Tag: horror
Evil Dead
Evil Dead revels in the grotesque, the perverse and the horrifying. It is a zombie movie. But it's also a movie about demonic possession, opening the door to hell and the danger of reading strange books. Friendship is helping your friend detox. Friendship is decidedly not reading passages out of the grimoire you found with the dead cats in the cabin you're all staying in. Mia's detox symptoms mask the fact that she's been possessed by some sort of unknown evil. By the time the group figures out what's happening, Olivia's taking off part of her face with a shard from a broken mirror and then stabbing Eric relentlessly with a needle. Clearly something is off. Olivia ends up on the wrong end of a broken sink and Mia feigns normalcy long enough to infect Natalie. A bite to the hand later and Natalie's trying to excise it as though it's the world's gnarliest cyst. When that doesn't work, she resorts to an impromptu amputation with a kitchen appliance. Is it a meat saw? It looks like a meat saw. I've never used one and don't think I ever will, now. The cliff notes in the grimoire hint that the only way to solve all this is with additional amputations and fire. Which makes sense, right? What else could do it? The cabin ablaze, a miraculously resuscitated Mia loses a hand pinned under one of the remaining vehicles and, in a storm of blood, puts an end to the last zombie with an expertly applied chainsaw. She wanders out of the woods and collapses on the highway. A stranger rescues her and loads her into his truck. She rests fitfully, until her eyes open wide and things fade to black. Did they close the door to hell? Even if they did, the grimoire doesn't burn. Somewhere there's someone who'll someday go on a hike, stumble on the ashes of the cabin, find a book to read and wish they'd never bothered.
His House
I'll protect you. His House is, ostensibly, a horror movie but it primarily uses features of the genre as a set of tools to explore trauma. It's more heartbreaking than generally frightening. There are outwardly supernatural elements here, but the real trauma, the real horror is what Bol and Rial fled. It's what Nyagak experienced, torn away from her mother by Bol and used as a means to effect his escape on a bus meant for women and children. It's losing Nyagak on the voyage across the sea and barely surviving. Yet, Bol and Rial make it to the other side of all of that and find the country where they seek refuge cold and uncaring. They're granted a home, but that home is run down, falling apart and the community around them is indifferent and unwelcoming. They try to hold it together, but their trauma manifests itself as ghosts, as a witch and as damage to the house as Bol lashes out, trying to drive the demons away. Bol and Rial pull apart, their caseworkers fail to understand and express concern only about what they can see. Bol burns the reminders of their past in a desperate attempt to free themselves from it. He realizes that he can't escape his past, his trauma and what he did to get to where they are now. He gives in to the witch, the apeth in a desperate bid to atone. Nyagak's ghost returns and, in a final act of forgiveness, of acceptance, Rial slays the apeth. Bol and Rial face their demons and arrive at an acceptance of where they are now. A new home, one that was also overtaken by the horrors of their past, but now with space for a more hopeful future.
Pretty Lethal
C4? I mean, I see at least 16. If you know anything about Pretty Lethal going in, you know that it's bound to be an absurd film. It knows that and is gleeful in its execution. A ballerina troupe is set to perform at an event in Budapest. Their flight is diverted, their bus breaks down and they trek to a hotel in — as far as they can tell — the middle of nowhere. Innocent, if irritating, protagonists meet a stereotype of eastern Europe. Pretty Lethal has the visual tone and palette of the John Wick franchise with none of the franchise's seriousness. What kind of ballerina doesn’t know how to make themselves throw up? Everyone's got a first name, a pair of ballet flats and the chemistry one might expect in an ensemble. Bones is the fearless leader, Princess is as spoiled as her name implies, Grace is preachy and high, while Zoe and Chloe are a pair of sisters with irritatingly similar names. The employees at the hotel seem hospitable until the son of a local crime boss shoots their teacher in the head. Why? She was there, mostly. Iris Apatow (as Zoe) has some expressions that are eerily like those of her mother, Leslie Mann. Chaos ensues. Fight scenes incorporate ballet; Bones ends up with a razor blade embedded in the toe of her flats (novel and effective) and numerous unnamed goons die. Because films like this are never, ever, in any way subtle, the hotel owner (played by Uma Thurman) was, in a past life, a ballerina. She lost her leg to the local crime boss and prepares for one last dance. The enemy of your enemy is your friend and this friend handles your enemy in a single, massive explosion. The best part? The girls make it to Budapest on mopeds conveniently left outside the hotel and nail their performance — toe blades, gore and all. First position!
