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Family Feud

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Let Him Go

by George Wolf

It feels like Kevin Costner and Diane Lane have made ten movies together, doesn’t it? They haven’t, but their low key and lived-in chemistry keeps you constantly invested in Let Him Go, a slow burning and effective revenge thriller aimed squarely at the older demos.

Costner and Lane are George and Margaret Blackledge, a retired Sheriff and his wife loving their status as grandparents to little Jimmy Blackledge in late 1950s Montana. The simple life turns tragic when their son James (Ryan Bruce) dies in an accident, and complicated when their daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter) marries the brooding Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain).

Donnie’s an abusive husband and stepfather, and without warning, takes Lorna and Jimmy back to his family in North Dakota.

George and Margaret decide to track them all down, finding out pretty quickly the Weboy clan don’t appreciate attention from strangers.

The flashpoint to this Western Gothic blood feud is matriarch Blanche Weboy, brought to scenery devouring life by the glorious Lesley Manville. Dragging on her cigarettes and demanding obedience, Blanche is quick to show the Blackledges how far she’ll go to keep Lorna and their grandson under her thumb.

Writer/director Thomas Bezucha builds the tension well, then uses Manville’s entrance as the natural catalyst for amped intensity. Adapting Larry Watson’s novel, Bezucha carves out the road to vengeance and redemption like a less nuanced Cormac McCarthy. This isn’t poetry, but that doesn’t mean it’s not primal and satisfying.

Costner’s in his comfort zone as a weathered country lawman, more invested and touching than he’s been in years. Lane grounds Margaret with a wounded but determined heart, stepping easily into the soul of the film.

After a tender kiss, a sixty-something husband telling a fifty-something wife, “Don’t start anything you can’t finish” could seem like a cheesy ad for Viagra. It doesn’t here, and that’s a testament to the authentic bonds of time, grief and love formed by Costner and Lane.

Even at nearly two hours, the secondary character development does feel slight, and some thematic possibilities of the Blackledge’s friendship with a young and wayward Native American (Booboo Stewart) are never quite fulfilled.

But Let Him Go is here for the adults at the ranch, with a solid American genre yarn full of few surprises, but plenty of bang for your buckaroo.

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Involuntary Tributes

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Triggered

by Rachel Willis

If you’re looking for a not-so-scary, violent, sort-of funny horror film this post-Halloween, Triggered might be for you.

Director Alastair Orr’s (Indigenous) latest effort starts with a violent opening, but quickly shifts focus to nine twentysomethings camping in a remote location in the woods. We learn this is a reunion of friends who were involved in a horrible event back in high school.

After a night of partying, the nine wake to find themselves hooked up to bombs, each with a countdown timer. As the friends learn the rules of the “game,” we suddenly find our characters locked in a Hunger Games-type situation. (There’s even a character named Kato.)

It’s hard to root for people fighting for their lives when none of them are very likable. It’s also nearly impossible to give the characters more than superficial identifiers (the smart one, the quiet one, the bad boy, etc.) when there are so many involved. However, the filmmakers do a good job of introducing them slowly over the opening scenes so we can better keep track of who’s who.

If you don’t remember their names, it doesn’t really matter. They’re pawns in a game, not people to care about. It’s a wise move, limiting the time spent getting to know the characters. It thrusts us more quickly into the “kill or be killed” situation, which is a lot more fun.

Some of the film’s jokes land, but most don’t, and it’s hard to build tension when so much of dialogue is a forced attempt at humor. There are a couple of lines that elicit a few good laughs, though. (“That’s the herpes talking!”) If you can ignore some of the weaker moments, you’ll be happier for it.   

A few of the actors really get into their roles, bringing some entertainment value, but others play their parts without enthusiasm, clarifying an imbalance of talent among the nine.

There are few surprises in a movie without much imagination, so don’t expect too much of the revelations as they come – you’ll likely predict most of what’s going to happen before it happens.

However, it’s easy to have fun with this movie – as long as you check your expectations at the door.

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Game Off

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True to the Game 2

by Darren Tilby

Full disclosure: I never had the pleasure of seeing the first True to the Game movie, and so my thoughts here are based entirely on Jamal Hill’s sequel True to the Game 2 and what little I managed to garner from it about the first movie.

Picking up a year after the murder of her husband – Quadir – by rival gang leader Jerrell (Andra Fuller), Gena (Erica Peeples) is determined to leave her life in Philly behind her, moving to New York City and reinventing herself as a journalist. But the past has a way of catching up, and soon the drug gangs she thought she had escaped are closing in.

