Hope and George review this week’s new releases: Scream 7, Pillion, The President’s Cake, Dreams, Dolly, Crazy Old Lady, PLUS movie news and notes from The Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin!
Knife Finds a Way
Scream 7
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
There’s a lot to be said for the Scream franchise. Sure, Wes Craven’s 1996 iconic original delivered the shot of adrenaline needed to reimagine and reinvigorate the horror genre. But the fact is that, seven episodes in, the series doesn’t have a lot to be embarrassed by.
In case any unexpected callers ask, there are 12 Friday the 13th films, 8 Nightmare on Elm Street films (yes, we are counting the 2010 abomination), 9 Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, 12 Hellraisers, and 13 Halloweens in all. Hell, there are 8 Leprechaun films. And, in every case, most of the individual sequels are terrible. Some of them unwatchable. But not Scream.
Sure, Scream 3 was a step backward. Scream 4 was less beloved than it should have been. Scream 5 was a nice comeback, then 6 was a bit of a letdown. Still, seven episodes and we have no real stinkers. Including Scream 7, co-written and directed by the franchise’s original scribe, Kevin Williamson.
The storyline has veered back, after Melissa Barrera was fired, which prompted Jenna Ortega to quit. So, naturally, the property finally found the money to pay Neve Campbell to come back, and good thing they did. When Ghostface tracks Sidney Prescott down to the smalltown where she’s raising her three kids with husband/police chief Mark Evans (Joel McHale), she needs to keep her own history from echoing through her teenage daughter Tatum’s (Isabel May) life.
Episode Seven is all about nostalgia, and a reminder of the years we all have invested. You’ll see plenty of familiar faces, including everyone’s favorite from the original film. There is a nicely organic reason for this, but the film’s core is about Sidney’s strained relationship with her daughter. That’s a weaker thread.
Williamson sells the new setting well enough, and with some understatement that feels refreshing. What isn’t subtle is the frayed nature of the mother/daughter dynamic, fueled by dialog and drama that’s forced and unearned.
The younger cast (including McKenna Grace, Michelle Randolph, Asa German, Celeste O’Connor and Sam Rechner), while perfectly talented, are slighted in terms of plot and character development. They only get a passing chance to school us on some new rules of the game, and benefit from the satisfying staging of just one standout kill.
The grownup side of the story is solid. It’s still a kick to see Campbell’s Sid and Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers doing their thing. There is still some teenage dumbassery involved, but this Scream is leaning into its age more than ever.
It’s less risky, and certainly after all this time, less groundbreaking. But Scream 7 is also less silly. Like a proud parent reminding the kids they can always come home, Williamson’s return gives the franchise some bloody comfort food to chew on.
Rude Awakening
Dreams
by Hope Madden
Early in Dreams, Michel Franco’s latest, a wealthy white guy at a board meeting says, “Why Mexicans? Isn’t there anybody here we can help?”
It’s a pristine boardroom, just the questioning Jake McCarthy (Rupert Friend), speaking to his benevolent father (Marshall Bell), and his philanthropic sister, Jennifer (Jessica Chastain). She gives him a playfully annoyed shake of the head, hands him a dossier to sign, and promises her “little projects” are all tax write offs. She and her father share a “what are we going to do with this guy?” smile and roll of the eyes.
Franco’s film is not subtle.
Chastain cuts an elegant figure, Franco’s cinematographer Yves Cape lingering over every meticulous ensemble, fetishizing each pair of impossible heels. She never smiles. There’s a hand ready to help her out of every vehicle as its door opens for her. She has never a hair out of place.
Except when she’s having energetic sex with Fernando (Isaac Hernández), the talented ballet dancer who’s just crossed the border and most of the US on his own to be with her.
The erotic thriller’s psychosexual politics are eye-catchingly surface level, with a heavy-handed examination of the American Dream driving the action. The role reversal—that the wealthy philanthropist is a woman and the beautiful ballet dancer in distress is a man—allows Franco provocative opportunities.
One of the most interesting things about Franco’s films, including Memory, also starring Chastaine, and 2022’s Sundown, is that, at just past the halfway mark, each becomes an entirely different film.
Dreams follows that path as well, although with less satisfying results.