They Will Kill You
When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs. — Benvenuto Cellini Movies like They Will Kill You are funny in that they're clearly about class warfare and position themselves, narratively, on the side of the downtrodden protagonist. Which is fair. Income inequality is an ever-widening chasm and there's a catharsis and appeal in that. I welcome it. But it's worth knowing how much money goes into making any given film and the motivations and constraints associated with the interests providing it. What happened in there? Rich people. Anyways, fuck rich people. Billionaires suck. Clearly, as you see here, they're a cavalcade of Satan-animated pig on a stick worshipping weirdos. They Will Kill You is rife with over the top violence. Not the horrifying realism of a Cronenberg film. This is more of the everyone is a highly pressurized balloon full of pink water and every severed limb hides a sprinkler variety. Good? Bad? Artistic choice. Zazie Beetz is a badass lead (she was a badass in Atlanta too) and Myha'la is excellent as her sister, Maria. Heather Graham is present to be repeatedly beheaded and Patricia Arquette is a fittingly absurd villain who ends the bloody mess wearing the demonic pig head as a helmet. The score matches this perfectly. Sparse synth music as needed, victorious tunes where appropriate. The camera work is excellent and bottling this up in a building makes it feel a bit like The Raid (though this has a lone eyeball navigating the ducts). Is this similar to Kill Bill ? Maybe. I don't know. I haven't watched it and don't you dare tell me what to do. The working class Asia butchers the rich, devil worshipping weirdos. She gets her sister back and makes the world better, one severed limb at a time.
Cobweb
Cobweb is a middling autumnal horror movie rooted in family secrets and childhood trauma. Lizzy Caplan excels at the crazy-lady role and is perennially trapped in it. Antony Starr is hard to mentally separate from his role as Homelander in The Boys . Starr is a capable actor but Homelander is such a perverse character and the shadow cast by a role like that is hard to escape. Peter is a quiet, reserved kid who hears tapping inside his bedroom wall until, one day, a voice calls out to him. His mother Carol (Caplan) and father Mark (Starr) are simultaneously dismissive, controlling and outwardly overprotective. They are, in reality, protecting the dark secret that lurks in their walls. The creature in the walls is, in fact, Peter's sister. A monstrous creature who alludes to having learned to climb while kept in the basement. She dismembers some bullies who break into Peter's house and Peter is rescued by the only person who actually cares about him, his teacher. They lock his sister in the basement and she promises to haunt him for the rest of his life. There's nothing to take away from this and no resolution. It's a dreary and only vaguely entertaining film.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The Autopsy of Jane Doe is standard horror fare. The leads are both extremely capable and it's all bottled up in a single location. The slow unwinding of events is effective at building tension, from the mysterious finding of Jane Doe's body at a gruesome murder scene to the layered discovery of who and what she is over the course of the autopsy. Austin Tilden is open minded about the nature of Jane Doe as the autopsy progresses and things get stranger and stranger. His father, Tommy Tilden, is implacable and roots his understanding of events solely in what their inspection of the body reveals to them. It's an effective balance and Tommy comes around as things become irrefutably supernatural. Jane, it turns out, is very much alive in some form or another. Trapped in her body, unmoving and unspeaking, but very much in agony and aware of events as they transpire. She lashes out, subverting the Tildens' reality into a horrifying nightmare that ends in the death of Austin's girlfriend, Emma, Tommy and Austin himself. Jane Doe was responsible for events where she was found, for events at the Tildens' mortuary and will continue to destroy whoever she's around as she's passed off again and again as some sort of cursed object.
Sick Puppy
Your husband is a serial killer. You've accepted that and you lend him a hand disposing of his victims. But you also want him to take a beat and watch a 90 Day Fiancé . Maybe he'll change. You get him a pottery wheel as a creative outlet, since it's not that different from his other hobby and hope for the best. Until he runs a lawnmower over a cat, gets distracted by a teenage girl who shows up at a local art fair and smashes his pottery. The bully that tormented Charlie and Dale in high school? He's a cop, naturally. It's a good fit. Until he catches on to them and ends up dead in their front yard, framed for their crimes (this is after Charlie kills someone who recognizes jewelry she's wearing that Dale gifted her from one of his victims). It's a twisted relationship and — perhaps — a loving one? It's twisted and Charlie and Dale are devoted to one another. Whether it's intended to be comedic or not, I don't know, but the odd, jazzy music and cock rock that make up the soundtrack do make an unbelievable film feel a bit silly.
