Fright Club

Fright Club: New York Vampires

Leave a comment

We had fully intended to look across so many big cities for their bloodsuckers, but it turned out New York is so brimming with vampires that we looked no further. Heck, we even had to do fuzzy math!

But quickly, a shout out to:

  • Detroit: Only Lovers Left Alive
  • Los Angeles: Blacula
  • New Orleans: Scream Blacula, Scream
  • Pittsburgh: Martin

There’s more, of course, especially once you leave the States, but instead of doing that, we focused squarely on NYC. And here’s what we found.

6. Nadja (1994)

Michael Almereyda spins an oh-so-indie-90s vampire tale of New York. Dreamy black and white cinematography blend with footage shot using a toy camera to create a weird dynamic—surreal, poetic, and often absurd.

Peter Fonda plays both Dracula and Van Helsing, the latter having killed the former and begun a search for Dracula’s daughter, Nadja (Elina Löwensohn). The startling cast also includes Martin Donovan, Jared Harris, and David Lynch.

The humor, violence, and stark beauty make for a heady mix.

5. Habit (1995)

Writer/director/star Larry Fessenden explores alcoholism via vampire symbolism in this NY indie. Fessenden plays Sam, a longtime drunk bohemian type in the city. He’s recently lost his father, his longtime girlfriend finally cut bait, and he runs into a woman who is undoubtedly out of his league at a party.

And then he wakes up naked and bleeding in a park.

The whole film works beautifully as an analogy for alcoholism without crumbling under the weight of metaphor. Fessenden crafts a wise, sad vampiric tale here and also shines as its lead.

4. The Addiction (1995)

Like most of director Abel Ferrara’s work, the film is an overtly stylish, rhythmically urban tale of brutal violence, sin and redemption (maybe). Expect drug use, weighty speeches and blood in this tale of a doctoral candidate in philosophy (Lili Taylor) over-thinking her transformation from student to predator.

Taylor cuts an interesting figure as Kathleen, a very grunge-era vampire in her jeans, Doc Martens and oversized, thrift store blazer. She’s joined by an altogether awesome cast—Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco and Christopher Walken among them.

Ferrara parallels Kathleen’s need for blood to drug addiction, but uses her philosophy jibberish to plumb humanity’s historical bloodlust.

3. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)

Cage was always willing to behave in a strangely effeminate manner, and perhaps even eat a bug. He made some great movies that way.

Peter Lowe (pronounced with such relish by Cage) believes he’s been bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals) during a one night stand. It turns out, he’s actually just insane. The bite becomes his excuse to indulge his self-obsessed, soulless, predatory nature all over New York for the balance of the running time.

Cage gives a masterful comic performance in Vampire’s Kiss as a narcissistic literary editor who descends into madness. The actor is hilarious, demented, his physical performance outstanding. The way he uses his gangly mess of limbs and hulking shoulders inspires darkly, campy comic awe. And the plastic teeth are awesome.

Peter may believe he abuses his wholesome editorial assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) with sinister panache because he’s slowly turning into a demon, but we know better.

2. The Hunger (1983)

Tony Scott’s seductive vampire love story has a little bit of everything: slaughter, girl-on-girl action, ’80s synth/goth tunage, David Bowie. What more can you ask?

Actually the film’s kind of a sultry, dreamily erotic mess. Catharine Deneuve is the old world vampire Miriam, Bowie is her lover. The two spend years – perhaps centuries – together seducing victims. But he suddenly begins aging, and she needs to find a replacement. Enter Susan Sarandon as a medical specialist in unusual blood diseases and a fine actress who’s not above smooching other girls.

Bowie and Deneuve are both so effortlessly cool and sexy that you can almost forgive them their nighttime savagery. You find out just how dangerous he is once he begins the rapid-aging process, but once you get a peek into Miriam’s chick Manhattan attic you find that she’s been far more dangerous – to her lovers and everyone else – for a very long time.

1. The Transfiguration (2016)

Milo likes vampire movies.

So, it would seem, does writer/director Michael O’Shea, whose confident feature debut shows us the relationship between the folklore and the life of a forlorn high school outcast.

Eric Ruffin plays Milo, a friendless Queens teen who believes he is a vampire. What he is really is a lonely child who finds solace in the romantic idea of this cursed, lone predator. But he’s committed to his misguided belief.

O’Shea’s film borrows ideas from George Romero’s Martin, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, and openly gushes over Murnau’s Nosferatu.  Inside and out, the film draws on the best in vampire cinema to help Milo deal with a world in which he is a freak no matter what he decides to do.

