This week in the Screening Room, Hope & George review Ella McCay, Goodbye June, Dust Bunny, Sirat, Silent Night Deadly Night, Influencers—with a clip from our Fright Club interview with filmmaker Kurtis David Harder— & Vision.
Tag Archives: MaddWolf
Eye in the Sky
Visions
by Rachel Willis
Unsettling close-ups of eyes and haunting music opens director Yann Gozlan’s thriller, Visions.
Estelle (Diane Kruger) is a successful commercial pilot who lives a seemingly idyllic life with her husband, Guillaume (Mathieu Kassovitz). However, it’s clear early on that Estelle keeps herself under strict control. Small details show how tightly wound she is.
Her ordered life is upended when she is reunited with an old friend, Ana (Marta Nieto). As Estelle’s opposite, Ana’s disorder is a little too on the nose. In one scene, Estelle is as rigid in her stance as Ana is fluid. Because of how heavy-handed they’re presented as foils, the two characters feel hollow.
As many women coiled too tightly, Estelle unravels rapidly. Violent dreams leave marks on her body. She begins to see eyes peeping in on her in various situations. There are several tense moments between Estelle and her husband, as well as between Estelle and Ana.
Kruger is impeccable, carrying the bulk of the film’s emotional weight. It’s unfortunate that the story can’t match her intensity. The film is often frustratingly opaque, leaving the audience with little to try to unravel as Estelle’s visions haunt her. Too many pieces seem smashed together with little narrative cohesion.
The overall effect is tedious. It’s hard to care about characters that are never fully realized. Each person in Estelle’s orbit is mere shadow. And the mystery at the heart of Estelle’s “visions” is less interesting than certain extreme moments she spends in the cockpit of a plane.
The focus on eyes is one of the more compelling features of Visions, but on the whole, it doesn’t succeed in keeping our eyes glued to the screen.
Monster House
Dust Bunny
by Hope Madden
Dust Bunny is a macabre delight.
Imagine Guillermo del Toro meets Wes Anderson. Equal parts fanciful and gruesome, the film tells the tale of a precocious youth named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who hires the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster that lives under her bed.
What a wonderful premise, and writer/director Bryan Fuller wastes not a frame of his feature film debut. The saturated colors and intricate patterns and textures of the set design, the ballet of horror that is his shadow imagery, the boldly whimsical costuming—all of it conjuring an amplified fairy tale. It’s tough to believe this remarkably confident feature is his first foray behind the camera.
Fuller’s casting is just as playful. Sloan delivers Roald Dahl’s Matilda by way of Wednesday Addams, braids and all. Mikkelsen’s adorably gruff, and watching his character mentally work through the mystery surrounding Aurora’s missing parents (eaten, he’s told) is fascinating. He and Sloan share a wonderful chemistry, never cloying for a second, and often darkly hilarious. Their banter is often priceless, Sloan landing lines with impeccably droll comic timing.
Speaking of hilarious, the great Sigourney Weaver is having a blast playing gleefully against type and shoplifting every second of screentime. All smiles, genuine joy, and murder, her character enjoys the pleasures life affords and accepts, with a smile, the reality of each situation. Again, usually murder.
Likewise, David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, with big support from an inspired costume designer, deliver entertaining weirdness.
Fuller’s premise could have taken many directions. It’s the sense of wonder Dust Bunny articulates that mesmerizes. But the writing doesn’t serve only to carry the visual splendor. It’s a clever script, edged with pathos and vulnerability, hinting at metaphor without ever submitting to it.
Blue Christmas
Goodbye June
by Hope Madden
Oscar winner and perennial contender Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with the Christmastime family drama, Goodbye June. What drew the esteemed thespian behind the camera? A script by her son, Joe Anders.
The film tells the tale of June (Helen Mirren), whose cancer has returned just two weeks before Christmas. Her doting, anxiety riddled son, Connor (Johnny Flynn), and her husband (Timothy Spall) get her to the hospital and wait for the rest of the family to come in and, well, take over.
These are the sisters: Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette).
Pause to marvel at this cast.
It would be hard to go wrong with any one of those humans, and indeed, Winslet’s ensemble—Riseborough and Spall, in particular—craft lived-in characters, each one’s behavior naturally amplified because of the situation. June is dying.
