Ahoy! This we talk through the pros and cons (mostly cons) of The Meg, as well as (mostly pros) BlackKklansman and (entirely cons) The Slenderman. We also run through what’s worth it and what’s not in home entertainment.
Check out the full podcast HERE.
A lot of horror romances don’t work out. Whether it’s the demon/internet connection hoping to impregnate you, the stalker/voyeur/vampire obsessed with you, or that dreamy girl who turns into a hungry panther every time she’s aroused – finding Mr. or Ms. Right in a horror movie can prove dangerous.
Let’s not even talk about prom dates.
Here are five of our favorite examples of the dire, bloody, terrifying reason that following your heart is not always your best bet.
Oh, poor Sidney Prescot (Neve Campbell). Her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) is practically Johnny Depp levels of hot, but ever since that thing with her mom, Sid can’t get intimate. Plus, Billy Loomis might be the town’s serial killer.
No, love doesn’t turn out great for Sid and Billy. Or for Tatum (Rose McGowan) and Stu (Matthew Lillard). Or for Mr. and Mrs. Prescott. In fact, the only romance that seems to flourish at all ends up giving one guy a terrible limp.
Moments after a sexual encounter with a new boyfriend, Jay (Maika Monroe) discovers that she is cursed. He has passed on some kind of entity – a demonic menace that will follow her until it either kills her or she passes it on to someone else the same way she got it.
Writer/director David Robert Mitchell has captured that fleeting yet dragging moment between childhood and adulthood and given the lurking dread of that time of life a powerful image. There is something that lies just beyond the innocence of youth. You feel it in every frame and begin to look out for it, walking toward you at a consistent pace, long before the characters have begun to check the periphery themselves.
Mitchell’s provocatively murky subtext is rich with symbolism but never overwhelmed by it. His capacity to draw an audience into this environment, this horror, is impeccable, and the result is a lingering sense of unease that will have you checking the perimeter for a while to come.
Backed by a plaintive, spooky soundtrack by Tindersticks, Clair Denis’s metaphorical erotic horror examines gender roles, sex and hunger. Denis is one of France’s more awarded and appreciated auteurs, so a one-time voyage into horror should not be dismissed.
A newlywed American couple head to Paris, ostensibly to honeymoon, but Shane (Vincent Gallo) is really there to re-establish connection with old colleagues Coré (Béatrice Dalle) and her husband, Léo (Alex Descas). The three scientists once participated in an experiment, and Shane needs to find them.
The film is a startling work of biologic-horror, but its existential riffs on intimacy, dominance and violence—common fare in the genre—are clearer-headed and more disturbing here than in anything else that swims the same murky waters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz5VlZc8tC4
Writer/director Jordan Peele crafts an impeccable horror based in social anxiety, articulating something more relevant and powerful than anything horror had undertaken in decades. His is a brilliant take on modern racism, cultural appropriation and horror.
On a less metaphorical level, it’s also a look at a really, really bad romance. Poor Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) agrees to spend the weekend with his girl Rose (Allison Williams) and her parents, meeting the family and participating in a big, rich-white-people party.
But Rose’s relationships don’t turn out so rosy. Just ask Georgina and Walter.
The prolific director Takashi Miike made more than 70 movies in his first 20 or so years in film. Among the best is Audition, a phenomenally creepy May/December romance gone very, very wrong.
Audition tells the story of a widower convinced by his TV producer friend to hold mock television auditions as a way of finding a suitable new mate. He is repaid for his deception.
Nearly unwatchable and yet too compelling to turn away from, Audition is a remarkable piece of genre filmmaking. The slow moving picture builds anticipation, then dread, then full-on horror.
By the time Audition hits its ghastly conclusion, Miike and his exquisitely terrifying antagonist (Eihi Shina) have wrung the audience dry. She will not be the ideal stepmother.
A little something called Avengers: Infinity War finally comes home this week. Heard of it? Well, you should have. You can also pick up a fun misfire of a punk rock flick.
Click the film title to read the full review.
by Hope Madden
It’s the end of the summer! Quick, what lackluster genre trash can we tidy up with a PG-13 rating to cash in on kids’ free time before they have to go back to school next week?!
That’s the theme for this week at the movies, a period in which a 70-foot prehistoric shark movie contains no blood-not one drop. Also, a super creepy, tall, faceless but nattily clad monster terrorizes teens.
I love a good villain, and this film has an opportunity. Slender Man is a cool character. Born online in a meme contest in 2009, the elongated, pale, bald and faceless man in a black suit who beckons children was immediately embraced by a horror community who apparently has no idea what to do with him.
