Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

Shudder Premiere

Rizz Up

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The Dead Thing

by Hope Madden

The clever, underlying theme in Shaun of the Dead is that every Londoner was already basically a zombie.

Elric Kane, co-writer and director of The Dead Thing, looks at a culture of app hook ups and sterile, fluorescent work spaces and sees something similar. A whole generation of people seems to already be dead.

They’re not exactly alive, anyway.

Beautiful Alex (Blu Hunt) fits that bill. Her job is mindless, she keeps her headphones in and avoids eye contact with her one co-worker, Mark (Joey Millin). After work and another swipe right hookup she sneaks into her apartment to avoid conversation with her longtime best friend (Katherine Hughes). Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.

Then she meets Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen), and it’s as if she wakes from a trance. It starts off the same as every other meet up, but Kyle is different. They connect. He stays all night, they laugh and draw pictures of each other and hate to say goodbye the next day when her uber for work arrives.

She decides to keep in touch, but he never responds to a text. So, she shows up where he works, and a mystery begins.

Each act in The Dead Thing tells a different story. Hunt anchors the evolving storytelling with an authentic display of ennui, of disconnectedness—partly chosen, partly inevitable. Smith-Petersen’s vacant sweetness gives each change in the narrative an underlying sinister quality that also evolves nicely from one act to the next.

By Act 3, Kane abandons the film’s original metaphor in favor of a different analogy. While this change offers more opportunity for visceral horror, the result is less satisfying than the original, insightful image of modern romance.

Though the more traditional wrap up disappoints after such a stylish and intriguing premise, The Dead Thing—including Iona Vasile’s dreamy camerawork and deceptively creepy performances throughout—keeps your attention and manages to subvert expectations and entertain.

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Real In

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Rounding

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Alex Thompson has already developed a good track record across multiple genres. His 2020 dramedy Saint Francis was a bold, impressive feature debut. Last year’s Ghostlight won critical acclaim and not an insignificant number of festival awards.

Somewhere between the two he wrote and directed a brooding medical mystery called Rounding that’s just now getting a theatrical release.

The film follows Dr. James Hayman (Namir Smallwood) as he navigates his second year in residency. As the film opens, James has an episode on his rounds in a large, urban hospital. It’s quite an episode, and after taking some time off, he decides he’d rather finish his residency in a more rural location where he can “have a bigger impact.”

There he studies under Dr. Harrison (Michael Potts, who elevates every scene, as is his way) and meets the 19-year-old asthma patient, Helen (Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always). James is convinced that there is something very wrong with Helen’s case.

Rounding is a slow build, essentially unraveling two mysteries simultaneously. As James sleuths the ins and outs of Helen’s illness, deteriorating mentally and physically as he does so, his own past trauma begins to take shape in front of our eyes.

That second mystery comes laden with the occasional supernatural imagery. Never once does it suit the film Thompson is making. Each of these scenes of horror feels spliced in from an entirely different movie. Although, these flashes are welcome bits of excitement in an otherwise laborious slog.

Thompson, who co-wrote Rounding with Christopher Thompson, keeps all information very close to the vest. It isn’t possible to unravel either mystery with what’s depicted on the screen, so nothing wraps up satisfactorily. Tidily, yes, and far too late and too quickly and with too little evidence to support it.

A slow burn thriller can work, but the thrill has to be worth the wait, the climax earned. We have to be building to something. Rounding boasts some solid performances, a few unnerving moments, and a oppressively creepy aesthetic. But they don’t amount to much.

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Seattle Was a Riot

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Heart Eyes

by Hope Madden

There is an undeniable goofy sweetness to Josh Ruben’s horror films, no matter the body count or blood flow or number of people with holes so big in their throats that you can see the characters behind them.

Heart Eyes is the latest from the Werewolves Within and Scare Me director. The new film, fit for the holiday, trails a serial killer slicing and dicing through couples every Valentine’s Day. It’s Year 3, and the marauder has moved from Boston to Philly to set up shop for this year’s gore soaked romance in Seattle.

Just as Ally (Olivia Holt)—still stinging from how quickly her ex moved on after their breakup—has to work with advertising fixer Jay (Mason Gooding) to right the marketing campaign she seems to have tanked beyond repair.

But when the Heart Eyes Killer mistakes the colleagues for lovebirds, a cross-city chase begins.

The script penned by Phillip Murphy (Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard), along with Christopher Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day 2 U) and Michael Kennedy (Freaky, It’s a Wonderful Knife), trots out rom com tropes as often as machetes. From meet cute to grand gesture at the airport to a string of classic romcom titles worked into dialog, Heart Eyes wears its influences on its sleeve.

The glossy “the city is its own character” filming, the amiable chemistry between Holt and Gooding, and their unreasonable good looks center the romance, but Ruben does not go light on the gore. Nor is he skimpy with comedy, although he can’t seem to settle on a tone for the humor. He veers from witty to broadly comedic to gallows and back, leaving the film feeling slightly haphazard.

