You Can See Everything

 2026, d. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim -in theatre

I was having lunch with some work friends earlier this week and late in the lunch we got to talking about movies. I brought up the phenomenal success of You Can See Everything - a near 3-hour documentary from arch comedian Nathan Fielder following Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she goes to prison - and my colleague asked with express disbelief "Why would anyone want to see that?"

Holmes was a notable success in the medical technology field for years, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for her at-home blood-sampling tool that could, she said, diagnose with near-complete accuracy almost anything a traditional blood sample at a traditional lab could. The claims were false, the company was investigated from a multitude of angles, and eventually Holmes and her co-founder/ex-boyfriend Sunny Balwani were indicted on wire fraud charges. 

It was a thing. 

Holmes became the subject of a popular HBO documentary The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley, and a very popular Hulu dramatized mini-series, The Dropout. People were already invested in this story, but also in Holmes. She is a brand, a commodity, and but also an unique curiosity of a person.

This documentary - wherein Fielder embeds himself with Holmes, her partner Billy Evans and their two children (one an infant, the other still a baby) in their ocean-side San Diego rental home for the five weeks leading up to her incarceration - is posited as Holmes and Evans idea.  They wanted Fielder, who has a unique and outsiders perspective on things (as evidenced in his reality/comedy series Nathan For You) to show a different narrative of who "Liz Holmes" is. And boy does it offer a different perspective.

Holmes has these massive, shocking blue eyes that are quite disarming. The majority of people's eyelids cover part of their iris, but Holmes' are always exposed, big blue discs with a bead of black in the centre that lead to a gaze that seems like its taking everything in. Her gaze is often accompanied by a blank smile, lower lip jutting out, teeth exposed, that seems both defensive and offensive at once.  The smile hiding something. The film spends a lot of time in immediate close-ups of Holmes' face as if it is trying to get a read on her.

Most documentary filmmakers aren't present in their films. Co-director Lance Oppenheim has only a small cameo in a re-enactment of an unfilmed meeting with Holmes and Evans before production, and a couple of name checks.  Fielder, however, is at the centre of the story, he has inserted himself into their lives and his presence shifts the narrative of this from pure doc into something else entirely.

A secondary narrative is constructed around Fielder's presence largely in the edit and post production. One of the first sequences in the film finds Holmes talking in the foreground, and in the background of the scene, through the blinds covering the window, we see the shape of a figure lurking. There's a cutaway to a close-up of that shape, and we can see it's Fielder, looking on with intensity. Throughout the film there are cuts to Fielder staring intensely at Holmes, and there are other scenes where Fielder and Holmes are staring intensely at one another. An early sequence, talking about how Holmes and Evans met, Fielder asks Holmes how she flirts, and staring intensely is her response. And they proceed to stare intensely at one another. 

The score make itself known from the film's early moments, bristling with intensity. At times it feels like Kane Parson's haunting, discomforting score from Backrooms and at other times it seems to be diving for TV movie melodrama, like Marcelo Zavos' in May December. Coupled with how the film edits the scenes and composes the shots of Fielder and Holmes' intense conversations/staring contests, it's implying that there is an attraction there, a connection, and, by way of the score, drama. There's also plenty of shots of Fielder leering at Evans, the implication of resentment or disgust is palpable. The reality is probably more like Fielder's intense staring is trying to parse out who Holmes really is, given her evasive responses to many of his questions, and her staring back at him is her investigating his responses. And those leers at Evans, well, they're absolutely justified (but that justification isn't fully explored until the back half of the movie after Holmes is imprisoned and visually absent from the film).

This is a film about narratives, the stories we tell to others and the stories we tell ourselves, and it's about how - and why - we tell those stories, and the outcomes we hope to achieve. Holmes' reasons for doing the documentary are different than Evans' reasons for doing the documentary. The story Fielder is trying to get out of Holmes is somewhat different than the story that he and Oppenheimer are telling with the film.  

The big thread is about the truth. Fielder's conversations with Holmes are often searching for the truth behind her words, past and present. She swears she never lies, and the film can't help but question whether that is the absolute truth, or if she's the greatest liar that's ever existed.  Is she manipulating everything, or is she incapable of manipulating anything or anyone.  Narratives and perspective are two sides, semantics becomes the linchpin as Fielder probes Holmes' claim that her device "can" do what she said. That she doesn't seem capable of distinguishing between use of "can" in the sense of "is able to now" versus "can" as in "has the potential to" is at the core of this film's inner conflict about its subject. Fielder shows Holmes the infamous Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on first" and Holmes just doesn't get it. He asks her "What is the name of the player on first" and she pauses, searching for the answer and says "I don't know" (that Fielder doesn't respond with "Third base" shows how invested in his investigation here, this is not a bit for him).

It's clear from this production that Holmes is neurodivergent. Evans keeps reiterating that her brain doesn't work like everyone else's, and that becomes very evident over the first hundred minutes of the film. It's also clear that Fielder is neurodivergent in a different way that makes him almost the perfect person to interact with Holmes in such an immediate and intimate capacity. He has no reluctance to ask her or Evans difficult questions.  Holmes often doesn't have an answer for him. Evans is often evasive, elusive, or defensive.

The second half of the film, after Holmes is imprisoned, picks up two years later and becomes very much about Evans and his impact on Holmes. Continuing with the manufactured narrative that Fielder and Holmes have this deep connection, and that Fielder has maybe fallen for Holmes, they dive into just who this man in Holmes' life is, and who he has become in the years she's been locked away from the world. He presents as a stone cold manipulator who has taken control of a psychologically vulnerable woman, and has found not as much a partner that needs protecting but a brand, a commodity, and a unique thinker he can readily exploit. Holmes, in many ways, presents like a member of a cult, but it's a cult of one and Evans is her cult leader. 

And so the question of You Can See Everything does, legitimately, become "is Elizabeth Holmes innocent"? Or perhaps not innocent, but "an innocent". Seeing how Evans manipulates and controls her (it's present in a very early scene where she is whisking eggs and Evans takes the bowl from her, whisks the eggs and hands the bowl back to her, with Fielder drawing attention to this situation that becomes a very specific metaphor for their relationship) it's very possible that Holmes' relationship with Sunny Balwani was very much the same (he was 37 when he met her as an 18-year-old). But it never abandons the doubt that Holmes very well could be the manipulator herself, the ultimate liar and con woman.

The film twists and twist and twists its narrative, and its questioning of narratives. In the second half there are extensive re-enactments of unfilmed events pertaining to interactions between Fielder and Holmes and Evans. These we have to trust as the truth, but also, given the context of the film, we absolutely have to question their truth. Even at times Fielder has to question his recollection of the conversations, who said what and how. Memory influences narrative, and our memories can be edited to suit a narrative we desire more than the truth.

I haven't watched Nathan For You, a show where Fielder, a comedian, offers his services to small businesses in trouble to help resuscitate their business, and his outlandish schemes are certain to fail. I have a difficult time with comedy that is fucking with the public, where people are taking the encounter as genuine, but it's all an act. As an often trusting/gullible person myself, deceit is something I frown upon. So I didn't know whether Fielder would be "in persona" here, and I couldn't tell at first if this idea of Fielder being obsessed with Holmes was something he was doing in the moment or just part of the edit (it becomes pretty clear it's the latter). Given that Holmes is a criminal and Evans is a real piece of shit, I was perfectly okay with the idea of someone coming in and messing with them, but that's genuinely not what Fielder is doing here. He's legitimately trying to find the truth, find answers, while also being as reservedly provocative as he can.

Oppenheim released his first narrative film, the excellent Primetime, last month, but is primarily known as a documentary filmmaker. While Fielder is the secondary face of the picture, Oppenheim is the steady hand behind it. Oppenheim brings to this big time documentary chops, with excellent, impactful coverage throughout, and the stylish, tone defining editing seen in Primetime is even more palpable here (the sequence of Fielder leaning over the back of the couch Holmes is sitting on while rocking a baby seat with her foot while they talk in a hard whisper to each other has three different compositions, each of them redefining the scene, and each conveying a slightly different narrative).

There are many parts to this I'm leaving out, including a delicious meta-narrative that further calls out the concept of the stories we tell and how we tell them, and how they are received. Everything that you see in You Can See Everything asks you to question what it is you are seeing, because even if you could see everything, you still can't trust everything that you see.

