Category Archives: Shudder Premiere

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Man of Your Dreams

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Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street

by Hope Madden

“It was intended to play as homophobic rather than homoerotic.”

So says David Chaskin, writer of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge—a film many consider to be the gayest horror movie ever made. Chaskin has long shared the belief that it was the casting of Mark Patton in the lead role, the “final boy,” that pushed the envelope from homophobic to homoerotic.

Chaskin is right.

Thank God for casting.

The mid-Eighties hardly needed another homophobic movie, or another AIDS-terrified horror flick. Did it need the story of an adolescent boy whose homosexual nature emerges as some monstrous id, only to be cured by the love of a good woman? No, but if you just don’t watch the last ten minutes of the film, Nightmare 2 is a bizarre and glorious B-movie coming out party.

Again, thanks to Mark Patton.

Patton is the center of the Shudder documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street. He also produces, which means he gives the footage his OK, leading to a film that comes off as self-congratulatory and self-indulgent more often than it should. But there is no denying Patton’s life has been fascinating.

Patton’s a charming, charismatic vehicle for the doc and the insight he offers into burgeoning stardom, closeted Hollywood and the Eighties is riveting. He’d lived quite a life before his first feature lead likely ended his career—but what he survived outside Elm Street was certainly tougher.

So much so that Patton’s particular anxiety about how this film affected him and his career sometimes feels misplaced. But watching how his perception of the “gay controversy” has evolved and what that evolution has allowed him to do within the gay community is delightful.

Of course, equally fascinating for horror fans is the debate as to who did and did not realize how profoundly gay Nightmare 2 was. Patton’s co-stars—Robert Englund (Freddy himself) comes off especially well—each add to the conversation in entertaining ways, though director Jack Sholder should maybe stop talking.

First time filmmakers Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen seem unsure of their real aim: to tell Mark’s story, to help Mark find closure, to deconstruct the film’s subtext, to explore its lasting meaning for the LGBTQ community. Because of their meandering focus, Scream, Queen feels longer than it needs to be.

Lucky for the filmmakers, every one of those topics makes for an intriguing investigation, and watching Patton triumphantly recreate his iconic (and likely career-ending) dance scene is sheer joy.  

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Monster Mash

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Monstrum

by Hope Madden

Very little in life brings me joy quite like a decent creature feature. Even the silly ones where a big, boil-riddled muppet winds up slathering pus leakage all over Korean mountain people in the 1500s.

Especially those.

Hun Jong-ho’s new import takes us back to 1506, a time when the king is beset by troubles: his disloyal prime minister, a plague across the land. That is a lot for one man to handle, and an even larger load once his most loyal guard, Yoon Gyeom (Kim Myong-min), abandons him to save a little girl’s life.

Fast forward a decade or so and strife still divides the nation, but that strife has a new name: Monstrum.

But is that monster really there? Or is it all just a figment of mass hysteria planted by a conniving prime minister? The sleuthing sets up a clever-enough through line and the deception creates space for plenty of gory action sequences.

Jong-ho’s story, which he penned along with Byeon Jeong-uk and Heo-dam, offers a relatively simple “the people have the power” narrative elevated by some nice set pieces and a handful of choice performances.

Myong-min cuts a properly heroic figure: quiet, savvy, handy in a fight. Kim In-kwan makes the perfect sidekick, his comedic moments (though often anachronistic) offer welcome moments of levity.

With K-pop’s Lee Hye-ri (of the band Girl Day), Jong-ho delivers a little 16th century girl power via one spunky adolescent who’s smart, capable, irreverent and fearless. (Another anachronism? Probably, but again, it’s a movie with a giant, pus-dripping puppet. You came looking for realism?)

And hey, who’s that handsome young man beguiled by Hye-ri’s badassedness? It’s Parasite’s Choi Woo-sik, charming as ever.

The film looks great, thanks in part to some exceptional costuming but mainly to cinematographer Kim Dong-Yeon’s capable maneuvering through interiors and exteriors, false backdrops and lushly wooded hills.

