Tag Archives: David Yarovesky

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Unstable for Days

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Locked

by George Wolf

The first English language remake (third overall) of the 2019 Argentinian thriller 4×4, Locked streamlines the vigilante festivities for a fairly generic teaming of one veteran trope and one new favorite.

Tech cautionary tales are all the rage, and thrillers have been car-centric back to at least Duel and Race With the Devil in the 70s. So, when the desperate Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) breaks into a luxury sedan, he quickly finds himself at the mercy of one vengeful Dr. William (Anthony Hopkins) and the latest in auto security gadgets.

Director David Yarovesky and screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross soften Eddie’s edges from the start. Yes, he’s a f*&kup, but he’s got a cute young daughter and really wants to do better for her, right?

William isn’t moved. He’s got his own agenda, and it starts with giving Eddie a painful tour around his pimped-out ride. Eddie’s locked into the steel reinforced frame, the car is soundproofed and polarized, the seats are equipped with tasers, the glass is bulletproof, the heat and AC can be pushed to lethal levels, all while William probes and taunts Eddie via a call on the in-dash display.

The conversations tell us much about William and Eddie, and a little too much about the film’s message of classism and wealth inequality. What’s worse, when William disconnects, and Eddie is free to explore the car for weaknesses, he conveniently talks to himself so we can be let in on his thought process.

Yarovesky (Brightburn) has some success making the single setting visually interesting, faring better with the action opportunities that come from William deciding the put the car in “drive” and enact some vehicular justice against any suspected criminals.

Skarsgård tries his best to give Eddie some needed depth, and Hopkins seems delighted to get cartoonishly villainous. But Locked can never develop the psychological engagement of 2013’s auto mystery Locke or the clever thrills of Trunk: Locked In from just two years ago.

And most surprisingly, it pulls punches from its own source material, settling for a surface level morality play without the shades of grey that almost always leave a more lasting impression.

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Super Bad

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Brightburn

by Hope Madden

Sort of a mash up of Superman and The Bad Seed, Brightburn wonders what would happen if that special little guy you found in the crashed space ship turned out to be a super villain rather than a super hero.

But this comic book-esque origin story plays more like a straight up horror flick than an evolution of Josh Tank’s underappreciated 2012 SciFi gem Chronicle.

Elizabeth Banks stars as Tori, blue collar Kansasian. (Look it up.) She and homespun farmer husband Kyle (David Denman) always knew the day would come when they had to explain some things to their “adopted” son Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn).

While Brightburn echoes Superman in many ways, it’s far more deeply rooted in coming of age horror. It is on Brandon’s 12th birthday that he begins to change. He’s broody, more aggressive—here is where director David Yarovesky (The Hive) and Brian and Mark Gunn (brother and cousin, respectively, of producer James Gunn) abandon SciFi and dive headlong into horror.

And what we find is that, removed of their comic book splash and super hero protagonists, super villains don’t really make much of an impression in horror. Yes, Brandon has basically the same qualities as Superman—heat vision, flight, super strength—and he seems only vulnerable to his own ship (or perhaps any trace of his home planet?)—but the question is, would Evil Superman be that much more destructive than an immortal killing machine who visits you in your dreams? Or a demon from hell? Meh.

That’s is not to take too much away from Brightburn. It’s a fun B-movie with plenty of blood and gore. (It earns its R rating.) Banks is characteristically strong and Dunn does a fine job of moving from sweet boy to flat-affect sociopath.

There are definitely a couple of moments of inspired gore.

Brightburn is a capably made, well-acted piece of semi-schlock horror. It’s also the third film this year to follow a put-upon mother deciding what to do with a son whose grown almost overnight from precious baby boy to burgeoning psychopath.

And while this is a staple in the genre, Brightburn certainly taps an immediate social preoccupation with that moment that toxic masculinity ruins a boy. The film also mines the guilt that fuels insecure parents who had no real role models of their own.

The film doesn’t wind up being as clever a conceit as you might hope—again, Chronicle did it better. It’s not an entire waste of time, either.