31 Days of Halloween: Night Patrol

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31 Days of Halloween: Hokum

2026, Damian McCarthy (Oddity) -- Amazon

Yes, a proper horror movie including creepy Irish mythos, ghosts and a haunted top floor to an quaint, old hotel. Oh, and a Dick American, but these days they are a horror unto themselves. We rather enjoyed McCarthy's last one, Oddity, creeped out by the actual oddity thing that played the titular role, and followed it not a few days later with his Caveat. He is keen on the creepy and if I can say one thing about this movie, it's that it elicited the first "AHHH!" jump scare in years -- I actually yelled out loud. 

The preamble gives us Ohm Bauman (quite the name; Adam Scott, Little Evil) sitting in his expensive concrete house, late at night, writing on his laptop. The book is about a conquistador seeking a lost treasure in the desert, which comes down to the treasure map stuck inside a bottle, and the only way (questionable) for him to smash the bottle, is on the back of a kid's head. But beyond the shitty whiskey fueled conundrum of his writing, he is also haunted by a ghostly figure he sees in shadows.

Later we find Ohm in Ireland, bringing the ashes of his mother & father to be scattered near the quaint inn where they had their honeymoon. Quaint means odd characters, like the one who killed a goat with a hand-crossbow and a creepy old man in a wheelchair who likes to scare children with tales of Irish witches dragging children through Hell at the end of chains. Ohm is not a shy man, letting everyone know his opinion on killing goats and scaring kids with stories. Oh, and the guy in woods drinking milk laced with magic mushrooms, who shares his uisce beatha ("ishka baha", or "water of life"; moonshine) with Ohm. Rural regions of any country are always colourful.

Ohm doesn't exactly endear himself with the staff of the hotel, quite literally burning the hand of the bellhop (Will O'Connell, Top Boy), who wants to share his manuscript with the famed writer, with a spoon heated from the candle inside a hollowed rutabaga jack-o-lantern (it's Halloween season), but the bartender Fiona (Florence Odesh, Foundation) doesn't draw his ire, nor he hers. Not long after being asked to drink his last at the hotel bar, she and the bellhop find Ohm having hanged himself. I guess the catharsis that brought him to Ireland did not go well.

He awakens in the hospital, weeks later. There is no awkward checking out or police, but its sure awkward when he goes to the hotel to collect his belongings. Now weeks after the Halloween party, and he learns Fiona disappeared that night, not long after finding Ohm. He learns that Jerry (David Wilmot, Bodkin), the mushroom milk guy, is their prime suspect, him being a vagrant with a shady past, and Ohm is compelled to track Jerry down, as her feels somewhat beholden to Fiona. 

Instead of a suspect, he gets a story of Fiona being murdered, Jerry having seen a ghostly visage of her, leading him to believe she is in the hotel's Honeymoon Suite, which has been cut-off since some sort of witch situation years ago -- the suite being accessible only via a chained & locked elevator, so the police (garda) never even bothered looking at the rooms. Jerry has already stolen the key and knows the hotel will be empty after that night, it being the end of the season.

Buuuut Jerry gets caught by the Fergal (Michael Patric, Frontier), the goat hand-crossbow guy, and is carted off, leaving Ohm to inspect the more-than-properly eerie Honeymoon Suite. He is helped by Mal (Peter Coonan, The Alienist), the concierge of the hotel, who finds Ohm after Fergal drives off with Jerry. And sure enough, he finds Fiona's body! She's in a dumb waiter that leads to a basement that has also been sealed off for years. Mal had led Ohm upstairs, hoping to put the whole thing to bed, not expecting Ohm to trigger the dumbwaiter's hatch and discover her body. He's the murderer, and rushes off, locking Ohm inside the room, chaining & locking the elevator behind him. 

This is when things get properly fucking scary. Interestingly enough, McCarthy does not present the movie with Ohm losing his shit. Sure, things have gone from weird to murder-y, and Ohm does start seeing ghostly visions, but he keeps his head, trying to figure a way out, while being haunted by memories and ghosts. You see, Ohm has had ghosts his entire life because, as a child, he acidentally killed his own mother with his father's gun, and his father drank himself to death afterwards. Mom is the effective jumpscare that got me, an apparition following around behind Ohm in her bloodied yellow dress. 

But that's nothing compared to the Barbarian style tunnel in the basement, that ends in a pair of "don't open me" doors. But no way out; just cinderblock walled up stairs. Oh, and the witch ghost that follows him up and OUT of the dumbwaiter. That's alright, Ohm remembers the chalk circle of protection and spends the rest of the night in honeymoon bed and she's gone by morning. Then a bloodied but determined Jerry shows up, having escaped Fergal and come back to find Mal, who already has a story cooked up about dropping the drunken Ohm at the airport. But Ohm has remembered what Jerry told him about Fiona's ghost pulling the long mechanical bell ringer, and alerts Jerry who goes upstairs to free Ohm. Alas, he is killed by Mal but not before Ohm can steal the keys to the still locked elevator (dude, you should have just left it opened until everyone was dead dead) and goes down into the witchy hallway to hide, hoping to fend her off with his chalk. It kind of works? He is captured in chains as well, but more importantly, Mal is carted off into the room at the end of the hall ... that is the doorway to Hell? Ohm, with the insistence of his mother's ghost, cuts himself free of the chains, escapes upstairs, and then back downstairs again via elevator and is rescued from the burning building by Fergal.

Again the hospital, the tale of woe is shared with the bellhop. Bodies were found, including Fiona's, but not Mal's. Mal had gotten Fiona pregnant and was worried by both what his boss and his wife would say. Fucking, men. Ohm has been saved, and relieved of his life long guilt and decides to finish off his conquistador story with a happier ending, as Fiona had asked.

Wow, I won't be doing recaps like that very often. It makes me tired before I can even mention how well-crafted the atmosphere of the movie was, being both eerie and ... capable? We even get some traditional questioning of our ghostly experiences, by the bellhop admitting he spiked Ohm's whiskey with Jerry's magic mushrooms, which probably explains utterly terrifying visions Ohm had (like the bunny costumed kids show host that blames Ohm for his mother's death) but not how Mal is carried off into Hell. Did he see ghosts? Was it all guilt and magic mushrooms? Hell of a lot to go through for family therapy. Yep, lots to chew on in this movie.

31 Days of Halloween: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

2026,  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett (Abigail) -- Disney+

We were rather charmed by the first movie; Kent liked it as well and he also enjoyed this one. 

So, to roughly recap the first one, which I should have mentally done before clicking Start on this one, but waitress Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving, Azrael) married into the old money Le Domas family. On their wedding day the whole family gathers at the gothic mansion to observe an old family ritual -- pull a card from a puzzle box, which denotes a traditional game. Unfortunately Grace pulls "Hide & Seek" which says the rest of the family has to hunt her down; hide until dawn, or die. Grace gets quickly fed up and dispatches everyone who comes up against her, and survives until dawn, only to witness the remaining family explode to gorey goo, subjected to failing to abide by the curse. 

This movie picks up on the doorstep of the mansion, the morning after, Grace covered in blood, her wedding dress and yellow hightops soaked with blood and gore. She passes out and wakes up in a hospital; handcuffed to the bed. Its not like murdering a bunch of people (in defense, of course) and burning down their house would go unnoticed. She is to be questioned by the cops, but is interrupted by the arrival of her "emergency contact", her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton, Freaky). The sisters do not like each other, Grace having walked out on her younger sister when she was 18, seeking to create a better life, before inviting Faith back into it.

Interesting. It was hard not to compare the similarities between "Ready Or Not" and the Zazie Beetz flick "They Will Kill You" but this sequel sets it up to even more similarities. 

Meanwhile a bunch of other Old Money Families are receiving phone calls from a lawyer mentioning that the Le Domases have died and a new seat has opened up at the table. Its like the John Wick world but with devil worship instead of assassination. While Grace and Faith argue it out over their family drama, one of the potentials, Bill Wilkinson (Kevin Durand, The Strain), shows up at the hospital with all his best knives, seeking to take out Grace before she can take the seat. But that's against the rules; just as he's about to kill Grace, he explodes into gooey bloody bits -- the Devil, or Mr. Le Bail (Belial? get it?) as the movies call him, has a standard gimmick. Immediately after, the Lawyer (Elijah Wood, The Monkey) appears wearing a gas mask, immobilizes Grace and Faith and takes them away.

