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Existential Mysteries and the Comedy Life

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Me, Myself, and the Void

by Rachel Willis

Suffering from a tough crowd at his standup show, Jack (Jack De Sena) is surprised when his non-comedian best friend Chris (Chris Smith) shows up to bail him out. He’s even more surprised when the crowd disappears, only to be replaced by a void resembling his own apartment in director Tim Hautekiet’s film Me, Myself, and the Void.

Right off the bat, we learn that Jack has suffered some kind of black out event. He is unclear as to why he’s on the bathroom floor. However, he quickly realizes that Chris is a figment of his imagination, here to help him unpack this mystery.

In addition to the mystery, Jack has to unpack the events leading up to his ungainly sprawl on the bathroom floor. His memory is a bit hazy in the void, but visions quickly start flooding in. This not only helps us learn more about Jack, but also about Chris, and Jack’s ex, Mia (Kelly Marie Tran).

One problem is the film’s assumption that Jack and Chris are familiar to the audience. Some may know their YouTube channel, but for those without prior experience with the duo, the familiarity doesn’t land well. It feels like a vanity project.

However, De Sena and Smith play well off each other, their banter landing like that of two men who are, in fact, best friends. This helps to engage those unfamiliar with their brand. It also works that De Sena takes lead, being the more engaging and natural of the duo.

As we uncover more of Jack’s life, the film attempts heavier material. A particularly touching moment involves Chris sharing a personal detail of his relationship – a moment that then becomes fodder for Jack’s act. It’s a glimpse into who Jack really is, as well as a nod to men’s seeming aversion to therapy.

It’s too bad the film doesn’t stay focused here. That might have given the audience something to chew on. Instead, we get a maudlin mess of a movie.

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Time After Time

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Thing Will Be Different

by Hope Madden

Writer/director Michael Felker has never made a feature film. What he has done is work alongside Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead as editor on every feature they’ve made since 2014’s Spring. It shows.

With Felker’s heady brother-sister time loop twister Things Will Be Different, the filmmaker revisits many of the themes that have marked each of Benson and Moorehead’s features (the duo produces and Moorehead has a cameo). But this film carves out its own identity.

We meet Sidney (Riley Dandy) and Joe (Adam David Thompson) not long after some kind of robbery. We know nothing of the crime itself, just that they’d gotten separated and have reunited at a little diner. From there they’ll head to a house. A house where they’ll be safe.

Sid has a daughter she needs to get back to. Joe doesn’t have much, but he looks forward to making up lost time with his kid sister while they hide out for two weeks. It’s not that the house itself is hidden—hell, they walked to it through a cornfield. It’s that it takes them to a place outside of time.

But the thing is, they’re not supposed to be there, and that complicates things when they want to go back home.

Among the film’s many qualities is the lo-fi time travel. The isolated farmhouse the pair flees to is anything but fantastical. Neither is the combination safe, or the hand-held cassette recorder for communicating across time. It’s all as clever and satisfying as it is budget friendly.

Felker’s writing is consistently compelling, his script offering both leads everything they need to build a lived-in, fractured relationship full of longing and bitterness. The clues concerning the time loop itself are just as clever and satisfying, every element fitting the retro vibe that itself feels delightfully out of time.

Felker’s film is certainly reminiscent of much of Benson and Moorehead’s work, although it also calls to mind a handful of other time benders, from Tenet to Timecrimes. But it never feels borrowed.

Felker uses time travel as an understated and poignant metaphor for the harmful cycles you find in relationships, especially in families. Thanks to sharp writing, stylish direction and a couple of well-crafted performances, he further separates his time travel fantasy from the scores of others and keeps you guessing until the last, powerful frame.

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Crushed Under Fortune’s Wheel

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The Wait

by Christie Robb

The gorgeous, warm, burnished glow of colorist Raúl Lavado Verdú and strategic photography by Miguel Ángel Mora elevates writer/director F. Javier Gutiérrez (Rings) take on a working-class man’s emasculation and subsequent descent into madness.

Three years ago, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) was offered a job as a gamekeeper on a privately-owned 1970s Spanish hunting estate. His wife reluctantly agreed on the condition that the gig was temporary—a two-year isolated hustle up in the mountains that would result in a better life on the other side.