It is a brilliant, energizing, compelling, maddening, delightful and thought provoking experience. You don't have to be at all steeped in Theranos lore, or have any real prior knowledge of Elizabeth Holmes as a person (I did not watch The Inventor nor The Dropout, nor really follow the Holmes/Theranos narrative at all), the film is a character study, and Holmes is a fascinating character, her situation is fascinating, Fielder is a fascinating presence to be injected into the situation, and Evans is a controlling, manipulative asshat trying to control everything around him (and the experienced professionals involved don't give him an inch).

KWIF: four shiny new things (and one old one)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. After the cold and sinus infection took me down for a couple weeks, I managed to get to the theatre four times in 6 days. I still feel like I'm quite far behind on new releases that I actively want to see in theatre, but still, progress is progress.

This Week:
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (2026, d. Bassam Tariq - in theatre)
Wicker (2026, d. Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson - in theatre)
Whalefall (2026, d. Brian Duffield - in theatre)
Primetime (2026, d. Lance Oppenheim- in theatre)
Airport 1975 (1975, d. Jack Smight - dvd)

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Way back in July 2019 at San Diego Comic Con, Mahershala Ali, fresh out of two Oscar wins in three years, appeared on the Hall H stage during the Marvel Cinematic Universe showcase, and announced he would be starring in a new Blade movie in the title role. Screenplay after screenplay was written or rewritten year over year, while director after director came and went on the project before it was officially shelved this year. One of those directors was Bassam Tariq, who made a few well-received independent films before Marvel tapped him, and then, I suppose, frustrated him. In some ways being tapped by Marvel early in your career, but then leaving them before producing a troubled film seem invariably better for one's career than actually making and releasing a Marvel film. It drives curiosity. Tariq would spend two years working on the film. Ali spent six.

What's clear from Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is that something clicked with Ali and Tariq and they really wanted to work together. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, isn't, however, a "what if...?" situation. It's not a Blade analog. It's not a film that will bring to mind Marvel storytelling or characters, although there is definitely one part of the film where Ali uses swords and daggers in a many-on-one fight that signals just what an Ali-as-Blade fight sequence might have looked like in Tariq's hands.

In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother Ali plays Latif, a ... hitman of sorts. He is an ex-Marine (maybe?) who takes jobs for money, but he's selective about the jobs he does. They have to be justified and leave him with peace of mind. They have to be threats to his Muslim community, and the threats seem like they may be as much within his community as outside of it. 

We first meet Latif mid-job, mid-fight. It's gruelling, but Latif is big, powerful, and skilled (Ali got very swoll, no doubt in training for Blade) and gets the better of his opponent. And then his phone rings.

Latif's wife passed away, leaving him with a teenage daughter, Fatiha (Adia), pre-teen son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and a baby daughter Khadijah at home. As he mourns with his family and tries to reassess his life without his wife, his handler, Mike Mahmoudi (Laith Nakli) keeps trying to get in touch, in increasingly aggressive and disruptive ways. His family doesn't know about his other life, but his mentor and imam Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito) does and warns that the path Latif has chosen may cost him everything.

Khadijah's supply of breast milk is dwindling, and she cannot seem to stomach formula, so the film finds Latif in search of breast milk for his baby. He wants to provide. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "milk bank", which is awesome, if you can access it, which Latif cannot. Eventually in his desperate quest, Mike finds him, and with thinly veiled threats, forcefully asks him to take a job. Mike's nephew Hatty (Abubakr Ali) has gotten rich off of making porn, but a neo-con group of religious wing-nuts made up of largely ex-soldiers led by the gold-toothed pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho) is on a mission from God to punish human traffickers and destroy the pornography business, and has Hatty in their sights. Mike wants Yoon killed. Latif refuses.

The second act of the film finds Latif on his desperate quest to feed his baby while fending off not just Mike but having inadvertently gotten on the radar of Hwan Yoon's church. Things become increasingly severe as his family start becoming targets from both sides.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens with intensity and holds at that level with occasional spikes of respite or escalation throughout. It does feel like riding a knife's edge for nearly two hours. I think of something like You Were Never Really Here as a comparable film in tone, but Joaquin Phoenix's character in that film is dark, brooding and lonely, driven by a need to do some sort of good in the world, while Ali here is dark and brooding, and while surrounded by community and family he's still alone, and he's driven by a belief that he's doing good in the world. Religion, however, plays a huge part in this film, and a cornerstone to Latif's background is he was once a teacher of the Quran to youths (including Hatty), and he tries to instill Muslim values in his kids, unaware that Fatiha is in full teenage rebellion, flirting with Mormonism. The kicker is that for all his teachings and all his connections to the mosque and community, Latif seems like a lapsed Muslim, a man who maybe doesn't truly believe anymore.

It's hard not to see the intention in the way Tariq presents the Muslim faith here. He's not trying to put a layer of gloss over it or, really, in any way preach about it or claim it is perfect (there are pains here to show that just like any religion and any community, there are people who use and abuse the community for their own purposes), but there's a stark juxtaposition against Hwan Yoon's cult of guns and violent righteousness (and I had to appreciate that the cult was not just white men, but quite diverse, if still laden with nutjobs).  That juxtaposition extends between a "church" that kills for its beliefs and Latif's same ethos.  There are religious allegories and metaphors here, most lost on me yet did not diminish the impact of the story being told. 

This isn't an action movie, though there are sequences that really hit hard. It is far more a character study of a man reeling from loss, a man at a crossroads examining everything he believes himself to be and what he believes in, a man in his most desperate hour,  and a father who is only just learning how to be a parent.  

Ali is the best scene partner to everyone on screen...he has presence no matter what he's doing at any moment, and he knows it, so he gives his scene partners so much space and elevates every peformance around him. I'm reminded of One Battle After Another somewhat in the moments between Tariq and Fatiha, the most important relationship in the film, the fact that Tariq's life choices have impacted Fatiha so severely that she faces difficulties in finding her own place in the world...and eventually Tariq's other life comes crashing down on his family and Fatiha's really the only one who understands what her father truly is, and the realization is so beautifully performed by Adia, just an exceptionally emotional, deep and raw performance that signals the arrival of a tremendous new talent.  I think a version of this story told entirely from Fatiha's perspective would be incredible.

The only downside to Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (besides my lack of familiarity with Muslim traditions and proverbs) was the sound mixing. I'm sure it's fine for the average person but the mix of Ali's low grumble, the ambient atmospheric noise (within the film, not the theatre) and the terrific Son Lux soundtrack made it hard to hear a lot of the dialogue (including a very key line delivery at the film's climax)... even still I found it enriching and impactful.  

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother's denouement is one of the most surprising things I've seen in a good long while. The way this film closes tells us what's most important in life and it's so counter to the traditional hero's journey. It's pretty marvelous (ahem).

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It was only days before seeing Wicker in theatre that I even came to know of its existence. An ad for it popped up on YouTube and, well, it was bizarre and alluring in all the right ways. The cast - Olivia Coleman, Alexander Skarsgaard, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki - captured my attention immediately -all are favourites- and then the man made of wicker presented himself ever so briefly and I wanted to see more.

Wicker's trailer promised a whimsy, fantasy, sex and gender politics, and the film delivered on all fronts if not always consistently. 

It's true that there is a whimsical nature to Wicker but the playful, fanciful tone of the film is underpinned with splinters threatening to prick you with every movement. For every spark of joyful glee, there's a devilish smirk as the film makes abrupt turns or jagged revelations that change continually change the texture of what your watching.

The fantasy of the film is two fold. The setting of the film isn't pure fantasy but at the same time, the village it takes place in is insular and relatively isolated, and the denizens largely seem content with it being that way. It's hard to pin down a time period for the film, but it's before electricity, everyone has a job to do (well, every man has a job to do) and they are devoid of proper names. They are called their profession... Fisherwoman, Baker, Tailor or, for most women, their identity is tied to their husband, like Tailor's Wife.  At first I thought when people called Olivia Coleman "Fisherwoman" that it was meant as a pejorative. The town folk look down on this unmarried, older woman who is completely self sufficient and largely uninterested in the societal norms and pleasantries (it's also clear she's faced a life of derision and has built up a resilient defensive shell and a barbed tongue in response).

The other fantasy, though, is obviously the center of the film. Basket Weaver (Dinklage) can do magic with his strands of wicker. Fisherwoman, having accidentally been signalled the next to be married (and ridiculed by the town in response) asks Basket Weaver to make her a husband, just to mock the town's patriarchal rites and structures.  But Basket Weaver makes a true man, a man who will look at a woman as an individual, not a possession. A man who will love and care for his partner, and be content with his life only if she is content with hers. The Wicker Husband (Skarsgaard) and Fisherwoman do marry, and Fisherwoman finds herself changed with the realization that there is an alternative to the life she has been leading, as well as an alternative to the life the people of the village attempt to enforce.