The Historian
I received Elizabeth Kostova's vampire novel The Historian for my birthday earlier this spring, and finished it last night. It has been great fun to read. I read Dracula back in 2023, but it seems like this year, for some reason, I have had more exposure to vampire stories, maybe because my Russian Literature professor...
Hush
Hush is a pretty ok horror movie about Maddie. Maddie is deaf, she's an author and she lives alone in a small home in the woods. Sarah and John live nearby and seem like pretty great neighbors. They stop being good neighbors when they're stabbed to death by a guy in a mask who then terrorizes Maddie for the duration. It's more or less what you'd expect, with some wrinkles provided by Maddie's condition. The killer can hear Maddie and she has to come up with a plan to survive knowing that he can hear her. This, erm, cuts both ways when he thinks he has the drop on her and she manages to stab him in the knee. Cool stuff. I realize I'm being blithe and a bit reductive, but I don't think a movie like this needs to be taken seriously. The circumstances are serious, but not terribly believable and it's a rather rote take on the whole slasher genre. But, for a low budget and a small cast, it is pretty fun.
The Strangers
Do you think they ever found Tamara? What if they'd had a no soliciting sign? Remember those old phone chargers that inevitably turned into a knot? Or how you used to be able to swap out batteries in your flip phone? Glenn Howerton is so effective at always playing exactly that guy. Charming, Dennis-adjacent and always a jerk on the edge of getting very angry. The Strangers is frightening, arguably even terrifying. Opening with crime statistics is a choice. The statistics are significant but it leaves no question as to what's going to happen to Kristen and James here. Unscrewing the bulb and getting them to answer the door is a terrifying first step and things simply escalate from there. The whole thing is expertly staged — the intruders silently observing Kristen in the background, the masks, the messages, the ever present threat until the bloody end. A tense, unsurprising classic.
Let Me In
Let Me In is a surprisingly tender and sweet film that happens to feature blood, immolation and dismemberment. It's incredibly easy to screw up remakes, vampire movies and remakes of vampire movies (I haven't watched the original yet — give me a minute). Eat some now. Save some for later. This applies to candy, but not people. You eat all of the people. Right now. At it's core, Let Me In , is an adolescent love story. Owen and Abby are both tortured (in very different ways, granted). Abby helps Owen navigate a distinctly human situation, urging him to defend himself and then by radically escalating things near the conclusion of the film. Owen helps Abby feel less alone, less monstrous and more human. That bond sees them escape, together and leaves me wondering if something similar had played out with Abby's "father". How old is Abby? How old was he when they met? Will Abby's affliction lead Owen down the same path?
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Can I have a cigarette? Ready or Not 2 such a wonderful, over the top, gleeful exercise in horror, satanism and camp. The Faculty is perhaps my all time favorite movie, so seeing Elijah Wood and Shawn Hatosy back on screen together was such a treat. Throw in Sarah Michelle Gellar (hail Buffy ) and a David Cronenberg cameo? :chefkissemoji: This is not a sequel that tries to stand on its own — it opens right as Ready or Not closes. The reveal here isn't the nature of the game, it's that the game continues. It also allows it to improve upon where this all started. When I resumed this after a brief break, I accidentally started Limitless Violence off of Diabolic Messiah of the New World Order and that the two fit so perfectly is not lost on me There is so much to love here. Elijah Wood being oddly calm while administering the rules guiding a bizarre pact with the devil? Check. Samara Weaving with a distinct, horrifying, almost quavering scream that never gets old? Check. Weaving and Kathryn Newton as an incredible, reluctant leading duo? Check. Just enough people popping like balloons full of red corn syrup — until they all pop? Check. I will watch this again. I will watch the first one again. I'll watch them back to back and then I'll wait for the next one. Can we get a movie about The Lawyer? Hail Satan.