Winslet captures the chaos, simultaneously merry and discordant, in a big family brimming with little kids all cramped in a hospital room or running wild through its halls. The child actors are quite good, not to mention awfully cute.
Anders’s script doesn’t overexplain, mercifully. The details aren’t terribly necessary if you’ve ever been in or near a family. Molly kind of hates Julia. This hurts Julia, who is also mortified by Molly’s controlling, even bullying behavior with hospital staff. Everyone thinks Helen’s a flake. Likewise, everyone is fed up with Dad and filled with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment in Connor.
Credit Anders, as well, for avoiding the cliché of the sainted, dying mother in the hospital bed. A charmingly mischievous Mirren is unapologetic but loving, still getting in digs here and there that have no doubt worn down her children over the decades. Helen shouldn’t wear yellow. Julia needs to look after everyone, but not in that overbearing way she sometimes has.
The fine-tuned performances are nearly undone by the superficial plot, unfortunately. Goodbye June is saddled with obviousness bordering on the maudlin that Winslet and her inarguably talented cast can’t quite transcend. Winslet’s crafted a holiday tearjerker with a fine but conspicuous message.
Naughty
Silent Night, Deadly Night
by Hope Madden
Not every bad, low-budget, unreasonably beloved Eighties horror movie needs to be rebooted. Do I rewatch Charles Sellier’s 1984 holiday slash fest Silent Night, Deadly Night every holiday season? Maybe.
I don’t rewatch its 1987 sequel every single year. I’m not a masochist. Nor have I watched SNDN 3, 4, or 5 (starring Mickey Rooney!) more than once apiece. Anyway, I’m obviously if begrudgingly the audience for Mike P. Nelson’s new update on the old Santa suit, Silent Night, Deadly Night.
And maybe it benefits from low expectations, but I liked it.
Nelson, who writes and directs, revisits the important beats of the ’84 original but he’s smart about it. Billy (Halloween Ends and The Monkey’s Rohan Campbell) listens to the voice in his head. That voice belongs to the Santa who murdered Billy’s parents when he was 8.
That’s an added layer to the triggered homicidal lunatic that populates every previous installment. It’s a welcome change that the filmmaker, Campbell, and Mark Acheson—as the voice of Shotgun Santa—maneuver for creepy fun.
Nelson does have a good time with the franchise, tossing Easter eggs around like a holiday crossover. But these moments feel more like communal celebration than pandering, a wink from one fan to another.
The casting is on point, even eerie, as Nelson’s tale feels like a Yuletide merging of SNDN and Halloween Ends, once gift store owner Pamela (Ruby Modine) gets involved—again, an inside joke that works better than it has a right to.
The carnage is often quite fun—one party scene, in particular. But even with the humor, Nelson never stoops to camp or spoof. He’s a little hemmed in by the limitations of the franchise itself, breaking no remarkably new ground. But Silent Night, Deadly Night is often clever fun. There are creepy moments, funny moments, bloody moments, but his film hangs together as a solid holiday horror.
Fright Club Bonus: Kurtis David Harder
Our Christmas gift to you, an extra Fright Club episode! We talk with filmmaker Kurtis David Harder, whose newest feature, Influencers, hits Shudder this weekend. He chats with us about the new film, his Nightmares Film Festival award winning Influencer, making movies, inspirations, and Christmas films. Check it out!
Anti Social
Influencers
by George Wolf
If you saw Influencer three years ago, no doubt you noticed that little smile from CW (Cassandra Naud) in the final shot. If, like me, you were hoping that meant she’d find a way to stir up more social media mischief, it’s a merry Christmas for both of us.
CW has quieted down a bit since we left her on that island, settling down enough with girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) to let her guard down and actually pose for photos. But an encounter with a travel influencer (Georgina Campbell) lures CW back to her old ways, and it isn’t long before she has more bloody tracks to cover.
Again, writer/director Kurtis David Harder has good instincts for knowing what questions we’re asking as this world wide web gets more tangled, and for keeping the beats relevant to the changing landscape of social media.
