Fright Club

Fright Club: Maybe a Vampire

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So many vampires – so many! And then there are all these other guys who may or may not be. Sometimes it’s hard to say. Sure they drink blood, but do they really need to? Let’s explore.

5. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)

Sure, Nicolas Cage is a whore, a has-been, and his wigs embarrass us all. But back before The Rock (the film that turned him), Cage was always willing to behave in a strangely effeminate manner, and perhaps even eat a bug. He made some great movies that way.

Peter Lowe (pronounced with such relish by Cage) believes he’s been bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals) during a one night stand. It turns out, he’s actually just insane. The bite becomes his excuse to indulge his self-obsessed, soulless, predatory nature for the balance of the running time.

Cage gives a masterful comic performance in Vampire’s Kiss as a narcissistic literary editor who descends into madness. The actor is hilarious, demented, his physical performance outstanding. The way he uses his gangly mess of limbs and hulking shoulders inspires darkly, campy comic awe. And the plastic teeth are awesome.

Peter may believe he abuses his wholesome editorial assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) with sinister panache because he’s slowly turning into a demon, but we know better.

4. The Transfiguration (2016)

Milo likes vampire movies.

Eric Ruffin plays Milo, a friendless teen who believes he is a vampire. What he is really is a lonely child who finds solace in the romantic idea of this cursed, lone predator. But he’s committed to his misguided belief.

All this changes when Milo meets Sophie (Chloe Levine), another outsider and the only white face in Milo’s building. A profound loneliness haunts this film, and the believably awkward behavior of both Ruffin and Levine is as charming as it is heartbreaking.

The Transfiguration is a character study as much as a horror film, and the underwritten lead, slow burn and somewhat tidy resolution undercut both efforts.

Still, there’s an awful lot going for this gritty, soft-spoken new image of a teenage beast.

3. The Reflecting Skin (1990)

Writer/director Philip Ridley has a fascinating imagination, and his film captures your attention from its opening moments.

Seth Dove lives with his emotionally abusive mother and his soft but distant father, who run a gas station in rural Idaho sometime after WWII. Seth’s older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) is off serving in Japan. Seth has decided that the neighborhood widow Dolphin Blue (a wonderfully freaky Lindsay Duncan) is a vampire.

Positively horrible things begin to happen, each of them clouded by the dangerous innocence of our point of view character.

The film plays a bit like a David Lynch effort, but with more honesty. Rather than the hallucinatory dreaminess Lynch injects into films like Blue Velvet (the most similar), this film is ruled by the ferociously logical illogic of childhood.

With this point of view, the realities of a war blend effortlessly with the possibility of vampires. Through little Seth Dove’s eyes, everything that happens is predictably mysterious, as the world is to an 8-year-old. His mind immediately accepts every new happening as a mystery to unravel, and the jibberish adults speak only confirm that assumption.

This film is a beautiful, horrifying, fascinating adventure unlike most anything else available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGHoknFI2I

2. Cronos (1993)

In 1993, writer/director Guillermo del Toro announced his presence with authorty by way of this tender and unusual “vampire” flick. Del Toro favorites Federico Luppi and Ron Perlman star. Luppi is Jesus Gris, the elder statesman, an antique store owner, loving husband and doting grandfather.

Perlman plays Angel, a thug – what else? Angel’s miserable but very rich uncle wants an Archangel statue from Gris’s store, but the real value has already found its way into Gris’s veins.

A vampire film of sorts, it’s a beautiful story about faith and love – not to mention the real meaning of immortality. Performances are wonderful, and watching this masterful filmmaker find his footing is the real joy.

1. Martin (1978)

Martin (John Amplas) is a lonely young man who believes he’s a vampire. He may be – the film is somewhat ambivalent about it, which is one of the movie’s great strengths. He daydreams in black and white of cloaks, fangs and mobs carrying pitchforks.

Or are those memories? Does Martin’s uncle hate him because Martin, as he claims, is really in his Eighties, as his uncle would surely know? Romero has fun balancing these ideas, tugging between twisted but sympathetic serial killer and twisted but sympathetic undead.