Sylvain White’s film positions him as an urban legend. Four girls watch a video to conjure the beastie. Bad things happen.
Do you know why bad things happen? Because kids today aren’t shown the classics, like The Ring. That movie knew how to maneuver a PG-13 rating.
So, the supernatural being haunts the woods. Or your phone. He’s electrical, you see. So, the woods. No, wait…
And therein lies the problem. We have a villain, born a meme. He has no real backstory, but he’s cool and he deserves a proper horror show. Screenwriter David Birke was absolutely not up to the task of creating that story. And even if he had done a proper job of it, White can’t manage to move scene to scene with any sense of dread or even narrative logic.
Boxes are checked with zero thought about why. Is there a scene in a library where one character stumbles upon some important background information? Why, yes, although it doesn’t make sense and leads nowhere.
Is there another scene of googling where a previous victim turns out to be in an asylum? Indeed! And again, this goes nowhere. Do they find her? Do they visit the asylum? Is she ever brought up again? Nope.
More than anything, Slender Man is just boring. And he shouldn’t be.
by Hope Madden
Welcome back, Spike Lee!
It’s not like he’s really been gone. He’s made a dozen or more TV episodes, documentaries, short films and basement-budget indies since his unfortunate 2013 compromised vision Old Boy. But BlacKkKlansman is a return to form—to the envelope-pushing enjoyment that showcases his skills as storyteller, entertainer and activist.
Earmarks of his most indelible marks on cinema—Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X—these three elements have rarely joined forces since 1992. You might get one (Get on the Bus) or two (Inside Man, Chi-Raq), but not all three.
Why now? Lee isn’t the first filmmaker to realize how painfully relevant historical tales of systemic racism are at the moment. But it wasn’t until 2014 that Ron Stallworth published the book detailing how he, a black cop in Colorado Springs in 1979, infiltrated the KKK.
You see how it all comes together?
If you don’t, you really should. Lee balances unexpected shifts between humor and drama, camaraderie and horror, entertainment and history lesson, popcorn-muncher and experimental indie with a fluidity few other directors could muster.
The story itself is beyond insane—a zany, hair-raising misadventure destined for the big screen. Stallworth (John David Washington), a rookie in Colorado Springs’s intelligence office, stumbles upon an ad in the newspaper, makes a call, and joins the Klan.
Of course, he’ll need a second officer to actually show up. Enter Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver—perfect), who sounds about as much like Stallworth as he looks, plus he’s Jewish, which could further complicate his face-to-face relationship with the hate group.
Much sit-com-esque absurdity and dramatic police procedural thrills follow, but it’s the way Lee subverts these standard formats that hits home. The insidious nature of the racism depicted in 1979 echoes in both directions—in the history that brought our country to this moment in time, and in the future Ron Stallworth undoubtedly hoped he could prevent.
Yes, there are laugh out loud moments in this film, but there are far more rallying cries.
One utterly amazing film and a bunch of not-so-terrible to talk through this week in the Screening Room. We love Eighth Grade! We also talk about Christopher Robin, The Darkest Minds and The Spy Who Dumped Me before turning our attention to what’s worth the effort in home entertainment. Listen in!
You can listen to the full podcast HERE.
by Hope Madden
Let me not be misleading. I did not want to see this movie.
Not just because The Darkest Minds is yet another cinematic adaptation of a dystopian young adult novel.
No, wait. That is why. And if you think you already know every moment of this film, you are correct. The Darkest Minds = X-Men + Divergent + The Girl with All the Gifts. (Haven’t seen that last one? You should!)
Ruby (Amandla Stenberg) is one of the very few children in America who have survived a virus, but survivors have been left with super powers. Deemed threats by the US government, they are rounded up, placed in internment camps and quarantined.
That right. Within moments of “fade in,” the president of the United States is ordering that children be caged. I swear to God. The dystopian future is now.
But the horrifying reality of our day-to-day world is not novelist Alexandra Bracken’s point, nor is it the point of screenwriter Chad Hodge or director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2 & 3). No, their point, as is required by their genre, is that our protagonist is so very special. So very special. She just doesn’t know it.
It’s also about evolution. It’s basically the youth of the world recognizing that they are the future and wondering why the hell they should wait to take over, seeing as how the adults are screwing things up to such a degree that we all may be dead before the youngsters can straighten things up.
That checks out.
To be perfectly honest, The Darkest Minds is nowhere near as awful as the trailer made it out to be. Yes, it is predictable to a fault, but the performances aren’t terrible. There are also shades of moral ambiguity here that are uncommon in this type of film.