Monstrum is no masterpiece—go in expecting The Host and come out disappointed. But for creature feature fun and just a touch of flatulence humor, Monstrum delivers.

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Imagine There’s No Heaven

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Z

by Hope Madden

There is a moment that currently fascinates horror filmmakers. It is the moment when we forever lose the sweet little white boy destined to become a sociopath.

Director Brandon Christensen (writing with Colin Minnihan) examines parental involvement and even responsibility with the imaginary friend horror, Z.

Beth Parsons (Keegan Connor Tracy) and her husband Kevin (Minnihan regular Sean Rogerson) are at odds about how best to handle son Josh (Jett Klyne) and his new buddy.

This sounds familiar.

Mother is immediately creeped out. Dad is lenient. Boy begins to lash out, blaming imaginary friend. Mom wants to enlist expert help. Dad agrees within reason, but begins to pull away once Mom becomes convinced of a supernatural presence. Bodies begin to pile up.

Brightburn

The Boy

Brahms: The Boy II

Hole in the Ground

Prodigy  

That’s just in the last three years. This phenomenon means two things: filmmakers have hit upon a provocatively of-the-moment topic and it will be hard to find a unique perspective on that topic.

Though Z never seems fresh, there are moments that feel more authentic than they have any right to. Christensen’s direction lets conversations, in particular, breathe. Actors get the chance to give their characters a heartbeat. Adult family relationships have a lived-in quality that both reinforces themes and carves out layers for the story.

As is often the case in this subgenre, the film lives or dies on the role of the mother. Lucky, then, that Tracy gives such a powerful performance. Never showy, Tracy’s weary, passive, put-upon delivery creates a mysterious yet believable character. Beth’s actions feel both natural and unpredictable, which creates a lot of space for the filmmaker to build in surprises.

Too much convenience, too many unearned jump scares and too much predictability threaten to sink the effort, but a handful of narrative choices and a few truly solid performances (plus a cameo from the always welcome Stephen McHattie) elevate the film.

It’s no We Need to Talk about Kevin (the high water mark for the category), but what is? It is an unsettling way to worry about what we pass on to our kids.

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Night of the Living

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Blood Quantum

by Hope Madden

It’s 1981 on the Red Crow Indian reservation and white people have lost their damn minds.

Since it is 1981, no way they know it’s zombies. Sure, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead came out in ’69, but the genre doesn’t really take off until later in the Eighties. No, they have to figure this out for themselves – no meta commentary, no preconceived notions.

It wouldn’t help them anyway because Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum is a zombie movie with a twist, which he uses to his advantage to subvert your knowledge of the genre.

Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) is having a busy morning. He had to shoot his ex-wife’s dog, his sons have both been arrested, Sugar keeps calling the station because his woman’s sick, and Traylor’s dad needs him to come see something down at the store.  

It’s always nutty like that right before the zombie apocalypse, though. Although, to be honest, Blood Quantum often works a little more like 30 Days of Night and Stakeland – both vampire films that riff on zombie tropes—but the filmmaker utilizes Romero when it makes sense.

Barnaby takes common horror themes and bends them to serve the film’s purpose as an apt allegorical nightmare. It’s the combination of social commentary and intimate family drama that makes the film memorable.

Blood Quantum would have been interesting solely on the basis of “plagued up Opies” invading indigenous space—sometimes wrapped in infected blankets, even. But the film derives its real strength from a more intimate struggle. Yes, a diseased white population threatens to overwhelm and destroy the folks of the Mi’gMaq reserve, but Barnaby’s focus is internal.

Whites are a mainly nameless burden, a privileged but parasitic condition of life. Traynor and his boys need to take care of their own shit if they want to survive this.

Greyeyes offers a level performance to build around. Kiowa Gordon brings sinister charm to the bad boy Lysol role, balanced nicely as favorite son Joseph by The Revenant’s Forrest Goodluck, (“He killed my boy!”)

