Tag Archives: Hope Madden

Fright Club

Fright Club: True Love in Horror Movies

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Love, exciting and new! Or, ancient and blood soaked. We’re not judging. There tends to be something wrong – lonesome, desperate, twisted, star crossed – about true love in horror. Maybe that’s what makes it so much more memorable. Here are our five favorite love stories in horror.

5. Spring (2014)

Evan (a spot-on Lou Taylor Pucci) has hit a rough patch. After nursing his ailing mother for two years, Evan finds himself in a bar fight just hours after her funeral. With grief dogging him and the cops looking to bring him in, he grabs his passport and heads to the first international location available: Italy.

It’s a wise setup, and an earnest Pucci delivers the tender, open performance the film requires. He’s matched by the mysterious Nadia Hilker as Louise, the beautiful stranger who captivates Evan.

At its core, Spring is a love story that animates the fear of commitment in a way few others do. The film’s entire aesthetic animates the idea of the natural world’s overwhelming beauty and danger. It’s a vision that’s equally suited to a sweeping romance or a monster movie, and since you’ll have a hard time determining which of those labels best fits Spring, it’s a good look.

4. Bones and All (2022)

The film follows Maren (an absorbing Taylor Russell, Waves), coming of age on the fringes of Reagan-era America. She meets and slowly falls for another outcast with similar tastes, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), and the two take to the road.

Given what the handsome young lovers have in common, you might expect a sort of meat lovers’ Badlands to follow. But Bones and All is less concerned with the carnage left in a wake than in what’s awakening in these characters themselves. 

Bones and All is a tough one to categorize. I suppose it’s a horror film, a romance, and a road picture – not three labels you often find on the same movie. In Guadagnino’s hands, it’s more than that, though. He embraces the strength of the solid YA theme that you have to be who you are, no matter how ugly the world may tell you that is. You have to be you, bones and all. Finding Maren’s way to that epiphany is heartbreaking and bloody but heroic, too.

3. Border (2018)

Sometimes knowing yourself means embracing the beast within. Sometimes it means making peace with the beast without. For Tina—well, let’s just say Tina’s got a lot going on right now.

Border director/co-writer Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider) has more in mind than your typical Ugly Duckling tale, though. He mines John Ajvide Lindqvist’s (Let the Right One In) short story of outsider love and Nordic folklore for ideas of radicalization, empowerment, gender fluidity and feminine rage.

The result is a film quite unlike anything else, one offering layer upon provocative, messy layer and Abbasi feels no compulsion to tidy up. Instead, he leaves you with a lot to think through thanks to one unyieldingly original film.

2. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Ana Lily Amirpour has made the world’s first Iranian vampire movie, and though she borrows liberally and lovingly from a wide array of inspirations, the film she’s crafted is undeniably, peculiarly her own.

Set in Bad Town, a city depleted of life – tidy yet nearly vacant – Girl (Sheila Vand) haunts the shadowy, lonesome fringes of civilization. One by one we get to know a pimp, a prostitute, an addict, a street urchin, and handsome Arash (Arash Mirandi).

Watching their love story play out in the gorgeously stylized, hypnotic backdrop of Amirpour’s creation is among the most lonesome and lovely ways to enjoy a good bloodletting.

1. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Visionary writer/director Jim Jarmusch enlists Tom Hilddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve (perfect!), a vampire couple rekindling their centuries-old romance against the picturesque backdrop of…Detroit.

Not since the David Bowie/Catherine Deneuve pairing in The Hunger has there been such perfectly vampiric casting. Swinton and Hiddleston, already two of the most consistently excellent actors around, deliver cooly detached, underplayed performances, wearing the world- weariness of their characters in uniquely contrasting ways.

Jarmusch, as he often does, creates a setting that is totally engrossing, full of fluid beauty and wicked humor. The film moseys toward its perfect finale, casually waxing Goth philosophic about soul mates and finding your joy.

We found ours.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: The Marvels, The Holdovers, It’s a Wonderful Knife & More

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The Marvels, The Holdovers, It’s a Wonderful Knife, Butcher’s Crossing, Onyx the Fortuitous, Mr. Organ, Ghosts of the Void, Love Virtually

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You’re Beginning to Look a Lot Like Victims

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It’s a Wonderful Knife

by Hope Madden

For some people, it’s not even Thanksgiving, let’s not get into Christmas movies quite yet, OK? Meanwhile, countless people have been binging Hallmark Christmas tales since July. And the rest of us are still stinging that Halloween is over.

By that math, 2/3 of all viewers will be pleased with It’s a Wonderful Knife, the Christmas story with all the feel-good cheer of the classics and all the bloody knifework of a solid slasher.