Shudder Premiere

Pregnant Pause

Leave a comment

Goody Goody

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Raymond Creamer made the most of what he had for his feature debut, Goody Goody. What did he have? Four talented actors, two locations, and a knack for atmosphere.

Samantha Robinson (who was utter perfection in 2023’s The Love Witch) is Goody. Goody is pregnant, and she’s creating the beautiful childbirth her baby deserves. She knows that he’ll feel it. He’ll know. It has to be perfect.

Colleen Foy is Sarah, the grownup in the room. Sarah is Goody’s midwife, the one who warned Goody not to give birth in a remote cabin deep in the woods during winter. The only reason Sarah agrees to the job is the fear that Goody, her husband Jayson (Colby Hollman), and his sister Candace (Zoe Renee) will go through with the home birth on their own.

Pregnancy/childbirth horror is so common because it is custom made for the genre. A beast is attempting to burst out of a human body. That human is swollen to a ludicrous degree and is, therefore, wildly handicapped when it comes to things like running or lasting more than ten minutes without having to pee. It is easy to generate dread because, even in real life, it’s terrifying and vulnerable and bloody and it really hurts.

Because it is so common, it can also feel tired. But Creamer develops dread differently. Our point of view is Sarah, the competent one. Watching her grow anxious generates a different kind of dread. When the one who knows what she’s doing is worried, everybody needs to worry.

Foy is remarkable in this role. The way Sarah’s patience and care are soothing but authoritative is a comfort to Goody and family, but also the viewer. As her nerves begin to show wear and tear, we feel more realistically trapped in this nightmare with her.

Robinson’s also wonderful, treading a line between entitled and defenseless, reckless and idealistic. She’s almost hypnotic, almost seductive, and that level of ecstasy helps the film find its tone.

It’s a gorgeous movie. Creamer creates striking moments in a dreamily rustic environment, slowly and quietly introducing the supernatural before pivoting to a full-blown creature feature. The tonal shift wouldn’t work were it not for Robinson’s spellbinding work bumping against Foy’s urgent realism.

For some, it still may not work. The film’s waning moments are mesmerizing, beautiful, and unsatisfying. But for most of Creamer’s 110 minutes, he counted his blessings and made them count.

New In Theaters

Summertime Blues

Leave a comment

Sunny Dancer

by Rachel Willis

Ivy is pissed off. It might be hard to understand why at first. She’s been in remission from cancer for 10 months, so one might think she would be happy.

However, writer/director George Jaques isn’t interested in how you think a person should feel after surviving cancer. With Sunny Dancer, Jaques gives us something nuanced yet familiar as Ivy (Bella Ramsey) finds her way with a group of teens at summer camp.

Ivy’s disconnection from life is the reason why her parents (James Norton and Jessica Gunning, making the most of their limited screen time) want her to spend four weeks at “chemo camp.” And though she is reluctant to participate and surly with the other campers, Ivy soon realizes camp was exactly what she needed.

Despite the hardship Ivy and her fellow campers have faced, they’re still teenagers at heart. Anyone who has felt rebellious or snuck out at night or just spent time with people who know you like no one else can relate to Ivy’s story.

The highlight of the film is the cast of kids who surround Ivy. Each one, from Ivy’s first love, Jake (Daniel Quinn Toye), to her horny best friend, Ella (Ruby Stokes), are fun to follow as they run wild and bring Ivy back to life.

The problem with any film that introduces a large cast of characters is finding ways to flesh out each one. Though the kids are great, not all of them get much depth. And the writing doesn’t bring each character to life as much as it could, but this is Ivy’s story. The two people she most gravitates to are the ones who most come to life.

As Ivy, Ramsey is good, but Stokes steals the show. She dominates each scene. Ramsey is a fine choice to carry the film, but the best scenes feature Ella.

With such a strong, naturalistic film, the movie’s emotional climax feels manipulative. It’s hard not to be disappointed by it when the rest of the film is so lovely.

Outtakes

Denied Pregnancy and Delayed Justice

Leave a comment

Baby Doe

by Matt Weiner

There’s no true crime mystery at the heart of director Jessica Earnshaw’s riveting documentary Baby Doe. Gail Ritchey gave birth in 1993 and left the newborn in the woods in Geauga County, a conservative rural suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio. The case was a local sensation that went unsolved until 2019, when DNA evidence led investigators to arrest Ritchey for murder.

What follows from that arrest is a challenging examination of the criminal justice system, its treatment of women and their mental health and how we view those accused of what popular culture (and pulpier true crime fare) dub acts that are “especially heinous,” told through a blend of contemporary footage and intimate access to the Ritchey family and their legal team.

