Screening Room: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Front Room, Rebel Ridge, Red Rooms, Winner & More
Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies
Ghoul of Your Dreams
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
by Hope Madden
No one has ever mastered gruesome charm, macabre whimsy, as fully as Tim Burton. His 1985 masterpiece Pee-wee’s Big Adventure made a name for him and his 1989 blockbuster Batman changed cinema. But it was with that movie in between, his ’88 nerdy goth classic Beetlejuice that we began to see the real Burton.
It also gave all outsiders everywhere the gift of Lydia Deets, so thank you Burton and Winona Ryder for that.
Lydia returns to Winter River, Connecticut with her widowed stepmother Delia, (Catherine O’Hara, glorious as always), and her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega). The family has reunited to mourn the passing of Lydia’s father.
Meanwhile, in the After World, BJ (Michael Keaton, all festering charisma) is still missing the one who got away (Lydia)—a theme, since his ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) has reanimated and is looking to swallow his soul.
One thing leads to another, somebody says his name three times, wedding bells ring, and Burton delivers his finest film in years.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t too hindered by fan service, and it benefits from fun new characters and a couple of great cameos. Justin Theroux is a hoot as Lydia’s yoga-retreat-douche-bro beau, and Willem Dafoe’s a fun distraction.
Ryder gets plenty of opportunity to look conflicted. Every close up—and there are plenty—is just choppy bangs, big browns, furrowed brow. But Lydia’s flanked with fun, energetic characters—both old and new—so the film never drags.
Each set piece is an imaginative, ghoulish delight and O’Hara could be booked with larceny for as many scenes as she steals.
The main draw, of course, is he who really shouldn’t be named, at least not thrice. Keaton and his iconic over-the-topisms beam with the joyous vibe the entire film delivers. The sequel feels less like a rehash or cash grab and more like a return to form—a return to ideas and creations that unleashed Burton’s imagination in ways few other projects have. It’s fun to have that back.
Seeing Red
Red Rooms
by Hope Madden
True crime culture. Serial killer groupies. The Dark Web. Does all of it seem too grim, too of-the-moment, too cliché to make for a deeply affecting thriller these days?
Au contraire, mon frère. Québécois Pascal Plante makes nimble use of these elements to craft a nailbiter of a serial killer thriller with his latest effort, Red Rooms.
What is a Red Room? It’s a dark web chamber where you can watch the kind of thing Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) is accused of doing. You don’t want to see what goes on there (and thankfully Plante does not subject us to it). Instead, we stalk Chevalier’s trial day after day with Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, astonishing).
But what is this model and online poker player doing sleeping in an alley just to get in line early enough to claim one of the few peanut gallery seats available for this, Quebec’s trial of the decade?
The enigma of Kelly-Anne—and Gariépy’s meticulous performance—becomes the gravitational pull in Plante’s riveting thriller. What is she doing and why is she doing it? Is she good or bad? Should we be worried about Clementine (Laurie Babin, a perfect dose of tenderness against Gariépy’s cool delivery), the down-and-out groupie Kelly-Anne takes in?
Plante expertly braids vulnerability and psychopathy, flesh and glass, humanity and the cyber universe for a weirdly compelling peek at how easily one could slide from one world to the other.
His real magic trick—one that remarkably few filmmakers have pulled off—is generating edge-of-your-seat anxiety primarily with keyboard clicks, computer screens and wait times. But the tension Plante builds—thanks to Gariépy’s precise acting—is excruciating.
They keep you disoriented, fascinated, a little repulsed and utterly breathless.
Many filmmakers in the last few years—the number growing with the rise of internet culture and mushrooming since the pandemic—have sought to reflect the dehumanizing effect of isolation. Few have done so with such unerring results as Plante and Gariépy. And they spawned a stellar thriller in the process.
Messy Inheritence
The Demon Disorder
by Hope Madden
A number of fine genre films have struggled through the particular horror of dealing with a parent in decline. The change in a loved one’s personality can seem horrific, and the specter of your own possible future is terrifying.
Natalie Erika James’s 2020 generational horror Relic tackled the subject with grace and dread. Fellow Aussie Steven Boyle sees something more monstrous in the family curse with is first feature as a director, The Demon Disorder.
Graham Reilly (Christian Willis) is reluctant to return to his family home, but older brother Jake (Dirk Hunter) says their youngest sibling, Phillip (Charles Cottier), needs help. The fact that Jake looks like a pirate left behind weeks ago on a desert island does not bode well for the shape of the younger brother back home.
Jake also says that Dad (John Noble) is back.