Urban Legend
Do you smell something? Urban Legend occupies the same milieu as Cherry Falls and I Know What You Did Last Summer but is far closer in quality to the latter. I vaguely remember having seen this before or, at least, I believe I have. I could also be that the setting is extremely familiar. The coffee shop — Friends burned this into everyone's mind — feels so emblematic and central to the time. But, unlike Central Perk, where nothing ever goes all that wrong, what's discussed here are murders past and present. One after another. Rumored deaths, cover ups, urban legends and fixtures of the popular lack of imagination. There are house parties with misused microwaves, pop rock fatalities both real and imagined and vengeance for a wrong that the protagonist committed and fails to connect. Is this Jared Leto at his most normal? Remember when gas was right around $1? How do you not see the guy in your back seat when you reach for a tape? Does nobody look in their backseat? The puffy jacket is a good killer disguise for a college in Maine. Everyone's trying to stay warm and stay alive. An essential entry into the genre of 90s campy slashers.
Cherry Falls
Class dismissed! Cherry Falls is a ludicrous slasher that manages to be campy while landing oh so shy of self-parody. A serial killer is on the loose murdering high school virgins so all the high school virgins throw a sex party to exclude themselves from the list of potential victims. Which, of course, would never work because that's just a word the killer carved in their victims (only to carve the inverse in another victim who was both not a high schooler nor a virgin). Why does the reservoir in the closing scene turn red? Setting this in Cherry Falls, Virginia is really on the nose (though nothing about this movie is subtle). This isn't as good as as Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer but it's a perfectly entertaining entry into the genre.
Triangle
Triangle is a late aughts horror gem that takes the aesthetics of a slasher film and wraps them around a time loop ala Timecrimes . Visually it feels very much like Dexter — there's an overlap in timing, locale, the warm visual tones, abundance of blood and the fact that the sea features so prominently in the most violent scenes (death is never far removed from a boat, I guess). The loop in Triangle is unexplained. You're made to believe it starts when the party boards the mysteriously abandoned cruise ship. You capsize, you miraculously drift to a rescue and manage to find a mention of Sisyphus and a lone occupant trying to kill you. The loop, in fact, is one in which Jess kidnaps her son, Tommy, from herself and her sisyphean task becomes one of securing her return to Tommy at all costs. Instead of rolling a boulder up a hill, she's killing her love interest and acquaintances over and over and over again. It's a special sort of hell. Jess' behavior on the ship leads you to believe she's a caring mother. Past Jess' behavior at the tail end of the loop reveals that she's overwhelmed and abusive, necessitating a rescue that results in Tommy's death. But, the core events of the film show the lengths she's willing to go to to get back to Tommy. In that way, the true cruelty lies in the acts she finds herself forced to commit and the knowledge that they never free her or rescue her son. There's no telling when the loop started and it may never end. Does Jess deserve a fate so cruel? Perhaps.
Crimes of the Future
The Cronenberg family has made some of the most grotesque movies I've ever watched. To their credit, they're never needlessly grotesque. Crimes of the Future exists solidly within body horror, which is a subsection of horror I'm often repulsed by but can't look away from. It's eerie, atmospheric, minimally scored and bleak in its outlook. Society appears to be teetering — government offices are helpless and rundown, horrifying surgeries are performed as a public spectacle and Saul Tenser's body grows novel organ after novel organ. It's horror as art and it's an art that robs its victims of their humanity. There are morose echoes of transhumanism in Dotrice and his experiments transforming himself and others so that they can eat and survive off the plastic waste littering their high tech dystopia. Saul and Caprice exhibit their pain, Timlin and Wippet watch, Dotrice engineers a way through and Cope fights against all of it, seemingly motivated to preserve what it means to be human in a society that's quickly losing sight of what that means.
undertone
Use promo code ABYZOU for 50% off your first meal kit! Movies like this are always fascinating because they hinge entirely on the ability of a single actor or actress to keep the audience engaged. Nina Kiri is more than up to the task. undertone is a slow burn that conducts itself almost entirely via a podcast recorded at Evy's mother's dining room table. I don't know that it's a novel concept, but it works. Kiri has a convincing podcast voice as does Adam DiMarco (her co-host, Justin) and a paranormal podcast is, naturally, a perfect medium for this. The audience is brought along with the hosts as they listen to files attached to a mysterious email, in order. It's an effective way to ratchet up the tension. The movie ending without answers is appropriate given that the hosts themselves have none to offer.
