In Vermont recently I was trying to find my way to the spa on Church St. where my sister Joy works. Her husband had nabbed me from the airport and dropped me off in the town’s small bohemian coffee house and art district with directions to my sister.
As I wandered onward, a handful of teenage girls walked behind me and I could not help but overhear their conversation because, as a rule, teens are loud.
Said one: My mom and I are both giving up chocolate for Lent.
Responded a second: You’re not even religious.
A third chimed in: That doesn’t matter. I’m doing Lent and I’m Jewish.
Another said: I think people just do Lent so they can say they do Lent to other people to make them feel bad.
By this point my mind had blown and was no longer capable of processing sound stimuli, so I can’t report what other fascinating ridiculousness flowed from their mouth holes.
I was cranky, this being a Friday in Lent and me without any decent meal options at the airports. I wanted badly to grimace at them in utter disdain. I may have wanted to punch them in their dumb ass faces. At the very least, I wanted to shout that you don’t “do Lent.” Lent is not a cartwheel, ladies.
Lucky for them I’d given up mocking and abusing vacuous teens for Lent.
Oh, wait…
Damn, I guess I’ve already broken that penance, haven’t I? And so soon into the season. Lent’s always so much harder than you think it’s going to be.
With an almost offensively naïve – or more likely, revisionist – sense of history surrounding an entirely anachronistic amount of gumption, The Ottoman Lieutenant is the third historical romance to hit theaters in as many weeks.
And the weakest.
The lovely A United Kingdom struggled to find an authentic voice for the true story of Seretse and Ruth Khama’s love. Bitter Harvest, on the other hand, lacked the focus to use its love story to articulate the horrors of war.
Both films made a valiant effort to shine a light on a historical period. The Ottoman Lieutenant separates itself from the pack primarily with its open attempt to rewrite history, to make it more noble, palatable and romantic.
Lillie Rowe (Hera Hilmar) is a young woman of privilege. She’s also an American with a thick Icelandic accent, but no matter. Lillie spurns her stuffy 1914 Philadelphian upbringing in in favor of mission work in Anatolia, thanks to a cardboard-stiff speech given by mission doctor Jude Gresham (Josh Hartnett).
Once there, as Dr. Gresham falls in love with Lillie, she’s busy falling for Lieutenant Ismael Veli (Michiel Huisman) who, luckily, speaks English – as do all Turks in the film, even when they’re talking amongst themselves. How convenient!
Armenians – a population all but wiped from existence one year later – figure minutely in this soft focus clash between Muslims and Christians. But why tell their story just because your film is set in their backyard on the eve of their genocide? The important thing to understand is that, in war, everyone is wrong and only love is right.
That’s the gallingly simple outlook of the nurse with the tousled hair whose cloying voiceover tells us everything and nothing, simultaneously.
Though Joseph Ruben’s direction can never transcend Jeff Stockwell’s historically vacuous screenplay, the film often looks quite lovely. As does Hilmar, which is great as she is never called upon to act. She poses really well, though, and never laughs no matter how precious the dialog. Plus, Lillie has so many great hats!
It’s almost a shame Ben Kingsley shows up when he does because, even saddled as he is with this one-dimensional stereotype of a character, Ben Kingsley can act. His talent only exposes the balance of the cast for the posers (and poseurs) they are.
The Ottoman Lieutenant offers a lot of easily won wisdom and quick solutions – and hats. None of these strike me as items abounding during a time of war, but stark reality is not the goal of the film.
Who loves horror? We do, you do, and that’s probably why homage horror is so satisfying. Filmmakers take a self-referential approach to draw attention to the tropes of the genre they – and we – love. It’s not a spoof, not a satire, it’s a loving ode to the genre. It’s like a big, bloody bear hug, and we are in!
5. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
This loving slasher offers not just clever, self-referential writing, but surprisingly likeable performances, given the topic. Leslie (Nathan Baesel – magnificent) intends to become the next great serial killer. Not your garden-variety killer, but the stuff of legend: Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, Leslie Vernon.
A documentary news crew (of sorts) led by intern Taylor (Angela Goethals) documents Leslie’s preparations.
Director/co-writer Scott Glosserman nails a tone that’s comical, affectionate to the genre, and eventually scary. Part Man Bites Dog, part Scream, the film could easily feel stale. It does not.
This is partly due to the wit and intelligence in the screenplay, but an awful lot of the film’s success rides on Baesel’s shoulders. As the budding legend, Baesel is so charming as to be impossible to root against. He’s borderline adorable, even as he slashes his way through teen after teen unwise enough to party at the old, abandoned Vernon farm.