One such enforcer is Tailor's Wife (Debicki), who is the defacto town magistrate through sheer sternness and force of will. She's a sour woman who, like Fisherwoman, is disgruntled with the patriarchy of her town, and displeased having to defer to her husband. But that is the town way, so the only thing that gives her purpose is enforcing the village rite and traditions. Fisherwoman bucking in the face of those traditions, doing what she cannot, only angers her more, she's full of resentment. 

Wicker Husband breeds a lot of resentment. It's clear that Fisherwoman is being satisfied by her husband, a generous and selfless lover, so the women are curious while the men feel emasculated. Though sex is at the core of the film's trailer, it's just one of the facets through which this film examines the patriarchy. Feminine pleasure may get more attention in the post Sex and the City years but still the male gaze dominates our media.

Though just touched upon briefly, Wicker escapes the "born sexy yesterday" trope and does reinforce that Wicker Husband does have agency, and was not built to serve Fisherwoman, he actually chose to partner with her.

Wicker is a pseudo-Frankenstein tale that refuses to engage with Frankenstein tropes. It could have leaned into those horror roots, but it's got its own plans for how the story of Fisherwoman, her Wicker Husband and the rotten village play out and it doesn't have any interest in the same old thing. Instead it looks to fables and fairy tales, teaching all the characters of the film a lesson or two (but each to their own lesson). It is based off a 2008 short story "The Wicker Husband" by Ursula Wills, which was written as a fairy tale.  (The story apparently had only been self-published online prior to the film rights being acquired, which is itself fascinating how things can be discovered anywhere, anytime.)

There are many delights to Wicker, but the greatest is the design of Wicker Husband. WETA Workshop's visualization of the character is so intricate and gorgeous, the details of his face, his hands, his body are just magnificent. The sound design, every move of Wicker Husband elicits a creak or a groan from the weave as the reeds compress or expand (yes, including that part of him).

It is a romantic, funny, sharp and pointed film that's probably the biggest, out-of-nowhere surprise of the year.

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Stop me if you've heard this one before... a guy goes out for a dive to recover his father's remains, only to get snagged by a giant squid and sucked into a whale.

I know right?  It sounds so unique and exciting.

And it is. And it isn't.

Whalefall finds Austin Abram's Jay Gardner returning to his coastal Californian home town from college (in landlocked Ohio) for the first time in a while. It's been a year since his father, terminally ill, committed suicide by returning himself to the ocean. Jay gathers with his mom (Elizabeth Shue) and sisters (Jane Levy, Emily Rudd) where it's clear that everyone except Jay is coping with the loss. 

Jay's dad Mitt (Josh Brolin) was an expert diver. He was a whale spotting tour guide as well as a bit of an eco warrior. He saw Jay as the heir to his knowledge of the world, but also the heir to his perspective on life. He wanted Jay to be aware of the world, and how to live in sort of harmony with it. Mitt didn't just respect the ocean, he worshipped it. Like any father who can't see past their own perspective, their own desires for their children, he bullied Jay into learning all the things he wanted him to learn, never taking the time for Jay's interests or to listen to Jay's perspective. It was a fraught relationship and despite Jay's desire to find connection, Mitt could never seem to stop the noises in his brain from reaching his mouth long enough to make one.

A comment from his sister about the empty coffin at Mitt's grave site leads Jay to the idea to go for a dive to find even one bone of his father's remains, even after being made aware that Mitt jumped intending to go down off the shelf into the inky blackness where Jay couldn't reach him.  Yadda yadda yadda Jay winds up inside a whale.

There was an excellent, as yet unfinished comic book mini-series from (woah) nearly 20 years ago called Gutsville by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving about a whole town living inside the belly of a whale. I loved that story and still hope it is completed one day. Of course any story of man being swallowed by a whale is a spin off the biblical Jonah and the whale...or at best a riff on Pinocchio...but director Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) has no designs on high fantasy inside a cavernous stomach.  No, he's much more interested in the gooey, fleshy, pulsating innards of earth's largest mammals, in the case a sperm whale.

Whalefall has two stories to tell. It has the tale of Jay's survival inside a great beast that has very little awareness that he's in there, and the story of Jay's relationship with his father. I have seen stories about people being inside of beasts before, as well as stories about the challenges between fathers and sons...so as much as Whalefall presents some familiarity, it also present a whole lot I've just never seen before in both of its plots.

Having complicated a complicated relationship with your father, or being a father and having a complicated relationship with your children (or having step-kids who have complicated relationships with their fathers) is definitely not unfamiliar ground for me and if it's done well, I'm 100% in for such exploration. I have to say, it is done quite well here. I could feel Jay's frustration with Mitt. I know that frustration. But at the same time, the movie gives space for Mitt too, not to express his frustration at Jay ... well, he does do that a lot, but examining that Mitt's frustration is as much about his own inability to escape his own trappings, his own nature, his own learned behaviour.  But it's not what everyone came to Whalefall to see.

And so being inside the mouth and various stomach chambers of the whale is a fucking ordeal.  And it's intense and mesmerising, just fully captivating, with no sense at all of what's to come next or what the plan is to get out of this situation.  And all the biological functions inside, well, I have no idea what's truth and what's just what looks funky on screen, but it's all really, really awesome...

...until it isn't.

The reality is there's a limited amount of space, and a limited amount of resources inside the body of a whale, so it really makes MacGyvering a way out of the situation pretty hard. It also limits the amount of interaction Jay can have with his environment, and so there's only so much time to be filled with the central premise. The rest has to be more emotional, more personal.  

So where Whalefall falls down is in its third act. For the first two acts, the film jumps between Jay's present and his past. Lost-style, there are kind of memory triggers, or blackouts that precipitate a flashback. It's a familiar formula and it works well. As much as, yes, the flashbacks interrupt the most exciting part of the film, they also provide a grounding tether to this fantastical situation.

The third act, though, attempts to merge these two threads, to get metaphysical, to get sort of spiritual, where Jay, defeated, and running low on oxygen starts communicating with the whale, and the whale communicates back to him, but as Mitt.  It's supposed to be an emotional catharsis, it's supposed to fully bridge the gap between these two stories, but it had the opposite effect on me, putting more and more distance between my connection to either story. This merger makes the survival tale that was grounded by the emotional story feel far fetched because the emotional story itself takes on a fantasy element. And the survival of the third act becomes more about the survival of the sperm whale, less about Jay.

Abrams, in survival mode for the second time this year, ably carries the weight of this film, even with absence the lighter touches he's brought to every other role I've seen him in. He's perhaps an unlikely superstar, but I predict his 30's are going to be huge for him.

I really liked Whalefall but was also pretty disappointed by it. These two emotions have no choice but to coexist. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before, except that it is.

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In the 1970's the retro aesthetic of the 1950's seemed like an entirely different society and culture, completely disconnected from the times. In the 1990's the retro '70's vibe seemed so deep in the past, something we had scrubbed from our memories, only for the disco era to come screaming back with a vengeance. The 2000's were 20-ish years ago, and it still doesn't feel like we're that disconnected from the times. But Lance Oppenheim's look at one of the stranger cultural artifacts of the era, saturated in pastiche, reminds us that we've moved a fair distance away.  But also not that far.

Primetime is largely shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio, black space flanking either side of the image on screen. Oppenheim uses (or simulates) many different camera formats throughout the procession of the film, including home video recorders, mini-cameras strapped to guns, and all manner of TV cameras. With only one watch it's hard to pick out specifically what the formatting is telling us, and whether the late-stage scene of a over-the-shoulder camera being dropped in a swimming pool (and not retrieved) is some form of message about network TV drowning in "reality TV".

The subject of Primetime is the trashy, gawking 2000's reality TV show To Catch A Predator, wherein a crew behind the scenes bait "sexual predators" found in chatrooms on the internet into thinking they are young teenagers interested in having encounters with gross older men. Once on the hook online, they're drawn to a location to have a physical encounter where they're pounced on by one-time journalist Chris Hansen, who then reads excerpts from their on-line chats and he publicly shames them before being tackled by police upon exiting the premises.

There was always something gross about To Catch A Predator, always something disquieting and uncomfortable about it. Not just the awareness that there are men like that out there, men ready to exploit the naivite of a teenager, but that there's people, and a network who are exploiting these exploiters for profit. Capitalism has no scruples. The show also blurred the lines of journalism and law enforcement and what responsibilities journalists actually had.

