Category Archives: Shudder Premiere

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Dario Argento Panico

by Hope Madden

In 2019, documentarian Simone Scafidi turned his attention to Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci for the film Fulci for Fake. It seems only fitting, then, that he shine a spotlight on Italy’s most revered horror maestro – and a bit of an artistic adversary of Fulci’s – Dario Argento.

Panico follows Argento into seclusion in a hotel where he hopes to finish his latest screenplay. From there, Scafidi interviews the director as well as his oldest daughter, Fiore, essentially ruining the whole point of Argento’s stay at the hotel, which makes the setup seem odd from the start.

Argento knows what’s up, though, posing thoughtfully with beautiful architecture and charming Scafidi with the odd reminiscence. These moments pepper a chronological throughline of archival footage and movie segments as well as contemporary interviews with family and other filmmakers.

Few genre fans would argue Argento’s influence or importance in cinema. Gushing tributes from Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé (who cast Argento in the lead for his 2021 drama Vortex) offer delightful glimpses into just what an influence he has been.

Not every opinion is positive – one friend of Argento’s even articulates the plain truth that the maestro’s Nineties output lacked all art.

What Panico lacks are follow-up questions. A number of provocative comments from interviewees seemed like opportunities to hear from Argento on the matter, and yet at no point does Scafidi dig in. This is most confounding during a fairly lengthy interview with Argento’s younger daughter, Asia.

The star of six of her father’s films, beginning with Trauma when she was 16, Asia Argento has been the center of a great deal of speculation and debate concerning her father as a filmmaker and as a parent. And though she spins each unusual parenting or directorial choice as if it’s natural, positive, or wise, most of the time it clearly is not. In fact, an entire (and far more interesting) look at who Dario Argento is and what we should make of his movies could be carved out of just her interview, had Scafidi double checked any of it with her dad.

Nope. Instead, Dario sits across a table from Fiore. She asks him how he managed to be such an amazing dad, always doting on his two daughters. He says that’s just how a person goes about being a father.

I’m not bothered by a superficial doc that just points out why a filmmaker managed to leave such a remarkable legacy in a single genre. But if you’re going to tease us with actual information, choosing not to address any of that information makes for a very frustrating viewing experience.

Would You Be Mine? Could You Be Mine?

Destroy All Neighbors

by Hope Madden

A film for anyone who squeezes creative passions into the hours outside other responsibilities, refuses the label “hobby” and still never manages to complete anything, Destroy All Neighbors lives that nightmare.

William (Jonah Ray) has been working and reworking the final song on his prog-rock album for ages. Years. He’s so close, but then the loudest, most aggressively weird neighbor moves in next door. Vlad (Alex Winter, who also produces) may have charmed William’s longsuffering girlfriend (Kiran Deol), but he’s pushing William to the brink of insanity. Who can get anything done with all that noise?!

William is that nonconfrontational nice guy who’s always being taken advantage of. But Vlad has pushed him too far. Which is why it will be so difficult to convince anyone that Vlad accidentally killed and dismembered his own self. But he did! Really!

Destroy All Neighbors delivers silly, sloppy horror comedy with the highly relevant message: maybe this is all your own fault. Ray (MST3K) drives the lunacy with an earnest performance. You kind of already know this guy. Hell, he could be you.

And that’s the real charm of Destroy All Neighbors. Director Josh Forbes, working from a script by Mike Benner, Jared Logan and Charles A. Pieper, isn’t wagging a finger of judgment. The finger is gently pointed inward.

The writing team comes from animation and comedy rather than horror, which may be why the film is so gleefully gory, no meanness in it. Whenever William does find his inner badass, the film makes sure he immediately regrets it.

A cameo from Kumail Nanjiani and the supporting goofiness from Lennon and Ryan Kattner as rock and roll has been Caleb Bang Jansen (say the whole name!) keep the tone silly.

