horror

Horror Times Four

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Horror Times Four Chet Kozlowski December 6, 2024 - 10:00

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You Are Not Me

Directed by Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera

Think Get Out cut with Rosemary’s Baby.

In You Are Not Me, Aitana (Roser Tapias) returns home for Christmas after three years with a same-sex wife, Gaby (Yapoena Silva), and a newly adopted infant, Joao. Her visit is unexpected, and her mother and father (Álvaro Báguena and Pilar Almeria) are curiously put off seeing her. Aitana discovers that she's been replaced by Nadia, a Romanian refugee. Nadia isn't a mere boarder: she has been given Aitana's bedroom, wardrobe, and memories. Aitana is dismayed, but Gaby wants to give Nadia a chance and their baby Joao a chance at grandparents.

But dark forces are afoot: personality changes in Nadia, disturbing dreams of Joao being tossed from an upstairs window, and her parent's involvement with a cult with satanic vibes and a charismatic leader suggest they may be caught up in something that could jeopardize them all.

You Are Not Me is the most fully realized of the films reviewed here. All elements are in sync: writing, directing, and acting. The actors are seasoned pros with mostly Spanish TV and some features to their credit. Its production values are high (probably due to its TV roots) and its scares are authentic.

You Are Not Me. In theaters and on digital December 6; Runtime 99 minutes.

What Lurks Beneath

Directed by Jamie Bailey

Think Alien cut with The Hunt for Red October by way of The Little Mermaid.

The crew of the submarine USS Titan find themselves on the brink of a confrontation with Russia that could lead to WW III. Their internal squabbles (the ship is saddled with unfamiliar personnel, a couple of whom are spies) are interrupted by celestial music from an unseen source and the discovery of a beautiful naked woman in a torpedo bay. She adds fizz by communicating telepathically with certain (but not all) members.

This one is writer-centric and very talky, with a script (by Marcus Raul) that takes provocative turns. The actors act valiantly, but a muddled sound design makes their dialogue hard to hear. The production is very low-tech. The height of technology is a laptop (how do they get the internet so far underwater?) Sets look secondhand or borrowed. What passes for command central of a submarine is a room with a sloppy pile of hoses, more like somebody's basement. The fate of the free world rests with a Ripley-style character. Beguilingly, What Lurks Beneath is summed up by a quote from James Brown (!)

What Lurks Beneath. On digital December 13. Runtime 102 minutes.

Chateau

Directed by Luke Genton

Think Blair Witch (for POV) cut with The Haunting of Hill House.

The title Chateau actually underplays the central gimmick of this film: it's shot from the perspective of an influencer posting her trip to a haunted house. The place in question is known as "Murder Castle," which collects souls. James (pronouns she, her), the influencer in question, works odd jobs in Paris, including cleaning the Chateau. She posts on social media, taking the viewer along, addressing them as "you guys" while trussed to a harness that mounts her phone and plunges her even more deeply into the action.

James is aided by the hapless Dash, a fellow couch surfer, and the conceit breaks to track him. James' story is complicated by the recent death of her mother and the disdain from her sister (who, by calling, interrupts James’ videoing) for not attending the funeral. But James refuses to relent in her quest for views.

Cathy Marks has a richly animated face, and as James, she makes an open, ingratiating host. As an actor, she has appeared in American Horror Story and The Young and the Restless. Colton Tran as Dash has the only other significant screen time. He’s known for TV’s The Sex Lives of College Girls.

But the gimmick is the thing, even as it reveals itself existential. In other words, it requires patience. Being put in the role of a viewer being catered to works at a curious remove from most cinema. Rather than enlisting our participation, it commodifies it and makes it explicit and artificial. "We" are no longer silent observers. "We" are as much a part of the cast as "they," and that transferal of agency wears thin pretty quick.

Chateau. On digital platforms, December 6. Runtime 84 minutes.

Bleeding - Directed by Andrew Bell

Think The Lost Boys by way of Gus Van Sant.

With What Lurks Beneath to Bleeding, we go from muddled to minimalist. Drug-seeking teens are turned into vampires by huffing "dust," powder laced with harvested vampire blood. Cousins Eric (John R. Howley) and Sean (Jasper Jones) are on the run from a jilted drug dealer. Eric mourns the recent death of his brother while attempting to keep Sean, who has taken up dealing himself, from full-blown addiction.

Bleeding is actor-centric. Mr. Howley and Jones are joined by Tori Wong as a mysterious damsel. The actors are young and attractive, and they do their best with what they’re given. They emote in tense confrontations that go nowhere. They writhe and cry and, well, bleed during the extended withdrawal scenes. They don’t have much to actually do, and when it comes, it's too little too late, and even that is in darkness.

Bleeding is atmospheric by default. It’s all shadows and silhouettes. Everything is dark, thematically and visually, and appears to have been filmed in the dark rooms of a single dark house. The movie tries to humanize vampires with a score that brings poignance to their plight.

