Tag Archives: Hope Madden

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A Connecting Principle

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Synchronic

by Hope Madden

Has it really been three years since filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead took us on the UFO death cult head trip that was The Endless?

It’s hard to tell with these guys. They really like to play with time.

Another riff on the same theme, Synchronic is a sci-fi fantasy about parallel dimensions and time travel—plus bath salts.

Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are best friends and NOLA paramedics, each facing his own existential crisis. Dennis can’t seem to move past the fear that he’s settled: for his wife, his job, his life. Meanwhile, Steve—whose existence of work, drink and women long ago ceased to have meaning—gets a medical diagnosis that has him rethinking everything.

So far so ordinary, but if you’ve seen anything these filmmakers have done (and you should see everything), you know something seriously weird is coming.

The film’s conceit is a fascinating one, and every grisly crime scene offers a curious clue that may eventually help Steve solve a mystery that gives him purpose and redirects his bestie. Benson, who writes and co-directs, offers plenty of opportunity for mind-bending action and wild set pieces.

He and co-director/cinematographer Moorhead cut back and forth through time to keep you guessing as to the mystery developing, but what’s left underdeveloped are the characters.

Two of the filmmakers’ previous three efforts focused on a pair of men linked through time and experience to the other—best friends in Resolution, brothers in The Endless. This kind of relationship has proven a beautiful anchor for their trippy plots, but Synchronic doesn’t invest enough time or attention to Steve and Dennis’s characters.

Both Mackie and Dornan are solid enough, but their chemistry is weak. The time-worn friendship is more discussed than exposed. Worse, Synchronic is the first of the filmmakers’ movies to lack a robust sense of humor. And it is missed.

The result is a sometimes dour though mainly melancholy effort that feels far less original than it really is. Synchronic is clever, to be sure, and at times quite touching. But for filmmakers who’ve until now positively dripped with inspiration, it feels like a step backward.

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Fright Club: Best Animated Horror

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Cartoons can be scary. Scooby Doo knew it. You can paint a nightmare in a way that no amount of CGI or practical effects can really execute. Animation frees a filmmaker from the constraints of the concrete world, allowing for more imaginative storytelling. Here are our favorite animated horror gems.

5. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

Feature length, R-rated anime is so often a simple excuse for fantasy fulfillment aimed at stunted adolescents of all ages. Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s 1987 film Wicked City certainly is that.

But in 2000, working from a story based on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s novel, Kawajiri executed the near-impossible. He made a sequel that was better than its much beloved predecessor (1985’s Vampire Hunter D).

Gothic and futuristic, beautifully drawn and nicely paced without losing the energy of the genre, Bloodlust delivers a gorgeous, bloody time.

4. Perfect Blue (1997)

This psychosexual thriller might feel garden variety if it had been made into a live action film. A young woman trades in her innocent image to take on more suggestive roles as an actress, only to find her fans turning on her in violent ways. Or is it an internal conflict over the way men and the media need to sexualize her that’s fragmenting her own mind?

In director Satoshi Kon’s anime vision, those familiar thriller tropes take on an unseemly dreamy quality. The animation style suggests more about the way mass media consumes a sexualized idea of innocence than any live action film could muster, and the hallucinatory quality achieved in the film would never have played this well in any other style.

3. Seoul Station (2016)

An animated side story to writer/director Sang-ho Yeon’s blistering zombie flick Train to Busan, Seoul Station gives us a chance to see what’s happening in other parts of Korea while Soo-an and her dad try to make it off the train alive.

A gripping story of people on the fringe, Seoul Station also boasts some incredibly imaginative animation. Scenes teem with slaughter, salvation, and social anxiety in a film that takes anime into reaches unsought before.

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Tim Burton penned and produced, directed by Henry Selick (Coraline), this tale of the Halloweentown/Christmastown mash up became an instant and unbreakable Goth favorite. Jack Skellington (“What’s happenin’, bone daddy?”) just doesn’t feel the same kind of love for Halloween that’s kept him motivated lo these many years. A little melancholy, he heads into the woods, only to take a wrong turn and find himself in the land of Christmas. Naturally, he and his fellow ghouls – meaning no real harm, you see – decide to kidnap Santa and run Christmas themselves… just this once.

The story, the music (by Danny Elfman, natch), the inspired stop-action style animation, and that sweetly macabre sensibility that Burton brings to every project spoke to the Nineties generation and continues to speak to outsiders, monsters, and lovers of animation everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3xTgBED5cQ

1. Fear(s) of the Dark (2007)

A French import perfectly suited to a dark and stormy Halloween night, the film brings together some of the top graphic artists in Europe and America to present six animated vignettes that showcase some of the mind’s deepest fears.

