Halloween Countdown, Day 24: Possession

Possession (1981)

Speaking of sex and monsters – wait, were we? – have you seen Possession? WTF is going on there?

Andrzej Zulawski – writer/director/Czech – created this wild ride with doppelgangers, private investigators, ominous government (or are they?) agencies, and curious sexual appetites. It’s more precisely fantasy than horror, but it strikes me as David Cronenberg meets David Lynch, which is a pairing I can get behind.

Sam Neill plays Mark. Mark has just left his job – a mysterious position with some kind of lab. He’s being offered a lot of money to stay, but he needs to go home. We don’t know why.

Back at home, he greets his genuinely adorable son Bob (Michael Hogben). I love that his name is Bob. Bob – it’s so normal, and yet feels so unusual for a small child. Mark’s wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) is also at home with Bob. There’s nothing normal about Anna.

Mark and Anna’s relationship boasts an intentional artificiality- a queasying sexuality- that makes it hard to root for either of them as their marriage deteriorates. Anna, it seems, is in love with someone else. Is it the sexually open – really, really open – Heinrich? Is it a bloody, mollusk-like monster? Is Mark boning Anna’s mean friend with a cast on her leg? Does Bob’s kindergarten teacher bear an unreasonable resemblance to Anna? Is anyone caring properly for Bob?

These questions and more go basically unanswered in a deviant, summary-defying, fantastical bit of filmmaking that mocks the idiocy, even insanity of obsession and boasts a handful of weirdly excellent performances. And sex with a bloody mollusk-like monster.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

Halloween Countdown, Day 23: Only Lovers Left Alive

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Vampires again! Can’t we just give it a rest already?

I hear ya, but before you write them off completely, let Only Lovers Left Alive renew your faith in the genre’s possibilities.

Leave it to visionary writer/director Jim Jarmusch to concoct the perfect antidote to the pop culture onslaught of romantic teenage blood drinkers. OLLA is a delicious black comedy, oozing with sharp wit and hipster attitude.

Great lead performances don’t hurt, either, and Jarmusch gets them from Tom Hilddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve (perfect!), a vampire couple rekindling their centuries-old romance against the picturesque backdrop of…Detroit.

I’m not going to lie, they had me at Swinton/Hiddleston/Jarmusch/vampires, but it’s such a treat to find the end result only exceeds expectations.

Not since the David Bowie/Catherine Deneuve pairing in The Hunger has there been such perfectly vampiric casting. Swinton and Hiddleston, already two of the most consistently excellent actors around, deliver cooly detached, underplayed performances, wearing the world- weariness of their characters in uniquely contrasting ways.

The less you know about the lifestyles of Adam and Eve, the better, and the plot consists mainly of consequences from a surprise visit by Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska). But Jarmusch, as he often does, creates a setting that is totally engrossing, full of fluid beauty and wicked humor.

His camera lingers in dark corners and high ceilings, swimming in waves of sublime production design, evocative music and mood lighting that is subtle perfection. This is a master class in style and atmosphere, conjuring up a dark world you’re just geeked to spend time in.

There is substance to accent all the style. The film moseys toward its perfect finale, casually waxing Goth philosophic about soul mates and finding your joy.

Ironically, Jarmusch treats the possibility of nightwalkers among us more realistically than any vampire flick in recent memory. And in the process, has some wry fun with how the whole thing went south.

Talk about finding our joy.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

Bringing Your Work Home

Ouija: Origin of Evil

by Hope Madden

It’s a rare thing for a sequel to better its predecessor. It helps when the bar is not particularly high in the first place.

Such is the case for Ouija: Origin of Evil. A prequel to the 2014 by-the-numbers spook flick Ouija, the new iteration takes us back to a stylish 1965 where a struggling widow (Elizabeth Reaser) tries to eek out a living as a fortune teller.

Though her goal is noble – she just wants to bring peace to the grieving – her gig is a scam. Worse still, she enlists the help of her 9 and 16-year-old daughters. But when she brings a Ouija board home to liven up the act, her youngest turns out to be the real medium.

This is not a great film. It is, however, not half bad.

Director Mike Flanagan (Absentia, Hush), who co-wrote with Jeff Howard, has proven that he can mine even familiar territory for chills. His casting certainly doesn’t hurt.

Rather than relying on fresh faced teens to carry a supernatural slasher, he turns to seasoned actors – Reaser and Henry Thomas (that’s right – Elliot!) – to ground the fantastical elements with understated but believable performances.

The important roles, though, are the kids. Annalise Basso – so strong in Flanagan’s middling Oculus – again nails a performance as a normal kid living through extraordinary circumstances.

