Screening Room: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Front Room, Rebel Ridge, Red Rooms, Winner & More
Monthly Archives: September 2024
Ghoul of Your Dreams
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
by Hope Madden
No one has ever mastered gruesome charm, macabre whimsy, as fully as Tim Burton. His 1985 masterpiece Pee-wee’s Big Adventure made a name for him and his 1989 blockbuster Batman changed cinema. But it was with that movie in between, his ’88 nerdy goth classic Beetlejuice that we began to see the real Burton.
It also gave all outsiders everywhere the gift of Lydia Deets, so thank you Burton and Winona Ryder for that.
Lydia returns to Winter River, Connecticut with her widowed stepmother Delia, (Catherine O’Hara, glorious as always), and her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega). The family has reunited to mourn the passing of Lydia’s father.
Meanwhile, in the After World, BJ (Michael Keaton, all festering charisma) is still missing the one who got away (Lydia)—a theme, since his ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) has reanimated and is looking to swallow his soul.
One thing leads to another, somebody says his name three times, wedding bells ring, and Burton delivers his finest film in years.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t too hindered by fan service, and it benefits from fun new characters and a couple of great cameos. Justin Theroux is a hoot as Lydia’s yoga-retreat-douche-bro beau, and Willem Dafoe’s a fun distraction.
Ryder gets plenty of opportunity to look conflicted. Every close up—and there are plenty—is just choppy bangs, big browns, furrowed brow. But Lydia’s flanked with fun, energetic characters—both old and new—so the film never drags.
Each set piece is an imaginative, ghoulish delight and O’Hara could be booked with larceny for as many scenes as she steals.
The main draw, of course, is he who really shouldn’t be named, at least not thrice. Keaton and his iconic over-the-topisms beam with the joyous vibe the entire film delivers. The sequel feels less like a rehash or cash grab and more like a return to form—a return to ideas and creations that unleashed Burton’s imagination in ways few other projects have. It’s fun to have that back.
Seeing Red
Red Rooms
by Hope Madden
True crime culture. Serial killer groupies. The Dark Web. Does all of it seem too grim, too of-the-moment, too cliché to make for a deeply affecting thriller these days?
Au contraire, mon frère. Québécois Pascal Plante makes nimble use of these elements to craft a nailbiter of a serial killer thriller with his latest effort, Red Rooms.
What is a Red Room? It’s a dark web chamber where you can watch the kind of thing Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) is accused of doing. You don’t want to see what goes on there (and thankfully Plante does not subject us to it). Instead, we stalk Chevalier’s trial day after day with Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, astonishing).
But what is this model and online poker player doing sleeping in an alley just to get in line early enough to claim one of the few peanut gallery seats available for this, Quebec’s trial of the decade?
The enigma of Kelly-Anne—and Gariépy’s meticulous performance—becomes the gravitational pull in Plante’s riveting thriller. What is she doing and why is she doing it? Is she good or bad? Should we be worried about Clementine (Laurie Babin, a perfect dose of tenderness against Gariépy’s cool delivery), the down-and-out groupie Kelly-Anne takes in?
Plante expertly braids vulnerability and psychopathy, flesh and glass, humanity and the cyber universe for a weirdly compelling peek at how easily one could slide from one world to the other.
His real magic trick—one that remarkably few filmmakers have pulled off—is generating edge-of-your-seat anxiety primarily with keyboard clicks, computer screens and wait times. But the tension Plante builds—thanks to Gariépy’s precise acting—is excruciating.
They keep you disoriented, fascinated, a little repulsed and utterly breathless.
Many filmmakers in the last few years—the number growing with the rise of internet culture and mushrooming since the pandemic—have sought to reflect the dehumanizing effect of isolation. Few have done so with such unerring results as Plante and Gariépy. And they spawned a stellar thriller in the process.
Messy Inheritence
The Demon Disorder
by Hope Madden
A number of fine genre films have struggled through the particular horror of dealing with a parent in decline. The change in a loved one’s personality can seem horrific, and the specter of your own possible future is terrifying.
Natalie Erika James’s 2020 generational horror Relic tackled the subject with grace and dread. Fellow Aussie Steven Boyle sees something more monstrous in the family curse with is first feature as a director, The Demon Disorder.