Faith has been mixed up in Grace's (new) family drama even before she can get a read on what the fuck is going on. They awaken to Exposition Time, where the Lawyer explains that any of the families' chosen hunters who kills Grace, gets the ring, which provides ultimate power. The two girls run out into the golf course and the Game is Afoot. 

Each of the hunters has their own gimmick: the twins have a flintlock pistol and a weird fisted warhammer. Viraj Rajan (Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Brilliant Minds) wears a mask and swings an east Indian sword. El Caido (Nestor Carbonell, Bates Motel) uses a sniper rifle, badly. Wan Cheng Xing (Olivia Cheng, Warrior) has her own sword. And each of their attending family members hang out in the green room watching the show unfold. If there family member dies, they can either forfeit the chance, or sign up (in blood) to take the hunter's place. If any of them kill each other then they explode in gore, along with any surviving family members. 

Creative fights, violent deaths, betrayals and subterfuge, and quips galore, eventually leads to Grace making a bargain with Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy, Fear the Walking Dead), to marry him -- he gets the ring, no death required. Except Grace turns the table on that, essentially dooming every single fucking one of the cult, family members and supporting staff all, much to the amusement of The Lawyer. Grace and Faith get to walk out into the sunrise with the cult gone and ... well, the cops are still probably gonna hunt her down.

I still find it weird that we can consider Satanic Activity, murder, mayhem and exploding people as "fun" but there we are -- Horror Adjacent. There's not a lot deep going on here, but some light commentary on Good vs Evil being useless constructs when it comes to running the world. We also get some fun cameos (David Cronenburg as the Danforth patriarch, and that short gooey scene with Durand) and all the Canadian supporting actors you can shove into a movie; and Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth.

I think we need a proper horror movie up next.

31 Days of Halloween: Handsome Guys

2024, Nam Dong-hyup (feature premiere) -- download

Or Haenseomgaijeu.

This Korean movie is billed as a remake of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, which we are huge fans of -- my post does not give it justice, and I think its time for a rewatch and a new post. In the original movie, the "evil" turns out not to be some supernatural entity in the "cabin in the woods" but more along the psycho lines that the college kids assume should be attributed to Tucker and Dale, but ends up being One of Their Own. This remake decided to embrace the classic cabin aspect of the movie and ... well, I will get to that.

Kang Jae-pil (Lee Sung-min, The Moon) and Park Sang-goo (Lee Hee-joon, Badland Hunters; weird; I wouldn't paste "full names" if they were English names, but I somehow seem compelled to do it here) are not hillbillies, in the traditional sense... is there even an equivalent to Alabama or Tennessee in South Korea? Would I even recognize the cultural tropes, if there were? Either way, the guys are definitely weirdoes -- odd haircuts, weird style and socially awkward to the extreme, without even noticing it. Especially to the group of influencer kids they meet at the rest stop / convenience store -- wow, South Korean rural roadside convenience stories are pretty much small department stores. The influencers are on their way to a majestic lakeside "cabin", a trope influencers have spread world wide, while the two friends, carpenters by trade, are on their way to a weird house, entirely not traditional Korean-style, that Jae-pil sunk their savings into. The kids are there to pickup snacks and booze, while the boys are picking up reno gear, all sharp objects that could be used to kill people. When one of the girls is startled by Sang-goo, and she is further frightened when he tries to help her up, the tone of conflict is set between the two groups.

It should be noted that the movie has a Satanic exorcism preamble where an American priest fails to exorcise Baphomet from a young woman, and we see a pentagram carved into a stone in the basement of an old .... cabin in the woods. Not like I need to fill in blanks for you, but it does show a distinct departure from the original movie, in that their will be real supernatural Evil here.

I commented that should "Tucker & Dale" ever be remade, the kids would definitely be "influencers" and we would take even greater glee in watching them jump into a woodchipper. Why is it we so dislike influencer kids? Its almost like they have influenced us into thinking that.

So, the boys get to their house, and begin cleaning it up, while the influencer kids do what they do best, snipe at each other and pick favourites. Oh, I forgot to mention, on the drive up earlier, the kids hit a goat in the middle of the road, and just leave it there. When the boys come by soon after, they are found by a pair of buffoonish cops, carrying the tarped dead creature out of the road. The lead buffoon assumes they are doing some illegal, in fact, he needs them to be doing something illegal, as two so completely ugly, clownish dudes cannot not be doing something illegal. But they aren't so they have to be let go. Goats, Satan worship, you get it.

Now where was I ? Oh yes, both groups at their houses doing what they do, which ends up with Mi-na (Gong Seung-yeon, Aloners), the girl who got frightened by Sang-goo, the "nice girl" who is ostracized by the rest, down by the lake while the boys are fishing and, again, they startled her and she falls in. Let's just say the lake has a drop and she sinks like a stone, requiring Jae-pil to dive in to save her. She also requires some resuscitation, and the next morning she awakens in their somewhat-cleaned-up house, initially scared at what these weirdos are doing with her in their house, but quickly charmed by Sang-goo's harmless friendly behaviour and the massive breakfast spread laid out. The two end up getting along swimmingly while Jae-pil goes out to do yard cleaning (wood chipper, chain saw, etc.). The kids have noticed she is missing and wander around looking for her, coming across the boys cabin. They are immediately convinced the boys have kidnapped her, but one of the kids, the Mean One, really only cares that Mi-na has his phone. And he's an influencer that cannot be without his phone.

What follows is a tragic black-comedy of errors. Its not presented as well as the original movie, but basically each of the kids are compelled to attack the Jae-pil, starting with just after he (chain)saws into a log full of wasps, those big nasty Asian wasps. The kids run screaming as he runs screaming from  the wasps, waving his chainsaw around like the mad man they all assume he is. One of the girls is impaled. The horrified boys attack, but a mislaid power cord electrocutes one, and trips the other, who falls into the planter box, which looks like a coffin Sang-goo "made" Min-na build (for herself) -- said planter box has lots of exposed nails. Ouch. And then the final kid jumps at Jae-pil, who has made it back to his wood pile, chipper munching on the rotting wood he has cleaned up, and the kid misses Jae-pil and .... grrrinnnnnnnd .... tomato paste.

All of the kids have very quickly died due to their own ineptitude and misunderstandings. And, well that pentagram in the basement under the boys cabin is suddenly lighting up with fiery symbols  -- one symbol for each dead kid. Except, the count is off and ... ohhh, electrocuted kid is not dead. And his awakening, as well as the return of the kid I forgot to mention has an unfortunate run in with the not-dead goat (I admit, I nodded off during that brief sequence) leads to the final act that is ... well, if this movie is a remake of "Tucker & Dale", then the final act is a very blatant nod to the original orginal Evil Dead complete with cackling possessed people in basements. And drawing on some pretty common tropes from Asian horror that I have commented on before (religion, destiny, legacy, family), the just-woke-up-from-a-coma younger brother of the original possessed women from the preamble has to fight off the proper now-raised Baphomet devil kid. Oh, and the buffoonish cops get mixed up in it as well.

It was actually a pretty decent remake of the original, capturing enough to make us smile, and being new and culturally appropriate to probably appeal to an entirely different audience. It doesn't have the bite of the original, and that is mainly because it does draw upon horror tropes as being actual horror, instead of all just a "ooops, we misunderstood" comedy of errors.

31 Days of Halloween: The Old Dark House

Usually I copy & pastedit the preamble from previous years. But considering this series has been going almost as long as the blog, its getting more than just a bit long in the fang. So, here is a list of previous year's entries: 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. 

This year has been a bumper crop of Horror and Horror Adjacent movies & TV, enough that I have at least half of the month downloaded, Listed or otherwise planned. And, of course, we still have tons from previous years that were skipped over for one reason or another. 

Full disclosure. This movie was suggested by a drag queen's Reel -- the glee with which they described the movie as a Halloween must-watch inspired this as the kick-off. And if I watched it purely for the camp fun, I would get it. Unfortunately, all we got was a terrible movie with no real plot, but for some of the truly fun camp moments.

This 1932 version adaptation of the 1927 novel by Benighted by JB Priestly, which was supposed to be a commentary on classes in post-WWI Britain, is a lesser known film by James Whale, the guy who did Frankenstein. It was considered lost for a while, but found again in the late 60s and more recently come to home media. We watched it on YouTube.

