Horror

dir: André Øvredal

2023

How do you do a new movie version of Dracula without telling people it’s about Dracula? You do what they did here, and don’t even mention his name, just like several years ago where Ron Howard made a new film version of Moby-Dick without telling anyone, and called it In the Heart of the Sea.

I would also further go on to argue that a title that generic helps no-one, absolutely no-one. I have a particular dislike for these recent titles for things that are simultaneously very specific and very abstract at the same time.

I am still trying to wrap my head around All the Light We Cannot See. Yes, I get what it means in the context of the story (blind woman in Nazi France, radio waves), but on the other hand, who fucking cares? And we can’t see it, because it’s not light.

That’s a different fight, a different pointless battle to get energised over. The Last Voyage of the Demeter, is a very specific title about a place, being a ship, that presumably never sails again. We are meant to ask ourselves “Um, I wonder what happened to the Demeter and its crew?”

Well, we get to find out, if we can make it through a stylish two hour horror flick. The film starts with the stately, portentous titles that inform us what we are about to watch is taken from the logbook of the Captain of the Demeter, but then it spoils the illusion, the necessary suspension of disbelief, by telling us that it’s a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

If you’ve ever read it, you would know how different it is from the chapters that come before and after. The gothic potboiler aspects of the rest of the novel are contrasted with the difference in approach that arises from the difference in perspective. Captain Elliot, the captain keeping the log, hasn’t read the preceding chapters, and doesn’t know what’s going on. We know, but it’s a complete mystery to him for most of the chapter.

dir: Samuel Bodin

2023

Cobweb is… less than great, in fact it’s not even close to great.

It barely approaches adequate. Which is a shame. Promising premise devolves into derivative dumbness, like most uninspired horror flicks. Like most flicks, probably.

In the run up to Halloween I will doubtless see a stack of horror flicks, some of which will have Halloween as an element or as a setting. Few will be (I hope) as poorly realised as this one.

Peter (Woody Norman) is a frightened, delicate boy, perfect for a role like this. He has pale skin, gigantic brown eyes and curly brown hair. Yes, he could probably perfectly play a role as Frodo in an inevitable Lord of the Rings remake.

He is (rightly) bullied at school, and his home life isn’t much grander. But whatever happens during the day, his nights are plagued with the inexplicable. He hears a tapping on his bedroom wall, sometimes he hears words being whispered.

His parents aren’t much help. The frazzled, brittle mother (Lizzie Caplan) is high pitched and hysterical even before things go wrong. The father is played by Antony Starr, so anyone who watched the Amazon series The Boys where he plays Homelander knows already that the character will clearly be some version of a charming psychopath.

Less charming, more psychopath. With everything that’s going wrong, Peter suspects that he can’t really trust his parents because, over-protective and violent as they are, they are clearly afraid of something.

One of those things that they’re afraid of clearly should be Child Protective Services, because her fragile Suzy Homemaker bullshit, which never makes a lot of sense since this is set contemporarily and that shit is from the 1950s, isn’t going to cut it. Both parents act like off chops long before there are any reveals, or any reasons given for why they might be acting like this.

The dad especially acts like a barely restrained lunatic right from the start.

dir: Travis Stevens

2022

A Wounded Fawn is not a predictable film, and that’s one of the things I liked about it the most. It is horror, definitely, but depending on how you look at it, it is less of the supernatural revenge thriller that it may look like, and a more straight-forward look at an awful man, and one of the women that he tries to prey upon.

Meredith (Sarah Lind) is recently out of an awful marriage, and is looking forward to her date with Bruce (Josh Ruben). They’re going away for the weekend, to a cabin in the woods.

The problem is, in the film’s intro, which follows a snooty auction for a piece of ancient Greek sculpture, we watched Bruce murder the successful bidder for the statue, as a weird red owl looking chap looks on.

So, okay, Meredith may be dating a serial killer.

Well, maybe “dating” is assuming a bit much. It doesn’t seem like he’s planning on a long term relationship with Meredith.

The opening speech from the auctioneer explains that the sculpture is of certain avengers from Greek mythology, the Erinyes, or Furies, as they are otherwise known; avengers of wronged women, scourges of those who murder or harm women. Hopefully they go after the manipulators and the gaslighters too. Regardless, right out of the gate, they’re saying that tied to the sculpture is the idea that some force exists in the universe, hinted at in mythology, of divine retribution that apportions cosmic justice.

If only it were true. I so wish it were true.

The reality is, there’s nothing there. Nothing punishes the worst of the worst unless the cops are lucky, and it’s arguable as to how you can get justice on serial killers. Capital punishment seems almost like a favour, and decades in jail seems like a joke.

All we can do as viewers is hope that the piece of shit fucks up, slips up in some way, and gets his just deserts.

Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, though. Maybe Bruce, too, is powered by the supernatural? I mean, whenever he’s about to kill a woman, a weird humanoid owl turns up, telling him to do it. Then he does it, horribly, jerks off, and then everything’s better in his world as he sets about dealing with the body.

Eww, no thanks, don’t drag us into your sexual dysfunction bullshit.

dir: Daina Reid

2023

Horror. Purest horror.

That’s what parenting is like, apparently.

Of course people watching this flick will be muttering “Babadook, Babadook” under their breath, but no-one said The Babadook was either the most original horror flick ever nor that it had the monopoly on mad mothers wanting to strangle their kids for reasons in movies.

This flick, mostly filmed in Victoria and South Australia, is ominous and filled with dread right from the start. It’s not just the exquisite cinematography, or the choice of what’s filmed, but the discomforting soundtrack does a lot of the work too. Those cello / double bass slowly bowed strings…

And then there’s all the awful things happening on screen.

It’s mostly a two-hander, with Sarah Snook playing a character called Sarah, and Lily LaTorre playing her daughter. I won’t say the name of the daughter character, because apparently no one is quite sure what it should be.

We already know terrible things are going to happen, because the daughter, while being driven in the car, asks about where someone is who she’s never met, and the mere mention of her name is enough to make Sarah somehow look even paler.

At first the name being said is “Joan, where’s Joan, is Joan going to be there?” referring to the guest list for the daughter’s birthday party. The answer is an emphatic no, because the Joan in question is Sarah’s mum, and Sarah can’t stand her mum, plus her mum is in an old folk’s home. For old folks. Speaking of which, Sarah’s dad, mostly referred to as grandpa, has recently died, and both Sarah and her daughter miss him terribly.

Sarah especially seems wounded by grief at the loss. But there is something far more seriously wrong with Sarah, and wrong with the daughter, especially when she starts insisting that her name isn’t Mia, but is in fact Alice.

Alice. Alice? Who the fuck is Alice? That’s a name to conjure with. Plus there’s a white rabbit that seems to have appeared out of nowhere, who just hangs around ominously in the house, only earns its keep once when it takes a chunk out of Sarah’s hand.

Alice…white rabbit… I can’t tell if we’re through the looking glass or in a wonderland, but this flick is short on wonder, and long on dread. Mia keeps getting injuries, and Mummy Dearest keeps asking her if someone is hurting her, bullying her. Mia keeps shaking her head, but at random times seems to insist she’s not Mia anyway, she’s this other girl.

And Sarah doesn’t want to talk about Alice, because clearly she’s still traumatised by something that happened 30 years ago.

Like always in these flicks, the mum is either a widow or divorced. The ex-husband / still dad (Damon Herriman) is nice enough, but he’s got a new wife, and they’re trying for another kid, and for some reason this really brings out the Shiv Roy in Sarah, who is always either terrified and confused, or profoundly irritated by people trying to bring up the past all the time.