Scream 7
AI? I refuse. That is the death of civilization. There were plenty of missed opportunities here to have even a vaguely meaningful discussion about AI and deepfakes and, while I appreciate the cheap shots at it, I know I shouldn't expect any depth from a Scream movie (unless you're talking about the depth of a stab wound). This isn't a bad entry for the franchise, but it's also not a good one. It was easy to predict how this would turn out knowing Melissa Barrera was tossed aside by cowards running a franchise they wouldn't survive appearing in and Jenna Ortega subsequently choosing not to return. That Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox remain present helps this avoid disaster and Isabel May is a welcome addition (she did a wonderful job in 1883 and narrating 1923 ). But, beyond the nostalgia, you'll get exactly what you'd expect out of this. (Oh yeah — great call including a Turnstile tune.)
Send Help
HEPL A dash of Lord of the Flies , a splash of Castaway , a douchebag nepobaby boss and the eccentric lady from planning and accounting that said boss abuses relentlessly. Oh and she's a fan of Survivor . Did they use AI in this for the CGI? It looks pretty rough, bordering on the comical when things get ludicrously gruesome. Nothing about this is worth taking seriously, but it is worth watching once. It lifts workplace dynamics and unceremoniously dumps them onto a desert island, ratchets up the tension and then concludes it all as predictably as any mediocre movie in this genre would. There is't a trope that isn't used here but it's all executed well enough not to suffer too much for it. Are they going to end up together? Killing each other? Both? One wants to be rescued, the other doesn't. Oh the tension. How could they ever possibly go back to the office after this? Linda, you've got this.
Happy Friday the 13th! Give Some Love To These Underappreciated Sequels As We Dive Into the “Worst” of the Franchise
As a horror series, Friday the 13th stands out with its iconic imagery. Those too young to see horror or too freaked out to jump into the genre already know who Jason Voorhees is and can link his trusty hockey mask to his image, fueling early word-of-mouth urban legends about the killer — whether based on his dark deeds on film or completely made-up. For the only Friday that falls on the 13th day of the month this year, fans may think it has to count for the best of what the franchise has to off...
‘Hell Hole’ Review – This Monster Movie Needs To Dig Deeper
The Adams family films have been on the up and up lately, catching the eye of horror enthusiasts ever since The Deeper You Dig in 2019. Their tendencies for lingering, dread-infused horrors present in their recent filmography grew in Hellbender to play with something more overt and in your face. That is to say, a good bit more daring. The Adams family have pushed their efforts here towards daring in a greater capacity. The family’s latest film Hell Hole stars John Adams and Toby Poser, who also ...
‘Frankie Freako’ Review – Throwback Creature Feature Is Pretty Good Pizza
Writer/director Steven Kostanski is doubling down on more of the humor that made Psycho Goreman an outlier for horror comedies within the past few years. This time around it comes in a pint-sized form (give or take a few ounces). Frankie Freako is, largely, a puppet-centric original creature feature that lifts from various Gremlins-adjacent cinematic riffs like a spoiled grade-schooler would when trick-or-treating, regardless of a babysitter’s presence. You could say that Frankie Freako meets ex...
‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’, ‘Halloween’ & The Season of Giving And Taking
There’s a chill in the air. Frost is accumulating in the sky and on car windshields; people’s faces are leaking fluids while they try politely hiding their illnesses; dealerships are dusting off their house brand market-devised strategically named year-end sales events. In other words, the holidays are here. But the only holiday we know will get the spotlight is Christmas. I’m not here to tell you why, you probably already have a good idea. There’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to any...
“Pop” Culture Horror — The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
A feature-length, fully animated Looney Tunes movie seems like something we would have gotten a lot more of in this world. But this is the first and only original film in the history of the studio. Though there is a certain apprehension towards how different Looney Tunes feels nowadays, seeing Porky Pig and Daffy Duck’s buddy slapstick adventure unfold returns us to what has made the Warner Bros. animation powerhouse so special. Director Peter Browngardt guides his beloved odd couple duo into ne...
