its deeper themes that I had to go to the Wayback Machine to dig up.  And they're worth digging up. 

  

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My Favorite James Whale Film

It's nearly Halloween, so let's talk about a monster.  

There are only a few really iconic images from the early days of film that are still potent in the present day.  One of these is Boris Karloff's portrayal of Frankenstein's Monster from the 1931 version of "Frankenstein."  The Monster's incredible impact on the history of film and popular culture can't be overstated, serving as a common point of reference for so many outsiders, both in and out of the horror genre. You can find the film's influence everywhere, from the work of Andy Warhol and Tim Burton to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," to Victor Erice's anti-Francoist fairy tale, "The Spirit of the Beehive."   The Monster may be one of the most parodied characters of all time, with humorous versions appearing in "The Munsters," "Young Frankenstein," Franken Berry cereal boxes, and the "Hotel Transylvania" franchise.

  

I debated for a while about writing this entry for "Bride of Frankenstein," where the Monster is more verbal and self-aware.  Many of the famous lines and images associated with "Frankenstein" actually come from this film, and it's just as highly regarded among critics.  However, the original "Frankenstein" is far more iconic and unsettling.  It has the famous "It's alive!" scene and the notorious drowning sequence that was widely censored until the 1980s.  Frankenstein is such a familiar figure now, it's hard to remember that the film is a straight horror picture, and audiences found its depiction of the Monster truly disturbing and frightening in the 1930s.  There were significant censorship challenges, and the film was banned in multiple countries over its subject matter.  A great deal of its effectiveness comes from Boris Karloff's portrayal of the Monster, who was initially conceived as a far more inhuman, mindless grotesque.  Karloff gives him a sense of pathos and tragedy.  You can feel his inarticulate frustration in all his attempts to interact with the people he encounters.       

The filmmaking is also excellent on every level.  Arthur Edeson's cinematography establishes so much of the film's atmosphere of dread and gloom.  Makeup artist Jack Pierce designed the immortal look of the Monster.  Charles D. Hall and Kenneth Strickfaden were responsible for putting together Frankenstein's laboratory, and filling it with sinister electrical machinery.  The electrical effects were a novelty in 1931, but so successful that they were soon popping up everywhere in the subsequent Universal Monster films.  "Frankenstein" was already very much part of a franchise, designed to follow up to the success of "Dracula" - in fact Bela Lugosi had been cast in an earlier version of the film before James Whale took over and brought in Karloff as his leading man.  Whale was best known for war films up to that point, and his approach to "Frankenstein" was to apply elements of German Expressionism to the visual style.  A fan of German directors like Paul Leni, Fritz Lang, and Robert Weine, he used heightened, exaggerated shots, dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, and distorted images to give the film an unconventional, ominous look.         

"Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" were both directed by James Whale, who was also responsible for helming "The Invisible Man," and other Universal horror classics.  However, Whale wasn't keen on being known as a horror director, and went on to direct several other excellent films in multiple genres, including the 1936 adaptation of "Show Boat," an American adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseille Trilogy," and a murder mystery farce called "Remember Last Night?"  However, he was never able to escape the shadow of his early successes, and left Hollywood for a career directing theater by the 1940s.  In recent years, he's become more celebrated for his LGBT identity - he was one of the rare uncloseted gay directors in the 1930s.  You can definitely read LGBT themes into the "Frankenstein" films without much effort.  

However, I've always viewed Frankenstein's Monster as cinema's patron saint for every minority and everyone ever treated as an unfortunate.  There have been some pretty good modern adaptations of "Frankenstein," but not many of these have been on film.  The power of the 1931 version remains too potent and inescapable, even after nearly a century.  

What I've Seen - James Whale

Frankenstein (1931)

The Old Dark House (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Remember Last Night? (1935)

Show Boat (1936)

The Great Garrick (1937)

Port of Seven Seas (1938)

Sinners in Paradise (1938)

Wives Under Suspicion (1938)

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Rank 'Em - 2024 Summer Thrillers and Chillers

I have a significant list of horror and thriller films that were released over the summer that I don't feel I need to write a whole review for, but I still would like to express some opinions on.  I'm going to try something new and do this in the form of a "Rank 'Em" post.  This list is in no way comprehensive - I'm skipping "The Watchers," "The Deliverance," "AfrAId," and the Russell Crowe exorcism movie  among other things, and I don't categorize movies like "The Crow" as a horror/thriller picture.  

