Upon first seeing the trailer for Anaconda, the Jack Black/Paul Rudd spiritual sequel to the 1997 JLo vehicle, my husband George said, “This will either be incredibly funny or unwatchable.”
I banked on the first. How could this lose?! Not only because of the upbeat comedy gold of Black and Rudd, but forever favorite Steve Zahn, plus Thandiwe Newton classing up the joint. With Tom Gormican, the madman behind The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, co-writing and directing, it seemed like Anaconda couldn’t go wrong.
Anyway, I wouldn’t call it unwatchable.
Black, Rudd, Zahn and Newton were high school besties, brought together again by a dream: to make a reboot/sequel/reimagining of the giant snake movie they’d watched dozens of times when they were young and idealistic.
It’s a funny premise!
One script, a lead on a snake handler, and 42 grand later, the friends head to Brazil to shoot this thing and salvage something of what they’d hoped to be when they grew up.
There are some funny bits. Selton Mello is joyously weird as Santiago, the snake handler. Cameos, descriptions, and bits of dialog from the original Anaconda inject a bit of mischievous fun. I will be using the term “Buffalo sober” in my future.
But as inarguably charming as this cast is, it can’t elevate the many stretches of film without a joke. Though lots of scenes are humorous, very few are laugh-out-loud funny. Both Rudd and Black fall back on schtick and timing to make up for the spare comedy of the script, and Newton is given nothing at all to do for 99 minutes.
Every scene goes on a beat or two too long, it takes the film forever to get to the jungle, and too little happens once we’re there. The fact that the film owes almost as much to a classic Black comedy Tropic Thunder as the original Anaconda only leaves you longing for something funnier to happen.
It’s watchable. It’s even mildly entertaining. But it felt like it could have been more.
What an incredible year for horror! Two unquestionable Oscar contenders, great international fare, great reboots and sequels, amazing original material, great independent horror, great studio horror—remarkably spooky stuff!
The year held so much great stuff that we were forced to leave incredible films off our final top 10 list. Our apologies to Companion and Animale, Hood Witch and Dead Mail, Final Destination: Bloodlines and 40 Acres and a lot of other really quality films. But that’s just how strong the competition was this year!
10. The Toxic Avenger
On Prime
Though the story’s changed, much remains the same in writer/director Macon Blair’s reboot in all its goopy, corrosive, violent, hilarious glory.
Peter Dinklage is one of the most talented actors working today, and as Winston he is effortlessly heartbreaking and tender. He’s also really funny, and this is not necessarily the kind of humor every serious actor can pull off.
Blair’s vision for this film couldn’t be more spot-on. Joyous, silly, juvenile, insanely violent, hateful of the bully, in love with the underdog—Blair’s Toxic Avenger retains the best of Troma, rejects the worst, and crafts something delirious and wonderful.
9. Chain Reactions
On Prime
Not everyone believes Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a masterpiece of American filmmaking. I find those people suspicious. Luckily, those are not the people filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe (Memory: The Origins of Alien, 78/52) talks to for his latest documentary, Chain Reactions.
The film is a celebration of 50 years of TCM. The celebrants are five of the film’s biggest fans: Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama. It’s a good group. Each share intimate and individual reminiscences and theories about the film, its impact on them as artists, and its relevance as a piece of American cinema. What their ruminations have in common is just as fascinating as the ways in which their thoughts differ.
Each of these artists came to the film from a different perspective—some having seen it early enough in their youth to have been left scarred, others having taken it in as adults and still being left scarred. But each one sees layers and importance—poetry, even—in Hooper’s slice of savage cinema.
8. Invader
On Shudder & Prime
Lean, mean and affecting, Mickey Keating’s take on the home invasion film wastes no time. In a wordless—though not soundless—opening, the filmmaker introduces an unhinged presence.
Immediately Keating sets our eyes and ears against us. His soundtrack frequently blares death metal, a tactic that emphasizes a chaotic, menacing mood the film never shakes. Using primarily handheld cameras from the unnerving opening throughout the entire film, the filmmaker maintains an anarchic energy, a sense of the characters’ frenzy and the endless possibility of violence.
Joe Swanberg, with limited screentime and even more limited dialog, crafts a terrifying image of havoc. His presence is perversely menacing, an explosion of rage and horror. Invader delivers a spare, nasty, memorable piece of horror in just over an hour. It will stick with you a while longer.
