Subverting expectations for viewers who simply wanted a Michael Myers versus Laurie Strode showdown, director David Gordon Green completes his contemporary “H40” trilogy with equal parts dim wit and sequences dimly lit. Halloween Ends (C) is as shaggy as its nobody-asked-for-him new lead character (a game but underserved Rohan Campbell) giving Lost Boys vibes atop a motorcycle, lured into nocturnal darkness by what may be The Shape under a bridge ready to fully phantom menace a fresh faced friend into a co-conspiratorial baddie. Jamie Lee Curtis is here too, of course, and she’s a delight, but the story’s awkward flash forward defies credulity, leaving her spiritually stranded as she and her granddaughter played by Andi Matichak fend off their own harvest season demons. Following the effective 2018 reboot of a direct sequel to the chilling 1978 original and a misbegotten 2021 continuation, this 2022 installment seems to be going full Season of the Witch (i.e. what in terrifying tarnation does any of this have to do with anything?) for most of its duration before it finally gets to the mincemeat of the matter. There are guilty pleasures amidst the stab bag: namely, some outrageous supporting characters and extremely awkward subplots. But despite slick production values, stunts and slayings, this finale barely sticks the landing. Among the junky jump scares and clunky split-cuts is a film that doesn’t deliver on scares or pathos in acceptable doses. It’s a Mary Jane candy of an occasion, petrified on the exterior and only mildly satisfying once you take the bite.
Put on your brave face because Parker Finn’s supernatural movie Smile (B) is one of the year’s most terrifying horror films. The plot follows a therapist, gracefully played by Sosie Bacon, who appears to be losing her mind after witnessing a bizarre tragedy involving a troubled patient, portrayed so well by Caitlin Stasey that the audience is spoiled by amazing acting early in the story. The film effectively unpacks the effects of trauma while supplying a steady stream of creepy visuals, jump scares and menacing mysteries. Bacon’s lead performance is consistently engaging, as is Robin Weigert as a tightly wound psychiatrist. Finn keeps the tension high and the emotions raw but relies a bit too often on unnecessarily fancy camera angles and cellphone calls as deus ex machina. The director keeps his grip and grimace so taut for so long that the narrative hardly has any pearly white fight left in it for the final showdowns. This movie is undoubtedly a good time for horror lovers and a solid entry into the genre.
When making this year’s ‘70s set horror film X, director Ti West also filmed a secret WWI era prequel, Pearl: An X-traordinary Origin Story (B-), and it’s the eerie crackup tale of the titular killer set amidst a corn pone maze of vintage Technicolor trappings. The handsome Hollywood production design on an isolated farm and an old-fashioned nearby town blended with Grand Guignol grotesquerie is consistently fascinating to watch even though the total package feels a bit obligatory. Mia Goth is brilliant in the central role, showcasing mania simmering slightly below and very highly above the surface in a series of escalating, campy and terrifying sequences. You truly can’t take your eyes off her. Tandi Wright is delightfully icy as her controlling mom; there are definitely Carrie vibes here. West’s stylized hues and horrors are largely a wonder to behold, although the color tones get more consistent attention than the themes and story beats. Some prescient subplots involving the Spanish Flu pandemic and an adjacent alligator are given short shrift, and one curious theatrical monologue doesn’t quite stick the cinematic landing. The film’s crafts including its score are roundly impressive, making the movie a triumph of style over substance. This is a slasher flick for the indie film set; but when you strip away the sparkling artifice, it’s sometimes not quite as special as its glamorous aspirations might imagine.
September 9 in theatres from 20th Century Studios. Now on demand.
The infamous Bates Motel has nothing on the vacation rental home at the center of Zach Cregger’s creative horror movie Barbarian (B), where two intriguing perfect strangers played by Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgård (“Pennywise” of It himself, a kind of Everyman without clown makeup) find they are mysteriously both booked the same night. Somehow there’s a feeling they may stay a while. It would be a Meet Cute if it weren’t so immediately creepy. Add in some toxic masculinity in the form of a crafty performance by Justin Long and some uneasy subplots which could make you wish for another infant formula shortage, and you have the strange elements of one of the most twisty terror fests of the year. Campbell is very committed to the protagonist role even though her mistake-prone character makes some outrageous decisions. Sometimes it feels she is playing into the audience’s delight at watching her make a decathlon of debacles, with parts of the plot clearly leaning into laughs. Cregger’s series of magic tricks, played so well in the first acts, sags a bit in the prestige. There are also a series of elevated horror concepts not sufficiently fleshed out. But overall it’s a bonkers good time with high production values (talk about a trap house!) and genuine psychological suspense. If you enjoyed last year’s Malignant or this year’s X, this feisty fright flick should be your jam.