Destroy All Neighbors is not a great movie. It’s definitely not a great horror movie. But it’s a light, weird, gentle reminder that you may be all that’s holding you back. (And also, loud neighbors kind of suck.)

Away from Home for the Holidays

The Sacrifice Game

by Hope Madden

The Holdovers by way of Blackcoat’s Daughter, Jenn Wexler’s latest mines the Manson-esque horror of the American Seventies for a new holiday favorite.

The Sacrifice Game opens on December 22, 1971. A homey suburban couple has just wished its last Christmas party guests a good night when the band of four who’ve been watching from the  yard come a knocking.

And that’s the thing about the Seventies. People still answered the door to strangers.

Not every scene in Wexler’s era-appropriate gem sings quite like the opener, but genre fans will be hooked, and rightly so.

Nearby, in the Blackvale School for Girls, news of the murder spree has kids happier than ever to go home for holiday break. Except poor Samantha (Madison Baines) and weird Clara (Georgia Acken). Which means their teacher, Rose (Wexler favorite Chloë Levine) has to stay behind, too.

Just as they sit down for Christmas Eve dinner, a knock at the door.

Naturally, Rose answers.

Part of the reason The Sacrifice Game works as well as it does is the casting of the cultish murderers, each with a fully formed character and each somehow reminiscent of the kind of Satanic hippie villains that once gloriously populated trash horror.

Olivia Scott Welch convinces as former Blackvale girl turned bad while Derek Johns delivers a sympathetic turn as the misguided veteran. Laurent Pitre’s self-pity is spot on, but Mena Massoud’s narcissistic charm outshines them all.

There’s enough grisly material for the true horror moniker, but nothing feels gratuitous. Each scene serves a purpose, and all dialog allows characters to unveil something of themselves. The youngers in the cast are not quite as strong as the rest of the ensemble, but their relative weakness is not crippling.

The film looks fantastic, and though the storyline itself is clearly familiar, Wexler’s script, co-written with Sean Redlitz, feels consistently clever.

It’s a rare year to be gifted with multiple enjoyable holiday horrors, but 2023 already boasts Thanksgiving and It’s a Wonderful Knife. The Sacrifice Game more than merits a seat at the same table.

Night of the Penned In

Night of the Hunted

by Hope Madden

Sometimes simplicity in horror is very effective. Take a very routine moment, something so familiar to viewers they realize they wouldn’t even think twice about it, and turn it into something sinister.

It’s late. You stop for gas. A sociopath with a high-powered rifle and good aim is hiding behind a God Is Nowhere billboard.

Franck Khalfoun’s Night of the Hunted is the latest horror to make what it can of a tiny cast, limited set of locations, and modern anxieties. Camille Rowe is Alice. She and John (Jeremy Scippio) are on their way back from a conference – their relationship is complicated – but Alice is in a hurry. And not in a great mood.

It’s 2 am. They stop for gas. The sniper makes excellent use of the well-lit, heavily windowed setting. There’s also a walkie talkie.

Any film that focuses so heavily on an exchange between two people only works when the writing and performances are strong. Rowe delivers when the script lets her. Alice is savvy and angry, recognizes her weaknesses but makes frustrating choices. Those choices are, of course, part of the character’s arc. They may also be due to the fact that all five writers and the director are men.

Night of the Hunted pulls in a lot of buzzy ideas and mixes and matches in a way that’s sometimes clever – the sniper toys with Alice, but why would Alice (or the audience) believe he means anything he says? It’s also sometimes frustrating for a number of reasons, chief among them that the monologue never ties to anything concrete in the story. No insight is gleaned – which is fine as no insight is needed, but the film behaves as if the speechifying has relevance.

There’s tension and some smart moments, although Night of the Hunted is still just another horror movie made by men in which the female lead has no purpose or value until she finds her maternal instinct.

