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Stuffed Animal House

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Sh*thouse

by Matt Weiner

It takes a certain bravery to cast yourself as a leading man who spends more time talking to his mom and stuffed dog than the romantic object of his affection. But Shithouse, the loosely autobiographical festival favorite from writer/director Cooper Raiff, isn’t the typical college comedy.

It starts in familiar enough territory. Raiff plays Alex, an awkward college freshman who feels like a fish out of water in Los Angeles and is homesick for his family back in Texas. It’s not clear that Alex has really talked to anyone besides his roommate, until a chance encounter brings him together with Maggie (Dylan Gelula), his dorm RA.

There’s an oblique chemistry between Alex and Maggie, a connection that’s undeniably there but blossoms as erratically as their first peripatetic night together wandering campus. So much of the movie starts to take on this collegiate version of Before Sunrise that it’s all the more disarming when their relationship takes a turn.

It’s also where Raiff’s script takes Shithouse from standard coming-of-age fare to something far more moving and empathetic. And refreshing: the writing is sensitive to its characters without flattering them. Young people behave terribly, but there’s a measure of grace the film affords them that feels welcome to anyone willing to put in the work to be a better person in a very public social media era.

For Alex, that means interrogating what it means to be a so-called nice guy. But it’s Gelula who steals the movie. Maggie has a mix of confidence and world-weariness that almost excuses Alex for being so enchanted. But she’s just as quick to dispel anyone’s entitlement, Alex included.

What Raiff captures so well, both in the quiet moments between Alex and Maggie but especially in the spaces where the two are apart, is all the hope and anxiety bound up in relationships—and how much possibility they can contain if you open yourself up to it.

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The Whole World Is Watching

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The Trial of the Chicago 7

by Hope Madden

Oscar winning, much beloved and frequently frustrating writer Aaron Sorkin first ducked behind the camera for the clever if overwritten 2017 indulgence Molly’s Game.

A courtroom drama (very Sorkin) about celebrity tabloid fodder (less Sorkin-like), the film seemed an odd match for the filmmaker. He’s found a much more comfortable focus in his follow up, the tale of eight defendants, their counsel, prosecution, and a corrupt establishment: The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Chicago 7 artfully and urgently recreates the scene of the federal court hearing against eight defendants alleged to have conspired to incite the infamous riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The film rings with historical significance as well as disheartening immediacy. It is another courtroom drama, this one benefitting from surprising restraint, as well as Sorkin’s deep well of passion for the subjects of legal processes and liberalism. Like Ave DuVernay’s 2014 masterpiece Selma, Sorkin’s new film details the past to show us the present.

He’s assembled a remarkable ensemble, each actor leaving an impression though none gets an abundance of screen time. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a blistering Bobby Seale while Frank Langella is infuriatingly believable as Judge Julius Hoffman. Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mark Rylance are all also excellent, as you might expect.

Jeremy Strong and Sacha Baron Cohen share a comfortable, enjoyable chemistry as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, respectively. Both appear in the film, as they did in life, as the wise-cracking comic relief in the room, but Cohen’s turn is thoughtful, wise, and slightly tragic. He’s obviously a talent, but this may be the first time we’ve seen the magnitude of his acting prowess.

An alarmingly relevant look at the power of due process, free speech, and justice, Chicago 7 is catapulted by more than the self-righteousness that sometimes weights down Sorkin’s writing. This is outrage, even anger, as well as an urgent optimism about the possibilities in human nature and democracy.

If I may quote my own review of Molly’s Game and my take on Sorkin as a filmmaker:

His are dialogue-driven character pieces where brilliant people throw intellectual and moral challenges at one another while the audience wonders whether the damaged protagonist’s moral compass can still find true north.

Still the case. But with Chicago 7, Sorkin’s struck a balance. He’s found a story and convened a cast that demand and receive his very best, because The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a story about today, this minute.

