Tag Archives: Hope Madden

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Worn Retread

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The Visitor

by Hope Madden

Four years ago, filmmaker Justin P. Lange used our preconceived notions against us to carve out a fresh horror with something meaningful on its mind. He followed his impressive feature debut The Dark with the subpar 2021 exorcism flick The Seventh Day.

This third outing, The Visitor, falls somewhere between the two.

 A young married couple moves back to the wife’s hometown when her father dies and leaves her his big, old gothic house. So far, so garden variety.

The pair’s not even unpacked yet when the husband starts hearing noises, then he’s having nightmares, and then he discovers a painting in the attic bearing his own unmistakable likeness.

Still pretty familiar. The truth is, not a single beat in The Visitor feels truly fresh. The film looks great and performances – especially from the supporting cast that includes veterans Dane Rhodes, Thomas Francis Murphy and Donna Biscoe – keep it lively.

Leads Finn Jones and Jessica McNamee benefit from a genre gender reversal. In nearly every film of this ilk, it’s the female who senses that something in this house and this town is amiss while her husband’s too stoic and dismissive to buy in. Here it’s Londoner Robert (Jones) who sees menace in the overly friendly townsfolk, who dreams of cackling old women. His wife Maya (McNamee) grows more and more hostile to his nonsense, especially now that she’s pregnant and they’re ready to start fresh.

Lange does a serviceable job of mashing together solid elements from better films and packing them in gorgeous autumnal shades. His set designer deserves applause for understated Gothic elegance. But it’s not enough.

Lange’s film boasts no real scares, not a single surprise, little dread. It’s a bland if attractive facsimile of other films we’re already kind of tired of.

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Fire Walk with Me

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She Will

by Hope Madden

There is nothing quite like an excellent set of cheekbones.

The effortlessly elegant and formidable Alice Krige and her fine cheekbones deliver another quietly powerful performance in director Charlotte Colbert’s bewitching horror, She Will.

Krige is Veronica, an actress seeking some time away from prying eyes. She and healthcare aid Desi (Kota Eberhardt) will seclude themselves in the Scottish Highlands so Veronica can convalesce from a double mastectomy. She’ll also be able to escape the media frenzy around a proposed remake of the controversial film that made her a star back when she was only 14.

It’s hard to say which of the two traumas haunts her more.

The traveling pair find, thanks to a self-help guru (Rupert Everett) leading his own little squad of guests, that the rustic getaway inhabits a spot used to burn witches in older, more barbaric times. Witty feminism doesn’t overwhelm but enlightens a tale with vengeance on its mind.

Colbert, who co-wrote the script with Kitty Percy, crafts a moody shapeshifter of a film, allowing atmosphere and images to drive the narrative. The result is hypnotic. Clint Mansell’s transfixing score spills into Jamie Ramsay’s dreamy cinematography and suddenly you can’t tell whether you’re in the woods or in Veronica’s headspace or neither or both.

Eberhardt’s thoughtful turn creates a lovely opposite to the brittle Veronica, their growth offering an enduring image of the strength in companionship and sisterhood.

Colbert peppers the film with unexpected humor that serves it well. She seamlessly blends styles and ideas into a singular vision – no minor feat for a first-time director.

On top of the controversy surrounding the Hocus Pocus sequel, it is nice to be reminded, however artfully, of the legacy of witchcraft: the powerful tormenting and in many cases torching the powerless. Colbert shows us how lovely revenge can look when those women have a little power.

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Sunglasses at Night

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Dark Glasses

by Hope Madden

Giallo is the soap opera of horror, and you have to embrace that to appreciate it. Emotion and drama, tension, fear and sexuality are amped up to a ludicrous degree, with sense and sensibility tossed out the window.

Few have ever done this as well as Dario Argento. I’d argue Mario Bava, but many consider Argento the king of giallo, and with good reason – his landmark 1977 film Suspiria may be the high-water mark for the entire genre. After a decade away from filmmaking in general and longer still since his last giallo, Argento returns to form with Dark Glasses.

Passions run high and bad decisions are rampant as Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) attempts to evade a serial killer. But wait, it’s more complicated than that! You see, she’s also blind and has sort of kidnapped this kid. It’s better if you don’t ask.

Though the score is not from Goblin, composer Arnaud Rebotini’s electronic soundtrack conjures classic giallo. Indeed, between those recognizable chimes and an early throat severing, you’d think you were watching Argento of old. But the filmmaker does have a couple new ideas in store, and marginally less misogyny onscreen.