Heart Eyes is also drawn out a bit too long. The finale, though plenty bloody, feels more forced than satisfying. But it’s a fun, gory, sweetly romantic waste of time, just like Valentine’s Day.

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Past Tense

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I’m Still Here

by Hope Madden

Walter Salles’s beautifully understated true story I’m Still Here benefits from a powerful central performance, a poignant naturalism, and the timeless truth that dictatorships offer only cruel injustice.

Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) adapts friend Marcelo Paiva’s book, written to record the life of his iconic mother as her memories faded due to Alzheimer’s. Paiva’s mother, Eunice Paiva, is brought to life with deeply felt humanity and power by Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres.

As the film opens, Eunice floats in the ocean, her five children on Ipanema beach nearby. A military chopper breaks her peace. Her older daughters play volleyball, her younger daughter plays in the stand, her one son, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) nabs a stray puppy and, knowing that his mother would deny him the pet, runs home to convince his sweetly indulgent father, Rubens (Selton Mello).

Many films present a wholesome, loving family unit in Act 1 so that the tragedies of Act 2 hit harder. But for Salles and the onscreen Paivas, the investment in this family time grounds every moment after. There’s genuine joy, bonds between and among family members that ring true and continue to ring until the final credits roll some 137 minutes later.

In 1971, shortly after Christmas, Rubens Paiva was taken from their home by Brazil’s military dictatorship. Like thousands of other Brazilians, he was “disappeared”. The balance of I’m Still Here participates in Eunice’s struggles in his absence.

Salles and Torres sidestep sentimentality at every turn. The graceful direction and formidable central performance pull you through every day—Eunice’s own arrest, fear for her children, her inability to even access the family’s bank accounts without her husband’s signature or a death certificate, and her aching worry and fear for Rubens.

We flash forward twice: once to the day, years after Eunice Paiva’s gotten her law degree and devoted her life to social justice, that Rubens’s death certificate is finally handed to her. When asked by the press whether it made sense to focus on Brazil’s ugly past when there was so much else fighting for attention, Paiva responded clearly that it was imperative. When government criminals go unpunished, they learn that their heinous acts are acceptable.

Parallels to our current climate certainly invest I’m Still Here with a particularly nightmarish urgency.  The timeline spreads the tale too thin, but it’s done to honor Eunice Paiva, whose strength in the face of right wing dictators inspires awe.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: You’re Cordially Invited, Companion, September 5, Hard Truths & More

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You’re Cordially Invited, Companion, September 5, Hard Truths, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Freelance, Like Father Like Son

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Paranoid Android

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Companion

by Hope Madden

It’s not to say that writer/director Drew Hancock is saying anything new, exactly. Most of the ideas are borrowed, and even the look of Companion feels cribbed from more insightfully stylized films. But the way he puts these ideas and images into play and keeps them playing guarantees a mischievously, wickedly good time.

On the surface is a timely reminder of themes played out on film since Bryan Forbes’s 1975 Stepford Wives and before. But today, as AI and sexual predation become terrifyingly acceptable, the tension feels wildly of-the-moment.

Sophie Thatcher (so good just last year in Heretic) is Iris. She doesn’t know it yet, but Iris is a robot companion, an emotional support robot, a f*ck bot. She and Josh (Jack Quaid) are hanging with Josh’s friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) at Kat’s boyfriend Serey’s (Rupert Friend) for the weekend.

Things get out of hand.

Lars and the Real Girl meets Revenge meets AI meets maybe twenty other movies, but damn if Hancock and this sharp ensemble doesn’t make it work.

A great deal of the film’s success is in our investment in these themes, the way we recognize and respond to buttons Hancock pushes. But what’s maybe more impressive is the plotting and structure of the thriller underneath. It’s smart, its beats make sense and amplify tension. A couple of reveals are telegraphed, but it’s not nearly enough to sink the fun of the story.

And it’s funny. Guillén can be counted on for hilarity, but the dark sense of humor that flows through this thriller as surely as blood consistently strikes the right chord.

Quaid convinces as entitled “nice guy” Josh, an excellent foil for Thatcher. Her turn in Heretic offered a glimpse of the instincts on display here. Thatcher seems simultaneously aloof and vulnerable, unnatural and human. She gives the film a depth of character, a heartbeat that allows it more punch than your garden variety dark comedy.

Hancock does settle for humor, biting though it may be. The script flirts with darker, edgier but no less honest ideas, but Companion isn’t here to expose all of that. Because that stuff is just not funny, and outright horror films need content too.

Turns out it’s kind of fun to be on the side of AI for a change.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Skeletons in the Closet, 2025

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Maybe our favorite podcast of the year, the annual celebration of all the terrible horror movies that the new crop of Oscar nominees might just want you to forget they ever made. But will we? Never!

Happy to see so much horror appreciated this year: The Substance, Nosferatu, Alien: Romulus. But that’s for another podcast. Today, let’s pry open some closets and see what’s festering in there.