Like Memory, Dreams considers power and consent in sexual relationships, and again, the latter film comes up shorter. Dreams seems more obviously built to provoke, more relentlessly opposed to choosing a side.
That feels less provocative and more irresponsible here. Whether, in the final image on the screen, we are expected to see the evil of privilege or the righteous glare of vengeance, what’s important to note is that no white men were harmed in the making of this film.
La Vida Loca
Crazy Old Lady
by Hope Madden
In a provocative and assuredly nuanced riff on the old hagsploitation genre so popular in the Sixties and Seventies, Martín Mauregui’s Crazy Old Lady dares you to look away.
The agist, often misogynistic originators of the genre—What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Straight-Jacket—eventually made way for more thoughtful, but no less terrifying, meditations on the horrors that await us all. The heartbreaking nature of dementia in Natalie Erika James’s Relic and Adam Robitel’s The Taking of Deborah Logan struck a nerve.
Crazy Old Lady traps us in a home with a dementia sufferer who’s stopped taking medication and has embraced a violent unreality. But Marengui, an Argentinian filmmaker, is less interested in what the future holds as what the past hides.
The great Carmen Maura is Alicia. Alicia has her daughter Laura (Augistina Liendo) worried. By the third time Alicia calls Laura inside of ten minutes, always asking for the same recipe, Laura panics. Hundreds of miles from home with no one else to turn to, she phones her ex-boyfriend Pedro (Daniel Hendler) with a desperate request: stay with Alicia until Laura can get back home tomorrow morning.
Pedro complies. But he’s not Pedro to Alicia. He’s Cesar, her first love, an abusive man with whom Alicia shared dark, even brutal secrets.
Mauregui takes a Death and the Maiden approach to the balance of the film. The result is a profoundly uncomfortable, breathtakingly performed exhumation of the kind of dark past that refuses to stay buried in the garden.
“People disappeared every day back then,” Alicia casually recalls.
Through most of the film’s runtime, we’re alone with Alicia and Pedro. Maura’s masterful performance hardly comes as a surprise. Broken, seductive, self-righteous, naïve, sinister—the veteran weaves from one tone to the next with alarming flexibility.
Hendler keeps pace. There is such humanity in his performance, confusion and terror and, most heartbreakingly, empathy. It’s a beautiful, aching turn. Though both actors are aided immeasurably by Mauregui’s deft writing, their chemistry and deeply felt performance elevate the film far beyond its genre trappings.
Mauregui builds tension, delivers unexpected shocks, and lets his exceptional cast compel your attention. Despite its exploitation title, Crazy Old Lady delivers a gripping tale.
Let Him Eat It
The President’s Cake
by George Wolf
After winning two awards last year at Cannes, The President’s Cake missed out on an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. That says much about how stacked the category is this time, because writer/director Hasan Hadi’s feature debut is an absolutely wondrous mix of empathy and gut-punch heartbreak.
In 1990s Iraq, nine year old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, in a remarkable debut of her own) lives with her feisty grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibet) in the poverty-stricken marshes. As “draw day” approaches at Lamia’s school, Bibi teaches her little tricks to avoid getting chosen for the compulsory “honors” of providing various items at the local celebration of President Saddam Hussein’s birthday.
But Lamia’s stern teacher sees through the scams, and the girl is picked for the most scrutinized task of all: baking the birthday cake.
Needless to day, failure would bring about some harsh consequences.
Though Bibi thinks she knows the best way forward for her granddaughter, Lamia strikes out on her own. Clutching her favorite rooster and conferring often with her friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), Lamia desperately seeks ways to acquire the precious baking ingredients that she cannot afford.
Buoyed by the two remarkably assured young performers, Hadi crafts the film with a delicate balance between childlike journey and harsh reality. Though Lamia’s travels through her homeland’s corruption, casual cruelty and degradation may recall The Painted Bird or Come and See, Hadi protects the innocence as fiercely as Lamia protects her rooster. His film’s heart aches for the plight of these people, even as it’s providing sly reminders that aspiring dictators share similar playbooks.
There is a tender, poetic beauty to be found here as well. The President’s Cake signals Hadi as a filmmaker full of insight and compassion, with the storytelling instincts to mine universal resonance from a uniquely intimate struggle.