It's hard to know what to make of Bleeding. It’s the first film for everybody involved, and it might have the best intentions. But darkness isn’t depth. One can view it generously as a moody tone poem, a fentanyl allegory, or simply a reel for aspiring actors.

Bleeding. Premieres at Dances With Films NY Dec. 6. Runtime 98 minutes.

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Women, In Chains, Talking

Chet Kozlowski — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 17:40:56 +0000

Women, In Chains, Talking Chet Kozlowski November 9, 2024 - 12:40

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What accounts for the appeal of abduction movies? They can be seen as a graphic act of misogyny or, in the best case, an inspirational story of survival. Either way, the appeal, such as it is, is to imagine a woman being kidnapped and to witness her violation and suffering.

The news used to carry intermittent cases of men keeping a woman—or women—chained up in the basement. We were meant to react in horror, but the Abduction Narrative has become a sub-genre of the horror film, spawning novels and films like Room, the Don't Breathe franchise, the various motifs of M. Night Shyamalan movies (i.e., Split) and Netflix series like the current Dear Child. These Abduction Narratives are usually produced by men.

This makes Last Known Location an interesting anomaly since it was written and produced by a woman. Aimee Theresa and her partner Danny Donnelly put out genre films under their Silver Octopus Productions. Last Known Location is their most recent offering.

Three women from different backgrounds are kidnapped by a shadowy figure and chained to the wall of his basement. Callie (played by Ms. Theresa herself) is a shy English tutor, and Danay (Sophia Lucia Parola) is a high-end therapist. They’ll be joined mid-film by Marly (Jennifer M. Kay), a feisty bartender. The women test their shackles, fear their turn to be taken upstairs, and plot to escape.

And they talk. And they bond. Ms. Theresa's script brings that to the genre: she uses it as a springboard for backstories that underscore the women's personal stakes. Callie is gay and unlucky in love. Danay has abandonment issues with her single father. Marly has just turned her online romance into a real one but frets that it's not real enough for her new partner, Keith (Patrick Hickman), to read her disappearance as anything other than ghosting.

In a genre that runs on perversion and bloody violence, Last Known Location is uncharacteristically clean. There isn't much blood, and the brutality isn't explicit. The filmmakers' purpose is drama and character development, which the script accomplishes with sensitivity. Ms. Theresa's script is compelling, even if her version of police procedures and the resolution is a little too tidy. But kudos to her for writing fleshed-out characters who are not objectified and with whom we can sympathize.

While the storytelling is solid, the filmmaking falls short. Last Known Location resembles a TV movie. Actual locations, not sets, are used: a local bookstore and a generic office serve as a police station. The basement prison is minimalist: chains, mattresses, and toilet, too orderly and spread out to be the site of forced captivity (in the closing credits, one cast member is thanked for the use of "her home" as a film set). The direction is unimaginative; more creative camera angles and lighting would have created a visually claustrophobic frame that heightened tension.

The actors do uniformly fine work; they are skillful and convincing. Here, in the dialogue, director Danny Donnelly keeps their conversations flowing at an engaging pace. The principal performances are augmented by Jamie Kerezsi and Dax Richardson as detectives, and Keith Illidge as Danay's father in flashbacks. An IMDb search shows the cast is becoming a sort of stock ensemble, cross-pollinating by appearing in films like The Arrangement, several shorts, and the Tubi series Certifiable.

Silver Octopus Productions is one of several regional companies supplying VOD content. They're based in Pennsylvania and besides narrative films do corporate videos, etc. In a market of exploitation and low standards, Silver Octopus strives for quality and is one production house to keep an eye on.

Ultimately, what makes this abduction film special is its woman-centricity. It's a stretch to call it refreshing, given the genre (and one can only wonder why Silver Octopus chose to work in this one, except to draw flies). All told, Last Known Location isn't perfect, but it's sincere.

______________________________

Last Known Location. Directed by Danny Donnelly. 2024. From Silver Octopus Productions. Available on VOD. 114 minutes.

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A Forensic State of Mind

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 22:56:52 +0000

A Forensic State of Mind Chet Kozlowski October 10, 2024 - 18:56

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The new slasher film Catch a Killer puts a stylish spin on the genre. Sure, it's got flashes of grisly murders and forensics but doesn't dwell on details. Instead, it offers a clever twist rare in this sort of movie.

Otto is the youngest person on the police force, a promising prodigy who, because of his age, is not taken as seriously as he should be. He arrives after the seasoned detectives have done their jobs and cleans the crime scene. Otto is leading a charmed life: an interesting job, a beautiful and supportive girlfriend and a baby on the way. He also kills time watching classic slasher movies, claiming they hone his skills.

A series of slayings suggests the same perp, whom Otto sets out to find. In doing so, he uncovers a pattern rooted in his favorite movies. Life gets more dangerous the closer he gets.