Better still are longtime character actor Gary Farmer (love him!) and relative newcomer Stonehorse Lone Goeman as a couple of guys who’ve lived through a lot and bring rich if not always valuable perspective.

Performances are not always exceptional, and you would not call this a feminist effort, but the underlying wry, weary wit separates the film from anything else like it.

There’s also an excellent use of resources – minimal sets maximized results: claustrophobia, tension, horror.  Barnaby’s spare but effective use of animation is another reason Blood Quantum delivers a vital new perspective for the genre.

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Pop Goes the Scary

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0.0 Mhz

by George Wolf

Imagine it’s 1984.

One of the members of Banarama has joined one of the members of Duran Duran in the cast of a new horror movie. That movie is assembled with the ideas and scenes from much better films, but young pop music fans probably haven’t seen any of ’em, so who cares?

Now, put on your mask and join us back in 2020. A similar mindset seems to propel 0.0 Mhz, a Shudder original that brings two stars of the South Korean K-Pop phenomenon to the screen.

Jung Eun-ji, lead singer of the band Apink, also takes the lead here as So-hee, the newbie in a teen team of ghost-chasers known as “Club 0.0 Mhz.” See, that’s the best frequency to call ghosts (don’t argue), and So-hee’s first outing with the group is to a supposedly haunted house in the woods where the kids aim to dial up a little necromancy.

But what Sang-Yeob (Lee Sung-yeol from the band Infinite) and the rest of the gang don’t know is…their new recruit comes from a long line of dead people-seers.

The local at the general store who tells them all not to go to there is just the first in a string of heavily borrowed narrative checkpoints. Pulling from The Grudge to Elm Street to The Conjuring to The Exorcist, first time director Sun-Dong Yoo adapts Jang Jak’s popular webcomic with barely a whisper of originality or visual flair.

But 0.0 Mhz is clearly aimed a notch below anyone who has seen those films. This is strictly teenage fare, content to provide good-looking idols to swoon over and warmed-over scares for kids who want to scream but not have nightmares.

It accomplishes that, and not much else.

So when get-togethers are all good again, 0.0 Mhz will be more than ready to slumber party!

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Unlucky Streak

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Cursed Films

by Hope Madden

The success of Shudder’s wildly informative and entertaining 2019 doc Horror Noire (still streaming – see it!) paved the way for their new 5-show doc series, Cursed Films. Each of writer/director Jay Cheel’s episodes spends 30 minutes examining one allegedly cursed horror movie production: The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, The Crow and Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Episodes 1 – 3 were made available for review, and the first thing we noticed was that each show is stronger than the last. Our hopes were highest for Ep 1: The Exorcist, but the series has a tough time finding its footing. The idea of a “cursed” production never really materializes and the episode feels padded with unrelated material.

In particular, time spent with a shyster modern day exorcist adds little to the overall theme of the program and offers limited at best entertainment value.

Poltergeist is a film more recognized for an alleged curse, so there’s a little more meat on Ep 2’s bone. Cheel opens up a handful of different, related conversations and braids them interestingly. The episode actually examines the bad luck that dogged all three films in the Poltergeist series and gets some skinny from one of the filmmakers (no, not that one).

It digs a little more at fan obsession in ways that non-Shudder audiences might mock while feeling perfectly at home with this target market. Still, the content feels light and the doc never seems to unveil much.

By Episode 3, though, Cursed Films finds its groove. The Omen offers not only more bountiful nuttiness to examine, but bigger and more interesting interview opportunities.

The big question: Why repeatedly use the single least flattering photo ever taken of Gregory Peck?

By halfway through the series, Cheel has begun to dig into the psychology of what makes a person – or the public – cling to the idea of a curse in the first place, and the psychology on display in this episode is fantastic. The random nut job guests, however, still feel like an unpleasant way to pad.

Though Episodes 4 and 5 were not available for review, the series seems to have hit its stride just as it hits two films that, while less popular than the first three in the series, suffered more profound bad luck than the first three combined.

