Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

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Knock Knock Joke

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The Strangers: Chapter 1

by Hope Madden

Reny Harlin’s best film is The Long Kiss Goodnight, though some would argue Die Hard 2. Niether one of these is great. Good, yes. Definitely. Not great.

He’s made 42 other features—42!—not one of which is good. A couple are decent. A lot of people think he disappeared, talk about his work with The Strangers origin story trilogy as some kind of grand reemergence, but he’s never gone away. It’s just that the movies he’s made for the last thirtyish years have been entirely forgettable.

So anyway, The Strangers: Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 is actually the third installment in the tale of masked marauders randomly hunting anybody who’s home when they come calling. Bryan Bertino’s 2008 original is among the scariest horror films of the new millennium. It took ten  years for somebody to decide it needed a sequel. It didn’t.

But that’s the problem with a franchise, isn’t it? You can’t replicate the genuine terror of a truly original horror film, you can only hope to replicate it. This is what Harlin, with writing partners Alan R. Coen and Alan Freedland—both comedy writers known for King of the Hill and other sitcoms—attempts. Chapter 1 hits all the same beats—all of them—as Bertino’s original. The only real difference is that he abandons every move that made the original original.

Gone is the complicated relationship, emotional gut punches, chilling lines and good music. The vinyl collection in this backwoods Airbnb is terrible.

Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) stop at an off-the-grid diner on their road trip from NYC to Portland, Oregon. Unexpected car trouble lands them in a rustic cabin overnight, which seems ideal until someone comes knocking looking for Tamara.

There’s a Richard Brake sighting, which is never a bad thing, but blink and you’ll miss him. Gutierrez and Petsch are fine. They’re asked more to pose and look nice than anything, but they do emit a lovable chemistry that makes you sorry for what you know is in store.

And though you certainly know where things are heading (partly because Harlin mimics Bertino’s original so early and often), individual set pieces ratchet up a certain amount of tension. It looks nice. Is it the gorgeous vintage horror aesthetic of Bertino’s original? It is not. But it’s a good looking movie.

So, if you have not seen the 2008 treasure that grounds this franchise, then Harlin’s Chapter 1 is sure to please. It’s an extremely conventional, competent horror movie. As if that’s enough.

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Wanted: Friends with More Imagination

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IF

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker John Krasinski—whose directorial output thus far has aimed at terrifying audiences soundless—turns his attention to something that’s never been scary in a movie: imaginary friends.

No, actually, except for the rare exception, every film about imaginary friends is horrifying. But Krasinski’s channeling Harvey, not Donnie Darko with his family friendly IF.

IF for Imaginary Friend, harmless beasties that are running rampant near Coney Island. You see, kids grow up and just forget all about their old, reliable imaginary friends. Once that happens, the IFs lose their purpose.

Bea (Cailey Fleming) is staying nearby with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) while her dad’s (Krasinski) in the hospital. She keeps running into these IFs and decides to help their grumpy (if handsome) handler (Ryan Reynolds) find them new homes.

The whole affair has a throwback quality to it, which suits its unabashedly sentimental attitude about childhood and imagination. The existential crisis recalls Toy Story films, but Krasinski is more concerned with the humans in his tale.

Fleming does a fine job as the 12-year-old who’s decided she’s all grown up, and a dialed down Reynolds is sweet enough. The film boasts an assortment of vocal talent for the various IFs: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Steve Carell, Louis Gossett, Jr., Amy Shumer, Maya Rudolph, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Richard Jenkins, Blake Lively, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Keegan-Michael Key, Bill Hader and Emily Blunt (wonder how he got her).

What IF lacks is a wild imagination. Everything is so very tame. The wholesomeness blunts any edges of the grief and fear at the heart of Bea’s story. And Krasinski’s story takes any number of turns without really deciding on a direction.

Krasinski’s movie looks good, but the tale he’s telling wanders in a lot of unfinished direction and leaves you with nothing to really remember.

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Put On a Happy Face

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Faceless After Dark

by Hope Madden

Back in 2016, Jenna Kanell made a horror movie, a low budget affair, the unofficial sequel to a very minor indie nearly no one saw. By that point in her career, Kanell had made half dozen or more low budget indie features, done loads of TV,  shorts, and a few music videos. In all likelihood, Terrifier didn’t register at the time as anything other than one more microbudget horror flick.