7. Bring Her Back
On Prime, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+
Filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou drew attention in 2022 for their wildly popular feature debut, Talk to Me. Before releasing the sequel, due out this August, the pair changes the game up with a different, but at least equally disturbing, look at grief.
It’s a slow burn, a movie that communicates dread brilliantly with its cinematography and pacing. But when Bring Her Back hits the gas, dude! Nastiness not for the squeamish! Especially if you have a thing about teeth, be warned. But the body horror always serves the narrative, deepening your sympathies even as it has you hiding your eyes.
Australia has a great habit of sending unsettling horror our way. The latest package from Down Under doesn’t disappoint.
6. The Monkey
On Prime, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+
Why is it that so many kids’ toys are creepy? Not that you should call The Monkey a toy. You should not, ever. Because this windup organ grinder monkey, with its red eyes and horrifyingly realistic teeth, is more of a furry, murder happy nightmare.
The film itself is a match made in horror heaven. Osgood Perkins (Longlegs, Gretel & Hansel, The Blackcoat’s Daughter) adapts and directs the short story by Stephen King about sibling rivalry and the unpredictability of death.
Perkins surrounds deliberately low energy leads with bizarre, colorful characters—even more colorful when they catch fire, explode, are disemboweled, etcetera. The film is laced with wonderful bursts of Final Destination-like bloodletting, as the Monkey’s executions are carried out via Rube Goldberg chain reactions that quickly become fun to anticipate.
Yes, fun. And funny.
5. Dust Bunny
In theaters
Imagine Guillermo del Toro meets Wes Anderson. Equal parts fanciful and gruesome, the film tells the tale of a precocious youth named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who hires the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster that lives under her bed.
Sloan delivers Roald Dahl’s Matilda by way of Wednesday Addams, braids and all. Mikkelsen’s adorably gruff, and the great Sigourney Weaver is having a blast playing gleefully against type and shoplifting every second of screentime.
Writer/director Bryan Fuller wastes not a frame of his feature film debut. The saturated colors and intricate patterns and textures of the set design, the ballet of horror that is his shadow imagery, the boldly whimsical costuming—all of it conjuring an amplified fairy tale. It’s tough to believe this remarkably confident feature is his first foray behind the camera.
4. Weapons
On Prime, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+
Weapons delivers an elaborate mystery slowly revealing itself, ratcheting tension, and leading to a bloody satisfying climax. Unspooling as an epilogue followed by character-specific chapters, the film builds around a single event, developing dread as it delivers character studies of a town of hapless, fractured, flawed individuals in over their heads.
This is smartly crafted, beautifully acted horror. Those who worry Cregger’s left nasty genre work behind for something more elevated need not fear. Weapons is here to work your nerves, make you gasp, and shed some blood. It does it pretty well.
3. The Ugly Stepsister
On Prime, HBO, Hulu, Disney+, and Shudder
Writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt infuses her feature debut with an impossible-to-ignore blast of sharp wit, subdued rage, and grotesque bodily horrors.
The Ugly Stepsister(Den stygge stesøsteren) is the latest new angle to a classic tale, but don’t expect it follow the trend of humanizing misunderstood villains. Blichfeldt makes sure there are plenty of bad guys and girls throughout this Norwegian Cinderella story, punctuated by grisly violence surprisingly close to what’s in the 17th Century French version of the fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.
It is fierce, funny, gross and subversively defiant. But is one feature film enough to immediately put Blichfeldt on the watch list of cinema’s feminist hell raisers?
Yes. The shoe fits.
2. Frankenstein
On Netflix
Lush and gorgeous, even when it is running with blood, the world del Toro creates for his gods and monsters is breathtaking. The choices are fresh and odd, allowing for a rich image of creator and creation, the natural versus the magnificent.
Oscar Isaac is a marvel of angry arrogance made humble. As his creature, the long and limby Jacob Elordi offers a monster who’s more sensitive son than wounded manchild.
Mia Goth delivers the same uncanny grace that sets so many of her characters apart, and del Toro’s script allows Elizabeth an arc unlike any previous adaptation. You don’t wander into a Guillermo del Toro film expecting less anything than glorious excess—another reason why Frankenstein and he were meant for one another.
1. Sinners
On Prime, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+
Ryan Coogler reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smoke Stack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.
Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.
It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity. When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.