Director Teddy Grennan stays in the pulp lane he's established with low budget titles like Wicked Games (2021) and Ravage (2019). He has a good eye, and the film's rapid-fire editing, baroque locations and propulsive music cues add to the mix. They also allow air for charismatic performances by actors Sam Brooks as Otto and Tu Morrow (no kidding) as his patient baby-momma Lex. Tommi Rose also stands out as a sassy detective who's intent on swaying Otto.

Catch a Killer's frames are well-composed within a really narrow aspect ratio, an aesthetic choice that pulls in the viewer. One might see the twist coming or think it too esoteric but, again, Mr. Grennan knows the chorus he's preaching to. Slasher films are an acquired taste, so this is unlikely to appeal to anyone who is not already an aficionado.

The gore is kept to a minimum, the suspense is sharp, and Catch a Killer's brisk pace makes its time well spent. Mostly Catch a Killer kills with charm.

___________________________________

Catch a Killer. Directed by Teddy Grennan. 2024. From Cold Beer Friday and Galvanized Films. 80 minutes.

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Giggy Ghee

Gary Lucas — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 21:02:21 +0000

Giggy Ghee Gary Lucas August 21, 2024 - 17:02

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Xenomorph, designed by Giger

ALIEN: ROMULUS--or more appropriately, Kids in Space.

Only six people in the balcony of the Village East Angelika at the 4:45pm screening yesterday (maybe it's streaming somewhere already?). A workman-like entry in the franchise by Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez --very, very good on the action set-pieces, very light on the substantial stuff, the very warp and woof 'o movies (characterization / story-telling prowess)--not to mention the vague acting chops of a bunch of random, more or less interchangeable Gen Z'ers whose smooth, blank facades are reminiscent of the unfinished pod people of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, and whose line deliveries were about 60% indecipherable (and Caroline and I had primo seats right in front of the giant screen in this former vaudeville palace). Where are the Snows of Yesteryear, the powerful gravitas of a Sigourney Weaver (Bill Moseley had a fling with her at Yale back in the day), the hale-fellow-well-met cheekbones of a John Hurt? G-G-G-Gone!!

A muddled plot about five indentured disadvantaged family-bereft kinder and a slightly autistic robot working the mines in an off-world colony somewhere on a planet Where the Sun Don't Shine, who in a hare-brained scheme hijack a spaceship (those teenagers!) to rifle a disused space outpost (uh oh, guess what's coming) in search of enough jet fuel to power their way during nine light years of cryosleep to Ivanka--sorry, Yvaga--a kind of sunny Paradise no one has ever once visited (kind of like El Rey, or Oz).

Actually there were about 10 actual minutes in the 2 hour running time where I was truly gripped and caught up in one of the endless cliff-hanging chase scenes / battles with the black giant penis-headed Xenomorphs (my late friend H.R.Giger's nightmarish conception, most likely derived from the monstrous figures of Francis Bacon's 1944 triptych "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion," see photo below).

Francis Bacon's "Three Studies" triptych

But once that flurry of engagement subsided, just when you thought the thing was finally over (another padded-out bladder-buster), the creaky plot-machinery cranked up again...and again!...and again!!...(spoiler alert: no sequel footage after the end titles--really? As I needed to vault down from the balcony to the sub-basement to hit the john pronto-and I waited for that??).

Stentorian music/sound design was okay ('cept for the many mumbled and incomprehensible line readings). Score by Benjamin Wallfisch quoted from Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and other Alien composer alums, and there was an actual needle drop from Wagner's "Das Rheingold" buried deep in the mix when they explained the "Romulus"/"Remus" Reference (triple r alliteration).

Note to Lukas Ligeti--the opening music rolls out with an approximation of yr dad's "Requiem" as famously used in Kubrick's 2001, all shrieking celestial voices from the Choir Invisibule--just like in Jerskin Fendrix's score for Yorgos Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness. I know, I know (believe me, I know), directors often put music cues they haven't licensed into their rough cuts and so fall in love with them that they often mandate their eventual Designated Composer to come up with soundalikes.

Gary Lucas in the Giger Museum in Gruyères

Anyway folks, the late Hans Giger was a strange and lovely man--he was a big fan of The Golem, and invited me to perform my live score with the film during a Retrospective they gave him some years ago at the National Technical Museum in Prague --that's another story. If you want to see what Giger was up to in the shadows of the Swiss Alps, far far away from Hollyweird, you could do worse than check out the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères.

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What Big Modern Retellings You Have

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 21:46:47 +0000

What Big Modern Retellings You Have Chet Kozlowski August 19, 2024 - 17:46

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To Kill A Wolf

There are only so many story plots. I’ve heard the total set at ten, then thirty-four. Whatever the number, the point is that the stories we tell have narrative precedents and what springs from them are variations on established themes.

Fairytales are a particularly fertile source of these plots: they are short, structured, and carry a strong moral message. And they’re as good a jumping-off point as any for first time writer/directors. Two recent films, To Kill a Wolf and The Beast Within, offer contemporary takes on Little Red Riding Hood. In both, all the elements are there—naive girl, dense woods, Grandma, wolf, woodsman—but each posits a unique interpretation.