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Free As A Bird

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Time

by George Wolf

I can’t remember the last time a film I was dreading made me feel so grateful that it existed.

I knew that Time was a documentary account of a man serving an outrageous prison sentence, and the wife who was working to get him released. I braced for another heartbreaking deconstruction of injustice and systemic oppression.

As effective as those films can be, what director Garrett Bradley delivers is a miracle of love, hope and superhuman perseverance. The film unfolds in a poetic, sometimes stream-of-consciousness fashion, enveloping you in the indefatigable spirit of Fox Rich.

Bradley first envisioned Rich’s story to be a bookend for her 2017 short film Alone, which focused on families effected by incarceration. But as she dug deeper into the hours and hours of Fox’s home videos, Bradley knew this was a journey that could not be denied.

In 1997, Fox was the getaway driver as her husband Rob held up a credit union in Louisiana. After Fox delivered twins, she served three and a half years in prison. Rob tried to accept a plea deal, but a series of mishandled legal maneuvers forced him to stand trial. The guilty verdict brought a sentence of sixty years with no chance of parole. Six-zero.

The respect that Bradley and editor Gabe Rhodes exhibit for the deeply personal nature of Rich’s footage is eclipsed only by the emotional power of how they present it. Concentrating more on the effects of Rob’s sentence than the background of his case, the film sings in a style that is simply transportive, carried by the voice of a true wonder woman.

We see Fox lift herself and her children to the heights of motivation and self-respect, never letting Rob’s return home seem like anything less than a coming day. And that ending…bravo. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

Time is a stunning journey, searingly intimate with a sobering undercurrent of commonality. You wear this film like a blanket of feeling. Don’t miss the chance to wrap it around you.

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Funeral for a Friend

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The Mortuary Collection

by Hope Madden

“Have you any experience in the mortuary arts?”

So begins a conversation between Raven’s End’s mysterious mortician and a young woman who’s come to answer the help wanted sign out front in writer/director Ryan Spindell’s fun and stylish horror anthology, The Mortuary Collection.

Mortician Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) has tales to tell of the lives and deaths in Raven’s End. His new assistant Sam (Caitlin Custer) is an eager listener, but also tough to please.

Such is the framing device for the anthology of short horrors, much like the one from Rusty Cundieff’s 1995 collection, Tales from the Hood (and just a bit like Jeff Burr’s 1987 anthology with Vincent Price, From a Whisper to a Scream).

The framing device is so often the best part.

Brown conjures a bit of Angus Scrimm (Phantasm’s Tall Man), channeling a little Tom Noonan as well, to create a spooky but somehow vulnerable master of ceremonies. Custer’s is an intriguing character, challenging her host, never squeamish or spooked. It makes for an interesting dynamic that turns more into a conversation on storytelling than you might expect.

The tales themselves are all set in and around a town where newspaper headlines speak of beasts, asylums, and missing persons. Raven’s End and its stories possess an unidentifiably vintage quality, something fictional and fanciful, modern and yet of an indeterminate past.

Characters sometimes pop up in multiple tales, each story boasting that patented twist ending you’d expect from a Tales from the Crypt episode. Some of the shorts are stronger than others (as Sam likes to point out to Mr. Dark), but the performances are all very solid, and Spindell peppers every story with fun bits of dialog.

“They won’t let me near a scalpel, and for good reason.”

There isn’t a weak short in the bunch, and though certainly some of the twists are not surprising, the execution is slick, the shorts are gorgeous and moody, and Clancy Brown is an absolute treat.

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Mother Knows Best

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Evil Eye

by George Wolf

Though they live in different countries, Usha (Sarita Choudhury) and her daughter Pallavi (Sunita Mani) talk often, and Mom always seems to have two main things on her mind.

Does Pallavi have a boyfriend yet? And is she remembering to wear her “evil eye” bracelet?

