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Fright Club

Fright Club: Nasty Videos

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Aaah, the old “video nasties” — movies banned from view to protect us from the untold damage they would do, their ruinous images. The idea that watching something could be our end is a fantastic source for horror. Horror filmmakers have taken that idea and run wild with it. Watching could make you mad. Making one could make you mad. Hell, just listening could do irreversible damage!

Thanks to Greg Hansberry of The Empty Coffin podcast for filling in for George this week! Today we celebrate the nasty videos that have propelled some of our favorite flicks.

6. Red Rooms (2024)

True crime culture. Serial killer groupies. The Dark Web. Does all of it seem too grim, too of-the-moment, too cliché to make for a deeply affecting thriller these days? Au contraire, mon frère. Québécois Pascal Plante makes nimble use of these elements to craft a nailbiter of a serial killer thriller with his latest effort, Red Rooms.

Plante expertly braids vulnerability and psychopathy, flesh and glass, humanity and the cyber universe for a weirdly compelling peek at how easily one could slide from one world to the other.

His real magic trick—one that remarkably few filmmakers have pulled off—is generating edge-of-your-seat anxiety primarily with keyboard clicks, computer screens and wait times. But the tension Plante builds—thanks to Juliette Gariépy’s precise acting—is excruciating. They keep you disoriented, fascinated, a little repulsed and utterly breathless.

5. Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Madman Peter Strickland (In Fabric) made an entire film about sound, and it gets so much right. Not just about sound—about the era, the equipment, giallo sensibilities and moviemaking.

Strickland, working with a sound department of 34, creates a psychological experience through sound almost exclusively. The amazing Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, flown in specifically to helm the sound in a horror movie.

“This isn’t a horror movie. This is a Santini movie!”

Gilderoy’s arc is profound, and sound is our only window into what is changing him. We don’t see what he sees, only his reaction to it and the sound of it that makes his psychological breakdown believable.

4. The Ring (2002)

Gore Verbinski’s film achieves one of those rare feats, ranking among the scarce Hollywood remakes that surpasses the foreign-born original, Japan’s unique paranormal nightmare Ringu. Verbinski’s film is visually arresting, quietly atmospheric and creepy as hell.

This is basically the story of bad mom/worse journalist Rachel (Naomi Watts) investigating the urban legend of a videotape that kills viewers exactly seven days after viewing.

The tape itself is the key. Had it held images less surreal, less Buñuel, the whole film would have collapsed. But the tape was freaky. And so were the blue-green grimaces on the dead! And that horse thing on the ferry!

And Samara.

From cherubic image of plump-cheeked innocence to a mess of ghastly flesh and disjointed bones climbing out of the well and into your life, the character is brilliantly created.

3. Censor (2021)

Writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond crafts such a stylish, unsettling film with her ode to Britain’s “Video Nasty” era and the theme that censoring something ugly can somehow make it disappear.

Naimh Algar astonishes as Enid, a film censor whose childhood trauma and guilt resurface when a producer (Michael Smiley) invites her to watch a movie. A mystery—and Enid’s fragile sanity—unravel as Bailey-Bond develops a murky, fantastical and wildly horrific atmosphere that leaves you guessing and disturbed.

2. Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome was the last true horror and truly Canadian film in David Conenberg’s arsenal, and it shows an evolution in his preoccupations with body horror, media, and technology as well as his progress as a filmmaker.

James Woods plays sleazy TV programmer Max Renn, who pirates a program he believes is being taped in Malaysia – a snuff show, where people are slowly tortured to death in front of viewers’ eyes. But it turns out to be more than he’d bargained for. Corporate greed, zealot conspiracy, medical manipulation all come together in this hallucinatory insanity that could only make sense with Cronenberg at the wheel.

Deborah Harry co-stars, and Woods shoulders his abundant screen time quite well. What? James Woods plays a sleaze ball? Get out! Still, he does a great job with it. But the real star is Cronenberg, who explores his own personal obsessions, dragging us willingly down the rabbit hole with him. Long live the new flesh!

