What's the Matter With Kids Today?

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

Quick Plot: It's a double date cabin vacation for two couples at very different points in their respective relationships. Thomas and Ellie are in a bit of a rut after a half-successful night experimenting with an open relationship (their weird little children Lucy and Spencer being weird little children aren't helping). Slightly more carefree Margaret and Ben continue to waffle on whether they want to be parents, particularly with some of Ben's mental health history.

These problems are nothing that a little nature hike couldn't fix, right? The group discovers a strangely alluring, incredibly deep cave that seems to have a particularly strong effect on Spencer. The next morning, the babysitting Ben awakens to discover the kids have gone missing. He tracks them back to their favorite new spot just in time to watch them both leap to their deaths. 

Or not.

Though Ben (and the audience) witness their odd suicide, Lucy and Spencer immediately appear back at their parents' cabin in a perfectly cheerful, none plummet-off-a-cliff mood. Ben is relieved, but his peace quickly curdles when realizes the kids aren't quite all right. 

You might even say, THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE CHILDREN.

We get quite a few more plot twists in the script by T.J. Cimfel and David White, all handled with great energy by director Roxanne Benjamin. For the first 45 minutes or so, there's some deeply unsettling tension. Is Ben cracking under the effects of lithium, or are his friends' children pure evil? And ultimately, which makes a more interesting movie?

For me, There's Something Wrong With the Children chose the wrong path, though I don't mean to imply that it doesn't fully work. The stretch where Ben (Zach Gilford, who's spent enough time in horror to know how to convey disoriented terror) and by extension, we are full on edge wondering how far these little monsters will go is incredibly tense. Granted, I'm a mark for homicidal minors, but personal preference aside, it's great stuff. And what follows is...fine. 

I won't spoil the last act or ultimate reveal. Much like with her first feature Body at Brighton Rock, Roxanne Benjamin nails a unique kind of tone that takes small human awkwardness into wickedly dark and funny territory. That feeling roars for There's Something Wrong With the Children's first hour, but once the main game is revealed and the plot kicks into cat-and-mouse chase, the surprises just aren't there.

High Points

I appreciate how much time and specificity is spent in defining both couples' current conditions, and perhaps more importantly, the four actors' skills at making their characters work as human beings even before they're running for their mortal lives

Low Points

The more you start to think about the nature of the actual villains and their specific decisions, the more some of There's Something Wrong With the Children's details start to become very, very fuzzy

Lessons Learned

Powder puff is girl's football for girls that don't want to have it called football

Generally speaking, it's better to get in a car than under it

When hanging around evil children, always drink out of sealed containers (actually, children are pretty gross even when not evil so apply this lesson to all manners of life)

Rent/Bury/Buy

At barely 90 minutes, There's Something Wrong With the Children feels like a brisk but swerving ride. For me, it was just one of those cases of a movie taking a turn in a different direction than my instincts, but that doesn't mean I'm the barometer on what kind of story we should have had here. It's enjoyable, but it also misses out on being great. Still worth a watch (currently streaming on Amazon Prime and MGM+, which allegedly is a real thing). 

A Walk In the Woods

I've ranted and raged at the gross misogyny and worse, plain boredom that seems to run deep through the V/H/S series, anthologies that have come to epitomize everything awful about straight white dude bro horror in the 21st century. The fact that three movies that featured fifteen segments couldn't give a single slot to a female filmmaker says quite a bit, especially when you realize Roxanne Benjamin was sitting there the entire time as a producer.

Now obviously, I know very little about the production background of V/H/S, and Benjamin's personal trajectory from producing to directing. But from where I sit, I see three (fairly crappy) movies that hired a total of fifteen male directors. Benjamin would go on to make her directorial debut in Southbound and follow it up with XX, an anthology founded on the idea of female directors because, you know, we had FIFTEEN stupid V/H/S segments that couldn't bother to include one.

Anyhoo, my point is pretty simple: I'm tired of bro horror, and fully ready to celebrate the women who are building their own dynasty. Thusly do we dive into Benjamin's first full-length movie.

Quick Plot: Wendy is a less-than-stellar part-time park ranger at Brighton Rock who valiantly offers to take her more experienced pal's shift to prove herself (and allow her friend to flirt with a hot guy). Most of the day's tasks involve hiking around and hanging up safety posters, but when she loses her map, Wendy's afternoon becomes considerably more complicated.

It would be bad enough to be lost and losing daylight, but the discovery of a dead body, creepy stranger, and some mysteriously deep claw marks put poor Wendy on edge. 

Wendy is played by Karina Fontes, a newcomer who had a small role in Benjamin's Southbound segment. The casting is crucial, since Wendy is the only character onscreen for a good chunk of the movie. So much of the movie's energy depends on Fontes, who brings such a fun likability and believable dumb innocence to the part.

Make no mistake: Wendy is no Ellen Ripley. She's a little flaky and far from a survivalist, someone who gets completely lost after trying to make such a point out of her abilities to read a map. But you know what? That's kind of refreshing. Yes, it's incredibly empowering to watch Sharni Vinson school ill-prepared killers in You're Next, but let's face it: many of us aren't actually equipped to survive a horror movie. Wendy is a perfectly average young woman, and seeing her dig deep inside herself to make it through 90 minutes of horror is in itself something to be proud of.

