On this week’s Screening Room Podcast, Hope & George review Faces of Death, You Me and Tuscany, Exit 8, Beast, Hunting Matthew Nichols, ChaO, Hamlet, Outcome, and Newborn!
Tag Archives: Screen Wolf
Content Re-creator
Faces of Death
by George Wolf
It’s almost quaint now to remember the word-of-mouth infamy achieved by the original Faces of Death in 1978. By the mid-80s it was a cult favorite at the video store, with a lurid promise to unveil shocking video of real fatalities.
Though the non-stock footage was faked (yes, even the monkey scene), hyperbolic stories of the film’s effect continued to gain traction and the sequels were cranked out.
This new Faces is not one of those. Writer/director Daniel Goldhaber smartly brings that pre-viral legend into the internet age, tucking the bloody hunt for a serial killer inside the dulling nature of modern-day voyeuristic fetishes.
Barbie Ferreira stars as Margot, who works as a website content moderator for a company promising to protect “the young and innocent.” Though she occasionally flags a video for violations, most make it through – which is just how her manager prefers it. But when Margot sees some videos of murders that look alarmingly real, it sets her off on the trail of a killer (Dacre Montgomery) intent on recreating scenes from the original Faces of Death.
Though employees at Margot’s firm are strongly discouraged from researching the videos they moderate, she begins sleuthing. What Margot finds, of course, is an internet audience eager for the brutality, and online footprints that aren’t difficult for a tech savvy psycho to follow.
Stupid decisions (especially by young people) are a staple of horror films, and Margot makes a maddening amount. But Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) is able to mirror most of them alongside the questionable bargains we’ve made as a web-obsessed society.
“It’s an attention economy, and business is booming.”
Our killer (Montgomery gives him both Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon vibes) knows his audience, and Goldhaber gives the funny games he plays with both his victims and Margot a nice sense of tension. Sure, you may want to slap some sense into most of these people, but then again, is your own browser history MENSA worthy?
The rough patches in the story go down easier thanks to the savvy, in-the-moment winks Goldhaber flashes while telling it.
Why has the explosion of technology that holds so much positive potential continued to reveal the worst parts of ourselves? If you give the people what they want, how culpable are the people that want it?
Michael Haneke may have asked the question more eloquently, but Goldhaber and Faces of Death have more trashy, finger-wagging fun.
Blame Canada
Hunting Matthew Nichols
by George Wolf
Is this a faux documentary? A true crime thriller? Found footage horror? It’s all of that, at least some of the time.
You know what, just don’t worry about it and enjoy the clever way Hunting Matthew Nichols tips its hat to a variety of genre influences.
Director and co-writer Markian Tarasiuk plays himself as a documentary filmmaker out to solve an over-two-decades-old missing persons case. Canadian teens Matthew and Jordan went missing on Halloween night of 2001, and now Matthew’s sister Tara (Miranda MacDougall) is teaming with Markian to get to the bottom of what really happened.
Early on, we come along on an engaging hunt for clues. A succession of solid supporting performances bring welcome authenticity to Tara’s fact-finding interviews, until a surprise discovery turns the film on its found footage ear.
The missing kids were big fans of the Blair Witch Project, and took a camcorder into Black Bear Forest to uncover the local legend of Roy McKenzie. This turns out to be a slyly organic way of acknowledging the big comparisons that will follow, and to setup the type of in-your-face finale that more than a few BWP naysayers may have preferred.
The ride is well-paced and impressively assembled, and the payoff is satisfying enough to make you forget about who’s manning the camera or why we’re watching reactions to a shocking videotape instead of the tape itself.
But this Hunt is a fun one, and it comes complete with a mid-credits stinger that flirts with the possibility of another chapter.
If so, count me in.
Screening Room: The Drama, Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Pizza Movie & More
On this week’s Screening Room Podcast, Hope & George review the new releases: The Drama, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Pizza Movie, Blazing Fists, & Two Prosecutors.
Truth Bomb
The Drama
by George Wolf
If The Drama is in your date night plans, better put the dinner after the movie.
Hoo-boy. You’re gonna need to make some time for conversation.
Writer/director Kristofer Borgli continues his social provocateur-ing with look inside a couple thrown waaay off course by a shocking confession. The aftermath – affecting not only the couple involved but other couples in their orbit – becomes a darkly funny and intentionally cringe-worthy dissection of intimacy.
Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are knee deep in wedding plans. As Charlie works on this planned remarks, his remembrances give us an organic – if one sided – primer on the Emma/Charlie relationship.
But one night while sampling food and wine menu options with their fiends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), everyone starts confessing about “the worst thing they’ve ever done.” It’s all embarrassing fun and games, until Emma takes a a turn.
Over a decade ago, Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure explored how relationships are changed in an instant by one man’s panicked choice. Borgli picks similar scabs, but with a more serrated and much darker edge.
Pattinson is excellent as a man struggling with the notion that his fiancé’s past should not change how he sees her. Zendaya makes the complexities of Emma’s life after the confession seem desperately authentic, and her search for support from those she trusted most achingly real.
Haim gives Rachel some serious teeth, taking instant and very personal umbrage to Emma’s reveal, and Hailey Gates impresses in a smaller role as a co-worker of Charlie’s who gets a little too close to his breakdown.
Because the thought experiment here isn’t just about Emma and Charlie. Borgli, even more-so than he did with 2023’s Dream Scenario, invites you to imagine yourself in several roles (and, of course, to judge the choices of those around you). The script is crisp, the humor is coal black, and the pacing (aided by some nifty editing and visual cues) keeps you invested at every turn.
“You always turn my drama into comedy,” Charlie says early on.