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I Am Luke’s Broken Heart

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Daniel Isn’t Real

by Hope Madden

Director Adam Egypt Mortimer’s stylish image of mental illness takes a kind of demonic Fight Club angle, hits some mildly homoerotic notes (like Fight Club didn’t?), and offers a quick and absorbing- if hardly new- horror show.

Co-writing with Brian DeLeeuw an adaptation of DeLeeuw’s novel In This Way I Was Saved, Mortimer drops us mid-mom scream into an average afternoon in the life of poor little Luke (Griffin Robert Faulkner, painfully adorable).

As Luke wanders away from home to avoid his mother’s psychotic episode, he witnesses the aftermath of a gruesome murder, but finds a new friend: Daniel.

Quickly enough, Daniel is helping Luke cope with his personal trauma, taking his mind off his problems, and maybe encouraging some truly evil behavior.

From here Mortimer directs us to an effectively creepy doll house (such a great prop in nearly any terrifying film or terrifying child’s bedroom), which will become (as it does in Hereditary and The Lodge) a fine symbol for the madness of the mind.

Mortimer’s film looks great and benefits from a trio of strong performances.

Mary Stuart Masterson, playing Luke’s paranoid schizophrenic mother, gives a brave and believable performance in a role that can easily be overdone.

More importantly, Mortimer’s besties/worsties Luke and Daniel (Miles Robbins and Patrick Schwarzenegger, respectively) create complete characters and offer an uneasy chemistry that keeps the film intriguing.

As Luke’s life spins inevitably out of control, Daniel’s clothing takes on a more and more Tyler Durden style, and I can get behind that. And a certain point near Act 3, Daniel Isn’t Real takes a weird and welcome Clive Barker turn, which is when elements stop being so stylishly predictable and become sloppily fascinating.

The unfortunate Magical Negro trope that will not die surfaces here. It doesn’t entirely sink the film, but it does its damndest to do just that.

Even so, Daniel Isn’t Real is an Olympic-sized leap forward from Mortimer’s previous feature, Some Kind of Hate, the director here showcasing an unpredicted visual flair and storytelling finesse. Though his film treads some well-worn ground, the way Mortimer and team balance the supernatural and psychological push and pull creates an unnerving atmosphere.

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When You Wish Upon a House

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The Room

by George Wolf

Why was Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult classic called The Room, anyway? Why not Tuxedo Football? Doggie McFlowers? Or the obvious: Oh, Hi Mark!

I know, I know, The Room made no sense as a title, which made perfect bizarro sense for a perfectly bizarro film.

This The Room is the new Shudder premiere from director/co-writer Christian Volckman, and while its title is perfectly fitting (though curious, considering the ease of confusion with Wiseau’s entry, as well as Brie Larson’s Room from 2015), the film itself struggles to add anything compelling to a familiar narrative.

Kate (Oblivion‘s Olga Kurylenko) and Matt (Kevin Janssens from Revenge) are moving into their new place in waaay upstate New York. It’s quite a fixer- upper, and somehow nobody hipped these homebuyers to all the gruesome details of the killings that occurred there.

“Nobody told ya?” asks an incredulous yokel.

Nobody did, thanks old-timer. Good thing, then, that Matt can get filled in with a quick Google. But wait, that’s not even the home’s biggest secret.

It’s got a room, a special room, that will give you whatever you ask. A ton of cash? Done. Priceless art (Matt is an artist)? Van Gogh for it!

What about a child? After two miscarriages, the room could be the answer to the couple’s prayers…or there could be a catch to all this wish-granting.

Kurylenko and Janssens are all in, and Volckman (helming his first live action feature) sets an acceptably creepy mood on the way to a mind-bending, off the rails finale, but The Room can never get below the surface of themes that have been tossed around since the earliest Monkey’s Paw adaptations.

