In a cinematic year filled with logline leftovers based on Air Jordan sneakers, Blackberry devices and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, moviegoers can express guilty pleasure and gratitude for a film adapted from its own Grindhouse mock trailer. Expect to preview coming attractions for a surefire franchise-in-the-making because Eli Roth’s latest scrappy, schlocky and overstuffed horror movie is certain to become a perennial feast: this first Thanksgiving (B-) film with a Final Girl delivers a multi-course cornucopia of clever kills. The movie’s cold open foists viewers into the mayhem and satirical delirium of a Black Friday sale riot that ends in a bargain-hunting bloodbath; a year later, in a related revenge storyline, a sextet of precocious Plymouth Rock teenagers try to avert a mysterious serial killer intent on creating a carving board of the Massachusetts town’s denizens. Nell Verlaque is a bright and nuanced lead actress supported by an ensemble of familiar faces such as Patrick Dempsey (yikes, that terrible Boston accent!) and Gina Gershon (mercifully muted) in supporting roles. The film is exactly as advertised – a Scream-style thriller mystery festooned in harvest season accoutrements, from pitchforks to parades. In the film genre of splatter films set on gory days, this is much more mid-tier slasher à la Happy Birthday to Me than rising to Halloween masterpiece levels. The story contains genuine jump scares, grisly murders of the bloody disgusting variety and ribald belly laughs. The film’s veritable turkey trot of graphic violence is so mercilessly cartoonish, it makes Cocaine Bear look downright avant garde. There’s an inspired moment when the heroine hides from the masked “John Carver” among mannequin heads in a beauty school classroom and employs hairspray as impromptu mace. Roth paces the film with finesse and fury and continually raises the stakes; he never mistakenly confuses his film with high art. Sure some elements are undercooked, but it’s ultimately a cavalcade of communal gasps. Buckle up, pilgrims, for high-camp, high-stakes, horned-up plenty.
If Halloween and Back to the Future had a love child, it would be Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer (C+); and in terms of radical surprises, this comic horror movie has very few flux (capacitors) to give. The contemporary teen protagonist, played by a funny deadpan Kiernan Shipka, must go back in time to the 1980s to avert a killing spree affecting her loved ones. Olivia Holt is effective as the heroine’s teenage version of her mother, and Julie Bowen is entertaining as mom in the modern day. There are some clever time travel conceits, nifty needle drops and funny asides about what passed for acceptable a generation or two ago, but there’s not quite enough here – including few scares – to warrant a strong recommendation. The “Sweet Sixteen” murderer clad in a Max Headroom style mask won’t likely enter the pantheon of killer classics, but the acting skills of Shipka portend more opportunities for uncanny comedy ahead.
The latest tepid incarnation of the half century spanning Exorcist movie saga is doubly damned in that it purports to change the course of a flimsy franchise that has never once matched the shocking original film and that David Gordon Green, fresh from his diminishing returns directing of a Halloween series reboot, is somehow up to the challenge of staking a claim of this devilish house of hellfire horror tropes to captivate a new generation. With the leaden TheExorcist: Believer (D), he neither serves up any nifty nostalgia nor provides any relevant new hot take. Frankly, the reason for this story’s existence is about as clear as pea soup. In the room where a few supernatural things happen, Leslie Odom Jr. makes insufficient impact as a widowed dad in a rural Georgia town whose tween daughter (Lidya Jewett) goes missing and comes back hissing. After almost building a credible amber alert procedural, Green bides time in the second hour with rubbery demon effects and little sets of deadened eyes that would make Polar Express characters’ heads spin. The filmmakers employ the notion that it takes an interfaith village to cure the tween and her similarly possessed friend (Olivia O’Neill) by throwing a cowardly priest (E.J. Bonilla), a holistic healer (Okwui Okpokwasili), a wannabe nun (Ann Dowd), another parent (Jennifer Nettles) and a parade of grassroots DIY warriors at the possession problem. None of the cast makes much impression, and even having O.G. star Ellen Burstyn burst in to the proceedings can’t penetrate the pall that’s hanging over this dull episode. Unanswered questions ranging from why the movie’s opening takes place in Haiti to ultimately why any of it takes place at all, are in abundance. Lousy effects and a plodding pace set the stage for the realization it’s not even scary. Banish this curious cash grab from your must-see queue.
