Frank Darabont really loves him some Stephen King, having adapted and directed the writer’s work almost exclusively for the duration of his career. While The Shawshank Redemption may be Darabont’s most fondly remembered effort, The Mist, an under-appreciated creature feature, is our vote for his best.
David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son head to town for some groceries. Meanwhile, a tear in the space/time continuum (who’s to blame?!) opens a doorway to alien monsters. So Drayton, his boy, and a dozen or so other shoppers all find themselves trapped inside this glass-fronted store just waiting for rescue or death.
Marcia Gay Harden is characteristically brilliant. As the religious zealot who turns survival inside the store into something less likely than survival out with the monsters, she brings a little George Romero to this Stephen King.
In a Romero film, no matter how great the threat from the supernatural, the real monsters tend to be the rest of the humans. King does not generally go there, but he does so with The Mist and it’s what makes this one of his most effective films.
While Harden excels in a way that eclipses all other performances, the whole cast offers surprisingly restrained and emotional turns – Toby Jones is especially effective.
The FX look good, too, and let’s be honest, a full-on monster movie with weak FX is the lamest. The way Darabont frames the giants, in particular, gives the film a throw-back quality to the old matinee creature features. But he never gives into cheekiness or camp. The Mist is a genuinely scary film – best seen in the black and white version if you can find it.
Regardless, it’s the provocative ending that guarantees this one will sear itself into your memory. Though this is likely what kept The Mist from gaining an audience in theaters, it is a brilliant and utterly devastating scene that elevates the film from great creature feature to great film.
They may sing songs we already know in a sequel that’s often thematically simple, but to quarantined families longing for an escape from re-runs, these new Trolls will feel like a cool blast of freedom.
Just as Branch (Justin Timberlake) is working up the courage to break out of the friend zone with Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick), trouble invades the Pop Troll world of endless singing, dancing and regular hug appointments.
Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom) of the Rock Trolls, daughter of King Thrash (Ozzy Osbourne!), has set out on a Mad Max-style rampage through Troll Kingdom, collecting the magic strings from each of 6 different musical villages in a quest to make everyone bow to power chords and devil horns.
Poppy makes a pinky promise (a pinky promise!) not to let that happen, so she heads out with Branch and Biggie (James Corden) on a shuffle through the Troll playlist.
Like the first film, World Tour brings exuberant splashes of sound, color and enthusiasm. But while this latest adventure salutes more types of music, it somehow makes all them feel more bland on the way to its evergreen moral of appreciating differences.
What elevates these Trolls, though, is their funny bone. One of the directors and two of the writers return from part one, but this film is much funnier, especially for the parents sitting down for movie night.
From the struggle to grasp “Hammer time” to the deviousness of yodeling and the futility of fighting smooth jazz, this script-by-committee lands several solid gags. A new group of all star voices (especially a scene-stealing Sam Rockwell as Hickory the cowboy) helps, too.
And really, where else are you gonna hear Ozzy mumble through “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?”
It’s August, 2016 – the hottest August in history – and Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes) is taking the temperature of New York City. Armed with open-ended questions, she travels borough to borough gauging different New Yorkers’ sensibilities concerning climate, race, capitalism, robotics, gentrification, unions.
As the world sweats and readies itself for a total solar eclipse, Story gets people talking.
Her subjects are not tongue tied, and their soliloquies are
loosely linked one to the other by their in-the-moment nature. You can’t talk
about this moment, it seems, without waxing nostalgic about the past and
worrying about the future.
How do they feel about the future?
Some are compelled to take action, to exert some control
over their present to claim their own future. Others prepare. Some take note of
what’s going on around them and that’s enough. Some don’t even do that.
The film is equally fascinating whether it’s digging into grand ideas or sitting in a sidewalk lawn chair chit chatting about the nastier, day-to-day consequences of gentrification.
It’s best, though, when it walks alongside Afronaut – New York artist or man from the future who’s come back to make notes on the present and offer sage advice?
