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Outtakes

What the Hell?

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Boorman and the Devil

by George Wolf

There was a new list floating around social media this week, and it ranked the 25 all-time worst movie sequels. 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic was nowhere to be found. That will probably surprise a bunch of people, including some that are part of Boorman and the Devil, a fascinating look behind one of the most infamous productions in film history.

John Boorman was fresh off of an Oscar nomination for Deliverance when he accepted the gig to follow up the phenomenon that was The Exorcist. Looking back, the now 92 year-old Boorman realizes Stanley Kubrick was correct when he warned the only way to follow Friedkin’s classic was to bring even more shock value.

Boorman chose an approach that focused on light over dark. Plus “the Synchronizer,” a tap-dancing Linda Blair and James Earl Jones in a locust getup.

It was a complete disaster. But director David Kittredge’s look back is so captivating, the urge to give The Heretic another look will be strong.

Boorman’s candor about the pain of failure is refreshingly honest, and the way that Kittredge surrounds it with insightful commentary from filmmakers such as Karyn Kusama, Mike Flanagan and Joe Dante creates an engaging filmmaking conversation.

Kittredge also shows some sharp editing skills, weaving in specific moments from the film to create wry commentary on the battles going on behind the scenes. Linda Blair would show up late, Richard Burton would leave early and Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher wound up exasperated.

Plus, there was the battle over the script re-writes, some ballooning budget and production schedules and Boorman’s case of Valley Fever that shut the whole thing down for five weeks.

Was there a Devilish curse at work?

Kittredge makes sure you appreciate all the things Boorman did right, and hear from a few critics who insist The Heretic is more triumph than tragedy. Either way, Boorman and The Devil is an essential and entertaining breakdown of one infamous film, and the devil-in-the-details of the filmmaking process itself.

New In Theaters

On the Road Again and Again and Again

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It Ends

by George Wolf

Just in case Backrooms was too abstract about the anxieties plaguing Gen Z right now, It Ends arrives to hammer the point home more directly. Writer/director Alex Ullom’s feature debut is a well-constructed metaphor for a timely existential dread, with a slam-bang setup fueled by one early kickass jump scare.

Four twenty-something friends pile in a trusty four-door and head out. They’re laughing, talking and trusting their GPS until driver Tyler (Michael Cole) suspects that something doesn’t seem right.

He’s correct.

One wrong turn has trapped them on a never-ending backroad through the woods, where stopping for even a few minutes can be deadly. Don’t worry about the gas gauge, bathroom breaks or starvation, Ullom sees those questions coming. Instead, worry about how Tyler, Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth) and James (Phinehas Yoon) will try to deconstruct this road trip rubric, and what they’ll learn as the miles add up.

If you’re thinking Exit 8, understandable, but that game offered a finish line that these drivers can only dream of.

They’re fresh out of college, and now they’re just facing an endless road of toil and frustration, managing a few fleeting moments of joy while they hang on to the hope that one day they might find salvation.

What kind of life is that?

Horror movies have always reflected generational fears, and this particular anxiety continues to resonate as an anchor for psychological torment. After that first act blast of terror, Ullom settles into a groove of introspection and gloom, with his four talented actors elevating a script that is a bit light on character development.

The important thing is, we believe these people are friends, and for the most part, their reactions to the situation (and, by extension, what it represents) seem genuine. The road only gets bumpy in act three, when Ullon seems desperate to reach a feature length runtime, spinning his wheels a bit before hitting us with his Rod Serling-esque finale.

It Ends still leaves a well-earned mark. It’s more proof that horror can be trusted to these talented young storytellers, and the future is looking scary good.

New In Theaters

I’m Not Looney, I’m Just Drawn That Way

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Coyote vs. ACME

by Hope Madden

Three years after Warner Brothers shelved Coyote vs. ACME for a tax write off, the delightful live action/animation hybrid finally hits big screens this week.

My interest hardly needed nudging after last year’s surprisingly entertaining The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. The fact that Coyote vs. ACME is about a soulless corporation willing to sacrifice cartoons because of its greed only increased its appeal. I love a good “art imitates life” story.

And this one did not disappoint. Will Forte is Kevin Avery of the injury law firm Avery, Jones, and Maltese—the first of about a billion nods to the brain trust that created the nearly century-old Looney Tunes. Kevin makes a living helping cartoon characters settle disputes with ACME for a couple hundred per case of backfiring rocket skates, anvil incidents, and whatnot.

Then Wile E. Coyote walks into Kevin’s office with a bottomless knapsack full of whatnot and suddenly Kevin’s facing a case that might be bigger than he even wants to deal with.

Kevin’s nemesis, ACME Corp’s slick talking attorney Buddy Crane (John Cena), offers a sweet settlement, but Mr. Coyote’s having none of it.