Primetime stars Robert Pattinson as Hansen, or, rather, a version of Hansen. Pattinson is delivering a performance, portraying a man who is driven by ego and prestige and a self-deluded belief that he is, somehow, helping make the world a better, safer place. It's a magnificent transformation that he makes a full meal out of, bathing in the glory of his accomplishments, but always falling in the shadow of contemporaries like Stone Phillips.

While Hansen is the lead character, Merritt Weaver co-stars as Hansen's producer, Andie Bender. Andie and Chris have a professional relationship and little else, but both fuel each other's ambitions, and neither is about to check the other for going too far. Andie is as wrapped up in the ratings race to take down Lost as Chris is. Where Hansen doesn't even consider the ethics of what they're doing, Bender seems to know that the work their doing is trash and morally questionable, but fully admits to not caring.

Skyler Gisondo plays "Decoy Dan" Plum, an actor hired to be the "teen" greeting the potential predator at the door. Where Chris is kind of unknowable as a person, keeping anything close to real at a distance in this story, and Andie is all in on her success-by-any-means, Dan just has ambitions as an actor to get his SAG card. He takes his role seriously, prepping for it as if every encounter he's going to have is a mini-play, partially scripted but with some improvisation.  Dan is the heart of this very darkly comic movie, but even he falls prey to the darkness. There are moments that pull him out of the black ink he's fallen in and Gisondo plays those moments of conflict and turmoil perfectly.

Oppenheim isn't interested at all in investing the audience in the success or failure of To Catch A Predator within the film, which is counter to the usual rhythms of these types of media based-on-a-true-story productions. Usually there's some investment into the health of the show, but Oppenheim is more interested in the toll that the show takes on the people behind the scenes.  

Primetime, as well as To Catch A Predator, hits its peak when they find a white whale, someone in the government...besides a celebrity there could be nothing more scandalous. The result of this encounter are pretty dark, and ends both the show and the film, save for a small coda.  The film is uber stylish, and quite propulsive, but starts to sputter a bit at the top of the third act, as it circles some of the character beats it's previously examined. There was more meat to be had in the fallout of the white whale but no room left to explore it.

For such a dark and twisted subject matter, Primetime is quite lively and even shockingly fun.

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By the time the sequel to 1970's Airport came along five years later, Irwin Allen had perfected the disaster movie formula with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Derived from a novel, Airport had quite different ambitions, positing itself as much a procedural as a disaster flick. Airport 1975 had no such background, and no such ambitions. It wanted to use and abuse the disaster movie formula as much as possible.

And so we get the motley crew of passengers aboard a Boeing 747 red-eye from Washington to Los Angeles, complete with the most briefest of introductions and character defining moments.  It should be an uneventful flight, but a weather front across the western seaboard forces the plane into an early landing at Salt Lake City. 

Unfortunately for them, a small single engine personal plane is also in their airspace, and its pilot is in the midst of having a heart attack. He loses control and grazes the side of the cockpit, tearing a hole open. The co-pilot is sucked out into the open air, a console falls and kills the navigator, and the captain is blinded in the collision. It's up to flight attendant Nancy Pryor (Karen Black) to take control of the situation and hopefully find their way to safety. The encroaching mountains aren't going to be much help though.

A disaster film has three parts - the introductions, the calamity, and the fallout. If one of these fails the other two can prop it up no problem. If two fail, then the third had better be good. Here, the opening introduction to our players is pretty weak, mostly glossed over. The disaster itself is especially terrible -- the image of the very-clearly-a-prop-dummy being sucked out of the plain is hilariously awful, and our only exterior view of the collision is on the poster -- but once the film settles into the procedural aspect of getting Nancy to fly the plane (while the passengers start coming to the realization of the full severity of their situation) it's pretty gripping. And then they attempt a mid-air insert of a pilot from a military helicopter into the cockpit through the hole. Insanity.

Half kinda trashy, half genuinely entertaining, Charlton Heston is kinda sleepwalking through his part, and Karen Black plays Nancy a little too hysterical for my liking, but overall it generally does work. George Kennedy needlessly reprises his role as Joe Petroni (though he seems to have gotten a pretty big promotion since the last one), but adds the most tenuous of connections to the first film...as if that really mattered.

31 Days of Halloween: Malignant

2021, James Wan (Insidious) -- download

Kent saw and wrote about it in 2022; he liked it, so ... we agree? And I added it to the list for the coming October, but only just watched now. No idea why. We have a lot of previously downloaded movies meant for this season, which are not watched. I could probably do all of next year from just that bin. 

Prior to this movie, Wan was known for Saw, which we never saw (pun not intended) or, if we did, so outright dismissed the Torture Porn gem that we soured on the whole franchise, but we did see Insidious and wrote about it in the inaugural 31 Days event. He was acclaimed enough that they gave him Aquaman which I hated (more retrospectively, as I am OK about it in the writeup), but Kent loved. And with the money from it, he did what can only be described as a Horror passion project, because... <keanu whoah> is it bonkers.

So bonkers, that upon starting it and the so unbelievably over-the-top, melodramatic, so utterly campy acting and preamble setup, I was wondering if this was going to be a movie within a movie, something where they ascribe a throwback Z-grade horror movie vibe to some elements, but normalize it elsewhere. Kind of? It never does the layered approach, but if it wasn't for the absolute bonkers budget he puts into the movie, this could have been Z-grade all the way.

So bonkers that I had to start Googling it. And it got, like a lot of, talk. 

Well, that's annoying. The next three draft paragraphs were eaten by a bad save.

Most of the chatter is mixed with allusions to "American Giallo", or comments on this being Wan getting to do exactly what he wanted to do in a movie, given the money and open control he attained from Aquaman. Kent's the more attuned to giallo, but from what I understand, I can see the comparisons, in that its usually involving an investigative element, and buckets of blood. This movie would be lacking the 60s-70s sexual component common in the Italian movies. But given that even Wan called this his ode to Eyes of Laura Mars and that is considered a landmark in the American version of the genre, I can see what people are saying.

So, after the preamble, we are years later. A pregnant and very tired & sore Maddie (Annabelle Wallis, Annabelle) is returning from late night work, while her husband Derek (Jake Abel, Another Life) watches the game and flicks thru his phone. He's a jerk, angry at her for getting pregnant again, after four miscarriages. He's more than a jerk, he's angry and abusive, poking her belly and when she responds slamming her into a wall, cracking both the plaster and her head. Like all sniveling abusers, he runs away to get her something and she locks him out. Later, he's sleeping on the sofa when a long hair shadow attacks and ... CRICK... kills him.

Enter the cops, one Detective Kekoa (George Young, Containment) Shaw and Regina Moss (Michole Brianna White, Songbird), who is totally not played by Wanda Sykes. There was no break-in, Maddie did not see who it was, Moss immediately says, "Its always the wife." Maddie wakes up in the hospital with her sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson, Elevation) -- she's lost the baby. Weeks later, a barely functional Maddie returns home to the house where Derek died, because she has no where else to go.

Maddie's head won't stop bleeding, and then she is having visions of murders. The long haired shadow, in a floppy leather coat, is killing people she doesn't know. Maddie believes the killer to be her "imaginary friend" she calls Gabriel, and as she explains it to Sydney, when she reveals to her sister that she (Maddie) was adopted, Gabriel has always been trouble -- he tried to use Maddie as a child to murder Sydney in the womb. The cops uncover that Maddie was once Emily and the murders happening are doctors who worked on her before she was adopted, something to do with reconstructive surgery.

It was at this point that Marmy stated, from the table where she was half-watching, mostly painting Halloween figures, what was going on. Viewers have commented on how bonkers this "reveal", which doesn't come until much later in the movie, when the violence escalates to extreme levels, but... <shoulder shrug> ... this is where I was expecting it to go. So, I was right in the idea that this played like a Z-grade over-the-top horror movie, but with budget, and I am not ashamed to say, skill. Wan takes a whacka-doodle premise and really plays it for heart. Even if he didn't succeed in convincing most audiences, he got the make the movie he wanted.

Once I settled into the "this is intentional", I really enjoyed the cheesey aspects of the movie. The sex appeal with which Detective Shaw is played, and their almost SNL Skit level interactions. The fact that Wan's wife plays Crime Scene tech Winnie (Ingrid Bisu, The Nun) who is crushing on Shaw. The violence is ultra, and I also amused myself by comparing the mass murder of cops in a station house scene from The Cycle with this movie's scene. I have a feeling the director of the former was a big fan of this one.

We agreed. And I have to say, I am amused that Kent is seeing more of the lauded examples of the horror genre that we started this blog saying was a "Toasty thing", than I am these days.

