The Love Witch (2016)

Director: Anna Biller
Writer(s): Biller
Starring: Samantha Robinson, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Laura Waddell and Gian Keys

There aren’t too many movies like Anna Biller’s The Love Witch, a film that she not only wrote and directed, but also produced, edited, and scored. It’s a rather bizarre comedic throwback to ‘60s horror. So unique is it that it’s rather hard to explain to those who have not been cast under its spell. 

Samantha Robinson is the beautiful Elaine, a witch who doesn’t seem to have much luck with members of the opposite sex, despite her frequent use of love potions and spells. So she kills them, before almost immediately moving on to the next one. She reeks of desperation, falling immediately for man after man and hoping that they will simply return her love and turn her into a housewife.

Unfortunately, Elaine’s witch instincts are rather poor; she often “overdoses” her subjects with spells that are too strong; as a result, they turn from “typical” cold-hearted men, into sappy, oversentimental babies who become too dependent on her. This, we quickly learn, is a turnoff for our protagonist: Even the desperate have their limits, after all.

No one seems to notice her killing spree (when friends ask, she merely tells them that she had to call off the relationship because they were too clingy), allowing her to continue with reckless abandon. There’s a hilarious scene in which she seduces - and then kills - the husband of a close friend while she is out of town, then keeps trying to change the subject when her distraught friend tries to tell her about her husband’s murder. 

Of course, all “good” things must come to an end; soon, she discovers that a police detective is hot on her trail. He is good-looking and confident, the way all men “should” be, which naturally makes him an ideal mate. She manages to seduce him…with unintended results. Is the man tasked with taking her down the man of her dreams? Or will he be just another victim to her ongoing scheme?

What’s refreshing is that this isn’t some cliched story about a woman who’s carrying out premeditated murder. Well, I guess it’s premeditated in that, at some point, she knows she’s going to carry it out, but Elaine goes into each relationship actually hoping that she has just met “the one”. She’s ready to settle down with any man who succumbs to her charms, which is also a reference to the male-dominated world of the ‘60s. 

Where the film gets its charm is from its trippy aesthetic: characters dressed in ‘60s style attire, are surrounded by decor and paraphernalia from the same decade, yet it’s actually set in the present day. Adding to the film’s sense of style are the “theatrical”, stilted performances - done intentionally in yet another homage to the style of the ‘60s - which somehow feels appropriate and is well-executed, although it certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste. 

Robinson is perfectly cast as the sultry seductress. At the risk of sounding shallow (I know, I know, looks aren’t everything) it’s easy to see how she could lure so many men under her spell. She does have a natural presence about her that also puts the viewer under her spell; we cheer for her to find her soulmate, even as it becomes more and more evident that such a man might not exist. She’s charming and likable; even we are willing to overlook her murderous streak, in the hopes that she finds her Mr. Right.

Its sole downfall is that it is painfully overlong, clocking in at exactly two hours. While that might commonly be seen as a minor transgression in most films, it’s a rather large one for a film like this, where the hammy acting and campy style all starts to lose its luster and become rather tedious. If the length felt necessary to fully explore the story, that’s obviously one thing. Yet its plot is simple enough that it easily could have been trimmed of some of its “fat”, without ruining the story or breaking its momentum. It never fully qualifies as “boring”, but it surely comes closer to eliciting that emotional state than it should.

Despite that, I’m certainly recommending The Love Witch to anyone looking for a unique spin on the horror genre; especially those who are typically not fans of such films. Those devoted to the genre might be off-put by the weird style, and lack of focus on the horrific elements (which are often played for lighthearted laughs), but for anyone with an open mind, The Love Witch provides enough character to distinguish itself in an overcrowded genre.

RATING: 6.5/10.

CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: A Christmas in Vermont (2016)

Director: Fred Olen Ray
Writer(s): Michael Varrati and Fred Olen Ray, based on a story by Jeffrey Schenck and Peter Sullivan
Starring: Abigail Hawk, Chevy Chase, David O'Donnell, and Howard Hesseman

Here we have a movie produced by Fred Olen Ray, who directed softcore porn for two decades before making the sudden switch to Christmas movies (no joke!); he was also responsible for the Lifetime “thriller” Deadly Shores, which was somehow even worse than the average Lifetime movie—and that's saying a lot. It also stars a woman who is not conventionally attractive which—let's be honest here, and as shallow as it is—is sometimes the only thing that gets us through to the end of some of these holiday duds (never underestimate the strength of an attractive cast, a notion that's magnified when everything else around them is terrible). Then, there's the tired plot, in which said woman works for a heartless boss who wants to close down a business in a small Vermont town just days before Christmas. No way she'll have a change of heart and fall in love with the owner, who happens to be an attractive man around her age! Still not sold on its awfulness? Did I mention that the boss is played by Chevy Chase, who looks like a balloon version of himself, is notoriously difficult to work with (in general), and whose best comedic days are behind him? Clearly, this movie sucks...right?

But this is also the season of miracles, and that is the only explanation I can convince myself of as to why A Christmas in Vermont not only isn't groan-inducingly awful, but a genuinely good example of a holiday movie. I mean, sure, technically after watching it, I can tell you why it's not bad: The acting is uniformly above par all around, the characters are more fleshed out than normal, and Chevy Chase is genuinely hilarious in a role that he probably had no interest in doing. Even by the end, the “unattractive” (which, to be fair, I never actually said) female lead, Abigail Hawk (who I just discovered is known for her role as a lead character is the godforsakenly awful "Blue Bloods", a staple as background noise in the homes of those aged 65 and up) is adorable, thanks to the personality she lends her character, and the conviction with which she plays her part. It's not really any of those things that are shocking in and off themselves, but given the “talent” involved, it's baffling to me how all of those things came together on this set, resulting in a movie full of genuine charm that, at least on paper, shouldn't even be watchable.

It's definitely not perfect: Morgan Fairchild (yes, that one!) is completely wasted as the lead dude's mom, a role that there is absolutely no need for. I'm also still waiting for that Christmas movie that has the nerve to avoid some of the more annoying tropes, such as the “overheard quote taken out of context that leads to the sudden argument between the yuletide couple just as things seem to be going perfectly”; unfortunately, we're still treated to that here. But such moments are at least offset by caring characters, such as the “wise old man” (again, usually the most annoying character in every movie, but not so here), who come off less as the caricatures they've become from appearing in so many of these tired tales, and more like genuine people. Who knew it was actually possible to laugh at a Christmas movie when you're supposed to, and that there could be joy derived from means other than making fun of the incompetence in which they were made?

In the end, A Christmas in Vermont succeeds when it shouldn't, by showing what can happen when a mismatched cast and crew can come together to create a cohesive whole; it's mind-boggling, and perhaps an even more inspiring testament to the magic of the holiday season than the story itself.

RATING: 7.5/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: 911 Nightmare (aka Dispatch) (2016)

Director: Craig Moss
Writer(s): Bryan Dick
Starring: Fiona Gubelmann, John Lee Ames, Scott Bailey, and Scott Broderick

I probably sound like a broken record: there are only so many euphemisms and synonyms for “terrible”, and running through MarVista’s movie catalogue has certainly tested my vocabulary limitations in that regard. But the main issue at play here, and one that I keep learning the farther and farther I dip into this project, is just how many different layers, of “bad” there really are: Every time I think I’ve experienced the pinnacle of incompetence, another movie comes along that tests my limits even more.

Case in point: I have reamed many a-main character from the studio’s repertoire for being unlikable, but none of them have ever approached the reprehensible levels of Fiona Gubelmann’s Christine McCullers. Here’s a woman who has literally been directly responsible for all of the hardships she faces, yet still plays the pity card at every turn, as if she’s a victim of circumstances outside her control. And I guess we, as the viewer, are just supposed to support her as she never learns her lesson, continuing to dig herself in deeper; we’re supposed to find our solace in knowing that this is a MarVista movie, and that, by the end, we know all of her misfortunes will turn completely around.

But I didn’t. I hated her from the first moment I saw her, and I hated her more with each passing minute, to the extent that even finishing this movie became a blood-boiling chore. I have said before that there’s nothing worse than a movie that causes feelings of indifference over hatred, because at least hatred makes you feel something, whereas indifference is just…boring; here's a movie that surely pushes the truth of that theory to its absolute limits.