Now, into their third year, she’s no longer talking to him. And their kid is growing restless, too.

When Eladio is offered a new opportunity to increase the size of their growing nest egg, greed overwhelms him. He pushes his luck too far.

Fortune’s Wheel turns and starts to crush him.

But is Eladio’s greed really the root of the evils that beset him? What about the guy who pressured him into the shady deal? And what’s with all the weird shit buried around the property?

The acting is good, and the movie has some genuinely unsettling moments. But it’s a little slow and leaves a subplot about feminine rage on the table like a loaded but unfired hunting rifle in favor of something more para than normal. 

So, it’s good to have pretty shots of the Spanish mountains to look at while you are waiting for the plot to catch up with the unsettling, sweaty, grimy, overripe vibe.

Shudder Premiere

4th Kind’s the Charm

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V/H/S/Beyond

by Hope Madden

It’s that time again. Time to blow into the cassette basket, ignore the blinking 12:00 and press play on another found footage anthology, V/H/S/Beyond.

The seventh installment in the series focuses (mainly) on left-behind evidence of alien encounters, plus one really weird but entirely unconnected doggy daycare nightmare.

This installment’s wraparound story comes not from a horror filmmaker but from award-winning documentarian Jay Cheel. He invites viewers to investigate the “evidence”—videotapes that may or may not tell of visitors—by way of the documentary “Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction.” The primary story under the experts’ eye is of an Ontario home and a missing man.

In between talking head evaluations of that footage, we’re treated to a smattering of other “evidence.”  The most fun is Jordan Downey’s Stork. Downey enlists a first person shooter style to follow a police standoff at a home where missing babies may be stashed. Funhouse gimmicks keep it lively, but the short’s main success is its particular spin on the alien itself.

Virat Pal’s Dream Girl, an interstellar twist on Bollywood stardom, is inventive fun, although the concept of found footage (unretouched or edited footage) is most betrayed in this short.

This brings us to the three most common problems in found footage. 1) How did the found footage get edited together from multiple cameras and angles? 2) Why didn’t the camera operator put the camera down to save themselves and others? 3) How and where was the footage left to be found? To a certain degree, you need to let go of at least one of these details or you can’t enjoy the film. But it gets tough.

Life and Let Dive from Justin Martinez (longtime friend of the franchise) takes us on a 30th birthday skydiving party gone wrong. Shot GoPro style, the short is consistently entertaining, delivers carnage aplenty and one really solid jump scare, plus good-looking aliens. Also, no egregious rule breaking.

The weirdest and possibly most disturbing belongs to directors Christian and Justin Long (the actor, who does not appear). Their short, Fur Babies, has absolutely nothing to do with aliens. Instead, it tails a delightfully unhinged doggy daycare professional (Libby Letlow). There’s also zero integrity in the footage—where it came from and how it was assembled—but there is some wonderfully unseemly stuff happening in the basement.

Kate Siegel’s Stow Away delivers a one-person documentary on recent desert sightings. The segment is strangely fascinating, and Alanah Pearce offers a compelling central performance. Solid creature effects and a logical arc of horror also elevate this one, but you can’t finish it without wondering: how did the world discover this tape?

Found footage horror still manages to strike a chord for a lot of people, and the V/H/S franchise routinely collects an intriguing assortment of films and filmmakers celebrating the form. Beyond is neither the best nor the worst in the series. It does hold some impressive scares and imaginative takes on the old encounter notion.

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Dust to Dust

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Hold Your Breath

by Hope Madden

Among the least examined perspectives in Westerns is the woman’s. In the rare instance that a filmmaker looks closely at what it was like for a woman on the wild frontier, the tale isn’t happy.

Earlier this year, writer/director/co-star Viggo Mortensen’s Western The Dead Don’t Hurt reexamined masculine nobility as abandonment. A decade ago, Tommy Lee Jones’s underseen The Homesman mined a very real phenomenon that befell many brides of the West. But Karrie Crouse and William Joines’s Hold Your Breath—actually set in the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl rather than being a strict Western—feels more akin with Emma Tammi’s 2018 horror, The Wind.

The always magnificent Sarah Paulson is Margaret Bellum, mother to Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), left to keep the family together while her husband travels to build bridges until the rain returns and their little farm can flourish again. In the meantime, Margaret and the girls are surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye can see and even farther, by dry, useless dirt.