4. Stitches (2012)
There are a lot of scary clowns in films, but not that many can carry an entire film. Stitches can.
This Irish import sees a half-assed clown accidentally offed at a 10-year-old’s birthday party, only to return to finish his act when the lad turns 16.
Yes, it is a familiar slasher set up: something happened ten years ago – an accident! It was nobody’s fault! They were only children!! And then, ten years later, a return from the grave timed perfectly with a big bash that lets the grisly menace pick teens off one by one. But co-writer/director Connor McMahon does not simply tread that well-worn path. He makes glorious use of the main difference: his menace is a sketchy, ill-tempered clown.
Dark yet bawdy humor and game performances elevate this one way above teen slasher. Gory, gross, funny and well-acted – it brings to mind some of Peter Jackson’s early work. It’s worth a look.
3. Tucker and Dale Versus Evil (2010)
Horror cinema’s most common and terrifying villain may not be the vampire or even the zombie, but the hillbilly. The generous, giddy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil lampoons that dread with good natured humor and a couple of rubes you can root for.
In the tradition of Shaun of the Dead, T&DVE lovingly sends up a familiar subgenre with insightful, self-referential humor, upending expectations by taking the point of view of the presumably villainous hicks. And it happens to be hilarious.
Two backwoods buddies (an endearing Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) head to their mountain cabin for a weekend of fishing. En route they meet some college kids on their own camping adventure. A comedy of errors, misunderstandings and subsequent, escalating violence follows as the kids misinterpret every move Tucker and Dale make.
T&DVE offers enough spirit and charm to overcome any weakness. Inspired performances and sharp writing make it certainly the most fun participant in the You Got a Purty Mouth class of film.
2. Cabin in the Woods (2012)
You know the drill: 5 college kids head into the woods for a wild weekend of doobage, cocktails and hookups but find, instead, dismemberment, terror and pain. You can probably already picture the kids, too: a couple of hottie Alphas, the nice girl, the guy she may or may not be into, and the comic relief tag along. In fact, if you tried, you could almost predict who gets picked off when.
But that’s just the point, of course. Making his directorial debut, Drew Goddard, along with his co-scribe Joss Whedon, uses that preexisting knowledge to entertain holy hell out of you.
Goddard and Whedon’s nimble screenplay offers a spot-on deconstruction of horror tropes as well as a joyous celebration of the genre. Aided by exquisite casting – particularly the gloriously deadpan Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford – the filmmakers create something truly special.
Cabin is not a spoof. It’s not a satire. It’s sort of a celebratory homage, but not entirely. What you get with this film is a very different kind of horror comedy.
1. Scream (1996)
In his career, Wes Craven has reinvented horror any number of times. When Scream hit screens in 1996, we were still three years from the onslaught of the shakey cam, six years from the deluge of Asian remakes, and nearly ten years from the first foul waft of horror porn. In its time, Scream resurrected a basically dying genre, using clever meta-analysis and black humor.
What you have is a traditional high school slasher – someone dons a likeness of Edvard Munch’s most famous painting and plants a butcher knife in a local teen, leading to red herrings, mystery, bloodletting and whatnot. But Craven’s on the inside looking out and he wants you to know it.
What makes Scream stand apart is the way it critiques horror clichés as it employs them, subverting expectation just when we most rely on it. As the film opens, Casey (Drew Barrymore) could have survived entirely (we presume) had she only remembered that it was not, in fact, Jason Voorhees who killed all those campers in Friday the 13th; it was his mother. A twisted reverence for the intricacies of slashers is introduced in the film’s opening sequence, then glibly revisited in one form or another in nearly every scene after.
We spent the next five years or more watching talented TV teens and sitcom stars make the big screen leap to slashers, mostly with weak results, but Scream stands the test of time. It could be the wryly clever writing or the solid performances, but we think it’s the joyous fondness for a genre and its fans that keeps this one fresh.
George participates in life. Me, I like to sleep late, eat a burrito, take in a movie. It’s all part of my “Sleepin’ Late and Feelin’ Great” philosophy, as opposed to the “Gettin’ Up Early and Feelin’ Surly” approach to life.
George can sleep late/feel great only so many days in a row before he has to go wrestle a bear or something. God help me, he always drags my ass with him.
Last weekend, he pumped and ran with Arnold. You know this one? You bench press your body weight, and then run a 5k. After lifting your body weight.