Christine is a cop on the “rough” streets of a small, unnamed city (the only kind in these movies), where she patrols with her father. One night, while driving a routine route, the cops see a hooded figure running down the sidewalk, a flailing woman frantically giving chase. With no idea of what’s going on, or even what crime (if any) has been committed, Christine jumps out of the car, ignores her father’s pleas to wait for backup (you'll quickly learn that listening to others is not her strong suit), follows the subject into the alley, and confronts him at gunpoint.

Her quick action results in the city's biggest bust to date: a 15-year-old kid who has stolen a bag of chips from a convenience store. He claims it’s because his mom hasn’t been home in days, and that he’s hungry, but Christine still informs him that she must arrest him. Huh? A kid? Over an item that couldn’t cost more than $2? Sure, lady. (Granted, she at least has an understanding, consoling tone, and doesn’t come off as some brash, trigger happy officer, but this is still pretty stupid.) In just one instance of many that makes Christine look like a bungling idiot—Mr. Magoo made flesh—the dumb bitch somehow lets a teenaged child squirm free of her grasp, grab her gun, and turn the tables. Of course now is when her dad joins the fray and takes charge of the situation, calming the subject down, who gives clear signs that he is about to surrender. And this is the moment—this very moment when the situation is under complete control--that Ms. McCunters decides is the perfect time to go for a backup gun she has hidden away; when her dad notices, he yells for her to stop (probably not the smartest thing he could do in that situation), the young kid panics, and shoots them both before getting shot himself. Both the victim, and Christine's dad die in the ensuing shootout; perhaps saddest of all is that Christine does not.

When we next see her, a little while later, she is suffering a limp from a bullet that hit her upper torso. (Seriously, in the opening scene, she lays in a pool of her own blood, body only seen from the waist up; not once is a leg injury even hinted at. Even later on, when they replay the shooting, she is clearly shot above the legs.) Her disability prevents her from patrolling the streets (probably a good thing for all), and has instead confined her to a dispatcher role. As it turns out, she sucks at that, too.

One day, a kid calls in, claiming he’s seen a boogeyman, and that he needs help. Christine dismisses it as a prank call almost immediately, and urges the child, several times, to hang up, stressing that the line is for emergency calls only. She clearly sounds agitated, finding relief only after the kid finally complies with her request. A couple of days later she’s called into the office to speak with her bosses: turns out the child she ignored was actually pleading for help on behalf of another kid, a teen who was murdered that night. She’s placed on unpaid suspension barring the outcome of the ensuing investigation, then for another two months after they find her negligible, but somehow valuable enough not to terminate.

Despite her “suspended” status, though—and also in spite of the fact she hasn’t been an actual cop for months—the police station never takes her gun or her badge away. And do you know why that’s convenient? Because she doesn’t think the widely-accepted suspects, the boy’s parents, are the ones that carried out this heinous crime! So, after already getting her father, and another boy killed through her incompetence, and with a job she desperately needs on the line, she launches her own investigation into the murder that she herself failed to stop. Can you say “tone deaf”?

The aforementioned “investigation” consists of tracking down people that the police should have already talked to (but, in some cases, didn't), and either pulling out a gun and yelling at them to admit to things they didn’t actually do, or asking basic suspects basic questions that the police no doubt already asked. All this and for what? What’s her endgame? In order to truly care for a character, you have to understand and care for their goal. What does she honestly hope to accomplish by doing this, and, perhaps more importantly, why should we care? This isn't some woman who's been a victim of unfortunate circumstance: This is a woman so stupid, she’s already killed two people through her own selfish actions, actions which she never shows a shred of remorse or accountability over (and the one time she does, she's clearly seeking validation from a friend). Despite her assurance that it's all about justice, and the synopsis assuring us it's about her guilt, it never comes across that way: instead, the investigation just feels like a way for her to clear her name, despite actually having legitimate blood on her hands.

To cope with all of the bad luck that she has completely brought upon herself, she frequents a local bar, where she somehow meets an attractive man who takes an interest in her. She assures him that he shouldn’t be interested, and shows her the crutch she uses to get around, something that’s pretty goddamned obvious considering she stumbles around everywhere in the first few scenes like a baby duck trying to walk for the first time in the movie's initial post-injury stages; an injury that seems to change in location and severity by the minute. The man, who luckily for her happens to be an actual cop with real credentials, assures her it’s okay and that he still wants to be with her, even though she has absolutely no appealing characteristics whatsoever. (No joke, she smiles once the entire movie, and spends the rest of the time either pitying herself, or using other people for her own personal gain.)

There have been several other movies where I’ve been against the leads getting together: most of the time, it’s simply because the actors are awful, or lack the basic chemistry necessary to make me think they deserve each other. Other times, despite the writers’ insistence that you cheer for them to get with the other lead, they just seem to fit better with a different character. But this is the very first time where the thought of her with anyone made me physically ill: this is an abhorrent character, who has wreaked havoc on herself and everything around her, without so much as an apology, or a basic acknowledgment that she is a terrible person; the idea that we are supposed to cheer for her to do anything except die alone is one of the great miscalculations of the entire 21^st century. (Actually, the love story isn't necessary at all; it would still be an awful movie without it, but at least a little shorter and minus one overblown plot point.)

Anyway, her investigation picks up: she starts enlisting the aide of actual on-duty cops to help her, something that would get everyone involved fired if they found out. But why should she care how her terrible decisions and complete lack of moral awareness affect others? She's got a name to clear, and it's entirely her own. Oh, and the parents who are going to jail for murdering their kid, but they are just the lucky beneficiaries of her obsessive need to prove to everyone that she's right about everything, and everyone else is wrong.

So she breaks into house after house, and follows suspect after suspect, and falls down from her slight knee bruise that's made to sound like an amputation-worthy injury (no joke) time and time again, all without police credentials or a search warrant, and all without the department's knowledge that she's going behind their backs to find a killer that they don't seem to have any interest in finding. If only they all had selfish reasons to dig deeper into the evidence like Ms. Child Killer does here, maybe they would have seen the errors of their ways and tried to find the real perpetrator a little harder.

Really, it all comes down to three words: fuck this movie. Fuck everything about it. It's alarming in its tone-deaf sincerity, in which we're supposed to cheer for a former police officer to avoid accountability for her own actions. So heartless is this cunt, that the only time we ever hear her apologize is to a man with whom she had a one night stand, and then kicked him out the following morning—and only because she needs his help. She doesn't apologize to her father's grave, or even to the mother of the child she so carelessly allowed to be killed, who she visits in prison simply to tell her she believes she's innocent; she doesn't apologize to the janitor she holds at gunpoint, screaming at him to admit to murders he never committed. This is a woman who finds her entire life in hot water thanks to a series of bad decisions, and the only way she can fathom getting out is by making a series of even worse decisions.

And of course, it works, because by the end, she solves the murder and gets her old job back. She also gets the officer to fall for her, despite having the personality of a fucking napkin (actually, that's not true, because napkins clean up messes instead of constantly creating them). Nevermind that she trespassed and gained every bit of evidence illegally, and that she risked the jobs—and lives--of others to achieve her own goal...all that matters is that she managed to prove that for every two lives she murders, she's able to save the only one that matters to her: her own.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)

• The scene where a superior makes fun of her limp while making a crying face is both politically incorrect, and absolutely fucking hilarious; in fact, it's the only scene that isn't genuinely infuriating in the entire movie (although the scene right after, in which Christine is so enraged by it that she throws her cane away and walks down the stairs perfectly fine, is.)
• DRINKING GAME: Every time that stupid bitch falls, take a drink.
• If you're going to have a movie where the main character has to alternate between limping and crying all the time, shouldn't you make sure to hire an actress that can consistently do both?
• DRINKING GAME: Every time her limp changes, take a drink. In the beginning it's cartoonishly overblown, and by the end it's very nearly forgotten, yet we're notified she's very close to needing it removed because it's so badly damaged, and she falls over in dangerous situations no fewer than four times.
• She's broken into that suspect's house so many times at this point, that I think she owes him rent money.
• NOTE: If you're ever going to break into someone's house, it's probably a good idea not to touch their mail.
• How does she get to call the shots all the time? Her “partner's” a cop who doesn't have blood on his hands, and is actually still a credentialed cop, for God's sake, and yet she's ordering him around like she isn't the worst officer ever to don a uniform.
• If you're building a case around someone, it's probably not a great idea to do it in a car parked right in front of their house.
• It's also probably not a great idea to use the same car, parked directly in front, for several days, either.
• She calls an officer friend to warn him of impending danger; he doesn't get notification of the call or texts despite literally using his phone to take pictures at the exact same time.
• Example of her outstanding police ability: (Subject far away at night) “Freeze!” (subject runs; she takes one step forward and falls down).