Coyote vs. ACME delivers a classic legal thriller punctuated with laughs and loving nods to animated history. Director Dave Green and a writing team led by Samy Burch (May December) follow in Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s footsteps in more ways than one. The filmmakers’ Looney Tunes love runs deep, and their knack for sight gags is as on-point as their instincts with a David vs. Goliath storyline.

It’s a smart script, and Forte, Cena, and P.J. Byrne (as Cena’s assistant) are a riot. Coyote vs. ACME never aims for the heights of Roger Rabbit (which was, let’s be honest, essentially a brilliantly disguised Chinatown for a new generation), but it doesn’t try to.

Green’s film celebrates generations of animated history with love and skill while it tells a story that’s relevance is as timeless as the Looney Tunes.

New In Theaters

Problem Child

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

by Hope Madden

Don’t make the mistake of assuming Jane Schoenbrun’s new feature Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a slasher. Or a slasher spoof. Or a satire about slashers.

It’s a sexual awakening brought about by Gillian Anderson. Obviously.

Up-and-coming (pun intended) queer filmmaker Kris (a wondrously vulnerable Hannah Einbinder) has been tapped to reboot a problematic slasher IP. She hopes to convince the Final Girl of the first installment, Billy (Anderson the Great), to return to cinema and star in the film. Turns out, Billy’s a recluse who bought and now lives in the camp from the original film. She hosts Kris for several days of movies, junk food, pot, and deeply sensuous slasher nerdery.

This is—and I say this with as much delight as possible—the nerdiest horror movie ever. How nerdy? The very second you hear yourself saying “that’s a split diopter,” Schoenbrun stand-in Kris says it out loud. When Kris apologizes for asking too personal a question of Billy, fearing it could be a #metoo violation, Billy replies, “I auditioned for The Burning. You know who made that, right?”

Nerds! And the best kind of nerds. Horror movie nerds! Sleepaway Camp trivia meets Friday the 13th nostalgia in a gloriously queer, brazenly shameless, wonderfully horny new horror film.

Like their last two features, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma concerns itself with transformation, identity, and horror. But Schoenbrun’s latest drops the dreamy melancholy of the previous films in favor of something tender, beautiful, and accepting.

The gender iconography littered across every scene finds its zenith in Little Death (that name!), the transgender marauder with a double-blade spear and an air vent helmet. (Honestly, if you haven’t read Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws, you should. Schoenbrun certainly has.)

TSADACM, like Schoenbrun’s last two films, is a gorgeous watercolor fever dream. It’s funny, incredibly bloody, and unabashedly in love with the aggressively sexual and sexually ambiguous slasher, no matter how problematic. Perhaps because it’s problematic.

The film is not just a wonderful walk through another person’s psyche, although it is that. It’s also a fascinating, deeply satisfying kick of a horror movie. You should go.  

Outtakes

Way Down in the Hole

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Bury the Devil

by Hope Madden

Things don’t often go well for live-in nurses in horror movies. Whether the caregiver is a loved one (Undertone, Relic, The Taking of Deborah Logan) or a professional (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, The Dark and the Wicked), the patient always seems to bring with them an additional presence.

So, I guess Julia (Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez) only has herself to blame. If she’d watched more horror, she might have known that her latest gig in a gorgeous lakeside home with Evelyn (Dawn Ford) would take more from her than her time and compassion.

Writer/director Adam O’Brien’s Bury the Devil creates a great, spooky atmosphere. Long takes and a prowling camera give the film a haunted quality, and O’Brien makes the most of his limited budget with a small but talented cast and this stunning location.

Ford takes advantages of the opportunities afforded her, gliding from wistful old woman to confused dementia sufferer to something sinister and back with ease. She commands the screen as patients in these films rarely do.

Likewise, Martinez carves out a believable character—not the martyr or conniver, just a working nurse on her first night in a new home.

The writing is occasionally pushy, trying too hard to wedge information into conversations without forced exposition. We exist only in the present tense. There are no flashbacks or days marked on the screen to help us along. Instead, O’Brien drops us into Julia’s first night and possibly Dawn’s last. It’s a structure that keeps the film moving and surprising, but it doesn’t offer a lot of opportunity to expand the story.

The gaps in the mythology weaken the climax. What you don’t know and couldn’t possibly understand without some guidance leaves you guessing at too much. That guesswork keeps the finale from feeling like a resolution, like pieces finally fit into a puzzle. It’s not enough to ruin the movie, but it’s enough to keep it from leaving a mark.

New In Theaters

Kitchen Knives Out

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Tony

by George Wolf

Among other things, Tony is another reminder that we’d all be better off if everyone’s first job was in a restaurant. It certainly altered the course of Anthony Bourdain’s life, and director/co-writer Matt Johnson makes the most of focusing his biopic squarely in that one eventful summer of 1975.

“Tony” was 19 then, and by his own admission decades later in the Kitchen Confidential memoir, a narcissistic lout in need of a “good ass kicking.” The story of that BTA wakeup call makes for an entertaining coming-of-age tale full of humor, humanity and one righteous clambake.

