This, I think, is my favorite thing about director/co-writer Diego Hallivis’s sociopolitical horror American Carnage. Rather than setting up one-dimensional, morally impenetrable heroes, Hallivis—writing with his brother Julio—delivers likable but flawed, and therefore realistic, characters to root for.
Those characters are mainly the offspring of immigrants: JP (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Camila (Jenna Ortega), Big Mac (Allen Maldonado) among them. Governor Harper Finn’s (Brett Cullen) election-friendly executive order not only deports all illegal immigrants, but also detains their US-born children for failing to turn their parents over to authorities.
Some of those kids can work off their sentence by providing elder care at the Alcove, an institution run by the benevolent Eddie (Eric Dane).
Though the comedic writing is never as sharp as it should be, Hallivis’s cast supplies charm and sarcasm in equal measure. Unsurprisingly, Ortega stands out as the group’s unofficial badass. Her scowl and unlikeable demeanor are the perfect offset to Lendeborg Jr.’s good-natured tenderness.
Maldonado works hardest to elevate tepid dialog, delivering the film’s most consistent comic relief with a jovial, lovable character.
The villains, on the whole, are not the over-the-top psychopaths of traditional horror. This is no doubt intentional. Racist danger, especially as it was uncovered and amplified during Trump’s reign (the film’s title comes from his inaugural speech), is a kind of walks in broad daylight, may be your neighbor, blends into the background reality.
Other than one little dance of evil, the villain performances are somewhat understated.
The villainy is not. There’s a metaphor at work, and though it doesn’t entirely work, the goodwill Hallivis’s cast generates keeps you interested in their journey and eager for comeuppance.
What starts off with a nearly The Forever Purge vibe takes a sharp turn into creepier John Hughes territory, then another dramatically Romero pivot. American Carnage looks good and performances are solid, but the movie can’t overcome those tonal shifts.
In today’s episode, we celebrate Hope’s novel ROOST, plus the brand spanking new audiobook, recorded by George himself. ROOST is the story of twins in a small Midwestern town during the satanic panic of the 1980s.
To properly put us in the mood, we will run through the best smalltown horror. There is a lot! Partly because small towns come equipped with small police forces. So, in addition to this fuzzy math list, we recommend: The Mist, Children of the Corn, Tremors, Dead and Buried, The Fog, The Birds, The Blob, We Are Still Here, Something Wicked This Way Comes,The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and Brotherhood of Satan (which always makes Hope think of her hometown).
6. I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
Billy O’Brien (Isolation) finds a new vision for the tired serial killer formula with his wry, understated indie horror I Am Not a Serial Killer.
An outsider in a small Minnesota town, John (Max Records) works in his mom’s morgue, writes all his school papers on serial killers, and generally creeps out the whole of his high school. But when townsfolk start turning up in gory pieces, John turns his keen insights on the case.
Records, who melted me as young Max in Spike Jonze’s 2009 masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are, serves up an extraordinarily confident, restrained performance. His onscreen chemistry with the nice old man across the street – Back to the Future’s Christopher Lloyd – generates thrills enough to offset the movie’s slow pace.
For his part, Lloyd is in turns tender, heartbreaking and terrifying.
Bursts of driest humor keep the film engaging as the story cleverly inverts the age-old “catch a killer” cliché and toys with your expectations as it does.
5. 30 Days of Night (2007)
If vampires can only come out at night, wouldn’t it make sense for them to head to the parts of the globe that remain under cover of darkness for weeks on end? Like the Arctic circle?
The first potential downfall here is that Josh Hartnett plays our lead, the small town sheriff whose ‘burg goes haywire just after the last flight for a month leaves town. A drifter blows into town. Dogs die viciously. Vehicles are disabled. Power is disrupted. You know what that means…the hunt’s begun.
Much of the film’s success is due to the always spectacular Danny Huston as the leader of the bloodsuckers. His whole gang takes a novel, unwholesome approach to the idea of vampires, and it works marvelously.
4. It (2017)
The Derry, Maine “losers club” finds itself in 1988 in this adaptation, an era that not only brings the possibility of Part 2 much closer to present day, but it gives the pre-teen adventures a nostalgic and familiar quality.