The human mind is always more capable of true horror than any teenage slasher movie, and that is what this film is interested in exploring. shorts delve into social anxiety, sexual insecurity, sociopathic tendencies, needles, dismemberment and the good old fashioned fear of the dark to achieve an overall feel of impending doom. You’ll get goosebumps without really knowing why.

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The Whole World Is Watching

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The Trial of the Chicago 7

by Hope Madden

Oscar winning, much beloved and frequently frustrating writer Aaron Sorkin first ducked behind the camera for the clever if overwritten 2017 indulgence Molly’s Game.

A courtroom drama (very Sorkin) about celebrity tabloid fodder (less Sorkin-like), the film seemed an odd match for the filmmaker. He’s found a much more comfortable focus in his follow up, the tale of eight defendants, their counsel, prosecution, and a corrupt establishment: The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Chicago 7 artfully and urgently recreates the scene of the federal court hearing against eight defendants alleged to have conspired to incite the infamous riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The film rings with historical significance as well as disheartening immediacy. It is another courtroom drama, this one benefitting from surprising restraint, as well as Sorkin’s deep well of passion for the subjects of legal processes and liberalism. Like Ave DuVernay’s 2014 masterpiece Selma, Sorkin’s new film details the past to show us the present.

He’s assembled a remarkable ensemble, each actor leaving an impression though none gets an abundance of screen time. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a blistering Bobby Seale while Frank Langella is infuriatingly believable as Judge Julius Hoffman. Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mark Rylance are all also excellent, as you might expect.

Jeremy Strong and Sacha Baron Cohen share a comfortable, enjoyable chemistry as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, respectively. Both appear in the film, as they did in life, as the wise-cracking comic relief in the room, but Cohen’s turn is thoughtful, wise, and slightly tragic. He’s obviously a talent, but this may be the first time we’ve seen the magnitude of his acting prowess.

An alarmingly relevant look at the power of due process, free speech, and justice, Chicago 7 is catapulted by more than the self-righteousness that sometimes weights down Sorkin’s writing. This is outrage, even anger, as well as an urgent optimism about the possibilities in human nature and democracy.

If I may quote my own review of Molly’s Game and my take on Sorkin as a filmmaker:

His are dialogue-driven character pieces where brilliant people throw intellectual and moral challenges at one another while the audience wonders whether the damaged protagonist’s moral compass can still find true north.

Still the case. But with Chicago 7, Sorkin’s struck a balance. He’s found a story and convened a cast that demand and receive his very best, because The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a story about today, this minute.

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Funeral for a Friend

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The Mortuary Collection

by Hope Madden

“Have you any experience in the mortuary arts?”

So begins a conversation between Raven’s End’s mysterious mortician and a young woman who’s come to answer the help wanted sign out front in writer/director Ryan Spindell’s fun and stylish horror anthology, The Mortuary Collection.

Mortician Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) has tales to tell of the lives and deaths in Raven’s End. His new assistant Sam (Caitlin Custer) is an eager listener, but also tough to please.

Such is the framing device for the anthology of short horrors, much like the one from Rusty Cundieff’s 1995 collection, Tales from the Hood (and just a bit like Jeff Burr’s 1987 anthology with Vincent Price, From a Whisper to a Scream).

The framing device is so often the best part.

Brown conjures a bit of Angus Scrimm (Phantasm’s Tall Man), channeling a little Tom Noonan as well, to create a spooky but somehow vulnerable master of ceremonies. Custer’s is an intriguing character, challenging her host, never squeamish or spooked. It makes for an interesting dynamic that turns more into a conversation on storytelling than you might expect.

The tales themselves are all set in and around a town where newspaper headlines speak of beasts, asylums, and missing persons. Raven’s End and its stories possess an unidentifiably vintage quality, something fictional and fanciful, modern and yet of an indeterminate past.

Characters sometimes pop up in multiple tales, each story boasting that patented twist ending you’d expect from a Tales from the Crypt episode. Some of the shorts are stronger than others (as Sam likes to point out to Mr. Dark), but the performances are all very solid, and Spindell peppers every story with fun bits of dialog.

“They won’t let me near a scalpel, and for good reason.”

There isn’t a weak short in the bunch, and though certainly some of the twists are not surprising, the execution is slick, the shorts are gorgeous and moody, and Clancy Brown is an absolute treat.

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Pennies From Heaven

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Faith Ba$ed

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

I have seen Faith Ba$ed and I am outraged.

People that haven’t seen it are outraged, and you know what that is?

Outrageous, but not surprising.