A new film based on a little-known chapter of the Dracula saga proves to be monstrously boring. André Øvredal’s moribund nautical vampire tale The Last Voyage of the Demeter (D+) rarely sets sail into either creative or scary waters as the undead bloodsucker lurks and lunges in equal doses from the cargo hold of a nondescript merchant vessel traveling from Romania to England. The film’s mundane production values, self-conscious narration, cheap-looking creature effects and general lack of specificity about the shipboard whereabouts of this shape-shifting Lil’ Nos(feratu) X mark another low point in Universal’s “revisals” of classic monster pics. The mystery of why Vladdie can’t simply dispatch of the puny crew of imbeciles makes the dramatic dance even more of a transoceanic trance. Only Corey Hawkins as the protagonist, a shipboard MD caring for an unwitting stowaway (Aisling Franciosi) in need of transfusions, demonstrates any discernible pulse in the acting department. There are traces of race politics here, but the characters are too uninteresting to properly embody their arcs. Any teased promise of allegory is more bark than bite. The missed opportunities are countless. Typically pacing in a supernatural thriller is slow for a while to stoke the tension, but this adventure just gets more glacial: a captain’s slog to be sure! Only the film’s ability to elicit unintentional laughs in the final reel provides much of a jump scare surprise.
The blunt force trauma of being a modern teenager receives its horror film embodiment in Danny and Michael Philippou’s story of friends who thrill to a psychic portal unleashed by a disembodied hand that foists dread into their heads in the often thrilling Talk To Me (B). This nifty A-24 Australian import featuring the eerie embalmed handshake sure to bring all the boys and girls to the yard starts strong and builds decent momentum, with resultant head-trips both expansive and concussive. The co-directors are particularly adept at drawing their audience magnetically into the throes of outlandish juvenile antics, a veritable arm wrestle with the supernatural, and they rarely give up their grip. Among the cunning conjurers, Sophie Wilde as our bedeviled heroine and Joe Bird as a wide-eyed innocent are standouts. Both dexterous young actors could varsity letter in possession. Other characters barely registered but were engaging enough to sometimes buttress the blow of the body counts. Creepy practical effects, shocking jump scares, startling sound design and a few surprising peccadillos keep the slight but mighty proceedings fresh amidst the digital dimensions and massive head wounds. Serendipitously, the most bonkers sequence in the hands-first haunting involves a rogue foot. For most of its brisk running time, this head-banging handmade tale definitely has legs.
This movie was staid when it should have slayed. An intriguing premise devolves into just a bunch of running scared in Tim Story’s horror satire The Blackening (D). The film follows a group of Black friends on a Juneteenth holiday weekend who encounter masked murderers while staying at a cabin in the woods. At the film’s core is a mysterious board game that turns players against one another in a type of racial roulette, but most of the plot is just actors running from room to room screaming. Grace Byers and Melvin Gregg are among the accomplished standouts in the ensemble. Among those who stand out for all the wrong reasons, Jermaine Fowler gives a stupendously misguided performance, jawdropping in its caricature. Story shows scant skill in helming this type of horror movie, with no cleverness to the kills or pacing for the scares. There’s more mystery and suspense in any given Scooby-Doo episode. What could have been a sly play on tropes or an intellectual dissection of the role race plays in these kinds of movies is largely squandered. In terms of dignity of daring, nobody gets out of this one alive.
All the joys of the Scream franchise – surprise slayings, fun rules, sly cinephile references, newbies and nostalgia, all in a wily whodunit package, come together effectively in Scream VI (B+) co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Characters who seemed tentative in the last go-round come of age with self-assurance in this installment with an invigorating change of venue to New York City. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega are dynamite as the central sisters smarting from the events of the 2022 film, and Jasmin Savoy Brown, Liana Liberato, Courteney Cox and Hayden Panettiere are among the standouts in the ensemble. The co-directors make great spectacle of Manhattan’s alleyways, brownstones, subways and even a movie palace as their topsy turvy series entry stylishly careens to effective showdowns. The whole movie is about subverting expectations with ample surprises up its sleeve. There’s a highly effective sequence to tickle the fancy of horror movie fans with a near-fancon of spooky cameos plus an array of genuinely suspenseful action scenes and a lot more gore. This energized entry brings some glory back to Ghostface.
An iconic film writer/director and his three on-screen protagonists each get points this time around for adapting. A high concept thriller based on a novel, M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (B-) pits faith versus fear as a same-sex couple and their adopted daughter are visited by a quartet of strangers with a disturbing proposition. This unconventional home invasion story with plot holes aplenty is lifted by three performances including Dave Bautista as the peculiar leader of the trespassers, Ben Aldridge as the alpha dad lawyer and Kristen Cui as the wise pint-sized girl. Jonathan Groff is a weak link as the other dad; his character barely registers despite some pivotal final reel action. Shyamalan awkwardly handles some of the fight choreography and flashes to the world outside the wooded domicile, but the movie’s missteps are largely forgivable in the context of the fierce family tale. By borrowing from someone else’s story, the suspense auteur finds unexpected surprises.
