Fantasia 2019--LITTLE MONSTERS (Abe Forsythe, 2019)

Lupita Nyong'o plays the charming Miss Caroline who protects her young charges from zombies in Little Monsters (2019)

Most kids are annoying.  It's true, and it's not just that other people's kids are annoying.  Don't let those parents fool you--they think their kids are also annoying, but they aren't supposed to say so, and...well, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube.  Horror is common ground for evil kids getting up to mischief, but little urchins as victims--either of their own parents, or "stranger danger" evildoers--are even more ubiquitous.  These "children in peril" horrors also inevitably have kids doing really dumb things in order to land themselves in mortal danger.  Then they grow into the most irritating people imaginable--teenagers--and we gleefully watch them be picked off by some invincible serial killer. 

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Back to kids.  Cinematic kids are notoriously adorable, and the 5-6 year olds Abe Forsythe chose for Little Monsters (2019) are definitely cuties.  Still, none of them come close to the angelic adorableness that Lupita Nyong'o channels as their super-sweet and heroic kindergarten teacher, Miss Audrey Caroline; whom, beyond a somewhat checkered past that landed her in Australia, can only exist in the movies.  She is impossibly wonderful, and utterly winning.  After seeing Nyong'o in Jordan Peele's Us (2019), audiences expect her to whup some sorry Zombie ass. She does not disappoint.

If she and those kids were the only people in the movie, I would have been delighted, but nope--we've got to have an overgrown man child in need of a redemption arc and a new girlfriend, so enter Dave (Alexander Englund).  Dave is a washed-up heavy metal wannabe who fights with his girlfriend throughout the opening of the film, and crashes on his sister's couch.  Said sister, Tess (Kat Stewart) happens to be a single mum to one adorable kid, Felix (Diesel La Tarraca--what a name!), who also coincidentally attends Miss Caroline's kindergarten class.  You see where this story is going, right?  When Dave is conscripted to bring Felix to school, he takes one look at Miss Caroline and falls in LUV. 

Miss Caroline plays Taylor Swift songs on the ukulele--and she makes it seem sweet rather than cloying

Frankly, you cannot blame him, but really, there is zero chemistry between these two since Audrey can surely do infinitely better.  He eagerly volunteers to join her in chaperoning the kids to a petting zoo, where a marvelous surprise awaits--Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad), a really horrid children's performer who seems to be part of a trend of evil children's performers (think Pennywise in It and the evil clown/kidnapper/psycho in Happy).  Although Teddy is not supernaturally evil--he's just a human a**hole.  He serves as a foil for loser Dave, who seems positively evolved in comparison.

When the zombies show up, Miss Caroline does her best to distract the kids and tell them that it's all a game--high-jinks ensue.  While the film is mostly structured for laughs, there are some worrying moments; nevertheless, Audrey wields a shovel with gusto.  As frequent readers know, I'm not a fan of horror comedies, but watching this film in a packed house at Fantasia, I found myself cheering right along with everyone else whenever Miss Caroline got out of a tight scrape.  Likewise, Dave's nephew, Felix, is probably one of the cutest kids I've seen in a while.  As a kid who is allergic to everything, you would expect the little tyke to be ripe victim fodder, but he manages to be much more than his sensitivities. 

Little Monsters is mostly fluff, but fun fluff

Some of the laughs hit, some miss, but Lupita Nyong'o makes the whole experience worthwhile.  She is luminous throughout, and Forsythe really scored when he secured her for Miss Caroline.  This woman can do anything.  I want her to be the star of all the movies. Dave's arc is hackneyed, but I guess we still need to reassure dickhead white guys that they have some place in contemporary cinema.  Be prepared, though--your tolerance for Taylor Swift and Neil Diamond needs to be pretty high to survive Little Monsters.