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 0/10.

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CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: A Puppy for Christmas (2016)

You would think the addition of a dog (or any animal, for that matter) to a sentimental Christmas story would be a guaranteed home run, but leave it up to those fine folks at MarVista to find a way to screw it up.

Noelle is a grown woman who has always been obsessed with the idea of owning a dog, but has never been able to get one, because, you know, dogs are ultra-rare and hard-to-find. Her latest dog-prevention obstacle is that the man she's been seeing for five years, ultra-douche extraordinnaire Todd, is allergic to them—until she learns that some dogs are hypo-allergenic, so she goes out and buys one. Turns out, Todd is not allergic to them, but is afraid of commitment, so he dumps her.

Meanwhile, for being so obsessed with dogs, it turns out Noelle has never actually researched anything about them; she takes the puppy to work with her, apparently thinking they come pre-trained. Of course, the puppy gets into adorable mischief that captures the attention of Liam, the rugged hunk that writes the “Adventure” column for the newspaper. After sleeping in her office overnight since she has nowhere else to go (?) she is caught by Liam, who invites her to his remote house for the weekend. This is perfect timing, because he's awaiting the arrival of his fiance, who no one in his family has ever met, and having the woman you're going to marry come home to you alone with a strange woman is probably a really great idea.

Thankfully, it's not so awkward because his family is there to surprise them with a surprise engagement party! After explaining that Noelle is not his fiance (thank God it at least avoided that trope), the two settle down with family, as Liam's real fiance keeps postponing the trip, eventually making it obvious she's never coming back. Good thing sparks are flying between him and Noelle! But it can't just be that easy—after an incredibly lame party, Todd realizes that he gave up a good gal, and tries to woo her back. Which man will she choose?

Really, it all comes down to the characters: Noelle is annoying as shit, and seems completely mismatched in all facets against the good-looking Liam. There was no part of me that felt they were a good match or wanted them to get together, and that's kind of the whole point of the movie. Then there's the whole point of the dog: I didn't even want it to get stuck with Noelle, who never seems to have any time for it amidst trying to fall in love and screwing up at every turn. Again, she shows no signs of anyone who has ever wanted a dog for a minute, let alone her whole life, as the narrative assures us is the case.

It's watchable by the slimmest of margins, and didn't fill me with the level of holiday rage that some of these movies do, but it's one that both animal lovers, and good movie lovers should skip altogether.

RATING: 3/10

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Better Watch Out (2016)

Director: Chris Peckover
Writer(s): Zack Kahn and Peckover, from a story by Kahn.
Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould, and Aleks Mikic

There are an untold number of films that give away too much in the trailer. For example, a specific twist, or a key scene, or a bit of foreshadowing that, once you start watching the movie, makes everything come together and eliminates the need for you to actually sit through it. After all, studios make their money by putting people in theater seats, regardless of what they think of the film, and so they will do anything they can to put butts in the seats.

Along these same lines, there are films that are also intentionally mis-marketed and made into something that they aren't, often with disastrous results. For example, studio execs may decide to put an emphasis on action in a film that focuses more on dialogue and pacing, to make it seem more action-packed than it really is, and to appeal more to people who enjoy that kind of film. It's a deceiving tactic, but Hollywood isn't a world known for its honesty. Besides, once they get you to commit, and take your money, there's little you can do (besides ask for a refund, which is oddly something that very few people seem to ever do; thinking about it, I've never thought of doing it, and I've hated plenty of theatrical films that I've seen).

But rarely has the art of the trailer been so brilliantly subverted as it is in Chris Peckover's Better Watch Out, a film that intentionally prepares you for something that it's not. It's all just one layer of unpredictability in a film that gleefully subverts genre expectations to deliver a film that still delivers the promised dark comedy, albeit in a very unexpected manner. (Also, ignore the multiple reviews that claim the finale abandons humor in favor of seriousness; it doesn't, though the already dark comedy does find a darker shade of black.)

Olivia DeJonge plays Ashley, a teenaged babysitter who has been tasked with watching over 12-year-old Luke (excellently played by Levi Miller) while his parents go to a party. Judging from the interactions between the two, she has done this many times before, but this night is different; she will be moving out of the state in just a couple short weeks, and wanted to say goodbye to the family by babysitting Luke one final time.

But what should be an easy paycheck starts to go off the rails from the outset: her boyfriend Ricky keeps calling her, much to the chagrin of Luke, who plans on letting her know how he really feels by putting the moves on her. This becomes both of their smallest concerns when figures start appearing in the windows, and noises are heard outside. Soon after, an upstairs window breaks; a quick investigation reveals that the culprit is a brick featuring a pretty straightforward, but rather frightening warning--”U Leave, U Die”. Luke's friend Garrett tests this theory by losing his cool and running panicked out the backdoor—and that's when everyone learns that whoever is behind this means business. Are these the actions of a spurned ex-boyfriend? A jealous current boyfriend? Or something else entirely?

And that's also where I will drop you off on this plot guide, because to go any further would require me to reveal certain plot points that are an integral part of the viewing experience. In fact, do yourself a favor and go into a viewing of this knowing as little as possible, and that will severely heighten the chances that you appreciate the twists and turns; the countless zigs and the zags.

The strengths of Better Watch Out are numerous, ranging from the quality of the script, to the brilliant performances throughout. In the past it has always felt like horror films in general—from the big budget studio fare, all the way down to the indiest of indies—have always been treated as an afterthought, with B-grade (or worse) talent being shoved in front of and behind the cameras. Now, with the success of movies like the It remake, and Get Out bringing large quantities of cash and success to studios (who only care about the cash part), it seems that the genre is finally starting to be taken seriously as a whole, rather than just the catalyst of pointless fads (the non-stop onslaught of post-Scream slasher films; the non-stop onslaught of post-Blair Witch found footage films).

It also marks the first time in a long while that I wasn't turned off by a characters' actions. All of them act within their characterizations, with no one breaking character to do something incredibly dumb. Granted, much of this is cleverly avoided by keeping characters within confined areas (thus severely limiting the number of available actions to them in the first place), but that's also a testament to the tightness of the idea and ensuing execution. (The one moment that could be considered a convenient bit of horror ignorance actually turns out to be a perfectly calculated moment when the plot starts falling into place.)

Imagine my surprise when a quick search revealed that this was not the creation of an up-and-coming horror auteur, but rather a work of a man whose previous sole feature-length directing credit was 2010's indifferently-received found-footage thriller Undocumented, which seems like such a run-of-the-mill horror film that I never even bothered to watch it, despite being tempted numerous times in the past by the admittedly intriguing poster. I still won't, for fear that it will lead me to lose respect for the man, but it's also a sobering reminder that (sometimes) talent cannot be judged just from one or two works. (To wit, who would have ever expected that Peter Jackson, he of Dead/Alive and Meet the Feebles infamy, would go on to helm one of the most epic and widely-acclaimed trilogies in the history of film?)

The ending did wrap things up a little too nicely for my liking, but I suppose it will be a welcome diversion for most audiences, who I'm told do not appreciate endless bleakness and nihilism, especially in their Christmas stories (and for what it's worth, there is a coda after the credits that actually addresses the “kindness” of the ending). That's really the only drawback in a film that's otherwise strong in just about ever other category. It will be interesting to see how time treats this: it will no doubt be on the short list of Christmas-themed horror classics, that much is known, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it on the list of top horror films of the year, decade, or maybe even quarter-century.

RATING: 9/10

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Always Shine (2016)

Director: Sophia Takal
Writer(s): Lawrence Michael Levine
Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Caitlin FitzGerald, Lawrence Michael Levine, and Khan Baykal

There were some rumblings about Always Shine when it was making its rounds through the festival circuit, where it seemed to be getting plenty of hype; I had forgotten all about it, and pegged it more as a drama, until it showed up to stream on Shudder, a horror-only streaming service. This once again drew my interest back into the project. One night, the wife and I decided to watch a movie, narrowed it down to two options, still couldn't make a final decision, and let a coin toss decide. Always Shine it was.