Let’s look under the hood(s).

To Kill a Wolf

In To Kill a Wolf, the Woodsman is a bearded recluse named Jonah who lives in the mountains of Oregon. He trawls the woods with a metal detector to expose wolf traps set by his predecessor for local ranchers. Jonah lives a spare existence; it’s a job and he needs the money. One day, he comes upon an unconscious young woman huddled in only her clothes in the snow and cold (she has on a red hoodie, of course). Dani is a teenage runaway, who after much reticence claims a “disagreement with my aunt” sent her into the wilderness. Jonah offers to take her home, though he resents the obligation. “If you can’t help yourself, help somebody else,” he huffs half-heartedly.

The house they go to is empty. Dani fesses up that it’s her grandmother’s and Grandma has died recently. Dani and her aunt Jolene (Kaitlyn Doubleday) and Jolene’s husband Carey (Michael Esper) have been packing up her belongings and closing out the place.

From the opening scenes of To Kill a Wolf you know you’re in good hands. Kelsey Taylor’s script and direction are steady and confident, and—as the story’s contours become clear—perfectly proportioned. By that I mean she resists overreaching in the manner of other American indies whose ambitions are bigger than their budgets. Ms. Taylor knows what she wants and has a terrific cast and crew to help her get it. She plants subtle symbols and connects narrative threads.

To Kill a Wolf is as engrossing a drama as I’ve seen in a long time: poignant, horrific, and fully realized. Ivan Martin and Maddison Brown make the bond between Jonah and Dani believable and heartbreaking. Mr. Martin builds Jonah’s character out of grunts and ticks. He’s a gruff man with his own cross to bear. Ms. Brown’s Dani is achingly conflicted; there’s a lot brewing behind those eyes. As Jolene, Dani’s aunt, Kaitlyn Doubleday shows the restraint that comes from enduring a sour marriage. And Michael Esper as husband Carey keeps switching masks as one of the most slippery characters I’ve seen in a long time. Even David Knell’s brief turn as The Rancher is simple and direct.

Suspense builds from character and is honestly earned. Several scenes are memorable, including Jonah instructing Dani how to free a wolf from a trap (it’s his goal in locating the traps to sabotage them), and a kitchen scene of psychological manipulation.

Music plays an important role in the film, and the mournful score by Sara Barone and Forest Christenson and sound design by Eric Wegener guide the action. The original songs are used prudently and sound appropriate, codes from an alternate universe. Adam Lee’s cinematography is dense and moody.

The producers of To Kill a Wolf are proud that it’s a “truly independent film” (as of this writing, Kelsey Taylor even handles sales). All in all, this is an understated gem and a wonderful film by a first-time auteur.

______________________________________________

To Kill a Wolf. Directed by Kelsey Taylor. 2024. 92 minutes.

The Beast Within

The Beast Within

The Beast Within updates Little Red Riding Hood differently.

A family in a farm on the English countryside suffers a family curse: every full moon, Noah the father turns into a wolf. When Imogen the mother knows it’s coming on, she packs him in the car, drives him far away, chains him to a stone wall, and leaves him to transform and take out his rage away from them. Later, when he’s back to normal, she brings him home. (The era is indeterminate: on the farm it’s medieval times, but they travel by Range Rover).

Mother and father try to keep this routine hidden from their eleven-year-old daughter Willow. All she knows is her father goes away periodically and comes back looking worn out. And that surly old Grandpa doesn’t like his daughter Imogen’s involvement one bit.

Willow is the film’s protagonist, and she’s played by Caoillinn Springall, a child actor whose features would, in an earlier time, make her the favorite model of classical painters. She has a penetrating gaze, an earthy laugh, and wears a red cape. Willow is curious about where Noah disappears to, and one night stows away in the car and beholds the harrowing scene. Imogen placates Noah with a sacrificial farm animal, chained within reach, to satisfy his appetite. The bloody carnage Willow witnesses intrigues her as much as it scares her.

So, okay: The Beast Within is shaping up, maybe into an allegory about Willow’s imminent womanly flow (hello, full moon) and sexual awakening. The movie looks great, besides: Daniel Katz’s cinematography has stunning clarity; shots are composed and lit like Gregory Crewdson photos, darkness punctuated by beams of celestial light. Looks like writer/director Alexander J. Farrell (a documentary filmmaker; this is his first narrative feature) is on to something.

And for a good half hour these ideas fall into place. But then things fall apart. These good ideas crumble, the direction becomes ambiguous and the editing choppy.

To make matters worse, this happens to an exceptional cast: Noah is played by Kit Harington, Jon Snow from HBO’s Game of Thrones. James Cosmo, who plays Grandpa, is also from Game of Thrones, plus Braveheart, and Amazon Prime’s Jack Ryan. Imogen, the mother, is played by Ashleigh Cummings, best known for her role in Amazon Prime’s Citadel, but chosen here for her young looks and resemblance to Caoillinn Springall’s Willow.