31 Days of Halloween: Moar TV - A Mix

Yaga, 2026, Crave/download
Crystal Lake, 2026, Peacock/download
Remain Calm, 2026, YouTube
Five Star, 2025, YouTube

There's too much on TV at the moment. Slow Horses started up again, new Marvel show Visionquest hit Disney, GBBO is in its new season, even LOL did a Halloween special. Sure, everything is streaming or downloaded, so we could wait, but we don't.

Where Below wanted to be set in Canada, but not feel Canadian, this show is, as usual, set in the US and feels so fucking typical Pacific Northwest Canadian. From the painfully slow burning opening episode where we introduce the characters, set the tone, and only hint at the menace to come, to the rainy, seaside small town (an island community) where a rich kid has gone missing, you know you are watching Typical Canadian SpecFic, and I feel, might be one of those that gets back-burnered to specfic channels only. This is not going to be the next Widow's Bay which every horror tinged show will want to be.

A detective has been flown to the small town on the island by a rich family, to assist the police with locating their rich son, who has not officially gone missing, and is known to not officially go missing, but when the Park family asks, everyone responds. He's paired with a reluctant Sergeant Carson (Clark Backo, Letterkenny), who is not charmed by this not-a-cop detective, despite his efforts -- Charlie Rapp (Noah Reid, Schitt's Creek) is more than a bit of a charming rogue, probably a slut.

The two do some initial investigating, but really, the only thing that happens in the first episode involves dead chickens, one hit by a car, and the other nailed to Rapp's hotel door and set on fire.

The show, by name alone, involves the Eastern European myth of Baba Yaga, a witch who either rides a mortar & pestle, or lives in a hut which walks on chicken legs. Like all witches, she is known to punish naughty children. The only hints we get in connecting this story to the witch are through narration.

I was not impressed by this first episode, but we will give it another two before dismissing outright.

Meanwhile the reimagining of the Friday the 13th franchise, which focuses on the events of the first movie, has been rather acclaimed. Part of the inspiration for this 31 Days series was a Halloween tradition the Peanut Gallery (Marmy) and I started some time in the early 2000s, where we revisited some, if not all, of the "classic horror franchises", including the Jason Vorhees movies, most of which we hadn't watched since the days of VHS. I still find myself surprised to be reminded that the franchise began not with the monster wearing a hockey mask, but with his mother punishing a bunch of promiscuous camp counsellors.

Whereas the first episode of Yaga accomplished absolutely nothing, this first episode does it all. We meet Jason, a young deformed boy (hydrocephalus), and his mother Pam (Linda Cardellini, Scooby-Doo) who works the camp. The counsellors help her take care of Jason while she works, but the kids are kids, and most either fear or mock him. And one fateful day, Jason attempts to prove himself worthy by swimming out past the safe zone, and the girl who was tasked with watching him, is having sex. Jason drowns. His body is never recovered.

Nine months later, Pam is still beside herself. The camp has closed during the investigation, but she constantly returns, seeking her son. She is both pitied by the nearby town residents, as much as she is a pariah. After a traumatic Founder's Day where she freaks out over other children swimming, she is escorted home and two men show up claiming to be State Police. They aren't, and in short course, they try to abduct her, but fail.... dramatically.

Wow, this show is going to be violent. Pam kills both men quite horribly -- one scene has a man drowning in plastic bag tied over his head, as a head wound fills up the bag with blood. The scene ends, just after Pam disposes of the bodies, with a phone call and, "They found us." A whole new mythos of Jason Vorhees is being built, and likely, long before the boy dons a mask and starts his own slaughter.

Color me bloodily intrigued. And yet, I am also typically cynical. Is this another Carrie and is Jason the subject of experimentation? Is a shadowy organization responsible for... what he becomes in the later movies?

* * *

Remain Calm (Jake Lewis, The Cowboy & The Samurai) is a comedy-horror short starring Paul Shore and ... Doug Jones, as ... well, Doug Jones. No, not really. He actually plays some sort of Man in Black (suit) showing up at an all night gas station seeking... something. Now, at the best of times, Jones can be unsettling with his height and long, lanky limbs. But in this case, he says the creature he is looking for hunts anxiety, so he is adding to his creepy nature with a big fake smile. Constantly. Punctuated by dialogue meant to raise the spirits of the two cashiers, and them being normal (lazy) humans, does not work.

Pauly Shore is my age. And yet, its not surprising to see him still playing the slacker working a dead-end job. He is most definitely type-casted. Nick Swardson is one of those instantly recognizable comedic faces, but I doubt anyone could name something he was in. Meanwhile, Jones is usually behind makeup.

Its a fun short, well produced and acted with an interesting premise, but really, the best of of it comes in the brief moments when Jones is on the screen.

Five Stars (Kai Hasson, Robu) stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, and was made in 2025, long after his acclaim from Kim's Convenience and various Star Wars properties. He plays a locksmith seeking to bump up his stars, after a spate of 1-star reviews because of his ... personality.

The woman calls him in to look at her closet door. Nothing odd here, but that it won't ... stay .... closed. No matter what she does, and no matter what Kang does to keep the door closed, it just won't. He also makes note that there is another light switch inside the closet, that does nothing. BUT when he closes the door from inside the closet, and flicks said switch, the door opens onto .... another realm. And in this realm, seemingly littered with the refuse of things from this closet (and from before his customer even owned the old house), he finds a demon, which is who has been constantly re-opening the door. And who probably ate the previous locksmiths called in.

Kang takes care of the demon, assuring her that her closet will now stay closed. Instant five-star review !! Except, he left his glass of water on a piece of furniture, WITHOUT A COASTER. 1-star !!

* * *

Horror shorts are something we should watch more. Hell knows, many of the horror movies we watch begin as a short. A short allows the creator to present their premise without all the filler space about characters and plots and setting. Just give us the horror and that's it. I am sure Remain Calm will be the next treated to such lifting, but .... I highly doubt it will be worth the payout.

31 Days of Halloween: Onslaught

2026, Adam Wingard (Death Note) -- download

This was tagged "military slasher" by most sites, which is why I allowed it to come into the series, knowing the plot would provide some connection to the slasher sub-genre of horror, even if it was about super soldiers taking on a PTSD Veteran.  I knew I would get an ultra-violent shoot-em-up, but what I wasn't expecting was a highly stylized, almost surreal, more-than-a-bit wacky film... maybe as far as farce ? Coming out of the movie, and kind-of remembering Wingard's name, I was thinking I would find out he was one of the self-styled auteur film makers know for a bunch of low-budget violent flicks, but I was not expecting the guy who did Godzilla vs Kong, but I now see it, remembering how wack-a-doodle that movie was, in comparison to the previous two.

So, we have Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens, Legion) awakened by his dom (as in, BDSM) wife telling him he is needed at the facility. Kammler is a Nazi scientist working in the US. Kammler is played by an almost unrecognizable Dan Stevens in an absolute terrible bald cap -- perfectly smooth, perfectly dome-shaped. He is flown by helicopter to the underground facility in the New Mexico desert, where we learn of his program to take reported-dead soldiers known for their aggressive personalities (by aggressive, I mean the kind who commit atrocities on a daily basis) and turn them into glowey-eyed super-soldiers. The first three prototypes are Crybaby, Cockroach, and the Butcher. Kammler has been summoned to oversee their first government observed field-test.

They go rogue and slaughter everyone, Kammler included. He dies... happy. And then they break out of the facility and into the desert. Meanwhile Kammler's dom wife (Rebecca Hall, Iron Man 3) activates a "cleaner" agent (Drew Starkey, The Devil All the Time), also involved in his own BDSM extracurricular activities (lots of gimp masks), to investigate the alarm at her husband's facility.

Nearby, at the mobile home trailer park of Windy Oasis lives PTSD-engulphed ex-Army Sniper Celeste (Adria Arjona, Hit Man). Like all of these vets, she's a bit high strung, constantly startling at shadows and memories, and likes to spend most of her time either drinking or shooting pumpkins in the desert, with her vast collection of automatic weapons. She also has a daughter, whom she loves dearly, but is clearly not suited to supporting. Her ex drops the little girl off for an unplanned weekend visit, just before the super soldiers come to town.

Aaaaand begin the titular onslaught.