Romero’s understated film is more of a character study than any of his other works, and Amplas is up to the task. Quietly unnerving and entirely sympathetic, you can’t help but root for Martin even as he behaves monstrously. It’s a bit like rooting for Norman Bates. Sure, he’s a bad guy, but you don’t want him to get into any trouble!

The film’s a generational culture clash wrapped in a lyrical fantasy, but quietly so. It’s touching, gory at times, often quite tense, and really well made. That, and it’s all so fabulously Seventies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNIGTSdKPl0

So that happened...

It’s Not a Vibrator

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My First B&E

by Hope Madden

When my sister Joy and I were about eight, our next door neighbors, the Manns, went on vacation. (I’ve changed their names in case the statute of limitation on breaking and entering is longer than I realize.)

They unwisely entrusted another neighbor up the block, Vickie Carmen (also a totally fake and not entirely convincing name), with the key to the house.

Vickie was to pick up the mail and feed the cats. Instead, she chose to bring her older sister Heather, as well as Joy and me, into the house for snooping, eating, and the stealing of coins from a giant container on the washing machine.

Heather was two years older than Vickie, Joy and myself, and we considered it a terrifying honor that she played with us. She also smacked and bullied us, bossed us around, mocked us without pity, and tricked us into doing dangerous and idiotic things that would land us in hot water.

But it was Vickie you had to look out for.

Together one afternoon, we four wandered through the neighbors’ home as some might an archeological find, examining everything. We ate their chips. We thumbed through their records. We opened cabinets. We stole Corey Mann’s Barbie clothes.

We went into the basement.

It was with starry eyes that we spied that jug o’coins, and promptly filled our pockets, fantasizing about the booty we’d buy at Cook’s Food Store down the block.

I looked forward to Caramel Creams or a Milky Way bar – or both! – since I was now a professional larcenist and could live it up bigger than I ever had.

Vickie would undoubtedly begin by hiding beyond the freezers eating baby food with her fingers, as was her Cook’s food-shopping tradition. Then, who knows what that freak would buy.

I once caught her eating the skin she’d peeled from a sunburn. I swear to God.

Before plunging headfirst into our illegally appropriated candy binge, we eyeballed the rest of the basement. Eager as we were for a sugar rush, we nearly overlooked an antique piece of exercise equipment.

Unfortunately, I did notice it. Indeed, it took my fancy and I recommended that we investigate.

Connie Mann was the youngest mom in the neighborhood and she insisted on being called by her first name. She was different. She was better. Not unlike Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls, but I can’t remember whether she had the same affinity for velour.

Connie had one of those weight-loss machines you’d see in old sit-coms. It was the kind of thing that resembles a doctor’s office scale, but at the top is a big, white belt that loops around your middle and vibrates away the fat.

I don’t know what you call this piece of equipment.

I’m sure you don’t call it a vibrator.

Whatever you call it, we turned it on.

Heather took the first tour. The knobs rotated furiously back and forth, back and forth, causing the movement in the belt that would make you sound like you were talking through the blades of a fan but would not, I felt sure, whittle away belly fat. Only a proper diet and sensible exercise regimen can do that.

The mistake I made – I mean, beside the mistake of breaking into a neighbor’s house and wandering around the dark and potentially dangerous basement of a home that would remain vacant for another week at least – was in examining the knobs too closely.

As I looked down, one tenaciously rotating gear grabbed the tips of my waist-length hair, yanked, and almost immediately my scalp was pressing cold metal.

“Turn it off! Turn if off! TURN IF OFF!”

They turned it off. My hair was already knotted around the knob, my head tugged so tight against the machine I thought the scalp would tear away from my skull. I was trapped.

My friends’ faces were ashen.

There was a long silence, and then Vickie, inching up the basement steps, whispered, “Let’s go. Come on. Let’s just go.”

Attached by the head to a machine at least twice my weight, stooped to one side and crying, I couldn’t even clearly conceive of my plight. My mind swam in terror.

And they did leave.

I didn’t scream or even slump to my knees looking for a more comfortable way to situate myself around my new anchor. I stared at the concrete block wall and did nothing at all. My brain ceased to function.