1. Peeping Tom (1960)

Director Michael Powell’s film broke a lot of ground and nearly ended his film career. People tend to react badly to horror movies that unnerve them, which is really odd given that this is the entire point of the genre. Peeping Tom pissed everybody off, maybe because—like Michael Haneke’s films Funny Games—Peeping Tom implicates you in the horror.

Mark (Karlheinz Bohm) had a difficult childhood, developing a bit of a voyeuristic hobby to help him cope. He starts off with prostitutes, filming them, capturing their terror as he kills them. He’s a voyeur, but who can throw stones? Didn’t every one of us who’s ever watched this film— or any other horror movie, for that matter—sign up to do exactly what Mark was doing?

Bohm’s great success is in making Mark unsettlingly sympathetic. Powell’s is in using the audience’s instincts against us. Bohm makes us feel bad for the villain, Powell makes us relate to the villain. No wonder people were pissed.

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Feeling Peckish?

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Little Bites

by Hope Madden

Set in the “every fabric is patterned” Seventies, Little Bites drops us into one really horrifying relationship.

Widowed mom Mindy (Krsy Fox) has sent her 10-year-old, Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro), to stay with Grandma (Bonnie Aarons, The Nun franchise)—an overbearing, hypercritical shrew. That’s not the problematic relationship, though. Mindy sent Alice away because of the demon living in her basement, the one who rings a dinner bell a few times a day, then takes a couple of bites out of Mindy.

The mythology is interesting if undeveloped, but whatever the reason Agyar (Jon Sklaroff, excellent) came to live off of Mindy’s flesh, it’s a solid and troubling concept. Sklaroff’s weary superiority and dark wit create a fascinatingly nightmarish villain.

 It’s a metaphor concerning the life draining sacrifice motherhood can be—something Babadook explored so beautifully and startlingly. It’s a provocative idea executed poorly.

Writer/director Spider One (Rob Zombie’s youngest brother) strings together some memorably disturbing ideas made weirder and better with some (not all) of his dialog. And a slew of veteran actors (Aarons, Barbara Crampton, Heather Langenkamp) strengthens the effort. Chaz Bono (who Executive Produces with his mother) delivers a sweetly bruised performance.

Fox is the weak link. She lacks chemistry with the rest of the cast and struggles mightily with the filmmaker’s more overwrought sections of dialog (any conversation between Mindy and her mother, for example).  

At least as problematic is the stiff direction. There’s precious little variety in shot selection, at an hour and 45 minutes, the film is in desperate need of a good trim. Every scene goes on for an awkward length, far longer than the actors are able to maintain any sense of naturalism. Tightening scenes would certainly have made carrying the film an easier task for Fox.

There’s something here, something unseemly and a little tragic. If the filmmaker could have trimmed the fat, Little Bites might have been a pretty tasty horror.

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That’s a Bingo

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Old Guy

by Hope Madden

There were three reasons to be optimistic about Old Guy, the latest from director Simon West. West used to make big budget, memorably bad actioners (Con Air), then middle budget middling actioners (The Mechanic, The Expendables 2), and now low budget actioners that have to find a way to capture attention. Hence, the three reasons for optimism.

Number one, two-time Oscar winner and all around magnetic onscreen mischief maker Christoph Waltz plays the lead. He’s Danny Dolinski, an aging hitman with a penchant for drink, drugs and threesomes (and hideously patterned short sleeve button downs).

Dolinski’s recovering from hand surgery—his trigger hand—which is slowing him down. Thus, he’s been tasked with training a new man, Wihlborg (Cooper Hoffman). Reason number 2. The actor’s handful of onscreen performances—particularly, his remarkable lead turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 Licorice Pizza—mark him as an actor I’m anxious to see in anything.

And reason 3, Lucy Liu, whose recent work finds edges and scars that give characters intriguing dimension. She’s particularly wonderful onscreen right now in Steven Soderbergh’s inverted ghost story Presence.

What’s most fun about the casting is that all three talents are playing entirely against type. And though not one of them is entirely convincing as their own particular fringe-of-society misfit, each is deeply charming.

West’s direction is frantic enough to do service to both the action and comedy Old Guy is trying to convey. Greg Johnson’s script is not helping. The dialog is not especially funny and worse still, the plot itself falls entirely apart under the lest scrutiny. But the veteran popcorn-and-car-chase director injects a bit of tension and giddy humor with image juxtaposition and punchy editing.

