Screening Room: Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Your Place Or Mine, No Bears, Consecration & More
Tag Archives: Hope Madden
Our Lady of Sorrows
Consecration
by Hope Madden
Consecration is another Catholic horror movie full of potentially vengeful nuns.
Yawn.
It stars Jena Malone and Danny Huston and was directed by Christopher Smith, whose Severance is one of the best horror comedies ever.
Go on.
Malone plays Grace, a woman called to Scotland to identify the body of her brother, a priest who killed himself after murdering another priest in front of a gaggle of nuns. But the Mother Superior (an effectively chilly Janet Suzman) tells the story a bit differently than handsome local detective Harris (Thoren Ferguson). She knows Grace’s brother was possessed by a demon and had the strength to end his life to protect the convent.
Grace is having none of it. What she is having are hallucinations and blackouts, which should probably concern her more than they seem to. But that’s just the beginning of Consecration’s problems.
Malone – a generally welcome sight in any film – is as unconvincing. Her amateur atheist sleuth is as believable as her Scottish accent. The gritty charm and sly intelligence she’s used to mischievous and mysterious effect in so many films evaporate in the face of this super serious if frequently lightheaded character.
Much of the ensemble fares better. Huston’s spot-on as the priest determined to find a solution to this convent problem. Meanwhile, Eilidh Fisher blends warmth and weirdness, creating the film’s sole memorably tragic figure.
But Smith’s script, co-written with longtime collaborator/first-time writer Laurie Cook, leaves too many gaps in logic for its tale to take hold. Most of these holes concern Grace, which is no doubt among the reasons Malone struggles to create a believable character.
The scenery is gorgeous and there is an interesting time/space twist that’s a bit of good fun. But it’s not quite enough to salvage a tired idea told with pretty images and little enthusiasm.
Meet the Parent
Attachment
by Hope Madden
There are not nearly enough horror films based in Jewish folklore. Have you ever seen a dybbuk movie? You should. So far, I’ve seen three – Marcin Wrona’s beautiful 2016 haunting, Demon; Keith Thomas’s 2021 horror, The Vigil; and writer/director Gabriel Bier Gislason’s latest, Attachment.
The thing about dybbuk stories is that I’ve never seen one go well for anyone. Fun!
On the surface – and even just below – Attachment is an astute observation on being new to the family, particularly in a situation where the relationship itself is probably not that welcome. All families are weird, but they are weird in such individual ways. Gislason picks that scab effectively, as does his cast.
Josephine Park is Maja, a Danish actress best known – really, only known – for playing Santa’s Elf in a long-defunct TV series. She literally runs into Leah (Ellie Kendrick) at a bookstore. Leah is in from London doing some research, the two fall quickly in love, and after Leah is injured during a seizure, Maja offers to return with her to London and her mother’s care.
There is something quietly astute about the way Gislason sets up the dynamic: the willfully oblivious love interest, the domineering parent (Sofie Gråbøl) unwilling to be gracious, and the insecure new love unsure how to make herself fit into the family. All of it feels authentic, even if the stakes and weirdness are clearly ratcheted up a few notches.
Attachment delivers slow-burn horror that repays close attention but never falls to gimmickry. Yes, the situation is absurd, but everyone behaves in a way that is rooted in real-world expectations and experiences.
When the film changes its point of view, you realize where its compassion really lies. Attachment is a nightmare about parenting, about releasing your everything – your beautiful, tender baby – into a vast and brutal world. At the center of the entire nightmare is love, of course, because there is no real horror unless love is at stake. It’s that knowledge that makes the film hurt.
Hug your mom.
Screening Room: Knock at the Cabin, 80 for Brady, Remember This, Little Dixie, Blood, Baby Ruby
Inconvenient Truth
Remember This
by Hope Madden
“What can we do that we are not already doing? Do we have a duty, a responsibility as individuals, to do something? Anything? And how do we know what to do?”
These words from Jan Karski, reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness, transcend the specific horrors Karski struggled with. They mean as much today as they did decades ago, and that’s just one reason Derek Goldman and Jeff Hutchens’s film Remember This strikes such a chord.
The other reason is David Strathairn. In a stirring performance, Strathairn brings Karski to life and he does it essentially on his own. Remember This is a one-man-show, a filmed stage play written by Goldman and colleague Clark Young, but co-directed by longtime cinematographer Hutchens (who also serves as DP). The combination brings a cinematic quality to the intimacy of the stage. But again, all of this is just support work, helping Strathairn compel your undivided, often teary attention for the full runtime.