To be frank, its disappointing and only mildly entertaining. For one, they don't even give Celeste access to that big stash of heavy weapons she has locked up. The actual onslaught seems.... curbed? They super soldiers slaughter everyone but Celeste, her daughter and another old vet named Josiah. There's only three of them, and while they can get up after getting shot, they don't walk off being dismembered, or headshots. Since the movie was most obviously going for a classic slasher (Jason Vorhees/Michael Myers) vibe, including the John Carpenter-ish soundtrack and fonts for titling, they monsters go down surprisingly fast. Usually I love me some style but the movie seems more concerned with it than with the actual climactic battle.

Meh.

31 Days of Halloween: The End of Oak Street

2026, David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) -- download

Kent.

OK, I didn't get to this immediately after the last movie about a family trapped in their suburban home, but I blame it on my highly-debatable media centre tagging system, which didn't consider this movie as horror -- I definitely do, but I get that most will lump it into the general survival-adventure bucket. Movies are almost always more than a single tag.

I guess I did not read Kent's post closely enough to catch that this movie takes place in ... 1982; late seventies, early 80s is what I was thinking upon gazing at the subdivision layout and construction styles. That is my era, so I was instantly taken back. Mitchell used the same nostalgia in It Follows despite that movie being set in an anachronistic bubble. 

Family drama. Its again centered here. Denise (Anne Hathaway, The Witches; Kent was right -- holy crow she's in a lot of movies in 2026) is a stay-at-home mom, entirely dissatisfied with her current situation, primarily because of her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor, Doctor Sleep), who has told her he would quit his gig jobs once he was hired back, but he keeps on disappearing every night to ... well, deliver pizzas. He's optimistically / obliviously in denial about the tension he is causing. Its 1982, he's stuck in the world of toxic male identity and needing to be seen as the breadwinner and protector of his family. He's not necessarily a Bad Guy, but he has blinders up that is hurting his family. Denise escapes into something that is entirely her own -- a novel she is writing about a ... well, a dissatisfied wife. The kids cannot not notice what is going on between their parents, while dealing with their own shit -- Brian (Christian Convery, Sweet Tooth) is being bullied, and graduating Audrey (Maisy Stella, Nashville) is coming to realize her college dreams are not going to happen.

Then after a long stormy night of bright flashing lights, they awaken to an entirely different world outside -- one that is millions of years in the past. The movie gently (snort, nothing is gentle when its a carnivorous dino) teases out the fact they are in the past, in the Age of Dinosaurs -- hungry hungry dinosaurs. But once we get our first clear view of the feathered ostrich sized raptor thing, we see the entire neighbourhood is fleeing the creatures, and... well, most are not escaping. There is a lot of death in this movie.

So, the family has to pivot from their very personal issues to ones of survival, exceeeept its not like Greg changes the behaviour that has been annoying Denise; in fact, it kind of amplifies it. Stay positive, don't let on how bad things are, protect your family. What Greg feels compelled to do, just pisses the pragmatist & realist in Denise off to no end. 

Then Brian spies his (still alive?!?!) dog out the window and sneaks out of the now fortified house to get him. Audrey observes him, and follows. Its not like the dinosaurs go to sleep universally at night. Going outside is death. They find the lone neighbour Jeanette (Jordan Alex Davis, Thriller) who has lost her parents. And when the parents discover their kids are missing, they head out, barely avoiding death numerous times, but at least they get to observe two dinos humping. Levity; not much of it in this movie. When they all finally reconnect, they still have to get home and along the way... well, Brian is eaten by an Allosaurus. Holy fuck; its horrible and surprising and traumatizing. But at least they got the dog Starbuck back.

And yes, I confirmed Kent's note that the kid Brian liked "Battlestar Galactica" and not, as I assumed, read "Moby-Dick".

So yes, this movie mostly plays as an adventure flick, especially with the ever present bombastic adventure film score, but I still sat it squarely in the horror genre as this movie is not shy about the neighbourhood dying and constantly. Given the star power at play, I assumed none of the family would die, not even the dog. Somebody in the production didn't like cats, as they were seen being eaten far too many times, but yes, even Starbuck survives unscathed. But.... Brian dying was... horrible. The look on Denise's traumatized face, the subsequent freak out, the rethinking of her disputes with him, the loss. I was not expecting it.

Now Denise has to step up and play protector.... OK, I retract that; she didn't have to step up -- she was always a protector. Denise is the one with the gun, she was the one planning to survive almost immediately, not playing the optimistic Greg role of waiting it out, or waiting for help to come. BUT now she is a single parent, and now her only goal is to save her kids. But how? Bubbles of Time is how.

The movie ends on a scifi focus, and a fun little paradox. Timey Wimey Spacey Wavey shit is going on, and the section of the neighbourhood, in a complete sphere, was sucked into the past. But there are other smaller bubbles that lead back to .... well, kind of the same time. Denise and the kids jump into one such winking in and out bubble that takes them back home to the ... night they were taken, but hours before. And so the movie hand-waves away all the horror from before, by having Denise call all the neighbours who we saw die, to get them out of their homes and to safer ground, before the time bubble sucks them all away. AND she gets a pizza delivered by her husband. He is "saved". The movie doesn't care about the paradox created -- previous timeline dad was eaten, but.... they have him back?

I liked the movie, I liked it turning the tables on the whole Jurassic Park comparison. I liked the horror of the experience. There is a little annoyance that Severe Trauma is depicted as wiping away familial issues, and yes, I get that the dramatic trick at play is that all their issues were petty and survival as a family was paramount, but eventually they will be in a place where those things will emerge again. Oh wait, no maybe not, Denise ends up writing a hugely successful novel based on their experience, and they have cashed in. 

31 Days of Halloween: The Cycle

2026, Jordan Downey (The Head Hunter) -- download

Don't read any further, don't even glance down, if you don't want a spoiler

OK, I got my werewolf movie. And yes, that's the frickin' spoiler. The movie does a really really good job of not leading you by the nose to that reveal.

Meg (Deborah Ann Woll, Escape Room) works as a forensic anthropologist at a "body farm" where they train crime fighters investigators on the various means and manners of body decomposition. She is not phased, like at all, by all the gross stuff. But she is entirely phased by the body the cops bring her to see, in a small coastal town in Oregon. It's not the shredded bodies of a mother and young daughter they want Meg to see, but the gray desiccated body of a man, found by a railroad track near the murder scene. That body is her estranged father, someone who ran out on her 36 years prior. Why the fuck was his body dumped there? What does he have to do with the murders? Can Meg deal with the emotions this dredges up?

I have said before that I like horror movies that set up our characters with a semblance of normality, of "real life"... well, real to the setting of the movie. Going on vacation in Thailand, drinking and dancing, is not a high mark in "real life", but the grimy, cramped places this movie is shot just smacks of the authenticity I like in these movies. I also enjoy that so many can be as much a murder investigation plot, as it is horror. This movie establishes its supporting cast really well: the young police chief Ian Marks (Will Hochman, Boston Blue) and his father, which the movie just calls "Marks" (Jeffrey Donovan, Law & Order), and the coroner Ratterman (Jeb Berrier, Sometimes I Think About Dying) who is appalled the cops want her consulting on the body of her own father.

The study of her dad's body doesn't lead far, but shows signs of regular and repeated bone breaks and healing, and the idea that the body died about 30 days prior. And finally, that he hanged himself. And then, and Chief Ian Marks, while seeking an update from coroner Ratterman, at the funeral home where the body is stored, and we guess Ratterman does his work, is attacked. We see the body crawling on the floor and then... blood spray and screaming. The Chief bumps into a switch on the cremation ovens and ... the next day all they find are the smouldering ruins and Ian's body. Somehow the dead body of her father is barely touched?

The overlay came up, "21 days later," but they were just having the funeral, the investigation still on hold and, for some reason, Meg's dad's body still... in storage? It should have been a greater hint as to what we were dealing with, but it just felt like a sloppy script, and TBH, it still does. Why would the dead man's body sit so long? If the death of the Chief was considered an accident, why wait almost a month to have his funeral?  

But the investigation has continued, and turned up a similar attack 30 years ago. A man was torn apart by an unknown animal, but was found before it killed him, and 911 called. When Meg hears the 911 call, she hears her father's voice, and her own -- it was the night he ran away. The victim survived the horrific mauling, but had to have a massive blood transfusion. He survived decades of reconstructive surgery but was left incapacitated. While they are investigating, there is another attack, another brutally torn apart body and ... the corpse of her father, but with fresh blood on its mouth and hands. So, we know there is a monster within that corpse, but we are not sure ... what. The corpse is once again brought back to the station.

