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Strange Darling (2023)
I see devils
A one night stand turns in to a bloody last stand. But whose?
Cat-and-mouse thriller that cuts up the time-line and holds back information to get us thinking. Reviewers keep referring to a twist, but for me the film-maker frames what is a simple story from opposite angles to get depth into the characters, and it's no surprise when suspicions over the reliability of the story-telling are confirmed.
The opening sequence is simply a 'final girl' fleeing through woods, and so stylized that I got the feeling of a violent allegory of how men and women negotiate romantic love, driven home by the choice of song. Further in, it feels like a study in the deathwish, with kinky sex and drugs and guns. In any case, this is not a straightforward serial-killer movie.
What raises this up for me, fot all its cleverness, is the performance in the lead role. At first I had my doubts about the actress, but when the extended dialogue comes on and the character loses her passivity she becomes intriguing, so that the long final sequence in the car (with a subtle mirror insert) brings out a sympathy twisted around from what I felt at the beginning.
The other performances are good, particularly the Demon, whose uncertainty captures the paradox where the dominator in S&M is really the submissive, without control.
Cinematography is gorgeous, full on red, like a reflection of blood. The editing is pacey most of the way, but then allows extended dialogue that always puts the characters into conflict, sometimes subtly, sometimes with humour. The score is ominous and laid on thick, but then the mood lightens up with a dozen softly-sung folk tunes.
If there is a flaw, it's in a scene in the woods with a bottle of vodka. It's an anomaly without explanation, although I may have missed some logic. I've read that the shooting of a big action scene had to be abandoned because of interference by the money-men, so maybe the scene in the woods would have tied in with that but couldn't be edited out.
Overall: Sophisticated blood fest.
P.s. Stick with the final credits.
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Bravo!
When the members of a family drug-gang begin dying one-by-one in mysterious circumstances, an investigator is given clues from the past to find out why.
Mike Flanagan goes to town again. I'm not a fan of his movies - except for Gerald's Game, which is a 10 (and gets a cheeky shout-out in The Pit and the Pendulum). And I only really took notice of him with his earlier series, The Haunting of Hill House - another 10 - which used a fascinating mix of dramatic story techniques, delivering one of the great horror reveals at exactly the mid-point of the run.
And this is another 10: a tour of Poe's most famous stories, integrated through character and motivation, and
wrapped up in a brilliant conceit based on the title story.
What is Flanagan's genius? I think it's that he ties in his character's lives with the incidents of evil, so that the figure of evil itself can remain in shadow, directing these entertaining baxtards to a doom that flows out of their own actions while the evil looks on. In other words, the evil seems natural and inevitable, and the trick is to figure out how the hell it got in to begin with.
He's also a master of cutting up the timelines of the stories, bringing the elements together at just the right moment. The best example in this series is the final episode of madness in The Telltale Heart. The chief benefit of this is that multiple mysteries can be dropped into the story early on, threatening to crystallize at any time in a moment of hair-raising comprehension.
The deaths are all delicious, and even when you've anticipated what's coming they still deliver moments of awe. And all the production values and performances are excellent.
Finally, the writing is so mature, recognizing the compromises in life, the nuances of characters, and their humour, while avoiding the false notes of revenge in favour of the tragedy of self-destruction.
What more is there to say?
MadS (2024)
Be there in 5
As he drives to meet his girlfriend while high on a mysterious drug, a guy picks up an injured stranger - and a night of terror begins.
Fresh entry in the zombie genre, with two innovations in the story telling that raise it out of the ordinary. First, it's a long-take, making the action immediate and pitching the horror against a pleasant summer evening in a pleasant French suburb - the kind of place you'd want to be, except ... zombies! If you're into this style, check out Those Who Walk Away (2022) - not as smooth in its direction, but the long-take really makes you feel the location.
Second innovation (at least for me) is that the story is told from the point of view of victims on the turn, with the usual weird neck cracking and hissing even as the characters move among their friends. Also their stories are told in relay, which is a similar technique to the strange witchcraft horror You Won't Be Alone (2022).
The direction and editing are good, with just a couple of moments to make me aware of the camera, but maybe could have picked up the pace sooner after the trigger event. Music is stylish. And performances are good, especially the original girlfriend, who delivers the one laugh-out-loud line during a scooter chase.