The writing here is crisp and urgent and Strathairn delivers it beautifully. There’s nothing showy in his performance, and the unassuming delivery often lands harder than it would have with more drama.
Remembering attending mass and doing as his mother told him as a boy, “I was a good boy.” Recalling his pride to serve Poland and his befuddlement at the blitzkrieg: “Poland lost the war in 20 minutes.”
The poignant understatement serves an important purpose, because there’s no hint of exaggeration or drama or self-indulgence as the actor shares Karski’s recollections of the war, of the death camp, of his inability to persuade the leaders of the Allied forces that their immediate intervention was the only thing standing between Polish Jews and complete annihilation.
“Governments have no soul.”
Hutchens’s camera is subtle but its fluidity in orchestration with lighting, Roc Lee’s sound design, and Strathairn’s movement keep the film from ever feeling stagnant or stage bound. The final result is surprisingly unsentimental, Lee’s subtle score never overwhelming the delicate performance.
Strathairn talks, a broken figure filmed in stark, lovely black and white, and we learn what apathy and inaction can cause. It’s a heartbreaking lesson worth remembering.
“My faith tells me that the second original sin has been committed by humanity through commission or omission or self-imposed ignorance or insensitivity, self-interest, hypocrisy, heartless rationalization, or outright denial. This sin will haunt humanity to the end of time. It haunts me now. And I want it to be so.”
Apples and Trees and All That
Blood
by Hope Madden
Back in 2001, Brad Anderson scared the living shit out of us with the ingenious institutional horror, Session 9. He followed this up with the utterly remarkable The Machinist, and a few years later, the mind-bending thriller, Transsiberian.
Things began to peter out for Anderson as a filmmaker by 2010’s Vanishing on 7th Street, and as he found more success with episodic programming, he more or less stayed there, popping over to film every few years with routinely middling results.
Such is the case with his latest, the supernatural family drama, Blood.
Michelle Monaghan is Jess, a recently sober, recently divorced, harried nurse settling her pre-teen children into their new home, an isolated farmhouse owned by her aunt before she passed. But Pippin, the golden lab, knows something’s wrong out in them woods.
Whatever’s out there ends up in Pippin and then, shortly, in Jess’s 8-year-old, Owen (Finlay Wojtak-Hissong). The obvious tension is amplified by the fact that Jess is desperately afraid to lose custody of her children, so she is loath to admit there’s anything seriously wrong. But things are seriously, seriously wrong with Owen.
Writer Will Honley hits on a topic that was really popular in the genre maybe five years ago (The Hole, The Prodigy, Brahms: The Boy 2, Z, Brightburn ). His updates actually recall slightly older films – Grace (2009), It’s Alive (the 2009 remake), even 1990’s nutty Baby Blood to a degree. What Blood is saying is not original at all, so to make it relevant, Anderson will need to mine Honley’s script for some real relevance.
The family dysfunction and addiction angle could be it. There’s an undercooked metaphor here concerning addiction and heredity. Owen’s bratty behavior buoys the film’s darker qualities, and that business down the basement is especially gruesome (as “down the basement business” so often is). But none of it pans out. In fact, some of it – the least forgettable bits – are forgotten entirely as the film delivers a kind of final grace that is wildly unearned.
Had that moral ambiguity felt intentional the film would have been at least provocative. The fact that it does not is alarming, but not in a way that makes the film more enjoyable.
All the performances are solid. Monaghan and June B. Wilde spar beautifully with each other. Meanwhile, Skeet Ulrich (nice to see you!) and young Skylar Morgan Jones fill out the problematic family well. They just won’t help you remember the movie.
Fright Club: Best (Worst?) Hotels in Horror Movies
You check in. You assume the best. You’d never think, as you doze off in total helplessness, that maybe the last guest is still lingering in spirit, or was fed to gators, or that the hotel itself may be the doorway to hell.
In all likelihood the worst thing you’ll bring home with you is bedbugs, but I’ll take the gators.
For this episode we’re joined by our dear friend Jamie Ray from the Fave Five from Fans podcast and, at his behest, we will run through horror cinema’s best – or worst? – hotels.