And that's where the reveal happens. The dead body of her father transforms, as the full moon rises. The "spirit" of the werewolf survives, even if the "host" has died. The curse is immortal, unless the body is fully destroyed, we must assume, or there could be a lot of werewolfs out there. The horribly disfigured, half-dead looking (practical effects!!) werewolf kills pretty much everyone in the station before Marks, the chief's father, drives it off with a shotgun. Meg has traced it back to an off-grid house, ascertaining that is where her father was hiding for the past 30 years. They go to investigate, hoping to ... destroy it?

They find a lair, equipment, technology meant to keep something in, cages and video tapes. And an explanation. While working an oil rig, Meg's father Peter Stump was scratched by something they found in a sinking lifeboat. Not long after, he knew what he was becoming, especially when he woke up next to the aforementioned mauled man. His final act, before disappearing, was to call 911. The victim was saved from becoming a werewolf himself by the full blood transfusion. And Stump went into hiding, hoping to drive the curse from his body through experimentation. Everything failed and his own final act was suicide -- which didn't work. Marks and Meg fight the creature off, as the sun is rising, hoping only to keep alive until it changes back to a (not rotting) corpse. The final scenes of the movie are Meg and Marks monitoring their own "cage" with the creature/corpse within, trying to find anything to defeat it.

As a tight plot, this movie didn't fully have it, but.... it definitely had something. Commitment and intention, in buckets. Most Shudder channel originals are buckets of gore, for its own sake, but this wanted a story and also, it wanted practical effects to be highlighted. They were mostly successful in the last bit, and can be applauded for at the very least, actually choosing practical magic. But what I liked was its production value --- Downey knows how to build a scene, populate it with a limited cast, and set it in a very real, lived-in location. I think back to the visceral, tangible nature of Fincher's Seven or the True Detective series. Downey also accomplished this, but in a grimdark fantasy setting, in The Head Hunter. I look forward to what he does next.

31 Days of Halloween: The Devil's Mouth

2026, Jeff Wadlow (Fantasy Island) -- download/Amazon

Note: We were watching our downloaded copy, when it lost integrity in the last 30 minutes -- but then I remembered it showed up on Amazon.

We watch enough to create a 'shark movies' Tag. Again, we as in Marmy and I; not sure of Kent's interest in movies with gnashy teeth sea creatures. I think his only entry in this Tag is a James Bond flick.

Anywayz, not going to debate the 'are shark movies horror movies?' as they are: a) survival, a common enough horror movie theme, and b) monsters, as sharks in movies are most def monsters. No debate -- Yes, they are horror movies. That is, unless the tone is Adventure Survival. Also, shark movies tend to also follow the same trope stream as a slasher movie, except the shark doesn't wear a mask. Now, wouldn't that be a movie!

I think you debated it, dude.

Anywayz, the pretty college girls and boys are on vacation in Thailand. We have Sara (Kathryn Newton, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come) and Max (Lana Condor, X-Men: Apocalypse), long time friends, planning to move to NYC together after college. Except Max is all about maximizing potential, so she's set up her own gig as an influencer in LA. Sara is not pleased. We have James (Nico Hiraga, Booksmart), who is their longtime friend, but also Max's BF. We have their third wheel Adrienne (Tommi Rose, Sweet Magnolias) and her pretty new boy toy Greg (wait, Greg + Adrienne??  blink blink; Gavin Casalegno, The Summer I Turned Pretty). We immediately peg Adrienne as the first to be eaten, by a shark.

So, Thailand vacation. Max is maximizing -- when their boat reservation falls through, she sweet talks the owner into bigger, better boat, and they spend the day drinking, dancing, snacking. As the day wanes, a somewhat subdued Sara goes snorkeling, and in a bit of a drunken not-paying-attention, Sara gives the OK for the boat to head back --- without Sara. Oops. Suddenly Sara is surrounded by stinging jelly fish, and ouch! They do finally notice, come back for her, but she is hurt physically and emotionally, and pissed at Max. We learn that Max never accepts accountability for her actions, no matter who they hurt.

Next day, caves! Swimming your way through spooky caves! There was a recent uncharacteristic storm that flooded the caves, so the guide suggests the Easy Swim, but Max wants a max experience, so she convinces him to take the on the Tough Swim! Danger! Excitement! Off they go. Sara is still stinging (pun intended) by yesterday's experience, a bit nervous, but Max doesn't care.

Suffice to say, they made the wrong choice. How exactly did a ocean dwelling gnashy teethed killing machine get into these fresh water caves? The aforementioned storm surge, of course! Big waves, higher than usual tides and enough diluted fresh water so this shark can survive, and we know from some videos from Florida, that its possible.

The first to go is the "don't go into the basement!" character, the lone (but cute!!!) scuba diver who flirts with Sara, but is... all by himself ! Later on, in a rather deep section of the caves, she sees him down below and waves. Not long after, CHOMP. And not long after that, they discover his mask with a tooth lodged in it. Ruh roh. Their guide Wat (Tayme Thapthimthong, John Rambo) needs to get them out of there NOW, but, Stupid Kids. While they are all panicking and arguing and yammering on, they don't see he has already departed. Good thing they didn't take his path because CHOMP.

They begin the slod plodding swim back, but Adrienne cuts her leg open on some sharp rocks under the water and ... sniff sniff, "is that bloooood?" Not So Bright and "I should've called my mother this morning" Greg is the first to go, and that just amps the panic and arguing by ten fold. We were wrong; Adrienne has to wait until second place. That leaves Sara, Max and James clinging to a rock arguing what to do next. Max, of course, needs to take control but Sara is adamant the swim back is too long, and the only safe way out is the climb to the ocean entrance. Max fears there will just be more sharks, cuz... ocean!

They end up taking a long meandering alternate route to the caves entrance, one that involves lots of long under water swims, coming up for air in pockets, while the shark stalks them on the other side of a line of stalactite and stalagmites, a literal wall between them and the gnashy teeth. BUT one errant swim and James gets trapped, only to drown. Its now only the oldest, dearest friends Sara and Max, whose oldest & dearest is severely fraying at the seams. Not long after losing James, they find themselves back where they started... the meandering underwater swims just brought them full circle.

So, take the blue tunnel, or climb up to the ocean entrance? Of course, Max has to be in control, despite her errors in judgement leading to the deaths of all their friends. You can see the resentment twisting in Sara's face, but .... she is showing a strength she never has before. But as they try to make their way to the blue tunnel, sharky shark begins slamming his nose into cave walls, bringing the roof down. Sara does drive him off with a flare, but now Max has a broken hand and difficulty climbing up to the ocean entrance.

Final scenes. Final .... girls? Sara is the Nice Girl, Max is a bitch. But despite the difficulties, Sara is staying loyal, "friends until the stars burn out...." I guess they see their friendship as immortal? Wadlow actually succeeds in having us root for the two getting out, despite Max's general unlikeability, primarily because we don't want that all hanging on Sara. It's a good fake-out, cuz just as Max is getting sufficiently out of the water, climbing up the cave wall, sharky shark leaps up, pulling her, and Sara tethered together by a climbing rope, back into the water. CHOMP. Sara's final good-bye is cutting the line between the girls.

But that's not the end. Sara has to deal with sharky shark, and does so by coaxing him to attack her while she hangs from some fragile overhanging rocks. A few heavy nose slams and sharky shark is caught under the falling ceiling, and Sara is able to climb her way out to the ocean entrance, which is... way the fuck above the beach, like waaaaaay up high. She has freedom but... how is she going to get down? I have a feeling the cry of success she lets out, was meant originally to be one of frustration, as she is kind of trapped up there, but that is not how the final scenes play out.

A cookie cutter shark movie, unfortunately with no unique or interesting hallmarks. I honestly thought both girls would get out, but it needs to cling so closely to tropes, that Sara the Nice Blonde Girl has to the Final Girl. 

31 Days of Halloween: Dracula: A Love Tale

2025, Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) -- download

I remain a fan of Besson's works, not so much of the man himself.

This adaptation of the Stoker novel takes liberties in two main ways: moves the primary action to Paris, and (oh migawd) was so inspired by the Coppola Dracula you could see the shadow of Gary Oldman in the background. Besson denies this entirely, but it cannot be ignored. Also, Besson claimed to have drawn upon the "truth" of the novel, in that Dracula had a wife he loved so deeply, he became a vampire to spit God, after she was killed. Yah dude, that was not present in the novel; in fact, nothing about Dracula presents him as a romantic lead. That's all generated in subsequent cinematic depictions. In the novel, he's a monster that stalks prey and takes advantage. Sound familiar?

Anyhoo.

