Tag Archives: Madd at the Movies

Shudder Premiere

All You Care to Eat

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Buffet Infinity

by Hope Madden

At about the 5-minute mark, I’d begun to worry about Buffet Infinity, co-writer/director Simon Glassman’s very Canadian sci-fi/horror/comedy hybrid. So far, we’d done nothing but flip through various low-fi, low-budget, very local Canadian TV ads. For five minutes.

That seemed like a long time for a prelude to a narrative. By 10 minutes, panic settled in as I realized the flipping from a few seconds of this law office ad to a few seconds of that used car commercial to a few seconds of this buffet advert would compose the entire film.

About one minute later I’d submitted to the mind-jangling force of Buffet Infinity. Which almost certainly means I would not have survived whatever it is that happened in Westridge County, Canada the day the sink hole appeared behind that mall.

Glassman’s premise, built from a script co-written with Allison Bench and Elisia Snyder, is clever, but its execution is bananas and perhaps brilliant.

The film mimics the experience of channel surfing in the Nineties with all the regional news and commercials. Did your small town have a car salesman who took on a superhero alter ego? Or a badly dressed ambulance chaser promising you a big payout for your negligence lawsuit? These are joined by a delightful pawn shop, an untested diet pill, a hilariously lip-synched series of insurance commercials, one low-rent L. Ron Hubbard (every ad is hilarious), and a nasty grudge match between neighboring restaurants.

Edited masterfully and performed atrociously (intentionally and enjoyably), and aided by a handful of quick news bits, the clips tell the tale of a town fighting to survive some cosmic capitalistic catastrophe.

Glassman’s instincts for presentation are on point. Whether it’s the crawl on the screen, the news channel jingles, the insane verbal descriptions attached to the buffet commercials, or just the relentless and twisted familiarity of each ad, Buffet Infinity nails its style.

I wouldn’t call it style over substance because that feels like a knock against the narrative being unveiled with each changing commercial. Still, certainly the presentation and its unlikely durability (93 minutes!) make style the more impressive of the two.

Buffet Infinity is a wild watch, and though—given its channel hopping style—it seems ideal for Shudder, don’t let the home viewing let you get distracted. Glassman repays you for your attention.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Union County, End of Oak Street, Wrong Girls & More

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Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Union County, The End of Oak Street, The Rivals of Amziah King, The Wrong Girls, Do Us Part – and we’re joined by the director and cast, Reed Arnold, Kelly Russo & Travis Laughlin! —Don’t Say Good Luck, Hellcat, Feed, and The Legend of Juan Jose Mundo.

Outtakes

Don’t You (Forget About Mom)

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Don’t Say Good Luck

by Hope Madden

There is a sweet, delightfully messy coming-of-age film at the heart of director Julia Hart’s Don’t Say Good Luck.

As high school sophomore Sophie (Sunny Sandler) nervously auditions for the school musical, navigating friendship and crush and theatrical nerves, her relationship with her mom takes a hit. What’s refreshing about Don’t Say Good Luck is that each of Sophie’s high school sources of angst takes a back seat to her issues with her mom, rather than vice versa.

In your average John Hughes film, troubles at home are the backdrop for our plucky teen hero. Hart, who co-wrote the script with Laura Hankin and Jordan Horowitz, reframes priorities. The film is about Sophie and her mom (Melanie Lynskey).

Hart goes so far as to soften the villainous stereotypes Hughes trained us to expect. By rounding out the more minor characters and refocusing attention away from high school angst and toward family relationships, Don’t Say Good Luck abandons the age-old trope that teens are on their own, their parents just don’t understand.

It’s nice. Beyond that, it’s often moving.

Lynskey is characteristically wonderful, and she and Max Greenfield present a very natural, endearing, weary bond as parents going through something tragic. The chaos of their lives—a busy high schooler, twin boys, a deli they co-own where they both work—feels lived in.

Add, in minor supporting roles, the great Bebe Neuwirth and Steve Buscemi, and you’re looking at an impressive ensemble, ostensibly there to buoy Sandler, whose father and mother (Adam and Jackie Sandler) produce.

Sunny Sandler does a fine job in the spotlight. She’s fine, like her sister Sadie Sandler was fine in Roommates. She’s probably not strong enough to anchor this film, but she doesn’t sink it, either.

Still, there’s a refreshing untidiness about Don’t Say Good Luck that keeps you off kilter and helps the climax hit harder. The film lacks cynicism, believes teenage girls do dumb things but are not dumb people, and sees depth where other films choose not to. It’s an enjoyable high school dramedy, and one that acknowledges its audience’s humanity.

Outtakes

Primeval Bloodbath

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Feed

by Hope Madden

Horror owes Ireland a huge debt for vampires. Yes, basically every culture and nationality has a vampire myth, but Ireland gave us Dracula and Carmilla. Remmick is the coolest vampire to come along in decades. But those bloodsuckers are predated by some millennia by the Dearg Due, Ireland’s first vampire, who finally gets her cinematic due in Marco van Belle’s indie horror, Feed.