Like Tammi’s horror, Hold Your Breath weaves maternal tragedy with societal pressures and supernatural legend to create a sometimes-hypnotic descent into madness.

Paulson’s brittle sensibility never entirely loses its humanity thanks to her layered performance. Deepening the characterization with genuine tenderness for the girls elevates the “is she crazy or is this really happening” trope.

Supporting turns from Miller, Annaleigh Ashford and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) heighten tensions and call to mind the chill of an effective campfire tale. The filmmakers also capture a fear that permeates the God forsaken region with effective visual moments, often with Margaret and her needlework or a little boy and his makeshift mask. These moments are stark and eerie, but the film can’t seem to hold onto that feeling.

Paulson’s performance aches with a pain that is particular to a mother, and it’s this broken heartbeat that keeps Hold Your Breath compelling to its conclusion. Its horror is touched with a melancholy suited to the genre. The tension comes and goes, leaving you with less than promised, but the film has enough going for it to make it worth your time.

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Get the Party Started

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Frankie Freako

by Hope Madden

Fans of the old Canadian collective Astron 6, whose output combined a love of 80s VHS with delightfully offensive imagery and an incredible mastery of silliness and tone, rejoice. Though no longer an official organization, the braintrust behind the brand have reassembled for the sloppy new horror comedy, Frankie Freako.

Connor (Connor Sweeney) is bland. His boss (Adam Brooks, flawless as always) knows it. His wife (Kristy Wordsworth) knows it. Connor isn’t convinced, although he is drawn to those late-night TV ads. You know, with the 1-900 numbers? And the partying goblins?

Connor caves and calls Frankie Freako. And before you can say “shabadoo” (a line delivered with hilariously tedious repetition by one of the freakos), the house is a wreck, Conor’s wife’s sculptures are in pieces, and someone’s spray painted “butt” on the wall!

And his wife will be home soon! What’s a fella to do?

Frankie and his two freako pals show Connor what raising heck can really do for a guy in this puppets-and-practical-effects flick.

Aside from Office Space and “quick, clean up this mess” films like Risky Business, Frankie Freako lovingly evokes all those Gremlins derivatives: Ghoulies (especially the sequels), Critters, Troll, as well as the Puppet Master series. Writer/director Steven Kostanski simultaneously mocks and embraces the inanity of each of those movies and delivers a spirited bit of comedy fun.

The film can’t touch the inspired Saturday Morning TV lunacy of  his last feature, 2021’s Psycho Goreman, but Frankie Freako fits reasonably well into the full stash of oddities made by Kotanski and his buddies Brooks, Sweeney, and Matthew Kennedy (here voicing Frankie). Along with Psycho Goreman, their combined output includes The Editor (2014), Father’s Day (2011), and uncharacteristically but impressively, The Void (2016), among others.

Frankie Freako does not perch at—or honestly, near—the top of that list of lunatic cinematic gems. But the group has its misses as well, and this film fits better with its hits.

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Metal Mama

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The Wild Robot

by Hope Madden

With wry, almost gallows humor, visual panache and an impressive voice cast, co-writer/director Chris (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch) Sanders’s The Wild Robot nails the aching beauty of parenthood like few other films have.

Adapted from Peter Brown’s gorgeously illustrated middle grades novel, the film drops us and ROZZUM unit 7134 on an island uninhabited by humans. This makes it tough for “Roz” (Lupita Nyong’o) to fulfill her mission of completing a task, any task. But then an undersized gosling (Kit Connor) imprints on her, allowing Sanders to have some fun with the unending complications associated with Roz’s new task: parenting.

The writing and the delicately lovely animation work together to hypnotic effect, each unveiling something more human with every scene, regardless of the fact that there’s nary a human in the movie. Sanders’s script reflects the human experience, both the timeless (the thankless heartbreak of investing your whole heart and soul into the process of successfully losing your child to their own future) and the immediate (AI, corporate greed, tech overlords).

A talented cast deepens the film’s effect. Nyong’o effortlessly treads the line between logic and longing with so graceful a character arc that you can feel Roz blossoming. Pedro Pascal joins her as Fink, the fox who hates to admit that he wants to be part of this little family unit more than anything.