According to writer and co-star Luke Barnett, people are upset at just “the idea of it.” And that’s an ironic protest that actually speaks more negatively about the Christian film industry than anything in this actual movie.

Barnett and director Vincent Masciale, both Funny or Die veterans, are more interested in the goofy exploits of two lifelong friends in California who are having trouble adjusting to adulthood.

Tanner (Tanner Thomason) is a ladies man bartender whose life goals don’t extend beyond drinking and hanging out with friends. Luke (Barnett) cleans pools while peddling the weight loss tea pyramid scheme of his entrepreneurial idol Nicky Steele (Jason Alexander in a bonkers cameo).

Luke and Tanner are big movie fans, and when they discover just how profitable the faith-based market is, a plan emerges. If they can make their own “Jesus” film and sell it to ChristFlix pictures, there should be more than enough profit to stuff their pockets and help out the local Elevate Church where Luke’s father (Lance Reddick) is the pastor.

The big question: can the boys snag Butch Savage (David Koechner, bonkers himself), the action hero from their youth, for the pivotal role?

Masciale, helming his second feature, brings an irresistibly absurdist vibe to the shenanigans that practically begs you not to overthink any of it. Sometimes we get character interviews as per a mockumentary, sometimes we don’t. The continuity and internal logic gets shaky at times, all of which falls perfectly in line with the movie within this movie.

Good-natured fun is certainly had at the expense of the faith-based industry. Margaret Cho’s appearance as a ChristFlix executive running down the rules of Christian films is every bit the bullseye of the horror rules in Scream, and the big Christian yacht rock concert (pay attention to those lyrics!) is subtle perfection.

But it’s the continued success of the Christian entertainment industry that makes it ripe for satire. And while Faith Ba$ed uses the setting to great advantage, its knives are never out for the believers themselves.

Because you know what else Barnett’s script gives us? A church community that is welcoming to all, one where people missing something in their lives can and do find real fulfillment.

And it gives us plenty of laughs, memorable quotes and overall nuttiness at a time when we could use it.

Oh, the outrage.

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See How High She Flies

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The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw

by Hope Madden

Who’s the villain?

A vampire didn’t choose that destiny, nor the zombie, nor even the werewolf. All three are victims of fate.

The witch, however, comes to her dark powers by choice. And maybe – as Robert Eggers pointed out in his 2015 masterpiece The VVitch—that choice might even make some sense.

Since Eggers’s beguiling horror show, a number of filmmakers have joined him in his ruminations. Lukas Fiegelfeld’s mesmerizing 2017 debut Hagazussa and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 feminist reprise of Suspiria represent the strongest among the resulting films.

Few if any will ever tell the tale so powerfully or so well as Eggers, but writer/director Thomas Robert Lee has a go with The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw. His film is interested in women’s agency, their oddness, what they owe, what they should and shouldn’t be deciding for themselves, and what they are willing to sacrifice.

It’s August of 1973, but it could just as easily be the 1950s or the 1880s. (So why 1973? It was a big year in women’s rights, after all.) A rugged woman, isolated from the nearby religious community, stands silhouetted against her barn, ax and woodpile.

She is Agatha Earnshaw (Catherine Walker), and she has a secret.

Things haven’t been right in the village since the eclipse 17 years back, but things have been especially troubling lately. Agatha has the only farm that’s producing, the only animals that haven’t taken sick.

Performances are wonderful in a film that looks rustic and spooky, creating a time out of time. Walker, who was so effective in the wonderful little Irish horror Dark Song, cuts an impressive figure of maternal ferocity. She’s orbited by consistently impressive turns, whether the sincere pastor (Sean McGinley), entitled patriarch (Tom Carey), distraught husband (Jared Abrahamson), or young woman finding her voice (Jessica Reynolds).

Each man, however sympathetic or compassionate, represents danger. Like a lot of horror films, The  Curse of Audrey Earnshaw is a coming-of-age cautionary tale: fear the power of womanhood. But Lee is careful to keep asking who, exactly, is the villain here?

The direction is too often obvious: a cough, a handkerchief, blood. At other times, cinematic choices betray the film’s low budget. The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw will never reach the ranks of classic, but it makes a lot of bold choices and leaves an impression.

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Liar, Liar

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The Lie

by Hope Madden

Kids are stupid.

There may be no more universally accurate sentence. But parents? Dumb and dumber.

Writer/director Veena Sud retools the 2015 German film Wir Monster with a great cast, compelling complications, and that same awful truth.

Kayla (Joey King) is not very popular, not very happy about her parents’ separation, and not at all excited for this weekend-long ballet retreat. When she sees her bestie Brittany (Devery Jacobs) at the bus stop and convinces Dad (Peter Sarsgaard) to pick her up, things turn ugly.