Overall: Not perfect, not profound - but hits the spot.
Daddy's Head (2024)
If you go down to the ...
A boozy young widow and her withdrawn step-son find it hard to come to terms with each other, and then Daddy enters the relationship.
Surprisingly strange film. I wasn't getting on with it at first: the unfeasibly modern house in unfeasible isolation in its forest prison, the self-entitled middle-class sensibility. But suddenly I was halfway through and completely engaged in the drama.
This is an easy one to spoil, because the evil entity is the kind you usually see in American movies, and its origin is only revealed late on. In the meantime, we get some suggestive lights followed by very spooky and stylish manifestations that are always tied in with sleep or drunken blackouts, emerging from a subconscious world.
The real thrust of this is psychological, and it is quite direct without being cliched, resulting in what I would call therapy horror. The best example of the sub-genre is Gerald''s Game, which comes with an optimistic ending - as it should. This doesn't quite reach the same standard, as it fails to explore the two deaths that precede the start and tie them in with the ending, nor the wife's previous trauma. So in Gerald's Game there's a subtle flashback scene, where the daughter turns away from the mother, fading to black, and in that moment we know why the grown daughter never had children; in this movie, the wife says she never intended to have children, but her motive is hidden to us. Still, this is one of the most powerful British horrors in recent years, and people complaining about the ending - "diet horror" lol - need to watch it again.
The production quality all round is excellent, with the director also writing the screenplay and the music, plus getting a credit for special effects. The score is mostly moody, and there's only one song credit, for a Prodigy number that blasts through the house and into the dark forest. The director does the editing as well, maintaining a good pace to make the simple chain of events fill the run time. Cinematography is outstanding, although I could have done with more full-face close-ups (and not just eyes and eyelashes). Performances are all high quality too.
Overall: Unexpected recovery.
The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)
Ties its own toe-tag
A failed cop takes a new job on the night shift at a city morgue, but faces the biggest test of her life when a murder victim enters the room ...
Similar in story and tone to Last Shift (2014), but better structured and produced. A cold open establishes the genre, albeit with a heavy hand, and the introduction of the heroine sets out the rules of the game in a well-paced first act that nicely dials up the spooks, with only one mis-step in a false jump-scare from a disposable character. The vivid presence of the lifeless corpse is done really well, on a par with The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), and the story promises a creepy ride.
Sadly it soon loses its nerve. The first problem I think is the decision to take events outside the morgue, allowing the entity to roam beyond the claustrophobic arena, when its growing malevolence should be concentrated on the heroine.
But the main problem is the dynamic of virtue, which rewards the heroine for reaching inside for the necessary strength to overcome, thus converting the horror into an unscary metaphor. It's a common, and perverse, problem with audience-pleasing productions - do they really think people want this school-marmish simplicity? Also, I don't sense any real understanding in the writing, direction or performance of the power of addiction - it's all learned out of a book.
Add to that the amateurishly rushed incinerator scenes, and the whole thing just flops. The same happened with Last Shift and Jane Doe, but in those cases the weirdness of the scenarios outran the imaginations of the writers. Here, it's the lack of weird that kills the movie.
The visuals are dominated by the gimmick of motion-activated lighting - clever, but a little grating - and there's a good moment with a motion-activated hand dryer in the bathroom. I didn't notice much about the music or sound design. Performances are okay.
Overall: Promising story fails to come to life.
Messiah of Evil (1974)
No-one will hear you scream!
A daughter in search of her reclusive father breaks into his artists studio to discover a journal recording his descent into the communal madness of the local town. What the hell happened to him?
Nicely eldritch tale from the cultish heart of '70s California. After an inexplicably brutal opening sequence, we switch to a fascinating monologue by a wandering mad woman (which gets wrapped round after the climax). The story then quickly takes us through the looking glass at a beautifully-lit futuristic gas station on the outskirts of town, where the heroine barely reacts to the manic behaviour of the pump attendant. Then down into the menacing artists studio, where the climax will take place.
Some influences, past and future: the most notable are the preacher man in Night of the Hunter, and the mall-hunting in Dawn of the Dead. The scene that inspires the latter shows apparent zombies feasting at the supermarket meat counter, a bizzare sight only matched by the creepy assembly of the same creatures behind a popcorn-gobbling girl in an almost deserted movie theater - like the gathering evil in the playground in Hitchcock's The Birds.