This is a bizarre little film that seems to owe almost its entire identity to David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, a fitting irony for a film that is so concerned with identity. But whereas that was made by a master director arguably at the top of its craft, Always Shine was made by someone at the opposite end of the spectrum: a director who has only one other feature-length film to their credit. Oh, and it's a woman. Bet you can't name three female directors not named Kathryn Bigelow! This is the kind of mountain women in the film industry face.

Always Shine begins with Beth performing an audition for a horror movie, during which she is informed that there will be a substantial amount of nudity required for her character. She is hesitant, and it is clear that she is not interested in doing that again (we later learn she has gotten naked in virtually every part she has accepted), but she cannot say “no”, and so she accepts. She is actually like this throughout life, a pushover who is incapable of letting out her true feelings; from this we can gather she's been walked on her entire life.

Next, we are introduced to Anna. She is also auditioning for a role in which she is angry that a mechanic did extra work without asking her first, and now wants to charge her an extra $300. In the film's only clever twist, it turns out this is not an audition after all, but her actually in a car shop yelling at the mechanic. From this, we learn that Anna is fierce and confrontational, the exact opposite of Beth.

So, of course, they are good friends who are planning a weekend getaway. They had fallen out of touch with each other a while back, but want to make amends and regain the relationship they once had. Only, it seems something is aloof right from the outset: both girls are insanely awkward around each other, as if they've never met before. I guess this was just to show the length of time that they'd been out of touch, but it's weird that people that were once so close, can devolve into almost instant strangers just a few years later. I mean, it's awkward to the point that I'm surprised one of them doesn't just decide this outing is a bad idea, and back out.

Anyway, through a series of instances, we can tell that Anna is jealous of Beth; herself a struggling actress, she resents Beth for consistently landing roles and getting all the attention from men, and sees her success as a threat. Her hatred continues to reach fever pitch as she learns more and more about her former best friend: Beth resents her because she feels like Anna is a much better actress than her, and actually stalled on giving her agent Anna's portfolio, out of fear that Anna would upstage her. It doesn't take much imagination to figure that Anna will overhear all of this and get angry, which is what happens.

Beth finally decides she's had enough, and chases Anna out into the woods. We never see what happens, but all of a sudden Beth inherits Anna's personality. She cuts and dyes her red hair into blonde, and gets all the attention that she never got before. Anna makes fleeting appearances...or does she? They are quick, almost ghost-like, in which she disappears just as quickly as she arrived. Is it a manifestation of Beth's guilty mind? Or have they really switched personalities?

The entire finale feels ripped out of the David Lynch handbook, complete with deja vu and flashbacks, as the two girls reverse their roles, and the film goes for a dreamlike atmosphere. The events leading up to the end are largely convincing in their gradual intensity, though, thanks mainly to the performances of Mackenzie Davis (as Anna; you may remember her as the nerdy lesbian in the wildly popular Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”) and Caitlin FitzGerald (as Beth), the two best friends. What is less convincing, though, is how they were ever friends to begin with.

This is just an example where too much ambiguity seems to sabotage the results. What starts off as a rather intriguing character study between two friends, abandons reality for its surrealistic ending, and suffers for it. Why be weird when there's no reason to be? A further annoyance is the relationship between the two characters: I mentioned that the actors give it their all, and they really do, but they are let down in the writing department because their characters never feel like more than bitter enemies. Even in the early scenes of them on their way to Big Sur (their destination spot), there is an unspoken tension between them that kind of hinders the rest of the proceedings: If someone is that bizarre from the outset, why would you follow through by voluntary quarantining yourself with them in a beach house somewhere for an entire week? I guess it just goes to show you how complacent Beth is, but it's agonizing for the viewer, who has to watch two annoying characters out-complain one another.

I think director Sonia Takal has a great understanding of pace—it all happens at a believable, perfect clip—but by having everything feel false from the outset doesn't really make us want to invest in any of these characters. They are simply two people who label themselves as friends, but who secretly (to themselves, anyway) feel nothing but deep resentment for the other. The final “twist” into ambiguous dreamlike fantasy atmosphere is rather pointless, and feels artsy for the sake of reviving its--by this point--long-bored audience.

There are a lot of things to like here, just more things to dislike, and that's what makes Almost Shine...well...well-titled in more ways than one.

RATING: 5/10

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Train to Busan (2016)

Director: Sang-ho Yeon
Writer(s): Yeon
Starring: Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim, Yu-mi Jun, and Dong-seok Ma

There are some movies that start off so ingeniously and unique that you just know they're going to be good; Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan is such a film. A man driving an urgent package to an urgent destination drops his phone and, while attempting to retrieve it, hits something in the middle of the road. It's a deer. He surveys the damage to the front of his truck, and looks a little upset, but the package is too important to care about anything else. He gets back in his car and drives off.

But the slow tracking shot back to the deer, along with the ominous swell to the soundtrack, tell us that something is not right. The animal is still, blood surrounding its body, just as we would expect. Then, it starts to twitch, then violently—and ever so awkwardly—jumps to its feet, the camera lingering closely on its face at which point what we already knew is explicitly verified: this deer might be moving, but it's not alive.

It's really quite an in-your-face open that sets you up for the “anything goes” world that you will be inhabiting for two hours. But there's also an ugly side to Train to Busan, one that's in direct contrast to the popcorn atmosphere that the film is trying to achieve. And it, too, is foreshadowed right from the outset.

In the very next scene we are introduced to Seok Woo, a businessman for a large corporation who seems deeply involved in his work. As it turns out, he is, to the point that he has to ask a coworker what to get his daughter for her birthday...after being reminded that tomorrow is, in fact, her birthday. Not surprisingly, we later learn, that selfish attitude is the main reason behind his impending divorce. Nothing in this movie can be that simple, though, so naturally, there's some collateral damage in this situation: their young daughter, who also happens to be celebrating her birthday the following day. And, of course, her only wish is for Seok to take her to Busan, to see her soon-to-be-estranged mother. Seok, ever the businessman, tries to use the “I'm too busy” excuse, but finally caves in to his daughter's request.

And that, even more than the occasionally amazing action scenes, becomes the film's trademark: It's all covered in a cloying saccharine coating, where every event feels like little more than a reason to beat us over the head with more emotion. Yes, we already get the strained relationship between father and child, because it's instantly made evident in several of the opening scenes. We already get that the child, who cannot be more than ten years old, is innocent, and sweet, and pure, and merely a victim of her father's workaholism. Yet the movie still rubs our noses in just how angelic the daughter is, even at the common sense cost of safety: After his father, a high-ranking executive, is tipped off about a route to avoid that would lead to guaranteed quarantine, she tries rushing off to tell everyone else. But when she is stopped, her father informing her that it's every man for himself in this scenario (a sad, but hard, truth), she accuses him of being selfish. Sure, stupid kid, it's only a good decision if you agree with it, even if your stupidity leads to the deaths of everyone around you, right? It's a movie that so desperately wants us to take it seriously, that it's impossible to feel anything but utter annoyance, especially as the painful outpouring of emotions continues to be a story device until the very end.

Now, don't take this rant the wrong way: there are movies that have successfully pulled off the difficult combination of emotion and horror. The Orphanage is a phenomenal example; it scared and moved me almost in equal measure. Even B-movies can do it: Trollhunter is unexpected proof of that, a film that had the audacity to “humanize” its monsters, something Hollywood would never have the guts to do. But the problem is the way Busan tries going about it: in the most formulaic, mundane ways imaginable. Each “heart-tugging” scene feels like it was ripped out of a Hallmark channel film, and with the same amount of conviction as you will find in those, which are themselves, tired retreads of one another.

Then there are the group of survivors, which are completely generic in mind and action. We already have “indifferent businessman who will change his ways and become a hero”, and “completely angelic little girl” covered, but there's also “popular cheerleader/athlete combo”, “rough-around-the-edges man who turns out to have a heart of gold”, his wife, who ticks the box marked “pregnant”, “homeless man who turns out to be okay after all”, etc., etc., etc. Bringing the groan-inducing cast of characters to completion is the “whiny rich man who will survive at all costs”; he also doubles as the film's central living villain, as if the overwhelming hordes of the undead aren't enough. It all becomes too much, and it eventually comes falling down under the weight of its own half-assed (though admittedly ambitious) ideas.