There are any number of “how far would you go to protect your potentially evil kid?” movies—some great (Luce), some less so (Prodigy). What sets this one apart is mainly the cast, plus a somewhat sly delivery.

Sarsgaard is wonderful, as always. He’s one of the most reliable actors working today, and he finds a way to humanize every character, add a bit of depth and some curious moral complexity. He certainly does that here, and with Mireille Enos (playing Kayla’s mom) as sparring partner, a great deal of backstory is communicated without being overtly detailed.

King, a veteran weepy horror protagonist, delivers a clever performance as someone you’re honestly never certain about. Unlike trainwrecks such as Brahms: The Boy II, The Lie knows why the character should be so hard to pin down, and that reason is not a gimmick. It’s integral to the story.

That story is sharply told, even if there are moments that leave you scratching your head. The police presence is something out of a TV drama, and not a very good one. But when all eyes are on this family dynamic, The Lie is often riveting stuff.

The film is far more family drama/thriller than horror, but Blumhouse could do worse than introduce its Welcome to Blumhouse program on Amazon with this solidly crafted, impressively acted film.

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Workin’ for a Livin’

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12 Hour Shift

by Hope Madden

“My mama always said, never trust a skinny woman. While we are eating, they are plotting.”

Amen, sister.

The skinny woman in question is Mandy (Angela Bettis, glorious as always). And she’s skinny for a reason.

It’s the tail end of 1999 somewhere in Texas and Mandy’s just starting a 12 Hour Shift. She’s a nurse (on probation) in a hospital that’s not well staffed, not well run, and losing more patients and organs than it has a right to.

Writer/director Brea Grant strikes an intriguing tone. Her film’s humor is simultaneously deadpan, macabre and very silly. It’s an unusual spot to hit because you don’t root against any of the bad guys, even though they’re doing horrible and often needless things to perfectly likable people. Mainly out of stupidity.

Bettis is dead-eyed perfection, her unflappable nature a front for reluctant tenderness. She’s orbited by a wild assortment of hicks, Karens, low-rent crime lords, criminals, hypochondriacs, bumbling cops, and drugs. So, so many drugs.

Boldly colorful and strikingly stupid, Chloe Farnworth’s Regina is a wonderful counterpoint to Mandy. Together the two generate laughs with the kind of frustrating bond you only have with kin.

Nikea Gamby-Turner’s comfortable presence creates a great energy, while producer David Arquette essentially plays David Arquette (but he does it so well!).

Grant’s film is ghoulish and tense, with a genuinely unexpected musical number. It’s a hard film to nail down, and though it plays out like a long and especially bloody sitcom, the utter lunacy of the plot feels grounded in an authentic exhaustion and insanity known only to those who work in hospitals.

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Repo Woman

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Possessor

by Hope Madden

It’s been eight years since Brandon Cronenberg swam familiar family waters with his feature debut, Antiviral. He is back with another cerebral, body-conscious fantasy thriller and my first thought is dayyuuuummmmn…

Son of the master of corporeal scifi horror David Cronenberg, Brandon appears to come by his fixations naturally. With Possessor, he travels along with a high end assassin (Andrea Riseborough) who uses a piece of tech (inserted directly into the squishy brain, naturally) to body hop from one mark to the next. She enters one body, takes it over, executes the hit and moves on.

That last part has started to cause some issues, though.

As it was with Antival, much of the world building here is left to our imagination and the film is stronger for it. Possessor’s internal logic is solid enough to be the entire plot. The context is impeccably rendered, providing the most disturbing landscape for Riseborough and her primary avatar, played by the nicely understated Christopher Abbott.

All of it proves an incredible piece of misdirection for what the film is actually accomplishing.

For much of the running time, the chameleonic and underappreciated Riseborough’s Tasya Vos plays an observant interloper—exactly what we are in this weirdly meticulous and recognizable future world. Showy jabs about privacy, appropriation, gender definition and capitalism are simultaneously clever and intentionally distracting.

Cronenberg’s created a gorgeous techno world, its lulling disorientation punctuated by some of the most visceral horror to make it to the screen this year. There is something admirably confident about showing your influences this brazenly.

Credit Cronenberg, too, for the forethought to cast the two leads as females (Jennifer Jason Leigh playing Riseborough’s boss). The theme of the film, if driven by males, would have been passe and obvious. With females, though, it’s not only more relevant and vital, but more of a gut punch when the time comes to cash the check.

Possessor is a meditation on identity, sometimes very obviously so, but the underlying message takes that concept and stabs you in your still-beating heart with it.