Which would involve a public weighing, so I’m out.
Not George, because he just looks for stuff to do.
It was for this reason that we got up bright and early one Sunday and drove to Logan, OH – about halfway between Lancaster and Athens. Rolling hills, strawberry patches, barns and assorted other rural whatnot. It’s like a little slice of West Virginia right here in Ohio!
Why head into the hotbed of nothing much? Warrior Dash – George’s second annual bout with mud, ropes and turkey legs.
He’d go on to tougher mudders than this, but it was really this Episode #2 that made me wonder what in the hell is the matter with people.
Warrior Dash is a 5(ish)K. You start running straight up a steep and muddy hill, then crawl through more mud, this time under barbed wire. You cross rope bridges, mount several climbing walls with nothing but your slimy, muddy hands and a rope to get you over. Then you wade chest-deep across a pond and pull yourself up to a platform, haul yourself over another wall, try not to slide ass first down a mud hill using a tow line to lower yourself, jump over a pit of fire (I swear to God), then drop into another mud pit and crawl on your belly to the finish line.
For your efforts you’re awarded a turkey leg, a beer and a Viking helmet.
Batman was there. He left his utility belt behind apparently, running in his mask, shoes and not much else. He did not perform as well as you might expect from a superhero.
Lots of people run in costumes, actually, which makes you wonder why people choose to invest so much time and effort in an outfit they will have to burn later.
When George Dashed the previous year, I had the excellent excuse of a walking boot to keep me from participating. Year two, it was just good old common sense that kept me sidelined.
George enjoyed the challenge, though, and performed well, as always. You cannot imagine how filthy he was as he finished. Words cannot describe it. Nasty – I guess that’s a fairly adequate word.
I snapped some shots as the mud caked and hardened. Post-race, we followed signs for Warrior Wash to tidy him up. The previous year they had a fire hose kind of set up that power washed the mud into submission. This year, warriors were offered more of a bath.
Signs led to a filthy brown pond. Warriors swam through it and, voila, clean! Because nothing cleans like pond water.
Gross!
Then the shuttle/school bus back to the car. There’s nothing quite like the aroma of a bus full of warriors: humans who’ve just completed a 3.5 mile obstacle course ending in a mandatory army crawl through a mud pit.
Smells like victory!
Sounds awesome, right? George enjoyed it.
You might, too! All you need to compete in Warrior Dash – aside from masochism and a few bucks – is a pair of running shoes you never hope to wear again, shorts you can tie (because wet, muddy shorts want to come off you as you run), and that nutty desire to participate in life.
At the close of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) gazes with befuddled joy at his beloved colleagues (one more beloved than others), his own ugly history and the dire fate of his breed now expunged. Remember?
Expect nothing so precious from James Mangold or Logan.
Set just a handful of years into the future, the film sees the most haunted of the X-Men – a guy around 200 years old by now – really beginning to show some wear and tear. Limping, scarred, drunk and mean, Logan no longer heals quite the way he used to. His beard is grey, his hero days long gone.
The last mutant was born more than 25 years ago. Nowadays, Logan drives a limo and uses the cash to grab dementia meds he brings across the border to his old father figure, Charles Xavier.
Bloody and bleak, tossing F-bombs and the franchise’s first flash of nudity, Logan is not like the other X-Men.
Or is he? A little girl claws her way into his life, and suddenly it’s evil scientists, armed goons and genetically enhanced villains all over again.
The villains won’t leave an impression, but the film will.
Logan relies on themes of redemption – a superhero’s favorite. 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.
He fights others, too, don’t fret. Indeed, you will see those claws tear into more flesh in this film than in all previous efforts combined. The violence in Logan is more unhinged, bloody and satisfying, too.
Even more startling is the behavior of Logan’s tiny feral beast, Laura (Dafne Keen). Oh, this movie has a body count – at least two of them headless.
It has an emotional center as well – which is not to say Logan works on all fronts. It’s lacking as the family drama it flirts with becoming, and can’t hold its own as a road movie, either. The narrative can’t find momentum.
But as an opportunity for Hugh Jackman to put his most iconic character to bed, it’s sometimes amazing.
Last year, Jeff Nichols’s Loving quietly observed the bond between Mildred and Richard Loving, a married couple whose union eventually brought down miscegenation laws in the US.
A United Kingdom, Amma Asante’s follow up to her 2013 historical drama Belle, treads similar waters. Like Loving, this is the true story of an interracial marriage with profound social and political impact.