Lulu Wilson plays the wee spiritualist Doris, and though she occasionally slips into something too cloying, for the most part she handles her part with a nice balance of innocence and eeriness.

Flanagan wisely picks up enough from the previous film for this origins story to make it a proper standalone effort. He does get a bit heavy handed with the tiresome FX (is anyone still undone by a crab walking pre-adolescent at this point?), but for 2/3 of the film his approach is more measured. He lets the appealing performances and family dynamic do most of the heavy lifting.

Elements that weaker filmmakers would have hit hard Flanagan allows to linger, to become intriguing rather than damning.

As has been the case throughout his career, he can’t quite close the deal. Though never terrifying and rarely fresh, Origin of Evil still brings enough era-specific nods and spook house moments to be a fun seasonal escape – but never more than that.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

Valley Dogs

In A Valley of Violence

by Cat McAlpine

Paul (Ethan Hawke) just wants to make it to Mexico, and freedom. Unfortunately, a random and heart-wrenching act of violence detours him down a bloody path to revenge. Writer/director Ti West brings his experience in the horror genre to the Wild West, with surprising but refreshing reserve.

In a Valley of Violence benefits from West’s time in horror. The build is steady and slow. Paul transforms from quiet stranger to calculating killer, but all the blood is earned. The shootouts aren’t elaborate but they are grisly and realistic.

The first note I wrote down was “color”. (The second note I wrote down was “His dog wears a bandana.”) West has colorized an homage to old westerns, bright and yellow. At the turning point, though, his roots show.

The camera work changes with Paul. A flashback is handled with a shaky cam and a flashlight. It feels like found footage, and though it’s a jarring stylistic change, it’s not unwelcome.

Another scene is shot from a single vantage point that makes the view feel like a security camera. The small room almost gets that fisheye quality, as Paul sneaks up behind an unsuspecting bather. These touches gently meld the horror and western genres, using cues from both to shape the viewers’ journey.

The performances are as realistic as West’s measured use of bullets and blood. Hawke is brooding and dangerous, but soft, too. His dog is an excellent device to extrapolate the way PTSD can function. Paul confidently banters with his dog, makes her promises, plots with her… but when he’s faced with people he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes low.

As the sheriff, John Travolta plays with equal restraint and mastery. He’s quiet but commanding, a good match to Hawke. As he devolves into panic, Travolta becomes funnier and more terrifying.

These performances from the two veterans balance out a younger cast of characters who are spoiling for adventure.

Karen Gillan shines with absurdity and humor, and she’s hard not to watch, even sprinting across the back of a shot. Taissa Farmiga is all wide-eyed wonder, but carries enough grit to make her character arc as compelling as Paul’s.

Most of the absurdity comes from a truly excellent Burn Gorman, as the priest. His drunken ramblings about sinners are bizarre, and showcase some of the best writing in the film. The priest’s appearances divide the film into three distinct parts, highlighted by Paul’s changing interaction with him each time. He serves as a beautiful device and a welcome, though momentary, release of pressure.

In a Valley of Violence is an homage to the traditional western with updates from the horror genre, not with blood, but with tension. Paired with a fantastic score from Jeff Grace and a cast that delivers, West has avoided the trappings of the modern shoot-em-ups and rejoined the classics with some fresh perspective.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek8cjysuvJ4

Halloween Countdown, Day 22: Housebound

Housebound (2014)

You need to see Housebound.

Funny and scary, smartly written and confidently directed as to take full advantage of both, this is a film that makes few missteps and thoroughly entertains from beginning to end.

Gerard Johnstone writes and directs, though his brightest accomplishment may be casting because Morgana O’Reilly’s unflinching performance holds every moment of nuttiness together with brilliance.

O’Reilly plays Kylie, a bit of a bad seed who’s been remanded to her mother’s custody for 8 months of house arrest after a recent spate of bad luck involving an ATM and a boyfriend who’s not too accurate with a sledge hammer.

Unfortunately, the old homestead, it seems, is haunted. Almost against her will, she, her hilariously chatty mum (Rima Te Wiata) and her deeply endearing probation officer (Glen-Paul Waru) try to puzzle out the murder mystery at the heart of the haunting. Lunacy follows.

Kylie’s disdain for every single person and event in this film is beautifully animated – O’Reilly constantly looks as if she’s just smelled something foul. But her expressions also share those fleeting moments of regret that make her utterly, admirably human.

Good horror comedies are hard to come by, but Johnstone manages the tonal shifts magnificently. You’re nervous, you’re scared, you’re laughing, you’re hiding your face, you’re screaming – sometimes all at once. And everything leads up to a third act that couldn’t deliver better.

The film is so much fun it all but begs to be seen with a group.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT1KcYiPb4I

Time to Stop Reaching

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

by Hope Madden

Who is Jack Reacher?