The title pretty much sums up the plot, in which a zombie outbreak befalls a train, leading the dwindling number of survivors to stay alive as long as possible against the growing hordes of the undead. That's it. And within this context, there are certainly some fantastic action sequences that show director Sang-ho Yeon can be a force to be reckoned with....no matter how much of a seasoned horror or action film fan you are, there's virtually guaranteed to be at least one scene that will drop your jaw to the floor. Along those same lines, I can't chastise him for lack of ambition, and many of the special effects are very well done. And the zombie movements, as well as their intense desperation to kill, are some of the best I've ever seen in a zombie movie, period.

It just becomes a problem when you're more dreading the obligatory banter between scenes, than you are looking forward to the action. And the longer that went on, the more I found myself disappointed with many of the “fight” sequences, which are largely bloodless (or only lightly bloodied), and in which it becomes clear just who the screenplay is favoring at any given time. If tired predictability is your favorite trait in a horror film, then you will have a great time riding this train; it's just an English-language audio track away from a multi-million dollar run at the multiplexes.

RATING: 5/10

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Blair Witch (2016)

Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Simon Barrett
Starring: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Corbin Reid, and Brandon Scott

I think I've made it pretty clear what I think of Adam Wingard in previous reviews: he's a hack. He's an unoriginal filmmaker who gets heaps of praise primarily because one of his best friends is Brad Miska, the man who founded, and runs, horror news site Bloody Disgusting. This ensures every one of his films is overhyped to thousands of rabid horror fans, who eagerly gobble up what they've been force-fed, and go to the theaters with the mindset that they are watching a true genius in action. In fact, Miska produced A Horrible Way to Die, Wingard's first horrible film, and then moved on to the V/H/S trilogy, of which Wingard directed a segment in the first one.

The case continues with Blair Witch, on which Miska did not have a (credited) hand, but who was sure to have two quotes in the first trailer (including “one of the scariest films ever made” despite it clearly not being anything close to that), and who went on and on in endless hyperbolic praise about how much of a “game changer” it is in a 4.5/5 skull review on his own website (read the comments to see how well that went over).

The original Blair Witch Project actually was, for its time at least, one of the scariest films ever made. The brilliant marketing strategy had people believing that it was, in fact, real, and the film's refusal to show its monster (or witch, as it were) is the reason for the film's success. But time, over which thousands (perhaps literally, or perhaps just an over-exaggeration based on perception) of similar films have ripped off its conceit, has not been kind to the original: I tried watching it again a couple of years ago and couldn't even make it halfway through. What was once an effective piece of horror has since been watered down by the many films that ripped it off; while I still admire it and would consider it an essential piece of horror, it lacks almost all of the power that it once had.

Well, the only thing Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's remake/re-imagining/sequel/whatever it is seems to have taken from the original, is that screaming characters running through woods is the only thing that made it work, because that's all we get for just about the whole thing. Oh, and CGI monsters. In other words, take everything that is weak about not just found footage films, but horror films in general, and you know exactly what to expect from this one.

But you know what? I don't even place most of the blame on Wingard (or even his frequent writing partner Barrett) for this poorly scripted mess; this is no doubt the ill-advised idea of an idiot studio executive who decided to cash in on a franchise was that was past its shelf date fifteen years ago. In studio fare like this, it's hard to tell just how many ideas the studio pushed upon Wingard and Barrett, so I can't even chastise them for all the poor decisions and characterizations that are inflicted upon the poor, hapless audience. Truth be told, the odds were stacked against anyone dumb (or desperate) enough to take this project; I can't imagine any genre filmmaker that could have taken this idea and turned it into a formidable film.

The original clearly had the upper hand by being one of the first films to do what it did, but beyond that, also had a believable cast that looked like everyday people. The mostly-improvised dialogue (and scare scenes) also pushed the authenticity a little farther, to the point that it wasn't hard to see why so many people fell for the idea that it was real footage. This Blair Witch reboot/remake/re-imagining fails from the first frame, in which we're told basically the same thing as we were told in the original: that this movie is made up of real found footage. Yeah, like this isn't a gimmick that was beaten completely to death ten years ago. Then we get our first glimpse of the attractive cast of “Dawson's Creek”-style characters, who are clearly reciting bad lines, poorly. Great idea, Lionsgate execs!

I suppose I should touch upon the plot, as threadbare and repetitive as it is: James Donahue believes he sees his sister in a YouTube video of the old cabin from the first Blair Witch, and enlists the aide of three friends to go help find her. The online footage was supposedly found out in the woods by a couple of locals, Lane and Talia, who are obsessed with the myths; they refuse to reveal where they found the tape unless James and his crew takes them along. Reluctantly, they agree.

Then, if you've seen the first film, you've pretty much seen the rest: The crew hear creepy things in the woods, go to leave, find they're running around in circles, lose “map” (which in this case is a GPS signal, as technological updates are the only real difference), then spend the rest of the time running and screaming each others' names while evading evil spirits that we can't see. Only, we do catch glimpses of the “creatures” stalking their prey, and they look like featureless grey CGI aliens. Wow, scary.

The only time the film actually comes alive is at the end, when the remaining survivors stumble upon an old cabin in the woods. Here, the film is given a much-needed digression from the tired wood setting, and where the tight corridors and small rooms become constricting, leading to a heart-stopping scene in a tunnel that's literally the first inkling I've ever seen that Wingard has the capabilities to render an emotion besides hatred or indifference out of his audience. There's also another effective scene near the end when the remaining survivors can't look at a creature in the same room as them...but that's completely undone a few seconds later when we get a glimpse of a poorly done CGI monster that, once again, runs counter to the effectiveness of the Blair Witch franchise.

It's rare that a movie made in 2016 already feels outdated four months after release, but that's what happens when you're a major studio trying to follow an irrelevant blueprint just to make a few bucks off someone else's idea. Who says there's no karma in Hollywood?

RATING: 3/10

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The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

Director: André Øvredal
Writer(s): Ian B. Goldberg and Richard Naing
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond and Olwen Kelly

I think I have mentioned before, probably many times, the frustrations I have when films try to explain things that would otherwise be more impactful if they were left alone. It happens far too often in horror movies, as if the filmmakers feel the need to tie up every loose end; in doing so they also often inadvertently talk away everything that was effective to begin with. There are certainly types of movies that need things wrapped up—after all, what would a murder mystery be if the crime or investigation was ignored—but when we're dealing with mysterious things, as we usually are with horror films, then the less said, the better.

It basically goes hand in hand with the common knowledge that the less we, as the audience, are shown, the better. Blair Witch kickstarted that trend by centering the movie around an evil force that we never get a glimpse of, but that we know is all around. Paranormal Activity seconded it years later; it is not a coincidence that both movies are frequently considered some of the scariest mainstream horror movies ever made, and that both exploded out of the gates and did big business at the box office (the less said about the sequels, an unfortunate side effect of a greedy corporate culture, the better).

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a movie that seems to understand everything that makes a horror movie great—until it can no longer resist the urge to start rambling on, offering up a rather unconvincing theory as to why bad stuff is happening to otherwise good people. It is right around this point that, for the first time in its scant running time, it loosens its grip on the audience; as it turns out, it's the biggest misstep in what is otherwise a masterclass of horror and tension.

The atmosphere of dread doesn't take long to materialize. In a “normal” house in the suburbs of Virginia, lies an unspeakable crime scene: the bodies of several adults are strewn about the house, several of them with large wounds and all of them with severe exterior trauma (in other words, blood is everywhere). But in the basement lies the half-buried body of a nude woman, with no blood surrounding her and no visible injuries. What killed her, and why was she the only one that was left without so much as a single bruise?

The answers to those questions fall into the hands of Tommy Tilden, local coroner, and his son Austin, who's a trained medical technician and his father's right hand man. Austin blows off plans with his girlfriend, Emma, to help his father with the mysterious woman (who has no forms of identification on her and thus is labeled a "Jane Doe"). It is supposed to be a simple autopsy like all the othersm,but things start to go amiss from the moment they go to open her up...lights flicker on and off, the radio station keeps changing stations on its own, and there are weird noises that occur far off in the distance. It's almost as if someone, or something, is trying to prevent them from opening her up to find the secrets hidden within...