The Beast Within has foils and surrogates galore. Willow’s maternal grandfather is a doppelganger for Dad, a version of him older. Willow is a dead ringer for her girlish Mom; in fact, they switch roles, in dress and action. This doubling comes off as intentional and plays into the theme of filial destiny.

The father is the problem. Mr. Harington tries mightily in his portrayal to show the effects of his curse: he plays Noah big, with grand gestures and a theatrical roar. But his scenes are truncated; his characterization is not cohesive. How does the movie expect us to take Noah? Is he a good man or an asshole? This ambivalence redirects the story’s point of view from Willow’s. It’s plain someone will be consumed, but who and by what?

The wolf creature design is an afterthought, accomplished with shadows and silhouettes. But the monster isn’t the point anyway. This is an allegory, remember, not a special effects fest. Which makes the climax disappointing: it’s too abrupt and explicit, and the denouement is made up of montages that suggest more footage was shot—whole sequences—than what was used in the final cut.

__________________________________________________

The Beast Within. Directed by Alexander J. Farrell. 2024. From Well Go and Arclight Films. 84 minutes.

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I Vant To Suck Your Blood

Gary Lucas — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:51:06 +0000

I Vant To Suck Your Blood Gary Lucas July 17, 2024 - 20:51

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The Vourdalak

The tableau above looks kind of familiar, right? Max Schreck, by way of Klaus Kinski, via Gary Oldman, yes?? And he/it--NOSFERATU, in other words--is on the way AGAIN, courtesy of Bill Skarsgård???

Well, you can't keep a good Vampire down, apparently--people's preferences/appetite for the physiognomic Rodent Man specimen currently taking over the world (I get most of my Style info from the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/style/who-is-a-rodent-man.html ).

Pish tush. You could do worse while you're waiting ('til Christmas!) for Skarsgård fils's turn as Count Orlok by checking out the curious French shocker THE VOURDALAK (d. Adrien Beau, see the still above)--now probably not playing anywhere near you (I am lucky indeed to be in walking vicinity of 4 of NYC's best arthouse cinemas: Film Forum, IFC Center, the Quad Cinema, and Cinema Village ). But sure to be streaming on MUBI or a similar cable channel any day now.

Based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's 1839 Gothic novella The Family of the Vourdalak--previously filmed under the title The Wurdulak as an episode of Mario Bava's 1963 horror anthology Black Sabbath starring Boris Karloff-- the gee-whiz factor herein is the use of a life-size VAMPIRE MARIONETTE standing in for the eponymous...well, protagonist... not exactly the word I'm looking for here, but it will have to do.

A puppet monster per se is not all that new (check out the RatBatSpider in Ib Melchior's 1962 The Angry Red Planet-- plus all those delightful Toho Studio kaiju creations)--but as a life-size vampire surrogate it's a novel twist indeed--'cept you can almost but not quite see the invisible hand working the strings propelling The Vourdalak around above ground on his gruesome business. Not that far afield come to think of it from Vincent Price's manipulation/reeling in of the Skeleton in the Acid Bath at the conclusion of William Castle's 1959 House on Haunted Hill (auteur Castle, whose films I've adored since I was a lad, is sadly to me conspicuously left out of Quentin Tarantino's otherwise crucial Cinema Speculation book, though QT does give him a name-check in passing in one of his many online interviews).

This opus has the feel of a particularly offbeat, lush Eastman color Hammer vampire film from another era--1963's Kiss of the Vampire and 1972's Vampire Circus come to mind--down to the primal manor house situated deep in a dark forest, which resembles nothing so much as Pinewood Studios's Black Park in Buckinghamshire, a favorite location of so many Hammer Horror exterior sequences.

Good sound design also: The Vourdalak (the animated decaying corpse known as Gorcha, on the attack below) slurps blood as noisily as Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu and speaks impeccable French as well (voiced by the director).

I don't want to spoil all the fine plot points which you can read all about elsewhere, except to say I was more or less riveted for the duration. (Up close the hideous mask of The Vourdalak also gives off an "Onibaba" vibe. Which is to say, there is a lot to chew over--hehe--for all you cine maniacs out there).

In conclusion, definitely a bloody cut or two or three above the quotidian horror fare. Well worth your attention.

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Careful What You Dream For

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:22:58 +0000

Careful What You Dream For Chet Kozlowski June 24, 2024 - 08:22

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At what point does imitation become homage? Does “homage” even figure in when the hallmarks of a genre master’s style become tropes, and supply a well of motifs for young filmmakers to dip into, even though they may have no idea where those tropes came from? They’re not nodding to the masters so much as breathing the air that they provide. And in this age where the parameters of plagiarism have become hazy, is it invalid for those young filmmakers to use those tropes to craft a personal statement?

These thoughts came to mind while watching Somnium, a new film that presents itself as psychological horror, but gets at something much more interesting.