Few directors working today wield the craft as masterfully as Park Chan-wook. He combines genres and slides from tone to tone effortlessly, mingling humor and tension, satire and tenderness, mystery and pathos and blood like no one else. Though his style is unmistakable, somehow each Park film is wildly original, entirely its own.
No Other Choice may, in fact, be more unusual than the others, although there’s something familiar in its opening. Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) celebrates a gift from his paper company’s American owners with a barbeque in the back yard. He loves his home, he loves his family, his dogs, the greenhouse where he tinkers, the dance lessons he takes with his wife, Miri (Son Ye-jin). Man-su is happy.
This being a movie, and this scene being its opening, we know Man-su will not be happy for long. The filmmaker does nothing to hide the cinematic artifice of his prelude, introducing the buoyant corporate satire of reinvention, or the refusal to reinvent.
That gift of expensive eel was a going away present, and Man-su is about to be out of work, along with a lot of other local middle aged middle managers in the paper business.
There’s not a weakness in this cast, but both Lee and Son are flawless. Each character takes a proactive yet romantic approach to navigating this setback, both guided by their own internal logic. Her logic looks a little more logical: cut back on luxuries like Netflix and dance classes, sell the house, carpool.
Man-su’s plan is a little bigger: create an opening that fits his skills and eliminate all competition for that job. So, murder.
Park’s crafted a seething satire on capitalism but manages to edge the biting farce with strange moments of deep empathy—just one example of the tonal tightrope Park doesn’t just walk, he prances across.
No Other Choice is complicated but never convoluted, constantly compelling and almost alarmingly funny. Between the intricate detail of the thriller and the gallows humor of the comedy, Park crafts a wondrously entertaining film.
I am generally down for a pulpy thriller where unreasonably attractive humans behave like lunatics. The Housemaid is one such film, and though I was somewhat skeptical, seeing Paul Feig at the helm instilled optimism.
Feig’s 2011 comedy Bridesmaids is an all-time great, but it was his 2018 twisty comedy/thriller A Simple Favor that gave me hope. Sure, The Housemaid’s trailer seemed boilerplate enough. A stunning thirty-something (Amanda Seyfried), wealthy beyond reason, wants to hire a down-on-her-luck twenty-something (Sydney Sweeney) for a live-in housemaid. A gorgeous husband (Brandon Sklenar) looks on. An equally gorgeous groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) looks on, just from out in the lawn.
The fact that both women are gorgeous, curvy blondes with enormous eyes suggests something doppelganger-y afoot, but beyond that, there are really only a few directions this can take. With Feig on board, I felt confident it wouldn’t be misogyny masquerading as a cat fight.
Seyfried’s always reliable, and the trailer put me in the headspace of her star turn in Atom Agoyan’s 2009 thriller, Chloe. Except now Seyfried’s in Julieanne Moore’s place, and Sweeney’s in Seyfried’s.
Or is she? Maybe I was assuming too much.
Rebecca Sonnenshine (who co-wrote one of my favorite zombie films, American Zombie) adapts Freida McFadden’s novel with enough sly scene craft to keep you interested. Every scene is a sleight of hand, and Feig’s assured direction flirts with potboiler so often that you’re seduced away from confident guesswork.
It’s a long game Feig is playing, but still, The Housekeeper takes too long getting there. Act 3, which is a ton of fun, feels too abrupt given the lead time to get to it. And everything post-climax is anything but airtight.
The Housemaid is an enjoyable thriller, a savvy reimagining of a tired plot we’ve seen dozens of times. The cast is solid, performers delivering sharp drama while Feig delivers pulp, the balance off kilter enough to be fun.
Krampus is the anti-Santa, St. Nick’s mean sidekick of lore from the Alpine region of Europe. He accompanies Santa on his rounds, and while Santa hands out treats to good kids, Krampus beats them or bags them and hauls them off to hell. I swear! If you’ve tired of the regular old traumatized youth who grows up to don the red suit and murder townsfolk, then Krampus might deck your log this season. Here are some of our favorites.
5. Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride (2018)
Who is Mother Krampus? Technically, she’s Frau Perchta, a real legend, also from the Alpine region of Europe, also likely to beat and maim idle or misbehaved youth around Christmastime. And while you’ll find about a dozen micro-budget Krampus slashers to choose from, only a couple give Frau her due. We recommend Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride.
