Tag Archives: Helena Howard

Nightmares Film Festival

Final (Draft) Girl

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The Red Mask

Screens Friday, October 17 at 4pm

by Daniel Baldwin

Attempting to reinvent a film franchise can be an incredibly tricky thing. If things change too much, filmmakers risk incensing fans and making audiences wonder why the new project even bears the same name as the original. If not enough is changed, subsections of fandom might be happy, but everyone else will still be left thinking, “What’s the point?”

That’s the fine line to be walked as a creator when tackling a pre-existing thing, especially when it comes to horror. There’s also a quiet truth: you’re never going to please everyone with your reinvention. Just ask folks like David Gordon Green, Nia DaCosta, Fede Alvarez, and filmmaking team Radio Silence. All tackled recent renewals of long-running slasher series to varying degrees of success, both of the critical and commercial variety. Fans still argue about all of them today and they will continue to do so for decades to come. For better or worse, franchises inspire passion in their fanbases. Sometimes that passion is born of love and acceptance. Other times, it is overflowing with hatred and malice.

This is the core subject of Ritesh Gupta’s satirical slasher, The Red Mask. Together with screenwriters Samantha Gurash and Patrick Robert Young, Gupta has crafted a fiercely critical look at both sides of the coin when it comes to a slasher series being redone for a new generation. The terror tale begins with acclaimed indie screenwriter Allina Green (Helena Howard) kicking off a stay at a secluded cabin with her fiancé, Deetz (Inanna Sarkis). The goal? To write a killer script for a reboot of popular fictional slasher series, The Red Mask.

Things take a turn when Allina & Deetz’s brainstorming sessions are interrupted when a couple (Jake Abel & Kelli Garner) with a clashing Airbnb reservation arrive at the cabin. Also – wouldn’t you know it? – they happen to be big fans of The Red Mask films who have their own very different thoughts on how their beloved saga should be revived. The stage is now set for a battle (both verbal and physical) between filmmakers and fans over the soul of an intellectual property.

It’s the kind of thing one only ever sees play out in comments sections and social media posts, but instead of ALL CAPS WARFARE, the fight becomes decidedly more literal in the hands of Gupta & Co. What results is a very savvy and fun piece of horror filmmaking that is sure to thrill you and make you chuckle in equal measure. Keep an eye out for this one, horror fans. It’s a really good time.

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TV Guide

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I Saw the TV Glow

by George Wolf

Fulfilling the promise of 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up, I Saw the TV Glow, is a hypnotically abstract and dreamily immersive nightmare of longing.

Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) meet as very introverted teens, drawn together by their love of “The Pink Opaque,” a Saturday night series on the Young Adult Network.

Maddy’s basement offers shelter from her violent stepdad, while Owen has to join her there in secret, away from the sheltering grasp of his mother (always great to see Danielle Deadwyler) and father (Fred Durst!).

Together, the teens escape into the weekly adventures of two young women (Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan) who connect across the psychic realm to battle monsters sent by the evil Mr. Melancholy.

But then the show is cancelled, the basement TV is left in flames on the front lawn, and Maddy vanishes without a trace.

As the film wanders through the advancing years and Owen sometimes comments through the fourth wall, Schoenbrun layers Eric Yue’s cinematography and a captivating soundtrack to craft a completely transfixing pastiche of color, light, sound and shadow.

Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) is heartbreakingly endearing, while Lundy-Paine (Bill & Ted Face the Music) provides a revelatory turn of alienation and mystery. It’s hard to take your eyes of either one of them, with Schoenbrun often framing their stares through close-ups that become as challenging as they are inviting.

And that feels organically right. Because Schoenbrun is channelling characters who imagine life as someone else, to again emerge as a challenging and inviting filmmaker with a thrillingly original voice.

Worlds’ Fair got our attention – and A24’s. Now I Saw the TV Glow is here to get in our heads.

New In Theaters

There’s Music and There’s People and They’re Young and Alive

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Shoplifters of the World

by Matt Weiner

Never meet your heroes. That goes double for present-day Morrissey, frontman for the Smiths. But Shoplifters of the World looks back at a more innocent era in 1987, the day the band broke up, and conjures up a time when the Manchester rock band was the Beatles for disaffected teens who traded in mop tops for asymmetrical haircuts.

And Denver, Colorado—if you believe the urban legend that inspired the film—was ground zero for overenthusiastic Smiths fans. Director Stephen Kijak reimagines the night that distraught fan Dean (Ellar Coltrane, Boyhood) held a radio station hostage, forcing the DJ to play nonstop Smiths songs.

While Dean remains holed up at the radio station with the DJ, Full Metal Mickey (Joe Manganiello, perfection as a heavy metal himbo), Dean’s friends grieve and celebrate one last big night together before figuring out their lives post-high school.

That includes college, the Army, and for Cleo (Helena Howard), a general sort of Linklater malaise that seems to befall suburban teens on the eve of life’s next big adventure.

The film sets Cleo and the gang’s exploits to Smiths songs, along with contemporary interviews with band members that serve as a reminder of how much the Smiths meant for music, especially pop and indie rock, in an age of big hair and even bigger power chords.

Even though the film is a love letter to the Smiths, it’s as much about the insular obsession of finding meaning through art. Even diehard metalhead Mickey comes to appreciate the way all these young fans have experienced an era-defining shock in their young lives.

Still, it’s hard to shake the sense that the entire night’s events come down to a group of surly teens gatecrashing a bunch of parties to force everyone to listen to their music instead of having a good time… and yet everyone is still exceedingly polite to all the assholes in eyeliner.

This is also a painfully recognizable part of both obsessive fandoms and a good coming of age story. The mix of low stakes self-discovery and winsome leads helps keep their night out more charming than cringeworthy. Shoplifters is content to go big on soundtrack and mood, and it’s a choice that works.

There isn’t a ton of depth to the ensemble friends—the film is often too busy setting up just the right music cue. But when you have the music rights to take those cues from the likes of Morrissey and Johnny Marr, a little bit of charm goes a long way.