“The guy you didn’t count on.”

Or, the guy spewing some tired, tired lines.

Four years ago Tom Cruise pissed off Lee Child fans when he put on the rumpled jeans and tee of the 6’5” drifter with mad military skills. In the serviceable thriller Jack Reacher, Cruise’s character puzzled through a homicide set up with the help of an inappropriately dressed defense lawyer.

Nowadays, though, maybe Jack is subconsciously looking to settle down. He meanders back to DC to talk with the Major who is now in command of his old post – the overtly fierce Samantha Turner (Cobie Smulders). Sparks?

Well, there might have been except Major Turner’s been incarcerated, there’s a highly trained sociopath with an alpha complex and a fancy pair of leather gloves, and an at-risk teen is in need of guidance.

The action’s far less interestingly choreographed, the humor is nonexistent, the villain is far blander (it was Werner Herzog last go-round, for lord’s sake!).

With the right combination of vulnerability, brattiness and savvy, Danika Yarosh provides the rare bright spot as the wayward teen. Smulder’s indignant badass is all but intolerable. Meanwhile, Cruise seems paralyzed as he tries to relay confused and conflicted paternal tendencies.

Edward Zwick’s stale direction isn’t helping. The closest thing to panache comes by way of the now de rigueur chase across urban rooftops. Yawn.

Still, Zwick’s greater crime may be the screenplay he co-wrote with Richard Wenk and Marshall Herskovitz, adapted from the Child novel. There is a difference between streamlining text and discarding character development, plot movement and sense. You spend 30% of the film thinking, “Well, that was certainly convenient.”

Incompetent plotting, weak catch phrases and a shocking lack of chemistry among any and all actors will keep a project from succeeding. Hopefully everyone involved – including the audience – can leave the film and never go back.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

Halloween Countdown, Day 21: I Saw The Devil

I Saw the Devil (2010)

If you’ve seen Korea’s awe-inspiring 2003 export Oldboy, you know actor Min-sik Choi can take a beating. He proves his masochistic mettle again in I Saw the Devil.

Choi plays Kyung-Chul, a predator who picks on the wrong guy’s fiancé.

That grieving fiancé Soo-hyeon Kim is played by Byung-hun Lee (The Magnificent Seven), whose restrained emotion and elegant good looks perfectly offset Choi’s disheveled explosion of sadistic rage, and we spend 2+ hours witnessing their wildly gruesome game of cat and mouse.

Director Jee-woon Kim, working with Hoon-jung Park’s screenplay, breathes new life into the serial killer formula. Seven years earlier he helmed the deep, murky and intensely female horror of Tale of Two Sisters, but Devil breathes masculinity.

With the help of two strong leads, he upends the old “if I want to catch evil, I must become evil” cliché. What they’ve created is a percussively violent horror show that transcends its gory content to tell a fascinating, if repellant, tale.

Kyung-Chul – part time school bus driver, full time psychopath – butchers Kim’s gal, but rather than killing the murderer when he gets the chance, Kim beats him within an inch of his life (in very graphic fashion), then implants a microphone and tracking device. Regardless of the mayhem this lunatic will unleash as soon as he recovers from his wounds, Kim’s content to simply wait, follow, and beat him up again.

Park’s plot takes a number of unexpected, even absurd, turns. It’s as if this particular movie stops off quickly to visit a couple of completely separate horror films. The result doesn’t always work, but it certainly shakes up expectations.

Truth be told, beneath the grisly, far-too-realistic violence of this unwholesome bloodletting is an undercurrent of honest human pathos – not just sadism, but sadness, anger, and the most weirdly dark humor.

If you can see past the outrageously violent images onscreen, you might notice some really fine acting and nimble storytelling lurking inside this bloodbath.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

They Got a Thing Going On

Keeping Up With the Joneses

by George Wolf

Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot as smooth and glamorous undercover spies? I’ll buy that. How ’bout Zach Galifianakis as a sensitive nerd and Isla Fisher as the wife just one makeover from bringing sexy back? Not a stretch.

Finding any good reason for Keeping Up with the Joneses, though, certainly is.

Jeff and Karen Gaffney (Zach and Isla) have just sent their two boys off the summer camp and finally have the house the themselves, so you know they first thing they do when they’re alone? Eat popcorn and watch The Good Wife on DVR!  That’s just the first of many obvious punchlines in search of a laughtrack.

See, the thrill is gone and the Gaffneys need that spice back! New neighbors Tim and Natalie Jones (Jon and Gal) bring it. They’re too perfect, and Karen just knows they’re up to no good, so she puts on a funny hat to follow Natalie, and they end up trying on lingerie together! Isn’t that zany and scandalous for these suburban wives?