In 1945, London clerk Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) married Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), heir to the throne of Bechuanaland (now Botswana).
Rejected by her family and his, the couple then faced opposition first from Khama’s people, then, more sharply, from the British government working in collusion with apartheid-riddled South Africa.
A United Kingdom teems with beautiful actors, postcard-ready shots, swelling strings and feel good moments.
What Asante’s film lacks is Nichols’s observational style, one that trusts the story and the actors to draw an audience in. Asante too often tells the audience how to feel with a leading score and disruptive camerawork.
The filmmaker and her cast have a lot of ground to cover, and though Asante’s glimpses the budding romance quickly enough to induce whiplash, her instincts are strong when it comes to handling the drier political wheeling and dealing that sought to keep the newlyweds separate.
David Oyelowo’s performance cannot help but conjure memories of his outstanding turn in Ava DuVernay’s 2014’s masterpiece, Selma. As he did in his portrayal of Martin Luther King, Oyelowo gives Khama tremendous presence. He is thoughtful, wise, compelling, charismatic yet human – exactly the kind of person who could lead a nation to democracy.
As Williams, Pike presents a believable mix of self-assuredness and self-doubt. In her hands, Ruth is elegant, humble and in love.
Luckily for Asante and the film, Oyelowo and Pike share so bright an onscreen union they overshadow most of A United Kingdom’s faults. They do seem very comfortably in love. So much so that it is impossible to accept that anyone – let alone three entire governments – felt the need to force the two apart.
While far from perfect, A United Kingdom gives you reason to applaud, to feel good, and to hope. That may be enough.
An eerie soundtrack echoing with alienation and longing pairs with a roaming camera in search of human connection. With these and little more filmmaker Tim Sutton creates the loose and lonesome architecture for Dark Night.
His film glimpses disparate lives that will eventually meet and, in some cases, end in a bland suburban movie theater.
Sutton bases this prelude to a massacre around a fictional copycat shooting. With no help from exposition, he builds an unsettling dread as we and the camera so dispassionately watch each character.
This anxiety grows as we realize one of these people will eventually act on the same urge that pushed James Eagan Holmes to open fire, killing 10 and wounding 20 more in an Aurora, Colorado screening of The Dark Night Rises in 2012.
The focus remains splintered, meandering from one character to the next – an Iraq veteran struggling with PTSD, a video game obsessed teen, a selfie-compulsive would-be model, a skate kid tellingly dying his hair orange. The only discernible commonality – aside from the lifeless landscape of their suburban digs – is personal alienation.
As their stories begin to coalesce, you’re asked to guess who will become the shooter. You understand that there will be an incident and instinctively begin to distinguish potential culprits from likely victims. It’s a sort of whodunit in reverse.
Sutton’s interest is in our preconceived notions as well as possible inspirations for this particular brand of American mayhem.
The filmmaker creates a drowsy cadence – clearly reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s own meditation on mass shootings, Elephant – pulling each thread tighter and tighter as the climax draws near.
Much of the power in Sutton’s film comes not from imagery but absence. Dark Night is adamantly bloodless. You know what is coming, feel the weight of its inevitability. What’s the use in seeing it?
Dark Night becomes a lyrical American nightmare, although at times its pursuit of authenticity feels more like cinematic sleight of hand. Characters begin to feel like red herrings, undercutting the basic, flawed humanity Sutton offered each one early in the film.
Still, between Hélène Louvart’s fluid camerawork, Maica Armata’s doleful score, naturalistic performances from an ensemble of newcomers and Sutton’s hypnotic structure is a potent vision of the damage of disconnection.
Oscar cometh, and with him the possibility of drawing attention to some of the best films from 2016 that many people didn’t see. By all means, check out Hell or High Water and Moonlight. Watch Natalie Portman’s brilliant turn in Jackie, or Viola Davis’s blistering performance in Fences. And for the love of God, watch Manchester by the Sea already. It won’t kill you.
And while you’re at it, pull out your Oscar score card and compare it with ours.
Best Picture
There are a lot of solid contenders and one possible winner. Such is the case every year, but the best thing about the real race this year is that it’s the movie you enjoyed most versus clearly the best film you saw this year. For us, it’s La La Land versus Moonlight, and however it turns out, we all win. This is how it will turn out:
Should:Moonlight Will: La La Land
Best Director
We would love to say David Mackenzie, beautiful visionary behind Hell or High Water, should win but will lose to someone else. But, Mel Gibson got that nomination for Hacksaw Ridge. So Mackenzie can’t lose, at least he has that. The winner, then?