Diana’s a harder-edged protagonist than what you find in other films from the Italian maestro. A high-end sex worker, she’s nonplussed about her line of work and disinterested in anyone else’s opinion of it. She’s a peculiar central character and Argento, who co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator Franco Ferrini (Opera, Phenomena), gives her more to do than elude victimization. She develops skills and bonds in the second act that feel reasonable and realistic, sometimes even tender. It helps ground the film in character before those characters step into a den of watersnakes and remind you that you are essentially watching a soap opera.

There are some inventive kills, gore aplenty, and loads of reminders of why Argento has developed such a boisterous following. This is by no means his best film, but it’s by no means his worst, either.

Everyone yells when they shouldn’t yell, everyone pauses when they shouldn’t pause, everyone talks when they shouldn’t talk, but who cares when the blood is this red and free-flowing?

Fright Club

Fright Club: Mean Girls & Bullies in Horror

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Horror is about power versus vulnerability. That’s why bullies and mean girls fit so well into the genre. You always hope the vulnerable will overcome. In this genre, there’s always the real worry that evil will overcome. But somehow, bullies and mean girls never stand a chance.

There are so many great ways to spend time with these high school baddies, but here are our five favorites:

5. Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Meg (Katherine Kamhi) was no picnic, but side-ponytail Judy (Karen Fields) is an all-timer when it comes to onscreen bullies. She hates everyone, is mean to everyone, but she really detests poor Angela (Felissa Rose).

“She’s a carpenter’s dream! She’s flat as a board and needs a screw!”

Like all mean girls in horror, Judy gets what’s coming to her. Still, you have to respect that ponytail.

4. It (2017)

Man, the kids of Derry have it rough long before the circus comes to Derry. Between Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his powerful mullet and the girls dumping wet garbage on Beverly, nobody’s safe. The Losers Club really brings them out of the woodwork.

In fact, they save Mike Hanlon’s life, which bonds the group through the real clown show. Maybe this is what made each of these kids tough enough to withstand he real clown show.

3. Let the Right One In (2008)

Sure, we know Conny learned to be a bully from his older brother, Martin. Maybe Martin learned it from his dad or something. But Oskar’s had just about enough of it.

Unfortunately, Oskar’s not as good at defending himself as he’d like to think he is once big brother shows up. Not that he really needs to defend himself anymore. In one of the greatest bully comeuppance sequences in all horror, Eli shows Oskar what friends are for.

2. Piggy (2020)

Carlota Pereda complicates the mean girl trope in this brutal, moving, amazing Spanish horror film. Sarah is targeted by town mean girl Maca (Clauda Salas). Roci (Camille Aguilar) is almost as bad, but it’s Claudia (Irene Ferreiro) who really breaks Sarah’s heart. It wasn’t long ago, they were friends. Now Claudia is willing to taunt, humiliate, and in one instance, nearly drown “Piggy”.

Maybe that’s why Sarah does what she does when the three girls are taken. That is to say, maybe that’s why Sarah doesn’t do what she doesn’t do.

1. Carrie (1976)

What else? Is there a more tragic scene? Is there a scene that better establishes a character, a context, or horror?

De Palma films the scene in question, appropriately enough, like a tampon commercial, all cheesecloth and beautific music. And then Carrie White (Oscar-nominated Sissy Spacek) desperately claws at her classmates, believing she is dying. It’s the most authentic image of vulnerability and terror you can imagine, matched in its horror by the reaction she receives from those she seeks: laughter, mockery and contempt.

The result is the ultimate in mean girl cinema and an introduction to a nearly perfect horror film.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Hellraiser, Amsterdam, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, Luckiest Girl Alive, Piggy & More

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Hellraiser, Amsterdam, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, Luckiest Girl Alive, Piggy, Deadstream, Missing, Acid Test, Hinterland, Two Witches, Bromates

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Pins and Needles

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Hellraiser

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Did you know that this is the 11th film in the Hellraiser franchise? There are 10 others, most of them terrible, a couple unwatchable. Why? How could it be so hard to create fresh horror from Clive Barker’s kinky treasure trove?

It appears David Bruckner (The Ritual, The Night House) wonders the same thing. He and screenwriters Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski and David S. Goyer had no trouble peeling the flesh from this franchise and exposing something raw and pulsing.

Oh yes, and gay, but if you didn’t pick up on any of the gay themes in out-and-proud Barker’s series before they cast a trans woman to play The Priest aka “Pinhead,” you missed a lot.

Jamie Clayton, with a massive thanks to makeup and costume, offers a glorious new image of pain. In fact, the creature design in this film surpasses anything we’ve seen in the previous ten installments, including Barker’s original. Each is a malevolent vision of elegance, gore and suffering, their attire seemingly made of their own flayed flesh.