And there’s just a silliness in the cast that’s engaging. Liu’s character is an absolute afterthought, but the performance compels interest nonetheless. Hoffman’s been handed less a character than a handful of tics in dark nail polish, but he gives the guy a heartbeat and you find yourself rooting for him.

And Waltz, so charmingly miscast, characteristically finds insignificant moments to turn into cinematic highlights. You’ll forget Old Guy the minute those catchy looking credits stop rolling, but sometimes a brain needs to turn off and wallow in three solid performers having fun and making the most of a bad situation.

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Birthday Blues

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Three Birthdays

by Adam Barney

The sexual revolution of the early 70s pushed the American culture forward, but not without some bumps and awkwardness on the way. Three Birthdays focuses on those bumps and shows how the revolution could wreck a family.

Co-writer and director Jane Weinstock breaks her film down into three segments, focusing on each member of a family’s birthday in 1970. This family of three lives in Ohio and both parents, professors at a local university, pride themselves on how progressive they are, despite the obvious contradictions that begin to bubble up.

Their daughter Bobbie (Nuala Cleary, The Crowded Room) wants to lose her virginity just to get it over with but ends up discovering her parents’ secret – they have an open relationship. Kate (Annie Parisse, House of Cards) has made a deal with her husband that they could have an open relationship as long as they are honest with each about it (they are not). She wants to explore sex outside of their marriage but is conscious that her husband is struggling with his career and generally feeling inferior. Rob (Josh Radnor, How I Met Your Mother) has been cheating on Kate since well before they decided to experiment and also wants to drive a wedge in the relationship between Kate and Bobby so that he can be the better parent.

All of this makes for a pretty unpleasant watch with some deeply unlikeable characters. Everyone is lying and embracing any opportunity to inflict emotional harm upon the other. Bobbie hates her mom for cheating on her dad, Kate seems to be enjoying watching her career rise while Rob’s stagnates and he suffers, and Rob is just a terrible person.

Radnor really leans into the darker parts of Rob to make him such a despicable character. It seems that the lesson to be learned through all of this is that people suck.

If you have been paying attention to the dates presented on screen for each birthday, you are going to have a good idea about where the finale is headed. Seriously, this is one of the most groanworthy endings since Robert Pattinson went to work at the end of Remember Me.

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Red Menace

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Captain America: Brave New World

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Look out! There’s a bloated menace wreaking havoc at the White House, throwing temper tantrums, creating enemies of allies, and ruining everything he touches.

But wait, could there be some nefarious, nerdy, unelected mastermind behind the villainy destroying the United States of America?

Art imitates life in Marvel’s latest big screen attempt, Captain America: Brave New World. Anthony Mackie picks up the shield as Cap. We’ve known Mackie could act since his 2009 breakout, The Hurt Locker, but can he carry a franchise film?

As a rule, franchise films are helped by the addition of Harrison Ford. He loses the mustache and picks up the mantle carried by Sam Elliott and William Hurt, playing Thaddeus Ross, newly elected President of the USA.

The President has done some pretty horrible things, though, and should really be in prison. Instead, he’s in the White House. Pair that with a mysterious villain trying to orchestrate a war, and the end of the world could be in sight.

But the movie has bigger problems, starting with its script. Writers Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman and Dalan Musson stuff the film with repetitive dialog and endless exposition. Not sure what just happened or what’s about to happen? No need to fret, somebody’s about to explain it again.

Director Julius Onah (Luce, The Cloverfield Paradox) strings together a few impressive action sequences, but the momentum always gets derailed by needless explanation and – especially in the third act – some bland CGI visuals. Even the cameos and end credits scene are less than inspiring.

From the beginning, the Captain America character felt like the moral compass of the MCU. The best films in the franchise have found ways to balance the super-heroics with timely questions about power and responsibility. Brave New World creates the opportunity but never allows Cap to follow through. Instead, complexities are neutered in favor of easily digestible answers and the next weakly earned plot point.

That’s what makes the film so disappointing. A deserving new hero and a solid cast are given a narrative treatment usually suited to streaming audiences who are looking at their phones or getting up to feed the dog.