But that is not what Terrifier turned out to be, is it? The little clown killer that could undoubtedly changed Kanell’s career, perhaps not in all the ways the actor/writer/director/stunt performer might have wanted it to. What’s a not-final girl to do?

Kanell channeled the experience into the new feature, Faceless After Dark, which she co-wrote with Todd Jacobs. Directed by Raymond Wood, the film follows a disgruntled struggling actress named Bowie (Kanell) who pays more bills selling autographs at horror cons than through actual acting gigs—but the clown from her hit movie earns more.

Plus, her more famous girlfriend is still closeted about the relationship, and her longtime best friend’s film got greenlit—as long as he gives the lead to a different actress.

And, of course, you have the creepy fans.

It all gets to be too much one night, until Bowie taps into her own creativity and becomes the artist she was meant to be.

Meta can get very tiresome, especially in horror, but there’s something wearily honest about its application in Faceless After Dark. At its best, the film is a reflection of the maddening obstacles facing people—women, specifically—trying to survive Hollywood.

Kanell delivers a commanding performance and the writing is sound, even if the plotting is a little obvious and superficial and the psychotic break feels unearned. But as a showcase for Kanell’s charisma, and an often satisfying reaction to the rampant misogyny in cinema and particularly in fan culture, it’s fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95DKHrE5bJM

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Graveyard Shift

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Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever

by Hope Madden

Thirty years ago, Danish writer/director Ole Bornedal made a taut thriller about the night watchman in a medical facility who stumbles into a lurid crime spree. Three years later, he made Nightwatch again, this time in English. And now, fully three decades hence, he hits those of us who remember either of the earlier films with a sequel: Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever.

Back in the day, Martin (Nikolaj Coser-Waldau) took a job as overnight security to help pay for law school. Today, his daughter Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal) does the same. Yes, she needs the money—since her mom’s suicide, her dad Martin is mainly drunk or pilled up and hasn’t worked in ages. But Emma has added reason. She just learned that her dad was involved in the famous serial killer case that ended in the building morgue.

Emma now blames the trauma for her mother’s suicide and her dad’s inability to cope, but her digging around has opened up a whole mess of new problems. Or old ones.

The filmmaker moves ably from the existential crises that fueled his original film to the ripple effects of trauma. He treads enough of the same beats to create an eerie echo of the past, but veers in mainly sensible new directions.

We do get to spend time with the majority of the original cast, though most of them appear for a scene, maybe two. Coser-Waldau anchors the sequel. Far from the wide-eyed youth who was so malleable thirty years ago, Martin is now barely functioning but earnestly interested in doing right by his daughter.

The filmmaker’s own daughter cuts a compelling contrast as Martin’s daughter. Determined and a little raw, Emma makes some rash decisions, but they never feel like dumb choices in service of a thriller’s scares. They feel like passion and impatience.

The mystery itself begins strong with an increasingly interesting perpetrator (Casper Kjær Jensen, tender and terrifying), but eventually devolves into something too pulpy and familiar. Still, Ole Bornedal has not lost his touch with the claustrophobic terror of being trapped inside a medical facility.

If you loved the original (or ‘97s solid remake with Ewan McGregor), Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever delivers bittersweet closure. But it’s an entertaining if not fantastic watch for thriller fans new to the franchise as well.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Best Nicolas Cage Horror Movies

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We love him. You love him. Once considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, later deemed a nut job with unusual spending habits who would take any role, Nicolas Cage has finally set the debate to rest. He is obviously both.

Whether his masterpiece performances—Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, Pig—or his many other great, good, mediocre and outright terrible films, Cage is a guy you can’t take your eyes off of. But what are his best horror films? Let’s dig in.

5. Renfield (2023)

They totally made a movie with a very saucy Nic Cage as Dracula. And a saucy Nic Cage is the best Nic Cage.

There’s at least one bloody toe in waters that send up rom-coms, satirize narcissistic relationships and homage a classic horror character while it’s also modernizing the themes that built him.

But experiencing Count Nicula alone is worth it. Plus, Nicholas Hoult is perfect as the put-upon sad boy with access to anti-hero superpowers and Awkwafina can wring plenty of humor from simply telling a guy named Kyle to F-off.