On the other hand, the direction is not so hot at generating an eerie otherworld, failing by comparison with The City of the Dead (1960) or Carnival of Souls (1962). And the editing of action sequences is oddly inept - not just that the promise of sexploitation ends up with lame, slightly off-screen kills, but also cuts up mundane sequences, like when the hero pitches forward after getting his arm bandaged, but all we see is him lying in the arms of the heroine rather than falling into place. The effect is kinda jerky and upsets the flow of the story.
The camera work is interesting, set design of the artists studio is outstanding, music is fairly spare - although you can catch a youtube vid of a sappy edited-in song for the opening sequence and end credits, which was stripped out of the digitized version in line with the director's wishes. Bearing in mind the wraparound scenario, you could say the song represents the real feelings of the mad woman, who imagines these events as a response to her trauma of lost love. Maaaaybe.
Overall: Slightly muddled concept, haltingly told - but effective.
(Footnote: The creepy cinema scene plays a trailer for a movie titled Gone With the West, released in 1974, three years after Messiah was shot. Seems GWTW was shot in 1968, but was so poor and unmarketable it had to wait six years for release. Strangely, the effect in this movie has a Zombie/Tarantino Grindhouse feel. And one other thing is the burning buildings in the trailer resemble the unfinished timber frames in the lead up to the supermarket scene in this movie. Whatevs.)
Beezel (2024)
Good style, needed a rewrite
After hosting its first massacre, the basement of a family home awaits its next victims.
Real interesting movie, but of mixed quality. The first thing to say is these film-makers have horror in their bones, proven in the opening sequence when we discover the way into the basement: exactly the stuff of a child's nightmare. There are several skilful dream sequences that manage to dial up the spooks and drive the characters deeper into jeopardy. And the reveals of the evil entity are sparing and well judged. Plus plenty to satisfy the gore-hounds.
Probably the outstanding element on screen is the sound-design, which really nailed some jump scares - a tricky thing to do. But my favourite moment was in the humour of a wonky doorbell-ring by a delivery guy, who then dashes to his car and reverses out the driveway with a Simpsons-style squeal of tyres ... in the snow! The camera work often finds interesting angles to make the house all ghastly, and the music generates dread, although it's sometimes edited too much on the nose. Of the performances, the standout is the man who brings us into the basement for the first time.
The story is in anthology form, with 5 tales threaded on to the claustrophobic location, all wrapped 'round with a generational theme. There are many camera POVs at play, with the opening sequence alone mixing 1st-person cine film with objective 3rd-person, and an overhead drone inserted - so I expected some reflection on who or what was really telling this story. For example: who shot the cine footage of the mother looking up from the basement? Sadly, no answer - and I don't think the writers/director copped on to this angle, even when they had a documentary maker enter the story.
Then there's the scene editing ... and here we come to the biggest problem, which is not on the screen but on the page, specifically with the characterisation. For me it was clear the actor playing the documentary maker was out of his depth, but I think it was because the character's situation was written without a true feel for how he got there. (Compare it to the genuinely creepy relationship in Creep from 2014.) To be honest, I was relieved when his story ended. And later on the relationship of the house-selling couple felt like the actors were rehearsing to find some chemistry, which resulted in exposition-thru-dialogue and a sequence of clunky editing.
Maybe I'm over-critical, but I do feel the screenplay should have taken a couple more trips through the shredder in order to integrate the characters' stories and buck up the pace. So, a dodgy foundation and a failure to think about whose story this really is do take away from the genuine horror style of the movie.
But overall I can't mark it down much - horror: you know it when you see it.
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Octopus stew
A young couple join the guests on a luxury cruise, but the wind is picking up ...
Lively satire with a glorious set-piece scene during dinner, a drunken exchange of Marxist and capitalist slogans, and a switcheroo in the third act that reprises The Admirable Crichton ... but with sex added.
The story weaves through a variety of lives, setting out with a power struggle between two lovers that reminded me of the uneasiness of the holiday makers in The Comfort of Strangers. It broadens out to the guests and crew on the cruise, with a stand out performance by Woody Harrelson. Then we jump to a total change of scenario, with an inversion that tests the politics set up at the climax of the cruise, but leaves the situation of our original couple unresolved.