Stenberg is a veteran of YA cinema—she’s Katniss’s beloved Rue from the original The Hunger Games, for God’s sake. That’s like ‘tween royalty. She’s exactly as awkward, angsty and unaware as she needs to be to become the vehicle for the “she’s so special” storyline. She’s surrounded by a capable cast of children and veterans that keep the story engaging and moving.
The action is adequate at best, the villain obvious and bland, and the climax will leave most people a bit underwhelmed.
And yet, I think these mutant kids may be right. They’ve convinced me. It’s time we just hand them the keys. They couldn’t do any worse, right?
by Hope Madden
You can’t be brave without being scared.
That is an insightful comment, but when it’s delivered earnestly by a lonely, introverted 13-year-old determined to come out of her shell in the meanest of all worlds—middle school—it is a gut punch.
Who would have thought that the most truthful, painful, lovely, unflinching and adorable tween dramedy in eons would have sprung from the mind of 28-year-old comic Bo Burnham? Or that the first-time feature director could so compassionately and honestly depict the inner life of a cripplingly shy adolescent girl?
But there you have it.
Elsie Fisher’s flawless performance doesn’t hurt.
Fisher (Despicable Me‘s Agnes, “It’s so fluffy!”) is Kayla, and we are with her, immersed in her world, for the last week of the eighth grade. God help us.
In Fisher, Burnham has certainly found the ideal vehicle for his story, but his own skill in putting the pieces together is equally impressive. Burnham’s as keen to the strangulating social anxieties of middle school as he is to the shape-shifting effects of technology.
This is the least self-conscious and most accurate portrayal of the generational impact of social media yet presented, and not just as part of the narrative. He uses social media as a storytelling device, whether the way the screen lights up the isolated face of a lonely teen, or the way the sound of the same girl’s YouTube videos narrate the very advice she wishes she were hearing from somebody.
It’s equal parts heartbreaking and sweet, and it miraculously never hits a false note.
He depicts both the normal that we all must tragically know, of being wildly out of your element even in your own skin, and the new normal that feels beyond bizarre. If your greatest ineptitude is human contact, how much harder to hone that skill when your only practice is in a virtual world?
Mercifully, Eighth Grade is not a cautionary tale about the dehumanizing dangers of an online world. It simply accepts that this is the world in which Kayla lives, depicting it as authentically and insightfully as he does a random lunch with the cool kids at the mall, or an unbearably awkward situation with a boy in a car.
Still, the best scene in the film—one that’s as uplifting as it is genuine—casts aside the glow of the phone for starlight and bonfire as Kayla and her dad, beautifully brought to life by Josh Hamilton, share a moment that will just fucking kill you.
Seriously, Burnham was never a 13-year-old girl nor has he ever been father to one. How the hell did he get all of this so insanely right?
I don’t know, man, but good for him. Good for all of us.
by Madden and Wolf, Esqs.
Wait, A Quiet Place needs defending?
The idea felt funny to us, as well. The film has raked in buckets of cash and gotten enthusiastic high fives from most audiences.
But there’s a relatively small, yet very committed band of naysayers, eager to point out that so much of the film fails basic tests of logic.
Hey, you like what you like and nobody’s a bad person for dissing A Quiet Place, but MaddWolf Court is in session to consider the accusations.
When have people ever stopped fucking?
So much gnashing of teeth about the nail! Much has already been written about it, and we agree with the most common defenses: these exposed nails have happened in the history of building things, removing it could be loud, and most importantly, the nail is there to mess with you.
We’d say it worked.
Unlikeable characters can be okay, ambitious even.
The soundproofed basement? The one they soundproof through the entire film in preparation for the coming of the baby? The one that gets flooded and you realize how utterly screwed the mom is going to be now?
Houses are hard and noisy to build, or move. The ground near a waterfall is probably not that stable. Lumber is hard to transport when you can’t start your car for fear of slaughter.
This movie is about an invasion of the Giant Ear Monsters, and people are upset because the characters don’t follow the universally accepted playbook for dealing with GEMs?
It reminds us of the horrifically realistic film Compliance, which got much finger-wagging from viewers upset with characters acting so unrealistically under pressure.
“No way they would do that, I wouldn’t have done that!” Well, congrats, but the real-life case history says people did exactly that.
Point being: you may think you know just what’s appropriate when the GEMs come, but you don’t. You’re overthinking, just enjoy the taut, well-executed ride.
And in closing, we propose that the chorus of voices eager to prove themselves smarter than A Quiet Place is actually a testament to how intelligent the film really is. It entertains us, scares us, and it also challenges us, which can be uncomfortable.
But countless nubile young women, making idiotic choice after illogical choice, on their way to a braless slaughter? Who cares? Classic slasher!