Renfield might be bloodier than you expect, but it’s just as much fun as you’re hoping for. Call it bloody good fun.

4. Grindhouse (2007)

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez deserved more eyeballs when they released their giddy mash note to low rent B-horror features. Both films were great, but what was really inspired were the fake trailers they wedged between the two features.

One of the best trailers, and possibly the fest film Rob Zombie ever made, was this gem that looks like a realistic evolution of an old Sybil Danning film. (Danning herself co-stars as one of the She-Devils of Belzac). The chef’s kiss is Cage, cackling maniacally over the end of the clip as Fu Manchu.

3. Mom and Dad (2017)

I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it.

It’s a joke, of course, an idle threat. Right?

Maybe so, but deep down, it does speak to the unspeakable tumult of emotions and desires that come with parenting. Wisely, a humorous tumult is exactly the approach writer/director Brian Taylor  brings to his horror comedy Mom and Dad.

So why do you want to see it? Because of the unhinged Nicolas Cage. Not just any Nic Cage—the kind who can convincingly sing the Hokey Pokey while demolishing furniture with a sledge hammer.

This is one of those Nic Cage roles: Face/Off meets Wild at Heart meets Vampire’s Kiss. He’s weird, he’s explosive and he is clearly enjoying himself.

2. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)

Sure, Nicolas Cage is a whore, a has-been, and his wigs embarrass us all. But back before The Rock (the film that turned him), Cage was always willing to behave in a strangely effeminate manner, and perhaps even eat a bug. He made some great movies that way.

Peter Lowe (pronounced with such relish by Cage) believes he’s been bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals) during a one night stand. It turns out, he’s actually just insane. The bite becomes his excuse to indulge his self-obsessed, soulless, predatory nature for the balance of the running time.

Cage gives a masterful comic performance in Vampire’s Kiss as a narcissistic literary editor who descends into madness. The actor is hilarious, demented, his physical performance outstanding. The way he uses his gangly mess of limbs and hulking shoulders inspires darkly, campy comic awe. And the plastic teeth are awesome.

Peter may believe he abuses his wholesome editorial assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) with sinister panache because he’s slowly turning into a demon, but we know better.

1. Mandy (2018)

Writer/director Panos Cosmatos’s hallucinogenic fever dream of social, political and pop-culture subtexts layered with good old, blood-soaked revenge, Mandy throws enough visionary strangeness on the screen to dwarf even Nicolas Cage in full freakout mode.

Not just Nic, either. Andrea Riseborough, cannibal bikers on LSD, The Chemist, and a religious sex cult led by a terrible folk singer. Plus a sword, an axe, a lot of blood, and did I mention the LSD?

Like Cosmatos’s 2010 debut Beyond the Black Rainbow, Mandy is both formally daring and wildly borrowed. While Black Rainbow, also set in 1983, shines with the antiseptic aesthetic of Cronenberg or Kubrick, Mandy feels more like something snatched from a Dio album cover.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Last Stop in Yuma County, The Dry 2 & More

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Not Another Church Movie, The Dry 2, The Last Stop in Yuma County, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Mind Body Spirit, Do Not Expect Much from the End of the World, Lazareth, Foil

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Leaving Yuma Is Never Easy

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The Last Stop in Yuma County

by Hope Madden

Writer/director Francis Galluppi was chosen to helm the next Evil Dead film. Don’t know him? Wondering what the visceral spew gods Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell see in him? The Last Stop in Yuma County may be your best chance to find out.

The filmmaker’s first feature boasts a collection of genuine talent, each playing a character who shows up one fateful morning at an out of the way diner known for rhubarb pie so good you’ll die.

They’re not there for the pie, though. Gas truck’s late and this is the last station for a hundred miles. They’re waiting: a knife salesman on the way to his daughter’s birthday party (Jim Cummings), an older couple with no place pressing to be (Gene Jones, Robin Bartlett), two bank robbers (Richard Brake, Nicolas Logan), plus Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue), keeping their coffee cups full.

It’s a potent setup, which is likely why so many films have settled into similar booths. While Galluppi works the tension afforded by his premise, he has surprises aplenty in store as well. Most of them spring from the characters that are established quickly and well by his cast.