Listed below are our five favorites, but honorable mentions go to Eaten Alive‘s Starlite Hotel, Basket Case‘s Hotel Broslin, Hotel Quickie from Killer Condoms and Slausen’s Oasis from Tourist Trap.
5. Motel Hello (Motel Hell, 1980)
It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters, so swingers looking for a cheap motel in which to swing – be warned! Fifties heartthrob Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, who, along with his sister Ida (a super creepy Nancy Parsons) rid the world of human filth while serving the righteous some tasty viddles. Just don’t look under those wiggling, gurgling sacks out behind the butcherin’ barn!
Motel Hell is a deeply disturbed, inspired little low budget jewel. A dark comedy, the film nonetheless offers some unsettling images, not to mention sounds. Sure, less admiring eyes may see only that super-cheese director Kevin Connor teamed up with Parsons and Calhoun – as well as Elaine Joyce and John Ratzenberger – for a quick buck. But in reality, they teamed up to create one of the best bad horror films ever made.
4. White Lovers’ Inn (The Happiness of the Katakuris, 2001)
Guests rarely come and a strange fate awaits them.
Takashi Miike is an extremely prolific director. He makes a lot of musical films, a lot of kids’ movies, a lot of horror movies, and then this – a mashup of all of those things. Like Sound of Music with a tremendous body count.
The Katakuris just want to run a rustic mountain inn. They’re not murderers. They’re lovely – well, they’re losers, but they’re not bad people. Buying this piece of property did nothing to correct their luck, either because, my God, their guests do die.
You might call this a dark comedy if it weren’t so very brightly lit. It’s absurd, farcical, gruesome but sweet. There’s a lot of singing, some animation, a volcano, a bit of mystery, more singing, one death by sumo smothering, and love.
3. Hotel Ostend (Daughters of Darkness, 1971)
Seduction, homoeroticism, drowsy lustfulness – this one has it all.
Countess Bathory – history’s female version of Dracula – checks into an all-but-abandoned seaside hotel. The only other guests, besides the Countess’s lover, Ilona, is a honeymooning couple.
Effortlessly aristocratic, Delphine Seyrig brings a tender coyness, a sadness to the infamous role of Bathory. Seyrig’s performance lends the villain a tragic loveliness that makes her the most endearing figure in the film. Everybody else feels mildly unpleasant, a sinister bunch who seem to be hiding things. The husband, in particular, is a suspicious figure, and a bit peculiar. Kind of a dick, really – and Bathory, for one, has no time for dicks.
Caring less for the victims than for the predator – not because she’s innocent or good, but because her weary elegance makes her seem vulnerable – gives the film a nice added dimension.
The accents are absurd. The outfits are glorious. The performances are compellingly, perversely good, and the shots are gorgeous. Indulge yourself.
2. Bates Motel (Psycho, 1960)
It doesn’t look like much, but the old Bates place used to be something before the new highway. Now it’s really just Norman, some dusty bungalows, that ice machine, swamp out back, some stuffed birds and, of course, Mother.
Anthony Perkins was the picture of vulnerability in Hitchcock’s horror classic, but the motel itself is also about as benign as a spot can be. Hardly the downcast, shadowy, menacing lodging you think of today when you think of low-rent motels. It’s bright, clean and empty. Lonesome, but hardly frightening. Just like Norman.
1. The Overlook Hotel (The Shining, 1980)
You know who you probably shouldn’t hire to look after your hotel?
Jack Nicholson.
A study in atmospheric tension, Kubrick’s vision of the Torrance family collapse at the Overlook Hotel is both visually and aurally meticulous. It opens with that stunning helicopter shot, following Jack Torrance’s little yellow Beetle up the mountainside, the ominous score announcing a foreboding that the film never shakes.
The hypnotic, innocent sound of Danny Torrance’s Big Wheel against the weirdly phallic patterns of the hotel carpet tells so much – about the size of the place, about the monotony of the existence, about hidden perversity. The sound is so lulling that its abrupt ceasing becomes a signal of spookiness afoot.
Nicholson outdoes himself. His early, veiled contempt blossoms into pure homicidal mania, and there’s something so wonderful about watching Nicholson slowly lose his mind. Between writer’s block, isolation, ghosts, alcohol withdrawal, midlife crisis, and “a momentary loss of muscular coordination,” the playfully sadistic creature lurking inside this husband and father emerges.