Ranked from best to least, here we go.

Oddity - The more I think about this Irish horror film from Damian Mc Carthy, the more I like it.  True to its name, this is a fascinating, weird, and singular piece of work.  The supernatural ideas are familiar - a blind medium seeks answers about her sister's death - but it's the way the twists and turns play out that really sets this apart.  Carolyn Bracken is excellent in a double role as the two sisters, and I really have to admire the ending for not pulling any punches. 

Strange Darling - JT Mollner's unnerving indie serial killer movie snuck up on me.  Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner are fabulous, while the shuffled storytelling works great.  Some of the commentary is a little pointed, but I like the filmmaking - several long shots that let scenes play out in interesting ways, and a dreamy soundtrack and sound design that helps set the mood.  The killer fits into a trope that I'm a little uncomfortable with, but the execution is very strong (pun totally intended).  Moller and his actors ensure that the title character is more than just a trope.  

Blink Twice - Lots of rough edges here, but I like Zoe Kravitz's directing debut an awful lot.  I like that it has a sense of humor, that it's got a great role for Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum gets to go ham, and that it's not afraid to get really dark when it needs to.  It's definitely influenced by Jordan Peele's work, but has its own very distinct voice and style.  The mechanics of the plotting are a mess, but the control of the tone is something special.  This would be higher on the list with a couple of fixes to the third act, and I can't wait to see what Kravitz does next.

Cuckoo - It took me about an hour to figure out what this movie was doing, but once I did, I really enjoyed the ride.  Cuckoo is a German co-production with an international cast, and like "Oddity" it really benefits from the more European sensibility.  The frights are genuinely unsettling, but there's a lovely undercurrent of sentiment that works better than I was expecting.  Also, if Dan Stevens does nothing else in his career but play kitschy character parts in genre films, I will be thrilled.     

Longlegs - Oz Perkins' film is very distinctive and not scared of being a little slow and a little off-kilter.  I admire its ability to create a real mood of apprehension and unease.  However, I really think that the refusal to spell out more of what was actually going on undercut the movie, especially in the final round of reveals.  The filmmaking is excellent, and the performances are very strong -  I like Maika Monroe's more than Nicholas Cage's - so "Longlegs" is well worth the watch.  I just can't get on its wavelength when it comes to the turn from serial killer movie to supernatural horror.  

A Quiet Place: Day One - I don't know that this quite qualifies for this list.  Sure, it's a "Quiet Place" prequel and has some excellent scenes of suspense and destruction when the aliens invade New York City.  On the other hand, this is such an intimate melodrama for so much of the running time, where the stakes are kept very low.  It often feels like a post-apocalyptic survival film, with Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn putting in unusually nuanced performances for a summer genre picture.  I had qualms about the abrupt ending, but otherwise this was a treat.

Trap - The first half of the film is a lot of fun, with Josh Hartnett delivering an excellent performance, and a really novel, if logistically ridiculous scenario for a manhunt movie.  "Die Hard" at a teen idol concert, from the POV of the baddie.  And then M. Night Shyamalan makes the mistake of leaving the arena, handing over the reins to a different character, and the whole thing quickly deflates.  The first half is good enough that this isn't a total wash, but "Trap" could have been a lot better than it turned out.

MaXXXine - Of Ti West's trilogy, I thought "Pearl" was great and "X" just okay.  "MaXXXine" has the most stacked cast, with Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Debicki, Halsey, and Lily Collins joining Mia Goth on her tour through the seedy underbelly of Hollywood, but the movie is oddly toothless compared to the prior movies that "MaXXXine" is supposed to be connected to.  I was waiting for the whole movie for Goth to really let loose and show us the monster we know she's capable of being, and the actual, heavily Manson-inspired storyline was such a letdown to see unfold.

In a Violent Nature - I like the premise here, where we see everything from the POV of a  Jason Voorhies-like killer as he sets off on a murderous rampage to recover stolen property.  The trouble is that this idea can't sustain a feature length film, especially one where the characters and story are so slight.  With no stakes to work with, it gets awfully boring watching our protagonist shamble around from kill to kill - I couldn't help but feel like I was watching someone else playing a video game, and not a very good one.  

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