It actually opens with some potential. The Waverton couple, and their friend Penderel (Melvyn Douglas, Captains Courageous), are lost somewhere on the backroads of Wales -- it actually takes some paying attention to catch this is in Wales, as everyone but a later character is just speaking with the bland Transatlantic accent. They are caught in a storm, lost in the middle of nowhere, bickering and yelling at each other, while Penderel quips in the back seat. The storm and muddy road are quite impressive practical effects, including the landslide that almost takes out the car. But finally they make it to a creepy mansion... on the moors?

This Old Dark House (the house, not the film's title) is not quite the trope originator, but it is definitely one of the early definers of the genre. Its a massive edifice owned by the uber-eccentric Femm family: effete Horace (Ernest Thesiger, The Bride of Frankenstein) who should have been an undertaker, his cranky hard-of-hearing sister Rebecca (Eva Moore, Of Human Bondage) and their scary hairy mumbling manservant Morgan (Boris Karloff, Frankenstein) -- this is proper non-sensical grumbling & growling, not Arthur Webley from Hot Fuzz West-country speak. The travelers are not exactly welcomed into the house, but begrudgingly accepted but, "NO BEDS !!" as Rebecca constantly screams. The are soon joined by Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), with his proper "Northern" accent, and his pretty chorus girl Gladys (Lillian Bond, The Picture of Dorian Gray).

A lot of focus is put on atmosphere. Margaret Waverton (Gloria Stuart, The Invisible Man) is all wet and yucky so Rebecca let's her change in her room, the room with the very wonky warped mirrors that leaves your face like a horror show, and hint -- don't open the windows when a Nor'wester is blowing. Also, she changes into a satin evening gown -- interesting choice. When they all sit down for dinner ("Have a potato!" Horace says menacingly) it seems genial and threatening at the same time. Meanwhile Morgan is getting drunk on gin in the kitchen, enhancing his own menace from leering to a Very Mean Drunk. And when the electrical lights go out in the storm, Rebecca wants Horace to go up four flights (exactly how tall IS this house?!?!) to grab the big lamp, but he won't have anything to do with it, and coerces Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey, Arsenic and Old Lace) into the task. And then there is the cackling ("Did you hear something? Must be the storm...") and the Locked Attic Door.

Eventually the family secrets do come out; kind of. The Waverton's find Sir Roderick Femm (Elspeth Dudgeon, in thick makeup playing a very very old man, one of her very many barely credit roles), the ancient infirmed patriarch who warns them the family is cursed. And then "never mentioned before" brother Saul (Brember Wills, Carnival) gets out of his locked room, first bemoaning the family is keeping him against his will, before discovering the carving knife and giving up the charade by harrying Penderel with his tales of being obsessed with fire. By this time, Morgan has gone on a drunken violent rampage, the ladies are locked in the cupboard and the boys (but Penderel) are locked in the kitchen. In shambling melee, Penderel and Saul fall from through second story railing and Saul is killed; Penderel only gets a bump on the head. Morgan, now sobering up, takes away Saul's body, his face torn in grief. In the morning, Horace emerges from his room with nary an "oh my" look on his face, considering half the house is wrecked. Rebecca looks onward with a sour face. Nobody seems to acknowledge their brother is dead.

I am not quite sure Whale intended on this being a campy comedy of a film, and I will leave that treatise for the film's cult following, but he most definitely did intend on all the queer coding. I am not quite sure by into the Waverton's being a bearded couple, but despite Penderel's I-just-met-you-but-I-love-you to Gladys, he is definitely played as the Gay Best Friend to the couple. And then there is Horace asking Philip if he can show him his bedroom, instead of getting the lamp his sister wants. Meanwhile Saul flirts / threatens to kill Penderel, switching mood with each heartbeat. Its most definitely a movie of its age, but I can see how it didn't hit well with audiences until much much later.

KWIF: Resident Evil (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. Sniffles. Cough. Sneezes. Vertigo. Madness. Stress. Rage. Anxiety. Sleeplessness. Aches. Indigestion. Reflux. In no particular order, and often on repeat. Let's talk about some movies and forget about the rest of the week.  I was hoping mirror this week's KWIF with last week's by watching another Cary Grant black and white comedy, another disaster flick from the '70s, another Fukasaku film, and Onslaught, set in the same shared reality as The Guest...but Onslaught is already gone from theatres and not quite yet on demand. Feh.

This Week:
Resident Evil (2026, d. Zach Cregger - in theatre)
Message From Space (1978, d. Kinji Fukasaku - tubi)
Avalanche (1978, d. Corey Allen - tubi)
Topper (1937, d. Norman Z. McLeod - tubi)

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I'm in danger of repeating myself (like that doesn't happen all the time), but I don't play video games so when the director Zach Cregger says that his latest film, and the latest adaptation of the Resident Evil video game franchise, is meant to evoke the feeling of playing a Resident Evil video game, rather than a straight adaptation of a game's story, I can't really tell you whether he was successful or not. The most I know about the Resident Evil franchise comes from binge watching the Milla Jovovich film series and listening to accompanying podcasts about the series. The most I've ever seen of the video games would have been commercials that I would have caught the first fifteen seconds of on youtube before hitting the "skip" button.

I have, however, seen Cregger's previous films, Barbarian and Weapons, and enjoyed them both. As time has passed, I recognize that Weapons and Barbarian are quite different types of horror movies, and that Weapons is much more my speed and style of horror than Barbarian was. Resident Evil is likewise a much different horror movie than Cregger's previous, but it absolutely proves he knows exactly what he's doing when he crafts his stories in bringing them to the screen. Barbarian and Weapons weren't flukes, this guy's got the goods as a horror auteur.

Where Weapons is a creepy, slow burn, non-linear, ensemble piece with a mystery to be unveiled that begins in a heightened reality, Barbarian starts extremely grounded, presenting as a situational horror that is rooted in the deep discomfort of never truly knowing what another person is thinking (or capable of), and then builds into escalating levels of surreal and then traditional horror.  Barbarian is genuinely scary and intense, while Weapons is primarily creepy. Resident Evil is scary, intense and creepy. Honestly, it maybe the most "horror" horror movie I've actually ever seen (I'm not a neophyte, but I'm also no expert), while also having Cregger's sense of humour sprinkled throughout.

It's largely a one-hander film. We follow Bryan (Austin Abrams) as he is takes on a critical, life-saving medical transport job. He has to go "up the mountain" to Raccoon City (makes me think they transported Raccoon City out of the midwest and into the Rockies somewhere) in the midst of heavy snowfall for which his economy-class vehicle is not equipped.  While driving he learns his girlfriend is pregnant talking to her over the phone, and he reacts badly. And then he hits something.

It kicks off from there. It starts out really small, and kind of funny, and just very slowly escalates. It's barely five minutes into the film before Things Are Happening, which is incredibly smart of Cregger. Weapons felt more like a sprawling novel adaptation, like prestige (not "elevated" thank you) horror, at 128 minutes. Resident Evil is over in sub-90 before the credits start. It is simply the story of someone who gets caught up in what is effectively a disaster and has to navigate his way through it. 

The closer Bryan gets to Raccoon City, the more things escalate.

There's not much to the plot here (not unlike a video game). There's a framework for Bryan to navigate. There are obstacles in his way. There are undead creatures that emerge that he has to face or flee. And there are sort of clues that could be interpreted as logic puzzles presented before him that he may or may not think through.

Yeah, from a character and story standpoint, it's thin (not absent, just thin), but boy is it thrilling. And gross. And scary. And gory. And clever. And funny. 

Abrams' first big role was as the titular Dash in the teenage Christmas romcom Dash and Lily, which is one of the best romcom TV shows ever made and one of the best Christmas romcoms ever made, and one of the best teenage romcoms ever made, and Abrams was great in it. His next big appearance was in Wolfs and managed to stand out sandwiched between George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as well as putting in a great performance as part of the Weapons ensemble. But this is a spotlight. Resident Evil succeeds or fails on whether you like this guy enough to care if he makes it through this horror show in one piece or not. And you do. It's hard not to like Abrams. He's got a pluck, a charm,and a down-to-earth, fallible quality that makes him seem so ... normal. He's an everyman, not a surperman. You never get the sense that anything Bryan is doing in this film is outside of what someone like Bryan is capable of. 

I mentioned the incredible opening act of Hope a few weeks back, just a propulsive 45 minutes of exceptional cinema teasing out the monster while following a woefully unprepared character through the chaos. Resident Evil basically does the same thing but instead of just throwing the character into the thick of it, he slowly wades into it. And it only does that. Where Hope then deviated into trying to tell a larger story, Resident Evil is just as non-stop propulsive a film, and it doesn't take its focus off Bryan. He is the larger story.