Bill Skarsgård has the unenviable task of following a letter-perfect Tim Curry in the role of Pennywise. Those are some big clown shoes to fill, but Skarsgård is up to the challenge. His Pennywise is more theatrical, more of an exploitation of all that’s inherently macabre and grotesque about clowns.
Director Andy Muschietti shows great instinct for taking advantage of foreground, background and sound. Yes, It relies heavily on jump scares, but Muschietti’s approach to plumbing your fear has more depth than that and he manages your rising terror expertly.
3. The Wailing (2016)
“Why are you troubled?” Jesus asked, “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Though the true meaning of this quote won’t take hold until the final act, it presents many questions. Is this film supernatural? Demonic? Or, given the corporeal nature of the quote, is it rooted in the human flesh?
Yes.
That’s what makes the quote so perfect. Writer/director Hong-jin Na meshes everything together in this small town horror where superstition and religion blend. The film echoes with misery, as the title suggests. The filmmaker throws every grisly thing at you – zombies, pustules, demonic possession, police procedural, multiple homicides – and yet keeps it all slippery with overt comedy.
2. Halloween (1978)
No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.
From the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter develops anxiety like nobody else, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.
Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the anxiety. Perfect.
1. Jaws (1975)
A big city cop moves to tiny Amity, where one man can make a difference. Unfortunately, that one man is Mayor Vaughn.
Steven Spielberg cemented his legacy with this blockbuster masterpiece. The interplay among the grizzled and possibly insane sea captain Quint (Robert Shaw), the wealthy young upstart marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and the decent lawman/endearing everyman Brody (Roy Scheider) helps the film transcend horror to become simply a great movie.
Spielberg achieved one of those rare cinematic feats: he bettered the source material. Though Peter Benchley’s nautical novel attracted droves of fans, Spielberg streamlined the text and surpassed its climax to craft a sleek terror tale.
It’s John Williams’s iconic score; it’s Bill Butler’s camera, capturing all the majesty and the terror, but never too much of the shark; it’s Spielberg’s cinematic eye. The film’s second pivotal threesome works, together with very fine performances, to mine for a primal terror of the unknown, of the natural order of predator and prey.
Or so his films would suggest. The director/co-writer’s latest absurdity, The Blood of the Dinosaurs —which appears to be related to an upcoming short The Wheel of Heaven—delivers oddball charm and horror in equal measure.
What’s it about? That’s an excellent question, and not a simple one to answer.
Kids’ TV host Uncle Bobbo (an eerily unblinking Vincent Stalba) wants to teach us where oil comes from. With assistance from his vampire puppet co-host Grampa Universe (voiced by John Davis) and his young helper Purity (Stella Creel), he seeks to enlighten and entertain. And misinform.
What else does Badon hit on? Birth. Death. Choice. 3D glasses. Kitch. Homage. Dinosaurs.
Badon, writing with regular collaborator Jason Kruppa, riffs on old school kids programming almost along the lines of Turbo Kid, Psycho Goreman, maybe even Strawberry Mansion and last year’s Linoleum. The Blood of the Dinosaurs, running a brisk 30 minutes, is far more confined and targeted than these. It feels a bit like an actual episode of something, but something terribly wrongheaded. Sort of a Pee-wee’s Playhouse for sociopaths.
If that does not seem like a ringing endorsement, you’re not reading it correctly.
The film throws a lot at you and not all of it hits, but Stalba’s central performance jibes perfectly with the weird concept to create a show that, quite honestly, I’m sorry I can’t watch every Saturday morning.
On the surface, Billy Porter’s directorial debut—the coming-of-age rom-com Anything’s Possible—is pretty traditional fare. High school can be tolerable with good friends, boys complicate everything, being different is the worst, just hold on until you can start it all again at college.
That does describe this film. The only thing differentiating this story from dozens of other high school dramedies littering cinematic history is that our lead, our Gen Z Molly Ringwald, is a beautiful trans girl named Kelsa.