The title gives away the film’s core conceit, but honestly, it bore more of a resemblance to Dolly Parton’s 2020 holiday debacle – I mean, charmer – Christmas on the Square. One small town real estate tycoon (Justin Long) intends to turn a historic strip into a shopping and dining oasis, even if it means bullying kindly old Mr. Evans (William B. Davis) into selling his family home.

But wait! No time to think about that when a white clad, knife wielding maniac is on a tear! And all this in the first ten minutes of the movie. Fast forward one year and everyone’s pretty much over those murders, except Winnie (Jane Widdop). No one cares, no one notices, it wouldn’t even matter if she’d never been born (…never been born…never been born…).

Director Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls) and writer Michael Kennedy (Freaky) have some fun piling on the holiday film cliches. And there are plenty of reasons to enjoy their movie.

First of all, Justin Long. There are few people more reliably fun to see in a horror flick, and in this one he rocks a spray tan and fake teeth. So many bonus points.

Also fun, Joel McHale (Becky), who is somehow now the go-to for horror movie supportive dad with daughter issues. Add the always welcome Katharine Isabelle, and though she’s tragically underutilized, it’s great to see Cassandra Naud (who was phenomenal in Influencer).

The story itself, with its plot twists and turns, is not as clever as it pretends to be. It is wryly funny, though, and often quite sweet. It’s not as raucous as Kennedy’s Freaky nor as badass as MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls, but it is a bloody slice of Christmas fun.

New In Theaters

Buffalo Stance

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Butcher’s Crossing

by Hope Madden

Nicolas Cage has done the wild West before. Of course, with 116 acting credits, he’s done most everything before. But he’s done this recently ­– earlier this year in The Old Way, and a couple of years back in Prisoners of the Ghostland. What’s new with Butcher’s Crossing?

Cage plays Miller, a buffalo hunter. He works for himself. And he knows the stragglers with their paper thin hides around these parts ain’t nothing compared to the majestic creatures he’s seen in the thousands over in Colorado territory. If only somebody’d pony up the dough, he could put together a hunting party and bring in the biggest haul this town’s ever seen.

Well, sir, that’s just what young Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) wants to hear. He dropped out of Harvard in search of adventure, and this looks to be that.

Co-writer/director Gabe Polsky adapts John Williams’s gorgeous 1960 novel of bitter truth and American mythology. Visually striking, the film’s untamed beauty belies its meager budget. Creating an atmosphere with limited means is an instinct Polsky has shown since his impressive feature debut, Motel Life.

Miller, Will, the hyper-religious Charlie (Xander Berkeley) and the scoundrel Fred (Jeremy Bobb) head into the Rockies in search of buffalo. What they find, along with the beasts, is themselves, and that is not pretty.

Butcher’s Crossing becomes a descent into madness film. This should be where Cage excels. Madness is essentially his brand. The character isn’t written well enough to leave an impression and Polsky’s storytelling is too tight to let the veteran madman open up. Lunacy never materializes.

Hechinger, memorably naïve in News of the World, delivers well enough as innocence turned sour. Both Bobb and Paul Raci, as the bitter entrepreneur who warned the men against the hunt, add a bit of color to the story.

Butcher’s Crossing is an ugly story of greed. It’s an ugly story of America. The shots of bison carcasses make an impression – the photography throughout is impressive, but this sickening image is particularly something. Unfortunately, Polsky’s script and cast can’t quite match the visual clarity he gives the tale.

New In Theaters

God Save the Queen

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The Marsh King’s Daughter

by Hope Madden

From its opening moments, Neil Burger’s The Marsh King’s Daughter establishes a meditative, even spooky mood. And though tensions rise fairly steadily over the following 108 minutes, he never entirely loses that atmosphere.

It’s a mood that suits a film about a young woman (Daisy Ridley) brought up in the most remote part of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Her father (Ben Mendelsohn) raises her to track, hunt, and recognize her place in the natural world.

Young Helena (played in youth by Brooklynn Prince, solid as ever) disapproves of her mother’s dour ways and prefers the company of her doting if strict father. This is why she’s so unhappy to be separated from him when her mother – who’d been kidnapped years earlier and forced to live in isolation – is finally rescued, and takes Helena with her to freedom.

And though Act 2 devolves into a fairly predictable if well shot and well-acted thriller, the effort put into the first act establishes Helena’s central conflict. She loved her dad more than anything in the world and he loved her back, in his way. His way was deeply, criminally wrong. But with Mendelsohn in the driver’s seat, the villainy is more than subtle and sinister enough to amplify an often-missed opportunity. We know why Helena loves and misses her father, regardless of the monster she logically realizes he is.

Mendelsohn is masterful, as is routinely the case. He brings an unnerving calm, a low key but committed sense that his way is the right way, the only way. His quietly impatient performance matches the films slow but deepening sense of unease.

Ridley – wiry, alert but never showy – convinces. Helena is what’s left of the kid whose idyllic childhood turned out to be more nightmare than dream.