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Surreal, touching, horrifying and somehow all three at once. Yet another entry into the 28 Days/Months/Years saga that never falters, never slows down and refuses to disappoint. Ralph Fiennes is magnificent and his relationship with Samson is oddly beautiful. I can't help but wonder what Samson would have done if he was present for the assault by the Jimmys and not distracted fending off a hoard of his own. Can we get a buddy movie featuring Dr. Kelson and Samson? I know the former is dead, but frame it as a daydream. Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, Jimmy Ink, Jimmima, Jimmy Shite — an absurdist band of traveling sociopaths. Or sadists? Sadists is a more fitting description. Kelson's portrayal of their deity is a thing of theatrical beauty soundtracked, perfectly, by Iron Maiden. Every entry into this series is a masterwork and I hope it never ends. We get a glimpse of Cillian Murphy at the end and I'll be disappointed if the next doesn't pick up right where this leaves off.
The Home
Look, normally I'd say it's safe to assume that a movie like The Home is bad purely because it's a horror movie featuring Pete Davidson. But the fact that Bodies Bodies Bodies proves that this can work. He's far better in settings tilted towards the comedic, but he's perfectly fine outside of that. But this is a spectacularly bad movie. Almost — almost — beyond redemption. This was bad enough to make me want to alter the schema for ratings on this site to support an explicit zero or a poop emoji. I finished it though and while the closing scene of cartoonish violence redeems nothing, it did save the schema.
We Bury the Dead
It's incredibly rare for a truly compelling movie like We Bury the Dead to emerge from such a well-trodden genre. It's not the apocalypse, but in Tasmania, it feels like it is. We've seen this though, we've seen visions of the apocalypse, movies and shows covered in zombies and wanton violence. But it's so rare that we get something novel, something that isn't emerging from a respected franchise, but we do here. It's all eminently believable too. The United States accidentally deploys a new weapon near a populated but remote area. The rank incompetence necessary for that to occur is everywhere in the world we currently inhabit. Like so many movies that are a part of a genre but stand out with in it, We Bury the Dead is not strictly a zombie movie. It's a rumination on grief, loss and closure. It's about Ava's journey to say what was left unsaid when Mitch off took on a work trip in Tasmania after a personal spat. She wants to find him, she needs to find him, she does find him. But she never gets the closure she's looking for. She only gets the closure the world offers her and it is both cruel and inadequate. That last scene with Clay vomiting on Mitch's body shrouded in cloth on the way to a burial at sea? Fucking perfect. Exactly the right touch to throw some absurd humor into a harrowing film.
The Hunt
I vaguely remember some controversy around this movie when it was first on its way to a release. Having watched it, it feels to farcical and stupid to have been controversial. It picks the worst caricatures of a breathtakingly stupid, distinctly American political divide and pits them against each other. The only interesting character is the protagonist Crystal and a large part of what makes her so interesting is that she (much like the audience hopefully does) sees how stupid this entire exercise is. I'll note that I watched this primarily because Sturgill Simpson is part of the cast. This works best when it's engaged in mindless violence, allowing you to briefly forget the premise.
Black Phone 2
I am a bottomless pit of sin. Nostalgia and memory are such a funny thing. The further you get from events, the more they fade, become blurry and linger as feelings. Certain moments stand out, sure, but they're often surrounded by a glow or a shadow. I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s so I can't claim to be nostalgic about the specific period in which this or the original The Black Phone are set, but it feels close. There's no ever present connection, there's personal connection and an analogue phone is at the heart of it. Remember pay phones? Phone booths? Simpler times. Unless they're channeling heaven and hell, but that's a pretty rare occurrence. It's smart phones that are persistent portals to hell. Finney's haunted by what happened to him, Gwen's delightfully foul mouthed and concerned. They're both haunted by what happened to their mother. That's all you have, I suppose. What you remember, how it's shaped you and who you know yourself to be. Even The Grabber knows that. The Grabber is, naturally, condemned to hell (as he should be) and expounds upon the way in which it tears away at you until only the worst is left. I imagine there was little tearing to be done. He draws his power from his victims, from that past and that darkness. Freeing those victims from where he left them robs him of his power. It's interesting that this felt like the closing of a chapter while opening the door for many more entries. Perhaps the Blakes are done, but I imagine you'll hear your phone ring and I'll be on the other end of the line, talking to you about Black Phone 9.
