"Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold. I'm not a big horror fan, but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.
She Dies Tomorrow (2020, d. Amy Seimetz) - AmazonPrime
Love and Monsters (aka "Monster Problems" - 2020, d. Michael Matthews) - Netflix
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020, d. Jim Cummings [not the famous voice actor]) - Crave
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This pandemic-laden reality we're living in is taking its toll, not just in lives lost, but in life lost, as in the time we're losing from being able to do much of anything in the name of keeping ourselves (and just as importantly, others) safe... or as safe as possible. There are, of course, those radical "freedom fighters" who refuse to lock down or mask up or get vaccinate because "liberties", whatever that means, when in reality all they're doing is putting themselves and others at risk of catching this miserable virus, and prolonging the time it's going to take to try and establish the "new normal". Looking around the world, at the places that got their shit together... Australia, Israel, China among others... that are finding their new normal right now, and comparing them to the worst case scenarios like India, Brazil, and even the not-quite-yet worst case scenarios like Canada, and it's hard not to let the mind spiral into doomsday thoughts. I give into that temptation too often, and it's beyond even depressing, it's just too massive to even contemplate except through the lens of what I've seen in film and television. We have a virus that, anywhere it's allowed to run rampant, starts mutating, and the mutations become more easily transmittable with our newly established vaccinations being less effective. At a certain point, your brain becomes numb to these thoughts and you become resigned to the fact that maybe things have gone south.
She Dies Tomorrow, from writer/director (and actress, but not in this one) Amy Seimetz, effectively captures this existential sense of looming dread in a story that finds one character telling another character how certain they are that they will not live beyond the following day, and soon that person starts to feel the same way, telling someone else, who tells someone else, who tells someone else, and so on and so on. The film was not made about the pandemic. It was more a manifestation of Seimetz's anxiety attacks, but it fits so well for the current cultural narrative. Even before COVID, it resonates with thoughts of the environmental turmoil, divisive political and societal structures, and the prevalence of feeling-based belief systems that cause people to act very irrationally that all kind of feel very foreboding.
The spread of this thinking acts like a contagion and before long it's everywhere, and there doesn't appear to be any effort to turn it around. It's not necessarily horrific, and at times there's a very black barb of comedy situated just underneath, but at the same time there's always a weight to it. I think, especially these days, its easy enough to emphasize with someone who is absolutely convinced that something is the truth, despite any physical evidence. Likewise it's easy to emphasize with the people they're encountering who try to handle this news as best as they can, with either placation, sympathy, frustration or vehement rejection. The scariest thing is that there's no resolution here, and no "cure" for what is affecting them. One character tries to experience joy, another just tries to continue working, others just panic, still others just get stoned and mellow out. There's a broad spectrum.
Having stared anxiety attacks in the face, I know how hard it is to reassure someone that everything is okay when their brain can only tell them the worst case scenario is the only outcome. In that regard, the film finds its allegory well, but it feels so much bigger than one mind, by the sheer fact that it's contagious dread.
The faces here are all "that guy(*cough*) person" quite familiar - Kate Lyn Sheil (You're Next), Jane Adams (Eternal Sunshine...), Chris Messina (Birds of Prey), Katie Astleton (Legion), Tunde Adebimpe (Marriage Story), and each has their own experience with feeling their impending end is coming. This also isn't John Dies At The End in which the title acts as some arch spoiler for the film, instead it's more the thesis.
I liked this. It's not very long at 84 minutes, but it does what it sets out to do effectively in that time. Seimetz's production style feels very guerilla, but there are moments of visual inspiration which signal much bigger things to come from her.
But, we ask, is it horror?
Going to have to say no, it never quite gets there, but it's just on the other side of line. It's like it's looking in the direction of horror but shying away from really going there.
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I had completely forgotten that Toasty had written about Love and Monsters when I watched it. I mean, he wrote about it back in October during his annual 31 Days of Halloween and Netflix announced it as a new release mid April of this year while also touting it as a Netflix film. It only got more bizarre when, through my cable provider, it was promoting the film as a new release only under the title "Monster Problems" (which apparently was its original title up until *just* before it's VOD and limited theatrical release last year). It was all such a bizarre thing.