Performances and editing are energetic. The elaborate set piece has a wonderful double-puke that looked real. The humour is pretty good - although the director for some reason decided to skip the gruesome fun of the "rich as hell!" guy trying to dance with a young hottie. Didn't notice much about the music.
I guess it's in Robert Altman style, lacking investment in the characters - for that reason I feel it slides off without leaving a mark. Same feeling I got with the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar! Another draw back is the implausibility of the super-rich slumming it on a package cruise, no matter how high-end.
Overall: Engaging, but no wedding bells.
P.s. A thought for the actor playing the girlfriend, who died just as the film was released.
Oddity (2024)
Odd it is
A witchy woman plots revenge for the murder of her twin sister.
I was well in to this up to the halfway mark. The opening scene really engaged me in a sort of prisoner's dilemma, and no use shouting at the screen, 'Just get out of there!' - I had no idea what to do either. Then we're introduced to an engaging character who draws us into the mystery, offering the possibility of supernatural intervention, as if it were part of ordinary life. She fetches up where she's not wanted, and the dialogue and delivery are enough to get me rooting for this awkward customer.
The direction and editing are very good, cutting off scenes when we've had just enough information, and in others lingering in silence to dial up the spooks. Performances are good, music is effective, and the overall quality is as much as you could hope for in a horror.
But. The story is a real let-down, no more than an old-fashioned morality tale where the wild possibilities shrink down to a pedestrian outcome through the anti-magic of some flash-back exposition. It doesn't help that the writer (and director) clearly has no idea how a modern psychiatric hospital works, imposing instead some ripe cliches from Ye Olden Dayes. And even if it had been set in the past, I wouldn't be satisfied until an extra layer of meaning had been exposed beneath the basic motive of revenge. I like my horrors to take on the mystery of life.
Overall: Impressive set up, deflationary ending.
Ku bei (2021)
Trouble in Taipei
When they go their separate ways at the start of the working day a young couple find themselves separated by an outbreak of a virus that sends the population into a deadly berserker. How will they find each other again?
Same basic plot as the classic zombie satire Dead Set, with a couple of lovers struggling through catastrophe to reunite, but with very different effect. This one lacks the humour, but excels in gallons of gore and becomes quite nasty, particularly in its sexual violence - although it still has an element of Asian prudishness over images of the nether regions.
Where this differs from standard zombie fare is that the infected retain their intellect, albeit enslaved to an overwhelming urge toward sadism. Along the way it makes some political points, particularly over the unresolved issues from Covid, but reaches its most interesting level following a wonderful hallucination of a doll's head in the water. The characters explore certain comparisons to ordinary human nature as expressed through violence ... and love, even as they circle back to the exchange between the couple in the opening scene. Hmmm. And a bleak ending - off screen.
The lead performances are fine, some iffy acting from the others. Pace is good, music good.
Gore hounds will enjoy it, and for the rest there's enough to lift us out of the zombie template.
Dagr (2024)
Drag
When two internet pranksters arrive to disrupt a photo-shoot, something evil decides to call it a wrap.
Just about the lowest rating I've given a movie.
A few references to film school and the profession suggest the makers are well aware of their craft, and there does seem to be an enormous number of cameras in play, but nothing is done with care or intelligence. As for the writing, it takes 30 minutes to dole out information that could have been injected through high-tempo montage. But then a literally in-your-face tribute to Blair Witch - followed by the fatigue of realizing that nobody in this production understood anything about that found-footage classic and its unifying concept. Instead, it delivers frights at the same level as one of those daft ghost-hunter TV shows - but without the shadows.
When presented with a spectacularly bad argument, scientists have a cutting put down: "not even wrong". This is the film version of that argument.
An extra point for the one glimmer of charm, the actor playing Thea, whose surname I'd like to pronounce nice and proper.
La mesita del comedor (2022)
Heady concoction
A put-upon husband gets his way for once, and then screws up in the worst way imaginable.
Not a horror, but a black comedy fuelled by the awful unease of having to own up to the unspeakable. It is engaging, but doesn't really amount to much, and the comedy relies on heavy-handed irony and a score that tries to mix a sense of spaghetti western showdown into the mounting dread. Also very heavy on dialogue, which crowds out the need for action.
