This week Hope & George review They Will Kill You, Forbidden Fruits, Alpha, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, A Magnificent Life, Refuge, and The Serpent’s Skin. Plus News & Notes from The Schlocketeer, Daniel Baldwin!
Girl Power Activate
The Serpent’s Skin
by Rachel Willis
Channeling films such as Carrie and The Craft, director Alice Maio Mackay brings a new take on women with power in her film, The Serpent’s Skin.
Fleeing from her transphobic home life, Anna (Alexandra McVicker) moves to the city to live with her sister (Charlotte Chimes). An intense opening scene lets us know how bad things are for Anna at home, so as she settles into her new life, you can’t help but hope she’ll find acceptance.
Anna finds more than acceptance as she reckons with newfound powers that allow her to defend herself in unexpected ways. When she meets Gen (Avalon Fast), a woman with similar powers, the two form an instant bond.
The film treads familiar ground as Anna and Gen learn both the depth of their power and the ability to harness it.
Mackay is fond of montages. Several occur in the film’s quick runtime. Some of those feel more relevant than others. Anna learning the ropes of her new job is a montage we could have done without. The time would have been better spent deepening her relationship with Gen or fleshing out ancillary characters.
Mackay writes with Benjamin Pahl Robinson. Their dialogue is clunky and repetitive, and it’s not always delivered with the right tone or emotion. While there are a few decent actors among the cast, the two leads are often the weakest of the bunch.
It’s not always clear why some of the events occur as they do. Mackay’s metaphor gets muddy as Anna and Gen deal with the consequences of their power. The filmmaker’s quest to mine new ground seems to obscure the larger theme.
It’s disappointing that The Serpent’s Skin isn’t as strong as it could be, because its allegory is both important and timely.
The Only Dangerous Minority
They Will Kill You
by Hope Madden
“When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.”
This quote from Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini opens Kirill Sokolov’s new blood drenched action horror, They Will Kill You.
No one is more pleased than I am at the popularity in contemporary cinema of the theme that rich people are evil. Better still is the more recent trend (a resurgence of a topic popular in the late Sixties and Seventies) that the rich are not just evil, they are literally diabolical.
Zazie Beetz is Asia. She takes a gig as a maid in old school, elite Manhattan high rise, The Virgil. Asia has ulterior motives. The Virgil has ulterior motives. It’s a home for Satanists and she is to be their sacrifice. But Asia has mad skills and the best hair in action hero history, so The Virgil’s residents don’t have such an easy time of it.
What follows is room after crawlspace after room of absolute carnage.
Sokolov proved his immense talent for confined, blood drenched action choreography with 2018’s Why Don’t You Just Die? If you enjoy They Will Kill You, I implore you to find the filmmaker’s previous gem. It is amazing.
His instinct for confined, bloody action is almost unmatched. (I’m not saying he’s better than Gareth Evans, but he’s in the conversation.) Sokolov’s frenetic pacing and arterial spray-soaked humor, though, is entirely his own.
Beetz carries the action effortlessly and Sokolov surrounds her with an outstanding array of pasty creeps. Patricia Arquette is almost heartbreakingly convincing as the help who believes she’s family. Sokolov, working from a script he co-wrote with Alex Litvak, points to the racism that keeps the elite breathing rarified air. But almost all his jabs at our social woes are made visually.
They Will Kill You definitely bears a resemblance to last week’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. But this film is more hard-core, the stakes are higher, and the confined, goretastic action is superior.
What a time to be a horror fan!
Paint By Numbers
A Magnificent Life
by Hope Madden
Sylvain Chomet is a filmmaker of eccentric, soulful films inspired by awkward, honest relationships, like The Triplets of Belleville. His films sparkle with love of vintage showmanship, the arts, and France. For those reasons, Chomet seems the ideal filmmaker to tackle a biopic about France’s prolific playwright and filmmaker, Marcel Pagnol.
Chomet’s animated feature A Magnificent Life opens in France of 1956. Pagnol is taking a bow, his early-career play having been successfully relaunched. But in a small party after the performance, he is listless. It seems the world has moved on, and he has nothing left to offer.
That emptiness, as we’ll see, is a post-success theme for the artist. Chomet positions these slumps as the points at which Pagnol would seek out a new challenge—from theater to film to literature.
The hand-drawn animation is an elegant wonder. The style for A Magnificent Life bears little resemblance to Chomet’s delightfully caricatured approach to Triplets or the endearingly wobbly look of The Illusionist. That’s not the only way the filmmaker’s latest animated feature changes pace.