A few Clevelanders are serving out their community service on Christmas Eve. These include KateLynn E. Newberry as good-as-gold Victoria, and Roger Conners gloriously portraying Lady Athena Slay. Conners’s every moment on screen is a hoot.
The film boasts some effective blood fx, solid performances, and a villain you can get behind.
4. Saint (2010)
What is every child’s immediate reaction upon first meeting Santa? Terror. Now imagine a mash-up between Santa, Krampus, a pirate, and an old-school Catholic bishop. How scary is that?
Well, that’s basically what the Dutch have to live with, as their Sinterklaas, along with his helper Black Peter, sails in yearly to deliver toys and bag naughty children to kidnap to Spain. I’m not making this up. This truly is their Christmas fairy tale. So, really, how hard was it for writer/director Dick Maas to mine his native holiday traditions for a horror flick?
Allegorical of the generations-old abuse against children quieted by the Catholic Church, Saint manages to hit a few nerves without losing its focus on simple, gory storytelling.
3. Krampus (2015)
Hometown boy Michael Dougherty, whose 2007 directorial debut Trick ‘r Treat is a seasonal gem, returned to the land of holidays and horror with his second effort behind the camera, Krampus.
When family dysfunction pushes young Max (Emjay Anthony) too far, he tears up his letter to Santa, unwittingly inviting in his stead, the evil shadow-Santa, Krampus.
The ancient demon and his anti-merrymakers get a fantastic design, and the entire film looks great. Plus an ensemble stacked with A-listers (Toni Collette, Adam Scott, David Koechner, Conchata Ferrell) elevates a script that might feel lacking otherwise.
2. A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
A trio of Canadian directors – Steve Hoban, Brett Sullivan, and Grant Harvey – pull together a series of holiday shorts with this one. Held together by Dangerous Dan (William Shatner), the small-town radio announcer who’s pulling a double shift this Christmas Eve, the tales vary wickedly from three teens trapped in their own wrong-headed Nativity, to a family who accidentally brought home a violent changeling with their pilfered Christmas tree, to a dysfunctional family stalked by Krampus, to Santa himself, besieged by zombie elves.
Yes, there is a second film out this holiday season with Krampus in it. You know what? This one’s better – in fact, it’s almost patterned after Krampus director John Dougherty’s cult favorite Trick r’ Treat and it offers more laughs and more scares.
Plus Shatner! He’s adorably jolly in the broadcast booth, particularly as the evening progresses and his nog to liquor ratio slowly changes. This is a cleverly written film, well-acted and sometimes creepy as hell. Merry f’ing Christmas!
1. Rare Exports (2010)
It’s not just the Dutch with a sketchy relationship with Santa. That same year Saint was released, the Fins put out an even better Christmas treat, one that sees Santa—or is it his evil counterpart, Krampus?—as a bloodthirsty giant imprisoned in Korvatunturi mountains centuries ago.
Some quick-thinking reindeer farmers living in the land of the original Santa Claus are able to separate naughty from nice and make good use of Santa’s helpers. There are outstanding shots of wonderment, brilliantly subverted by director Jalmari Helander, with much aid from his chubby-cheeked lead, a wonderful Onni Tommila.
Rare Exports is an incredibly well-put-together film. Yes, the story is original and the acting truly is wonderful, but the cinematography, sound design, art direction and editing are top-notch.
This week in the Screening Room, Hope & George review Ella McCay, Goodbye June, Dust Bunny, Sirat, Silent Night Deadly Night, Influencers—with a clip from our Fright Club interview with filmmaker Kurtis David Harder— & Vision.
Imagine Guillermo del Toro meets Wes Anderson. Equal parts fanciful and gruesome, the film tells the tale of a precocious youth named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who hires the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster that lives under her bed.
What a wonderful premise, and writer/director Bryan Fuller wastes not a frame of his feature film debut. The saturated colors and intricate patterns and textures of the set design, the ballet of horror that is his shadow imagery, the boldly whimsical costuming—all of it conjuring an amplified fairy tale. It’s tough to believe this remarkably confident feature is his first foray behind the camera.
Fuller’s casting is just as playful. Sloan delivers Roald Dahl’s Matilda by way of Wednesday Addams, braids and all. Mikkelsen’s adorably gruff, and watching his character mentally work through the mystery surrounding Aurora’s missing parents (eaten, he’s told) is fascinating. He and Sloan share a wonderful chemistry, never cloying for a second, and often darkly hilarious. Their banter is often priceless, Sloan landing lines with impeccably droll comic timing.