Just as I cannot compare this to the video game series, I'm also not a gore hound, so I can't really tell where this fits on the goriest movies ever list. I imagine it's not at the very top, but it's well past the middle. It's incredibly well made that grabs you from the start and doesn't let go. Toasty's going to love it.

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What a weird film Message From Space is. In part this statement is made because I watched Message From Space after watching Legend of the Eight Samurai. Both films are directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Both films feature Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter) and Etsuko Shihomi (Sister Street Fighter) and baby-faced Hiroyuki Sanada (he looked so young in Eight Samurai, it seems impossible that he could be in another film 5 years earlier). Both films are based off the classic 1800's Japanese serial Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Kyokutei Bakin. The difference is that Message From Space is a sci-fi space opera adaptation of the material while Legend of the Eight Samurai is a sword-and-sorcery translation.

In Message From Space, the planet Jillucia has fallen to the tyrannical Gavanas Empire. The small hovel of unenslaved Jillucians send their princess Emeralida (Shihomi) off planet with warrior Urocco (Makoto Satō) and eight mystical Liabe Seeds that will reveal the fabled eight warriors that will help free their people from enslavement under Emperor Rockseia XXII (Mikio Narita) and his nasty mother.

The first chosen of the liabe seeds are roughneck pilots Shiro (Sanada) and Aaron (Philip Casnoff), as well as their shifty pal Jack (Masazumi Okabe) and also Meia (Peggy Lee Brennan) who is rebelling against her affluence by hanging with these low-lifes.

Much of Message From Space feels like live-action anime, for better or worse. While Eight Samurai had a definite Star Wars influence, with shot recreations and Japanese fantasy interpretations of Star Wars elements like the stormtroopers, Message From Space feels less like a rip-off of Star Wars than a capitalization on its success.

The best aspect of Message From Space is it's space ships and flying sequences. There is an anime energy to the astronautics and it's a pretty visceral viewing experience. There's definitely a bit of the trench run from Star Wars in what they were emulating here, but it seems more like the speeder bike sequence from Return of the Jedi and the podracing sequence from The Phantom Menace...as if Lucas watched this film and took a couple tries to match its sense of speed and excitement.

The ship designs are all over the place, but most of them are pretty great. Just like Star Wars, they feel cobbled together, like model kits that have been kit bashed and put together in unintended ways but making for unique and interesting looking pieces.  My lack of experience with manga and anime is such that I don't know if Message From Space was a huge influence on anime, or vice versa...or if it was sort of a feedback loop. One of the space ships is just like an old school sailboat with giant masts that I know I've seen in anime before.

It's a shame then that pretty much the rest of the film is nonsensical dross. The characters are poorly constructed with little to no development over the course of the film. There's not a single character arc in this film that carries any weight or resonance. The dynamics between the characters is underbaked at best, without any real sense of who these people are to each other, and what they mean.

The story itself is all over the place, progressing in a staccato fashion that has no sense of coherency or flow.  Oh, it takes big swings (the Gavanas have built rockets into Jillucia and move the planet into our solar system, and then proceed to blow up the moon) but none of the movements feel in concert with one another. 

Even though the effects are clearly on a tight budget and pretty unrefined, there is a quaintness to them that is appealing. There's effort put into this production that's pretty easy to appreciate, so it's just the more disappointing that it amounts to a pretty underwhelming film as a whole. As much as I prefer sci-fi to fantasy Legend of the Eight Samurai is the superior, and more rewarding of these two bizarrely similar films.

---

As mentioned last week, one of my slow-burn projects is to watch all the 70's disaster movies. I love the formula of these, and hope we one day see it again, but I don't think disaster films will ever be the same because of modern digital effects and production design.  Disaster films of the '70's era are great because of the technical limitations and the creative solutions in visualizing the disasters and their aftermath.  They're also great because of their sprawling ensemble casts and the willingness to kill them off.  

Avalanche was Roger Corman's New World Pictures entry into this fray. Starring Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow and Robert Forester, it's not quite as low-rent a cast as you might expect for a Corman-produced B-movie version of a disaster flick...except that the remainder of the cast is a veritable who's who of "who's that?" No other names or recognizable faces involved (at least not 50 years later anyway).

Hudson is the proprietor of a new ski resort that faces some controversy over the ecological impacts of its development. Farrow plays Hudson's ex-wife, coming to the resort as guest of the owner, who has plans to woo her back if he can ever escape all the damn meetings he's in. Forester plays a celebrated photographer and naturalist who lives nearby and is concerned about the amount of snowfall happening on the mountaintops.

The film is mostly interested in the love triangle of Hudson, Farrow and Forester, while making it apparent to the audience that Hudson's aggressive advances of Farrow are unwelcome (so much arm-grabbing). There are other characters introduced, like Bruce the champion skier, and his mentally unstable girlfriend Tina, and the maybe unnamed skater that Bruce cheats on Tina with sending her into a dark spiral, and Tina's ex-husband the news reporter. There's also Hudson's mom and her chaperone, the resort's accountant McDaid (there's no romantic entanglement there, but there should have been). 

Where your average disaster film would spend about a half hour cutting between each of these characters before setting off the main event, here it takes about an hour before the titular avalanche kicks off.  Usually some aspect of the oncoming tragedy could have been prevented if not for the hubris of one of the characters, whether the disaster could have been prevented, or at least more lives could have been saved with early warnings. Here, however, despite all this set-up of Hudson not listening to Forester about the building snow on the mountaintops and how all of Hudson's ongoing development work and cutting down of trees will increase the likelihood and severity of an avalanche, the whole event is kicked off because of a totally random plane crash. Hudson had no true culpability here.

The avalanche, as might be expected from a Corman production, is a budget production, alternating between miniatures, stock footage, Styrofoam boulders and blowing soap flakes, and superimposition effects. It's delightful in its cheesiness. By the time the avalanche is over, there's barely a half hour left in the film to deal with the fallout of the avalanche, and, I have to say, it's pretty tepid. The carnage is not insane, and the response is pretty immediate. Two of our three leads are leading the rescue effort, and Farrow is just sort of off to the side, so nobody we've spent any quality time with in the movie, besides mom and McDaid, are in any immediate danger. Putting underdeveloped characters in peril is not very exciting.

Avalanche is a sub-par execution of the disaster film formulae. It's obvious that budget constraints were the reason for it spending 70% of its time on silly romantic entanglements and hashing and rehashing the same background details over and over. But at the same time, it is one of the most 1970s movies I've ever seen. The hair, the moustaches, the clothes, the earth tones, the wood... everything, the ski suits and snowmobiles and luggage, the dancing (oh the dancing) and the finger snapping, the live music in the lounge, the corny competitions being held at the resort...all of it is pretty damn glorious if you want a hit of pure 1970's into your eyeballs. I had a great time.

I forgot, when watching Avalanche this past week that I had actually seen it before, as part of Netflix's Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Gauntlet season back in 2017. It's not a memorable film, nor is it even close to good, but it still delighted me. 

---

I have been reading film critic Nathan Rabin's series over on his substack on Manic Pixie Dream Girl movies. Rabin coined the term 20 years ago and his series of reviews of films featuring the character trope is a means of reckoning with its success in entering the pop culture lexicon as well as its misuse. A Manic Pixie Dream Girl is the construct of a male writer who imagines a lively, care-free woman who will snap a boring, depressed guy out of his dull-ass colourless reality and teach him how to live...and love. They are a complete fantasy, typically women who exist solely for the purpose of uplifting the most average of men out of their utter average-ness.

In Rabin's current writings, he's starting looking back to film's before he coined the phrase to find earlier examples of the MPDG in cinema, and there's no shortage of them (Barbra Streisand in What's Up Doc? being just one example). Without meaning to step on his spot, I submit Topper as being yet another one...only in this case, the twist is it's Manic Pixie Dream Ghosts (thanks to Lady Kent for coming up with that one).

In Topper, George and Marion Kerby (Carey Grant and Constance Bennett) are two affluent, hard-drinking gadabouts who seem to have less than a care in the world. When we first meet them, George is driving through the countryside sitting on the back of the seat of his convertible and driving with his feet.  They're heading into the big city for a board meeting in the morning at the bank (George is the majority stakeholder or something, I didn't actually follow) which means they have all night to party.  Marion takes delight in flirting with buttoned-down Cosmo Topper (Roland Young), a respectable man who really would just like to dance and let loose and play, but his prim and uptight wife Clara (Billie Burke) won't let him.