The line ends up feeling like Borgli’s own confession. The Drama is a totally different rom-com animal, one that many may find just too confrontational. But there’s a layer of hope to be found here, too, and a kind of unflinching eye that’s hard not to respect.
Half Hallucinogens, Half Pepperoni
Pizza Movie
by George Wolf
First off, pineapple is the all-time greatest pizza topping. And I am not on drugs.
I can’t say the same for Monte and Jack. They are most definitely on drugs, and a pizza is all that might save them from their worst nightmare coming to shove a chainsaw where it most definitely does not belong.
That’s just a tiny sample of the batshit craziness delivered by Hulu’s Pizza Movie, an outrageously R-rated gross out and stoned out comedy that rises above some dry stretches to land several set-pieces of outright hilarity.
Jack (Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things) and Monte (The Goldbergs‘ Sean Giambrone) are college nerds. Jack’s unfortunate mishap as the football team mascot made both of them targets of constant bullying, even from Lizzy (Becky‘s Lulu Wilson), an old friend who’s now trying to run with the cool kids.
After one of their regular dorm room beatdowns jars a tin of ten-year-old drugs loose from the ceiling, the boys partake. And the ride begins.
A YouTube video from the drug’s inventor (Sarah Sherman) tells the guys they’ve got several stages of trippiness coming, including Nothing but the Truth, Bad Words, The Old Switcheroo and more. And if they don’t want to experience that last stage with the chainsaw enema, they better wolf down some ‘za in a hurry.
Oh, and Lizzy thought the drugs were mints and took some, too.
Writers/directors Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney (from the SNL writers room) craft their feature debut as if Edgar Wright took Scott Pilgrim and the Superbad guys to college for a drug-fueled class on practical blood splatter effects.
Leaning on a winning ensemble that perfectly sells the vibe, Kocher and McElhaney move through the six stages of balls tripping like levels in a video game, keeping the intensity up with a succession of quick cuts, camera swipes and rapid fire gags. From psychotic R.A.s out to banish all partiers to the wasteland of Gralk Hall, to tenacious Snackatron food drones to a college band performing only “clown-core vomit opera,” the barriers between Monte, Jack, and their Lord of the Pies delivery two floors down keep piling up.
And I haven’t even mentioned the “Makin’ It” dance sequence and the butterfly named Lysander Featherhemp that’s voiced by Daniel Radcliffe!
Yes, it’s nuts, and sometimes in a can’t-catch-your-breath funny kind of way. Not everything lands, of course, but Pizza Movie doesn’t slow down long enough for any cold spots to linger. Just let them pass, another piping hot slice of WTF will be in your face any second.
Screening Room: They Will Kill You, Forbidden Fruits, Alpha & More
This week Hope & George review They Will Kill You, Forbidden Fruits, Alpha, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, A Magnificent Life, Refuge, and The Serpent’s Skin. Plus News & Notes from The Schlocketeer, Daniel Baldwin!
Retail Equinox
Forbidden Fruits
by George Wolf
Just a few minutes into Forbidden Fruits, it’s clear that Apple (Lili Reinhart) has created a living space that does not bow to the patriarchy – at the local mall or anywhere else.
Apple, Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) are the Queens of the Highland Place mall in Dallas, and the awestruck whispers we hear as they walk in tell us much about the kind of power the “Fruits” enjoy.
Reporting to an unseen manager named Sharon (stay late for an important reveal), the ladies work the floor at the Free Eden boutique, fleecing customers into big dollar buys, worshipping Marilyn Monroe and adhering to a strict regimen that includes sex on a schedule and communicating with boys only through emojis.
Also…there are hexes and spells when needed. So, all seems good with this coven as a trio. Until Pumpkin (Lola Tung from “The Summer I Turned Pretty”) strolls in from that pretzel place in the food court.
Pumpkin is unintimidated by the Fruits, confidently telling Apple, “My job doesn’t define me, my hotness and personality do.”
That’s just one of many priceless lines, and writer/director Meredith Alloway’s adaptation of Lily Houghton’s stage play becomes a sharp, sly and sardonic treat, spilling the beans (and the blood!) about the chaos and contradictions of trying to stay true to yourself.
All four actresses are terrific, carving out distinct identities that keep various secrets on simmer. Is Cherry really that much of an empty-headed vessel? Does Fig have aspirations beyond Highland Place? And what’s the real truth about the death of Apple’s abusive Dad (“R.I. – but not P!”)
Tung makes it fun to guess Pumpkin’s true motives for joining the Fruits, and Alloway crafts an engaging ecosystem of complex girl power. The limited setting of the play never feels claustrophobic, and the mashup of storefronts, costuming and technology creates an anachronistic callback to the glory days of mall society.
Alloway does take her time getting to the bloodletting, but leans in pretty hard with some fun practical magic once it does hit. Remember those warnings about getting caught in escalators? Ouch!
But the real delight here is how the film utilizes a horror device derived from the fear of a women’s power to discuss how messy and imperfect the path toward self-actualization can be. There is strength in community, but danger when – as Cherry points out – you forget Shine Theory and “ruin my glow!”
These are definitely some hot topics for a day at the mall. But in the world of Forbidden Fruits, digging into them is even more fun than sorting through the blacklight posters at Spencer’s.
Fright Club: Interview with Dream Story Director Florian Frerichs
Bonus episode! We sit down with filmmaker Florian Frerichs, joining us from one of Germany’s most legendary film studios! We discuss his latest feature, Dream Story, as well as his other films and his novel, They Will Claim that I Was Dead.
Screening Room: Project Hail Mary, Ready or Not 2, 1000 Women in Horror & More
This week, Hope & George review Project Hail Mary, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Vampires of the Velvet Lounge, By Design, 1000 Women in Horror, and The Well.