Catherine O’Hara—always a treasure—delivers dry wisdom in hilarious doses. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Bill Nighy bring endearing personalities to their furry and feathered characters, while Stephanie Hsu injects Act 3 with a little wicked humor.

The film’s delight is only deepened by its sadness, and you may find yourself bawling repeatedly during this film. I know I did.

Sanders’s career is marked with the vulnerable optimism that defines an outsider’s longing for connection. In his worlds, a parent and their sort-of child—Lilo and Stitch, Hiccup and Toothless, Roz and Brightbill—flail and flounder until they find the strength of an extended family.

It’s a story he’s apparently not done telling. But he tells it so very well.

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Silence Is Golden

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Azrael

by Hope Madden

Last year, Brian Duffield’s No One Will Save You told a fully developed alien invasion story with a single line of dialogue. In 2013, J.C. Chandor created a breathless, satisfying adventure yarn without one word with All Is Lost.

A little more than midway through the post-apocalyptic horror Azrael, director E. L. Katz (working from a script by Simon Barrett) introduces the first speaking character. It’s a cagey move, and one that solidifies the filmmakers’ ability to clarify not just an immediate situation but an entire mythology without a single comprehensible syllable spoken.

Our signposts are three separate cryptic prophesies scrawled across the screen. Other than that, we witness a world left behind. Our tale is set many years after the Rapture. Alone in a woods, one woman (Samara Weaving, Ready or Not) finds beauty in nature. As she brings a gift to her lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Femme), they recognize a bird call and flee.

Because that was definitely not a bird.

Anyone who’s followed Weaving’s career knows she’s up for some relentless, bloody action. She has her fill of it here, battling a left-behind cult as well as bloody thirsty, flesh bound demons. She’s so expressive that the character never feels limited without lines.

The balance of the ensemble is also up to the task at hand—Katariina Unt and Eero Milonoff (of the amazing Border) leave a particular impression.

So do the demons, which come across like char broiled crawlers from The Descent. Nice!

Katz hit out-the-gate with his feature debut, Cheap Thrills. Barrett has been hit or miss, but his hits have soared, You’re Next and The Guest among them. What they fully understand is how to develop tension, how to direct your attention, and how to use the camera to tell attentive audiences all they need to know.

There’s nuance and depth for those who invest, but at 85 minutes and boasting almost constant action and bloodshed, Azrael is a solid choice for even those with a limited attention span.

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Pleased to Meet Me

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My Old Ass

by George Wolf

If the assignment was to write a letter to your younger self, keeping in mind the painful mistakes you’d like to erase while illustrating John Lennon’s classic line “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” and peppering in some R-rated laughs, then writer/director Megan Park absolutely aced it.

My Old Ass is all of that and more, a smart, funny and surprisingly emotional comedic fantasy that ranks with the best coming-of-age films of the last several years.

In a breakout big screen debut, Maisy Stella (from TV’s Nashville) is completely captivating as Elliot, a restless just-turned-18-year-old more than ready to leave her family’s cranberry farm in rural Canada for the University of Toronto in just 22 days.

But after a wild and hazy birthday party with her besties, Elliot gets an unexpected visit from an old new friend: her 39 year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). It takes some unique convincing, but eventually Elliot has questions…and some weird requests. Her old ass has answers, thoughtful advice and one stern warning.

“Avoid. Anyone. Named. Chad.”

“Chad?”

Enter Chad (Percy Hynes White).

Three years removed from her standout filmmaking debut The Fallout, Park lightens the mood via a charmingly fantastical premise, but keeps the film grounded with a refreshing and authentic voice. There’s so much honesty here about appreciating the journey to finding yourself, and it’s all perfectly fleshed out by the contrast of Plaza’s jaded deadpans and Stella’s enthusiastic naiveté.

Yes, life is about having the courage to make mistakes and find out what and who you really want, but it still wouldn’t hurt to be a little nicer to your brother. One day you’ll appreciate the memory.

Not one moment of either performance feels false, a testament to Stella, Plaza and to the strength of Park’s script and directing vision. While none of the sentiments here may be new or even especially profound, give in to the slightly Twilight Zone setup and the way My Old Ass delivers its life lessons might just knock you on yours.

And bring tissues. You’ll need them for more than just cushion when you land.