Above all, this new world seems satisfied with playing it safe. And that’s not brave at all.

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Hookers and Blow

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Paddington in Peru

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

So what has Paddington bear been up to in the eight years since the classic Paddington 2?

Well, he’s got a new director (Dougal Wilson in his feature debut), a new Mrs. Brown (Emily Mortimer steps in for Sally Hawkins), and a brand new British passport (with an unusual photo)! And that legal ID comes in mighty handy when Paddington (perfectly voiced again by Ben Whishaw) gets a mysterious letter from Peru.

Aunt Lucy is missing!

So what’s there to do except pack up the Browns, Paddington, and Paddington’s brand new deluxe umbrella and head out to solve the mystery. After meeting with the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman, always a plus) and collecting clues at the Home for Retired Bears, the gang hires dashing Captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) to take them up river and straight into a jungle adventure.

Because while Paddington and family may be searching for Aunt Lucy, certain other parties are searching for El Dorado, the mythical lost city of gold!

The bar set by Paddington 2, an honest to God masterpiece, is very high. Dougal and team had their work cut out for them, and the Browns’ Peru visit is never quite as intricate, clever or transcendent as the last installment. But Colman’s comedic genius, lushly crafted scenery, meticulous CGI, and the cast and filmmakers’ commitment to the earnest charm characteristic of the franchise guarantee a delightful cinematic experience for every member of the family.

Dougal keeps the pace and perils lively, while the new screenwriting team (Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont) delivers sweet family fun that weaves in some warm furry feelies before the credits roll and a surprise guest appears.

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Driver’s Seat

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Something Is About to Happen

by Rachel Willis

After losing her job as IT support staff for a dental supplies company, Lucía (Malena Alterio) seeks employment as a taxi driver in Antonio Méndez Esparza’s Something is About to Happen.

I’ll admit I was immediately intrigued by the opening credits. The black text on red background and the string-heavy score sets a compelling tone for the film.

Following the energetic opening, things slow down a bit. We follow Lucía through several day-to-day tasks, including supporting her elderly father. But a fleeting conversation with a taxi driver sets Lucía on a new path.

And what could very easily be a mundane venture into new territory for Lucía is anything but. It sometimes starts to feel a little like Taxicab Confessions, but rather than something tawdry and banal, instead we watch a woman opening herself to a new world in exciting, curious, sometimes dangerous ways.

The film’s naturalism helps ground it as sinister elements weave their way into the fabric of Lucía’s life. There’s a haunting melancholy underneath Lucía seemingly boundless enthusiasm. As her façade slips, we can’t help but watch in fascinated horror.

There are some scenes that are a bit too long, but on the whole, each one compliments the next as we follow our hero as she navigates life, love, and loss in the driver’s seat of her taxi. More often than not, we’re given new information with each scene, learning more and more about Lucía and what makes her tick.

Crows populate the film, sometimes in unexpected ways. The birds have often been used as symbolism, and it’s not too difficult to tease out what they represent to Lucía and the film overall. Their appearance in the film, however, fluctuates between non-existent or heavy-handed. It’s a bit much when they could have been utilized in subtler ways. It’s hard to anticipate what might come next for Lucía, which makes the film and enjoyable watch even as it meanders off course from time to time.

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Mommy’s Little Angel

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Armand

by George Wolf

If you’re the parent of young children, your first reaction to troubling accusations against them is likely to be denial.

There must be some mistake, right? My child would never do such a thing.

It’s a catalyst that almost demands taking sides, and one that writer/director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel explores to unique effect in Armand.

The mesmerizing Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World, Handling the Undead, A Different Man) is Elisabeth, a Norwegian actress who is summoned to her son’s school for an urgent conference. Six year-old Armand has been accused of bullying his friend Jon in the boys restroom. The incident apparently involved acts of “sexual deviation.”

Jon’s parents, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit) are waiting at the school with two administrators and the boys’ teacher. And what begins as a calm attempt at fact-finding slowly dissolves into a fascinating unraveling of mystery, fantasy, and outright curiosity.