The entire film takes place in just two locations—a mechanic’s garage and a rundown family home—but Boyle gets plenty of traction out of those spots. The chemistry among the brothers feels strained but authentic, and their performances go a long way toward elevating a story that never feels fully realized.
The main event—and the biggest differentiator between The Demon Disorder and other films of this kind—involves some pretty impressive practical effects. Boyle’s film boasts three different globulous monsters—nasty beasties that make you want to reach for the disinfectant.
Possession film/body horror/creature feature is an enticing combination. In truth, the three don’t really fit that well together here. Eliminating the Christian symbolism might have streamlined this meandering script, but a lack of depth in the storytelling would still have shown its ugly, blobby, viscous face.
The monsters are cool, though.
But Boyle—who’s built a career on makeup design and creature FX—plays to his strengths and delivers a fun, DIY creature feature while he’s at it.
Feed My Frankenstein
AfrAId
by Hope Madden
Artificial intelligence is scary. Mary Shelley knew it. When you create something smarter than you are, with an endless ability to learn, you don’t just become obsolete. You risk becoming a slave.
Writer/director Chris Weitz is the latest to spin the story for its scary implications, although the weekly titled AfrAId is more thriller than horror.
Good guy Curtis (John Cho—who’s had tech unravel his world once already in 2018’s Searching) is pressured by his overbearing boss (Keith Carradine) to take a new client’s product home for a bit.
The company’s IAI—a kind of superpowered Alexa—immediately ingratiates itself by convincing the kids to do the dishes and watch an educational documentary and giving Curtis and his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) some alone time.
In the blink of the surveillance camera’s eye, the buttery voiced AI has befriended each of Curtis and Meredith’s children—Iris (Lukita Maxwell), high school senior with an emotionally manipulative boyfriend; Preston (Wyatt Lindner), the middle schooler struggling to make friends; and wee Cal (crazy cute Isaac Bae).
Well, this AI is a godsend! Which, of course, is entirely and pretty obviously inaccurate. Weitz’s screenplay reflects societal anxieties effectively enough but there’s no center to it, no “but why?” explanation.
Terminator had that. Frankenstein had it, too. It’s a curious omission and without it, the film collapses on itself.
The cast elevates every scene. They are, top to bottom, first rate and the film boasts an always welcome David Dastmalchian sighting. The smooth performances and easy chemistry onscreen heighten tensions, and Weitz does make a narrative choice that feels like a grim surprise. But it’s not enough to make AfrAId one that stays with you.
Pollinator and Predator
The Wasp
by Hope Madden
There’s something about a two person show.
Yes, there are more actors in The Wasp than just Natalie Dormer and Naomie Harris, and each one of them—Olivia Juno Cleverly, Leah Mondesir-Simmonds, Dominic Allburn—does a fine job. But Guillem Morales’s thriller is more than anything a suspenseful showcase for two remarkable talents.
Harris plays Heather, an elegant, wealthy, unhappily married woman. Carla (Dormer)—pregnant with her fourth child, married to a gambler, making ends meet with a cashier gig and whatever other cash she can pick up—is suspicious and reluctant but desperate enough for cash to agree to meet with her old classmate. Not that she and Heather were friends back at school.
Heather has a proposition. You may be able to guess what that is even if you haven’t seen the trailer. You can also guess that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Indeed, there’s a chance you’ll figure out the twists as they come up. Maybe not. Either way, Harris and Dormer will draw you in and leave you marked.
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s screenplay plays with expectations in a number of ways, obscuring the label of protagonist and antagonist. The ground shifts beneath you as frequently as it does the characters. And it wouldn’t work, you wouldn’t buy it as easily as you do, were it not for these performances.
Harris, and Oscar nominee for 2016’s Moonlight, delivers a nuanced, brittle performance that keeps you off center. Dormer is a revelation. Angry, apathetic, vulnerable, desperate—in her hands, Carla is a survivor more resigned than resilient. She’s less afraid to hope than she is pissed off about it.
Dormer also finds moments of humor to humanize the character, moments Morales uses to let the audience breathe. Whatever its dramatic contrivances, and there are a few, the success of The Wasp boils down to riveting, believable performances that command your attention.
Feeding Frenzy
Out Come the Wolves
by Hope Madden
Predator and prey. Alpha and beta. Necessary and expendable. Writer/director Adam MacDonald puts these ideas into perspective with his latest thriller, Out Come the Wolves.