The central Event is dealt with off-camera, and only referred to afterward through the stains it leaves behind. A secondary Event is thrown in for gratuitous plot complications, but can't really be sustained by the rather plain characters. I thought the chance for dramatic irony was missed in not getting the wife to decide for herself to stay out of the room: "I promised not to become over-attentive, like my mother" - along those lines.
The performances are good, with the psychic pain of the lead character well delivered. And the direction keeps up variety in a tight location.
Overall: notable oddity.
P.s. There is a Jesus theme, but I don't think it informs the story. Maybe I need to think harder.
You'll Never Find Me (2023)
Can you give me a lift?
A lonely man keeping company with a bottle of whiskey in his dingey trailer answers the pounding on his door in the middle of a stormy night to find a rain-soaked young woman looking for help. Will he give it to her?
Impressive two-hander from Australia, with strong performances that avoid being stagey. I'm not the best judge of cinematography, but the lighting and framing create the necessary claustrophobia in a tight location with plenty of close-ups, and the editing maintains a good pace. There are fleeting flashbacks, but the tension is kept steady, with only mild relief in a couple of nicely judged scenes - especially the card game - and a subtle vein of irony in the dialogue.
The outstanding element of the production is the sound design, with the storm groaning and creaking and clanking like an angry ghost outside the trailer, while the moaning strings of the score echo the melody of the spooky Sleepwalk song on the tinny radio. And plenty of wheezing and bubbling and tinkling ... like being woken up by a nest of starlings.
The Aussies have taken a seriously good turn in their horror productions: I'm thinking of Talk to Me and the brilliant Run, Rabbit, Run, and this movie starts out with the same promise. However, in the end it's just a morality tale with a touch of preachiness, and while there is a clever perspective shift in the climax it doesn't quite make the grade of the earlier movies. Perhaps it's just me, but I prefer this sub-genre to find its strength in the weirdness of the perpetrator, and not in the pathos of the victim.
Overall: When we come to remember this era of Aussie horror with the same fondness as J-horror, this will deserve an honourable mention.
Double Blind (2023)
Copable
A desperate young woman joins a bunch of misfits in a top-secret drugs-trial, but the stakes get raised as the experiment expands.
First 25 minutes is excellent story-telling - pared-down scenes that give just enough information for the imagination to work on, so the pace sets off at a good clip. The altered-reality scenes are stylish and weird, elevating the intrigue and visual enjoyment. And the score is serious synth-doom (by Die Hexen) - well judged even though it never gets a rest. Performances are good, even if some of the characters are a bit sketchy.
Problems with the plot, though. It feels as if the complications are conjured up just to keep getting the characters into trouble, and I was never convinced by the overarching situation with all its implausibilites. One thing that puzzles me is that the title raises the expectation of the disguised placebo, which should have set up a Traitors v. Faithfuls game theory struggle. But that gets chucked out in a single line of dialogue, to be replaced with a ham-fisted evil corporation theme.
While the dynamic of placebo/nocebo was never explored (although that would be kinda high-falutin'), I would have settled for more emphasis on the weird, particularly with sleep deprivation opening up the boundary of reality, and then the plot somersaults wouldn't have mattered so much. The story could have had the chance to do that spooky trick in The Shining, where delusion steps over into reality, which would have been powerful with such desperate and hopeless characters. As it stands, this is more an under-powered zombie-free imitation of the classic Resident Evil.
Overall: Strong opening let down by shambolic motivations.
Exhibit A (2007)
Tears of a clown
When his family says they've had enough, a prankster dad gets serious. Dead serious.
Shoe-string found footage of a family's descent into the abyss. The camera work is chaotic, and often so poor that I began to sympathize with the critics of this genre who suffer motion sickness just by looking at the screen. And yet the dynamics and the emotion come across as raw and immediate, qualities that might have been lost through competent cinematography.
It does stick to the pure form of FF, with a minimal framing device in the title and notice at the very start; all the music and sound effects are diegetic; and the setting and dialogue are banal. A few passages where the presence of the camera is implausible, but few FFs overcome that problem entirely, and it's nothing some security camera POVs wouldn't have fixed (Dad could have splashed out on them after the intruder at the party).
The only other thing to note is the performance of the father's role - very effective in delivering a character who is odious yet likeable.
Overall: Raw material made interesting by the central character.
#Saraitda (2020)
Don't come back, Walk out the door!