Texting is vexing, words are blunt instruments and smartphones illuminate the unexpected in Halina Reijn’s dark comic horror movie Bodies Bodies Bodies (C+). This meta whodunit featuring a quintet of Gen Z actresses playing wealthy semi-strangers engaged in hardcore house-partying trades magnifying glasses for digital devices to examine a killing spree. The film, with its land grab of lewd lexicon and triggering aplenty, feels oddly hatched in a sassy sociology class. Reijn is fixated on allegory over actual scares while uncovering the carapace and contradiction among women of gentle demeanor becoming merciless in an Insta. Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalava seize some of the best acting moments, and Pete Davidson is a riot as a slacker and truth teller. The film’s most distinctive features are its lighting and cinematography, exploring a gleefully glowing aesthetic in the increasingly dark domicile. Whether the ensemble is intended to be the object of affection or ridicule, the group is fairly unlikable, which can distance the viewers from caring deeply. Despite some occasionally curious satirical ideas, this movie is hardly more frightening than a wi-fi outage.
Those harboring horror film history will have a sixth sense of what you get when it’s Kevin Bacon plus sleepaway camp: it’s not a lucky day for the teen participants. John Logan’s new film They/Them (B) is pronounced “they slash them,” and although it’s sometimes more effective as social commentary than horror movie, it’s often a riveting and surprisingly sensitive psychological adventure. Theo Germaine is absorbing as the non-binary protagonist in a talented LGBTQ ensemble, with Anna Chlumsky and Carrie Preston among the standout counselors at an outdoor conversion camp further complicated by the presence of a masked killer. Kevin Bacon is solid as the seemingly mild mannered but possibly sadistic camp leader; the actor clearly liked the concept enough to be a behind the scenes producer as well. The body count is punctuated by sterling doses of intimate drama and even a jubilant singalong to a Pink anthem. Just when folks thought it was safe to be out of the closet, this twisty tale provides refreshing riffs by the queer and loathing, especially when the usual roles occupied by damsels in distress are magnificently reversed and empowered. This is unexpected fare in the streaming wilderness of late summer.
Ethan Hawke has made some of the seminal movies about growing up and coming of age, and his casting against type as a terrifying child abductor and serial murderer in Scott Derrickson’s ‘70s-set scary movie The Black Phone (B+) is one of the project’s genius original flourishes. But the child actors Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw playing the lead siblings in this extremely entertaining film are the revelations that hold the puzzle pieces together. These charming teens are a delight, and their characters make way fewer novice mistakes in facing down their adversaries than those in typical slasher flicks. The grounded direction is taut and the story satisfying as the voices of past kidnapping victims lend the protagonist the courage to face his captor via the titular device. Some of the supernatural elements could have used a bit more explaining, but superb character work and period detail help propel the movie into the top-tier of recent elevated horror films. For its genuine performances and highly competent story beats alone, this film is a thrilling callback.
It’s possible for an elevated horror film to be so contemplative that it floats right above rational headspace. Alex Garland’s ambitious but only partially successful Men (C+) centers on Jessie Buckley as a widowed London woman who goes on a solo holiday in the English countryside but becomes disturbed by the men in the community. There’s sledgehammer allegory aplenty (sometimes as obvious as a big bite from the fruit of the courtyard apple tree) but ultimately lots of Garland’s creative visual flourishes including some “body horror” conceits haven’t been seen before. Viewers will soon know and appreciate why ensemble player Rory Kinnear is creepy menace personified. The film’s standout star though is Buckley, fresh off an Oscar nomination, who communicates bravery and dread in both plausible and outlandish parts of the story. Garland’s vision mostly exceeds his grasp in this outing, but he brings genuine characterization and suspense to the first two acts before the plot gets more toxic and off the rails than anyone expected.
It’s the rude versus the prude as a coterie of ‘70s pornographers makes their blue movie in the bleak barn of some sheltered country bumpkins in Ti West’s extremely watchable slasher film X (B+). Alternating between moments of tenderness and terror, it’s a highly entertaining American gothic as nubile humans soon find themselves the livestock on this farm. The women in the ensemble – Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega and Brittany Snow – get a campy showcase in West’s creative landscape, with Goth a stunning standout in a double role. It’s far from just scary or sensational as the director stages creepy bedroom scenes, overhead alligator attacks and at least one pitchfork perfect moment. There are knowing nods and homages to movie massacres of old, but the filming is a fresh, imaginative and sometimes funny take on the genre. It touches on sexual mores with religious undertones but ultimately is just a blissful horror movie. It’s bawdy and bloody, and you can’t take your eyes off of it.