If all of this sounds bland, that's because on paper, it is. The film's effectiveness is owed primarily to director André Øvredal, whose last film was 2010's severely underrated low budget epic Trollhunter. It might be a little too early to call him a “master” of the craft, but he must certainly be at the forefront of the current cast of rising stars. The scare tactics Øvredal relies on are the same we're subjected to in any number of tired Hollywood films: long dimly-lit hallways, noises off in the distance, etc. But his skill lies in the way he effectively twists our expectations around; he catches us off guard not by giving us anything new, but simply by not calling attention to his scares. There are no obnoxious string swells in the soundtrack, or fake jumps that negate the mounting intensity; by using a bit of restraint, he gets us to let down our guard, allowing him to pounce with ruthless efficiency. I even called a bit of foreshadowing just from watching the trailer, but the way it was actually executed still sends shivers down my spine.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch are fantastic as the father-son duo, but the real star of the show is Olwen Kelly, who plays “Jane Doe”. For being little more than a dead body, she receives an awful lot of screentime, which obviously requires her to be perfectly still, something she pulls off with alarming consistency (apparently this is owed to a strict regiment of yoga, which helped her control her breathing). There have to be at least 100 shots of her face (no exaggeration), with many of them framed the exact same way, but it never loses its effect; in fact, her blank stare gets even more and more creepy as the events surrounding our stars start turning more and more sinister.

And that's how it all comes back to the explanation, which is especially annoying considering the ridiculous events that are allowed to go unexplained. Do we really need some kind of backstory as to why Jane Doe is who she is, and why she got to be that way? Even if we do, this one is so poorly constructed that it really just doesn't make a single lick of sense. Thankfully, it doesn't take up too much time, but it is the only thing that breaks an otherwise solid streak of tension, thus magnifying it even more.  Emma, who plays Austin's girlfriend, is also little more than a character of afterthought, included for little to no reason.  Even the "payoff" involving her character isn't worth it--she seems thrown in just because it has to be an unwritten rule of cinema that there be at least one living attractive female character in there somewhere.

Despite its minor flaws, this is still required viewing for anyone that likes their horror scary. Unfortunately, the fact that it doesn't completely suck means that it won't be playing at any multiplexes, which are reserved for D-grade (and below) fare that are produced by major studios only to haul in large amounts of cash, at the expense of its audiences' intelligence, and the creators' artistic integrity. If you're a horror fan, be sure to track this one down, though. It's easily one of the best horror films I've seen in a long time.

RATING: 8.5/10

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The 5th Wave (2016)

Director: J Blakeson
Writer(s): Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner. Based on the novel by Rick Yancey.
Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Alex Roe, Zackary Arthur, and Liev Schreiber

Prior to seeing The 5th Wave in a (second-run) theater, I was immediately reminded why I stopped seeing mainstream movies at all in the first place: it’s a joyless walk through derivative landscapes, featuring carbon-copy characters stolen almost verbatim from a million movies before it. It’s a bad movie, but not because of its blandness or its write-by-numbers plot; rather, it’s a bad movie because it blatantly strives for nothing more than mediocrity.

I suppose part of that blame falls on the books, which rely on the ever-popular Twilight formula in which a human falls in love with a non-human, and then must defy the odds to make the relationship work. Only here, the “outsider” of the relationship is not a vampire, but an alien, which is part of a race that are imaginatively referred to as “The Others”. But whereas the books seem to be pushing the envelope of its target demographic (my wife, who has read the two that have been published up until now, says they are much more violent and have more language than the movie does), the film version is content with watering everything down to its lowest-common-denominator roots, in an obvious effort to cater to the teenage crowd.

Cassie Sullivan (played by Chloe Grace Moretz) is your typical high-schooler with a caring, loving, complete, and wholesome family consisting of a father (a completely unnecessary Luke Wilson), a mother (Maggie Siff), and a younger brother named Sam (Zackary Arthur). But things are not as perfect as they seem in this fairytale world: aliens are beginning the most-drawn out invasion in history. As we learn from the long tagline, which also serves as a curiously-concise plot synopsis that almost eliminates the need to even watch the movie in the first place, the first wave is darkness: the aliens, who hover above Earth in large UFOs, use an electromagnetic shield to disable everything, from engines, to cell phones, to electricity. In wave two, they cause massive flooding to all bodies of water on Earth, meaning those that live within a hundred miles of an ocean are all but screwed.

The third wave brings disease, as “The Others” infect birds with a deadly virus that naturally spreads to almost all living things. Some of the people are naturally immune to it, but those that aren’t slowly die an agonizing death: Cassie’s mother is one of them. The fourth wave is an all-out invasion, which we learn after the Army infiltrates a refugee camp in which Cassie, Sam, and their father are staying. Curiously, the children are bussed out to safety, while the parents are told that the one functioning bus will be back shortly to reunite parents with their children. Not surprisingly, this is a lie; through a debriefing to the parents by the required is-he-evil-or-is-he-good character Colonel Vosch (coolly played by Liev Schreiber), the Earth is under attack by aliens who can possess anyone without any trace. In other words, it’s impossible to differentiate the aliens, who look exactly like you or I, from normal humans. Also not surprisingly, Cassie does not make the bus, leaving her brother to make the mysterious trip all by himself, while also giving the story a convenient story arc.

Then there’s the fifth wave, in which the captured children are turned into soldiers to fight the onslaught of aliens, using technologically-advanced headsets that can detect who the aliens are. Would you believe that Cassie’s old high school crush, Ben Parrish,  and her brother Sam happen to be in the same squad? Or that Ben takes a liking to Sam (not knowing of his relation to Cassie) and does everything in his power to protect him from a world so violent and cruel?

But Cassie isn’t just twiddling her thumbs during all of this: after witnessing the death of her father at the hands of the military, she grabs a machine-gun and starts off in her quest to find Sam. Not long into her quest, she is shot in the leg while roaming through an abandoned freeway; so great is her blood loss that she lapses into unconsciousness. As we know will happen, she wakes up in a mysterious place, conveniently picked up by an attractive young man with dreamy eyes who attempts to nurse her back to health. He is Evan Walker, and we learn that all of his immediate relatives were wiped out during the previous waves, and he is deadset on helping her to compensate for his failure to save his own family. She is reluctant to accept his help at first, fearing that he may be one of “The Others”, but after he saves her life, she realizes that he might not be so bad to have around after all.

Then, one night, they are attacked while hiding out in a car, and the ease in which Evan dispatches three people, all armed, has Cassie questioning his genetic makeup yet again. Is he a human, as he assured her that he was, or something much, much worse? Forming an uneasy alliance (aren’t they always in these stories?), they set aside their differences in order to infiltrate the military base where Sam, and the other kids, are being forced to fight the alien intruders. But not everything is what it seems, as they will soon find out…

The whole project just feels emotionless and distant, like we are clearly watching actors and crew go through the motions simply to collect a paycheck: everyone does their jobs, but no one is interested in going above and beyond. Even though it’s been years (literally) since I have seen a big-budget “blockbuster”, I see the focus is still on computer effects, which are very much still obviously computer effects; the technology doesn’t seem to have progressed all that much in the many months I’ve been absent from the scene. I am probably in the minority—and probably sounding like a condescending, elitist jerk at the moment—but I just don’t get any satisfaction from hopelessly watching a videogame that I can’t control play out in front of my eyes. So to say that none of this inspired me to do anything but excitedly leave the theater when it was over, should go without saying.

The one saving grace for me was Liev Schreiber’s performance as Vosch, a man who is required to hover between “evil” and “genuine”, something that Shreiber does with complete conviction. He has such an intimidating presence that he gives his character a complexity missing from all the rest; an effortless balance that constantly leaves the viewer guessing what side he’s on, even as it becomes more and more apparent. Schreiber does something that is nearly impossible to do, and that is to almost singlehandedly give an uninspired character an extra dimension; I was absolutely drawn to his performance, and he easily became my favorite anything of the whole movie.