It’s been a year since Orla’s (Grace Collender) tragedy. Her influencer/bestie Nessa (Daisy Jelley) is sure that a week away in a remote Irish cottage will help bring Orla out of her depression, and if Nessa can take advantage of the beautiful spot for some posts, all the better.

This is essentially a cabin-in-the-woods horror, isolating five attractive young people of mixed gender in a natural, even primeval, setting.

Is it a tired set up? It is. Do filmmakers drag it out time and time again because it’s effective? Also yes. Locals are spooky, there’s no phone service, characters are out of their element, and a natural evil is disturbed.

An early-film flashback gives us a sense of what that evil is, but van Belle could mine the mythology more effectively. It would have more effectively set Feed apart from other films. Instead, we spend most of our time inside the cabin with the more predictable storyline.

The cast does a fine job of finding characters hiding in these fairly typical characters. Jelley is the most hamstrung as the vain best friend and failing influencer, but Clinton Liberty, as Orla’s boyfriend, struggles with the film’s most underwritten character.

Collender’s solid and both Rhys Mannion and Oskar Smith find nuance and personality for their characters. Naimh Hogan’s central villain has come cool trickery, but her presence lacks real terror. Charlotte Bradley, on the other hand, is effortlessly frightening as the innkeeper who’d rather keep the vampire.

It’s a good looking movie and van Belle uses the tools of the influencer within the vampire myth well. He just doesn’t break out of routine often enough to make Feed particularly memorable.  

Shudder Premiere

The Passenger

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Hellcat

by Hope Madden

Writer/director Brock Bodell’s Hellcat keeps you guessing and intrigued with a tight premise, two locations, and a cast you can count on one hand.

Dakota Gorman is Lena, and she’s not having a good time. She’s awake, her head is spinning, her stomach is not right, and she’s moving. Unsure of how she got here, Lena’s in an Airstream, rolling down a highway to God-knows-where.

For the majority of Hellcat’s 91-minute runtime, Gorman is alone to throw fits, connive, sleuth, convulse, and rebel inside that camper. Physically alone, anyway. Over a sound system rigged to the pick-up hauling the thing is the voice of Clive (Todd Terry). Clive wants Lena to stay calm and stop busting up his home until he can get her to a doctor. She’s been infected, he says.

It’s a clever but simple premise, and the tensions and questions are mined well. Lena is quite sure she’s been drugged and kidnapped. Bodell drops well-timed hints and clues to keep you leaning one direction and then the other. Evidence suggests that Clive is not what he says he is, although there’s still some proof that maybe he’s not a villainous liar. It’s tough to know.

Gorman’s physical performance is impressive and grueling. She gives Lena a savvy, angry edge that makes you believe she’ll find or fight her way out of this.

Likewise, Terry makes you want to believe Clive.

The long, lonesome highway allows for some clever attempts at escape, and given your conflicting loyalties throughout, Bodell is not afraid to twist the knife.

As we head into the third act, things get a little contrived but weirdly, entertainingly so. The full backstory/mythology is never entirely articulated, which is a bit convenient given the direction things take. And the practical FX are slightly hokey.

But on the whole, Hellcat is lean, mean, and effective.  

Fright Club

Fright Club Bonus: Author/Publisher Billy Graves

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Thrilled to get a peek behind the indie publishing curtain with Lacandon Jungle Press founder and author of Seams of the Infinite, Billy Graves! We talk publishing, indie horror, and George lets us in on recording an audio book!

ljpbooks.com

lacandonjunglepress@gmail.com

The Screening Room

Screening Room: One Night Only, Cookie Queens, Ice Cream Man & More

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Hope & George review this week’s new releases: One Night Only, Super Troopers 3, Ice Cream Man, Cookie Queens, Tinsman Road, Big Baby and The Yeti. PLUS! News & Notes from The Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin!

Outtakes

Baby I’m a Star

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Big Baby

by Hope Madden

Is a horror film writer’s imagination creating real life carnage? Writer/director Spider One (Little Bites) asks the question in his latest, Big Baby.

Brandon Scott is Adam, an insecure but successful horror screenwriter who opens the film by listening to two dumbasses with a podcast say his latest movie is so bad that he should kill himself.

The point is not whether the movie is bad. The point is that Adam continues to listen. Then to stew and brood, even though his girlfriend Kate (Krsy Fox) reminds him that he’s too good to be bothered by these idiots. He’s kind of being a big baby.

Cue the nightmares: a hulking brute in a crying baby mask axes Kate in half. And the only way Adam knows to deal with this nightmare…and the others…and the waking hallucinations…is to write a script about it.

Spider One takes advantage of Scott’s genuine talent to anchor a film with a lot of insights and jabs. When you write horror, people forever wonder what’s wrong with you. Big Baby digs into this, as characters in Adam’s script show up in his life begging for theirs. He can change their fate. He has the control.