The Ritual
The scariest part of this movie is that you can never get back the time you spent watching it. Al Pacino is old and receipts scripture. Dan Stevens is young and confused. Abigail Cowen speaks in a lower register in languages unfamiliar to aforementioned actors. The camera shakes, sisters get abused by Cowen and eventually, mercifully, the movie ends.
The Long Walk
💰🩸🧦👟🚶♂️🚶♂️🚶♂️🚶♂️ The only guarantee you have as a human being is that you are going to die. And, if you're lucky, you get to choose how to spend those last moments. ... Every moment matters. Especially at the end. This is what it's going to be like trying to get insurance in a few years. Wear the pedometer. Don't stop. That number indicates whether they can cover you. Hunger Games: America edition! 60s/70s-era America is now ruled by a despotic, totalitarian regime embodied by a sunglass wearing Mark Hamill with a voice like that of Tom Waits . Fifty men walk and walk and walk and walk and walk. If you make it, if you keep pace, you get a wish and massive economic gain. The pitch is that this is to drive home the relentlessness and work ethic needed to get the country back on track, that productivity spikes after it occurs. It's very American, right? Everyone engages for selfish reasons and it's a sacrifice, sure, but it's a personal sacrifice. It's also a brutal way to motivate both the individual and the collective. But, America's had a dark streak of brutality and violence and its core from its founding that has never diminished nor wavered. Here, the country experienced a war or traumatic event that has led to military rule and turned that brutality inwards. You enter a lottery for a one in fifty chance to dramatically change your circumstances (your participation ensures that your circumstances will change dramatically). It's not unlike and, perhaps, an allegory for the draft lottery imposed during the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The prospects for survival were grim, but perhaps you'd be among the survivors. Here, you get rich, in reality, you survive. So you walk, and walk, and walk. You sleep as you walk. You shit as you walk. Your shoes fall apart, you walk through your socks, your feet bleed and you walk, you walk, you walk. Against all odds, you make friends. Good friends. An incredible friend. A brother. He tries to sacrifice himself. You sacrifice yourself and he, your brother, wishes for the tool he needed to enact the vengeance that you wanted. Tear down the dystopian state that tore down your family, killed your father and for what? For thinking freely, which means thinking wrongly. It's predictably Orwellian and a touching ending. As Pete turns and walks away from the scene, Raymond's wish fulfilled, you see a bright, glowing vision of an open future. No tanks, no military, but a wish fulfilled and an open road.
Midsommar
🇸🇪🌅💐🐻🔥 I've watched a lot of weird movies and quite a few weird horror movies. This is terrifying, but not in the grotesque Cronenberg-ian sense. It's also not as immediate or as overwhelmingly dark as Ari Aster's Hereditary . It's more of a sun-soaked slow burn. Dani experiences an unspeakable tragedy, Christian's an uncaring douche, Mark's purely a douche (don't piss on the ancestral tree) and well, why not tag along on a trip to a festival in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. Aster manages to blend cults, worship and ritual into their most horrifying possible outcomes. This one is the polar opposite, visually, of Hereditary . Hereditary was all oily, murky darkness. Midsommar is glaringly bright, floral and slowly winds in horror as the ritual in Pelle's home village unfurls in front of everyone. Every 90 years, 9 sacrifices are required to purge the Hårga commune of evil. Four outsiders, four volunteers and one chosen sacrifice. The outsiders are increasingly terrified, the villagers are unmoved and Dani observes the ritual's conclusion with a slow smile. Absolutely horrifying.