MacDonald returns to the woods, where he’s long wrought havoc (Pyewacket, Backcountry). In this forest, Sophie (MacDonald’s regular collaborator Missy Peregrym) is hoping her childhood best friend Kyle (Joris Jarsky) can teach her big city boyfriend Nolan (Damon Runyan) how to hunt.
Nolan’s a writer planning an article on the experience, but he’s also eager to meet Sophie’s dear friend to get acquainted and maybe gauge the competition.
MacDonald’s cinematic bread and butter has been the small cast, big woods, test of the survival instinct. In Backcountry it was a bear; in Pyewacket, a demon. The title here probably gives away the antagonist this go-round, but MacDonald has more in store for us than just a couple of hungry wolves.
Though small cast plus limited location generally equals low budget, Out Come the Wolves boasts impressive production values. Interiors, though slightly hokey and sometimes obvious, develop tension with claustrophobic close ups. MacDonald also takes this first (mainly interior) act to set up the gender politics at work, something he plays off of well in the coming outdoor adventure.
Jarsky delivers the most believable performance, one fraught with roiling emotions and conflicting goals. Runyan is slightly hamstrung by the underwritten “big city guy” role, but he finds a nice balance between smug and vulnerable, insecure and earnest.
Peregrym’s third act makes her first act easier to stomach. She’s saddled early on with a bad dance scene and unrealistic levels of emotional ignorance. It’s not Peregrym’s fault—the writing team (MacDonal and Jarsky along with Enuka Okuma) unable to craft a realistic character is to blame. And Peregrym does what she can, but it’s not until the final third of the film that she gets any opportunity to shine.
It’s still not a very convincing character, but the performance elevates the script.
Out Come the Wolves has some obvious ideas on its mind. It takes those ideas in tense, often interesting directions buoyed by Jarsky’s performance, in particular.
Fright Club: The Alien Franchise
We’re making a bit of a departure for this episode. The latest in the Alien franchise had us—like everyone else—doing a bit of ranking.
1. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
2. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
3. Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)
4. Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez, 2024)
5. Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)
6. Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992)
7. Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott, 2017)
8. Alien vs. Predator (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2004)
9. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (Colin Strause, Greg Strause, 2007)
But we thought it would be fun to catch up with a couple of other big Alien nerds and hash it out. What worked with Alien: Romulus? What didn’t? Where does it fit within the pantheon and why? Is Alien 3 an underrated masterpiece? Is Alien Resurrection actually any good? And why were there so many vaginas in Romulus? So, so many.
We welcome two great friends of the podcast, filmmaker Timothy Troy and MaddWolf contributor and Schlocketeer, Daniel Baldwin. Beware: spoilers ahead! We’re going to pull this apart a bit, so if you haven’t seen Alien: Romulus (or any of the others, for that matter), be warned.
Screening Room: The Crow, Blink Twice, Strange Darling, Stream & More
Fantasy Island
Blink Twice
by Hope Madden
Zoë Kravitz is pissed off.
Nice.
In her directorial debut, Kravitz—working from a script she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum—delivers an intoxicating and haunting thriller about privilege.
Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody) is Frida, a waitress with a huge crush on disgraced-but-apologetic billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum). When he invites her and her best friend Jess (the always welcome Alia Shawkat) to his private island, both accept without a second thought.
It’s all rich guys and delicious food, pools and cocktails, drugs and sun. What Frida can’t quite figure out is why Slater never seems to make a move.
What transpires feels influenced by the classic The Stepford Wives, as well asJulia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. The ideas are less borrowed than repeatedly, historically true and Kravitz reconsiders these timeless notions with an unerringly contemporary sensibility and a mean spirit that’s earned.
Ackie’s solid in a role that asks a lot. She’s surrounded by lively, creepy performances that perfectly animate the superficial, manufactured joy of the story being told. Adria Arjona impresses in a role with more arc than most. Meanwhile, both Christian Slater and Red Rocket’s Simon Rex steal scenes left and right.
Still, it’s Tatum who effortlessly bridges horror fantasy with “damn, this could really happen.” His morally blurry turn, charmingly evil, has such authenticity to it that the island horror feels more like a reflection of reality than it should.
Should you board an airplane for a tropical island with a bunch of wildly rich people you’ve never met before? Good lord, no. Nothing good could possibly come of that. Kravitz’s horror story could easily have become a cautionary tale in less skilled hands, but that is not the story she’s telling.
Blink Twice, which was originally titled Pussy Island, covers really horrible territory, but again, thanks to nimble and respectful direction, there’s not a gratuitous moment. What Kravitz delivers instead is a seductive, tense, satisfying thriller.