It’s kind of a cross between In the Mouth of Madness and Stranger Than Fiction with the baby mask from Happy Death Day thrown in for good measure. And it’s often fun and more often compelling, again due mainly to Scott’s committed performance.

Fox turns in solid support in a part that generates the film’s real tension as Big Baby nudges toward toxic behavior and domestic abuse. Things get sloppy once the film focuses more deliberately on what it is that Adam’s writing.

Had the script’s story tied into the core story in any way, the final product could have been quite rich. Instead, we get a series of non sequitur murders. While the tension outside Adam’s script amps to a spectacular, yell-at-the-screen level, the parallel story within the script Adam’s writing squanders that energy.

The result is curiously unsatisfying. Even as Big Baby leaves room for sequels, we’ve lost interest in the tale it’s telling.

Shudder Premiere

Dead of Winter

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The Yeti

by Hope Madden

The year is 1947. The location? The Alaska Territory.  A little expedition led by oil tycoon Merriell Sunday (Corbin Bernsen) has gone missing. Sunday’s son (Eric Nelson) mounts a search party, but it wasn’t oil his old man was after. It was something hairier.

The Yeti boasts a cast full of talent, Nelson, Bernsen, Brittany Allen, Jim Cummings, and William Sadler among them. And it’s a period, practical FX creature feature! I didn’t expect Godzilla Minus One, but I was hoping maybe for something as fun and interesting as last year’s Monster Island.

It actually reminded me a little bit more of Roseanne Liang’s 2020 creature feature Shadow in the Cloud for its retro vibe and girl power attitude.

Writers/directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta buoy a soft script with their casting, and they hit a fun, hokey tone by mining the era for a newsreel vibe. The stagey sets, hard-boiled dialog, and practical FX are endearingly compelling.  The filmmakers are clearly going after a 40s B-movie feel without leaning parody, and it mainly works.

A couple of shots are beautifully lit, and every actor pulls their weight and then some.

As Sunday Jr.’s expedition hits some bloody snags and the horror of the story begins to gel, the script’s weaknesses start to really draw attention to themselves: forced backstory sharing, burdensome daddy issues, and plot holes that don’t get filled.

Naturally, like a werewolf movie, a yeti film lives and dies on creature design. Wayne Anderson’s design is solid. On occasion, the filmmakers seem unable to shoot, light, and edit the scenes for maximum impact/minimum “that’s a mask and a suit” disbelief. But the physical presence of the beast gives dimension to scenes. Plus, thank you for going practical instead of ruining the film and its throwback vibe with AI.  

In the end, a script that needed a couple more drafts keeps The Yeti from truly satisfying. It has its moments, though.

New In Theaters

We All Scream

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Ice Cream Man

by Hope Madden

With Ice Cream Man, filmmaker Eli Roth visits the underappreciated horror subgenre focused on hordes of deadly children. Wolf Rilla may have done it first with 1960’s Village of the Damned, but Roth is following more closely in the footsteps of Narciso Ibañez Serrador and his 1976 film Who Can Kill a Child?

Since the Seventies, there’ve been plenty of killer-children flicks, most famously Children of the Corn from Stephen King’s novel. But Roth finds humor in the mayhem, channeling  2015’s Cooties in particular, but with a noticeable difference.

Generally, these films represent an adult nightmare. Our victim-heroes are grown-ups faced with the impossible task of defending themselves, and occasionally a handful of untainted children, from ravenous, murdering swarms of youngsters. It’s a tough spot to be in, hence Serrador’s title.

Roth changes that up. It’s little leaguer Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) and a couple of other kids who managed who find themselves face-to-face with the Ice Cream Man’s minions. His wares change children into frenzied killing machines. Only those lactose intolerant enough not to digest the tainted snack treats remain healthy.

Roth delights in the childish carnage. Early kills are especially nasty, all of it laced with a macabre humor and ghoulish playfulness. A similar tone is one of the reasons his 2023 film Thanksgiving was such an enjoyable return to genre work.

But Ice Cream Man never hits the spot quite as well as Thanksgiving. By removing the adult victim-hero, Roth creates a children-in-peril horror that doesn’t pull on the emotions of similar fare, like It or Devil’s Backbone, because children are also the villains.

The switch also eliminates the vicarious fear and revulsion adults often harbor, sometimes deep down, for children. Cooties read like every middle school teacher’s secret fantasy. It’s also funnier and better paced without foregoing any of the blood or nastiness.

Roth can’t manage to keep the pace moving, often pausing the action when it makes the least sense. The plot, what little there is, feels like a convenient, even cliché afterthought.

Which is not to say that Ice Cream Man is all bad. For bloodthirsty horror fans, it gets nasty. There are also a handful of randomly funny moments, and others that are just offensive. More offensive are the dips into gen AI, which is particularly weak and plain ugly during the backstory. The film’s less irreverent than it thinks it is, though, and that’s its biggest weakness.