I know me, and I am terrified of everything. It’s hard to imagine that I didn’t stare into some dark corner, sure I’d seen movement or heard growls – human growls – coming from the darkness behind me.

It’s hard to believe I didn’t tear myself free, running bloody and half-hairless back to my house.

I honestly believe I was more afraid of my mom’s reaction to my breaking and entering than I was to dying alone in a basement.

Lucky for me, though the Carmens may have been the kind of bitches who’d abandon you to rot in the basement of your neighbor’s temporarily unoccupied home, my sister isn’t.

She strode somberly up to my father – likely relaxing with a cup of coffee and an episode of M*A*S*H – and told him, “Come with me. Bring your tools.”

Simple as that. My hero.

Dad dismantled the machine and freed my head. The hair on the left side tangled to about 1/3 its natural length, and the scalp remained raised and bumpy for months. To this day my hair does not lay flat on the left side. But we never told my mom, never narced on the Carmens, never fixed the machine.

Maybe the mysteriously broken equipment drew the Manns’ attention away from all that missing change.

New In Theaters

Life Support

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The Big Sick

by George Wolf

The Big Sick is that rare breed seldom seen in the wilds of the multiplex. It’s a smart and incisive romantic comedy that has something new and vital to say while it’s being both romantic and comedic.

It also feels incredibly authentic, probably because co-writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani are telling much of their own story.

Kumail (Nanjiani) is a struggling standup comedian in Chicago who can’t bring himself to tell his traditional Pakistani family about his new girlfriend Emily (Zoe Kazan). Family pressures eventually lead to a breakup, not long before Emily becomes hospitalized with a mysterious infection that becomes life-threatening.

Emily’s parents (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) know all about Kumail, and they aren’t exactly thrilled with his insistence on hanging around the hospital with a visitor’s badge.

Director Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer, Hello My Name is Doris), is blessed with a uniformly wonderful ensemble cast, and he guides the actors through alternating levels of humor and societal insight that feel effortlessly organic.

We see a Muslim family portrayed much as any other movie family might be (imagine!), with generational conflicts that are plenty familiar, even if they manifest in unfamiliar ways. Bonus points for cleverly educating about Pakistani culture while also finding the funny in culture clash and persistent stereotypes.

Almost all the humor – be it scatalogical, corny, or suddenly dark – finds a mark, and is paired with a constant undercurrent of relatable humanity that draws us into these characters and becomes truly touching.

At times hilarious, sweet,  emotional and even heartbreaking, The Big Sick has a case of charming that will follow you home.

Let’s hope it’s catching.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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This Dude Abides

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The Hero

by Hope Madden

Somebody finally wrote a starring role for Sam Elliott. Let’s be honest, we all love him. What’s not to love? His lived-in masculinity, mannered charm and sonorous delivery make every line a comic/dramatic/romantic dream.

His latest film, the Brett Haley directed and co-penned The Hero, feels like an attempt to give Elliott his own The Wrestler or Crazy Heart.

I’m cool with that.

Haley was responsible for the 2015 life-renewing romance I’ll See You In My Dreams, a post-middle-age adventure starring Blythe Danner, with Elliott joining as her mustachioed gentleman caller.

With Hero, Haley places Elliott firmly in the lead of another “life begins when you decide it does” kind of story.

In a role undoubtedly written specifically for the actor, Elliott plays an aging performer who’s knocked around Hollywood for decades but is best known for his deep, cowboy voice. The film opens with that memorable baritone recommending, “Lone Star barbeque sauce – the perfect pardner for your chicken.”

It’s an inspired scene, full of humorous indignity and carried beautifully by the voice-over veteran. It’s really a shame Haley can’t build on it.

Elliott’s Lee Hayden has cause to reevaluate his life when a health issue, a lifetime achievement award, a viral video and a surprising new girlfriend all collide unexpectedly. Oh, so many reasons to contemplate your own mortality.

Elliott’s quiet, moseying way remains as enigmatic and charming as it ever has been, and seeing him play a character so very close to himself is sometimes eerie. Real-life wife Katharine Ross even plays his ex.

The film scores highest marks in two scenes with Ross, and in everything with a delightful Nick Offerman, playing against type as Lee’s goofy former co-star and current weed dealer.

