Horror

In a Violent Nature

Rest easy, sweet prince, you've earned your rest

dir: Chris Nash

2024

This is a very Canadian horror flick.

I know, so many movies get filmed in Canada, pretending to be the States, pretending to be a lot of places, but this flick doesn’t hide its Canadianness at all, revelling in its time and place (north Ontario), using Canadian bands, on the (very diegetic) soundtrack, unashamed Canadian accents and presumably a heck of a lot of Canadians on and offscreen.

This is in service of great evil, this being a flick where a supernatural killer rises from the grave and brutally dispatches a bunch of people whether they deserve it or not, but it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t have a point, at certain junctures.

To say that this flick is mostly shot from the killer’s perspective seems to misrepresent what actually happens, or is shown. It’s not through his eyes that we see all the murder and mayhem transpire: the camera follows, much of the time, from just behind him. We spend a lot of time just watching him walk places, or standing there patiently waiting to see something that means he can start butchering people.

Much of the walking happens in nature. We watch our murdering murderer quietly walk from place to place murdering. Because of this novel setup, what it means is we’re never surprised, really, when our murderer, Johnny (Ry Barrett), murders someone. From the first murder to the last, we know it’s coming, we see it happen, and at times the murderising goes on and on for absolute ages at a leisurely place.

What are we meant to make of this? If you’re a normal person, you are probably neither reading this review nor ever going to watch a film like this. What could be more disturbing to a normal person that seeing horrifying murders of innocent people at the hands of a wordless revenant, in a manner meant to elicit sympathy not for the victims, but for the monster?

To horror fans, well, a flick like this could just be the catnip we’ve been waiting for.

Rating:

8 stars

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Stopmotion

No, that's not creepy in the slightest

dir: Robert Morgan

2023

Stopmotion is the kind of flick you could only recommend to die-hard horror fans. I don’t mean people who’ve occasionally seen popular horror films that everyone else sees and think “oh yeah I don’t mind the occasional jump scare”.

No. If you watched this flick and liked it, and recommended it to people willy nilly, you could end up arrested. The most likely reaction would be whoever you recommended coming back to you, slapping you in the face and screaming “what the fuck were you on when you recommended Stopmotion to me? Do you hate me that much?”

They probably won’t speak to you again, either. Maybe you planned it that way?

I don’t know, you’re a complicated person with a lot on your plate. Maybe a 10-year-old’s birthday party wasn’t the best place to play it.

Regardless, this is a very disturbing, very nasty little film, about how working on stop motion animation is so slow and pain-staking that it drives its practitioners mad, absolutely stark raving bonkers. And then the murders start, and that’s not even the worst thing.

This flick is mostly what we would call psychological horror, with extreme body horror thrown in as well. It is, I am pretty sure, intended to make you feel queasy. Every time anyone (me) talks about a movie, of course you have to mention other movies in order to (lazily) give people reference points. I’ve seen a lot of reviews say “it’s like this movie, or reminiscent of that one”, but the one it reminded me the most of, despite having a completely different story, was the great film from ages ago called May, staring Angela Bettis, from way back in the early 2000s.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of May? Well, it’s not much of a reference point, then, is it? Let’s just say I always feel uneasy around any pair of scissors I ever see, thanks to that film.

Rating:

8 stars

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424 reads

I Saw the TV Glow

If we could crawl inside at that age, we would have

dir: June Schoenbrun

2024

I saw it glow, too. Many times.

This is a complicated and awkward film to talk about. It doesn’t really follow conventional cinematic storytelling structures, and it doesn’t really look like or is set up to be like what we might expect from a movie, any movie. It looks like a low-key, small-scale story about two teens obsessed with a tv show from the 90s, but it’s really about…

I dunno, I don’t really know. This looks like it’s a lot of things, but it always takes us somewhere different.

In its most simplistic rendering, we could say this flick is about two desperately sad and lonely teenagers, who grow up to be two desperately sad and lonely adults. If we were feeling unkind, we could say it’s about two people with severe mental health issues who fixate on a tv show meant to be reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and who start confusing reality with fantasy because of trauma and loss, and because they never get the love or support they needed, they never get to be well-rounded people with integrated personalities and senses of self.