Benjamin wrote and directed Body At Brighton Rock, and it makes me thrilled for her next project: a remake of the beloved Night of the Comet. There's a very similar tone in this film, one that's not afraid to be simultaneously silly and filled with danger. It's a tricky balance, but one that ultimately makes for a darn enjoyable watch.

High Points

The tone is key, but it depends so much on Fontes's performance that I'd be remiss to not put her in this slot

Low Points

I could have used one or two less "it's just a dream!" reveals, but at the same time, this is a movie about a woman being lost on an isolated mountain. I think I'd have a few nightmares too?

Lessons Learned

Maybe turn off the noise cancellation feature on your earbuds when hiking alone?

Nothing starts a fire better than anti-fire propaganda!

Why do we need female filmmakers, you might ask? Because often they're the only ones who understand the value of a hairtie on a hot day

Rent/Bury/Buy

Body At Brighton Rock isn't terrifying or ever hilarious, but it's just a genuinely good time all around. You'll chuckle a little, maybe jump a tad, and ultimately, walk away with a very satisfying and fresh-feeling flick. Streaming on Hulu and worth your eyeballs. 

Tales From the Southbound

The renaissance of the horror anthology has been wonderful in spirit and mostly terrible in execution. Following the fan love for Michael Daughery's Trick or Treat, it seemed as though every genre filmmaker under 40 was contributing to one collection or another, from the grainy V/H/S series to the often insufferable output of The ABCs of Death.

Needless to say, I've found modern anthologies disappointing (and occasionally, infuriating). But that doesn't mean I've given up on them just yet. 

Story 1: The Way Out
Directed by the trio Radio Silence (they of the disappointing Devil's Due and the 10/31/98 segment of the first V/H/S), The Way Out follows a pair of men on the run from what appears to be an unidentified crime. As they speed their rickety pickup truck down a deserted highway, they are pursued by strange floating skeletal creatures that follow them right inside an ominous gas station.

We'll get back to this.

Story 2: Siren
A trio of young women break down on that same lonely highway, accepting a ride from an oddly sunny 1950s-esque couple who take them back to an ominous meatloaf dinner. Something is clearly amiss, but there seems to be an added weight in how their presumed leader played by Starry Eyes' passive aggressive rival, Fabianne Therese) is seen as being responsible for the untimely death of one of their members. Directed by first timer Roxanne Benjamin, Siren has some fun with its almost Parents-ish vibe. It also feels the most incomplete, as it offers up a lot of unanswered questions. While I generally believe one of the the keys to anthology segments (much like short stories) to be telling a complete tale in under 30 minutes, this was definitely the one story I wanted to see more of.

Story 3: The Accident
The Signal's David Bruckner directs this tight little tale about an ill-fated and too easily distracted man named Lucas whose cell phone chat with his wife leads to him smashing into a young lady in the middle of nowhere (well, Southbound's hell-ish highway). After some internal debating, Lucas calls emergency services and spends the rest of his evening trying to save his victim in an abandoned hospital with only the mysterious, not-quite-right dispatcher voices to guide him.

While it doesn't necessarily do much, The Accident was my personal favorite segment of the bunch. Mather Zickel's Lucas toes an interesting line between being a guilty manslaughterer and a poor unlucky bastard, while the ambiguity of the dispatch voices are just odd enough to keep you on edge. Anthologies are almost always morality tales, and this one serves as a different spin on that idea.

Also, death gurgles are intense.

Story 4: Jailbreak
Patrick Horvath (The Pact 2) directs this one. A raging man storms into a worn-down bar demanding to see his long-lost sister Jesse. The bartender (Orange Is the New Black's Matt Peters) agrees to drive him down that familiar highway to where Jesse is working as a sort of satanic tattoo artist (or something?). It's hard to say too much more without giving away some of the bigger happenings, but let's just say that when your little sister disappears down a highway to hell lorded over by floating skeleton people and bar werewolves, maybe it's best to leave her put.

Story 5: The Way In (aka Story 1: Part 2)A seemingly normal couple is spending a family weekend in a rented home with their teenage daughter before she goes to college. Before they can sit down to their last supper, three masked men show up for some violent payback. The story plays like a fairly standard home invasion, but much like Siren, it also drops some mysterious clues without revealing all of their details.

Overall, Southbound offers a fresh and easily watchable take on the anthology format. Each story leads into the other in an organic way and while there's not a specific wraparound tool used to tie everything together, the themes and basic idea of this purgatory-like road to hell work extremely well when all put together. The styles and tones are more complimentary than consistent, which helps the full picture add up to something fresh.

High Points
As grouches continue to whine about the lack of good horror in the modern era, one can point to the credits of the cast and crew of Southbound to show connections to a slew of good-to-great genre films of late: actors from Starry Eyes, YellowBrickRoad, The Signal, and a few more (not to mention the film's wraparound DJ voice is done by none other than Larry Fessenden)

Low Points
We can't hit all of our CGI out of the park, but sometimes it hurts when almost all of it fouls

Lessons Learned
You know, don't kill innocent people and you won't go to hell or be forced to relieve a horrible monster chase for eternity

Rent/Bury/BuyAfter my increasing embitterment over the new age of jerky bro-tastic anthologies, Southbound is an extremely pleasant little renewal of faith in the genre. The film isn't perfect, but it's a good ride. You can find it on Amazon Prime.