Brake—reliable as ever in the coolly authoritative villain role—wastes no energy or dialog. He’s a menacing presence in every scene inside the diner. Logan, as his loose cannon younger brother, creates tension and relieves it comically in equal measure.

Characters come and go as we move toward the inevitable standoff, but each actor is able to carve out something memorable. But the one you never forget, no matter how little he does, is Cummings.

No one delivers earnest human weakness with as much awkward tenderness as Cummings, and even when he’s hiding under his table, you know something more is coming.

The Last Stop in Yuma County is a single-location film done extremely well, mining visual details in place of exposition, relying on character to enrich its slight premise, and delivering giddy tension. It’s full of fun, blood and surprises.   

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Angst on a Shoestring

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The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something has Passed

by Hope Madden

no one told you when to run

you missed the starting gun

Pink Floyd sang of a particular worrisome anxiety. Joanna Arnow perfectly articulates the emotion, or lack of, right from the title of her feature, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something has Passed.

Arnow writes, directs and stars as Ann with unerringly deadpan delivery. Ann suffers from Millennial malaise. Her job evokes no passion. Her family is clingy and yet distant. Even her interest in BDSM, in Arnow’s hilariously banal depictions, is lifeless.

Growing listless with her longtime, much older “dominant,” Allen (Scott Cohen), Ann engages new partners, then moves to more traditional dating, finally developing a charming relationship with Chris (Babak Tafti, all warmth and tenderness).

At this point, Arnow’s detached irony threatens to make way for genuine human emotion. Chris and Ann’s awkwardness is sweet. You almost root for the film to be turning into a romcom. Arnow toys with that, as well as the coming-of-age arc, resisting cliché and doling out generational insights in hilarious monotone.

While there is something vaguely Lena Dunham about Arnow’s film, her voice is so utterly her own it’s tough to really compare The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something has Passed to anything else.

That voice echoes in the film’s visual aesthetic as well: everyone and everything at arm’s length, somehow simultaneously disengaged but compelling.

Not everything gels, and even the bulk of the film that works brilliantly will not work on everyone. Arnow’s film is an acquired taste— defiantly so. But like most good comedies, it’s saying something incredibly honest and more than a little bit sad.

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Endure What Cannot Be Cured

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Mind Body Spirit

by Hope Madden

There is something clever underlying directors Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda’s first feature, Mind Body Spirit.

Anya (Sarah J. Bartholomew) is sharing videos of her journey to wellness. She’s just moved cross country into the home her departed grandmother Verasha left her. She never knew her grandmother, but she sees this as an opportunity for a new life.

Her only friend on this side of the country—wellness influencer Kenzi (Madi Bready)—stops by occasionally to check in and collab on videos. But she can’t really get behind Anya’s new direction, taken from a hand-written book left by the deceased and written mostly in Russian.

Mind Body Spirit has a bit more compassion for influencers than most horror films do. Though the tale mines the cultural appropriation and blissful ignorance that is easy to find among influencers—particularly those peddling wellness—the depiction is not entirely one sided.

Bartholomew’s performance is endlessly vulnerable and empathetic, but even rushed and cynical Kenzi gets a nice arc that deepens the impact of the film’s horror. Because naturally, naïve Anya misinterprets the underlying message in the tome her departed grandmother left her.

The directors also write, along with Topher Hendricks, and their script sometimes dances with language, toying with the way mystical turns of phrase can easily be used, depending on inflection, to terrify.

Shot in one location with a total cast of 4 (one of whom appears exclusively via FaceTime), Mind Body Spirit rarely gives evidence of its budget. The found footage approach is sometimes fresh—the ads between video segments are inspired—but like most films of the genre, there is no integrity to the actual footage: who shot it, who edited it, why and how it got posted, etc.

More problematic is the occasional blood gag. Outright horror is included sparingly, but when it is, the unreality of the gag is pretty evident. The filmmakers don’t really tread any new ground, either. They just pull in social media as a slightly askew way to tell the same story you’ve seen a number of times.

Nonetheless, Bartholomew shoulders what is at least 75% one-person-show and does it with enough tenderness that Mind Body Spirit never loses your attention.