At its heart, this is a story of black lives being torn apart by gang violence, and as such, you might expect it to be a profound or maybe even empowering experience. Regretfully, the only thing remotely profound or empowering here is that not absolutely everyone in the film is an utterly detestable stereotype—although most are.

Much of the film relies on broad stereotypes and genre clichés, as it grinds from one scene to the next, and from one two-dimensional character to another. And there are a lot of characters here, in fact too many. Each with their own branching story going on, many of them not particularly well written, and most with arcs never satisfactorily resolved. While there are many perfectly capable performances, I just can’t accept them as believable people.

Quite apart from that, the pacing is off, the soundtrack feels like an afterthought and the plot is quite dull. It’s not bad, but nor is it exciting; there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before, and seen done better. The camera work, however, is really rather splendid. Framing is solid, and how the camera drifts and floats throughout and from scene to scene is skillfully done and pleasing.

True to the Game 2 didn’t work for me, on any level whatsoever. I disliked many of the characters, I was disinterested in the story, and I was bored by the predictability of its cliché-ridden writing. Fans of the first film (True to the Game), and perhaps fervid fans of the crime genre itself, may get something out of this, or at least more than I did. But suffice to say, I won’t be climbing the walls in anticipation for a sequel.

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Ship of Ghouls

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Blood Vessel

by Darren Tilby

I was excited to see Blood Vessel for two reasons: firstly, it’s a creature feature, which I love. And secondly, I love the deserted/ghost ship setting. Now I’ll be the first to admit I had high expectations for this film, and perhaps they were too high. Because by the end, I was left feeling a little deflated.

Now I want to be absolutely clear when I say Blood Vessel is NOT a bad film. Not by any stretch of the imagination. My main issue with the film comes from the pacing. We follow a group of seven survivors of a German U-Boat attack. Three Americans: Malone (Robert Taylor), Jackson (Christopher Kirby) and Bigelow (Mark Diaco). Two Brits: Nurse, Jane Prescott (Alyssa Sutherland) and codebreaker, Faraday (John Lloyd Fillingham). Also Australian, Sinclair (Nathan Philips) and Russian, Teplov (Alex Cooke). A diverse selection of allied forces.

We join this mixed bag of characters adrift at sea and with dwindling supplies. On the verge of losing all hope, a Nazi minesweeper hoves into view—a visually stunning sequence. Deciding that capture, or possibly even murder by the Nazi’s is better than starving to death the group clamber aboard. But once aboard, the ship seems deserted. Apart from a mysterious young girl (Ruby Isobel Hall) who – in a sequence mimicking Newt’s discovery in Aliens – is found hiding deep in the ship’s interior.

Blood Vessel gets off to a strong start and wastes no time getting the survivors onto the doomed vessel. Director/co-writer Justin Dix employs visuals here, and in fact, throughout the film, that are incredibly compelling and atmospheric. The eerie red hue of the sky and crashing waves of the ocean as the Nazi ship pierces the seemingly unnatural pelagic fog is quite a sight to behold. The movie’s excellent visual quality is maintained in its production design and particularly with its creature effects. And while the creatures themselves are, without a doubt, grotesque and frightening looking, they are never fully utilised.

Which brings me to the issue of pacing; for me, the film’s biggest problem. Which really is a shame because, actually, it starts off so well. But after a long time of exploring the ship and discovering the desiccated and burnt corpses of the ship’s crew (which is fun), we still haven’t learned anything new. And by the time the creatures are released, the events in the story restrict them doing anything that feels worth our wait.

What this does mean, however, is that we get to spend more time with these characters, which isn’t a terrible thing. The quality of the performances throughout the film’s cast is solid, with Alex Cooke’s Teplov really standing out for me. The problem here is the unoriginality of the characters themselves. None really express as anything other than genre typical stereotypes, which isn’t a massive problem for a film like this; character backstories and development aren’t terribly important. But it would have been nice to have seen something a little different.

All things considered, and in spite of a few issues, Blood Vessel is an entertaining enough horror romp. A well-directed, situational horror film with gorgeous cinematography from Sky Davies and John Sanderson’s superb special effects is what awaits anyone daring enough to hop aboard.

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Sheep Go to Heaven, Goats Go to Hell

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The Dark and the Wicked

by Hope Madden

I’ve been a Bryan Bertino fan since The Strangers because of course I have. How could I not be? That loyalty paid off in 2016 with the moving allegorical horror The Monster, and it rewards viewers again this weekend with the supernatural terror of The Dark and the Wicked.