Starry-eyed smalltown Gemma arrives in LA to become an actor. She takes a job in an experimental sleep clinic called Somnium, which promises to literally make their clients dreams come true. Clients sleep in sensory-deprivation pods while Somnium technicians mine deep-seated dreams of success either to be achieved, or to implant the belief that they have already been achieved (Gemma questions the ethics of the practice: “Does it actually change their reality or just their perception of it?” and her coworker Noah replies, “What’s the difference?”)

Gemma goes about her life, working, auditioning, and in flashbacks relives her breakup with Hunter, a talented but unenterprising musician. Strange things start to happen to Gemma at home and at work: suspicious noises, ominous shadows, and a menacing pale figure.

Depressed and lonely, Gemma finds an angel in the back alley of an arcade: the mysterious Brooks, who offers to guide her budding career. Is he a talent agent or a devil? Alone in the nightshift, she discovers odd selfie videos of Noah, who appears in them to victimize women in Somnium’s sensory deprivation chambers. Additionally, there is the prospect of an “accelerated dream program” called Cloud Nine that forces clients to confront desires and motives.

Writer/director Racheal Cain cites Wes Craven as an influence—and one can see it, especially in The Nightmare on Elm Street—but David Lynch is clearly the template. Though set in the present day Somnium has Lynchian flourishes of the past: furtive meetings in diners, outdated computers, boyfriends styled on James Dean. Gemma gives a stunning audition á la Mulholland Drive. Gemma’s apartment contains a dark hallway which suggests a portal to hell, as in Lost Highway. A bar band is even named “Twin Peaks.”

Which is not to accuse Ms. Cain of imitation, or even homage. She uses familiar tropes, established longer ago than she’s been alive, to tell a story that questions her own motives as an artist. Gemma is her surrogate. Why want celebrity? At what cost? Why is Gemma so willing to sacrifice what she loves and debase herself in order to get fame? Ms. Cain comes to some unique and intriguing conclusions in Gemma’s trajectory.

As Gemma, Chloë Levine gives a layered performance, going convincingly from innocent to desperate. As comically innocent as she appears in LA, in flashback she shows realistic passion with her boyfriend Hunter, played by an equally fine Peter Vack (Ms. Levine’s voluptuous features contrast nicely with Mr. Vack’s lean look). She is uncertain in her growing reliance on the punk-coiffed and hedonistic Brooks (played by Johnathon Schaech; good to see him again) who challenges her to become her true self. Will Peltz as Noah and Clarisa Thibeaux as Olivia, Gemma’s enigmatic coworkers, also do admirable work.

Besides her well-chosen actors, Racheal Cain’s vision is ably realized by the production design of Olivia McManus, the score by composer Peter Ricq, and Lance Kuhns’ cinematography.

Ms. Cain’s direction is succinct. She lingers on settings for a few beats more than usual after characters have left the frame, allowing us time to fully consider what we’ve seen. Is it innocuous or sinister? She peppers her horror-centric scenario with big questions: are we following dreams or are dreams following us?

Am I reading too much into this? I don’t think so. Ms. Cain has said the idea for Somnium has been simmering for years. Either way: if Racheal Cain followed the David Lynch tropes just because they’re there, she artfully honors the canon. If they bubbled up from her subconscious, even better. Maybe they came to her in a dream.

_____________________________________________________

Somnium. Directed by Racheal Cain. 2024. From Untold, Rabid Rabbit Films, and Allred. 92 minutes.

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Spiders from Mars

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 May 2024 14:23:58 +0000

Spiders from Mars Chet Kozlowski May 27, 2024 - 10:23

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Roger Corman would love Sting. In fact, he would have made this movie. If there’s a heaven, the late, great maestro of the B movie is looking down and smiling.

Sting is Corman to the core: it has a charmingly no-budget look, an offbeat premise, a crew of actors you know you’ve seen before, and limited mise en scene (all the action takes place in one building, between floors. It’s snowing furiously so they don’t go out). In other words, all the earmarks of a classic Roger Corman movie, like The Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Crab Monsters, and Not of This Earth.

Sting’s going for the effect of a B-movie classic. Add elements of the original Invaders from Mars and Die Hard—those are not Corman productions—and you get the picture. Sting’s credits even use the same font as Netflix’s Stranger Things (it’s Benguiat Bold, blood red).

After a prologue about Earth’s weather being screwed up by a mysterious meteor shower, we cut to a tenement in Brooklyn. The building’s old, and everything’s going wrong with it, including ominous bangs in the duct system. A grumpy exterminator finds unexplained carnage and is sucked into the ducts by an invisible menace.

A title card takes us back four weeks. Unbeknownst to humankind, let alone the residents of the building, the meteors have deposited Alien-style eggs that birth spider-like creatures. They emerge from their pods, adorable and appearing harmless.