Should: Damien Chazelle, La La Land Will: Chazelle
Best Actress
This is a stacked category (including Streep, Portman, and Loving‘s Ruth Negga)– one of the strongest pack of contenders for Best Female Lead we’ve seen in years. Congratulations to us that it will be so tough to choose. But here’s the way it’ll likely go:
Should: Isabelle Huppert, Elle Will: Emma Stone, La La Land
Best Actor
Tightest race this year, and only getting tighter. Even Denzel Washington was surprised to see the Screen Actors Guild award come his way for Fences, and with all the overlap in the voting pool between that organization and the Academy, Denzel’s chances have only gotten better. But we still give Casey Affleck the slightest of leads.
Should: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea Will: Affleck
Best Supporting Actress
Regardless of her limited screen time in Manchester by the Sea, Michelle Williams has every right to this award, only because the great Viola Davis should be nominated in the best actress category. But since she’s not…
Should: Viola Davis, Fences
Will: Davis
Best Supporting Actor
This is another group of impressive performances. Nice to see Lucas Hedges included for his great work in Manchester by the Sea. Still, this ranks as the second strongest lock on the ballot (after Viola’s certain win).
Should: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight Will: Ali
Best Original Screenplay
Wow, the brilliance off all this work could blind you. The Lobster, 20th Century Woman, La La Land and more, someof the most original, most provocative and most moving screenplays we’ve seen in years. There are no losers here.
Should: Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water Will: Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Best Adapted Screenplay
Matching the originals in style and substance is this group of adapted screenplays (including Lion, Arrival, and Fences). Breathtaking.
Should: Barry Jenkins, Moonlight Will:Moonlight
Best Animated Film
Oscar liked some obscure cartoons this year – and good for all of us that they drew attention to such gems as The Red Turtle and My Life as a Zucchini. Still, it’s the big boys who delivered. No, not Pixar. For once, the ultimate behemoth in ‘toon-tainment, Disney, put out the most relevant and gorgeous piece of animation, and will be rewarded for it.
Should:Zootopia Will:Zootopia
Best Documentary
Three films here, including Ava DuVernay’s gripping 13th, are almost equally deserving of this award, each of them speaking to the nation’s racial tensions in a way that illustrates both the history and currency of the topic. We’ll be happy however it turns out, but if it were up to us…
Should:I Am Not Your Negro Will:OJ: Made In America
Catch the show Sunday night on ABC. Coverage begins at 7pm.
Few figures in horror are more familiar, no matter your age, than Vincent Price. With more than 100 films to his credit, not to mention the Scooby Doo episodes and Thriller rap, the iconic voice and face of evil (and sometimes comedy) left an impression. Whether it’s his hapless scientist in The Fly (1958), the sole survivor of a zombie/vampire epidemic in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, or his murderous supervillain in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Price put his voice, his height, his hair and pencil-thin mustache to evil use with a panache few could match.
With the help of Phantom Dark Dave, we take a look at the best Price had to offer.
5. Masque of the Red Death (1964)
One of many Poe adaptations director Roger Corman did with Price, this one sees the actor as a Satanic prince ruling over a plague-beset village. While he tries to turn one village innocent (Jane Asher) from her naïve ways, his lover Juliana (Hazel Court) decides she’s finally ready to wed Satan.
All this takes place at a party the prince is throwing – a closed-off house party of sorts, where guests are encouraged toward debauchery and kept safe (they believe) from the plague outside.
Price cuts a bemused presence of evil in this overly dramatic adaptation that throws some provocative notions and bold color into the Poe mix.
4. House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Price famously worked with B-movie maestro William Castle twice. While The Tingler succeeded in many ways – cinematic and historical – House on Haunted Hill became their most iconic and memorable collaboration.
Chock-full of cheese and floating heads, the film is best watched as a joyous bit of nostalgia. Price’s millionaire Frederick Loren hosts a party in a haunted house at the behest of his wife. Isn’t she amusing? Guests are locked in, and those who survive the night will take home $10k.
The bumps in the night are laughable by today’s standards, but the fact that this plot has been lifted so many times – even making its way into a Flintstones episode – speaks to the simple power of the tale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmgAsLr2bgI
3. House of Usher (1960)
Roger Corman made 8 films with Vincent Price, most of them adaptations of the work of Edgar Allen Poe. House of Usher is the strongest of the efforts, primarily because of Price’s presence.