If you are a fan of the big-budget spectacle disguised as a movie, or if you have read the books in this series (as my wife has), then you will probably enjoy this a lot more than I did (and in the interest of full disclosure, my wife really liked it). It’s the kind of movie that allows you to just sit back, shut your mind off, eat some popcorn, and understand everything without having to make much effort to follow along. My biggest qualm is that those qualities have come to define almost every Hollywood blockbuster these days, to the point that audiences seem content with never having to turn their minds back on. But watching movies like The 5th Wave, ones that strictly adhere to time-worn formulas simply to make a buck, is akin to making a copy of a copy of a piece of paper, and then repeating this a million times: it doesn’t take long for the quality to drop until, eventually, all you are left with is a blank sheet of paper.

RECAP: As with the vast number of Hollywood blockbusters, The 5th Wave is long on obviously fake computer-generated effects, but short on anything of actual substance. It’s a cash grab, from the first frame to the last, one that follows a strictly formulaic story from which it never has the desire to stray. It feels emotionless and distant: sure, it has plenty of the obligatory scenes of emotional distress, but they are completely simulated by actors who either lack the talent, or the commitment, to give them any kind of lasting effect. My one plus is Liev Schreiber’s performance as Vosch; he oozes charisma, and strikes his character’s required balance of “evil” and “genuine” with surprising aptitude. Of course, if you like this kind of movie, or are familiar with the source material, then chances are pretty good that you will like this one, as my wife did. Personally, I just can’t get any satisfaction out of watching a movie that I feel like I have seen dozens of times before, completely verbatim.

RATING: 3.5/10

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Green Room (2016)

Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Writer(s): Saulnier
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Joe Cole, Alia Shawkat, Imogen Poots, and Patrick Stewart

I do not get excited for theatrical releases very often, especially when I am disappointed by a director’s previous release, but the hype level was through the roof for me concerning Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin.  Why, you may ask?  Because, while I was a little letdown by his debut revenge thriller, I still saw loads of potential in Saulnier, calling him a “promising filmmaker” and even declaring that “I’m still eagerly looking forward to his future releases.”  Crazily enough, it was during research for that review (which I just realized is part of my unpublished backlog, so you’ll just have to take my word for it) that I stumbled on the trailer for this, caught some positive pre-release buzz, and saw that it would be premiering in my city about two months from then.  I made sure to put it on the calendar; to put that into perspective, it would be just the second time in the past two years that I went to a theater to see a movie—and the only other time was two nights ago, when my wife and I went to a second-rate theater to see a movie that we received free tickets for.

Just as Saulnier took the revenge thriller and stripped it down to its most basic parts in his previous film, he imbues Green Room with a little twist of its own: all of the people involved, on either side, are not complete idiots.  Thus, the showdown that ensues between a punk band in unfamiliar territory and a group of neo-Nazi skinheads feature both sides calculating their options and slowly raising the stakes.  Of course, the skinheads hold a distinct advantage, knowing the building inside and out, but the longer the band stays alive, the more their momentum grows.  Watching it all unfold is very similar to watching a chess match, as both sides are constantly formulating new plans as the situations change.  Obviously, not all of them succeed, much in the same way that our decisions in real-life can have life-altering (or even “ending”) consequences, but these are mostly intelligent people who, on the punk side, are in a desperate situation to stay alive, and for the skinheads, are in a desperate situation to avoid death and/or jail-time, and for the most part, there’s a convincing level of believability to their pre-scripted decisions.

It all starts with “The Ain’t Rights”, the punk band in question, heading to Seaside, Oregon to record an interview for a radio show.  When the band, who is made up of members Sam, Reece, Pat, and Tiger, asks when they can expect their piece to air, the interviewer, Tad, reveals that he had his radio segment revoked, so he’s not sure when, or even if, it ever will.  Rightfully pissed off that they traveled all that way for nothing (and are so broke they even had to siphon gas to make it that far), Tad sets them up with a show at a punk café as a favor. Unfortunately for him, that digs him in even deeper: turnout is so low, that even after giving the band his own cut of the proceeds, their total haul still only comes out to a little over $6 per bandmember.  Still fuming over the situation, they eventually decide to cut their losses and return home, something they soon wish they would have done.  Because before you know it, Tad is placing a call to his cousin for a guaranteed show the following day just outside Portland.  The catch?  It’s at a bar run by, and populated with, white supremacists.  Relatively unfazed, but more desperate, the band accepts Tad’s offer, and head for the venue in time to make it for their afternoon show.

Once they get there, they have only a few minutes before their matinee set begins.  As a joke, the lead vocalist, Tiger, suggest that they kick things off with a cover of the Dead Kennedy’s “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”, an “inspired” choice given their surroundings.  Not surprisingly, it doesn’t go over too well; Pat, the guitarist, seems visibly shaken by the crowd’s hostile reaction.  I guess contrary to popular belief, skinheads do not have strong senses of humor after all.  Despite the rocky start, the rest of the gig seems to go off without a hitch, and right after their set they are quickly ushered out of the bar to make room for the next act.  Well, that’s what was supposed to happen, anyway; in all of the commotion and hustling, Sam (Alia Shawkat, from “Arrested Development” fame) realizes that she forgot her phone in the “green room” (a term used for the waiting room of a venue where performing acts hang out before taking the stage), which Pat offers to retrieve for her.  What should be a simple task gets blown out of proportion when he stumbles on Emily, a dead girl with a knife in her head.  Hovering over her are Werm (an evil-looking man) and Amber, Emily’s friend. 

News of a murder must travel fast, because two of the bar’s bouncers, Gabe and Justin, quicky catch wind of the situation, and force “The Ain’t Rights” back into the green room.  Justin hangs in there and holds everyone at gunpoint while Gabe runs off to call the police, and also notifies the bar’s owner, Darcy (a fiendish Patrick Stewart), of the unfolding events.  Darcy is a quietly terrifying man, the type that never raises his voice, yet who knows no limits to his depravity or thirst for blood.  As he shows up to try to handle the situation, the band wrestles the gun away from Justin and hold him at gunpoint.  Meanwhile, Amber joins the band’s side, distressed over the murder of her friend, which has still come under mysterious circumstances.  Darcy tries negotiating through the door for the gun; at the last second Amber sees that Darcy is not alone, as he has assured them, so she calls a trap…and so begins an intense, exhausting standoff, filled with some of the most devastating acts of simulated violence ever captured on film.

And it’s the way Green Room handles its bloodshed that might just be its most triumphant aspect: It’s presented in sharp, shocking bursts that are repellently graphic and hard-to-stomach, even for a genre aficionado like me.  This isn’t a film that revels in it for the sake of entertainment, but rather one that rubs our noses in its ugliness, as if attempting to undo years of playful desensitizing at the hands of the Freddy’s and the Jason’s, and trying to re-convince us of the real-life finality and brutality that can accompany us in life’s final moments.  It's largely effective in this mission, though an early scene involving a box-cutter that is so over-the-top it becomes laughable, prevents it from achieving near-perfection.

Unfortunately, there are some cheap narrative cushions that Saulnier just can’t seem to resist—or are they included at the insistence of the studio/distributor?  One thing that I cannot stand are the moments when otherwise-serious movies feel the need to throw in humor during violent situations; there are a couple one-liners after kills that cheapen the effect, and feel a little hypocritical for a movie trying to portray its murders in such an ugly light.  Green Room also has a chance to end on a heart-wrenching moment of perfect and genuinely unexpected poignancy, but goes on for thirty more seconds just so it can deliver a final, predictable punchline to an ongoing series of jokes that were never funny to begin with.  These may be relatively minor annoyances, but again, in a film that prides itself on its intelligence and audacity, the pointlessness of their inclusion is thoroughly magnified.

In spite of these shortcomings, Green Room is still highly recommended to strong-stomached fans of the horror genre.  I was curious to see how Saulnier would follow up Blue Ruin, and he did so by making an even better film; now I’m really looking forward to seeing whether his next film can continue on his rapidly-rising career trajectory, and if he sticks with his two-word “[color] [noun or verb]” formula that he’s been using lately to name his next picture.