One of them is captured by a girl named Charlotte (get it?), a precocious 12-year-old. Charlotte’s mother Heather has remarried to Ethan, who moves the family in and becomes the supervisor of said tenement. Charlotte and her stepfather are aspiring graphic novelists, working on the book that once published will bring a better life. Charlotte hides the spider, names it Sting, and feeds it cockroaches.

That is, until Sting grows enough to go after bigger prey, that is, human.

Sting was filmed in Australia. Kiah Roache-Turner directed from his script. His movie is clever and has a sense of humor: jump scares come from the threatening shadow of the giant spider mistaken for hanging plants and a power strip riddled with cords. It’s more technically sophisticated than a Corman movie. It has lots of POV Steadicam shots through corridors and ducts. Mr. Roache-Turner has directed other genre films, like Wyrmwood and Nekotronic.

The Australian cast is impressive: Ethan is played by Ryan Corr of Hacksaw Ridge and HBO’s House of the Dragon; Penelope Mitchell of the latest Hellboy and Star Trek: Picard is mom Heather; Alyla Browns (who plays Furiosa as a young girl in the upcoming blockbuster) is Charlotte. Silvia Colloca, Danny Kim, and Jermaine Fowler (doing a decent Chris Tucker imitation) also stand out.

For its Corman-y constraints (digital effects give way to a charmingly DIY spider in the climax), Sting takes on some deep human issues. Charlotte’s father is absent, and she’s having trouble adjusting to her new life. A woman downstairs mourns her lost family and drowns her grief in drink. Granma has Alzheimer’s. The biologist upstairs wants to cure cancer.

One aspect Roger might not use: human suffering is a punchline when sympathetic characters meet gruesome fates. Call me old-fashioned. I know we expect blood and viscera from a movie like this. But I liked Sting and can’t help thinking it would find a wider audience if it didn’t have so much gratuitous gore.

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Sting. Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner. 2024. From Screen Australia and Align. On VOD, DVD, and Blu-Ray. 92 minutes.

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a.k.a. The Haunted Motel

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:00:00 +0000

a.k.a. The Haunted Motel Chet Kozlowski March 7, 2024 - 10:00

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Film Review

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horror

Titles are tough. You want to come up with one that tells what your movie's about in a way that's unique and gets attention.

Fun fact: titles can't be copyrighted. An author can "own" plot, character names, etc., but not the name of the project. You could make a movie and call it The Godfather or Gone with the Wind. It'd be compared to the original, of course, but you could do it. For example, Sam Raimi doesn't own the words "the," "evil," and "dead."

Search the movie site IMDb for the title Night Shift, and you get dozens of films and shorts right off the bat. Refine your search to "Night Shift 2023" and you get at least fifteen. For a new film called Night Shift, standing out isn't going to be easy.

That title problem is a clue of what's at issue with this first film by a duo called the China Brothers. You've seen this story before.

This is an issue with many of the "first-time auteurs" that fill our current craving for content. The ease with which movies can be made (some are filmed over a weekend on an iPhone) and distributed has opened a floodgate of imitators.

In this particular Night Shift: A mysterious young woman named Gwen Taylor applies for a job at the front desk of a ramshackle motel and is assigned to work—what else?—the night shift. The place has seen better days: it's in the middle of nowhere, the rooms are falling apert and most of them are empty. The stuffed bear's head in the office keeps falling off the wall; the pool has been drained by a sinkhole. Plus there's the spooky vibe: kid's swings creak and sway even when there's no wind, the "janky" wi-fi can't be relied on (a must in this sort of movie: sketchy communication with the outside world), a car with blackout windows keeps cruising by. And there are few guests, one really, and another who might just have come up from the bowels of hell.

The China Brothers, Paul and Ben, are reaching for a kind of brother-notoriety attained by the Coens and Wachowskis. Like most first films, Night Shift is derivative. The Chinas know what they like and want to reproduce it. Hints of Lynch are everywhere: Phoebe Tonkin, who plays Gwen, has a Madchen Amick (Twin Peaks) thing going on, with her arched eyebrows, high cheekbones, and sly eyes. The interplay between Gwen and Alison, a ditzy teen (Madison Hu), calls up Mulholland Drive. And Patrick Fischler, one of David Lynch's go-to actors, does a turn as half of a kinky couple booking a room.

More: what crawls out of the motel pool's sinkhole could have come from The Ring. And at other points, you might wonder if you've stumbled into the Bates Motel.

Still, Night Shift is an accomplishment. Up till now, the China Brothers' sole credit has been the screenplay for Sweet Virginia, 2017. They might wear their influences like epaulets, and their ambitions might be modest, but their storytelling is solid. Few flashy effects, no show-off sequences. I'm guessing they came in under budget.

The actors are into it: Ms. Tonkin (an Australian actor known for the CW's Vampire Diaries and more recently Netflix's Boy Swallows Universe) is onscreen almost constantly and carries the action well. Lamorne Morris (impressive in the most recent season of FX's Fargo) as the motel manager has an easy charm. And Madison Hu, who can currently be seen in Netflix's The Brothers Sun, as the (slightly too-old) teenager Alison is an able sidekick.