George and Marion get into a car accident because George is probably still drunk and speeding, and they die. They emerge as ghost and take the whole damn thing in stride (I guess if you die fully lit, you remain fully lit forever in the afterlife). They wonder why they haven't passed on to the pearly gates, and, they surmise, that they need to do a good deed. Marion's immediate thought is they need to teach ol' Topper how to let loose, and thus the flirtatious, vivacious, playful, life-loving, liberal woman starts messing with Cosmo, and he, of course, loves it.

How could he not? Constance Bennett's performance as Marion is so damn alluring. She's designed to be, of course, so that Topper will follow her anywhere and everywhere. In the wrong hands, Marion could be seen as mean-spirited, as really fucking with Topper, but Bennett gives the impression that Marion is genuinely delighted by Topper, and her flirtatiousness is strictly that. She's married to George of course, but she has the liberty, and desire, to run around with men who amuse her.  And it's true, Roland Young is kind of adorable. From the get go you understand Topper is a man burdened by rules, a man longing for fun and joy and pleasure, but he lives in a reality that seems to deny him that. And so he needs a Manic Pixie Dream Ghost to unshackle him.

Of course, Mrs. Topper finds out her husband has been running around with another woman, and part of the story is about Clara loosening up, and learning that being buttoned-down and polite society is seen as uninteresting (the society women she wants to hang out with only come around after Marion gets Topper thrown in jail and reported on in the newspaper).

For Grant, this seems like it was a contractual obligation... he had so many pictures to make in a year with a studio, lending his big name and handsome face to a marquee and poster, but he's barely in the film. This is Constance Bennett's show (and what a show). Normally a lack of Grant screentime would be a bit of a downer, but not here. Eventually George has to come back into the picture to reign Marion in. As footloose and fancy-fee as George is, even he realizes when Marion is being too much of a pixie, too much of a dream girl. In a just world, George would have been Clara's Manic Pixie Dream Guy/Ghost (and in a non-sexist world, he would have been right alongside Clara in helping Cosmo live life to the fullest).

It takes a little too long for Topper's premise to come to fruition, but when it does it's a very fun, often funny, and fully spirited tale. I would love to get a remastered version of the film as the Tubi version had quite poor sound quality (especilly for my half-deafness) and washed out contrasts. Apparently there are two Topper sequels which is baffling given how it ends, but I'm also very curious.

KWIF: tubi-ular bells

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. An annoying end-of-summer cold as well as intense end-of-quarter workdays and TIFF wreaking havoc on showtimes downtown all conspired to keep me out of the theatre this week. Movies got watched, but maybe not what I would have seen otherwise.

This Week:
The Philadelphia Story (1940, d. George Cukor - tubi)
Starflight One aka Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983, d. Jerry Jameson - tubi)
Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983, d. Kinji Fukasaku - blu-ray - also on tubi)
The Guest (2014, d. Adam Wingard - tubi)

---

The Philadelphia Story opens with a shock. Cary Grant's C.K. Dexter Haven being thrown out of his home by Katherine Hepburn, playing his wife Tracy Lord. She snaps one of his golf clubs in half and he, enraged, restrains himself from striking her. Instead he puts his meaty hand softly on her face and then pushes her to the ground and walks away. He's a hurt man unsure of where to place his emotions, and so his act is clearly a show of dominance rather than intending to be violent. But it is still so shocking. It's still violent.

Let's be clear...assault is assault, and this constitutes assault. But it's also kind of funny because it's so unexpected. It shouldn't be funny, but I couldn't help but laugh. The jaunty, whimsical music is also telling us to not take it too seriously. It's a very weird note to start this movie on.  Throughout the film, unfortunately, there are multiple snappy remarks about domestic abuse that are meant to be funny, as striking one's wife was just an accepted part of a domestic relationship back then apparently. Thankfully, there's no further physical violence upon women in the film. 

After that very brief (and did I mention shocking?) opening scene, when we next cut to Tracy, she's getting married again. We learn that she's from an affluent family (as was Dex) and that she's marrying George Kittredge (John Howard) a man of new money who isn't as well versed in high society. Their marriage is to happen on the weekend.  Macaulay Connor (James Stewart) is a writer assigned by his editor to cover the wedding, with his partner, photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) to accompany him. They both question how they will get access to the wedding, and the answer comes with Dex leading the way. Yes, Dex is going to crash the wedding (but also introduce Mac and Liz as friends of Tracy's brother who's away in South America...) The jig doesn't last long but there are reasons they go along with it.

Tracy is  passive agressive in her welcoming of these people into her parent's home, and certainly isn't welcoming of Dex appearing back into her life, not at this time.  Mac is a crusader and an artist, and has genuine disdain for the wealthy, and certainly has no real desire to pursue this assignment. But when Tracy finds Mac's book of short fiction (or was it poetry) at the library, she's kind of smitten by the deep thinking, soulful man she'd so easily dismissed, and Mac, meanwhile, sees she's not the vapid snoot he assumed she was.

And so here we have a strange love pentagon where Mac, who is with Liz, now finds himself falling for Tracy (and Liz keenly aware of it and really just kind of relaxed about it, as if this is something Mac does all the time), and Tracy, likewise, falling for him, while getting married in a day or two, and then Dex is lingering in the peripherals dropping hints (or giving gifts) about their past when times were really good and romantic. 

Based on the stage play of the same name by Philip Barry, which also starred Hepburn and she also produced it. She was also the instigator for bringing the play to the big screen as a means of hopefully getting her out of movie jail after a string of bombs. It's a very sharp, twisty, unexpected story that doesn't follow traditional romance or romantic comedy beats. Most of the struggle of these characters and what they are feeling is internalized. For all the words they spew (it's a very punchy, fast-talking script) they aren't talking as much about what's really going on inside, merely hinting at it.

Hepburn here is fully in charge. This is Tracy's story, and she's not willing to fit the role that any man wants to put her in... not Dex, not her father, not George, and ultimately not Mac. Because Tracy is so fiercely independent, so frustrated with the patriarchy, she rebuffs it, and refuses to submit to it. As a result, these men who proclaim to love her have put her up on this pedestal, that she's a goddess or a queen, something other.  

Dex spent his years of marriage treating her like she was a wild horse that needed to be broken, because that's the role women were expected to play, to be submissive to their husbands. What alternative examples were there? He called her goddess, but he refused to worship her...even worse, he just refused to respect her. Mac, meanwhile, sees her, sees the person she wants to be, but also still elevates her to royalty status, someone above him... they're not equals.  He's drawn to that imbalance, but even though she's into it now, it's apparent she wouldn't put up with it long. And then George, the man she's supposed to marry, idolizes her, but also wants her to fit in a box, and play the role of kept woman, be at his side, and that definitely won't work for her.  

And while the point of the movie is Dex -- still seething with contempt, jealousy and little boy hurt feelings -- sees Tracy with these other men, and how other men act around her, and how she responds to that, and realizes he played it all wrong, that she wasn't meant to be a possession or a god, that she was meant to be supported and loved and given the same respect and companionship that he himself wanted from her.  At least I think that's the realization he comes to. As I said, this is Tracy's movie, and Dex disappears throughout much of the film a surprising amount. I really thought the possibility here was that Tracy learns to love herself and that she doesn't need a man in her life for any sense of fulfillment.  But that's not how the films of the 1940's worked.

This is the most interesting I've ever found Jimmy Stewart playing bitter and spiteful and turning that around into a dashing romantic lead. Hepburn I've not had much experience with, but this gives her the opportunity to be hard and sometimes comically nasty, but also flirty and vivacious. It's amazing to watch her face transition from stern to soft. The Philadelphia Story is a tremendous romantic comedy, the wordplay razor sharp, the comic setpieces are small but uproarious, and everyone involved is completely on point. Maybe not a flawless story, as we're still dealing with the affairs of the wealthy as if they're all that matter (and this is a film that is warning us not to judge them so harshly, which, from a modern lens, I cannot agree with at all), but what entertainment!