Earnshaw’s camera becomes an ever-present member of the extended Ritchey family as they grapple with an unthinkable crime. Ritchey’s high school sweetheart and now husband Mark was unaware that Gail was even pregnant with their child at the time, and Earnshaw doesn’t shy away during interviews as Mark and Gail both reckon with their deeply conservative Christian upbringing that may have contributed to Gail’s state of mind at the time.

As Ritchey’s defense team confers with experts on how to get a jury to sympathize with Ritchey, Earnshaw touches on other high-profile cases on the subject of “denied pregnancy.” This is where the documentary takes yet another surprising—and enraging—turn, with medical experts on one side offering up compelling and deeply moving testimony on the under-discussed condition. On the other side, there is Ohio law, which in this case bars Ritchey and her team from using any of this as part of her defense. Instead, her lawyers must focus on the argument that the baby was stillborn.

Earnshaw’s raw interviews ultimately weave a sad, winding narrative that starts with Ritchey’s overbearing father and ends up in a suburban Cleveland jury room filled with male jury members and a reproving judge. It’s difficult to shake the sense that whatever is happening in that courtroom, it’s not about justice.

We do at least find more tender moments and even grace outside of the trial. Some of this comes from likely sources (a welcoming church, spearheaded by a caring pastor’s wife). But one of these moments comes from a surprising figure near the end of the film, one of the few men outside of the Ritchey family who sees Gail as someone who is more than the acts she has committed.

These moments, rare as they are, hardly make up for a criminal justice system that seems both unequipped and uninterested in understanding the mental health of why some people do what they do. Thankfully, Earnshaw is, and she tells the story beautifully in a way that suggests if sympathy is impossible, we can still find room for empathy.

New In Theaters

Put It Right On Me

Leave a comment

The Weight

by George Wolf

A few desperate men are given the chance to wipe their slates clean. Transport some precious cargo across 100 miles of hazardous terrain —including one very unstable bridge — and they’ll all be free to start new lives.

The Weight will bring to mind Sorcerer and The Wages of Fear, specifically, but on a more general level it recalls a throwback brand of thriller that’s dense with themes of sin and redemption layered through the choices, toil and sweat of conflicted souls.

It’s 1933 in Oregon, and the country is still reeling from the Great Depression. Sam Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is already struggling to provide for his young daughter Penny (Avy Berry) when a brush with the law lands him in a labor camp.

Warden Clancey (Russell Crowe) notices that Murphy is a quiet man who can solve problems, so he presents a tempting offer: move the stash of gold out of Blackhawk mine before FDR confiscates it, and Murphy will be out of jail in time to save his daughter from becoming a ward of the state.

It’s an easy call, so Murphy handpicks a small team, and heads out — under the watchful eyes of two armed chaperones, of course.

Director Padraic McKinley, reuniting with Hawke after The Good Lord Bird series, crafts his big screen debut with detail and vision, adapting the weighty script from Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines and Leo Scherman into a tense and visually striking adventure. The forests and rivers become daunting obstacles that raise the stakes, while McKinley illuminates an exquisite fight for life via lighting bursts of a thunderstorm.

And of course Hawke is perfect. He’s become such a reliably wonderful actor, and this type of understated inner struggle is his sweet spot, finding an authentic, cautious chemistry with a terrific Crowe and the solid ensemble, including Julia Jones (Dexter: New Blood) as a runaway woman eager to join the mission and not look back.

You may guess a plot turn or two, and a tighter grip in the editing room would have trimmed some bloat from the nearly two-hour runtime, but The Weight still carries plenty of welcome genre heft. It manages to balance familiarity with richness of character and craft, giving us the kind of movie we should be glad to still find in the theater.

New In Theaters

Hair Raising Hallowen

Leave a comment

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

by Hope Madden

Fully two decades ago, the gang at Aardman animation produced Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and it was perfect. A perfect family Halloween film, perfect entertainment, it won the 2006 Oscar for best animated feature. And it’s the reason I was so delighted at news of Aardman’s new Halloween feature, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom.

The dear Shaun the Sheep franchise is sort of a Grade B W&G, but imperfect Aardman is better than none. It’s almost Halloween at Mossy Bottom Farm, and the herd has been raising pumpkins to carve for their celebration. Meanwhile, Farmer laments his receding hairline because he wants to ask the Vet to the Mossy Bottom Halloween Hoedown.

Then Shaun finds a “Home Made Science” book and soon the pumpkins won’t stop growing, Farmer has vanished, and some incredibly hairy beast is running amuck!

One of the great charms of this franchise is its love of silent movies and its precise display of the sight gags that go into great comic storytelling. There’s no dialog in a Shaun episode. Even the human characters only gesture, sigh, and grunt. But you’re never unsure about the hijinks and that meticulous instinct for cinema is impressive.