Starkly blond and working his height to achieve a ghastly presence, Price’s Roderick Usher is a weirdo from the word go. The performance fits this tale of sibling trouble perfectly, as Corman – with the help of Price and Myrna Fahey as Roderick’s sister Madeline – mines something unseemly and yet well hidden in the family dynamic.
What is Roderick’s deal with his sister, really? Corman finds something symbolic and uthinkable in the Usher madness that Poe barely hinted, and though this House of Usher is never entirely out with it, it lays a queasying undercurrent that makes the film a success.
2. Theatre of Blood (1973)
Vincent Price made 101 films, but in a way, it feels like fewer. Maybe because so many of them were basically the same film: a decent man is believed to have died horribly; disfigured and insane, he returns to exact bloody vengeance in increasingly bizarre yet clearly outlined ways.
This could be House of Wax, any of the Dr. Phibes films, and Theatre of Blood. What makes the latter stand out is that, even as it reworks themes so terribly familiar to Vincent Price fans, it does it in a way that sends up Price’s image and still tells a clever tale.
Price’s Edward Lionheart believed himself to be the greatest actor in London. When the city’s eminent critics fail to give him the recognition he is due, he falls to his death. Or does he?
Using strategies that not only call back to Price’s earlier works but predict both Seven and some of the Saw franchise, the spurned actor comes calling to make his critics eat their words – and sometimes their dogs.
1. Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm) (1968)
Price’s one true horror film asks him to step outside his comfort zone a bit. Yes, he once again plays the evil villain – clearly the role the lanky, mustachioed tenor was born to play. But as Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed “witchfinder general” he gets to really tear into his work.
Hopkins, along with his evil henchman John Stearne (Robert Russell) travel the English countryside ridding villages of witches on the taxpayer’s dollar. Woe to those who think they can spurn a sexual advance – which makes you wonder just why righteous soldier Richard (Ian Ogilvy) leaves his bride-to-be alone with her uncle, the priest who’s losing favor in the village. Hell, he even gives the two witch hunters directions to her house. What kind of love is that?
Director Michael Reeves takes the movie in directions unlike those found in most of Price’s work. The film was released in the states as The Conqueror Work, a Poe phrase meant to connect it to Price’s slew of Poe-inspired films, but fans of that franchise would likely balk at the overt violence on display here.
It remains an effective work of horror, and Price’s most convincing performance.
It is the top of the food chain that has the most reason to fear evolution.
Isn’t that the abiding tension in monster and superhero movie alike? The Girl with All the Gifts explores it thoughtfully and elegantly – for a zombie movie.
In 2010, director Colm McCarthy took an unusually restrained and intimate look at lycanthropy in his underseen Outcast – kind of a werewolf Romeo and Juliet among Irish travelers. This time he mines Mike Carey’s screen adaptation of his own novel with the same quietly insightful bent.
Melanie (startlingly strong newcomer Sennia Nanua) lives out her young life in a cell, then restrained head, hands and feet in a wheelchair as part of ongoing research conducted by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close).
Let’s pause. When 6-time Oscar nominee and all around acting badass Glenn Close deems a zombie film worthy of her talent, we should all pay attention.
So, what’s the deal? A horde of “hungries,” each infected with a plant-based virus, has long since overrun the human population. Dr. Caldwell, her researchers and the military are holed up while trying to derive a cure from the next generation, like Melanie – the offspring of those infected during pregnancy.
It is an unsettling premise handled with restraint and realism, bolstered by uniformly admirable performances.
Melanie aside, the characters could be standard fare zombipocalypse cogs: gung ho military guys, driven researcher, tender-hearted woman here to remind us all of the civilization we’re fighting to save.
But expect something surprising and wonderful out of every actor involved – from Paddy Considine as the Sarge with something to learn to Gemma Arterton as Melanie’s beloved teacher to Close, steely and cagey in a underwritten role.
But much of the weight sits on Nanua’s narrow shoulders, and she owns this film. The role requires a level of emotional nimbleness, naiveté edged with survival instinct, and command. She has that and more.
McCarthy showcases his bounty of talent in a film that knows its roots but embraces the natural evolution of the genre. It’s not easy to make a zombie film that says something different.
Girl brims with ideas and nods to films of the past – in many ways, it is the natural extension of the ideas Romero first brought to the screen when he invented the genre in ’68. It definitely picks up where his Day of the Dead left off in ’85, working in nods to 28 Days Later as well as other seminal flicks in the genre.
But what Girl has to say is both surprising and inevitable.