This whole thing is just a waste of everyone’s time. The cast is talented, and director Greg Mottola has a fine resume (Superbad, The Newsroom) so shade might be thrown in the general director of Michael LeSieur and his inane script.

There’s nothing new here, nothing really creative (well, okay, the end credit graphics have a fine style) and very, very little that’s worth even a chuckle. Will the squares in white suburbia teach the superspies about feelings? Will the spies show the bored couple how to put sex and excitement back in their marriage?

Wait, wasn’t I in a movie like this, but better?

Yes, Gal Gagot, you were. It was Date Night, and it was funny.

This is not.

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

 

Halloween Countdown, Day 20: Aaaaaaaah!

Aaaaaaaah!

by Hope Madden

Aah, the precarious position of the alpha male. Oh should I say Aaaaaaaah!? Because that is the delightfully appropriate title of Steve Oram’s feature directorial debut.

An absurd horror comedy, the film offers no dialog at all, just grunts, as humans – devolved into ape mentality – go about their poop-throwing, territory marking, television smashing daily existence.

It’s the kind of overly clever premise you expect to wear thin, but honestly, it doesn’t. Much credit goes to a game cast (including Oram) that sells every minute of the ridiculousness, and to Oram again as director. He keeps the pace quick, his images a flurry of insanity you need to see more than once to fully appreciate.

Oram has more in store than a wickedly bloody send up, though. His film wisely deconstructs our own human preoccupations and foibles in a way that’s strangely touching, even sad at times.

The lack of dialog suits the experiment in the same way Steven Soderbergh’s meta-dialog suited his weirdly personal 1996 effort Schizopolis, or the way Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s use of unsubtitled sign language fits his brilliant film The Tribe. While Aaaaaaaah! is far lighter and more madcap than either of these, it still asks you to use another means of understanding character actions, which allows you to see humanity on a more jarringly primal level.

It wouldn’t even be a horror movie were it not for all those severed penises.

Oram and his appealing cast keep you interested as seemingly divergent stories blend and reshape, and domestic hierarchies shift. Lucy Honigman is particularly compelling, but every actor has surprising success in articulating a dimensional character with nary a word to help.

A familiar face in British comedy, Oram stood out in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 horror comedy Sightseers. He’s playing against type here as the threatening male presence, but he’s equally hilarious. The talent has to rely primarily on sight gags, obviously, and Oram has a flair for presentation. His quick 79 minute running time helps, but there’s never a dull moment in this jungle.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

A Movie that Gives Your Heart a Hug

A Man Called Ove

by Christie Robb

There’s a concept in the northern countries of Europe that helps the people there combat the rigors of the long, frigid, winter nights. It’s called gemütlichkeit in German, hygee in Danish, and mysig in Swedish and loosely translates as “cozy.” But it’s not just a sitting in front of a crackling fire, blanket on lap, warm drink in hand kind of physical cozy. The concept encompasses emotional coziness—friendliness, peace of mind, social acceptance. The Swedish film A Man Called Ove, exudes mysig.

It’s the story of a cantankerous old widower who has recently been counseled out of his 40+ year job. His life has shrunk to the point where his days are spent patrolling his neighborhood enforcing homeowners’ association rules, yelling about where dogs can answer the call of nature, and tossing junk at stray cats. His plan is to wrap up the loose ends of his existence, and then join his wife by taking his own life. But the plan is delayed by the young family that moves into the house across the street, running into his mailbox in the process.

And you probably know where the movie is going to go from there. You’ve seen versions of this story before: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Up, St. Vincent, etc. Crabby old guy softened by the connections made with a youngster. But that doesn’t make Ove any less charming.

In Hannes Holm’s adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel, Rolf Lassgård manages to make even the angriest, most nihilistic version of Ove seen in the first portion of the film somehow likable despite his rudeness. And, in flashback sequences that occur each time Ove attempts suicide, his life story is fleshed out, revealing past events that have contributed to his current demeanor. This makes his subsequent, often bumbling, attempts at increased connection more poignant. And the family that provides a catalyst for his change is helmed by the fantastic Parvaneh (Bahar Pars)—friendly, decent, very pregnant, and taker of absolutely zero-shit from anyone.

It’s the kind of movie that makes you appreciate the beauty in the small details in life, the mysig: a well-cared-for green plant perched in front of a frosty window, a child’s drawing, neighbors that know your name and wave to you from across the street, a car ride with your dad. It’s the kind of movie that you’ll appreciate as the temperature dips, the dark comes creeping ever earlier, and the sky takes on the appearance of soiled sidewalk. It’s the kind of movie that might be best enjoyed with a small group of good friends and a warm beverage.

Verdict-4-5-Stars