On waking up home alone a teen finds the world outside has changed into a hell hole. How will he survive?
Enjoyable zombie flick with plenty of action, plus a nice balance of humour and sorrow in what is basically a boy-meets-girl story (not unlike the classic Dead Set). The opening scene is standard - not much compared to the intro of the Dawn of the Dead remake - but then a very cool zombie transformation brings an adrenaline rush, and we're off to the races.
Some minor plot holes, but the survivor-in-the-wilderness action is well done, with hundreds of fine old-style zombie performances, and some neat MacGyver-like just in time equipment bodges to keep hope alive.
Being Asian, it doesn't shy away from the despair of the characters, but the humour sits nicely alongside to vary up the pace and get us engaged with the characters. The performances are spot on, and it's good to see the reserved nature of Korean culture when under pressure. The third act also adds a tasty weirdness, the kind of dark fairytale scenario that you only get in times of breakdown.
The music changes pace throughout, and all the production values are top notch.
Overall: Top of its sub-genre.
What Josiah Saw (2021)
Family Fortunes
Long after the suicide of a mother, her family gravitates back to the homestead for a reckoning.
Superior horror that gave me a good chill. The writing is excellent, with everything falling into place behind it - direction, performances, editing. The Texas landscape looks great, and the camera lingers over period items to cast a spell of time stood still.
The story comes in three chapters plus the climax, with big variations in pace. The second is influenced by Tarantino, as a flawed hero drifts in with menacing characters who barely contain their violence until it all explodes. There's definitely a nod to the hypodermic scene in Pulp Fiction, and maybe to the famous briefcase Maguffin as well. But for all its entertainment, this is where self-indulgence leaves some loose ends - no biggie, since it's just an interlude before the main event.
The first and third chapters give us the most clues down the winding road to a pair of twists (followed by a final final twist). The shape of this main story is like Stephen King's It, or the recent series The Haunting of Hill House, where scattered adults are drawn back together to address their common childhood trauma. And it works well.
The choice of music is interesting, with such titles as Aim to Annihilate and the ole' classic Mom DIed in a Fire She Set. The score is atmospheric and classy, although sometimes a little on the foreboding nose in certain scenes that might have been carried better by leaving the actors to do their thing.
P.s. There is one reference to a character named Paul, who I couldn't place - maybe I missed something.
Overall: Get stuck in.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
The Tall-Tale Heart
When a cadet at a military academy is found murdered in weird circumstances, the authorities call in a tortured ex-cop to figure it out.
Institutional murder mystery meets gothic horror in the depth of winter. Lavish production, with icy blue cinematography and moody orchestrals throughout, befitting the lead character. The other performances are excellent - for me the stand-outs were Poe and the doctor's wife, but the list goes on, and I even did a double take on spotting the credit for the old professor. Plus a round of applause for the period hats.
I don't rate it so high since the gothic element is just over the line of absurdity, and the theme of revenge always leaves me cold. Also I'm not a fan of final long-winded expositions. Tis pity, because there are some deep resonances, particularly in the love story and in the irony of the mirrored situations of the two principal characters. And I think there's a nod to The Fall of the House of Usher.
Overall: Impressive but forgettable.
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023)
Better than most FF
When an internet sleuth drags her girlfriend along to investigate the scene of a grisly massacre at a deserted mansion in the woods, they get more than they bargained for.
Over-produced found-footage that still manages to be effective. The ideal for this genre is to wind up the story like clockwork in the first ten minutes, then let it unwind through intelligent editing of the footage, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps. Instead this production gives us masses of exposition through the framing device of a mockumentary, with explanatory flashbacks, and inserts foreboding music where appropriate.
So the story has trouble standing on its own feet, with ho-hum plotting and characterisation, and in the end has to fall back into classic Blair Witch mode to reach its climax.
And despite the fussy direction, the in-scene motivations are poorly handled. You know you can run away, right, instead of shuffling? So that the audience might satisfy itself that every means of escape was tried, before this unstoppable evil had its way? Perhaps bolting and chaining the bedroom door might be in order - especially since the chain is hanging limp, in plain sight, in scene after scene? It won't do any good, but y'know ... And if a character is in terror of her life, the best thing to do is put the camera down while still trained on the action, so the audience doesn't have to wonder why she's still filming. If she needs the camera light to flee through the darkness, then that's OK. And of course: don't split up, and don't go toward the threat that just scared the bejebus out of you, etc. And it's not necessary to give a final homily on the nature of evil: we know what we just saw.