The introduction of toxic bro blogger Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell) feels right on time, as does the re-introduction of Madison (Emily Tennant), who now has even more scores to settle with old frenemy CW.
Naud gives another terrific performance, as CW remains a smart, slippery and ever intriguing mystery girl. Dancing in and around more gorgeously framed locales, CW makes it fun to try and guess what she’ll do next. What’s even more fun? The fact that we’re not prepared for just how batshit things get in act three.
Harder’s observational nature about social media never feels like finger-wagging, and the continually rising stakes of mystery, mayhem and fun land Influencers as another lethal blast of engagement.
Smash those like and follow buttons!
Screening Room: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Hamnet, Oh What Fun & More
Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Hamnet, Merrily We Roll Along, Oh What Fun, Man Finds Tape, Pig Hill, Reflections in a Dead Diamond, The Wailing, The Lonely Legend and My Mother the Madam!
Stop Your Sobbing
The Wailing
by Rachel Willis
For as many horror films as I watch, it’s rare for one to truly unnerve or scare me. The ones that do tend to hit a deeply held fear or anxiety. Director Pedro Martín-Calero’s film The Wailing hits one of those fears—the fear of not being believed.
Co-writing with Isabel Peña, Martín-Calero movie follows several women as they encounter a sinister presence. Each section of film follows a different woman, traveling backward and forward in time to show how each one is impacted by the violent entity in their lives.
The first is Andrea (Ester Expósito). While walking home one day, the music on her phone is interrupted by the ethereal wailing of one or more women.
The film’s tension picks up quickly. One especially frightening scene pairs the fear of not being believed with the anxiety of being ignored. As Andrea pleads and screams for help in a crowded room, onlookers simply stare at her, unmoving and unmoved.
It’s these moments, and several quieter ones, where the film excels. As the suspense and mystery grows, it’s clear the takeaway is that when women are ignored, everyone is the worse for it. While the women are the most negatively and directly impacted, the violence has a sinister spread with the potential to affect everyone in it orbit.
The only element the film struggles with is how to convey text conversation. The choice to overlay images with text messages is distracting and negates the rising tension.
Fortunately, this is only an issue during Andrea’s story. Then the film moves back in time to follow Camila (Malena Villa) as she interacts with Andrea’s mother, Marie (Mathilde Olliver).
The Wailing excels in following a reverse timeline to explore the extended metaphor of the long-term effects of not believing women. The film ends on what could be construed as a hopeful note, but the choice of how we move forward is left to the audience to decide. Believing women is the first step; what comes next is up to us.
Know Who Your Friends Are
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
by Hope Madden
In 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s—a predictable PG-13 horror built on a video game—delivered a bit of gimmicky fun for fans of the game and little to nothing for the rest of us. So, hooray! There’s a sequel.
Director Emma Tammi returns, with video game creator Scott Cawthon handling the sole screenplay credit this go-round. His script sees Mike (Josh Hutcherson) still avoiding therapy for himself or his disturbingly naïve 11-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio). And Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) is so bad off she’s taking psychological advice from Mike.
Naturally, all of them are suffering the trauma of the bloodthirsty animatronics that came to life on night security Mike’s watch last time around, possessed by Vanessa’s evil dad’s. But Mike’s painting a house and Abby’s into robotics, so I’m sure they’re fine!
Wait, they’re not. And through a fairly convoluted storyline that sees one of Seinfeld’s neighbors get The Story of Ricky treatment, the trio not only brings the Country Bear Murder Spree back to life, they set them free to roam the town.
Scenes are slapped together with a gleeful disregard to continuity, and again, the macabre sense of humor that might have kept the film afloat is entirely missing.
Freddy Carter is a fun addition as the villainous Michael. (Who, honestly, names one character Mike and another one Michael?) And there is a Skeet Ulrich sighting. Plus, a new animatronic—kind of a goth Miyazaki styles marionette—is cool. And though I’d predicted McKenna Grace to be a kind of cold open kill, instead she gets a bit of a creepy, if small, character arc.
I realize the film is aimed at a young audience, but Tammi and team could at least pretend to respect them as viewers.
Hutcherson can act, and I’m confident someday he’ll get another film that lets him do that. Until then, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 ends with a clear path to a third installment. Hooray.