Still Preoccupied

V/H/S/85

by Hope Madden

If found footage, horror anthologies and 80s nostalgia are your thing, V/H/S/85 is speaking your language. The sixth episode in the series straps on those heavy camcorders and uploads that security cam footage to remind us of all the horrors of the Reagan era.

Highlights include David Bruckner’s wraparound story, “Total Copy.” An alum of the 2012 original V/H/S and successful filmmaker behind The Ritual and the recent Hellraiser,  Bruckner has a tricky assignment. The wraparound has to serve as an anchor for the balance of the short films while standing on its own. Bruckner’s tale delivers a VHS tape of security footage that’s been copied over with commercials, exercise videos, and other horrors. But the main story it tells, of an entity in lockdown being studied by researchers, is chilling, sometimes funny, and eventually pretty bloody.

Not to be outdone, Mike P. Nelson contributes two short films with one clever twist. The first, “No Wake” follows a group of campers who head out onto a lake despite posted signage forbidding it. And though things go predicably wrong for them, the actual execution (both by the director and of the characters) delivers genuine surprises, as does the twist in Nelson’s second outing, “Ambrosia” about a fundamentally bent family tradition.

“TKNOGD” (technogod), from Natasha Kermani (Lucky), is the most daring of the set, although it nearly outstays its welcome before hitting its stride. A performance artist laments the blossoming obsession with tech. The plausibility of the audience reaction is almost as much fun as the gory finale of her show.

Gigi Saul Guerrero (Satanic Hispanics, Bingo Hell) contributes a news piece gone wrong during Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake. What’s most effective is her use of the set to increase claustrophobia to high levels before bursting that tension with the bloody finale.

Scott Derrikson’s (Sinister, The Black Phone) “Dreamkill” is the most effective and imaginative of the set, plus there’s a Goth kid! Now that’s a reason to love the 80s! A police detective keeps receiving VHS tapes in the mail of murders that have not yet been committed. From the grim crime scenes to the plot twists to the almost funhouse architecture of the final acts of carnage, “Dreamkill” never lets go.

This is the strongest set of shorts in a V/H/S installment in a while. It’s fun, gory, creepy and bite sized – ideal for the season.

Mama Mia

Nightmare

by Hope Madden

What happens if a woman reconsiders Rosemary’s Baby?

This is not to say that writer/director Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s Nightmare is the masterpiece of Polanski’s 1968 Oscar winner. It is not. But this Norwegian horror delivers an intriguing pregnancy nightmare, one that benefits from a somewhat merciless female perspective.

Eili Harboe (Thelma) is Mona. She and boyfriend Robby (Herman Tømmeraas, Leave) just bought an apartment. It needs a lot of work, but it’s all theirs and now they can be grown-ups. Mona isn’t sure she and Robby have the same definition of grown up, though, and here’s where things begin to break down.

Mona begins having nightmares that escalate into sleepwalking, sleep paralysis and hallucinations. Could it be stress over abandoning a burgeoning career to focus on renovations and – if Robby has a say in things ­– starting a family? Or maybe it’s the creepy neighbors and their screeching infant?

Whatever the case, Robby’s sexy, shirtless doppelganger comes to Mona every night. The relentlessness of it all has Mona questioning reality.

So do we. Rasmussen rarely clarifies what is really happening and what is nightmare. She mines the dreamy fact that what we see in our sleep is often an image of our waking troubles, particularly those we hide from ourselves. Mona wants to please, as so many women do, and the men around her take casual advantage of this. One scene in a doctor’s office pinpoints the moment Mona finally is moved to begin to act on her own.

Microagressions blend into bigger dangers as Mona’s life blurs with her nightmares. Rasmussen fills the reality with details and beautifully executed moments that fully outline Mona’s struggle. The darker fantasy world of the nightmares is given far less attention, and the medical world that bridges the two feels slapped together.

But Harboe’s understated turn, particularly in a handful of breathtaking scenes, helps Rasmussen blisteringly articulate an everyday horror women face.