Kelsa (Eva Reign) is starting her senior year and counting the days until she can leave Pittsburgh for her dream school, UCLA. She spends all her time with her two besties, Em (Courtnee Carter) and Chris (Kelly Lamor Wilson), but their balance is thrown out of whack when Em announces she likes Khaled (Abubakr Ali), Kelsa’s secret crush.
Porter and screenwriter Ximena García Lecuona lean hard on formula. The one difference here is that Kelsa is juggling more than most high school seniors, even if she’s determined to convince herself that she is not.
Porter’s sly direction follows Kelsa’s lead. As she’s ready to complicate the narrative by considering how the world is reacting to her not as a teen but as a trans teen, the film redirects its attention. The simplicity of the movie’s structure, its plot, even its performances often work in its favor.
Many viewers will, for the first time ever, see themselves in this comforting adolescent formula. For countless other viewers, normalizing Kelsa’s high school anxieties demystifies and creates empathy.
But is it entertaining? Sure! Reign is a charmer, as is Ali. Support work, especially from the always impressive Renée Elise Goldsberry, as well as a clearly loving look at PittsburgH, give the film a welcome sense of joy. And while there is one extremely ugly comment, on the whole Anything’s Possible never wallows in trauma.
That’s not to say that Anything’s Possible or Kelsa manages to sidestep all the dangers and indignities that face trans teens. But it’s not the focus.
Rather than making a film about the day-to-day oppression, trauma, bigotry and danger facing a trans teen, Porter and García Lecuona turn our attention to the universal dramas of being a teenager in Pittsburgh. That may not feel groundbreaking or even necessary, but it absolutely is.
A bog is a nice spot for horror, eh? You think you’re walking along a lovely field when suddenly, you’re sucked in. Like quicksand, only mossier.
Betriek (Sallie Harmsen) and her daughter Hanna (Noor van der Velden) live with Hanna’s grandparents on the edge of one such Dutch mire in Nico van den Brink’s Moloch. A body just turned up out there, perfectly preserved for maybe hundreds of years.
And then another appears. And another. And another—each a female from a different era. The discoveries trigger other unusual behaviors, all of it corresponding with the town’s celebration of an unsavory history.
It sounds a little contrived, a little familiar, but van den Brink’s naturalistic approach to the story offsets any hokeyness. Harmsen’s spooked but reasonable lead makes for a clear-eyed hero, one who rails against her lot in life quietly but surely. Her choices sometimes feel erratic but never unnatural, and the cast around her shares a lovely and reasonably strained chemistry.
All performances are more raw than polished, which amplifies an authenticity struggling to anchor the supernatural elements.
Because scary stories are scarier if you believe them.
Not that the film ignores its spectral side. Ringing bells, musical interludes, moments in an aquarium and other highlights of the film’s sound design lend Moloch a supernatural eeriness that deepens its dread.
Van der Velden shows keen instincts for allowing his tale to unravel in its own time. Close attention to detail allows a rich understanding of the story Moloch tells. Whether you devote that kind of attention to the film or not, Moloch gets its point across.
Who’s up for a perfectly harmless, slight, not especially funny cartoon? Well, depending on how hot it is outside and how bored your kids are, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank could be worse.
Hank (Michael Cera) dreams of being a samurai. Ika Chu (Ricky Gervais) dreams of ridding the land of this ugly little town that ruins the view from his palace. How about making Hank the samurai that protects that ugly village? Hank will be a terrible samurai! He’s a dog! Who ever heard of a dog samurai?
Well, who ever heard of a cat Western? But that’s what we essentially have here, because Hank has crossed many treacherous lands to find his way to the land of cats so he could fulfill his destiny, even if nobody there wants him. Like at all.
OK, maybe little Emiko (Kylie Kuioka), who also dreams of becoming a samurai. But definitely not Jimbo (Samuel L. Jackson), the town drunk who used to be a samurai before shame led him to catnip.
It sounds like it should be funny. There’s also the supporting voice cast, if you need to be impressed: George Takei, Michelle Yeoh, Djimon Hounsou, Aasif Mandvi, Gabriel Iglesias, Mel Brooks.