As for the figures of evil, I know many are creeped out just by the sight of clowns, but my first thought was, 'Oh, they hired some specialist mime artists for this bit - that's why they're so still. Do their noses get itchy?'
Yet the atmosphere is genuinely creepy, and I was mostly engaged throughout. Plus there is an original and excellent video conference weird-out at 45 mins that got my adrenaline buzzing. For that, and the mounting hysteria (a la BW, including a distant cry for help that sounds like the first victim) I rate it above average.
The Boogeyman (2023)
Blame it on the boogey
After the death of the mother, a family of three finds an unwelcome intruder has come to deal with their grief. In its own way.
Colour-by-numbers demon/monster flick. Sigh. Maybe it's just me, but yet another emotional crisis in American suburbia that ends with a punch-up and a group hug? The only note of interest was in the father's assertion that Carl Jung 'said it all', so I was hoping for some fleshing out of that psychiatrist's spookier notions, particularly related to sleep difficulties and fear of the dark. But no - all rejected later on with a stamp of the heroine's foot: 'But it's REAL!' Some may see the demon/monster as a metaphor for grief, but that idea isn't worked through into action, and we end up with escapism. So much for the power of cinema to bring ideas to life.
The performances are fine - nothing memorable, and one awful piece of direction late on in a reaction shot of the young girl as she blankly watches a grisly death: the actor was probably looking at a green screen, with no help in how to create convincing effect. The editing is pretty rapid, yet the story drags. Not sure why - probably too many unnecessary characters, and the ones who are necessary not properly integrated with each other. The music is low key, with lots of groaning strings and piano semitones, but very busy - a couple of times it almost drowned out recorded messages, and otherwise never failed to tell us how to feel. Silence can be golden. The production values are good, with an awesome swivel pan while checking for monsters under the bed, but not enough to save the story from a low rating.
Overall: I checked my phone a couple of times.
All Fun and Games (2023)
Lost along the way
When a boy brings home a knife found in an old shack in the woods, his family becomes victim of a curse.
Interesting start. The opening scenes use flashback and voice-over, but the storytelling has a light touch and promises a proper theme in the generational covering up of the source of a present evil. And it is Salem, with kids battling an ancient curse - is that you, Stephen King?
But the direction quickly loses its touch, with naive use of over-the-shoulder shadowy movement and spooky sound design, and a heavy emphasis on the boy's descent into madness - much better to give us small touches of weird amid scenes of normality.
The normality is well delivered, with good performances in a lively family dynamic, and one excellent scene of rapid fire dialogue. But the story quickly collapses into slasher mode; then raises itself up with some clever game play (and a blatant pun), before ending with your average dispelling of ye olde curse. So, suffering from a disjointed screenplay, it adds up to a blood-drenched Scooby Doo mystery.
The real mystery is a rather cool song during the drinking game at the party - Overjoyed by the Dutch Singers. Can't find it anywhere online. Otherwise the music is generic orchestral stuff.
Oh, and the budget - how did all those hundreds of people in the end credits get paid? It's a Canadian production, so lots of grants?
Overall: Lost before it got going.
Talk to Me (2022)
I let you in
A teen grieving for her mother volunteers for a spooky prank among her friends, but finds herself drawn in deeper than anyone expected.
Not totally satisfying, but an impressive Australian entry in the high-school dice-with-death genre. The first half is excellent, opening with a busy shocker of a prequel scene, before launching us into a world of adolescent rebellion and angst, where the energetic characters always react with frank humour or touches of sensitivity.
The performances are strong, helped by a script that balances action and dialogue just right, and the editing and direction keep the story unfolding at a good pace, with a couple of reversed plot-points to open up new areas of intrigue. The sound design has clever moments, and the lack of jump scares means it never has to go over the top. Plus the music is full of energy, including that Sia song everyone drunkenly sings along to without realizing its subject is the despair of addiction. Nice.