There’s also a story, and a decent one at that. Bruckner’s core themes replace the S&M leanings with trauma and addiction, following a young addict named Riley (Odessa A’zion) as she ruins everyone and everything she touches.

Riley’s boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) has some inside info on where rich people stash their valuables, but when the two break open a safe… there’s only that strange puzzle box inside. 

And what a magnificent puzzler it is.

Like everything about the film’s visual design, there’s new richness and lethal detail to the box. It hides complicated new configurations, and Bruckner – whose horror cred is now firmly established – reveals them in intriguing tandem with the slippery rewards offered by the Cenobites.

Fans of the original classic may have been understandably wary of a rebranding, but this new vision overcomes a slightly bloated buildup for a more than satisfying crescendo. The kinks may be gone, but the chains are still chilling, in a darkly beautiful world full of sensual, bloody delights to show you.

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Chicas Malas

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Piggy (Cerdita)

by Hope Madden

Mean girls are a fixture in cinema, from Mean Girls to Carrie, Heathers to Jawbreaker to Napoleon Dynamite and countless others. Why is that? It’s because we like to see mean girls taken down.

Writer/director Carlota Pereda wants to challenge that base instinct. But first, she is going to make you hate Maca (Claudia Salas), Roci (Camille Aguilar) and Claudia (Irene Ferreiro). In one tiny Spanish town, the three girls make Sara’s (Laura Galán, remarkable) life utterly miserable. Like worse than Carrie White’s.

And though Sarah’s relationship with her mother (Carmen Machi) is a rose garden compared to the one Carrie shares with her wacko mom, things could be better. Sarah’s mom veers from unobservant to dismissive to defensive. Even when she’s trying to be helpful, that aid comes with a heaping dose of insensitivity.   

But it’s those pretty, skinny high school girls whose contempt nearly kills Sarah. In a scene that’s difficult to forget, cruelty blossoms into something brutal and horrifying as Sarah tries to take advantage of a nearly empty swimming pool.

Traumatized by the afternoon, a dazed Sara makes a choice that she will wrestle with for the balance of the film. Pereda doesn’t present a simple, single reason for what Sarah does. Or, more to the point, does not do.

In this scene and all others, the filmmaker complicates every trope, all the one-dimensional victim/hero/villain ideas this genre and others feast on. Redemption doesn’t come easily to anyone. Pereda also seamlessly blends themes and ideas from across the genre, upending expectations but never skimping on brutal, visceral horror.

Much of that horror would feel unearned were it not for substantial performances from every member of the cast. But Sarah is the most complicated character by far, and Galán performance is a reckoning. She’s utterly silent for long stretches, Sarah trying to make herself invisible. It’s in those still moments that Galán shines most fiercely.

Piggy is a tough watch, there’s no doubt. It’s also a ferocious and stunning piece of horror cinema.

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Resting Witch Face

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Hocus Pocus 2

by Hope Madden

Thirty years ago (more or less), Disney released a family friendly seasonal comedy that underperformed and was forgotten. Forgotten, except by every 8-year-old who watched Hocus Pocus then or would go on to rewatch it annually during spooky season.

The entertainment behemoth finally realized what it had and commissioned a sequel. Hocus Pocus 2 reunites willful witches Winnifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy) with Salem, the town that hates them.

What is it that reawakens the evil Sanderson sisters? A somewhat convoluted storyline, actually, but it involves female empowerment and community and it’s charmingly, inoffensively told.

Halloween’s here, and with it, Becca’s (Whitney Peak) 16th birthday. She’ll celebrate this year as every year by sharing a little spookiness in the woods with her bestie, Izzy (Belissa Escobedo). It’ll be the first year that the third in their trio, Cassie (Lilia Buckingham), doesn’t join because she’s hanging out with her boyfriend. Meh!

Anyhoo, the Sandersons are accidentally conjured. Somehow the local crystals and essential oils purveyor (Sam Richardson, likable as ever) is mixed up in things. And Cassie’s dad – kindly Mayor Traske (Tony Hale) – is in mortal danger!

Director Anne Fletcher (The Proposal) hits enough nostalgic notes that adult fans of the original will feel seen. Its contemporary story allows for brand new witch-out-of-water scenarios to explore, and, of course, the sisters are always up for a musical number. But this is definitely a kids’ film.