It derails hardest, though, when it tries to juggle a distant relationship with a daughter (Krysten Ritter) and a new romance with a hot, much younger woman (Laura Prepon).

The Hero breaks no new ground. Had Haley and co-writer Marc Basch (who also co-wrote Dreams) thrown one or two fewer contrivances at us, or found perhaps a fresher way to contend with their obvious choices, they might have had something.

Instead they ride Elliott’s charm and settle for sentimentality, which is such a shame. It’s high time Sam Elliott gets to lead his own movie, but he deserves a little more than this.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Teenage Dream

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Spider-Man: Homecoming

by Hope Madden and George Wolf 

With brief but wildly enjoyable screen time, the newest Spider-Man (Tom Holland) introduced himself to us in last year’s Captain America: Civil War. His presence was energetic, light-hearted and fun – childlike. Appropriate for a high school freshman.

It’s exactly that bottled exuberance that makes Spider-Man: Homecoming so enjoyable.

The events of Cap and Iron Man’s battle for control of the Avengers only months behind them, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr. – like you didn’t know) takes arachnid-bitten science nerd Peter Parker under his wing.

Pete’s not ready for the big time yet, though. Mr. Stark would prefer his protégé focus on being a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man instead of pestering for an invite to be the next Avenger.

There are several things director Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car) and his enormous team of writers get right.

Firstly, they know we’re hip to Pete’s origin story, so the bite, Uncle Ben and all that needless angst are mercifully missing.

Next, they keep the story tight and low to the ground. It’s a training-wheels villain – somebody too big for you or me to contend with, but no intergalactic menace or god waiting to annihilate global humanity.

It also helps that said villain, the “Vulture,” is played by the reliably nutty and likeable Michael Keaton, who brings the perfect mix of psychosis and humanity to a role that could have easily been pushed over the top.

But mainly, Watts hits a bullseye with the film’s joyously entertaining tone.

As solid as the Marvel universe has been, it’s not hard to find moments (especially in Civil War) when the push for a hip chuckle undercuts the action. The humor in Homecoming hits early and often, but only to reinforce that the film’s worldview is sprung from a teenage boy. In this way, it feels more true to its comic origins than most in the entire film genre.

Holland, who just turned twenty-one, has no trouble passing for fifteen in a wonderfully wide-eyed performance. Paired with a nicely diverse group of classmates, Holland finds the perfect sweet spot to contrast the social minefields of high school with the learning curve of his new Stark Industries super suit.

Best of all, Holland re-sets the character to a place where its growth seems both unburdened and unpredictable. That’s exciting, and not just for Pete.

Same goes for the film. Watts and his writing team fill Homecoming with the thrills, wit and humanity (plus a plot twist that’s subtle genius) to give the entire superhero film genre a freshness that’s plenty welcome.

Throw in a letter-perfect final scene, and we’re already tingling about what Spidey might be up to next.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

For Your Queue

The Snack that Smiles Back

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Okja

by Hope Madden

That lovely period of youth, close enough to childhood to be magical, near enough to adulthood to be tinged with longing – it’s that moment where people like Spielberg made their greatest mark.

Filmmaker Joon-ho Bong takes us there with the story of a super pig – a genetically engineered and yet utterly adorable hippo-like beastie bred to feed a lot of people cheaply – and her best friend.

If you haven’t seen the films of Joon-ho Bong, you should. All of them. Repeatedly.

This versatile Korean filmmaker is as comfortable with dystopian fantasy as he is creature features, with dark family dramas as police procedurals. Whatever he makes, he edges it curiously with humor and shadows with a bit of horror. It’s a heady mix, but in Bong’s hands, it never ceases to satisfy.

In this case, we tag along as Korean farm girl Mija (Seo-hyun Ahn) wiles away days in the rural mountains with Okja. Ten years earlier, the Mirando corporation left the tiny piglet with Mija’s farmer grandfather. It’s now time for the company to take her back.

What opens as a beautiful story of magical childhood friendship a la E.T. or some kind of live-action Miyazaki film turns, in Act 2, into something far darker. Once Tilda Swinton (glorious – and playing twins!) and Mirando Corp come calling, Okja becomes satire of the most broad and brutal sort.