The score, credited to Blitz//Berlin, hits all the horror movie notes, telegraphing the many jump scares.

In the press materials, the China Brothers maintain that their main purpose is “to entertain.” Well, okay. Maybe next time, rather than a rehash, dig deeper for an original vision, something that breaks new ground, like the movies you admire.

But first, guys, reconsider that title. You don't want your movie to get lost in a sea of Night Shifts. How about something like "The Haunted Motel"? It's short and tells you what you're in store for.

I'd go see that.

Night Shift. Directed by the China Brothers. 2023. From Quiver Distribution. In theaters and on VOD. 82 minutes.

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Don’t Know Much about Prehistory

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 03:23:43 +0000

Don’t Know Much about Prehistory Chet Kozlowski February 12, 2024 - 22:23

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Film Review

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horror

The new film Out of Darkness starts promisingly, with a title card that tells us it's set 45,000 years ago. It opens with a long shot of a campfire, a dot in a vast expanse of night. Then voices talking in a foreign language about stories, about how they have preserved our memories, and our ancestors, etc. and I'm thinking what? This is happening 45,000 years ago? The most we had back then is cave drawings and these people are discussing—discussing!—legacy?

We start to see them then, lit faintly by the campfire. Thick shadows shift for the closeups. The actors are… beautiful. Uniformly beautiful. Modern day uniformly beautiful. This is like a casting call for multiracial models, all high cheekbones and trendy stubble. Lenny Kravitz is more primitive.

Day breaks and the troupe decamps and sets off across vast rolling plains (actually the Scottish Highlands). They have names like Adem and Ave (get it?) and Odal and Geirr and Heron. They are dressed in furs and wear pants—pants!—and rawhide hoodies while trudging across the empty terrain where nothing can come up on you without you seeing it first. And…nothing does. Eventually, they come upon the bloody remains of a mastodon, an eerie charnel house of guts and bones.

Then the child Heron (Luna Mwezi) gets snatched and the hunt is on to find him. One of the women, a "stray" named Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green) is alarmed to find she's bleeding through her buckskins. And now the team leader Adem (Chuku Modu) and Elder Odal (Arno Luning) fear the scent of her menstrual blood is conjuring up a supernatural threat.

Director Andrew Cumming is known for short films and some TV work. Here he relies heavily on jump scares and the predictability of characters being picked off one by one on a schedule you can set your watch to. The actors, including Kit Young as Geirr and Iola Evans as Ave, give it their all, but have little to do besides stalk around and yell.

What they yell, the press notes tell us, is a "bespoke" language called "Tola," developed by linguist Daniel Anderson and archaeologist Rob Dinnis. Mr. Cumming's script (with cowriter Ruth Greenberg) touches incongruously upon contemporary topics like social pecking order, sexual fidelity (remember, these are cave people) and similar load-bearing bullshit. Is this even historically accurate? Don't know much about history, but did people 45,000 years ago really have this level of discourse or consciousness?

Throughout, the filmmakers make a concerted effort to obscure the action. Broad daylight isn't ominous, especially on terrain where you can see something coming on you miles away, and violence happens in pitch black night or fog as thick as cotton candy. Suspense requires a payoff, and this comes too late and too little.

Jean-Jacques Arnaud's 1981 Quest for Fire sometimes comes to my mind. It's a stirring reimagining of Stone Age times, and used the most simian aspects of its actors to great advantage. Little dialogue, mostly grunting and pointing. Furs on their backs that looked like they'd just been stripped off a saber-tooth tiger. That film did so much with so little and resembles authenticity, because we don't really know, do we, what happened that long ago?

So, maybe unfairly, I had hopes for Out of Darkness. It's billed as a "survival horror film" about primitive homo sapiens who face sinister forces. I wanted authenticity I guess, and figured filmmaking forty-three years after Quest for Fire would be advanced enough to give it to me.

More and more, given the ease of filmmaking and the volume of "content" available, I ask myself why a film was made at all. Does it serve some passion or viewpoint? Does it even take delight in making the most of a low budget? I don't see any of that in Out of Darkness. It's made-up language (which might as well be Klingon. Has anyone checked to see if word forms are consistent? I won't. Life's too short), its half-hearted scares, its rummage sale costumes… what was the point of even setting it in the past? Mostly it's just people walking across open fields carrying homemade spears.

Out of Darkness wants to join the ranks of Quest for Fire and Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising, and even Hulu's Native American take on the Predator series, Prey. It claims as its pedigree the producers of It Follows and Saint Maude. But director Andrew Cumming doesn't display a vision equal to those films. Shooting in the Scottish Highlands offers great emptiness, the challenge being to fill it with something of substance.

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Out of Darkness. Directed by Andrew Cumming. From Bleecker Street and Stage 6 Films. 2022. 87 minutes. In theaters.