Dominic Sessa is exceptional as the young Bourdain, who is so caught up in his future writing genius that he lies to everyone about the huge Vassar fellowship that he didn’t get. Following his crush Nancy (Emila Jones) to Provincetown, Mass., Tony is forced to earn his keep by washing dishes at The Flagship restaurant and sleeping in Chef’s (Antonio Banderas) hammock out back.

And so the education begins. While co-worker Sal (Tuner‘s Leo Woodall) schools him on the local women and party life, Chef’s gentle and patient influence nudges Tony to stop pretending and follow his passions.

Sessa, with his frantic hair and brooding intensity, makes the gradual transition frustrating, relatable and heartfelt. His chemistry with Banderas (in a performance perfectly suited for an Oscar nod) is warm and real, providing the film a reliable anchor that does not disappoint.

Johnson (Blackberry, Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie) has been clear that he came to the project with little knowledge of the Bourdain brand. That helps the film avoid undue reverence, and lets Tony’s future accomplishments hang bittersweetly in the air, an unspoken but understood step in this character arc from lout to legend.

Because in the summer of 1975, Bourdain’s future could have taken many different paths. Though the end was tragic, Tony finds a messy, inspiration joy in the beginning, and in the subtle twists of fate that can change lives forever.

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.

New In Theaters

Payback’s a Bee-yotch

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The Rivals of Amziah King

by George Wolf

Back in 2019, Andrew Patterson’s debut feature The Vast of Night was a welcome surprise. Meticulously crafted with a detailed throwback vibe and some snappy dialog, it got me excited for what Patterson had in store.

We finally get his second feature with The Rivals of Amziah King, and once again, I am charmed.

His timeline shifts to present day, and the setting moves from New Mexico to Oklahoma for an adventure filled with rousing roots music, the basics of beekeeping, a Southern Gothic mystery and one clever plan for revenge.

Matthew McConaughey is electric as Amziah King, a rural beekeeper, musician and all around character who’s asked to help find the rightful owner of twenty barrels full of stolen honey. But after some absurdist violence, a reconnection with his former foster daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass in a captivating debut) and a memorable pot luck/jam session, King finds his own bee colony has been lifted.

Kateri’s affection for King as a father figure has never wavered over their years apart, and she commits herself to payback for the guilty party. And she’s pretty sure the trail will lead right to local tycoon Dob McCoy (Kurt Russell).

Patterson has a delightfully unique brand of storytelling, one that retains a youthful innocence no matter what adult themes are being juggled. His wordplay is fresh and often deadpan funny, and his camera can oscillate between fluidity and bits of slo-motion for effect.

Two films in, it’s clear Patterson is a skilled world-builder. And here, that world is a small Oklahoma community with many interconnected parts and memorable personalities. The parallels that Patterson draws with bee colonies are clear but not force-fed, and his wonderfully eclectic ensemble makes it a kick to follow them around.

Patterson seems to be enjoying the bigger canvas for his second film, with a few strands of excess and a 130-minute run time that does get a tad bloated when we reach some odes to Huck Finn in Act III. But it always feels in service of a big swing and a committed vision, and that will always bee easy to forgive.

Yes, bee.

Outtakes

Correct-a-Mundo

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The Legend of Juan Jose Mundo

by Rachel Willis

Do you remember what it’s like to be in high school and to be desperately in love with someone who doesn’t see you that way? Writer/director Michael Walker and his co-writer Susan Gomes sure do. What’s even better about their film The Legend of Juan Jose Mundo is that they remember being young and in love in the glamorous 1980s.

High school junior Julie (Anna Miroden) is upset when she finds out the Spanish exchange student she was expecting is being replaced by a boy named Juan (Alexandro Byrd). It’s not too hard to anticipate that Julie’s discomfort will give way to youthful lust. But of course, as easy as she seems to hit it off with Juan, he only has eyes for seemingly every other girl in school.

The formula might be familiar, but the film itself is a gem. Miroden is the perfect every girl. She’s the ideal balance of cute and insecure. Even when boys do like her, she freezes before anything can happen. She also has the conundrum of wanting the boys to like her, but only the “right” boys. When those boys don’t like her, it feels like none of them do, even when several show her how untrue that is.

As a perfect mirror to Julie’s insecurity, Juan is the model of confidence. He flirts and hooks up with countless girls. His legend grows within the school, and even Julie’s best friend Suzanne (a fantastic Hannah Kepple) is swept up in his wake.

But despite any mistakes or poor decisions the characters make, it’s impossible not to like them. Each one brings a level of realism that has you rooting for them to make better choices and figure out how to navigate the choppy waters of adolescence. There isn’t a dud among the cast, and the writing gives even ancillary characters enough to bring them to life.

This film has a lot of heart and puts many teen comedies from the 80s to shame.