It’s been years since Usha and her husband left the U.S. for their native India, as Pallavi stayed behind with aspirations of writing a novel. Now, as her very American daughter nears thirty, the traditional Usha is getting impatient for a wedding, and trusts in the bracelet to protect Pallavi against any evil spirits preventing her from marriage.

So, when Pallavi begins a serious relationship with the dashing Sandeep (Omar Maskati), she is shocked when Mom objects, and strenuously.

You’d object, too, if you believed your daughter was dating a reincarnation of the abusive boyfriend who tried to kill you three decades before.

Originally a best-selling Audible original, Evil Eye is directors Elan and Rajeev Dassani’s contribution to Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse series. With an adapted script from source author Madhuri Shekar, the film lands as a delightfully cultured mystery. As narrative layers develop, the atmosphere is more supernatural thriller than outright horror show.

Plot turns tend to rely on convenience and in the absence of any sustained tension or outright fear, the real draw becomes the mother/daughter dynamic propelled by the two lead performances.

The veteran Choudhury makes Usha a fascinating conundrum, haunted by her past, fearing for her daughter’s future and forced to question some beliefs she’s long held dear. When the script wavers, Choudhury elevates it, selling every moment with conviction.

Mani, an up-and-comer seen in Glow and the current Save Yourselves!, provides the effective contrast. Pallavi’s modern path is, at first, only mildly affected by her mother’s traditional sensibilities. But when Usha comes west to present her concerns in person, Pallavi must confront her own inner turmoil.

By the time the final twist is revealed, you’ll most likely have already guessed it. But what you’ll remember about Evil Eye has little to do with the mysterious occurrences surrounding this mother and daughter. It’s the humanity flowing between them that sticks.

Outtakes

Monstrous Temptation

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Boo

by Hope Madden

Alcoholism and addiction prove to be powerful underlying themes for a lot of horror films—The Shining, The Monster, and Habit among them. Writer/director/star Rakefet Abergel delivers a twist on that sobriety tale in her short, Boo.

It’s a clever film with a savvy lead turn by Abergel as Devi, 7 years sober and waiting for her fiancé to pick her up from the meeting where she gets her chip.

So much can happen in those minutes between “Come get me” and “I’m here.”

A couple of friends, both more recently sober, smoke and wait with her awhile, and Devi reveals that lately she has just been so tempted.

From there, the filmmaker runs through a quick handful of everyday nightmares: alone in a parking lot, then not alone. Polite and then afraid. In every scene, though, Abergel’s performance suggests a distraction greater than the fear itself.

Darkly funny and boasting outstanding soundtrack choices, Boo is a wicked good time.

Boo premieres on ALTER October 19.

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And Feathered

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Tar

by George Wolf

It takes a good while to get to the creature in this creature feature, but that’s hardly the most misplayed hand in Tar. It isn’t until the last few minutes that the film serves up the kind of winky-winky that would have gone a long way toward saving it.

A group of employees in an office building above L.A.’s old La Brea Tar Pits is under a tight deadline to clear out. The smarmy landlord is evicting them all with one day’s notice, and they have to be gone by 6am or face a big penalty. Then of course the building’s power is cut mid-move, but there are bigger, messier problems.

Underground construction work on the subway expansion has awakened La Brea’s Matchi Manitou, and it ain’t happy.

Director/co-writer/co-star Aaron Wolf gets Timothy Bottoms and Graham Greene to head up his cast, which is good for the poster but bad for the rest of the actors who can’t keep up.

Wolf employs a narrative structure heavy on flashback, and the moments of tension that manage to avoid that roadblock are awkward and clearly telegraphed.

The ensemble of evacuees/possible victims (including Emily Peachy, Sandy Danto, Tiffany Shepis and Nicole Alexandra Shipley) has the depth and logic to only reinforce the point of that horror spoof Geico ad. And after about 90 minutes, the film’s eureka moment makes you wonder about the Drive-In pleasure Tar might have been if it hadn’t waited so long to tap a self-aware vein.