Play Thing
Dolly
by Hope Madden
Fans of Savage Seventies Cinema, rejoice. Filmmaker Rod Blackhurst channels The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Tourist Trap, and even a little bit of Ted Post’s 1973 freak show The Baby for his wooded horror, Dolly.
Macy (Fabianne Therese) and Chase (Seann William Scott) hike through the woods to a breathtaking overlook where Chase will pop the question. But they probably should have turned back at the first sign of those baby dolls nailed to the trees.
Soon enough, they meet Dolly (Max the Impaler, that’s quite a name), an enormous person whose whole noggin is hidden inside a cracked ceramic doll’s head. Dolly has a shovel, puts it to unusual use, and soon enough it’s just Dolly and her new baby, Macy, back at Dolly’s house.
Blackhurst nails the look and vibe of a 70s grindhouse horror show. And it’s not just tone, it’s also the content. Dolly gets nasty. Blackhurst intends to horrify you far more than frighten you. Whether it’s blood or body fluids or rancid food stuffs or broken bones that trip your gag reflex, he’s aiming to find it.
Ethan Suplee—you remember, the happy singing football player from Remember the Titans–cuts a far more intimidating presence as Daddy, and you can’t help but wonder about the backstory here at Dolly’s place. Kudos to Blackhurst, who co-writes with Brandon Weavil, for keeping it ambiguous.
Yes, if it’s an indie Seventies horror aesthetic you’re after, and logic and common sense are of less importance, then Dolly is for you. But if you crave one single scene of realistic behavior, the movie comes up short.
Therese can’t be blamed. She does what she can, her attempts at carving a heroic character are in and of themselves heroic. But Macy’s every action is made exclusively to further the plot and never, ever to create a believable character. If you have a tough time watching a person constantly abandoning weapons along with common sense, this film will frustrate you.
The excellent grindhouse violence and style are only equaled by the utter and distressing ridiculousness of the plot. So, even Steven, I guess.
Screening Room: How to Make a Killing, Psycho Killer, Man on the Run & More
On this week’s Screening Room podcast, Hope & George break down this week’s new releases: How to Make a Killing, Psycho Killer, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, The Oscar Nominated Short Films, This Is Not a Test, The Last Sacrifice, The Dreadful, Diabolic, Kokuho, and Ghost Train.
Teenage Wasteland
This Is Not a Test
by Hope Madden
Take The Breakfast Club, eliminate the humor and add zombies and you’re headed in the direction of Adam MacDonald’s This Is Not a Test.
Olivia Holt is Sloane, an utterly miserable teenage girl. Her older sister took off, leaving her alone with her abusive dad. And if that’s not enough, the zombies are here. And not that slow, rambling kind. It’s the red-eyed, fast moving, pissed off kind.
MacDonald, working from a script he co-wrote with Courtney Summers, pays tribute to his Z-film inspirations the moment Sloane steps out onto her front porch to take in the suburban carnage.
So, yes, both Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake—among others—get a nod. Which makes you wonder, as you must wonder every time somebody makes another zombie movie, why do it? What new idea can you bring to the genre?
I suppose it’s the teen angst angle that John Hughes exploited for an entire career. And though there are cinematic pauses (human reactions lagging to frustrating slowness so the camera can witness the unfurling action), stupid choices (almost a necessity in most horror flicks), and a lot of shouty drama, somehow it feels likelier given that our protagonists are all high school seniors.
They can be dramatic with their friends, that’s all I’m saying.
Holt is solid and the young cast around her ably handles the melodrama and action. Corteon Moore is particularly impressive in the kind of Alpha male jock character rarely allowed nuance.
Likewise, Luke Macfarlane pops in mid film to be unseemly, desperate and creepy in equal measure.
Sloane’s arc is not with her classmates, though, but with her sister. There’s a simplicity to the arc that allows the carnage to get showy without overpowering it. But that simplicity adds to the film’s relative ordinariness.
There’s nothing bad about This Is Not a Test. Yes, character behavior is often frustrating, but not in a way that makes caricatures out of characters. The problem is that there’s nothing exceptional about the film, either.
A House Divided
Kokuho
by Matt Weiner
A sprawling epic about the orphaned son of a yakuza boss and his single-minded dedication to becoming the greatest kabuki actor of his era is now Japan’s highest grossing live-action movie. After three hours of near total immersion in the kabuki world, it’s easy to see why.