A quarter century of death stab for cutie culminates in the sights and sounds of settling. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s 2022 reboot of Scream (C+), which is essentially the fifth movie in continuity in the meta horror whodunit series, takes place 25 years after the streak of fatal stabbings from the original film as a new killer dons the Ghostface mask and targets a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the small California town’s deadly past. The traditional cold open – this time featuring Jenna Ortega as the ingenue who gets a threatening phone call while alone at her house – is promising with its insider discussion of what makes an “elevated modern horror movie,” but alas the film that follows doesn’t further deliver on the premise to forge a more creative path with artier intentions. Instead we follow an ensemble of newcomers ranging from Melissa Barrera to Mikey Madison to Mason Gooding who are all given scant dialogue with which to work and collectively evoke minimal chemistry or empathy. Only Jack Quaid gets some funny throwaway lines as the character who perpetually states the obvious about the horror tropes the group is experiencing within the “rules of the requel,” kind of a sequel many years later bringing back familiar stars to extend a franchise. The film’s third act finally hits high gear as those original movie stars get their hand at revenge and redemption, with Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette all effective in resurrecting their wise and weary characters. The final thirty minutes is a hoot and while still not “elevating” the horror to any new plane at least delivers what fans of the series have come to expect and love: twists and turns of the knife and events. So ultimately the slow-burn pays off for the new directors taking over for the late Wes Craven , but it’s regretful the intro and finale have more impact than the sometimes sluggish songbook in between.
It’s a mob against the masked man in this not especially terrifying continuation of a retconned timeline horror mythology. After his successful 2018 reboot, David Gordon Green further builds his boogeyman opus with the second of a proposed trilogy, Halloween Kills (C), but this follow-up proves to be a rather routine slasher film despite being competently made. There’s a bit of a big chill in the air as reuniting survivors of violent attacks by serial killer Michael Myers form a vigilante squad to thwart him once and for all, or at least until the next planned sequel, while the largely sidelined Jamie Lee Curtis character Laurie Strode recovers in a hospital after a failed attempt at offing Myers. Judy Greer and Andi Matichak get little to do as the descendants of the Strode bloodline. Will Patton as a sheriff deputy and Anthony Michael Hall as one of the kids Laurie used to babysit also get few contributions aside from Hall’s frequent exclamation that, “Evil dies tonight!” The brute force body count and candied cornucopia of creative slayings should thrill hardcore fans of horror films, but the musings that the Town of Haddonfield is now basically cursed by fear that turns neighbors against one another, Purge style, doesn’t really stick. The only mild inspiration is that Michael’s childhood home is now occupied by a gay couple (Scott MacArthur and Michael McDonald) who view the domicile for its camp value; if only the irony were carried through in other vignettes, there might have been more cleverness amidst the carnage. This installment basically confirms a tradition of inferior sequels, treads water for most of its duration and portends a “Shape” of things to come.
More of a bonbon for cinephiles than a slasher contraption for the masses, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (B+) builds on producer Jordan Peele’s recent masterworks to expose horrors of the American race and class struggle. Her uncanny Chicago-set narrative about appropriation and gentrification focuses primarily on razor-focused actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen, who plays an artist obsessed with a new subject based on the urban legend of a hook-armed killer bearing sweets who once haunted the city’s projects. The talented Teyonah Parris provides a formidable foil as his partner, an art gallery executive trying to remain above the fray of mysterious mounting events. The ubiquitous Colman Domingo is also effective in a small role. The cinematography, music and menace are straight out of a Hitchcock or Kubrick composition, providing the typical tenets of the horror genre with a considerable upscale upgrade. The labyrinthine honeycomb of this only slightly supernatural take on the Windy City, filled with swirling bees, fun house mirrors, eerie incantations and blood dripping like honey through nooks and hallways, becomes an apt metaphor for twists to come. There are few extended sequences of gore or fan favorite jump scares; instead there is a gradual unveiling of themes and origin stories to stimulate the mind and provide a deeper sense of unsettling. Watch the color palette for clues, and enjoy creative montages including shadow puppets for clever insights into the backstory. DaCosta is all sting as she goes in for both the message and the kill, and if there were one constructive criticism to offer an already pensive film, it would be that it needed even more character development and nuance so that personal transformations could fire with additional intensity. DaCosta’s film is strong and beguiling, and it could become one of those unsuspecting art films to mysteriously rule the box office.