Fantasia 2018--Last Child--Dong-seok Shin (2017)

Kihyun (Seong Yu-Bin) hangs out with his fellow miscreants in Dong-seok Shin's Last Child (2017)

Kids Suck, there is no justice, and there is no God.  These feelings are what I was left with after the moving, but damn depressing, screening of Dong-seok Shin's Last Child, my first film screened at the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival.  Seriously, I should have started the festival with some gleeful limb-shredding disembowelment accompanied by the raucous cheers of the Fantasia crowd, but I chose to start things off with this grief-filled exploration of one couple's terrible loss, and how they might be revived by caring for a young man their son's age before it all goes to shit, as the world seems to do.

Jin (Choi-moo Seung) and Misook (Kim Yeo-gin) cling to their tattered marriage after losing their son, Eunchan.

The film opens with contemplative shots of Jin (Choi-moo Seung) as he labors to hang wallpaper.  He's the owner, with his wife Misook (Kim Yeo-gin) of an interior business, where he and a crew lay floors, tile, wallpaper.  His skills as a craftsman are highlighted in close-ups of his process as he papers a room.  He exemplifies a taciturn reserve in his encounters with others, as he's still grief-stricken by the loss of his son, Eunchan.  His son saved another boy, Kihyun (Seong-Yu Bin), from drowning, but perished while doing so, dying a hero's death.  Those heroics do not mean much to Misook, whose bitterness coats the air around her like a sour taste on the tongue.  She's riven with despair.  Kihyun has subsequently dropped out of school, and is living an aimless life making deliveries for a restaurant--he seems to be suffering from a heavy dose of survivor's guilt.

The most satisfying moments in the film are when Kihyun learns how to be a wallpaper craftsman, working for Jin

For reasons unclear beyond an incredible outpouring of human kindness, Jin takes a listless, aimless Kihyun under his wing, deciding to teach him the craft of laying wallpaper and flooring.  The most satisfying moments of the film consist of the gradual bonding between these two, as Kihyun develops pride in the work he's doing, and finds a purpose as he learns these skills.  Misook starts to warm to Kihyun as well, as she slowly lets him in after adamantly keeping her distance from the kid.  My darkness kicked in when the three of them playfully go on a picnic and take a selfie together.  All I could think is "something terrible is going to happen," because this film is not going to allow this moment of happiness to linger.  When they drop off Kihyun at home, and he promptly vomits after their departure, and subsequently doesn't show up for work the next day, I just KNEW something happened.  I cannot really tell you without giving away a crucial plot point, but let's just say Kihyun and his teenage cohort are not really telling the truth about what happened the day Eunchan died.  Cue terminal loss of all joy and impending darkness.

Two thirds of the way through the film, we know that Misook and Jin will probably never smile again

The performances by the three main characters are incredibly powerful, and despite my claim that Kids Suck, I felt a great deal of sympathy for Kihyun--yet that feeling is dwarfed by the crushing empathy I felt toward Misook and Jin, who just cannot catch a fu**ing break, and move from despair to devastation.  While these representations are plausibly realistic, as forms of entertainment go, I haven't felt like my heart was just stomped on multiple times since P.T. Anderson's Magnolia--although that film has some weirdo sparks of humor that keep us from wanting to off ourselves.  Still Dong-seok Shin does include a shot of suspense, and I found myself writing "uh-oh" in my notes multiple times as the characters' respective narratives spiraled ever downward.  Things come to a head as the three head out for one last picnic in proximity to the dreaded river that serves as the catalyst for all the events thus far.

Kihyun enters the river which previously took the life of Eunchan

South Korea clearly has a severe bullying and assault problem among its youth, and many of its strongest dramas--such as Poetry (Chang-dong Lee, 2010) and Han-Gong Ju (Su-Jin Lee, 2013)--explore these issues in powerful and provocative ways.  I give points to Last Child for never really illustrating that violence--this imagery is never shown, but speaking about these events is its own form of violence, although one more subtle and nuanced.  Things come to a head on the same river that took Eunchan's life, but then the film ends rather abruptly.  I honestly don't know how the film could have done things differently, but I didn't hold onto much hope at film's end, and as I've mentioned, walked out with a heavy heart.  Instead of being narratively inventive, I found the film just piled on the bad stuff, until I really just wanted it all to end.  And it did, but not in what I felt was a satisfying manner.