A twisty old Southern Gothic that relies on practical effects and imagination, the film arrives somewhere in deeply rural America with Louise (a terrific Marin Ireland). She’s about a day behind her brother Michael (Michael Abbott Jr., The Death of Dick Long), back at home because of Dad’s deteriorating health.

Mom (Lynn Andrews) does not want them here.

Bertino is not a filmmaker to let his audience off the hook—if you’ve seen The Strangers, you know that. Like that effort, TD&TW is a slow burn with nerves fraying inside the isolated farmhouse as noises, shadows, and menacing figures lurk outside.

Bertino and cinematographer Tom Schraeder work the darkness in and around the goat farm to create a lingering, roaming dread. There are clumsier moments that feel like pre-ordained audience scares, and they really stand out in a film that otherwise just seeps into your subconscious. But where Bertino, who also writes, scores extra points is in crafting believable characters.

Too often in horror you find wildly dramatic behavior in the face of the supernatural. One character adamantly denies and defies what is clearly happening while another desperately tries to communicate with “it.” No one would do either, but this is the best way to serve the needed action to come in lesser films.

Here, Bertino, Ireland and Abbott give us real characters honestly grappling with something extraordinary.

The don’t want to be here. They don’t want to leave. So, they just do what they can, like the rugged folks they are.

“Well, if I’m here, I’m gonna work.”

Like Natalie James’s Relic from earlier this year, TD&TW has the long, slow, debilitating experience of parental illness on its mind. Like that film, this movie has a deeply aching center that makes the horror in the house as tragic as it is scary, and more horrifyingly, somehow inevitable.

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Waiting On a Friend

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Come Play

by George Wolf

In a vacuum, Come Play is a fairly smart and mildly jump-scary slice of PG-13 horror for your Halloween weekend. It even finds an unexpected and satisfying way out of the monstrous concept that it fosters.

But the feature debut for writer/director Jacob Chase has trouble escaping the shadow of two other films. One is Larry, Chase’s own short from 2017, and the other is the modern horror classic that clearly inspired him.

Larry is the star of Misunderstood Monsters, a story app that Oliver, a non-verbal autistic boy (Azhy Robertson from Marriage Story), has stumbled onto. Larry says he just wants a friend, but he’s too scary, and Oliver resists.

But Larry just won’t be denied. And it isn’t long before Oliver’s estranged parents (Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher, Jr.) have to admit they really are being terrorized by an entity let in through the screens on their many devices.

A monster from a troubled child’s story manifests itself in a home unsettled by emotional turmoil. Though the metaphors in Come Play are geared more toward multiplex than art house, the blueprint is plenty familiar.

Chase does prove himself to be an able technician, exhibiting some nifty camerawork and a fine sense of visual creepiness. But the road to his effective finale drags from a lack of solid scares and the feeling of filler that can plague a short film stepping up in class.

There are some valid ideas at work here. They’re not terribly urgent or original, but Come Play isn’t pretending they are. It’s a film with little interest in overthinking, for horror fans not interested in films that do.

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Witchy Women

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The Craft: Legacy

by Hope Madden

Does The Craft: Legacy miss the Goth Goddess vibe that only Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk) can bring to a teen horror about high school witchcraft?

Of course it does. All movies do. I can name very few films that would not benefit from at least a touch of Nancy Downs’s magic, although this one does seem to ache for it. Still, writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones does an admirable job of updating the angst, limiting the cattiness, and creating a coven worthy of the best weirdos.

The sequel of the 1996 cult classic drops into modern day suburbia with adorable little outcast Lily (Cailee Spaeny) and her mom (Michelle Monaghan). Mom is moving in with beau Adam (David Duchovny) and his three teenage sons, so Lily is trying to be supportive.

And then, it’s the first day of high school in a brand new school, which is, itself, the worst day of anyone’s life, right? No. This really becomes the worst day—THE WORST—until Lily is rescued by three new friends.

They like her even before they realize that she’s the witch they’ve been waiting for to fill out their coven. Yay!

Lister-Jones creates an atmosphere far more fun and accepting than the one you’ll find in the ’96 original. Written and directed by men (Peter Filardi and Andrew Fleming), The Craft created a sisterhood only to have it destroy itself from within.

In the sequel, girls are told that their difference makes them powerful and only villains seek to control a girl’s power for her.

The result is a lot of fun, although it’s also a film that loses track of its purpose pretty quickly. The stakes never feel especially high, and most of the real drama and peril aren’t introduced until halfway through the film, giving them a tacked on quality. It’s as if Lister-Jones really loved hanging out with these kids and then realized at the last minute she was going to have to give them something to do.