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Father/Daughter Dance

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On the Rocks

by Hope Madden

At its surface, On the Rocks offers a wryly fun adventure film. It’s a flashy, superficial good time with Bill Murray, and who does not want that?! It’s a father/daughter romp and a heist film of sorts, full of high-end cocktails, cool cars, and hijinks.

But that’s not really the film at all. Writer/director Sofia Coppola’s latest is a candy-coated rumination on legacies left by loving but problematic fathers.

Rashida Jones is Laura, a writer devoting most of her attention and time to her two little girls, with little left for creativity or chemistry. Her husband (Marlon Wayans) is putting in extra hours at work, traveling a lot, and spending a lot of time with his leggy colleague Fiona (Jessica Henwick).

Maybe he’s just busy and maybe Laura’s just in a rut.

Dad doesn’t think so.

Laura’s unrepentant playboy dad Felix (Murray) orchestrates a sleuthing adventure, tailing hubby’s taxis and offering sage advice from a man who knows a little something about infidelity.

Murray is all charm, his charisma at fever pitch. There’s also a lonesome, tender quality to the performance that gives it real depth, and enough self-absorption to grant it some authenticity.

Jones, as his reluctant accomplice, suggests the reality of midlife doldrums with grace. She also transmits the tragic enthusiasm of a daughter still pleased to be the focus of her father’s attention.

It’s almost impossible to avoid comparing Coppola’s latest dramedy with her Oscar-winning 2003 Murray vehicle, Lost in Translation. There are certainly similar themes: a woman unsure about her marriage finds herself drawn into a paternal relationship (with Bill Murray). On the Rocks is too tidy and too slick to entirely stand up to that comparison, but like Lost in Translation, there’s an autobiographical quality to the film that gives it a soul.

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Squeaky Clean

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The Cleansing Hour

by Hope Madden

Almost a decade ago, Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz locked a couple of fraudulent online “ghost hunters” inside an abandoned hospital in the entertaining flick Grave Encounters. It wasn’t the best “supernatural huckster faces honest demonic peril” film of that year—that award goes to Daniel Stamm’s impeccably cast The Last Exorcism.

So, fast forward about a decade and writer/director Damien LeVeck (that is a horror name, my friends) gives us a mash up of both of those movies.

The Cleansing Hour is actually a full-length version of his 2016 short of the same name. In the feature, boyhood friends Max (Ryan Guzman) and Drew (Kyle Gallner) use what they remember of their Catholic school days to fake weekly online exorcisms.

Star of the show Max is a hottie and a bit of a d-bag. Dressed like a priest, he’s in it for the fame and groupies, or as he likes to call them, disciples. Drew is the brains behind the operation. But they’ve hit a plateau. Their viewership isn’t growing as fast as they’d like. Maybe Max is looking at other opportunities. Maybe Drew should just marry longtime girlfriend Lane (Alix Angelis) and get an honest job.

Or maybe a real demon will show up for their next episode.

LeVeck and crew mine that oh-so-Catholic nightmare of shame and confession well. Performances are fine, Guzman’s pretty, but there’s so little new being said here that the film grows tedious long before its 95 minute run is up.

The Cleansing Hour plays too much like a film made by someone who’s seen a lot of horror movies but lacks an original voice. Storylines fall back, not on primal scares or universal areas of dread, but on ideas from other movies.

LeVeck’s film offers a few speeches concerning the evils of the Catholic church (nothing inspired or vital, mainly obvious and hollow), points to our unholy dependence on technology, and shows anxiety about how tech both connects us and brings out the worst in us. Also, an ugly voice comes out of a pretty face.

Familiar stuff, that.

Most problematic (but least surprising) is the twist ending that’s so tired by this point, the idea was just mocked in another horror movie that opened last week.

There’s nothing awful about The Cleansing Hour. It is perfectly serviceable low budget horror. You could watch it. Or you could find any one of the movies it steals from instead.