Blood in an Elevator

Elevator Game

by Hope Madden

Urban legends, paranormal hunter shows, teens making bad decisions – Rebekah McKendry’s Elevator Game rehashes a lot of ideas but banks on a new game and villain to elevate the familiar.

Elevate, get it? It’s in an elevator.

Which, to be honest, seems like the first missed opportunity because McKendry chooses not to heighten claustrophobic tensions by trapping anyone with a monster in a tiny, enclosed box suspended in midair.

Huh.

Instead, gullible thrill seekers (and the hosts of a paranormal investigation show) follow the rules of the online sensation, the elevator game. Press a specific sequence of floors. When it’s finally time to press the button for floor #5, keep your eyes closed the whole time. Do that and the 5th Floor Lady will pull your car up to the 10th floor for a glimpse of her red world.

Sneak a peek instead of keeping your eyes closed and you – and anyone else sorry enough to ride the elevator with you – will face nasty consequences.

There’s an effective backstory explaining the origins of the 5th Floor Lady and an occasionally impressive use of shadow. But McKendry’s network TV style staging and drama leach all tension from the story.

Not one actor convinces as a high school student, nor do most of them convince as long-term best friends or even as frightened prey. David Ian McKendry and Travis Seppala’s dialog doesn’t help.  

Nazarly Demkowicz comes off best, playing the gang’s occult-nerdy camera operator, Matty. His performance borders on comic relief, but offers more nuance than what you can expect from the balance of the cast.

McKendry’s 2022 WTF horror Glorious, while flawed, spilled over with imagination and sewage in equal measure. Elevator Game is in want of more imagination. (The sewage would really be out of place, though.)

Teenage Dream

Perpetrator

by Hope Madden

Jennifer Reeder is preoccupied with missing girls. Her 2019 gem Knives and Skin watched a town fall to pieces around one such absence. Where that film was full of melancholy absurdities, Reeder’s latest, Perpetrator, is a little bolder, a little angrier. 

As Jonny (Kiah McKirnan) approaches her 18th birthday she goes a tad out of control. Her dad (also in some kind of crisis) doesn’t know what to do with her, but an out-of-town aunt (Alicia Silverstone, a sinister delight) offers to take her in. So, Jonny goes from a fairly anonymous, if reckless, urban life to something far more noticeable in her aunt’s small town.

And there is something deeply amiss in Jonny’s new hometown. Girls just go missing. All the time.

McKirnan’s fish out of water performance is so much fun here because Reeder forces the audience to identify with this feral creature. The rest of the town is so odd, almost willing victims after a lifetime of systemic herding. Jonny’s humor, cynicism and enjoyable streak of opportunism give the film a constant sense of forward momentum, though the just-this-side-of-surreal atmosphere has a dreamlike quality.

Silverstone’s prickly, unpredictable performance is nothing but twisted fun, and all the supporting turns contribute something simultaneously authentic and bizarre to the recipe. (That’s a cooking metaphor because of Aunt Hildie’s birthday cake, an ingenious and foul plot kink worth acknowledging.)

Reeder’s work routinely circles back to peculiar notions of coming of age, but John Hughes she ain’t. Goofiness and seriousness, the eerie and the grim, the surreal and familiar all swim the same bloody hallways, practice the same open shooter drills, and speak up at the same assemblies honoring the latest missing girl.

Reeder’s interested in the way women are raised to disregard one another, to compete with each other, to be adored and consumed, sexualized, victimized and vilified. Her reaction to this environment amounts to a reclamation of blood. Perpetrator swims in blood and gore and humor and terror and feminism galore.

Fins to the Left, Fins to the Right

Sharksploitation

by George Wolf

How much do we love Sharks?

Mother’s only get one day, but it’s Shark Week.

And from Megs to ‘Nados to super sharks eating Samuel L. Jackson in the middle of a Samuel L. Jackson speech, we clearly cannot get enough shark movies.