So it’s uneven. Characters are fun and performances are strong. Nicholas Galitzine is especially delightful in what amounts to a dual role. He’s equally convincing in each. Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna and Gideon Adlon round out the coven, and they are as adorable as Lily.

They just really need more to do.

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Because You’re Mine

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Spell

by Hope Madden

Spell is here to let you know that fear of backwoods folk is not for white people only.

Omari Hardwick is Marquis, an enormously successful corporate lawyer who is not above defending clients against class action lawsuits that would primarily benefit people of color like himself. Why does he do it? Because that’s his job, he’s good at his job, he makes a lot of money, and he worked very hard to get where he is.

How do we know that last bit? Well, nightmares about abuse wake him in the morning, plus he knows how to pick a lock when his wife somehow locks herself in her own bedroom. Marquis came from somewhere he’s not proud of, and now he has to pilot his own airplane with his wife and two teens back to Appalachia to go to his father’s funeral.

Spell is a by-the-numbers backwoods thriller. Our hero has forgotten where he comes from. This film plans to scare him into remembering.

Marquis wakes up all James Caan style in the bedroom of some helpful but controlling woman who wants him just to rest. He does not not want to rest, though. Quite reasonably, he wants to know where his family is, what happened to him, and why Miss Eloise (Loretta Devine) keeps the door to his room locked.

Deep in Appalachia, it seems, you will always find a creepy granny type who conjures a bit, an amiable grampa type who’s not as nice as he seems, and an extra-large, extra quiet Jethro kind of guy in bib overalls.

Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer doesn’t drum up too many surprises there. His screenplay borrows heavily from about a dozen films from Misery to The Skeleton Key to Green Inferno, not to mention every flick where a group stops off at a creepy gas station only to realize they’ve gone too far off the map for their own safety.

Wimmer is white, though, which makes this particular story an unusual one for him. Director Mark Tonderai does not get a screenwriting credit, so I guess we assume that this vernacular sprung from the head of Wimmer. I really hope not. It would be problematic enough coming from a Black writer.

Marquis’s foot, though. For gore hounds and the squeamish looking for a nasty thrill, that foot alone is almost worth it.

Until the third act. I am not one to suggest that ambiguity equals plot holes. I like movies that leave questions unanswered. Unless those questions are: Where did the entire cast of villains go off to, leaving the hero all the time in the world to travel wherever he needs to go in these woods? And why isn’t he even limping?

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Teen Wolves

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The True Adventures of Wolfboy

by George Wolf (no relation)

Have many Young Adult films carry a theme of self-acceptance? Plenty, but that’s not a problem.

It’s delivering that message via the same tired playbook that gets old, which is just one of the reasons The True Adventures of Wolfboy lands as a charming and completely captivating tale of a truly special teen.

And director Martin Krejci makes sure it feels like a tale in so many magical ways, starting with the beautifully ornate title cards separating each chapter in the journey of a lonely and self-loathing boy on his thirteenth birthday.

Paul (Jaeden Martell) suffers from hypertrichosis – an extremely rare affliction causing abnormal hair growth all over his face and body. He covers his face with a ski mask most of the time, but his father (Chris Messina) gently urges him to put the mask aside and accept the taunts of “dogboy!” with dignity.

Paul’s mother has been gone since he was born, but when a strange birthday gift delivers a map and a promise of explanations, Paul runs away to answer the invitation and get some answers from Mom (Chloe Sevigny).

Krejci crafts Paul’s journey from dog to wolf as an epic odyssey of self-discovery. From Pinnochio-like exploitation in a sideshow run by Mr. Silk (John Turturro, also a producer), to joining the eyepatch-wearing Rose (Eve Hewson) for a string of petty holdups, Paul’s world – and his world view – expands quickly.

But it is the effervescent teen Aristiana (transgender actress Sophie Giannamore) that most triggers Paul’s awakening. She hates the short “boy” haircut her mother insists on, while Paul is ashamed of how much hair he has. Her mother calls her Kevin, his mother doesn’t call at all.

Similarly, Martell delivers true tenderness and longing behind Mark Garbarino’s impressive makeup, while Giannamore is a heartwarming example of defiant positivity. Both actors and their characters bond quickly, and screenwriter Olivia Dufault (also transgender) finds a power that eludes so many YA dramas via the subtle genius of writing Aristiana as a secondary catalyst.

We already feel for Paul, so Aristiana’s effect on his self image is something we feel without being told. The point is made organically, with wit and wisdom, and much more resonance. What Paul finds at the end of his journey is sweet, but just gravy.

Wolfboy is the rare teen drama that speaks without condescension, and entertains without calculation.

That’s welcome, special even.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?