Though Bong peppers the prolog with a couple F-bombs, there’s still no way to be ready for the pivot his film makes. Not every actor is prepared for the shift, either.

Swinton – so breathtakingly brilliant in Bong’s 2013 flick Snowpiercer (Be a shoe!) – is characteristically fascinating as Mirando’s mogul, and Paul Dano offers a startlingly unpredictable eco-terrorist.

The generally reliable Jake Gyllenhaal can’t seem to nail his part, kind of a Jack Hannah patterned after a crackhead version of Richard Simmons. It’s less interesting than it sounds.

Otherwise, though, the collision of styles and gut punch of a third act guarantee that the film will stick with you.

Okja is the first film in which Bong clearly states a prescribed purpose, rather than simply writing and directing a fine, if politically astute, film. That doesn’t take away from his movie’s power, and only cements his position as a filmmaker at the top of his game.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

Fright Club

Fright Club: Asylums in Horror Movies

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Who’s crazy, who’s not? Whose perspective can you believe? Why can’t I look in the basement?

All fine questions that have been asked in film since around 1920. We sifted through all the loonies and the asylums to generate a list of the best and nuttiest available.

Thanks to Senior Lunatic Correspondent Dr. Neil McRobert – affectionately known as NakMac – for returning, hangover and all, to help us count down the best horror films in set an asylum.

5. Lunacy (2005)

So, here’s one that lives up to its title. If you were to choose any “lunatics running the asylum” film, this is the one to go with.

Set in Czech Republic 2005, disturbed young Jean (Pavel Liska) accepts an invitation to stay with a man who believes himself the Marquis de Sade (Jan Triska) – frilly shirts, horse-drawn carriage and all.

If you’ve seen any of the films of Jan Svankmajer, you know to expect the unexpected. It turns out, his talent for the surreal and the grotesque so perfectly fit the topic of the film, it’s hard to imagine anyone else making it.

Animated meat cutlets, insane speechifying, burlesque and unpleasantness aplenty work together in a film that defies summarization but leaves an unmistakable impression.

4. The Brood (1979)

Dr. Hal Ragland – the unsettlingly sultry Oliver Reed – is a psychiatrist leading the frontier in psychoplasmics. His patients work through their pent-up rage by turning it into physical manifestations. Some folks’ rage turns into ugly little pustules, for example. Or, for wide-eyed Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), rage might turn into bloodthirsty, puffy coated spawn. This is Cronenberg’s reimagining of procreation, and it is characteristically foul.

What’s she so mad about? Her divorce. So angry, indeed, that she’s gone mad – and begun neglecting, even endangering, her puffy coated actual daughter.

Cronenberg wrote the film during his own ugly divorce and custody battle. He created a fantasy nightmare rooted firmly in the rage, despair, and the betrayal that comes from watching someone who once loved you turn into someone who seems determined to harm you.

Cronenberg is the king of corporeal horror, and The Brood is among the best of the filmmaker’s early, strictly genre work. Reed and Eggar both are unseemly perfection in their respective roles. Eggar uses her huge eyes to emphasize both her former loveliness and her current dangerous insanity, while Reed is just weird in that patented Oliver Reed way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQkJJxjdIM

3. Session 9 (2001)

Nyctophobia, dissociative identity disorder, creepy tapes, an abandoned asylum – the pieces are there for a spooky, if recognizable, horror movie. Credit writer/director Brad Anderson for swimming familiar waters and yet managing a fresh, memorable and disturbing film.

Gordon (Peter Mullan) needs some cash – and some sleep. Troubles at home aside, he’s having problems getting his latest assignment completed on time. With just a skeleton crew and an unreasonable turnaround time, Gordon has to remove the asbestos from the long-abandoned Danvers Lunatic Asylum.

He sneaks away a lot to call his wife and listen to these therapy tapes he’s found. Meanwhile, a couple of his guys are bickering over a shared girlfriend, another one’s a pothead, and then there’s Gordon’s sweet, mulleted nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III), who’s afraid of the dark.