Graham Reilly (Christian Willis) is reluctant to return to his family home, but older brother Jake (Dirk Hunter) says their youngest sibling, Phillip (Charles Cottier), needs help. The fact that Jake looks like a pirate left behind weeks ago on a desert island does not bode well for the shape of the younger brother back home.
Jake also says that Dad (John Noble) is back.
The entire film takes place in just two locations—a mechanic’s garage and a rundown family home—but Boyle gets plenty of traction out of those spots. The chemistry among the brothers feels strained but authentic, and their performances go a long way toward elevating a story that never feels fully realized.
The main event—and the biggest differentiator between The Demon Disorder and other films of this kind—involves some pretty impressive practical effects. Boyle’s film boasts three different globulous monsters—nasty beasties that make you want to reach for the disinfectant.
Possession film/body horror/creature feature is an enticing combination. In truth, the three don’t really fit that well together here. Eliminating the Christian symbolism might have streamlined this meandering script, but a lack of depth in the storytelling would still have shown its ugly, blobby, viscous face.
The monsters are cool, though.
But Boyle—who’s built a career on makeup design and creature FX—plays to his strengths and delivers a fun, DIY creature feature while he’s at it.
Cosmic Revenge
The Paragon
by Rachel Willis
Dutch (Benedict Wall) is pissed off. The victim of a hit and run, he’s had nothing but bad luck since that day. When you feel like your life is falling apart, what’s a person to do?
In writer/director Michael Duignan comic oddity The Paragon, the answer is to learn how to become psychic in pursuit of revenge.
Dutch’s indignation at being hit by a car (a silver Toyota Corolla) and left for dead bleeds into the rest of his life in often hilarious ways. He obsesses over small things—like people who ride unicycles but are not in the circus—ranting to a wife who is tired of listening.
Duignan and Wall do a wonderful job making Dutch an interesting character—fun to watch, even as his bitterness dogs him. When he begins his psychic training with Lyra (Florence Noble), you’re eager to see what happens next. Noble is the perfect foil to Wall’s emotional outbursts. The film’s straight woman, she excels at playing off Wall in ways that help define each character. This is a mismatched duo if there ever was one, and it keeps the humor flowing.
The film has a lot of fun playing with Dutch’s anger and the absurdity of his quest. Throw in the oddball character Haxan (Jonny Brugh), and the movie only gets funnier. Not taking itself too seriously is what allows this weird movie to work so well.
Duignan keeps the film from flying too far off the rails. The Paragon never feels weird for weirdness’s sake. Each element fits nicely into Dutch’s unusual journey.
The part of the film that doesn’t work quite as well is the length of time spent during Dutch’s attempts to harness his psionic power. While it’s a lot of fun, it’s also time that might have been better served deepening Lyra’s character.
But this is a film that enjoys exploring the “what might have beens” of life and keeps you hooked while it does.
If the Van’s a-Rockin’…
Don’t Turn Out the Lights
by Christie Robb
When childhood friends reunite for a birthday weekend, they didn’t sign up for this RV road trip of a lifetime—that ends up cutting several short.
Writer/director Andy Fickman (Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2) has a few decent jump scares up his directorial sleeve with Don’t Turn Out the Lights, an early spooky season horror flick.
He shows up to the party with a potentially fun cast of characters, cool sound effects, and a well-used fog machine. But…that’s about it.
The characters are thin and underwritten. It’s established that these people are all deeply connected (except for one critically-underused plus one, a roommate of the core group played by John Bucy). I expected secrets and interesting group dynamics to play into the horror movie set-pieces.
Instead, we get stock characters: Instagram Girl, Jock, Stoner, Rich Bitch, Pick Me, Boyfriend, Rapey Racists…
With such thin characters, it’s difficult to muster up the empathy for any one of them to really care much about their fate. Which would have been fine if the Big Bad had been compelling.
But, it’s not really clear what’s causing all the carnage. Is it an external force or something driving the friends into crazed-self harm/psychopathy? It seems to be made up of a mish-mash of horror tropes that have absolutely nothing to do with each other all kind of deployed on random timers.
The friends theorize about what’s going on in between convenient “waves” of paranormal attack.
In the end, there’s just…no payoff. It’s giving early draft of Cabin in the Woods energy, but on a much lower budget, and with the ending still largely undetermined.
Set up was kinda promising though.