A kinder, more empathetic and thoughtful angle would be to say this is a story about two people born with a sense that there is something inherently wrong either with the world or with them being in it, who try to find the way to live in it less painfully, in a way that allows them to be who they are meant to be, or not.

How mysterious that sounds. It doesn’t play out that way, but there are a great deal of scenes where we are not sure if what we are watching is real or imagined, or feels real enough that even if it isn’t literally happening, we are meant to think it should be(?)

Rating:

8 stars

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Tarot

Your movie is an insult to charlatans, con artists and people
with eyeballs

dirs.: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

2024

What makes me even angrier about this movie is that when I heard that there was a horror flick called Tarot which was presumably about tarot cards, or something, I was actually excited about it?

What a fool I was! What was I thinking?

This will probably be the strangest thing I’ve ever admitted to in a review, in any review, but I actually adore tarot cards. I’ve always loved them. I’m not joking, I collect tarot card packs and have always loved them.

But don’t confuse a hobby / predilection / interest with agreement with the whole fortune-telling / divination bullshit – not for a second have I ever believed in the predictive power of the cards, nor have I ever desperately done a reading looking for Tattslotto numbers or as to where I would one day find my One True Love (turned out it was down the pub).

What I have always loved about the cards is the cards themselves, the images on the cards, the history behind them, the major arcana and the minor arcana, and that, depending on the pack, you can get images filled with explicit or subtle imagery and symbolism, or minimalist ones, or ones that err more on the side of purely aesthetics.

I love them all, from the traditional like the Rider-Waite pack to the more esoteric.

This flick, based on a book I’ll never read, takes tarot cards, the idea and the image of them, and just basically takes a huge dump over their whole existence.

Rating:

3 stars

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You'll Never Find Me

Mate, I never started looking

dirs: Indianna Bell & Josiah Clark

2023

Thank you, yet again, Shudder. Without you, I’d have to watch, uh, something else on some other streaming service.

This Australian horror flick has appeared, indistinct, barely visible, just out of sight, gradually coming out of the gloom, on this most excellent of streaming services, and as such I went into this knowing absolutely nothing about it, other than that it was a newish flick with sterling reviews (overseas).

It’s not for everyone. It’s mostly set in one location. Scratch that, it’s only shot in one location, and only has two actors in it who speak. One of them is Patrick (Brendan Rock), who lives in a trailer home somewhere near the coast, and the other is the visitor who knocks on his door during a storm (Jordan Cowan).

It is really pouring down outside, at least that’s what it sounds like to Patrick. Before there’s even a knock at the door he seems distraught, or drunk, or both.

Things you can tell just by looking at him: he’s on his own, and probably has been for a long time. Isolation, we might think, has brought him to a place of paranoia and fear of the world outside his trailer. However long it’s been since he’s had a visitor, he does not seem to be that welcoming, telling the woman knocking to fuck off.

Nevertheless, she persists, and he eventually lets her in, dripping wet and muddy footed. She’s very grateful, and seems a bit confused about where she came from, how she got to his trailer, and where she should be going.

Rating:

8 stars

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Baghead

I assure you, her personal hygiene is above reproach

dir: Alberto Corredor

2023

What a strange movie. Imagine your father dying, in a horrible seeming accident, and you find out you’ve inherited a pub from him in Berlin. Berlin! And not even a good pub.

And it’s not even an ongoing business, so you don’t even have to go to the trouble of disappointing the regulars by telling them you don’t want them coming around anymore, and that you want a better class of patrons to frequent the place, not you rusted on day drinkers and shambolic alcoholics. I don’t know if German people put bets on dog races, but it’d be that level of peeps.

And they’d be the types that would nurse a pint for over an hour, because they’re there just for the familiarity, the routine, and not the ambience or the 20 Euro cocktails or the loaded bratwurst.

Maybe you’d meet a local, or a rival pub owner, and after an hour and a half of rivalry and misunderstandings, maybe finally, someone would run somewhere just in time to stop the other from leaving forever, and they’d kiss passionately as the orchestra swells, the music builds (unfortunately it’s oompah oompah polka music with all the tuba you can handle), and the happily ever afters start as the credits roll.