None of the other characters have enough richness to feel like more than vehicles for the father/daughter story. Garrett Hedlund is particularly hamstrung by the underwritten “supportive spouse” role, and Gil Birmingham feels especially manhandled as the tragedy waiting to happen.

The most disappointing aspect of The Marsh King’s Daughter is the way the second act bends to predictability. But Burger remembers the strength of his opening when father and daughter return to the woods in the last third, and it’s worth the wait.

New In Theaters

Blinded by Science

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Fingernails

by Hope Madden

Nearly a decade ago, Yorgos Lanthimos delivered the most scathingly, cynically hilarious look at the human desire to quantify love, test it, find safety in it. And if not, be turned into a delicious crustacean.

Cristos Nikou’s delivery is more romantic, but his central theme is similar. Love is unquantifiable.

In a non-specifically retro time period with wall phones and a lot of 80s and some 90s jams but computers that look to be from the time of the dinosaur, one company has perfected a test to determine whether two people are in love. This test, it was hoped, would end divorce, end loneliness, end unhappiness. But most couples test negative, so it’s actually only created a loneliness crisis.

Anna (Jessie Buckley) and Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) are among the lucky ones. They tested positive some time back, and have fallen into a safe and predictable routine. And yet…

Anna takes a job at the very institute where the test is conducted, working alongside Amir (Riz Ahmed). That right there is the reason to see Fingernails.

Buckley’s a tremendous talent. Few actors so accurately, achingly portray yearning quite as she does. That conflict plays across Anna’s face in a raw performance matched by Ahmed’s. The Oscar winner shares electric chemistry with Buckley, which compels interest in a story that, while delightfully told, lacks a bit of depth.

White, in a smaller role, delivers as well. You can’t root for him, but neither can you root against him. He feels human, and complicating the emotion within a romantic film is never a bad idea.

Nikou’s elegant direction slides and dances from scene to scene, evoking melancholy one moment then swooning the next. It’s so beautifully shot that the occasional obvious moment – lingering on one toothbrush, holding on a reaction shot – stands out.

The trajectory is rarely in doubt and the film leaves much to mine when it comes to its premise. But whatever the weaknesses of Fingernails, Ahmed and Buckley and their thrilling rapport more than overcome.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Nightmares Film Festival New Distribution Panel

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In this bonus episode recorded live at Nightmares Film Festival from Gateway Film Center, the fest’s panel on what distribution looks like in 2023 for independent horror filmmakers.

This year Hope got to join a panel with Justin Seaman of Nevermore Production Film (and filmmaker behind The Barn & The Barn 2), Cicely Enriquez of The Owens Group, and Scott Donley of Good Deed/Cranked Up Films. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Uncategorized

Poor Career Choice

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Five Nights at Freddy’s

by Hope Madden

Two years ago, director Kevin Lewis essentially made the live action horror film based on the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. He did not have a license, but he did have Nicolas Cage. Lewis’s 2021 flick Willy’s Wonderland is an eccentric lock-in with one silent janitor (Cage), and a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese style animatronics out for blood.

It’s not very good. But Cage is very Cage in it – kicking animatronic ass, taking regular breaks to rest up and play some pinball, and uttering not a single word.

Director Emma Tammi (The Wind) does have the rights to the video game IP. But she does not have Cage.

What Five Nights at Freddy’s misses more than anything is the sense of macabre humor that seems a requirement for a film about, essentially, a blood thirsty Country Bears Jamboree.

Josh Hutcherson is a down-on-his-luck big brother. He needs a job, or his wicked aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson) is going to take custody of his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). So, he’s desperate. Just desperate enough to take an offer from a sketchy career counselor (Matthew Lillard) for security detail at the long-shuttered kids’ entertainment pizzeria.

Though Masterson’s storyline is predicably moustache-twirling evil, she’s fun. Lillard is reliably, weirdly creepy and his every moment onscreen is a twisted delight.

I like Hutcherson. He was a hoot in Tyler McIntyre’s 2017 gem Tragedy Girls. He has no opportunity to do anything with Mike the Forlorn. Hutcherson grimaces and looks pained for 90 minutes.

Tammi – who’s horror Western The Wind delivered a spare, spooky descent into madness – cannot land on a tone for this one. The script she co-wrote with Seth Cuddeback is a plodding predictable dirge. Game writer Scott Cawthon gets a credit as well, but it’s unclear how much he might have contributed to the screenplay.

The film builds no momentum, most scenes cut short in favor of an emotional flashback, a contrived family moment, or a dream sequence that can’t conjure the eeriness needed to push the film into horror territory.

There’s meanness in the kills, but certainly no blood, and no macabre delight, either.

Willy’s Wonderland was a weak, predictable, dumb film but at least it had Nicolas Cage.