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival from Neon Films. Released via video on demand 2/14/23.
Tropical resorts seem to be the modern milieu for disassociating with one’s central humanity, and auteur Brandon Cronenberg’s horror thriller Infinity Pool (B-) is the latest instance of a not so innocent abroad discovering he’s not feeling completely himself. Without spoiling the labyrinthine plot, expect curious customs in a foreign land, relentless violence, the appearance of doppelgängers and an array of hedonistic detours. Unfortunately Alexander Skarsgård doesn’t command the screen with enough gravitas to justify his journey, but his co-star Mia Goth is an unhinged sensation as the seductress who brings out his primal instincts. She’s proving to be the follow-her-anywhere marquee star of horror shows. There’s a point in this film where a very original premise gets lost in a fog of Altered States meets A Clockwork Orange tropes, but Cronenberg ultimately reins it in and lands his thesis. Beyond the bizarre brushes with ultra violence, there’s a compelling message about wealth and power and creating one’s own moral universe. The tale could be tidier but is fairly engrossing.
Welcome to the latest horror movie escape room: unfortunately it may provoke in even the most patient viewers an unwavering desire for that final moment of freedom through the multiplex exit door. A triumph of sustained, unblinking mood and atmosphere with an equally confounding sense of storytelling, Kyle Edward Ball’s little suspense movie that could, Skinamarink (C+) is an admirable micro budgeted cult curiosity. It feels like an art project brought to life as two largely off-camera preschoolers roam their house in the middle of the night, whispering (with necessary subtitles) about missing parents, noting vanished windows and observing their toys are moving on their own to the soundscape of diabolical public domain cartoons. It’s likely the first found footage genre film to showcase such an ambitious unfinished Lego project or highlight how many low budget ways filmmakers can show a toilet disappear. Ball employs an intriguing grainy film stock to invoke a sort-of 1995 with some creepy objects and angles and a few choice “audio jump scares” in what is otherwise the very definition of a slow burn. Yes, the movie was evidently made for $15,000, but the subtitles required more proofreading and the TV sets needed frame rate adjustment. The story doesn’t sufficiently reveal themes or intentions; and although the ambiguity may stoke some viewers’ imaginations, it will leave many shaking their heads and some saying, “Hey, Blair Witch, hold my juice box.”
In a funkified morality tale fusing Frankenstein’s Monster and Gremlins, the invention in question is Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN (B), an orphaned girl’s companion robot who proves to be more wired for overprotection than child’s play. Allison Williams is effective as a tightly wound toy maker who inherits a niece (game kid actress Violet McGraw) whose unusual bond with the automaton becomes increasingly concerning. The title character played by Amie Donald and the voice of Jenna Davis is a sass machine full of tangy twitches, and an ensemble including a funny Ronny Chieng becomes the prey-things for the uncanny valley of the doll. The endoskeleton of the story has been told many times before, but Johnstone imbues his entertaining enterprise with suspense, satire and panache. The musical numbers alone were unexpected and amusing, and the jump scares prove pretty fun for a PG-13 outing. The story sputters a bit toward the end, and the whole movie could have been much scarier; but it’s overall very crafty and creative and elicits some wily smiles. These android adventures in babysitting are largely a light horror hoot.
You’ll think twice accepting the invitation of a couple met on vacation offering to host your next holiday at their home after watching Christian Tafdrup’s unsettling suspense thriller Speak No Evil (B+). This is icy social satire of the highest order on a slow slide to all-out horror, filmed mostly in English with some sequences in Danish and Dutch, although nobody’s tourism bureau is likely to claim this prickly cautionary tale. The story showcases ways we dole out small compromises to accommodate and keep the peace with folks we don’t know all that well. Morten Burian and Fedja Van Huêt make the biggest impressions as two men with opposite approaches to nearly everything in life, which makes for a cauldron of conflict. Sidsel Siem Koch is also magnificent as the mom who’s a canary in the coal mine; the shock in her eyes based on different parenting approaches portends even more horrifying chasms. There’s very effective, absorbing drama here and hardly a false move, although the final act wraps a little too terrifyingly tidy. Fans of tightly wound, misanthropic movies will get their fix on this one.