---

One of my slow-burn projects has been to watch as many of the 70's disaster flicks as I can stomach. There are obviously the biggest of big - The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure -  but there's also a plethora of try-hards and hardly-tryings that came out of that era - your Earthquake or Juggernaut.  They all follow the same formula, which is spending a half hour introducing all the players we're going to follow through the film, as well as teeing up the disaster to come, and then having the big disaster set-piece killing a whole bunch of people, and then having our survivors (those we met in the opening act) traipse through the aftermath trying to find safety... and we're never quite certain who will perish along the way.

(Toasty covers a lot of the modern disaster flicks - check the "disaster" tag - which tend to just follow a single protagonist surrounded either by family or, like, a research team, and not the ensemble of disparate characters as per the 70's formulae.)

Hal Linden (Barney Miller) plays Josh Gilliam, the head designer of the Starflight, a cutting-edge rocket-fuelled plane that will climb to the upper atmosphere and move a 400mph, making a direct flight from L.A. to Sydney in two hours. While the simulation tests don't reveal any outright problems, Josh feels reluctant about the rocket system, and worries something will go wrong with the inaugural flight to Australia.

Pilot Cody Briggs (Lee Majors) is having domestic issues, his marriage is hanging on by a thread, and he's reluctant to commit to single mom Erica Hansen (Lauren Hutten), the press secretary for Starflight's parent company, Thornwell Aviation.  She, and her daughter will be on the plane, as will dozens of press people, a wanna-be aeronautics mogul, a gold thief, and a contest winner chosen from the Thornwell employees who worked on the plane.  As well, last minute, the plane is held to allow for the loading of the recently deceased ambassador from Australia in his coffin.

Despite the set-up of something being wrong with the plane, it's in fact, outside events which cause the tragedy to happen. A experimental satellite rocket launched too early explodes in the atmosphere which sends debris hurtling towards the Starflight. Their only option to avoid it is to climb higher using the rocket boosters. The only problem is the debris struck the ship and now they can't turn the rockets off. They rocket into space, into orbit of the earth, with a limited supply of food, power and oxygen. The plane is out of fuel, and they have no heat shields to even re-enter earth's atmosphere. How ever will any of them survive.

Space shuttle Columbia, that's how. Somehow, over less than a two-day span in this film, NASA manages to land the Columbia four times and launch it three. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for an nearly billion-dollar experimental rocket plan that only seats like 40 passengers (and you thought Fly Emirates was expensive...) but turning around launch times in two hours is not only improbable, but impossible.

Presented on Tubi in glorious 4:3 aspect ratio, I was wondering if Starflight One was a TV movie given that it has a run-time of nearly 2 hours and figuring most TV movies are, like, 90 minutes given that they have a 2 hour timeslot to fill and that they have to run commercials...but I forgot that back in those days that networks would block of 2 1/2 or 3 hours for "event" movies. It's most definitely a TV movie. I mean, look at the cast list. Even with John Dykstra on special effects, this is special effects on a TV budget. Once the Starflight reaches zero gravity, there's only a scene or two of people floating, and from then on it's painfully obvious that the actors are trying to mimic weightlessness by slowly bending and straightening their knees. It. looks. bad.

The far-fetched idea, the cliched formula, the bad cast of characters (I mean, the gold thief just got married and is going to Australia on a honeymoon with his unsuspecting bride, and they don't use that for anything other than to have gold bars in the cargo bay... at least the Australian ambassador's coffin is used as an air-tight transportation unit to shuttle a dude from Starflight to Columbia, but it's still a dully executed sequence)... Starflight One is a tired regurgitation of better ideas.  The most interesting part of the film is the love triangle between Cody, his wife and Erica, but Majors seems to be taking a paycheck and can't be bothered to invest in caring about the emotional life of this character. The big "I love you" scene between Majors and Hutton is up there for one of the worst on-screen kisses I've ever seen, beaten only by a kiss that happens between them later in the movie when they're saying goodbye, perhaps forever (Majors doesn't even attempt to participate in the kiss, and you have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes for such a dispassionate effort).

That said, as badly executed as it sometimes is, and as poor an example of this genre as it is (and pretty much the end of the era for this kind of disaster movie), it's still so in the mould that it is kind of watchable (kind of), even if most of the entertainment value is laughing at its absurdity.

---

A note to my future self... if you get a recommendation for any sort of Asian action film from the 70's or 80's, check Tubi first before dropping any coin on a blu-ray release. Watch the film and then decide if you like it enough to want to watch it again, uninterrupted by commercials and in a much better quality presentation, and care enough to delve into special features.

I've seen many a samurai movie, and I genuinely love the genre, and I've seen many wuxia fantasy films which I also like. I'm less versed in Japanese fantasy which sort of bridge these two, or if that's even a common thing. Legend of the Eight Samurai plays out less like either of those two niches and instead feels very much like an homage to the made-in-Italy sword-and-sorcery movies of the 60's (which I guess also trickled out throughout the 70's and came roaring back in the 80's).

Princess Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is on the run. Her family has been murdered, and it's only Shizu  which stops them from fulfilling the revenge curse of the Motofuji clan. The evil Hikita Gonnokami Motofuji (Yūki Meguro) and his lover/mother, the witch Tamazusa (Mari Natsuki) have discovered the secret to immortality (it involves taking a bath in a massive blood pool) and are on the path to ruling Japan and possibly the world so long as they vanquish their enemy completely. 

But Shizu finds her own destiny is tied to eight samurai ("dog") warriors whom she collects along the way (these include actors like Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter) and Etsuko Shihomi (Sister Street Fighter)). But continued run-ins with vainglorious outcast Shinbei (a young Hiroyuki Sanada) turn from disgust to admiration to love in pretty rapid succession, with a lot of contrivances and complications along the way.

Legend of the Eight Samurai is a loose adaptation of a classic Japanese serial from the 1800s ( Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Kyokutei Bakin) that was definitely an attempt to Star Wars-ify such fantasy tales (there's even a Luke-and-Leia-rope-swing moment which is composed pretty much exactly the same). While there are moments that feel like Star Wars homages (including the sort of Stormtrooper-y samurai hordes), I couldn't escape the feeling of the many getting-the-band-together fantasy adventures I'd seen over the years. While visually the big sets and setpieces, the rotoscoped animated effects, and the use-what-we-got outdoor environments felt of the 60's era, the synth-heavy soundtrack from Nobody, and the oh-so-'80's power ballads from John O'Banion feel very much of their time. The style of fantasy and the tone of music don't mesh innately, but at the same time it makes for a very distinctive production.

It's not that I disliked Legend of the Eight Samurai, but I had a hard time settling into it. It's...different. It moves at an unfamiliar pace, and it often seems to lack focus.  It's always hard to watch a film where the protagonist (Princess Shizu) is really so defenceless, and the heroic figure (Shinbei) is a real aggravating rascal for much of the film, but eventually comes around (young Sanada is so damn cute though) to being the inevitable eighth samurai (not really a spoiler, is it?). If I watch it again, it will have to be in dialogue with maybe other adaptations of the source material, or director Fukasaku's work... or maybe I just want to hear those cheesy ballads again, because they're so spot emulations of the hit songs of the era that it's astonishing that I've never heard them before.

---

And finally this week, I decided to watch The Guest after years of saying "no thanks" due to fundamentally misunderstanding what type of movie it was. It's a psychological action thriller that takes on the feel of 1980's action and horror movies but in a 2010s setting. I thought it was just a psychodrama in the Cape Fear, Pacific Heights, Single White Female vein where someone who isn't what they seem completely insinuates themselves into the lives of an unsuspecting victim, demolishing their reality from the inside.

And it is sort of that, but also not. 

Laura Peterson (Sheila Kelley) and her husband Spencer (Leland Orser) are still grieving the loss of their son, who died in combat overseas, when turning up at their door is David Collins, a veteran from their son's unit, and a friend with a message for them.

They invite David to stay with them, and he's so respectful and kind and courteous. He helps out around the house and starts mentoring their bullied son Luke (Brendan Meyer). Their daughter, 20 year old Anna (Maika Monroe) is wary of this stranger, something about his vibe puts her off, that is until she catches him in nothing but a towel coming out of the bathroom, and she's fully switched on. But the glamour spell doesn't last. Little things tweak her, and she's right to worry.  What the family doesn't see, but we the audience, is the way David's face drops anytime someone turns their back to him or leaves a room, and the way he peers out windows in anticipation. David instigates a fight with Luke's bullies at a bar where he utterly demolishes them, he defends Anna's friend from a toxic ex-boyfriend at a party, he provides comfort and guidance for the family...it seems like David is the good guy, but the tone of the film, everything from scene composition, to the tone of the music to Dan Steven's steel blue eyes and wry, unnerving smile feel off. And then there's the cutaways to a shadowy government contractor led by Major Carver (the late, great Lance Reddick) which maybe intone David is a victim and on the run...?