Atmosphere is everything in this film. And though several surprises may not really surprise, performances are outstanding and Anderson has some seriously scary moments in store. Oh, poor Jeff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYC83LCttW8

2. Titticut Follies (1967)

In 1967, the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman announced his presence with authority, producing the first film in American history to be banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security.

While the American legal system may have believed the filmmaker had violated the privacy of the patients of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater, the film suggests it cared less about the patients’ other rights.

Haunting and spare, juxtaposing patients’ day-to-day abasement against choreographed musical numbers performed with a saucy baritone on staff, Wiseman’s film rattles you. The filmmaker offers no voiceovers to guide you. Instead, he assaults your sensibilities with the raw and unacceptable truth.

1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Few films of the silent era or any other are as visually striking as this. A German Expressionist, director Robert Wiene uses light and shadow, exaggerated angles and gloomy spirals to envelope us in a nightmare.

In a story told in flashback we learn of Francis, who is visiting his bewitched beloved in an asylum. He tells the tale madness – a traveling hypnotist and his somnambulist, performing at a town fair; murder, magic and lunacy.

The film’s twist ending and framed storytelling have become commonplace in horror – particularly in “asylum” horror – but the look of this film has never been truly recreated.

Taken in the context of the time, Caligari becomes a metaphor and premonition of Germany’s mindless obedience to a lunatic, homicidal authority figure. Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz wrote it just after WWI to reflect their experiences in the war, but it mirrored a growing, terrifying phenomenon in their country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0A0sfxM6AE

Outtakes, Slider

Best of 2017 So Far!

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Land a’ goshen, the year’s half over already! How the F did that happen? Well, we’ve watched 161 films so far this year. Whew! Which have been the best? The new episodes of both Planet of the Apes and Spider-Man would’ve made the cut, but our judges said July releases didn’t count, so….let’s have a look at what did.

1. Get Out

You want to know the fears and anxieties at work in any modern population? Just look at their horror films.

You probably knew that. The stumper then, is what took so long for a film to manifest the fears of racial inequality as smartly as does Jordan Peele’s Get Out – an audacious first feature that never stops entertaining as it consistently pays off the bets it is unafraid to make.

2. The Survivalist

 Lean, mean futuristic science fiction that feels unsettlingly like reality, The Survivalist ranks among the best dystopian films in recent memory. And as writer/director Stephen Fingleton creates an utterly plausible and devastatingly grim future, the film marks a first time filmmaker with an awful lot to say.

3. It Comes at Night

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.

But what are the 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.

4. The Beguiled

Snugly hidden near the fighting in Confederate territory, a girls’ school takes in a wounded Union soldier. Delicately shifting allegiances, power struggles, competition, longing, fear, and danger waft between the columns of Miss Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies.

Sofia Coppola develops a languid and ornate atmosphere, punctuated where necessary to create a sense of dread and urgency. Her cast is uniformly excellent, their commitment to character leading to a finale that’s as devastating as it is inevitable.

5. Logan

Bloody and bleak, tossing F-bombs and the franchise’s first flash of nudity, Logan is not like the other X-Men.

Logan relies on themes of redemption – a superhero’s favorite. Director James Mangold pulls ideas from Children of Men and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but his film reminds me more of The Girl with All the Gifts. (If you haven’t seen it, you should.)

The point? The children are our future and Logan’s real battle has always been with himself. Almost literally, in this case.

6. Baby Driver

Start to finish, the soundtrack-driven heist flick Baby Driver has a bright, infectious charm – and you can dance to it.

The beats offer more than a gimmick to ensure the flick dances along – the tunes getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) has buzzing through his ear buds give rhythm to his impressive high speed antics.

The game cast never drops a beat, playing characters with the right mix of goofiness and malice to be as fun or as terrifying as they need to be. For all its danceability, Wright’s film offers plenty of tension, too.

7. Hounds of Love

 Driven by a fiercely invested and touchingly deranged performance from Emma Booth, Hounds of Love makes a subtle shift from horrific torture tale to psychological character study. In 108 grueling minutes, writer/director Ben Young’s feature debut marks him as a filmmaker with confident vision and exciting potential.