Shudder’s Sharksploitation takes a…wait for it…deep dive into the titular subgenre, building a scattershot timeline for how sharks have been depicted in cinema, both BJ (before Jaws) and AJ (after Jaws.)

First-time director Stephen Scarlata rolls out a respectable array of film historians and pop culture commentators, interspersing the requisite film clips, and sometimes bunching several together via split screens.

Scarlata doesn’t always follow a strict chronology, which can be a bit distracting as the approach sometimes groups the shark films by era, and other times by a similar theme.

Still, there is some solid info here, such as the progression of sharks being held as Gods in the 1931 Murnau film Tabu, to being held by evil geniuses in Bond films, to being hunted for harassing a small New England town over 4th of July weekend.

And, of course, once Jaws practically invented the “blockbuster” as we know it, shark mania was cranked up to eleven while stoking a fear that wasn’t exactly based on fact. Jaws author Peter Benchley came to regret this, and the film is careful to show how he later would devote his time and energy to ocean conservation.

But in the decades since, the laws of shark physics (“shar-sics”!) have been willingly ignored by shark films, and Scarlata achieves a fun sense of mischief by often following a film synopsis with a quick cut to an increasingly exasperated marine biologist.

There’s also an enlightening and funny look behind that infamous line from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, a revisit to the influx of sharks on 70s TV (lookin’ at you, Fonzie), and a nod to the relative “cooling off” period before an eventual rebirth via 1999’s Deep Blue Sea and the emergence of SyFy channel originals

But along with the low-budget “mockbusters” of The Asylum and the intentional ridiculousness of the Sharknado franchise, Scarlata reminds us that there are more recent entries (Open Water, The Shallows) that found ways to thrill with new rules for an old game.

The film’s a little rough around the edges, and it suffers from a wandering nature that can seem like treading water, but Sharksploitation is an entertaining trip through the history of a beloved subgenre. And ultimately, it feels both welcome and overdue.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to shop for Mom’s Shark Week gift.

Sinking Feeling

Quicksand

by Hope Madden

Back in 2023, Chris Kentis crafted one of the most nerve-wracking explorations in tension ever filmed. Open Water dropped you in the middle of the ocean with a married couple and, eventually, as day turns to night and their scuba boat never comes back for them, a lot of sharks.

Few survival tales have stripped away so much and still left you so frazzled. Andres Beltran follows the minimalist tourism of doom path with his Colombian hiking misadventure, Quicksand.

Although Sofia (Carolina Gaitan) and Nick (Allan Hawco) are separated and heading toward divorce, they accept friend Marcos’s invitation to speak at his medical convention. During some down time, they go for a hike, run into trouble, and flee for their lives in the wrong direction – into a part of the rainforest known for quicksand.

Here is where we spend most of the film: stuck chest deep in Colombian mud with an unhappy married couple. No one will realize they’re missing for at least a day, and even then, they’re miles away from where anyone might look for them.

The quicksand isn’t their only problem, naturally. Trapped as they are, they’re vulnerable to predators – fire ants, snakes – but they’ll still have time to hash out their own issues.

A film this limited, done well, can keep you in the moment, your head on a swivel, your mind working along with the characters’ to find a solution. Adam Green’s 2010 skiing horror Frozen succeeded, as, to a degree, did the 2010 Ryan Reynolds date with claustrophobia, Buried.

Given the extremely limited cast, action and locations, a film like this lives and dies on performances since there’s almost nothing else to look at. Hawco delivers layered, vulnerable work that surprises.

Gaitan is less convincing, partly because the performance is superficial and partly because Sofia’s internal journey feels inauthentic and manipulative.

Beltran’s direction, though competent, lacks inspiration. He never manages to mine tension, and his actors rarely feel truly stuck. Uncomfortable, sure. Dirty and wet, definitely. Trapped and panicked, nope.

The fact that the film’s blandly obvious, wildly outdated message is all we get from our efforts doesn’t do Quicksand any favors, either.