Tag Archives: Hope Madden

New In Theaters

Can You Hear Me Now?

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Drop

by Hope Madden

The thing about Drop, Christopher Landon’s new first date thriller, is that we’ve seen it before. Maybe not this exact scenario, but the idea. Go all the way back to 2002’s Phone Booth, when Joel Schumacher and a self-righteous sniper trapped Colin Farrell on a pay phone. Or back to 2014 and Drop co-writer Chris Roach’s extortion-by-text-in-the-sky thriller, Non-Stop.

The point has always been that, via our technology, we’re helplessly surveilled and those watching can pull strings we don’t want pulled. It can be effective because it mines our collective reality. And Landon and a game cast keep the cat-and-mouse antics about as believable as they can be.

Meghann Fahy (The Unbreakable Boy, White Lotus) is Violet, a single mom out on her first date since the death of her abusive husband. She leaves her precocious 5-year-old Toby (bespectacled Irish internet sensation Jacob Robinson) at home with her sister (Violett Beane) and heads to a downtown Chicago high rise for a pricy dinner with too-good-to-be-true Henry (Brandon Sklenar).

But before she can even taste that calamari appetizer, Violet’s phone starts pinging with messages, including a command to check her home security footage. If Violet doesn’t kill Henry, the masked man in her living room will kill Toby.

Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) has a strong track record with horror comedies, but Drop is not really either. It’s a tidy thriller, and though Landon’s instinct for humor gives the first date banter a charming quality, he can’t quite direct his way out of the script’s physical limitations and storytelling contrivance.

Almost, though. Landon gives the penthouse eatery a dizzying fishbowl quality. Between savvy editing and the cast’s commitment, tensions rise with gamesmanship that usually feels fairly authentic.

But then, a dramatic convenience reminds you that this is a movie, and that no human would react as the character is reacting if, indeed, a gun was pointed at their 5-year-old.

Still, Drop exceeds low expectations mainly on the charisma of the cast and two universal fears: technology and first dates.

Outtakes

All Hat and No Cattle

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Gunslingers

by Hope Madden

Nic Cage makes, what, 18 movies a year? And every tenth or so is really worth watching, maybe because it’s fun, often solely because he’s a lunatic, and once in a long while you get a Pig, a Dream Scenario, a Mandy. But more often than not you get a Gunslingers.

Written and directed by Brian Skiba, the film opens with the worst AI New York skyline, circa 1904, you’ve ever seen. The scene that sets up the film amounts to a handful of quick cuts, gunshot sounds, and the worst CGI fire you’ve ever seen.

Cut to four years later and Thomas Keller (Stephen Dorff, a consistently solid actor who deserves better roles) is looking for the mythical town of Redemption, Kentucky. There he can lay down his guns and his name and take on a new, peaceful life, like every other citizen. It’s a town full of wanted men who’ve found…subtlety is not Skiba’s strong suit.

Hold your horses! That guy who was badly CGI burned? He’s on Thomas’s trail! And so is Val (Heather Graham), an “old friend” with a 4-year-old in tow. Who could be the father? What could Val want in Redemption? And how much exposition can Heather Graham be tasked with blurting out at opportune moments?

Well, old Thomas hasn’t been a citizen of Redemption long, but he’s already got friends in Redemption: town leader Jericho (Costas Mandylor); his daughter, the bartender (Scarlet Rose Stallone); his righthand law man (Tzi Ma in the worst wig you’ve ever seen onscreen); and the town religious zealot (Cage, dressed so anachronistically like a late ‘60s hippie it’s ludicrous).

Gunslingers feels like a grade school play written by a precocious 4th grader who watched a lot of Spaghetti Westerns. Skiba presents all the main beats of the genre with none of the connective tissue that gives them context or purpose. Every scene is contrivance plus shoot out plus convenient plot turn plus Val shouting exposition followed by Cage brandishing some kind of inexplicable tracheotomy sound to his vocal delivery.

It’s probably not the worst movie Cage has made, but lord, it is not good.

New In Theaters

A Mother’s Burden

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Eric LaRue

by Hope Madden

The film Eric LaRue pairs two of modern cinema’s most talented and least appreciated actors: Judy Greer and Michael Shannon. Intriguingly, Shannon doesn’t appear onscreen. Instead, he makes his feature directorial debut with this emotionally raw drama about a mother’s spiral after her son murders three of his classmates.