Multiply the probability of a harm by the magnitude of the
harm.
All directors manipulate the message, especially
documentarians, and Story is no different. Story’s unshowy curiosity proves an
amicable though not passive guide. She doesn’t judge, neither does she excuse.
Story talks with big thinkers in their spacious, impressive apartments. She follows activists to the streets as they practice to effect change. She sits on a barstool with Yankee fans who’d like to reframe racism as “resentment.“
Is the future controllable, inevitable, or both? Are we preparing for it, or will it eat us whole like the moon ate the sun that August? The answer is ultimately surreal – just ask Afronaut.
The year was 1988, and as far as you know, metal bands shouted
“hail Satan” and evangelicals took to the airwaves warning their flocks about cults
driven to spill virtuous blood.
Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer) jumps in the way back
machine to road trip with three besties headed to a rock show. Alexis
(Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson) and Bev (Amy Forsyth) are rockin’
like Dokken with those bare midriff black tees and upside down cross dangles,
but something’s amiss.
For one thing, their hair is not nearly obnoxious enough. No
way they’re en route to a rock concert in ’88. No one’s hair even grazes the
car ceiling.
Also, that trio of dudes they’re flirting with (at least one of them is mulleted, so there is a whiff of authenticity) is clearly beneath them. Plus, with this nationwide ritualistic Satanic killing spree going on…
Here’s the thing, though. I was actually alive in rural Ohio
in the late Eighties, and there honestly were people—like, people in
authority—who believed our corn fields were lousy with covens. They believed metal
music transmitted the words of the dark lord to the eager ears of teens.
It wasn’t true. It’s just that all rock bands in 1988 sucked.
Nonetheless, Meyers creates a nearly believable atmosphere
for his spare, occasionally comical dive into Ozzy-inspires Satanism.
Hasson charms as the hot friend with a weak bladder. While
the banter never feels quite fresh enough to be improvisational, the dialog
among the three girls is random, comfortable fun.
Daddario and Hasson share a silly chemistry that keeps scenes bright and engaging, even when the slight plot begins to wear through.
In its best moments, We Summon the Darkness conjures Kevin Smith’s Red State (an underseen and under-appreciated horror gem). Johnny Knoxville plays intriguingly against type as the Midwestern pastor warning youngsters about the lures of the devil, and Daddario has enough screen presence to anchor the movie.
There’s just not a lot to see here. Pretty girls. Terrible music. Worse clothes. Religious zealots. Backwards thinking. Friends who drive you crazy on a road trip because they have to stop every ten minutes to pee.
Yes, that does sound like 1988 to me, actually. It’s just too bad Meyers couldn’t deliver the kind of inspired, memorable scares born of high school relationships, weirdos and misfits he shared in My Friend Dahmer. Instead the camaraderie and atmosphere become entertaining distractions from a forgettable story.
With her 2013 debut It Felt Like Love, Eliza Hittman brought a refreshing honesty to the teen drama. Zeroing in on the summer days when two girls began their sexual lives, the film was an exciting introduction to a writer/director with a quietly defiant voice.
At its core, Never Rarely Sometimes Always could be seen as Hittman’s kindred sequel to her first feature, as two friends navigate a cold, sometimes cruel world that lies just beyond the hopeful romanticism of first love.
Autumn (Sidney Flanagan) is a talented 17 year-old in Pennsylvania whose crude father berates her for an ever-present foul mood. She’s worried, and when a visit to her local health clinic confirms her fears, Autumn confides only in her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) as she weighs her options.
In Autumn’s home state, those options are severely limited, so the girls scrape together as much money as they can and hop a bus to New York, encountering more hard realities along the way.
The over-reliance on metaphor that sometimes hampered It Felt Like Love now feels like that awkward school picture from just a few grades back. NRSA shows Hittman in full command of her blunt truth-telling, demanding we accept this reality of women fighting to control their own bodies amid constant waves of marginalization.