The Guest comes from director Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), whose latest film in theatres (at the time of writing), Onslaught, is not a sequel, but in the same world as this film. That most definitely looks like an action movie, and it was conversations in media around that film which alerted me to the fact that The Guest was not much at all what I was expecting. Rather than being tense and uncomfortably dramatic, this is more heightened intensity and pulpy, with shades of John Carpenter and James Cameron pumping through its celluloid veins. It's not a very surprising movie, but it seems to know exactly what its doing and how it wants to do it. It may not seem the most logical leap from this to giant apes and lizards, but Wingard proved he knew how to capture tone and create an movie that is fun and exciting that also thrills.

[Poster talk... there's not a single good poster for The Guest. Most of them feature either David or Emma in silhouette against vibrant neons that intone/imply nothing. There is a poster of Stevens with a ditty bag slung over his shoulder that implies just a little more but not enough. And then there's the follow-up posters, once again using the vibrant colours and shadowed figures just with big bold quotes from critics. They do not sell the movie at all. Paired with the trailer, which make it out as another sort of secret psychopath story this was a poorly promoted movie.]

Stubbing Out: Samara & Karl/Kyle

Eenie Meanie, 2025, Shawn Simmons (primarily a writer; directorial debut) -- Disney+
Carolina Caroline, 2025, Adam Rehmeier (Snack Shack) -- download

Well, fuck. I had it all planned out in my mind, and I thought I had properly confirmed it, but apparently Samara Weaving was not starring in two star-crossed lovers, back-water America, crime stories with the same guy. Turns out, Karl Glusman (Eenie Meanie) and Kyle Gallner (Carolina Caroline) are not the same actor.

But, same look in each movie, same initials... there is something going on here.

My original intent was to, and I doubt it would become a new tag, but begin the write up(s) just after I started the movie(s). I often watch movies, these days, in fits & starts: with week day morning coffee, and just after I get up on weekends. Life interrupts. Occasionally, when doing so, I like to put in a "stub" post, to capture what I was thinking as I watched, even before completing the movie. Given this post was going to be about two movies, I tagged that onto the post title.

Original original intent aside, the plan will still goes, just with no comparing about how odd it was for Samara, and really she is the star power here, to be in two very similar movies with the same co-star. She is still in two very similar movies, in genre if not tone, about people on the ass-end of American life making terrible crime-ridden life choices.

Samara Weaving started her career, in my eyes, as "not Margot Robbie" but came into her own, again in my mind, in a 31 Days choice of The Babysitter -- for some reason, I did not do proper credit-ing in that post. Not long after, she stood out again in Ready or Not. She hasn't been a Margot Robbie stand-in, in my mind, for quite a long time, which makes her role in Babylon all the more amusing.

Karl Glusman will always be, to me, Sergei from Devs but that is because I never saw any of his previous projects. The Internet loved his threesome in Love, a Gaspar Noé movie --- odd note, Kent references his movie Enter the Void at least three times in other posts, but neither of us wrote about it.

Kyle Gallner doesn't really have any prevalence in my mind. He's just one of those ten million character actors that have played a single episode of all the TV crime dramas and just enough roles in movies that I recognize his face. I guess his only stand-out, to me, would be "Beaver" from Veronica Mars some 20 odd years ago, but he was a kid then.

***

Edith, or Edie, Meade (Weaving) was raised by two degenerate drug-using criminals. When she was 14, she picked them up from a bar and while attempting to escape the cops, crashes the car, killing her mother and paralysing her father. She spends the rest of her youth in the usual abusive foster system, in Cleveland. After escaping that, she ended up back in the seedy crime-ridden underbelly of her parents. The movie begins when she has escaped that, going to school, keeping a job. But what she hasn't escaped is her on-again off-again relationship with John (Glusman), who is a complete loser.

We are introduced to Edie in a nightclub; she is supposed to be the typical skanky but smart girl, wanting to go home early so she can study. I don't buy Weaving's American skank -- she's just too statuesque. But she's a bad girl wanting to go straight: school, shit car, shit boss, shit job at a bank, which gets robbed and Edie is knocked unconscious. When she awakens at the hospital, she finds she is pregnant, and that means a hard decision: should she talk to John (Glusman), her ex, the father, or should she avoid him.

She should have avoided him. She walks straight into his shit show, where he owes Nico the Mob Boss (Andy Garcia, Wrath of Man) and she has to put her legendary driving skills back into action. In the intervening years between the car crash and her going to school, Edie was a driver for Nico, a very very good driver. But John is her Achilles Heel, an entire mess of a human being, stupider than pavement, but able to charm Edie in ways she cannot control.

John had kidnapped Nico's card counter, a man who makes Nico a lot of money. Then the card counter is accidentally killed, and now John owes Nico all the money the card counter could have potentially made. Edie has two options: help John on a job for Nico that could recoup the money, or let.... John... die. We wouldn't have a movie if Edie didn't love John, trainwreck and all.

What plays out in tragi-comedy is a fun mish-mash of violence and stupidity and adrenaline, from the guy who did the YouTube / TV show Wayne, a violent little romp about a high school kid on bicycle trying to get his dad's car back. John continues to make bad decisions, Edie ends up having to make some really hard decisions.

I would do some comparisons to specific car chase and/or heist movies, but we know the tone. There are tense chase scenes, avoidances and bone-jarring crashes. There are betrayals and murders that don't sit well with Edie. Its all familiar ground, but... I rather enjoyed it. Weaving wraps herself in the role, and unlike the next one, it is not as enamoured with her statuesque body. We get most of her performance from her eyes, sad and disappointed most of the time, hard and determined when needed.

***

Caroline (Weaving) opens the movie alone, carjacking her ride, driving off into the sun. She is going to end up here, but where we really meet her first is a gas filling station in Texas where the makeup-lite Caroline (code for innocent, unworldly) observes customer Oliver (Gallner) con the gas station owner out of $20. She's annoyed he would take money out of the hands of another; he is amused she caught his con so quickly.

Later they bump into each other at a roadhouse, she is surprised he is still in "town". Why would anyone stay in her little bumpkin speck-on-the-road of a town? She, of course, is desperate to get out. Commenting leads to flirting, flirting leads to dating and dating leads to sharing -- Caroline's mother left her when she was young, and she has always wanted to go to Carolina, where she believes her mother is, to ask why. She's also mesmerized by his little con jobs, and asks him to show her how its done. They are taken with each other, but you are always left wondering how much of their interaction is him controlling the beautiful blonde in front of him, but I remember the opening scene where she is alone, and wonder whether she is manipulating him from the very start.

When they do couple-crime dramas, the go-to is Bonnie & Clyde but this is more akin to True Romance but without all the Tarantino quirkiness. Its romantic, its exciting, its tense. 

By midway through the movie, things have escalated. Simple $100 cash shuffling has become large sums of money, has become lifting wallets and emptying bank accounts, has become... robbing banks. Caroline wants more: more excitement, more cash, more slinky outfits. That is, until she sees the darker side of what they are doing: the fear they generate, the intimidation and violence they have to use to keep things going -- the harsh cruelty that keeps Oliver moving along so he can do the next job. Caroline likes it when its fun & exciting, not so much when they have to pistol whip someone. That escalation also brings real life into play, and they are on a Wanted List.

Reality has Caroline question where's she from, so the original intent of the road trip, before the con jobs, before the slinky dresses, before the bank robberies, was to find her mother in Carolina. But we all know how those visits turn out... Meeting Deborah (Kyra Sedgwick, Bad Shabbos) for 10am screw drivers is not a pleasant experience and Sedgwick is incredible in this pretty-much cameo, eliciting waves of revulsion from the way she holds her chin and the words vomiting out of her mouth. But, instead of a call to her Daddy and a wake-up call, she asks Oliver if they can rob the world.

"How do we know if we are good people pretending to be bad, or bad people pretending to be  good?"

Their world comes crashing down pretty quickly, and hard. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't provide much breathing room for neither us, nor the couple. Caroline should have just taken the time to absorb the reality of her mother, but instead it leads to the death of a state trooper and, finally, Oliver taking Death by Cop so Caroline can escape. TBH I was imagining he would abandon her, to return to his life of lone con jobs, but I guess he really did love her.