This is not that film. This film is about evil things, not love. This is about grief, with no consolation. And it’s also about how young people with nothing will fall victim to any scam or scheme that will give them even a hint of money for their troubles.

Rating:

7 stars

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401 reads

Arcadian

There will be blood, and the gnashing of teeth, so many teeth...

dir: Benjamin Brewer

2024

This is a surprisingly good action-y horror flick, and the main reason I say that with surprise is that Nicolas Cage is in it, and doesn’t really overact at all.

Which is… sometimes it feels like I criticise Nicolas Cage for overacting and for underacting and generally for acting, and it feels like I’m not fair to the guy at all.

Seriously, anyone could have played the role he plays here, that’s how unnecessary he is in the scheme of things. Nah, that’s unfair again.

This is a post-apocalyptic flick, in that something happened, civilisation fell apart, and a man (Cage) brought up his two sons on some isolated farm. The film starts with Cage’s character strapping on a back pack and hightailing it out of a wartorn city, struggling to get to two baby boys, who don’t seem that grateful to see him, after all he must have done to get back to them…

Fifteen years later, they live a strange existence on this farm which makes it look like they’re really afraid of vampires or something. Maybe werewolves. Regardless, it’s well into the movie before the threat is shown. We know they’re some kind of creature afraid of or pissed off by daylight, and they have serious claws.

Could be big angry guinea pigs? After Cage and his boys, at sundown, batten down the hatches and secure every window and door, something attacks one of the barricaded doors repeatedly. And it sounds pretty pissed off. Like it really, really likes eating humans.

Rating:

7 stars

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619 reads

Suspiria (2018)

Three millions colours red

dir: Luca Guadagnino

2018

You might be asking yourself as to why I’m reviewing a six-year old movie when there are all sorts of films, contemporary or otherwise, that I could be finally getting around to seeing. I’ve been trying to make myself (almost at gunpoint) watch this for years, and I finally made myself do it.

Also, since Luca Guadagnino has the quite successful Challengers in cinemas at the moment, I thought I’d look back before looking forward.

Part of my reluctance to really watch this remake / redo all the way through is that I adore the original Suspiria. Seriously one of my favourite films. That’s not the same as me saying I think it’s a great film. It’s definitely not one of the greatest flicks of all time.

It was a lot of things. It was like the most extreme alternate reality version of an Alice in Wonderland-like story that you’ll probably ever see that isn’t pornographic. It had a strong visual palate that’s been imitated continuously since then. It also had a magnificent soundtrack by progressive metal band Goblin that I had a CD copy of.

Remember CDs? They were great! Their cases were perfect for doing lines on…

But anyway. I’m not a purist that hates the idea of flicks being remade in principle, but the idea of someone remaking Suspiria filled me with trepidation. I can’t claim to know Luca Guadagnino’s oeuvre that definitively, but I’ve seen enough to know that he’s a careful filmmaker. I loved his Io Sonno Amore / I Am Love way back in the day, which was when I thought he started working with Tilda Swinton. And I thought highly enough of Call Me By Your Name, before we got sick of Timothee Chalomet being everywhere, and before finding out Armie Hammer was a sadistic cannibal.

This flick is plenty faithful to the original film. Many of the same characters appear. The setting is similar, in that it’s a German dance academy, and the protagonist is again a naïf waif from America. Jessica Harper, who played the lead in the original back in the 70s, gets to have a cameo appearance, which is the price of entry.

But the new Susie Bannon is played by Dakota Johnson. She is a Mennonite from Ohio. When people ask her where she’s from, they don’t believe the answer.

How does a Mennonite, which is a step removed from the Amish (who they hate with a passion), get to be a dance star?

Isn’t that the thing about dance? With enough talent, drive, determination, hard work, starving yourself and nicotine you, too, can come from anywhere and become the lead in a hardcore dance troupe.