Characters carve out whole personalities without a word. Shaun is a problem solver as likely to cause the problem as to fix it. Farmer’s a bit of a bumbler, sort of a country bumpkin Wallace, complete with a dog of high competence and higher tolerance. And overbites have never been more charming.

Though entirely wholesome, the film packs some lovely references for old school horror. The tactile animation feeds that vintage vibe, but the tone is forever goofy. Exceptional editing keeps the pace frantic, but not so quick moving that you’ll miss any of the fun going on in the background.

Plus, at 80 minutes, Shaun the Sheep keeps the pace crisp and exits the party without overstaying its welcome. It’s a joyous way to celebrate the season with the young ones, and it will entertain everyone watching.

New In Theaters

Track Your Package?

Leave a comment

Resident Evil

by Hope Madden

A lot of people seem curious to know what Zach Cregger is doing following up Weapons—one of the most revered horror films of the last decade—with the seventh installment in a horror video game movie franchise. By the looks of Resident Evil, having a blast is what he’s doing.

Rather than offer another badass on a mission story, Cregger’s episode, co-written with Shay Hatten (John Wick 3 & 4, Army of the Dead), enters the newly overrun Raccoon City with a hapless courier (Austin Abrams) tapped to run an important medical package to the Raccoon City General Hospital. Things go from bad to worse to much worse to oh my god no pretty quickly in an impressive series of set pieces showcasing body horror, carnage, mutants, goo, and more.

Cregger’s direction is fresh and fun, building dread and releasing it with bits of humor. He gives us some nifty first person shooter POV, but not enough of it to become tedious. The camera lingers when you don’t expect it to, and turns away when you really hope it will.

Cregger never takes the film too seriously, which is usually the downfall of any video game adaptation. But he absolutely embraces the video game-ness of the film, digging into the grossest and most disturbing elements of the game while rooting the mayhem in a character you can care about.

Resident Evil is frequently funny without falling into camp. Abrams, who was such a standout comic force in Weapons, delivers an ideal doofus to root for. John Walter Hauser has a fun expository sharing cameo, and Zach Cherry is also pretty funny.

It’s also pretty gross, fast paced, tremendously violent, and harrowing in a fun way.

The unhinged horror of it all won’t surprise those of us who saw Cregger’s 2022 feature Barbarian. He’s a horror guy. He knows horror and he has fun with it while still leaving some scars. Resident Evil isn’t going to win anybody an Oscar, but it’s a good time.   

New In Theaters

Sequel of the Witch

Leave a comment

Practical Magic 2

by Hope Madden

What made 1998’s Practical Magic so compelling? It was a beautifully filmed tale of a sad woman traumatized into dimming her light, a sister who shone, trauma be damned, and Aidan Quinn at his most swoon worthy.

Nearly 30 years later, somehow Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) is just now having to deal with daughters and their boyfriends. Practical Magic 2 reunites Bullock and Nicole Kidman (she who shone) as witchy sisters who have to navigate the next generation of the Owens curse. (When Owens women fall in love, their lovers are doomed to die horribly.)

Sally’s been hiding her witchiness again, for so long that her daughters have forgotten all about the family power. But now Kylie (Joey King) is in loooooove. And her boy Gideon (Blue Beetle’s Xolo Maridueña) is in danger, so she’s off to England with a black magic book and the goal to break the curse.

Bullock and Kidman, who’s here almost exclusively for comic relief this go-round, make for a fun Odd Couple. Bullock’s low-key comic timing is always sharp, though Kidman seems less sure footed in the comedic role. There are also moments when the pair’s humor feels out of place. They are in search of Sally’s missing and presumed in-peril daughter, after all.

Directed this time by Birdbox’s Susanne Bier, PM2 embraces the beautiful clutter, perfectly mussed long hair, and 90s fashion sensibilities of the original. It’s still a movie meant to showcase Bullock’s beauty, and it does.

The international intrigue feels rushed and telegraphed, and at no point are you unsure of the film’s outcome. And while the first film was split between each sister’s storyline, that made narrative sense because they were the two beloveds who were meant to come together. (Quinn was mainly delightful eye candy.)

The narrative has lost its balance with the two sisters together, one daughter/niece in peril, some aunts back at home. Plus, dudes as witches? Ew.

Great to see Diane Weist and Stockard Channing return, as dear as ever playing the aunties. And though there’s not a scene that stands up to the charm of the original, Practical Magic 2 is fine. It reminds you that sisters are awesome, long hair is too, Cool Whip is delicious, and there’s rarely a bad time for a margarita.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?