Lost in Elevation
Peak Season
by Matt Weiner
With the passing of M. Emmet Walsh this year, it might be time to update Roger Ebert’s (Harry Dean) Stanton-Walsh Rule—that no movie featuring either actor can be altogether bad—to include a living guidepost. And there are few more apt candidates than Fred Melamed.
Thankfully, Peak Season, which features a brief but memorable turn from the veteran character actor, is much better than “not altogether bad.” The second feature from directors Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner takes a familiar romantic premise to welcome new heights.
Amy (Claudia Restrepo) is a fish out of water in more ways than one as she enjoys a brief vacation away from New York to spend the 4th of July holiday at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She is staying with her well-to-do fiancé Max (Ben Coleman) at his uncle’s opulent vacation home. But after a family friend (Melamed) gets the couple fishing lessons as a welcome gift, she finds herself more in sync with the vibes of Loren (Derrick DeBlasis), a fly fishing guide, restaurant dishwasher, part-time landscaper, and whatever else pays the bills so he can fish and hike the Tetons.
When Max has to return to the city for a work crisis, Amy seeks out Loren as a stark contrast to the Silicon Valley-types Max left her with. His life trajectory is the total opposite of Amy’s—her career as a well-paid but burnt out management consultant pleases her immigrant mother, but she lights up at Loren’s unburdened joy. Or at least the appearance of ease, as we learn there are some downsides to living out of a Jeep without health insurance while pursuing vigorous physical activities.
Max bounces in and out of town, oblivious to Amy’s gnawing uncertainties and focused more on work and video calls than Amy’s casual mentions that she’s been spending a good deal of time with a ruggedly handsome stranger.
Amy’s soul-searching is comfortable territory for romantic dramedy, but Peak Season has two major advantages. First, there’s Grand Teton and the Wyoming scenery. It’s easy to see how the town became one big dude ranch to the wealthy, which Peak Season hammers home to great effect with numerous hard cuts between the struggling local workforce like Loren and the urban cowboys who rely on them as set dressing to live out their own fantasies of a life that could’ve gone differently, if only.
Second, there’s the fully earned chemistry between Amy and Loren. Even as the story relies on some emotional shortcuts to save time on character development, the two are fully realized by Restrepo and DeBlasis.
For those who wrap up every vacation in a new place with a score of Zillow links for unaffordable homes in unaffordable neighborhoods, there’s a wistful comfort to be found in Peak Season. But when you ask yourself “How did I get here,” just know that you might not like the answer.
Sins of the Father
Betrayal
by Brandon Thomas
Thrillers wrapped in a healthy dose of family drama make me anxious. Issues with your parents, siblings, or other members of the family can be stressful enough without throwing in murder and betrayal. Although, having to listen to your uncle’s political takes at Thanksgiving can be pretty scary too.
Betrayal’s opening scene sees three brothers (Brian Vernel of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Daniel Portman of Game of Thrones, and Calum Ross of Wednesday) shoot their sadistic father (Paul Higgins of In the Loop) and leave him for dead in a shallow grave in the woods. Short flashbacks show that the brothers had endured years of mental and physical abuse at the hands of their father. As the brothers return to the remote spot where they buried their father, they find the grave empty and also begin to suspect each other and their motives and secrets.
Betrayal is wrought with tension and suspense from the opening scene. Without sharing the brothers’ horrific past, director Rodger Griffiths injects enough subtle unease and strife between the characters that you instantly understand something is wrong. It’s a level of suspense that never goes away – it only changes as different layers are pulled back as the film approaches its brutal climax.
Griffiths wryly plays with the “is he or isn’t he” question of whether the father is actually dead. This isn’t Diabolique where that question is central to the overall story. No, the mystery of the father’s ultimate fate is a catalyst to jumpstart violent conflict between the brothers. It’s a clever spin that keeps the audience on an emotional rollercoaster of anxiety and fear. You want the brothers to persevere, but what if in some ways they’re ultimately as monstrous as the father they want dead?
Higgins steals the show as the family’s brutal patriarch. He plays him as a villain through and through. This guy isn’t a conflicted father dealing with his own trauma and insecurity. No, he relishes putting his sons and wife in their place. He needs to remind them of his position at the head of the family, and he does so with his fists and his words, which sometimes do even more damage.
Fans of brutal revenge films will find a lot to like with Betrayal. With solid direction, an excellent cast, and a script that throws in some nice surprises, this thriller is one to seek out.