As we meet Janice (Greer), she’s struggling just to make it through a grocery store when she runs into Pastor Steve (Paul Sparks, pitch perfect). The dynamic these two actors and their director develop in this crucial scene sets the tone for a movie unafraid to get messy and stay there.

Pastor Steve wants to help. He sincerely does. He doesn’t want to think about what happened, doesn’t want to blame anybody for anything, doesn’t want to rehash the ugliness of the incident. He wants to help this woman clean her wounds and end the infection, but definitely does not want her ripping off any scabs to get there.

Likewise, across town at the more evangelical Redeemer church, Janice’s husband Ron (Alexander Skarsgård) is being wooed into an even cleaner and more complete erasure of his pain by giving his burden to Jesus.

Janice is just not sure any of this helps. And even if it does, it’s not the help she wants.

Shannon directs a script by Brett Neveu, the screen adaptation of his own stage play. It’s a tough story, and one that’s been covered by some outstanding indie films: Fran Kranz’s 2021 chamber piece Mass, and Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 masterpiece We Need to Talk About Kevin ranking among the best.  

Eric LaRue leans closer to Mass in that it examines the influence of religion on the grief, shame, and anger left after such a crime. But Shannon mines his material for a different outcome. A single moment of surreal absurdism (in a booth at Cracklin’ Jane’s restaurant) underscores the film’s cynicism concerning the good-faith efforts of religion to end suffering.

Skarsgård breaks your heart as an awkward, broken man trying desperately to move past his pain. A supporting cast including Tracy Letts, Lawrence Grimm, Kate Arrington, Nation Sage Henrikson, and especially Annie Parisse, delivers precise and authentic turns. But it’s Greer whose powerful performance—full of anger, shame, regret, longing, disappointment and most of all weariness—plays across her face in ways that seem achingly real.

Not everything works, but every performance is remarkable and there is bravery and power behind the message that life and death are messy things.

New In Theaters

Boys of Summer

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Hell of a Summer

by Hope Madden

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are not the first to send up the summer camp slasher. They may not even be the first this year. But that fact doesn’t make Hell of a Summer any less delightful.

The co-directors and co-writers are also co-stars, playing two best friends returning to their beloved Camp Pinewood for the first time as counselors rather than campers. Bryk’s Bobby is a wannabe Romeo hoping to score. Wolfhard’s Chris is a little more enlightened.

“Single use plastics are the real killer.”

Among the charms the writers bring to the film is the ironically unironic Gen Z humor, which can’t help but set the film apart from similarly themed comedies. The pair also invest in character. Yes, the circle of counselors looks like every other set of doomed slasher victims: horny teens making bad decisions. And while no actor is asked to shade in a lot of various grays, each character has enough screen time that their jokes feel character driven and earned.

Abby Quinn shines as the grungier kid in the bunch, but it’s Fred Hechinger—who had one hell of a 2024, with roles in Thelma, The Nickel Boys, and Gladiator II—who steals this movie. The same sweet natured haplessness that fueled his turn as devoted grandson in Thelma lends power to the trope-skewering at the center of this film.

Hell of a Summer’s subversions are never heavy handed. They’re almost delicate, with quietly observed authenticity that echoes the film’s—and generation’s—underlying, if often comedic, empathy.

The plot itself could have used a few more solid surprises. Hell of a Summer does not set out to reinvent the wheel, and even commits to one of the genre’s most tiresome new stereotypes. (The social media influencer has replaced the rich, popular blonde as horror’s shorthand for victim most deserving a comeuppance.)

Still, it’s fun while it lasts. And Fred Hechinger is a treasure.

Shudder Premiere

Neighborhood Watch

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825 Forest Road

by Hope Madden

I wonder whether Ashland Falls is a far drive from Abaddon, New York. Looks like a pretty area.

Hell House LLC writer/director Stephen Cognetti launched a fun and mainly impressive horror franchise from the dusty soil of the mythical Abaddon, New York, reinvigorating the found footage genre and reminding those who’d forgotten that clowns are terrifying.

Cognetti’s latest, 825 Forest Road, is the filmmaker’s first feature outside that franchise. Though he leans on some of the style that made the Hell House films memorable, this movie is not found footage. In fact, it’s a pretty straightforward haunted house picture.

Chuck (Joe Falcone) and Maria (Elizabeth Vermilyea) buy a roomy old home in Ashland Falls, to be near the little college where Chuck’s younger sister Isabelle (Kathryn Miller) will attend. Couldn’t Isabelle just move into the dorms like every other college freshman?

Why do that when they could all uproot themselves and buy a haunted house?