Sang-il Lee’s adaptation of Shuichi Yoshida’s novel Kokuho kicks off with a gripping gangster showdown that leaves Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa) without a family or direction in life. An impromptu performance on that fateful night provides a lifeline to a different path when his innate acting talent is recognized by the revered kabuki actor Hanai Hanjiro II (Ken Watanabe).
Hanjiro offers the boy a home—along with a rigorous, even physically abusive apprenticeship—much to the chagrin of Hanjiro’s son, Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama). Where Kikuo has the otherworldly talent and dedication of an outsider, Shunsuke is cocky and lazy, his status protected by the conservative traditions of kabuki and family bloodlines.
When Kikuo’s fortunes rise as Hanjiro’s favorite heir, a confrontation with Shunsuke seems inevitable. And so it is, but in ways that end up being far more complex, moving and unexpected than the pair’s rivalry first suggests. The story (adapted by Satoko Okudera) has the length and breathing room to pack in its fair share of rises and falls, but a deftness is always there to defuse the melodrama in favor of a slow burn that the rivals carry with them across decades.
Kokuho is after a more spiritual catharsis, made all the more potent with the demanding strictures of kabuki that fill almost all the time spent with the stage actors. Lee provides only glimpses of a rapidly modernizing country beyond the walls of the stage. And yet the weight of these changes is felt all around, as patrons come and go, living legends die and families grapple with what this artistic pursuit means and whether or not it’s worth it.
Watanabe is born to his role, with an uncanny ability to summon warmth, fear and regret with the briefest of expressions. His sons, both chosen and adopted, are locked into a replay of the sins of the father, and Yoshizawa and Yokohama play off each other to heartbreaking effect.
Kokuho devotes extensive time to the kabuki performances themselves, not just the rehearsals. The art direction from Yohei Taneda is a stunning highlight of the film, and goes a long way toward explaining even to an audience unfamiliar with kabuki why Kikuo believes the sacrifice to be worth it in the name of art. And that is the question being asked, by Kikuo and those whose lives he alters for better and worse. What if we’ve misunderstood the Faustian bargain all these years? Maybe the devil can have our best interests at heart too, if it means achieving the sublime for even a moment.
C’est Ce Se
Psycho Killer
by Hope Madden
Gavin Polone’s Psycho Killer had one strike against it going in, for me. The film takes us along for the ride on the Satanic Slasher’s cross-country killing spree.
And while James Preston Rogers cuts an impressive figure as the serial killer at the center of this cat and mouse chase, a Satanic murderer is a conservative straw dog cliché as tired and damaging as witches, maybe worse.
That aside, Polone, working from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, The Killer, Metalocaplyse: Army of the Doomstar), crafts a taut thriller.
Georgina Campbell (Barbarian) is Trooper Jane Archer. After witnessing her husband’s murder, Archer determines to take the shot she missed and put an end to the Satanic Slasher.
Campbell delivers a properly heroic performance. Smart, driven, and with an aggressive lack of cooperation from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies but nothing to divide her attention, Archer figures out the psycho’s trajectory.
And though her story involves one almost inescapable cliché, having a woman play the cop who misses the shot that could save their spouse and then, job be damned, scours the country to kill the bastard—it’s a nice gender role reversal.
The villain’s concept impresses: the hair, the mask, the coats, the voice. His mythology is sometimes clunky, other times lazy, but it’s rarely the backstory that makes a villain memorable. This guy’s creepy.
Logan Miller offers solid support with limited screentime. Likewise, Malcolm McDowell lends his unmistakably infernal voice to great effect, providing the film with a bit of dramatic flourish. But otherwise, Psycho Killer blends police procedural and revenge flick with plenty of tension and not a lot of fanfare.
There’s fairly little onscreen violence. Though an awful lot of grisly carnage is mentioned, there are only a few scenes in the film depicting it. Two of them are grimly subversive and worth the ticket price.
The third act comes seems to come from nowhere, but it’s a big capper to the slow building momentum of the Slasher’s bloody journey. Psycho Killer isn’t perfect, but it’s a tight, entertaining bit of a thrill.