Screening Room: Infinity Pool, Living, You People, Women Talking, Fear & More
Swim At Your Own Risk
Infinity Pool
by Hope Madden
Brandon Cronenberg + Mia Goth + Alexander Skarsgård … for a very specific set of people, the sum there is hell yes.
Riding my favorite wave in horror – that rich people are unspeakably diabolical – writer/director Cronenberg takes us on a strange journey through privilege, debauchery, entitlement, boredom, narcissism, psychotropic drugs and more in his trippy new flick, Infinity Pool.
Skarsgård is James Foster, a writer of very little renown who’s vacationing on a fictional island nation with his wealthy wife (Cleopatra Coleman). They’re bored, but as luck would have it, James’s number one fan Gabi (Goth) and her husband have vowed to show them a good time.
Cronenberg’s ultimate concept is clearly, wildly his own, but moments sometimes call to mind ideas from last year’s Speak No Evil, as well as Society, Kill List, Hour of the Wolf, and A Serbian Film (no, not that part). Still, the film never feels borrowed. Uncomfortable, yes. Borrowed? No.
James represents the regular Joe – yes, a very good-looking version, but regular, nonetheless. And no matter how long he plays the part, he’s an outsider. The truly wealthy are alien. Beyond the sci-fi insanity, beyond the outright body horror, this is the most horrific element of the film because feels honest. It touches a nerve.
In 2020, Jeff Bezos racked up more than 16k in parking tickets. Because, why not? He wanted to park there. Once you reach a certain tax bracket – which is the one where you pay no taxes at all – no rules apply. And that does not create better people.
It’s fascinating and refreshing, this particular approach to the story. These particular villains. And Goth proves once again to be a seductive menace and a force to be reckoned with.
There are certain scenes in this – one in a group holding cell at the island prison, for instance – that are as insightful, impressive and memorably horrific as anything any Cronenberg has filmed.
It’s hard to believe this is only Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature. It does not pack the visceral punch of 2020’s Possessor, but it is a satisfyingly surreal piece of class warfare and an outstanding way for the genre to kick off 2023.
Or Don’t
Maybe I Do
by Hope Madden
Writer/director Michael Jacobs is best known for producing TV shows that speak to teens: My Two Dads, Boy Meets World, and Girl Meets World. But just seconds after what feels like the longest pre-film credits in the history of cinema, his feature film Maybe I Do makes certain we know this is not that.
The romantic dramedy enlists four truly great veteran talents to take a peek at romance, love, and existential angst in your sixties.
Grace (Diane Keaton, who executive produces) can’t help but notice Sam (William H. Macy), who’s sobbing at a foreign film as he dumps M&Ms into his popcorn tub. She reaches out to him because he “seems distressed.” He assumes that, as she is also alone at a movie, she, too, is distressed.
She admits she is, but honestly, there’s nothing wrong with going alone to the movies. I’m saying that, not Diane.
Anyway, they bond. Meanwhile, Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon quietly out-hot each other. And across town, young Michelle (Emma Roberts) questions an uncertain future with Allen (Luke Bracey).
So, the film offers three different vignettes of couples talking, arguing, and ruminating about love until worlds collide in the most obvious and contrived way possible. The sheer volume of cliches at work here could drown out almost anything of value, but how do you dismiss a film starring Macy, Keaton, Sarandon and Gere? Even the tritest dollops of wisdom sound charming and/or wizened coming from one of these four.
Gere and Macy together are a particularly tender treat, and while I applaud the actors and the opportunity the film allows, this scene best articulates the movie’s most nagging weakness. The whole film is sad for successful men who are dissatisfied with how their lives turned out. No one on earth is less pitiable than a successful middle-aged white man and his angst over what he hasn’t accomplished. But Gere and Macy almost make it work.
The second biggest problem is that the film hits traditional romance so hard. The act that has Michelle rethinking her relationship with Allen should be a red flag, an end to the relationship. Instead, it becomes a “marry me or it’s over” ultimatum. No. No! And then the whole film, one brimming with wildly unhappy marrieds, intends to prove to us all that you just have to go ahead and take the leap with someone who publically humiliated you to make sure they didn’t have to commit to you.
No.
Maybe I Do is unabashedly romantic, deeply traditional, well-meaning and tired. So tired. But at least you get to see four tremendous actors riff off each other for 90 minutes.