Ullmann Tøndel and cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth keep us inside the sterile school building for nearly all of the film’s two hours, puncturing the strained decorum with an array of devices. There are persistent nosebleeds, the sound of heels echoing on hard floors, moments of psychological performance art, and one alarming fit of laughter that purposely strains your patience.

It all helps to distinguish the film from similarly themed dramas such as The Teacher’s Lounge or even Mass, but also threatens to keeps us detached through self indulgence. The can’t-look-away excellence from Reisve never lets it happen, and Armand – which won the Caméra d’Or, for Best First Feature last year at Cannes – rewards audience commitment with a satisfying, if not exactly revelatory, resolution in Act Three.

The characters may be talking about children, but the film is talking about adults. Armand presents a challenging, but ultimately haunting take on the lingering dangers of convincing ourselves that everything is fine.

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Somewhere in Time

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Timestalker

by Hope Madden

Back in 2016, Alice Lowe wrote, directed and starred in the charmingly dark horror comedy, Prevenge. It’s been a long wait, but her absurd wit, impeccable timing and delightful attention to sight gag detail return with the dark reincarnation rom-com, Timestalker.

Lowe is Agnes. No matter when you catch her—mid-1600s, Napoleonic era, 1980s New York—Agnes is feeling lost. Unmoored. As if something in her very soul is lacking. And then suddenly, over and over and over again throughout the ages, Agnes realizes what she’s missing is Alex (Aneurin Barnard).

Alex never seems to agree.

A handful of souls orbit the star crossed never actually lovers (Nick Frost, Tanya Reynolds, Kate Dickie, Jacob Anderson), but that never really registers with Agnes. She’s too attuned to her longing, and then eventually, her need to change her fate because, in each life, Agnes dies (pretty horribly) so that Alex can live.

What Lowe has penned is a clever subversion of romance tropes—“I have crossed oceans of time to find you”—without entirely mocking that aching sense of longing that fuels an obsession. Lowe’s most clever device is positioning a man as the object of infatuation. Playing that idea off a later introduction of Agnes’s own stalker further pokes holes in a century’s worth of romance cliche.

Timestalker is funny, sometimes brutally so. Anderson shines as a mischief-maker and instigator popping in from age to age with very dark suggestions, and an underused Dickie’s priceless deadpan delivery adds value to each of her scenes.

The look of the film offers endless enjoyment, and Lowe is a hoot in every situation.

Don’t look for much in the way of a plot, though. Where Prevenge unveiled a bit more of its backstory and detail with each new scene, Timestalker feels like a really fun Groundhog Day with no underpinning story. The film is disappointingly slight given the clever points it makes.

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Rizz Up

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The Dead Thing

by Hope Madden

The clever, underlying theme in Shaun of the Dead is that every Londoner was already basically a zombie.

Elric Kane, co-writer and director of The Dead Thing, looks at a culture of app hook ups and sterile, fluorescent work spaces and sees something similar. A whole generation of people seems to already be dead.

They’re not exactly alive, anyway.

Beautiful Alex (Blu Hunt) fits that bill. Her job is mindless, she keeps her headphones in and avoids eye contact with her one co-worker, Mark (Joey Millin). After work and another swipe right hookup she sneaks into her apartment to avoid conversation with her longtime best friend (Katherine Hughes). Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.

Then she meets Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen), and it’s as if she wakes from a trance. It starts off the same as every other meet up, but Kyle is different. They connect. He stays all night, they laugh and draw pictures of each other and hate to say goodbye the next day when her uber for work arrives.

She decides to keep in touch, but he never responds to a text. So, she shows up where he works, and a mystery begins.

Each act in The Dead Thing tells a different story. Hunt anchors the evolving storytelling with an authentic display of ennui, of disconnectedness—partly chosen, partly inevitable. Smith-Petersen’s vacant sweetness gives each change in the narrative an underlying sinister quality that also evolves nicely from one act to the next.

By Act 3, Kane abandons the film’s original metaphor in favor of a different analogy. While this change offers more opportunity for visceral horror, the result is less satisfying than the original, insightful image of modern romance.

Though the more traditional wrap up disappoints after such a stylish and intriguing premise, The Dead Thing—including Iona Vasile’s dreamy camerawork and deceptively creepy performances throughout—keeps your attention and manages to subvert expectations and entertain.