No doubt, events get brutal, but never without reminders that Young is a craftsman. Subtle additions, such as airplanes flying freely overhead to contrast with the theme of captivity, give Hounds of Love a steady dose of smarts, even as it’s shaking your core.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNEurXzvHqE

8. Raw

 A vegetarian from a meat-free family, Justine (Garance Marillier, impressive) objects to her new university’s freshman hazing ritual of eating a piece of raw meat. But once she submits to peer pressure and tastes that taboo, her appetite is awakened and it will take more and more dangerous, self-destructive acts to indulge her blood lust.

Writer/director Julia Ducournau’s has her cagey way with the same themes that populate any coming-of-age story – pressure to conform, peer pressure generally, societal order and sexual hysteria. Here all take on a sly, macabre humor that’s both refreshing and unsettling.

9. Norman

 Writer/director Joseph Cedar skillfully creates an utterly fascinating character in Norman (Richard Gere), who maneuvers through an equally intriguing web of politics, friendship and desperation. And Gere, as good as he’s ever been, makes it feel authentic.

It’s a performance that should not be forgotten come award season, and it anchors a smart, detailed film as compelling as any political thriller, yet as familiar as your last little white lie.

10. The Blackcoat’s Daughter

 Winter break approaches at a Catholic New England boarding school. Snow piles up outside, the buildings empty, yet Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) remain. One has tricked her parents for an extra day with her townie boyfriend. One remains under more mysterious circumstances.

Blackcoat’s Daughter behaves almost the way a picture book does. In a good picture book, the words tell only half the story. The illustrations don’t simply mirror the text, they tell their own story as well. If there is one particular and specific talent this film exposes in its director, it is his ability with a visual storyline.

Pay attention when you watch this one. There are loads of sinister little clues to find.

11. Split

 A transfixing James McAvoy is Kevin, a deeply troubled man harboring 23 distinct personalities and some increasingly chilling behavior. When he kidnaps the teenaged Casey (The Witch‘s Anya Taylor-Joy) and her two friends (Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Suva), the girls are faced with constantly changing identities as they desperately seek an escape from their disorienting confines.

The split personality trope has been used to eye-rolling effect in enough films to be the perfect device for writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s clever rope-a-dope. By often splitting the frame with intentional set designs and camera angles, or by letting full face close-ups linger one extra beat, he reinforces the psychological creepiness without any excess bloodshed that would have soiled a PG-13 rating.

12. Free Fire

 Imagine if the entire 93 minutes of Reservoir Dogs took place in that last act shootout among the pack.

The noteworthy fact about Free Fire is not that it has a ballsy first act, but that the entire film is a third act. With scarcely a word of context, we’re rolled into an empty warehouse just in time for a shootout to begin, and there we will stay until the film concludes.

There is a barely controlled, very funny, incredibly bloody chaos afoot here, and it is a wild and entertaining sight to behold.

13. Colossal

 Colossal could also describe the height of writer/director Nacho Vigalondo’s latest concept, but despite some shaky interludes, it’s one worth the investment. Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis make a compelling pair, and as secrets of the film monster’s history are revealed, Vigalondo lands some solid satirical blows about self-absorption and personal demons.

Perhaps best of all is how Colossal works out of the conceptual corner it backs into. Much like the Koreans who keep coming downtown no matter how often the monster appears, Vigalondo is committed to the end, delivering a strange but satisfying in-the-moment fable.

14. The Lovers

 Credit writer/director Azazel Jacobs for turning the romantic dramedy inside out, weaving sly writing and touching performances into a thoroughly charming take on the resilience of love and the frustrating struggle to pin it down.

The Lovers is sneaky in its casual nature. Through subtle storytelling and stellar performances, it finds meaning in places rarely explored this effectively, and a gentle confidence that frayed emotions can still bond.

15. Guardians of the Galaxy 2

 Is that second mixtape ever quite as awesome as the first? Rarely, and that’s the Catch-22 of the original film’s surprising blast of space zaniness. While we never saw that one coming, this new one arrives with weighty expectations.

No, Volume 2 can’t match the ruffian charm of the first, and there are some stretches of not-much-happening-here. But James Gunn’s sequel shares a lot of heart, swashbuckling visuals and more than a few solid belly laughs.

Yes, we did like these, too:

 

 

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?