RECAP: Intense as all hell, with unsettling and graphic violence to boot, Green Room is a sharp step forward for writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin), which turns the horror genre on its ear by presenting characters that aren’t completely stupid (gasp!)  Patrick Stewart is, as you’ve heard everywhere else, excellent in his villainous role as the eerily calm, yet unspeakably evil bar owner Darcy, while the rest of the cast also deliver high-quality performances.  Once it gets going, and it doesn’t take long, it puts the pedal to the metal and never lets up, making it one of the more effective horror films I’ve seen in a while.

RATING: 8/10 

Hush (2016)

Director: Mike Flanagan
Writer(s): Flanagan and Kate Siegel
Starring: Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, and Samantha Sloyan

Hush proves that no matter what disability you give your main character, a shitty home invasion movie is still a shitty home invasion movie.  It also proves just how easy it is to trick critics into thinking you’ve made something special: throw in a heroine that doesn’t lay down and play submissive at the first sign of trouble, and watch them all rush to crown your work the next horror masterpiece.  Just excuse the fact that she’s one of the stupidest characters to grace a horror film in a long time; her only saving grace is that the man who randomly decides he wants to kill her is somehow even stupider.  Also, ignore that the story is nothing but standard genre fare…in other words, take the idea of a tough, deaf woman out of the picture, and what you’re left with is a terrible, lazy excuse for a film that no one would have even batted a lash at.

Kate Siegel (also one of the co-writers) plays Maddie Young, a deaf writer who logically lives all by herself in a secluded cottage buried deep in the woods.  Without a gun or any manner of weaponry for self-defense.  Now, I understand that real-life writers often quarantine themselves away from others when writing, but isn’t that usually to get a little peace and quiet?  At the expense of sounding rude, isn’t that all that Maddie hears to begin with?  All half-joking aside, it’s kind of an idiotic set-up already, as her friends constantly worry about her and her safety, but hey, it’s a horror movie!  Let’s just bare with it…

Hush begins by quickly establishing her lifestyle: she talks on the phone to a couple friends (via videophone and sign language), ignores a call from her ex-boyfriend Craig, decides to FaceTime Craig but backs down at the last second, then ignores him again when he calls back, FaceTime’s her sister, and in between all this, sits herself down to write her next novel.  Also, to spoon-feed us every little tidbit of information that we might possibly need to understand this complex plot, her friend, Sarah, from a nearby house that always remains unseen, stops by to give Maddie a glowing review of her first novel, and to return her copy of it.  They spend a couple hours chatting on her front porch, conveniently taking us from daylight to dusk, before Sarah heads home.  Only, she never makes it.

While Maddie is in the kitchen, preparing dinner, Sarah runs up to her side door, which is conveniently all glass.  She screams, begging for help, furiously pounding on the glass door before a masked killer comes up and finishes her off.  This is concerning because it also shows us another sense that Maddie apparently lacks, and that’s peripheral vision: even though this whole attack lasts over a minute, literally FEET away from her, and even though she spends a good amount of this time facing forward, at an angle where the furious flash of colors and motion would have captured the attention of even a blind person, she goes about obliviously continuing to go about her task.  Hold on, it gets worse.

The killer, who by now has already figured out that she cannot hear, opens her front door and stands mere feet away from behind her as she tries writing her novel on the couch.  It’s chilly out, something we know because not five minutes of screen time later, she opens the very same front door and shudders.  Yet she can’t feel the draft of the open door as she cluelessly types away, nor can she feel the presence of an intruder staring at her while brandishing a knife?  She is finally clued in that something is amiss a little later, when her previously-missing phone turns up with photos of her sitting in the house, including one snapped mere seconds earlier.  Now she realizes that something is wrong; the man soon appears on her front porch brandishing a crossbow, and one of the most asinine “hunter” vs. “hunted” films ever made is underway.

Actually, it doesn’t feel so much a game of cat-and-mouse as it does a case of writers trying to pad a twenty-minute movie into a space four times greater than that.  There are countless shots of the killer walking around her house, trying to see her through the windows, to taunt her some more.  Only, these pack no suspense whatsoever, because he clearly states at the beginning that he won’t come in there until she wants to die.  Now, this could have been a nice little lie that could have lead to some suspense, if all of a sudden she looked and the door was open and he was somewhere inside, but it's pretty obvious from the way he keeps pacing around outside that he's that one rare killer who's a man of his word.  Since there’s no direct threat of him entering the house, which seems to be made up of 90% windows, then that pretty much removes a very large dose of tension.

Maddie also happens to be completely oblivious to common sense: if you are deaf and under attack, I would think logic would dictate that you stay in a room with as few windows, and ways to gain entrance, as possible.  So her first thought is to stay on the first floor, in a bedroom with two windows, and sit between the two windows facing the bedroom door.  Gee, I don’t know how that could go wrong.  In no time at all she’s lured out by the killer using her dead friend to knock on the window, something she doesn’t have to acknowledge or answer, but of course does.  It’s literally not until about half-hour into the confrontation that Maddie seems to even remember that she has an upstairs flat; there’s only one way in from the inside (walking up the steps) and the only way in from the killer’s perspective would require him to climb up to the roof and break a window.  But instead of wisely arming herself with a sharp object and guarding the two entrances, she makes another genius decision: climb out the upstairs window herself, and walk around on the roof, where one misstep would clearly cost her her life.  She tries creating a diversion by throwing her flashlight into the woods.  The killer hears the flashlight land, sees it shining on the ground, obviously not being manned by anyone, and clearly having been thrown there by someone desperately trying to escape, and still goes to check it out.  Jesus, it’s like Dumb & Dumber in horror form.

In another case of blind stupidity, the killer sees Maddie on the roof, climbs up to get her, and somehow doesn’t even brace for the possibility that she’s waiting to attack him when he reaches the top rung.  Because, you know, people on ladders aren’t vulnerable in the least.  So it completely catches him off guard when she hits him in the face with a blunt object, sending him falling to the ground below.  Come on there, menacing killer, that’s some Home Alone shit right there, and probably the first thing you should plan for when climbing up anything to confront someone desperate for survival.

What attracted me to this was the assurance that it tramples over well-worn home-invasion stereotypes; it doesn’t even have the intelligence (or gall) to do that.  There are brief snippets where the sound cuts out for a few seconds—obviously so that we can hear what she hears—but it’s only a few times during the whole movie, and only once during the “attack”.  How hard would it have been to show some scenes from her POV, complete with the sound removed?  That wouldn’t have added anything to the budget, and would have instantly established a claustrophobic atmosphere, while giving us a specific example of just how detrimental her lack of hearing is, and how much more difficult it makes her situation.  Truthfully, there were any number of ways that the filmmakers could have really toyed with either her handicap, or the whole tired home-invasion idea, but they seem dedicated to following the path well-traveled, delivering a film that has the appearance of wanting to try something new, without actually doing it.

I'm not even going to get myself started on the ending, which is so laughably atrocious that it defies all logic.  I really can't mention anything without giving it away, but the difficulties a fully-grown, relatively healthy, and mentally capable adult male has in dispatching a weak female who is slowly bleeding to death, is truly mind-boggling.  If I'm coming off as misogynistic, I'm really not meaning to be: I literally mean the woman is so bad-off that just looking at her wrong could kill her, and yet this injured-yet-able-bodied adult male, with the full ability to move and carry things, basically has to go out of his way to give her a fighting chance, and does so, to infuriating results.

To try to end this on a somewhat positive note, it's competently made, and the acting is okay.  I mean, as with a lot of such films, "acting" boils down to simply crying for long stretches (the victim), and taunting said crying girl (the killer), but both leads are at least adept at sticking to their established roles.  And hey, in a movie this bad, even something mediocre is a resounding win!

If you like your horror movies to be slow, predictable slogs through genre conventions, then set aside some time for Hush.  If you want something more than that, I can only apologize on its behalf.

RECAP: Hush is nothing more than overhyped trash; the cat-and-mouse game that comprises most of the narrative is a wash thanks to the stupidity of the two main characters, who frequently make such ignorant decisions, you would swear they were suicidal.  This basically plays out like a twenty-minute short blown up to four times that size; it feels like it was padded with endless shots of the killer walking around the house, and constantly looking into windows.  Don't be surprised if, by the end, you're torn between who you think deserves to die more: the killer, because he blows trillions of chances to finish off his victim, or the deaf woman, because her death would serve as the immediate end to the movie, and thus, your suffering.

RATING: 2/10    

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