Flanagan, a New York musician making her acting debut, is simply a revelation. There isn’t a hint of angsty teen caricature in Autumn’s dour moodiness, just a beaten down worldview born from all that is revealed in her beautifully brutal interview at the New York clinic.
As an off-camera social worker asks Autumn to give the titular response to a series of questions, Hittman holds tight on Flanagan and she never shrinks from the moment. It’s a devastatingly long take full of hushed experience that may easily shake you.
Just three films in, Hittman has established herself as a filmmaker of few words, intimate details and searing perspective. NRSW is a sensitive portrayal of female friendship and courage, equal parts understated and confrontational as it speaks truths that remain commonly ignored.
Given the subject matter, the film’s PG-13 rating is surprising, but hopeful. This film deserves an audience, much like the conversations it will undoubtedly spark.
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.
The first step toward freedom is telling your own story.
Writer C.S. McMullen and director Malgorzata Szumowska tell
this one really well. Between McMullen’s outrage and the macabre lyricism of
Szumowska’s camera, The Other Lamb offers a dark, angry and satisfying
coming-of-age tale.
Selah (Raffey Cassidy, Killing
of a Sacred Deer, Vox
Lux) has never known any life except that of Eden, the commune where she
lives with the sisters, the wives, and the Sheperd (Michiel Huisman, The
Invitation).
Szumowska doesn’t tell as much as she unveils: Selah’s
defiant streak, Sheperd’s unspoken rules, what puberty can mean if you’re a
good follower. She strings together a dreamlike series of visions that horrify
on a primal level, the imagery giving the film the feel of gruesome poetry more
than narrative.
Selah’s first period and the group’s migration to a new and more isolated Eden offer the tale some structure. Like many a horror film, The Other Lamb occupies itself with burgeoning womanhood, the end of innocence. Unlike most others in the genre, Szumowska’s film depicts this as a time of finding your own power.
The Other Lamb does not simply suggest you question
authority. It demands that you do far more than that, and do it for your own
good.
Selah’s emotional arc plays itself across Cassidy’s face, at first all eyes, piercing blue and eager. But restlessness and defiance outline every expression. Soon Selah’s painterly beauty gives way to the hardness of anger—a transformation Szumowska celebrates.
Misery loves company, yeah? So let’s hang out with some other folks whose stir-craziness leads to even worse decision making than our own. For the first time ever (to avoid a salt-in-the-wound effect), we are sticking strictly to movies you can stream right now—which means The Lodge didn’t make it, although we do really love that movie.
6. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
More
of a second cousin than a sequel to 2008’s Cloverfield, 10
Cloverfield Lane is a claustrophobic thriller. No found footage. No shaky
camera. No perturbed kaiju.
Michelle
(Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes from a car crash handcuffed to a pipe in a
bunker. Howard (John Goodman, top-notch as usual), may simply be saving her
from herself and the apocalypse outside. Good natured Emmett (John Gallagher
Jr.) certainly thinks so.
First-time director Dan Trachtenberg ratchets up the tension as the film progresses, finding the creepiness in even the most mundane domestic activities, as an award-worthy performance from John Goodman reminds us monsters come in many forms.
*Cheapest on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu
5. Rammbock: Berlin Undead
Why does this film work?
Michael (Michael Fruith) arrives in Berlin to visit his recently-ex
girlfriend. She’s not home. While he waits in her apartment, Berlin falls prey
to the zombipocalypse.
It’s actually the rage virus, and it’s how well Rammbock plays like the
Berlin equivalent of 28 Days Later or Quarantine that helps
it excel.
Michael finds himself trapped inside his ex’s apartment building, scheming
survival tricks with the plumber hiding out with him. The team work, strategy,
human kindness and pathos all combine with really solid acting and more than a
few well-choreographed action bits to help this film more than transcend
familiar tropes.
You love these guys. You believe in them, and the idea that they won’t make it through this is dreadful. Director/co-writer Marvin Kren, blessed with a stellar cast, works your sympathies and your nerves.
*Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes
4. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? Yes, please!
The two then-aging (just barely, if we’re honest) starlets played aging
starlets who were sisters. One (Davis’s Jane) had been a child star darling.
The other (Crawford’s Blanche) didn’t steal the limelight from her sister until
both were older, then Blanche was admired for her skill as an adult actress.
Meanwhile, Jane descended into alcoholism and madness. She also seemed a bit lax
on hygiene.
Blanche winds up wheelchair bound (How? Why? Is Jane to blame?!) and Jane’s
envy and insanity get the better of her while they’re alone in their house.
Famously, the two celebrities did not get along on set or off. Whether true
or rumor, the performances suggest a deep, authentic and frightening hatred
borne of envy that fuels the escalating tension.
Davis is at her unhinged best in a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination. Crawford pales by comparison (as the part requires), but between the hateful chemistry and the story’s sometimes surprising turns, this is a movie that ages well, even if its characters did not.
*super cheap on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play
3. It Comes at Night (2017)
Deep in the woods, Paul (Joel Edgerton, solid as always),
Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) have
established a cautious existence in the face of a worldwide plague. They have
boarded their windows, secured their doors, and enacted a very strict set of
rules for survival.
At the top of that list: do not go out at night.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults explores the confines of the house with a
fluid camera and lush cinematography, slyly creating an effective sense of
separation between the occupants and the dangers outside. But what are those
dangers, and how much of the soul might one offer up to placate fear itself? In
asking those unsettling questions, It Comes at Night becomes a
truly chilling exploration of human frailty.
*Netflix
2. Housebound (2014)
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.
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 any better.
*free on Tubi; also on iTunes
1. The Shining (1980)
It’s isolated, it’s haunted, you’re trapped, but somehow
nothing feels derivative and you’re never able to predict what happens next.
It’s Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece rendition of Stephen King’s The Shining.
A study in atmospheric tension, Kubrick’s vision of the
Torrance family collapse at the Overlook Hotel is both visually and aurally
meticulous. It opens with that stunning helicopter shot, following Jack
Torrance’s little yellow Beetle up the mountainside, the ominous score
announcing a foreboding that the film never shakes.
The hypnotic, innocent sound of Danny Torrance’s Big Wheel against the weirdly phallic patterns of the hotel carpet tells so much – about the size of the place, about the monotony of the existence, about hidden perversity. The sound is so lulling that its abrupt ceasing becomes a signal of spookiness afoot.
An unidentified body is found buried in the dirt at an unusual crime scene. The county coroner and his assistant/son begin an autopsy, immediately discovering unsettling things. As they dig for more answers, unsettling gradually turns to terrifying.
In 2010, director Andre Ovredal made Trollhunter a fresh blast of B-movie fun. He brings a similar vibe to The Autopsy of Jane Doe, a film with enough wry smarts and acting chops to deliver more satisfying scares than you might expect.
Ovredal, along with screenwriters Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing, knows the payoff is weaker than the premise, so he makes sure you’re plenty invested early on, earning some capital that will be spent when things get a bit silly. Talented leads don’t hurt, either.
As Coroner Tom Tilden and his son Austin, Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch display an easy chemistry and deliver a solid anchor of believability to build upon. We trust these guys, and we don’t doubt they truly want to do right by the young victim through science, and learn the source of her painful death.
That there is plenty of gruesome body horror should be no surprise, but the under-reliance on a bevy of special effects is a nice one. Even better is Ovredal’s treatment of his lead actress (Olwen Kelly). Yes, the female body on the slab is young, attractive (at least to start) and constantly nude, but the director seems careful not to further exploit that fact with a leering camera, focusing instead on making it increasingly difficult to look her way.
Once the Tildens realize they’re in a literally bloody mess, Jane Doe becomes an adult version of Lights Out, delivering jump scares and red herrings with a knowing, playful touch that says “Why so serious? Let’s have some fun!”