It’s also curious why the one line in the film that invites a closer inspection seems to be overlooked.
“Who are we if we can’t protect them?”
As a timely, tense metaphor for parenting in an increasingly terrifying and uncertain world, we think A Quiet Place…..nails it.
When we first started this podcast, one hundred thirtysomething episodes ago, we devoted specific shows to the best horror movies by the decade. We started with the Sixties, but we got called on that at one point by a listener who wanted to know what we thought were the best horror movies of the Fifties.
We have finally responded to that (hopefully) very patient listener, and enlisted the help of our old friend Phantom Dark Dave. Together, we wander through the cold war movies that scared a generation.
Is Godzilla the best film on this list? No. But, more than any other film in the genre, it spoke directly to global anxieties, became a phenomenal success, and changed the face of horror.
As Japan struggled to re-emerge from the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, director Ishiro Honda unleashed that dreaded kaiju—followed quickly by a tidal wave of creature features focused on scientists whose ungodly work creates global cataclysm.
Far more pointed and insightful than its American bastardization or any of the sequels or reboots to follow, the 1954 Japanese original mirrored the desperate, helpless impotence of a global population in the face of very real, apocalyptic danger. Sure, that danger breathed fire and came in a rubber suit, but history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.
Director Dono Siegel was the first filmmaker to bring Jack Finney’s Cold War nightmare to the screen. He wouldn’t be the last, maybe not even the best, but what he did with this eerie alien tale tapped into a societal anxiety and quickly became one of the most influential and terrifying films of its time.
Doc Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is just home from a short trip when he’s inundated by patients swearing their loved ones are not their loved ones at all. Sure, they look the same and have all the same skills and memories, but there’s no warmth, no passion.
With this, the fear that our very nation could be overtaken by an outside force – Russians, say, for terrifyingly immediate sake of argument – working its way through not by force, but by quietly taking over each and every person in one town, then spreading from town to town to town.
It’s the kind of insidious evil that fuels contagion horror, infestation horror, even demonic horror. But Invasion of the Body Snatchers spoke to a society’s deepest fears and became a touchstone for all SciFi to follow it.
In 1958, Hammer Films began its long and fabulous love affair with the cloaked one, introducing the irrefutably awesome Christopher Lee as the Count.
Their tale varies a bit from Stoker’s, but the main players are mostly accounted for. Peter Cushing steps in early and often as Van Helsing, bringing his inimitable brand of prissy kick-ass, but it’s Lee who carries the film.
Six foot 5 and sporting that elegant yet sinister baritone, Lee cuts by far the most intimidating figure of the lot as Dracula. Director Terence Fisher (what?!) uses that to the film’s advantage by developing a far more vicious, brutal vampire than what we’d seen previously.
Still, the film is about seduction, though, which gives Lee’s brute force an unseemly thrill. Unlike so many victims in other vampire tales, it’s not just that Melissa Stribling’s Mina is helpless to stop Dracula’s penetration. She’s in league. She wants it.
Ribald stuff for 1958!
The minute delicate Christine’s (Nancy Kelly) husband leaves for his 4-week assignment in DC, their way-too-perfect daughter begins to betray some scary behavior. The creepy handyman Leroy (Henry Jones) has her figured out – he knows she’s not as perfect as she pretends.
You may be tempted to abandon the film in its first reel, feeling as if you know where the it’s going. You’ll be right, but there are two big reasons to stick it out. One is that Bad Seed did it first, and did it well, considering the conservative cinematic limitations of the Fifties.
Second, because director Mervyn LeRoy’s approach – not a single vile act appears onscreen – gives the picture an air of restraint and dignity while employing the perversity of individual imaginations to ramp up the creepiness.
Enough can’t be said about Patty McCormack. There’s surprising nuance in her manipulations, and the Oscar-nominated 9-year-old handles the role with both grace and menace.
Pierre Boileau’s novel was such hot property that even Alfred Hitchcock pined to make it into a film. But Henri-Georges Clouzot got hold if it first. His psychological thriller with horror-ific undertones is crafty, spooky, jumpy and wonderful.
And it wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the weirdly lived-in relationship among Nicole (Simone Signoret) – a hard-edged boarding school teacher – and the married couple that runs the school. Christina (Vera Clouzot) is a fragile heiress; her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) is the abusive, blowhard school headmaster. Michel and Nicole are sleeping together, Christine knows, both women are friends, both realize he’s a bastard. Wonder if there’s something they can do about it.
What unravels is a mystery with a supernatural flavor that never fails to surprise and entrance. All the performances are wonderful, the black and white cinematography creates a spectral atmosphere, and that bathtub scene can still make you jump.