So, two stories with similar paths, similar bad decisions, both ending with Weaving's characters alone and expecting. Two entirely different tones. The first is more my thing; my days of being charmed by violence-crossed lovers out against the world are gone. Like Edie, I have grown out of that. But the latter was a competently done story and I cannot fault it for anything, including the familiar story, because telling the same story over and over again is how the telling of tales is done.

Three Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Def-Con 4

1985, Digby Cook, Paul Donovan, Tony Randel -- Amazon

I told Kent I was going to do it, and since I don't have the spare brain cells for anything real at the moment, I watched this one over a few days.

Wow, that was bad, but not as bad as I recall judging it way back in Ye Olden Days of VHS. Don't get me wrong, its terrible but terrible in the way most 80s post-apocalypse movies were. And the Canadian-isms of it all, sort of allow me to forgive it much. I also am amused that I recalled two very important details from my first viewing: when I saw the Alexander Keiths stubbie beer bottle being used as a candle holder I knew the movie was Canadian (ignoring the Maury Chaykin role), and I believed the whole movie having taken place in Nova Scotia, based on the map in the Bad Guy's lair.

So, this is Cold War hype at it hype-iest. A handful of astronauts in a satellite space station grumping about how long they have been up and looking to get back to Earth, when it happens -- someone pisses someone else off (oh, say... someone calls The Prime Minister his Governor) and the missiles start being lobbed. They are supposed to launch their own but they argue and, don't.

Minutes later, which I gather is supposed to be weeks, one of them gets a message from his wife. Radiation has caused a sickness, most people are dead, anyone ill is quarantined and his child is dead. The crew argue again and Howe (Tim Choate, Babylon 5) fiddles with the computer, sending them on a landing trajectory. I admit, I was washing the dishes so I didn't catch everything, but I believe they got a signal from Earth, which was weird cuz everything should be all blowed up. Oh, the other astronauts are Walker (John Walsch, absolutely nothing else) the commander, and Jordan (Kate Lynch, Lost Girl) the doctor.

Weird note. There were moments when I thought the movie was going to stray into sexytime. One, it had to be Walker as Howe is married, watches a "blue movie" and Jordan just rolls her eyes. Entirely inappropriate. There are a few other very terribly written sexual scenes, as if the script was done by a 14 year old boy whose only exposure to sex was a bunch of nudie mags in a plastic bag hidden under his bead.

They land. Not sure how, as their space station doesn't actually have a visible lander module. BUT not before they launch all their own nuclear payload. All but one, and it starts ticking down. Its a rough landing and Jordan is knocked unconscious and they are jammed weirdly on a sandy beach. As Walker tries to dig his way out, he is grabbed by unknowns and ... only his hand drops back into the hole. When Howe emerges with a flimsy stick as a weapon, he sees people sawing chunks of meat off Walker -- CANNIBALS !

He runs, but is caught by a random trap put out by Vinny (Canadian royalty Maury Chaykin, My Cousin Vinny) the redneck survivalist, in his best Canadian Tuxedo and kilt. While this movie never mentions its in Canada, and always seems to at least pretend its following American style politics & military structure, it also drops regular Canadianisms. 

Weird note. Its been... what, a few months? They have been revolving up there for the few months and the planet has fallen into complete barbarism? They haven't even landed in an urban area but they have cannibals and bandage wrapped muties, but everything is "The Road Warrior" level PA. Why? Even with mass death and collapse of society, things would hang onto a near-normal for at least years. But, whatever, this wants to do the "Planet of the Apes" thing and have them arrive to a shocking change of affairs.

So yeah, Vinny. He has a pretty good setup with booby traps (I am sure he giggled when he set them up) and land mines and secret tunnels back to his slapped together shack. Again, he should at least have a fortified hunter's cabin, but nope, he's hidden inside hammered & glue sheets of wood and metal, pure PA ramshackle. He has a girl in his basement, and seems to have lost all eating utensils as he forces gruel upon Howe. He has nudie mags pasted all over the wall. How tries to convince him to help, offering half of his space station food supply (months!!) in exchange for some guns and information. Vinny says he will just kill Howe and take it all; fair point. But then he's distracted by an interloper blowing himself up outside, and Vinny heads outside to see what "the kids" are up to.

While Vinny is outside, the girl in the basement, named JJ (Lenore Zann, X-Men '97), crawls out, all dressed in a school uniform. Hmmm, so the kids must refer to a bunch of youngin's that she was part of ? Once again, Howe offers food if she will help, but before the two can escape, Vinny returns. He's taking the pair with him as he checks out the beach where the station crashed, in his Mad Max'd out tractor, complete with armoured cage. When they arrive, Vinny makes some comment about the "lunatics from Fort Blah Blah" and suddenly there is a beached blonde guy with a terrible moustache and a sloppy military uniform. And other guys with guns. Vinny boots it, back to his tractor, but they capture him with hooks and chains.

Back to Fort Blah Blah, I guess. Its just another example of slapped together ramshackle, but there are a LOT of civilians, some in cages, some in holes, most in weird favela box shacks but otherwise looking like filthy normal people. I was left wondering why. There is no world building in this movie; its not smart enough to have such. Sure, we can postulate that the disease, radiation sickness, cannibals and muties (I know they are not radiation mutants, just bandaged survivors, but they present as muties) run rampant in the surrounding landscape, so people have congregated here under the auspices of being protected by whatever military folks are in Fort Blah Blah, but really, they've just become slaves / fodder for his whims.

And who is him? The "kids" turn out to be, and we learn from an exposition scene from JJ, a handful of boarding school kids (college? highschool?) who were in a helicopter with the General Dad of one of them, and it crashed before they could get to safety. So, he, the preppy as Kent called him, is Gideon, a charismatic and ruthless son of the dead General, and he is not entirely stupid, so people follow him. JJ is his ex-girlfriend who doesn't appreciate his ruthlessness, and ran away, only to be captured by JJ. 

The spacestation / lander thing / whatever has been carted back from the beach by slaves, and off camera, they got Jordan out of it. She, and the rest of the prisoners are tossed into cage holes, where they are subjected to the half-eaten Walker. Eww. Meanwhile Gideon and his henchmen are trying to get coordinates of a proper base of survivors, the usual mythical "safe zone" from all the PA movies. They will get that by hacking the computer module from the spacestation. Gideon has a tech guy with a broken back, who he taunts with freedom and food. Together they get the required coordinates, and plan to escape on a boat. Howe has also said he wants a boat, a sailing boat, which should allow him to get to South America where the radiation won't be as bad. Meanwhile, the one remaining nuclear warhead, stuck in its launch tube, is still ticking down, unbeknownst to everyone.

So, the prisoners are to be executed via lots of melodrama and eye rolling on my part. But just as the crowds scream for blood and the hangin' is about to happen, the broke back dude has dragged himself out, somehow got a gun, and opens up. Total Chaos! Gideon is shot! Jordan offers to help but only if they are all freed. When she medically assists him, she tries to convince him that the poison is a pain killer but he turns the tables and kills her instead! Drama! Tragedy! In all these PA movies, everyone but the lone Main Guy and the Cute Girl have to die. Meanwhile outside, Vinny has freed all the average-people slaves and prisoners and convinced them to fight back. In the ensuing chaos, Gideon escapes to the boat, with the coordinates, and JJ. The "fighting back" does not really go well.

Still doing dishes.

Howe and Vinny chase after the boat, only to see it sailing away. Howe jumps in the water, is tossed a rope by JJ, fights Gideon, and the boat is theirs! Gideon and his blonde henchmen Lacey escape back to Fort Blah Blah just as the clock countdown finishes.

Boom. 

Credits roll. 

The final victory has been won. Mankind can now rest in peace.

What? What final victory? A single boom that wipes some part of Nova Scotia off the map? Victory for who? And there are people in the boat, and at whatever Safe Zone they are sailing to, so no final rest for mankind. What does that even mean??

Speaking of not-making-sense, the tag line from the poster, "The last defense. The last hope. The battle for the future of the world has begun." Huh? They were not "battling for the future of the world", they were just ... well, fighting over food and a girl. These are just words on a poster; nothing to do with the movie. Gah.

As big messy productions go, this was all the mess, but in some, mostly MST3K kinds of way, it was kind of fun. Or maybe it was the kind of terrible that I like to write about. Either way, it distracted me.