The backstory—family tragedy, estranged siblings trying to rebuild something—is the first of the film’s many weaknesses. The fact that the incoming freshman looks like she’s older than her guardians doesn’t help set the mood, either.  

But it’s not just Chuck’s new house that’s haunted. It’s the whole damn town. That can be a ripe premise, too. Just not today.

825 Forest Road delivers a little bit of the style Cognetti’s become known for, and it’s refreshing to watch a modern horror film and know that if you don’t pay attention, you may miss an inspired bit of haunting. But in this case, that’s not enough to merit your time.

Though Vermilyea convinces, the balance of the cast feels more like they’re doing a read through than performing. Chemistry among the actors is nonexistent, which exacerbates the problem with the unfelt backstory.

Every reason to do something is a contrived excuse rather than natural choice, and every reason not to do something is even less earned. The movie plays like a rehearsal that could have turned into something fun with a couple more rounds of script revisions.

New In Theaters

Shadow Dancing

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The Woman in the Yard

by Hope Madden

Exciting news! There’s a new scary movie starring Danielle Deadwyler—you know, who should have  been Oscar nominated in 2024 for The Piano Lesson and in 2022 for Till? Well, the Academy may not appreciate her talent, but horror does. Deadwyler leads director Jaume Collet-Serra’s new Blumhouse PG-13 scarefest, The Woman in the Yard.

Deadwyler plays Ramona. Newly widowed and still badly battered from the wreck that took her husband, Ramona wakes up one morning to a power outage, sick dog, irritated children, and a creepy woman in her front yard. Give her strength.

Peyton Jackson impresses as the adolescent son, pushing boundaries partly because of his age, partly because of necessity. The authenticity of his interplay with Deadwyler rattles you, each act of rebellion ratcheting tension inside the farmhouse everyone is afraid to leave and not entirely sure why.

Okwui Okpokwasili cuts an impressive figure as the Woman—elegant, hypnotic, and terrifying. The film’s entire cast consists of five people, but you never tire of them and each pulls their weight.

The cast’s commitment, chemistry, and the anxiety they build help the film feel more robust than it really is. An obvious metaphor finely cloaked in veils, shadows, and leg braces, The Woman in the Yard sometimes feels a little slight.

Sam Stefanak’s script skirts awfully close to being an American remake of an Australian classic. So close that I won’t mention the title to avoid spoilers. But Collet-Serra has fun with shadows, and his off-kilter camera work draws attention to how tightly the story comes together.

And, of course, Deadwyler’s excellent. She mines the character for the depths necessary to pull off the horror. You feel for Ramona, but you may not like her, and you probably don’t trust her. It’s a fascinating performance and fearless in many ways.

The film around her is no masterpiece, but it is a solid piece of genre filmmaking enlivened by bright performances and dark, nasty shadows.

New In Theaters

Kids Are Great, Aren’t They?

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The Assessment

by Hope Madden

Director Fleur Fortune’s feature debut delivers an effective gut punch of a sleight of hand. What feels for quite a while like a near-spoof on our collective unpreparedness for parenting morphs slowly into something entirely else. Something more sinister, more human, and alarmingly likely.

In a post-dystopian future where scientists have created an ageless but sterile dome world, it’s necessary to apply and be assessed for parenthood. Because, since no one dies anymore, and it was the strain on resources that caused the dystopia in the first place, children are not grown outside the uterus for just anybody.

But Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are ready, they’re sure of it. They just have to convince their assessor, Virginia (Alicia Vikander).

Fortune’s career up to now has involved a lot of music videos and perfume advertisements, work that’s sharpened her instincts for image. The shot making in The Assessment is often stunning, but it also informs the story. There are no voiceovers or news flashes to catch you up on the dystopia, who caused what, why we are where we are. But you don’t lose track of it because of how organically Fortune fits this story in this environment with these characters.

Everything serves a purpose—each costume, dinner guest, glance and line of dialog—but none of it feels forced or false. The delicate balance created in the early going, a balance the assessor destroys with manipulated childlike chaos, is thanks to meticulous direction and performances.

The three leads shine, none of them blameless and yet all forgivable. Because the chaos wrought in the film becomes more and more dire as the honest-to-god strain of this kind of world slowly, authentically reveals itself.

The Assessment’s resolution unfortunately feels less sincere, landing far more obviously than the preceding scenes. There’s a predetermined tidiness that flies in the face of the disarming chaos that came before.

It’s a small criticism of an insightful, frightening look at where our future may take us.