Three Films Make A Post: Clean. Fast. Professional.

I, Tonya (2017): Ah, the underclass, what’s easier to make fun of, and get loads of film price nominations in the process? After all, it would be way too much effort to do something interesting and instead of pointing and laughing at the poor, the uneducated, and those who never had much of a chance, perhaps use one’s powers of mockery to point and laugh at a society that produces them exactly so that they can point and laugh at them and look down on them.

In other words, this piece of crap directed by Craig Gillespie (also responsible for the bad Fright Night remake that interestingly enough shows the same lack of empathy and understanding) really got my goat. Classism is alive and well.

Josie (2018): This thriller about a high school girl (Sophie Turner) coming to a US small town in the South and provoking obsession in a lonely, broken middle-aged man (Dylan McDermott) and a teenager Marcus (Jack Kilmer) as directed by Eric England on the other hand doesn’t really result in much emotional turmoil, good or bad, in this viewer. There are all the elements of a really good neo noir or a sleazy trash film in here – the actors are certainly game – but as England plays it, the most interesting aspects of the plot are never explored much, if at all, and all the dangerous and/or uncomfortable ideas it could have or directions it could take are underplayed at best, ignored at worst. It’s the kind of psychological thriller that balks from actually diving too deep into its characters’ psychology, and consequently, there’s little more to it than decent actors, a slick look, and the inevitable plot twist a lot of viewers (me included) will have seen coming from miles away.

I Kill Giants (2017): I’m a bit underwhelmed with Anders Walters adaptation of Joe Kelly’s and J.M. Ken Niimura’s comic (as scripted by Kelly himself) too, but at least here I’m being underwhelmed on a high level. The film looks great, is well designed, well paced, the acting – particular by kid actors Madison Wolfe and Sydney Wade though Zoe Saldana turns out to be no slouch at all when she’s cast for her acting chops more than for her looks – is spot on, and the script does clearly know what it wants and why.


My problem with the film is that where it does want to go and what it has to say about the connection between fantasy and bitter reality, and about the way people have to cope with grief and pain in real life is as banal as possible. “You’re stronger than you think!” and “You have to face reality!” is as far as the film’s meagre philosophy gets. Which is not very far given all the build for it.

The Clovehitch Killer (2018)

Teenage Tyler (Charlie Plummer) leads a rather overly protected life, directed by the wishes and opinions of his Evangelical conservative parents Don (Dylan McDermott) and Cindy (Samantha Mathis), and clearly not planning on rebelling against the course they set for him beyond some backseat fumbling with a girl from the church band. However, doing said (awkward) fumbling in his father’s car one night, the teenagers find a bondage porn picture in the car. Next thing Tyler knows, he has the reputation of being a perv, and starts to harbour doubts about his father’s lifestyle. As a matter of fact, he begins connecting his Dad to a serial killer of women known as Clovehitch (named after a type of knot he used) who was active in their town some years ago.

Tyler’s somewhat confused search brings him together with Kassi (Madisen Beaty), a girl obsessed with Clovehitch for reasons Tyler typically never questions. So, if Don truly is Clovehitch, what are Tyler and Kassi going to do about it, and what’s Don going to do to his son if he finds out?

Duncan Skiles’s The Clovehitch Killer is that rarest of things, a movie about a serial killer that doesn’t romanticize serial killers in one way or the other. In fact, one of the film’s core strengths lies in portraying its evil as banal, or at least quotidian in its way, avoiding being spectacular about Clovehitch or his murders. That’s not because the film thinks its serial killer is harmless. Rather, it understands that the true horror of its killer lies in the fact that he’s a perfectly normal seeming, if ultra-conservative, man who decently fits in a society that thinks itself decent also. Just that he can only gets his kicks when he’s tying up and murdering women, which, to him, quite clearly feels quotidian and normal, too. McDermott’s excellent performance really drives this aspect of the film home – there’s not attempt at trying to be horror movie creepy, or larger than life and Evil. Instead, the actor plays Don as just some guy, (with horrible secrets, obviously) but realizes that what’s inside him is not something written on a man’s face. On a horror level, this arguably makes the killer much more impressive and frightening than the usual eye-rolling and scenery-chewing would, giving Don a reality that’s truly disquieting.

The Clovehitch Killer clearly has its thoughts about what this fitting in with society of a killer has to say about the society itself, about all the other things hidden in plain sight. In fact, this is a film about secrets hidden in plain sight in more than one way. On a stylistic level, Skiles very often hides important details that will be revealed later to be found just outside the frame of a shot and the line of sight of his characters; suggesting that just one closer look, one move in a different angle, and all secrets can be revealed. In the plot, there are secrets just out of view (perhaps unconsciously ignored) all over: be it the motivation for Kassi’s obsession with Clovehitch, Tyler could learn if only he bothered asking, the way Tyler’s former best church friend is so clearly repressing that he’s gay, Tyler’s own unspoken frustration with the way he has to live even before the whole serial killer angle comes out. Just as much, this is a film about the way people in a society or a family (one mirroring the other) repress/have to repress these secrets, which will only lead to them coming out violently in the end.


At the same time, The Clovehitch Killer also works genuinely well as a quiet horror film, a variant on the kid detective mystery tale that reveals not that crotchety old Mr Smith has been dressing up as a Mummy to scare off the treasure hunters but that true, banal horror has been hiding in plain sight all along.

Three Films Make A Post: A warrior without equal. A weapon without limits

The Messengers (2007): And then there was the time when the Pang Brothers Danny and Oxide went to Saskatchewan to shoot a movie for a US company that’s supposed to be taking place in North Dakota, while none of the actors even attempted to pretend to be Midwesterners (in a way even a German notices). It has a perfectly decent cast including Penelope Ann Miller, Dylan McDermott and Kristen Stewart in a non-horrible performance, looks – it’s a Pang Brothers joint after all – really nice, and culminates in a finale as crappy as only the Pangs do them. In between there’s a run-through of variants of many a classic horror scene (done ever so slightly to very much worse, of course) and little that’ll catch one’s interest.

It’s all perfectly inoffensive, but when has that ever been a good thing to be said about a horror film?

The Messengers 2 (2009): Of course, this direct-to-DVD sequel-in-name-only by Martin Barnewitz manages to be even less interesting than the Pang Brothers film that came before. It’s got little of the slickness of its predecessor and clearly not much of an idea what to put in place of that slickness. Despite decent actors like Norman Reedus and Heather Stephens, there’s little to see on the acting front either, for the script can’t do ambiguous characters or just internal complexity at all, but then, this is the sort of movie that thinks not going to church and “taking His name in vain” (seriously) is something that can only be the first step on the path to adultery and cursed-scarecrow incited murder.

The Caller (2011): So props to this US-Puerto Rican production directed by Matthew Parkhill for at least leaving the baby Jesus home. But I’m being unfair, for this is actually a rather decent thriller of the timey-wimey sub-genre, with a good lead performance by Rachelle Lefevre, a well-cast handful of other actors (well, and Stephen Moyer whose attraction this heterosexual guy can’t fathom, but we can’t have everything), and even a script that doesn’t go for any kind of idiotic twist in the end but works fairly and consequential from its premise. While I’m not particularly excited about the film – it is good but never quite as riveting as it perhaps could be – this is the sort of random Netflix find that makes one look at one’s queue with a degree of hope, and certainly a film it’s easy enough to appreciate.