Rating:

8 stars

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Out of Darkness

From darkness we came; to the lovely darkness we will return

dir: Andrew Cumming

2022

This Stone Age-set horror flick was made during the dreaded covid era, but was only released this year in cinemas, I think. It’s a perfect covid era flick: it’s all filmed outdoors, some people are wearing masks, no toilet paper anywhere, fear drives people to do terrible things to each other…

Forty three thousand years ago is long enough ago that you can make up whatever shit you want as to how ‘early’ humans might have acted, thought or behaved. If you believe archaeologists and palaeontologists (and what would they know, being people who’ve devoted their lives to academic study and figuring out what went on literal ages ago), this was before agriculture, before alphabets and before social media. How did they know who to cancel, then?

This flick takes a curious yet welcome approach to how these early humans communicate. I am not going to pretend that I know or knew what “Tola” was prior to this experience, but I can say now that most of our protagonists here speak a made up Basque/Arabic dialect. I don’t know how much to read into that, but for the purposes of our story, I think it runs something like this: A group of ‘early’ homo sapiens travel from possibly the coast of what we call Spain today to the eastern shores of what we call Scotland these days.

How do I know any of that? I don’t. I know it was filmed in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean it’s set in Scotland, since 43,000 years ago, it wasn’t called Scotland, it was probably called something like *click* *pop* *snik* “cold death land” or something like it by these people. They’ve left an inhospitable place and come to an even more inhospitable place. Nothing grows on the blasted heath that they can eat, they’re terrified of forests, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone or anything around.

In other words it’s only slightly less hospitable than it is today.

The leader is called Adem (Chuku Modu), and he’s a violent bully and a piece of shit, but in this day and age, that makes you a natural leader. He has a pregnant partner, Ave (Iola Evans) and a teenage son, Heron (Luna Mwezi), and a fearful brother, Geirr (Kit Young). There’s also an old ‘wise’ man, Odal (Arno Luening), and a young woman they refer to as a stray, Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green).

Adem thinks he is the main character and skips reading the assignment. He is incorrect. Beyah is the main character, and she has very much read the assignment.

Rating:

8 stars

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Late Night With the Devil

I fell in to a burning ring of fire. Went down down down
and the ratings went higher

dirs.: Colin & Cameron Cairnes

2024

This is a surprisingly accomplished film, especially for one made in Melbourne. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie made in Melbourne. Love and other Catastrophes? Chopper? The Book of Revelation?

Fortunately or not, none of ‘Melbourne’ or Naarm factors into the story because it’s set in America in the 1970s, and mostly all transpires in or around a tv studio where a “Tonight” type program is being filmed.

The lead in this is Jack, played by David Dastmalchian, who has often played weirdos or psychos or a combination of both, but here plays the charismatic host of a late night program that is suffering in the ratings and doesn’t look like it’s going to survive. Even if you haven’t watched a tonight show lately, or in the last ten years, or even longer, the format hasn’t changed. There’s a host, there’s a sidekick, there’s a band, and there’s a studio audience made up of clapping seals who applaud and laugh whenever a sign lights up telling them to laugh like the mindless automatons that they are.

There’s musical guests, there’s people with animals, there’s probably movie stars and comedians and, I dunno, local celebrities, and it all transpires under the studio’s bright lights and beige / burnt orange / brown set designs.

But since the ratings for his show, which used to threaten Jimmy Carson, but now are scraping the bottom of the barrel, are terrible, he’s desperate for something to change his loser narrative.

Hence, the occult. The show goes to extreme lengths to court controversy, and there’s nothing more controversial, for the time period, than bringing on a teenage girl who says she’s possessed by a devil.

Not The Devil, mind you, but some other low-ranking shmuck who can still do the scary voices and the rotating head thing.

The ethics of bringing out a clearly mentally ill teenager and putting her in front of a national audience, well, let’s remember the time period. Sexual harassment was mandatory, everyone was smoking, even babies in the womb, and no one ever drank water, only spirits, all of the time, apparently.

Rating:

7 stars

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Horror

In a Violent Nature

Stopmotion

I Saw the TV Glow

Tarot

You'll Never Find Me

Baghead

Arcadian

Suspiria (2018)

Out of Darkness

Late Night With the Devil

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