A Magnificent Life follows a traditional biographical story arc, and that kind of reliance on familiar beats is out of character for Chomet. The film is also dialog heavy, which is wildly unusual for this filmmaker. In Chomet’s previous animated features, both Oscar nominees, any dialog became simply a blip or burble in a meticulously crafted sound design.
Pagnol’s life and career do seem fascinating. He rejected easy money, stood up to political and artistic pressures, and continually produced groundbreaking work. But A Magnificent Life gets mired in the detail and loses the larger themes. Since so many of those details deal with Paris’s difficulty with the Marseille accent so common in the writer’s work, the points are embarrassingly lost in the English language dub.
A Magnificent Life offers a perfectly lovely history lesson on one of France’s greatest playwrights and pioneers of cinema. But Chomet’s lost the off-center wonder of his earlier animated work, and a documentary might have been a better choice for a straightforward biopic.
Retail Equinox
Forbidden Fruits
by George Wolf
Just a few minutes into Forbidden Fruits, it’s clear that Apple (Lili Reinhart) has created a living space that does not bow to the patriarchy – at the local mall or anywhere else.
Apple, Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) are the Queens of the Highland Place mall in Dallas, and the awestruck whispers we hear as they walk in tell us much about the kind of power the “Fruits” enjoy.
Reporting to an unseen manager named Sharon (stay late for an important reveal), the ladies work the floor at the Free Eden boutique, fleecing customers into big dollar buys, worshipping Marilyn Monroe and adhering to a strict regimen that includes sex on a schedule and communicating with boys only through emojis.
Also…there are hexes and spells when needed. So, all seems good with this coven as a trio. Until Pumpkin (Lola Tung from “The Summer I Turned Pretty”) strolls in from that pretzel place in the food court.
Pumpkin is unintimidated by the Fruits, confidently telling Apple, “My job doesn’t define me, my hotness and personality do.”
That’s just one of many priceless lines, and writer/director Meredith Alloway’s adaptation of Lily Houghton’s stage play becomes a sharp, sly and sardonic treat, spilling the beans (and the blood!) about the chaos and contradictions of trying to stay true to yourself.
All four actresses are terrific, carving out distinct identities that keep various secrets on simmer. Is Cherry really that much of an empty-headed vessel? Does Fig have aspirations beyond Highland Place? And what’s the real truth about the death of Apple’s abusive Dad (“R.I. – but not P!”)
Tung makes it fun to guess Pumpkin’s true motives for joining the Fruits, and Alloway crafts an engaging ecosystem of complex girl power. The limited setting of the play never feels claustrophobic, and the mashup of storefronts, costuming and technology creates an anachronistic callback to the glory days of mall society.
Alloway does take her time getting to the bloodletting, but leans in pretty hard with some fun practical magic once it does hit. Remember those warnings about getting caught in escalators? Ouch!
But the real delight here is how the film utilizes a horror device derived from the fear of a women’s power to discuss how messy and imperfect the path toward self-actualization can be. There is strength in community, but danger when – as Cherry points out – you forget Shine Theory and “ruin my glow!”
These are definitely some hot topics for a day at the mall. But in the world of Forbidden Fruits, digging into them is even more fun than sorting through the blacklight posters at Spencer’s.
Blood Pressure
Alpha
by Hope Madden
There are drawbacks to being one of the most daring and original voices in cinema. Chief among them is expectation. Audiences anticipate that each new effort will somehow outshine the previous.
After 2016’s Raw, Julia Ducournau’s incandescent first feature, surely no one expected Titane. And I mean no one. Feral and unforgiving, homaging others but blazing its own wildly individual path, Ducournau’s sophomore effort took home Cannes’s Palm d’Or in 2021. The film that defies summarization managed to make Raw look tame, almost precious. Raw, by the way, is about a college freshmen overcome with cannibalistic frenzy whenever she’s aroused, if you haven’t seen it. Tame and precious.
So, expectations for Alpha, the filmmaker’s latest, were high.
The tale begins with its best scene. Amin (a wondrous Tahar Rahim) sits with his arm outstretched as his 5-year-old niece Alpha (Ambrine Trigo Oaked) makes his needle wounds pretty by connecting them, constellation-like, with a black marker. Simultaneously heartwarming and queasying, it seems the perfect opening to a Ducournau project.
We flash forward quickly to another disturbing scene. This time, 13-year-old Alpha (Mélissa Boros) has her arm outstretched. She’s barely lucid, surrounded by teens partying obliviously, as someone tattoos an enormous A on her arm. The work is not professional and draws plenty of blood.
From here, Alpha oscillates between two timelines in an alternate reality France. The core story of love and negligence, family trauma and addiction, sits in the context of a blood-borne epidemic. An epidemic to which Alpha has now made herself susceptible.