The original was a kind of sibling to Fred Dekker and Shane Black’s 1987 family film Monster Squad. Both showed poorly at the box office and went on to become beloved seasonal fixtures. Hocus Pocus brought the sensibilities into the nineties by, for one thing, recognizing that boys can also be virgins. HP2 modernizes further.

To begin with, not every citizen of Salem is white. And though it’s impossible to entirely redeem three characters looking to eat children, at least the sequel skims the ideas of systemic misogyny. But mainly it offers campy, scrappy, bland but amiable fun.

Midler, Najimy and Parker reinhabit the old trio well enough to remind us why so many kids loved the original. Whether HP2 can strike the same chord with today’s youth is tough to tell, but at least there’s a Halloween flick everyone can watch together.

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Why So Serious?

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Smile

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Man, It Follows was a great movie. It was a film that saw coming-of-age as its own type of horror, a loss of innocence that you either pass on or let kill you.

It’s a conceit that will never feel as fresh as it did then, but writer/director Parker Finn has a go with Smile.

Sosie Bacon is Dr. Rose Cotter, a therapist working in an emergency trauma unit. A woman is brought in, lashed to a gurney and screaming. Rose evaluates her in a safe space where Laura (Caitlin Stasey) can be comfortable, free. Rose listens to her paranoid, anxious story of a smiling, malevolent presence and tells Laura, as calmly as she can, that as scary as these ideas may feel, they can’t harm her.

Rose is wrong. And so begins a very borrowed and yet often powerful meditation on the nature of trauma and the state of mental health stigma.

Bacon delivers a believably brittle performance as the character who knows she’s right, even if everyone believes she’s crazy. But there’s more to this genre trope, given that Finn’s entire theme is an exploration of mental health. As a therapist and also a woman suffering from trauma, Rose can see her current situation more clearly than most.

There’s honesty, depth and empathy at work here, a 360-degree look at mental health and the systems and norms that affect people. Smile is also a clear metaphor for trauma and its insidious ripple effect.

It’s also a showcase for a fine supporting cast, and a few good, if borrowed, jump scares and freaky images. Kyle Gallner is particularly solid, and both Robin Weigert and Rob Morgan deliver traumatizing performances in small roles.

Turning something as inherently harmless as a smile into a threatening gesture carries a primal creepiness that Finn exploits pretty effectively throughout the film. Even so, the nearly two-hour running time feels bloated as Rose’s search for the origins of her curse begins to drag.

Her detective work – plus one very familiar shot – make Smile an easily recognizable marriage of It Follows and The Ring. Credit Finn for not hiding his intentions, and crafting some thought-provoking frights in the process.

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Dangerous Method

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Devil’s Workshop

by Hope Madden

I hate to admit this, but my first thought upon screening Devil’s Workshop was that we don’t need another low budget exorcism movie – or worse yet, another ghost hunter demonologist movie. I am pleased to report that writer/director Chris von Hoffmann’s latest horror offering is not “just another” anything.

The premise seems garden variety enough. Struggling actor Clayton (Timothy Granaderos, Who Invited Them) auditions for the part of a demonologist in a new low-budget indie. His competition, Donald (Emile Hirsch), is a social climbing douche who gets whatever he wants. To sharpen his edge for the callback, Clayton hires a real demonologist to train him for the performance.

That demonologist is played by Radha Mitchell, who’s both wonderful and evidence that von Hoffman has something unusual up his sleeve.

The filmmaker cuts between earnest, insecure Clayton undertaking his eerily authentic preparation, and narcissist Donald, preparing in his own way. As von Hoffman does this, he comments on the main theme of his film: a knowing, sly analogy of the process of acting, from ridiculous to pretentious to dangerous.

What emerges is a cheeky, cynical but not hateful application of the mantras and exercises meant to break an actor down and open them up to the demons that will create a better performance.

Two things are necessary for Devil’s Workshop to pull this off: stellar acting (or the metaphor falls apart) and genuine horror (or the metaphor overwhelms the story).

The acting is stellar, beginning with Mitchell. Her giggles and offhanded terms of endearment, hand gestures and facial expressions create an elusive character. Granaderos, so impressive as the sinister partygoer in Who Invited Them, adopts a wide-eyed insecurity that suits von Hoffman’s style.

Rather than drawing our eye to the speaker, von Hoffman’s camera lingers on the listener. The choice captures Clayton’s discomfort, sometimes for a troubling length of time, creating unease.

The horror does well enough for nearly long enough. A couple of times it’s effective, but it never rises to true scares. Worse still, the payoff doesn’t land. In the end, von Hoffman’s insiders-view of the dangers in submitting entirely to a part falls just short of success.