HIM
WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?! EVERYTHING! Then show me. Are you HIM? Is Austin Reaves screaming "I'm HIM" HIM? Is HIM HIM? I mean, not really. It's an interesting, ruminative fever dream about race, sacrifice, the toxicity of sports (American football in particular) and the casual acceptance of violence as a prerequisite of achieving greatness. While it is a horror movie, what HIM grapples with is more horrifying than any of the blood and violence it's covered in. I've never enjoyed American football. I've never understood the rules and I've never found it interesting. It's uniquely American and, in that, it's uniquely brutal. All sport requires sacrifice to achieve at the highest level and it all carries with it risk of injury. It doesn't all require skull to skull violence and a legacy of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. What does that sacrifice really get you? Best case, it yields generational wealth and, even if you fall short, it yields significant wealth. It also yields permanent, nagging injuries and a brief tenure at the peak. So, Cameron Cade sacrifices everything at the altar of brutality masquerading as sport. His father forces him to watch Isaiah White suffer a gruesome injury as an example of what's required for greatness. He's injured in pursuit of becoming HIM, the GOAT. An unwilling head injury that may well rob him of the opportunity to be paid piles of cash in return for willing ones. And who better to induct Cameron into this world than the universally regarded GOAT in Isaiah? Greatness requires sacrifice. It requires a fanatical devotion to your craft and that devotion either breaks you or breaks you out. If it's the former, you're forgotten. If it's the latter, the possibilities are limitless (until you leave the field — the arena). You're showered with praise, fans worm their way into your life and your sauna. The parties are exclusive and you're surrounded by adoration and celebration that finds you becoming the object of worship, the accidental leader of a cult. Is any of this real, though? Is it a fair bargain? Do Elsie's orifice-bound crystals actually work? Or was that blow to the head far more severe than its made out to be? : He's not. But he is a testament to achieving more than what's expected of you until it stops becoming overachievement and becomes a baseline. : That White plays for a team named the Saviors is not lost on me. Neither are flashes of earlier mascot iterations that resemble something you'd see at a klan rally. : Easily the best performance of Marlon Wayans' career.
Primitive War
🇺🇸🇻🇳🇷🇺🦖🦕🪖🔪👨🏻🔬🧨🚁 Oh, good. We're following a junkie into hell. The best war movies are often the ones made by folks who don't have historical ties to it and thus benefit from some distance and objectivity. This isn't strictly a war movie nor is it one of the best war movies, but there is some objectivity. There are also a whole bunch of dinosaurs rendered to screen with a small budget. It's also far more entertaining than any of the newer Jurassic Park films. Get drafted (or sign up) and go to Vietnam. Do terrible things and don't go home because you were eaten by a dinosaur. This isn't what I would expect to come out of screwing around with a particle accelerator built out in the middle of an active war zone, but I'm not a scientist. Try for teleportation, get dinosaurs instead. Just smile and pull the trigger 'til the problem goes away. It's also the American way. There are guns, guts, camaraderie, bad accents and explosions. It is fun.
Weapons
This wasn't what I expected going into this. Not that I had much in the way of expectations. I liked the cast, I liked the previewed tone and I went with it. What I got was a well-assembled horror movie that told its story from the perspective of each of the main characters involved. As is often the case when this approach is taken, you get overlapping views of the same events from different perspectives. It works well and it works well because it slowly ratchets up the tension leading to the film's conclusion. Amy Madigan absolutely lives Gladys. A villain as the star of the show — an utterly, perverse, jarring caricature of a family member who strains credulity as a caretaker. Maybe she's related, but holy shit she's unhinged and that is tissue thin beneath the veneer of normalcy she attempts to project to authorities. She could've been married to Longlegs . A little bit of Pennywise, a lot of control exerted on authors when she has so little over herself. Control is a weapon and when Gladys loses it, that weapon turns on her. Alex Lilly survives under it, pushes up against it and then shatters it. He wants his parents back but, parents want their kids back, but being held in such a tight grip can bend and break you in unpredictable ways. Alex's parents and his classmates likely won't ever be the same. Gladys won't either — that loss of control really tears her up.
Descendent
Descendent isn’t entirely without its redeeming qualities. It sports some interesting visuals, a capable if largely unknown cast committed to their roles and emotionally-relatable dynamics. A loving couple falters after a serious injury to the husband. They navigate the injury and a pregnancy as best they can, faltering, stumbling and recovering. The husband sees flashes of aliens, grapples with his sense of reality and fails his family. Is any of it real? Is it the head injury? They dangle an explanation at the end, but don’t give you an answer. Emotionally compelling, narratively confused and flawed.
Together
It’s called diazepam now! A couple in a relationship that’s teetering on the edge of failure moves to the country for a job. For one of their jobs. While the other one pines for a return to the city. Take a hike, fall in a cult hole, struggle with attachment issues, then supernatural attachment issues and attribute it all to relationship struggles. It does a good job of playing with emotional attachments, relationship tension and meshing that into body horror that embodies attachment issues. I suppose there’s nothing quite as clingy as being physically drawn into one another (willingly, in the end). Two souls become one, two bodies become one and the Spice Girls LP spins ever onward.