Outtakes

Lane & Ruckus Skye Talk Devil to Pay

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by Hope Madden

It’s almost time once again for Nightmares Film Festival, which will be hosted virtually this year as NFF: Masquerade. This fest all but guarantees that you’ll find a new favorite film. Last year, for us, that was The Devil to Pay (originally called Reckoning).

“We were honestly shocked and surprised by how the horror community embraced this film because, to me, this is a straight family drama,” says co-writer/co-director Ruckus Skye. “It did really well in genre festivals but I was surprised by it. We wanted a Southern Gothic tall tale kind of a thing.”

Ruckus and Lane Skye’s thriller makes its debut on VOD today, and they were kind enough to answer a handful of questions about working together, Southern women, and their film’s glorious lead, Danielle Deadwyler.

“The film wouldn’t exist if she didn’t exist because we wrote it for her,” says Ruckus. “We met Danielle a few years earlier through the Atlanta arts community and the three of us wanted to work together, but the right project never came out. Finally, Lane and I said, ‘Why don’t we write something for her?’ We knew we wanted to make a Southern Gothic thriller, and this was the story we came up with. We wrote it and handed it to her and crossed our fingers that she’d like it.”

“She liked it so much that she came on as a producer to help get it made,” Lane says. 

Deadwyler plays Lemon, an Appalachian farmer who struggles once her husband goes missing. He may or may not have run afoul of the most powerful person on the mountain, Ms. Tommy Runion, played with unerring superiority and Southern charm by Catherine Dyer.

“Officially, the community values how long you’ve been on the mountain more than anything else as far as status goes,” Lane explains. “But especially being in the South, any time you see a black family surrounded by white people who are persecuting them, you cannot help but draw your own conclusions about what is happening.”

For a film that pits matriarch against matriarch, the Skyes had a couple of influences.

“My family became matriarchal after my grandfather died,” Lane recalls. “All my aunts and uncles live in the same place, and once my grandmother became the oldest in the family, she got to make the family decisions. So that idea that whoever’s the oldest member, whether they’re male or female, is the one in charge worked really well here.”

“Also, I like to think about praying mantises and how the women are way stronger and more fierce than the men,” Ruckus adds. “I think Southern women are especially fierce.”

They say The Devil to Pay took them only 12 days to write and a total of three months to make.

“We were just insanely motivated. We were excited about the idea and we had a window, if we could get it together fast enough,” Ruckus says. “That is absolutely the fastest we’ve ever written anything.”

“There are definitely a lot of themes and ideas in the film that we love and that we’ve been stewing on for a long time,” Lane says. “A lot of this world has been in our brains for a while.”

The pair, who co-wrote 2020’s drive-in hit Becky and are working on a coming-of-age film for Becky star Lulu Wilson called Hearts on the Run, have an intricate system for working together.

“We come up with the idea together or we shape it together and then we’ll break the story in a room together,” says Lane. “But when we get to the actual writing part, we don’t ever write in the same room because we’d probably kill each other. We have this really elaborate dropbox structure and we go back and forth.”

“We break it down by every single scene in the movie,” Ruckus says. “That way she can be writing one scene and I can be writing another. It took us a while to get to that, but we just rewrite each other until we both think it’s done.”

And when directing together?

“On set directing, the golden rule is we don’t move on from a set up or a scene until we’re both happy,” says Ruckus. “Because we’ve written and developed it, by the time we’re on set we’re working from the same vision. So, a lot of arguments when we’re writing, not near as many when we’re actually shooting because we kind of know where we’re going with that.”

The pair say they began writing comedies, which brought no success at all. Once they realized that all their favorite films were thrillers, they changed course.

“We make films that we want to watch, so it’s just us satisfying our own tastes,” Lane says.

“We are more concerned with the grounded reality of characters rather than cool ways to kill someone,” Ruckus admits. “We say that we write heartwarming movies where people are murdered.”

The Devil to Pay is available today on all major VOD platforms.