We begin in Walachia in the 1400s, Prince Vlad Dracul (Caleb Landry Jones, Antiviral) in his entirely not Coppola-inspired shiny armour is dragged away from the sex & debauchery with his wife Elizabeta (Zoë Bleu, feature debut) to fight the Muslims. Except they ambush her, while she is being secreted away to protection by a handful of guards, and an errant bolt from Vlad's own crossbow kills her. He is beside himself, slays the Bishop and rejects God; thus is born the monster.

This opening period sequence had me wondering whether this movie had been his own personally funded passion project, given the flop-ness of Valerian and the fact that, at least in North America, his last two flicks went severely under the radar -- I still haven't watched DogMan and was not even aware of June and John. The armour looks less authentic than the cosplayers I see in my IG feed, and the sets.... well, they look like painted sets. 

I also should mention that I cannot take Caleb Landry Jones as a romantic lead -- I know we are not supposed to judge physical appearance, but.... he's just so toady to me. But at the very least, he and Zoë Bleu do have more chemistry than Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne did.

Over the next four hundred years later, Vlad is convinced his Elizabeta will reincarnate, as she promised him not even death would end their love. But its not easy to find one woman among the millions, so he enlists the assistance of minions (no, not little yellow babbling minions; but more on that later) -- by turning others into vampires. There is an interesting play on trope, the one where Dracula is considered irresistible to most people, but its developed here by having him develop a perfume scent so powerful it draws anyone in the room to him. Basically he roofies anyone within nose distance of him into a horny suggestible state open to neck biting. There is a ridiculous, hilarious, WTF dance number that shows Drac dancing and seducing over the hundreds of years.

Four hundred years later, we are in Paris where Vatican investigator Father Totally Not Abraham Van Helsing (Christoph Waltz, Frankenstein) is brought into to consult on the strange case of, red-headed Maria (Matilda De Angelis, Citadel: Diana), who got really really horny on her wedding day, and hurt a few people, her husband included. They have her chained up in a cell, and when The Priest (seriously, they don't name him.... eye rolls) inspects her, going on and on like he is from CSI: The Vatican he points out her sharp teeth and desire for blood. Its all presented rather matter of fact-ly, like you know, vampires are just one of those weird things in the world. After confirming her as vampiric, The Priest goes on to do some research.

Oh my, De Angelis has fun in this role, the utter exuberance she has playing the blood sated vampire, horny as hell and high on life, her tongue lolling all around her bright shiny fangs, laughing and dancing, enthusiastic about everything. This is how vampire life can be alluring.

Meanwhile, we are in Coppola's Dracula Castle where (not Keanu) Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abed, Andor), a real estate agent, is invited in to setup a "deal you cannot refuse" with the Prince who owns the castle. I swear, it feels more like Harker is there to invite Dracula into a Ponzi scheme, and not the novel-driven "I need to buy land in London" plot that brings them together. And this is where we meet The Minions, Dracula's little grey grotesques (not gargoyles) that do all his bidding for him, instead of the three wives he traditionally has in the basement -- its a weird playful addition to the movie. Dracula, in these scenes, is so... very... totally... Gary Oldman. It is also here where Harker trades his life for the story above, the one with the perfume concoction -- "Oh yeah, you're a vampire? How about you not drain me like a pig, and I listen to your really cool life story? Sounds good? Good."  Aaaand Harker's fiancé just happens to be.... Elizabeta reincarnated! Off to Paris, Drac runs! So, eventually Harker is able to escape via a small window and a long fall.

So yeah, Mina Murray, or "Elizabeta", is Harker's fiancé and Maria's best friend. Not sure how Maria played any useful role in finding her, but .... still. The scenes of their meeting are where the movie focuses on its sub-title, "A Love Tale" -- this movie really sympathizes with Drac, actually making him a respectful, honest man, not doing the immediate terror and "I vant to dreenk yer blud !" Besson wants this act to be beautiful, to have the two come together naturally, to have Mina / Elizabeta's realization be real and not subterfuge. And it works.

Well, his desirable goal works. She does realize who she once was and .... they run away together. BUT given Besson's history with women, there seems to be some very not-subtle comparisons between him "an Old Guy who likes young women" and Drac's very very very Old Guy who likes younger women, one in particular. Its always been the cultural challenge of immortal beings and the young women they fall for, in fiction. Angel who was over 100 years later, falls for 16 year old Buffy -- and Joss turned out to be a troublesome figure in his interactions with female "coworkers". What exactly can a 3000 year old elf have in common with his 20 sumthin love interest? But no matter, the two run away, and as Besson presents it, she is not "beguiled", she has been made aware of Who She Really Is. Buuuut, her fiancé and The Priest won't be having any of that.

That final act is ... well, wild. Soldiers have accompanied The Priest and Harker, and are attacking his castle with a fusillade of cannon fire from nearby cliffsides. Soldiers fight, soldiers die. Drac is a good swordsman, and they are ... lacking. And his little grey grotesques are all over the place, leaping to attack. In the end, its not the fight that wins the day but a war of wills between The Priest and Dracula, wherein the former reminds Drac that he is condemning Mina/Elizabeta to the same eternal damnation as himself. The only way he can truly "save" her is to release her, to die himself, to free her from whatever he had in store for her. And thus Drac does, taking the silver stake for her, as so many tragic-love depictions of these two shows.

I didn't hate the movie, but ... it won't be on The Shelf. It has tenuous connections to what I like from Besson, but all in all it just felt like one gigantic indulgence, even more so than Valerian. I blame the subject matter. I don't think this story is one that fits well into his grand scheme of things, his playfulness and large scale story telling. 

31 Days of Halloween: Black Phone 2

2025, Scott Derrickson (The Gorge) -- download

Sequel to The Black Phone, one we enjoyed a few years ago, which took place in 1978, this picking up in 1982.  Finney is Finn (Mason Thames, How to Train Your Dragon), a teen now, come into his height. Dad has cleaned up his act, and is close to his three-years-sober coin. Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, A Christmas Wish), also a teen, and feeling very beholden to, and protective of Finney, has started having dreams again, sleep walking and screaming in the night, and is a bit of a pariah at school for her infamous prophetic dreams. Meanwhile, Finn is angry all the time, and smoking up to deal with the pain of his memories.

Again, from the opening credits, I really liked the style Derrickson goes for -- the grain, the home video look when Gwen dreams, the slightly blurred edges, the colour tones. But where would he go? The Grabber (Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight) is dead, but just a glance at the poster, and we know he's back; but how? What cheap ploy will they use to Bring Him Back. In fact, its not entirely cheap, but in the vein of these Heroic Horrors, it expands upon the mythology present, which again, is right down my sub-genre alley.

That said, Marmy likened it to subversion of the Freddie Kreuger school of spook-dom, in that the spirit of a dead man comes to people in their dreams, which physically presents in the real world. So yeah, maybe a cheap ploy.

Gwen's dreams are of her mother as a child. Mom used to attend a "winter camp" high in the mountains above Denver, a camp that closed in the late 50s after the disappearance of the three kids, but apparently has recently reopened. Finn wants to avoid it all, even answering some tell-tale ringing pay phones with a dismissive, "I can't help you..." but Gwen needs to know what is going on. When she hadn't known what her dreams were about, kids had been taken, which culminated in her brothers abduction -- she is not letting that happen again. She signs herself, and the boy at school who likes her, up as camp counsellors and at the last second, Finn comes along.

Arriving during a massive storm, they are the only kids/counsellors who showed up, the rest having been informed that it was all cancelled due to the historical storm raging outside. Whoever set-dressed this for "once in a lifetime storm" must have been from a warm city, because what the kids dealt with was just a normal Ontario winter day. Anyhoo, the kids are trapped with only the camp owner Mando (Demián Bichir, Let the Right One In), his niece "Mustang" (Arianna Rivas, A Working Man) and two holy rollers. And thus begins the haunting, and response.

Gwen learns that three boys were murdered here, but their bodies were never found. One was chopped up with an axe, one was burned and one had his head bisected. Gwen knows this from her horrific dreams. Meanwhile, they are still calling Finn. It is not until they make a connection between the disappearances/murders that they also connect The Grabber to it all -- he was present at the camp when the kids went missing. He is the killer of them as well. And once that is established, thus begins his Freddy routine, assaulting Gwen she she is asleep. Everyone but the holy rollers becomes acutely aware they have to find the bodies of the children, free their souls, and release whatever power The Grabber has left on this plane.

By no means was this as good as the first, being merely a required horror franchise extension. But I still enjoyed the structure and the Heroic Horror elements. Hawke as The Grabber still freaks me the fuck out.