The second half narrows its focus and, while the tension does build, we lose touch with some of the complex characterization of the group in favour of a personal journey into madness. The balance between the psychological and the supernatural isn't quite right for me, I guess because the necessary weirdness and mystery is sacrificed for the sake of bringing on the climax and resolution. Compared to another recent Australian horror, the brilliant Run, Rabbit Run, it just lacks the sophistication to leave me open-mouthed in horror. But I ain't really complaining - it's still one of the best in the past couple of years.
Overall: Top of its sub-genre.
Cabin Girl (2023)
No one's to blame?
After a highway accident during a road trip to get over the death of her parents, a travel-vlogger restarts her channel from a cabin she's decided to settle down in. But is the previous resident really gone?
Lively start, ends up a mess. The motivations of the characters are inept, not only at the highest level involving the trauma of the protagonist, but at the mid-level in the way others become involved with her, down to the most basic level of why characters move around in a scene.
What on earth has the death of her parents got to do with the story? Or the death of the previous occupant? Why on earth is there a romance with the mechanic? How on earth does she plot-point-alert bump into the doctor and the bar owner when she's going away from the van that she was just walking toward? It's like things just happen 'for reasons'. To put it another way, the action does not flow from specific motivation; rather, motivation is tacked on to the action so that you feel the director's hand.
The production values are mostly not bad, and I admit that I had a sense that the endless Nancy Drew cliches were a trail of symbols that would lead to a bizarre reveal of the character's psychology. But in the end it feels like a child showing you a colour-by-numbers picture plastered with crazy crayon.
The editing declines in quality, with too much footage of how a character gets from point A to point B, and repetition of shots that don't tell us anything new - particularly of the stalker, and that damn floorboard. The spooky bits ain't all that, with no feel for shadow and the music too obvious. Add in some flabby dialogue, and it's no wonder some of the performances are less than convincing.
I kinda liked the song over the end credits, but ... no - somebody is to blame.
Life (2017)
Red Dwarf
An abducted Martian fights back against his oppressors.
Well, I thought I'd invert the logline to see if that might bring more insight - sadly, no. This is a well-paced action adventure that hides it's 'sciency stuff' exposition pretty well, and just about qualifies as horror through its monster element. The main mistake is in the sentimental lull before the climax - I actually tuned out to perform some complex engineering on a noisy fan: a rubber washer fixed the whirring sound.
The characterisation is promising, since we're introduced to a scientist released from his wheelchair by zero-gravity and another, a misanthrope, who abhors the ways of mankind - so both have good reason to prefer life away from earth. The latter character's fate does provide irony, but nobody else's life gets flipped or switched or twisted round (apart from dying), so the story is not much more sophisticated than The Thing From Another World or yet another episode of The Twilight Zone.
The production values are quality, with impressive CGI and effective music.
P.s. The crew is multi-national, despite Russia becoming the baddie after 2015 - yet the reference to Syria is pure propaganda. Did the Pentagon get its hands on the script?
Cobweb (2023)
A pinch of spice
When night time noises start coming from behind his bedroom wall, a young boy seeks help ... but not from his parents. And not for himself.
Well, well, well - I wasn't expecting this: a modern monster movie. Not an old fashioned creature feature, nor sci-fi from the outer reaches, but up-to-date dysfunctional-suburban-family style.
The plot engine is a secret from the past, and our detective is a sensitive young boy who hears things that go bump in the night. There's the standard black artwork noticed by a concerned teacher with a heart of gold (and some nominative determinism), from which the trail leads back to the dark heart of a disturbed house.
The unusual complication is that the story squashes all expectation of virtue in a bloody climax, although it does leave us with an overly complacent resolution - but even then the film makers don't quite let us off the hook.
So it loses its nerve a little right at the end, and for sure the plot isn't water tight (especially the home invasion), but I still rate it high because the director commits to the power of suggestion and allows the intensity of the frights to grow naturally, while we're never sure until the end where the real threat is coming from. The editing keeps excellent pace, and the music fills the neat runtime without overbearing. Plenty of movement in the camera, with the outstanding shot a zooming swivel pan that generates some queasiness at the dinner table. And the performances are solid and convincing, even with the slight vibe of cartoon gothic in a gloomy location that seems to have impossibly large interiors.
The director and writer are American, but I wonder if the Bulgarian influence, evident in the end credits, and Canadian financing made for a darker vision than you'd expect from a Halloween movie.
Overall: Good entertainment, give it a crack.