The only thing more dangerous than someone who gets nothing they want is someone who gets everything they want. It’s a moral declaration with numerous possibilities, but always more effective when left for an audience to realize on their own, and then maybe underlined by a Rod Serling parting shot.

The Room includes the lesson as a line of dialog, which is a crystal clear picture window into the subtlety to be found inside.

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Jessie’s Boys

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Jessica Forever

by Hope Madden

Shudder’s latest premiere, the French film Jessica Forever, offers a scifi antidote to war films. This is a quietly absorbing genre piece concerned with the lives left to those who know nothing more than fighting for survival, those who must endure not only what battle has done to them, but what battle has encouraged them to do.

In an unnamed future, Jessica (Aomi Muyock, Love), collects and rehabilitates “orphans” — feral young men with nothing and no one. Left entirely on their own, they wreak bloody havoc on society and are hunted by government-controlled drones.

We open on one such young man, Kevin (Eddy Suiveng). He’s thrown himself through a pane of glass in what looks to be a recently abandoned home. As a heavily armed tactical unit descends on the premises, only to softly embrace the combatant, writers/directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel introduce the visual and tonal fluidity the film will emphasize throughout its running time.

The dystopian cinematic landscape is highly populated, but Jessica Forever manages to carve out a unique space.

Muyock’s enigmatic central figure, so quietly effecting, provides the film its compelling center of gravity. Around her orbits a loose family of young men, and as Poggi and Vinel weave in and out of their day-to-day, we’re tuned into the filmmakers’ primary interest.

Unlike so very many movies out there, it is not the glamour or danger of war that attracts these filmmakers. Instead, Jessica Forever focuses on the mental and emotional wreckage these young men carry around with them as they cling to each other and their varying ideas of family, home and normalcy.

Everything about the design of this low budget scifi poem is astonishing. Working with cinematographer Marine Atlan, who shot the pair’s short After School Knife Fight, Poggi and Vinel create and sustain a hypnotic mood.

An absurd beauty to some of the shots helps the filmmakers offset its deliberate pacing. The entire crew, sound design in particular, pulls their weight as well, and the cumulative effect moves this lightly plotted ensemble piece in daring directions.

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Dead Lands, Episode 3

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The Kingdom at the Edge of the World

by Rachel Willis

After a tense, fast-paced second episode, the third episode of The Dead Lands is a bit of a come down.

It’s not surprising that the show runners would choose to follow an action-paced episode with a slower focus on world-building. However, The Kingdom at the Edge of the World comes off more like a placeholder than an opportunity to further the series arc.

Searching for more information about how to right the wrongs in Aotearoa, Mehe and Waka seek out three sister witches. When they find two of the three, we learn more about what’s happening to the world, but not enough to justify devoting two-thirds of the episode to these characters. Much of the dialogue feels like riddles designed to confuse rather than enlighten, and it becomes tedious trying to keep track of what is important information and what’s merely filler.

Though we’re treated to more of the Maori style martial arts, Mau Rākau, there is a scene between Waka and one of the witches that comes off a bit silly. Their choreographed moves are beautiful, but the interaction never feels real. 

It’s only during the last third of the episode that the pace picks up and a few truly tense moments occur, reminding us why this show is worth watching.

Even though the pacing falters, the character development is some of the series’ best yet, with a strong focus on trust. Many times, Mehe is advised not to trust Waka by both by her friends and by those who sense his dangerous nature. Waka is similarly advised to keep his guard up around Mehe, that she will use him to suit her needs and then betray him. This is the first time Waka truly feels like a danger, and to Mehe in particular. 

Despite the obvious threat Waka might pose to her, it is clear Mehe trusts him – she even says as much while they’re training. However, Waka seems to punish her for that trust. It begs the question: will his deadly, distrustful nature threaten their developing bond?

When he gives her a test, she passes it – in the audience’s eyes. Waka, on the other hand, seems to make a decision that reveals his true feelings. However, we’re left hanging as to how Waka will act as the show progresses. The end of The Kingdom at the Edge of the World promises greater conflict to come.