Speaking of hilarious, the great Sigourney Weaver is having a blast playing gleefully against type and shoplifting every second of screentime. All smiles, genuine joy, and murder, her character enjoys the pleasures life affords and accepts, with a smile, the reality of each situation. Again, usually murder.
Likewise, David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, with big support from an inspired costume designer, deliver entertaining weirdness.
Fuller’s premise could have taken many directions. It’s the sense of wonder Dust Bunny articulates that mesmerizes. But the writing doesn’t serve only to carry the visual splendor. It’s a clever script, edged with pathos and vulnerability, hinting at metaphor without ever submitting to it.
Oscar winner and perennial contender Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with the Christmastime family drama, Goodbye June. What drew the esteemed thespian behind the camera? A script by her son, Joe Anders.
The film tells the tale of June (Helen Mirren), whose cancer has returned just two weeks before Christmas. Her doting, anxiety riddled son, Connor (Johnny Flynn), and her husband (Timothy Spall) get her to the hospital and wait for the rest of the family to come in and, well, take over.
These are the sisters: Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette).
Pause to marvel at this cast.
It would be hard to go wrong with any one of those humans, and indeed, Winslet’s ensemble—Riseborough and Spall, in particular—craft lived-in characters, each one’s behavior naturally amplified because of the situation. June is dying.
Winslet captures the chaos, simultaneously merry and discordant, in a big family brimming with little kids all cramped in a hospital room or running wild through its halls. The child actors are quite good, not to mention awfully cute.
Anders’s script doesn’t overexplain, mercifully. The details aren’t terribly necessary if you’ve ever been in or near a family. Molly kind of hates Julia. This hurts Julia, who is also mortified by Molly’s controlling, even bullying behavior with hospital staff. Everyone thinks Helen’s a flake. Likewise, everyone is fed up with Dad and filled with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment in Connor.
Credit Anders, as well, for avoiding the cliché of the sainted, dying mother in the hospital bed. A charmingly mischievous Mirren is unapologetic but loving, still getting in digs here and there that have no doubt worn down her children over the decades. Helen shouldn’t wear yellow. Julia needs to look after everyone, but not in that overbearing way she sometimes has.
The fine-tuned performances are nearly undone by the superficial plot, unfortunately. Goodbye June is saddled with obviousness bordering on the maudlin that Winslet and her inarguably talented cast can’t quite transcend. Winslet’s crafted a holiday tearjerker with a fine but conspicuous message.
Not every bad, low-budget, unreasonably beloved Eighties horror movie needs to be rebooted. Do I rewatch Charles Sellier’s 1984 holiday slash fest Silent Night, Deadly Night every holiday season? Maybe.
I don’t rewatch its 1987 sequel every single year. I’m not a masochist. Nor have I watched SNDN 3, 4, or 5 (starring Mickey Rooney!) more than once apiece. Anyway, I’m obviously if begrudgingly the audience for Mike P. Nelson’s new update on the old Santa suit, Silent Night, Deadly Night.
And maybe it benefits from low expectations, but I liked it.
Nelson, who writes and directs, revisits the important beats of the ’84 original but he’s smart about it. Billy (Halloween Ends and The Monkey’s Rohan Campbell) listens to the voice in his head. That voice belongs to the Santa who murdered Billy’s parents when he was 8.
That’s an added layer to the triggered homicidal lunatic that populates every previous installment. It’s a welcome change that the filmmaker, Campbell, and Mark Acheson—as the voice of Shotgun Santa—maneuver for creepy fun.
Nelson does have a good time with the franchise, tossing Easter eggs around like a holiday crossover. But these moments feel more like communal celebration than pandering, a wink from one fan to another.
The casting is on point, even eerie, as Nelson’s tale feels like a Yuletide merging of SNDN and Halloween Ends, once gift store owner Pamela (Ruby Modine) gets involved—again, an inside joke that works better than it has a right to.
The carnage is often quite fun—one party scene, in particular. But even with the humor, Nelson never stoops to camp or spoof. He’s a little hemmed in by the limitations of the franchise itself, breaking no remarkably new ground. But Silent Night, Deadly Night is often clever fun. There are creepy moments, funny moments, bloody moments, but his film hangs together as a solid holiday horror.