Brooks also co-wrote the screenplay, which explains a lot. A dozen or so jokes littered throughout the film might have been funny 60 or so years before the target audience was born. Very few jokes connect to dogs, cats, samurai films, Westerns—anything in particular, but they lack that fun, random feel. A giant toilet figures prominently. There is flatulence.
Cera and Jackson definitely share an odd couple quality—enough that I’d love to see them do a live action film together. But Yeoh and Takei are wasted, and Gervais gets no good dialog to deliver (though he does a villain well). Hounsou’s fun.
The movie looks fine—not great, but fine. Its themes about acceptance are muddled and soft peddled, though—another victim of weak writing.
A profoundly odd short film called Bad Hamster precedes Paws of Fury, though. There’s that. Just depends how hot it is, I guess.
There are so many things about Celine Sciamma’s masterpiece Portrait of a Lady on Fire that stay with me. For example, the way men haunt the film without ever really being onscreen.
Director Jenna Cato Bass employs a similar strategy in her psychological thriller Good Madam, a film where white people are all but absent yet still suffocatingly present.
The South African film catches up with Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) and her daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya) on their way to see Tsidi’s mother (Nosipho Mtebe). Tsidi is not entirely welcome, not happy to be there, but here they are: mother, daughter and granddaughter sharing servants quarters in the home of a wealthy, dying white woman.
The film’s story has an unstructured authenticity about it, likely stemming from its improvisational storytelling (essentially everyone in the cast is credited for writing the film). Conversations ring true in ways that are sometimes touching, sometimes startling. Scenes rarely feel like breadcrumbs leading through the mystery inside this house, and yet, that’s what they are.
The film walks the line between political allegory and supernatural horror with ease, conjuring dread from the opening moments. Cato Bass twists that knife as Tsidi rails against her mother’s slavish devotion to the catatonic homeowner. Present meets recent past, all of it overshadowed by a long, horrifying South African history.
Cato Bass and her cast confront colonialism, both present and past, through the eyes of three generations. The film repurposes familiar images, often effectively, sometimes calling to mind Jordan Peele’s Get Out, among other genre fare.
Cosa’s performance is especially strong and unpredictable and she seems to transform physically from scene to scene to suit the character’s mood.
The ambiguities of the storyline can be as frustrating as they are refreshing, but Good Madam doesn’t waste your time. It’s a savvy, satisfying subversion of history and horror.
It’s rare for a film to tackle the difference between spirituality and religion with as much beauty and empathy as Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Costa Rican treasure, Clara Sola.
Clara (a remarkable Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is a middle-aged woman living with her mother and niece in a remote area of the country. Her closest friend is a white horse, Yuca, that the family lets to a neighbor each morning to use with tourists. When the neighbor hires a summer replacement named Santiago (Daniel Castañeda Rincón), something in Clara awakens.
Making her feature debut, Álvarez Mesén is already a master of showing without telling. Her film unveils Clara’s story moment by moment, but never feels deliberate. Using mainly nonactors gives Clara Sola a lived-in, authentic feel, while Sophie Windqvist’s camera and Ruben De Gheselle’s score immerse Clara and her family in something both natural and enchanting.
Chinchilla Araya, a dancer by trade, delivers an unaffected, unselfconscious performance you can’t look away from. Simultaneously delicate and fierce, it’s a turn perfectly suited to the magical realism the filmmaker develops.
Castañeda Rincón’s tenderness is forever surprising, and the two develop an easy but heartbreaking chemistry. Álvarez Mesén, who writes along with Maria Camila Arias, isn’t afraid to complicate characters—the kind of complexity rarely given to those in such a rural setting.
No one in Clara’s world is one-dimensional, nor is the filmmaker’s take on family. The love inside Clara’s house may be what feels most believable and sincere—and damaging. But what emerges is a clear look at the way spirituality is reined in and controlled by religion. Even clearer are the marks left by the women who enforce patriarchal order.
Clara Sola is an utterly gorgeous film unlike any other. It moves at its own pace, unnerves as it goes, and leaves you shaken but hopeful.