5. Sebastian Stan: The Apparition (2012)

Yawntastic! Ben (Stan) participates in a college experiment with Patrick (Tom Felton), who believes that if you believe hard enough in a spirit even if you know it doesn’t exist, it suddenly will exist.

And if that’s not dumb enough, it will also reappear suddenly many years later. And also hunt you down even if you’re far away, haven’t believed in it again, or I don’t know? And it turns into mold? Because it’s affected by energy? Or something? And it doesn’t like camping? Or it does?

Here’s what I know for sure. It’s boring as hell.

4. Guy Pearce: The Seventh Day (2021)

You know what every Guy Pearce fan should see? You should see Ravenous. It’s so good! Scary, tense, weird in the best way. You know what you probably shouldn’t see? The Seventh Day.

First of all, Justin P. Lange’s follow up to his underseen gem The Dark with an exorcism movie. Yawn. Then he goes on to waste real talent—Keith David and Stephen Lang. Pearce plays a legendary, no-frills, even controversial and brackish exorcist who’s taken on a trainee. But all is not what it seems and none of it’s very interesting. There’s a kind of intriguing premise hidden underneath all the boring whatnot, but it does seem like Pearce is trying to elevate the material.

3. Adrien Brody: Giallo (2009)

Dario Argento made some incredible films. Giallo is not one of them. It fits squarely into the uninspired, visually bland, poorly plotted output we saw from him post-Opera.

Adrien Brody, in duel roles, didn’t seem to care for the film, either. He used the pseudonym Byron Deidra, but you’ll know it’s him. Both times. There was a time when Argento’s films were so stylish, so visually arresting and gloriously weird that no one cared how silly the plot was. But rob a film of that panache and the borrowed, bland, dumb plotting is hard to miss.

Brody’s no stranger to horror, and while none of these are masterpieces, all but Giallo is decent: Wrecked, Predators, Splice, The Jacket, The Summer of Sam. We’re obligated to mention The Village, too, although we’re not fans.

2. Isabella Rossellini: Infected (2008)

What on earth was the tortured ingenue in the masterpiece Blue Velvet doing in Adam Weissman’s 2008 made-for-TV contagion/alien invasion flick? She’s great, actually, and her big-reveal scene is no doubt the reason she took the role. It’s inadvertently hilarious.

Judd Nelson co-stars. He may have been actively in a coma. But it’s worth it just to see Rossellini’s big scene. It’s on YouTube and dailymotion—wouldn’t want you to pay for it!

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2612003353/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

1. Demi Moore: Parasite (1982)

Friend of the show Charles Band directed this treasure of low rent cinema. Demi Moore stars ad spunky, lemon loving Pat in a post apocalyptic desert town. “Sickies” run wild, often topless. Work camp escapees are even worse. Still, somehow Pat trusts the stranger (Robert Glaudini), a doctor who used to create parasites for the government and is now infected with one. She’s just helpful like that.

Moore does not embarrass herself, and that’s tough given the terrible writing and stiff scene partner. Best part is the creature, which we believe inspired the look of the beast in Killer Condom. High praise!

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Sister Sledgehammer

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Hard Truths

by Hope Madden

Nobody makes films quite like Mike Leigh, and that may be because nobody’s films more accurately resemble humanity than his. There is nothing glamourous, nothing artificial about a Mike Leigh film. Certainly not Hard Truths.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste astonishes as Pansy, the most unpleasant woman in England. Profoundly unhappy with everything and compelled to share her vitriol, Pansy is a tough character to love. Perhaps impossible.

Leigh traps us for 97 minutes with a woman we would, in real life, do anything to get away from and Jean-Baptiste insists that we see her humanity, edgy and prickly as it might be. This performance should be studied.

A supporting cast of characters, each bringing laughter as well as drama, buoys the quick run time. David Webber, in particular, excels, bringing surprisingly touching depth to a character with barely two sentences of dialogue. That’s mainly thanks to Pansy.

Luckily, Pansy’s unpleasantness is balanced by her sister, Chantelle (Michelle Austin). Open, caring, and endlessly forgiving, Chantelle is Pansy’s opposite, and only friend. Austin’s warmth, which Leigh brings to the screen at exactly the necessary moment, offsets Jean-Baptiste’s bitterness and allows for a real story to begin to take shape.

As is so often the case with Leigh’s films (Mr. Turner, Happy-Go-Lucky, Secrets & Lies, and on and on), the story unveils itself slowly. His writing is as deceptively structured as his direction, forever suggesting fly-on-the-wall but seamlessly moving toward deeply human revelations.

It is this masterful craftsmanship that steers his films away from parody, from caricature, from melodrama and toward poetry. Leigh accepts even the most flawed and unlikeable character, holds them with compassion if not forgiveness. He doesn’t solve their problems, often doesn’t even offer them an opportunity at redemption. But he refuses to ignore even those people you would not want to have to spend 97 minutes of your own life with. And miraculously, in giving Pansy just a little slice of your day, your own humanity deepens.