The AIDS analogy is clear but expect Ducournau’s visual style to turn the somber into something harrowingly beautiful. Sufferers of this unnamed virus show symptoms of smoke escaping their mouths when they cough. As the diseases progresses, bodies turn to something akin to blue veined, cracking marble.
It’s in this world that confused, self-destructive Alpha comes of age. Her mother (Golshifteh Farahani), a doctor, becomes passionately, almost blindly obsessed with keeping her junky brother and her reckless daughter safe.
The crisscrossing timelines often rob the film of its momentum. The real problem, though, is that in the end, Ducournau employs a fantasy trope to connect the timelines and embody the mother’s anxiety. Vague as she is about it, and powerful as the final moments are, Ducournau cannot breathe enough life into the cliché to elevate it above cliché.
There is a haunting ghost story at work here. Ducournau’s cast is astounding, and her visual style, though far more somber here than in her previous work, is still enough to draw a gasp. But Alpha boasts less imagination than either of the filmmaker’s previous efforts, and it’s hard not to be a tad disappointed.
Fright Club: Interview with Dream Story Director Florian Frerichs
Bonus episode! We sit down with filmmaker Florian Frerichs, joining us from one of Germany’s most legendary film studios! We discuss his latest feature, Dream Story, as well as his other films and his novel, They Will Claim that I Was Dead.
Screening Room: Project Hail Mary, Ready or Not 2, 1000 Women in Horror & More
This week, Hope & George review Project Hail Mary, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Vampires of the Velvet Lounge, By Design, 1000 Women in Horror, and The Well.
Running Dry
The Well
by Adam Barney
Scarcity of resources always brings out the worst in humanity. With everything that is going on in the world right now, the conflict at the heart of The Well feels more plausible than ever.
In Hubert Davis’s film, society has collapsed and almost all of the world’s water has been contaminated with a deadly virus. Deep in the woods, Sarah (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) and her parents guard a homestead that has the most valuable resource – a well with unlimited water that is safe to consume. When the filter for the well goes bad, Sarah must help her family by venturing out into the world to try and find a replacement part.
Sarah’s journey leads her to a cult led by the enigmatic Gabriel (Sheila McCarthy), who has held her ragtag group together on the promise of leading them to salvation. Sarah must not only navigate the dangers of the unforgiving world, but decide who she can trust when everyone is out for their own survival.
The Well is going to feel very familiar to anyone who has been watching the deluge of post-apocalyptic movies and shows released over the past decade. It doesn’t really offer anything new or unique, the plot largely unfolding as you would expect with characters that won’t stick with you too long afterward the closing credits. While it is well shot and acted, The Well ’s limited budget keeps the action in the woods. The film’s pace is slow, and it doesn’t really create much tension along the way. I like the idea of the world that The Well is trying to create, I just wish it offered up something more entertaining or memorable.
Games People Play
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
by Hope Madden
Back in 2019, filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett released Ready or Not. This tale of scrappy hero Grace (Samara Weaving) delivered a giddy, action-oriented, splatter-fueled horror comedy with the relatable central message that rich people are evil.
Weaving is back for the sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Grace is paired with her sister and reluctant sidekick Faith (Kathryn Newton), as both are forced to endure Round 2. Last go round, newlywed Grace had to survive until dawn on the evening of her wedding while her husband’s family tried to kill her. There were rules, specific weapons—they aren’t savages. They’re Satanists.
Well, in surviving the Le Domas family’s game of hide and seek, Grace triggered a second game. And what this game teaches us is that the entire world is run by a bunch of billionaires, each of whom is unspeakably, irredeemably evil.
Just like real life!
But in the movie, the evil billionaires face consequences. So Ready or Not 2 is a cathartic joy.
Weaving and Newton share a fun, funny, bickering chemistry. Their backstory becomes the spine of a film that, like the original, delivers series of entertaining, bloody set pieces.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett surround the sisters with a great ensemble, including the legendary David Cronenberg as the Danforth family patriarch.
Elijiah Wood is an understated hoot as Satan’s lawyer, reteamed for the first time since The Faculty with Shawn Hatosy, effortlessly psychotic and endlessly familiar as that white guy born into loads and loads of money. (Titus is his name.)
Sarah Michelle Gellar also stars as Titus’s twin sister Ursula Danforth. Geller’s turn is a manipulative delight, a billionaire convinced that a little evil is OK in the grand scheme of things if you do good stuff too.
Kevin Durand, Nester Carbonell, Maia Jae and the whole set of entitled hangers on are also spot on and fun. The entire film feels a little like therapy, honestly.
If you enjoyed Ready or Not, I’m hard pressed to believe its sequel won’t also leave you smiling.