It was a very disarming watch, because the title seemed to insinuate another eye-rolling teenage romance in a genre setting, and it opens with, basically, a virtual apocalypse. Without going into specifics (Toasty goes more into it in his review) what's left of humanity huddles in caves and missile silos and fallout shelters and the like, away from the surface where the fauna of Earth has mutated into gigantic creatures, most of which are keen on humans as snack food. Now, this sounds pretty dire, and it should feel pretty dire, but the film adopts a pithy, light-touch voiceover from our main character, Joel, played by the most average-y average early-20's white guy Dylan O'Brien (The Maze Runner). That's not a diss, but a credit to O'Brien making Joel out to be a supremely average, if not just subtly below-average guy, as was necessitated by the script. Joel needs to be a shaky, nervous, unaccomplished type in order to make his adventure seem that much bolder and grander. The actual explanation for the apocalypse as presented in the film is 100% comic-book science, and man do I love it. It's like "this is our idea, it's completely implausible, but just don't worry about that, we're gonna have some fun".
And we do.
That adventure finds him leaving the comfort (well...barely comfortable) surroundings of an old missile silo, where he has a makeshift family of other survivors roughly the same age as him... only they are all paired off and seem much more capable adults than he is. After 7 years of searching the CB radio dial for other survivor colonies he finds the one where his old high school girlfriend, Aimee (Iron Fist's Jessica Henwick), has made refuge and makes the bold choice to trek to the coast to be with her.
This puts Joel on the surface where he encounters plenty of monsters, makes friends who teach him a few things and of course winds up at his destination only to find that what's waiting for him is not what he expected.
I really dug the adventure here. The creature designs were delightful... intimidating but cool. The next step from taking a real animal and making it gargantuan and mutated was handled so well, since nature would be pretty intimidating if humanity suddenly dropped a half dozen rungs down the food chain ladder. I also liked that the film dealt with Joel's unhealthy fixation on Aimee and his inability to move on. For Joel, it was all he had left from his old life, and the only hope he had for the future, which is a lot to put on someone. It's only when he arrives at his destination that he realizes this, but the fact that he does indeed realize it, and on his own no less, was certainly a welcome touch. There's a fine line between grand romantic gestures and unhealthy obsession and this film understands that sometimes they're one and the same. But it gets to the root of that unhealthy obsession and addresses it.
The third act is, as with any post-apocalyptic scenario, the usual third act, where the worst thing the survivors have to face is other survivors. It's the unfortunate reality, that the worst people will likely do anything it takes to survive, even if it means fucking over the rest of humanity. But this typical story is usually presented as horror, where here it's more kind of high adventure and even comedy. That unusual pithy tone and laissez-fair attitude towards the post-apocalypse seemed like such an odd choice for the first two acts but pays off nicely in the Goonies-style finale.
My favourite part of the film is that Joel, a terrible artist in high school, has become a rather excellent one 7 years later. He puts his talent to use creating a monster field guide, which I would love to see a copy of.
This isn't a huge movie, a big record-breaking blockbuster, but it's a delightful, fun, spirited, genre-laden PG-13-style adventure film that just stimulates my geek brain and I will definitely be coming back to on regular occasions. Despite it's Po-Ap surroundings, it's a warm, welcoming, and vibrant movie that welcomes you along for the ride.
Yeah, but is it horror?
Not so much. It's "horror" in the same way, like, Godzilla movies were horror. In that they're not really horror at all, but at the root there is a horror concept, it's just not executed to horrify, but to entertain and excite.
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In that same 31 Days of Halloween, Toasty reviewed The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and unlike Love and Monsters, that one did stick in my brain. Seriously, go read his review and try not to be intrigued by Toast's perplexed and somewhat impressed response (the last paragraph's a spoiler though).
I think I was expecting something even weirder that this, but, even still, it's plenty weird. Actually, I think I was expecting something differently weird. This one's weird is... (I'm fighting so hard not to say "weird" right now) certainly unexpected. Toast's review alludes to writer/director/lead star Jim Cummings' very off-kilter performance and that's the centerpiece of this film's weirdness. The film opens with a series of panoramic shots over the credits that alternate between normal vistas and an upside-down vantage point, signifying things are going to be regularly turned on its head in this one. We spend time with a young couple on a romantic engagement getaway, only to have the woman be murdered...or perhaps attacked by a wolf or creature. We're introduced to Cumming's character, John, at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where he offers up an unpleasant "what I'd like to do to my ex-wife" scenario that is even more disturbing given that he's the Sheriff of Snow Hollow (well, technically his dad - the late, great Robert Forster - is the Sheriff but he's got a heart condition he's not dealing with which causes John no end of anxiety).
When we see John in action at the murder scene, it's just dizzying layers of interaction, with John talking to all his fellow deputies and his father and others, and it's a fine line whether John's in charge or just being an asshole. The weight of the murder and the investigation and his father's neglected illness, as well as negotiating his teenage daughter sends John to his breaking point and he starts drinking again. And once John starts drinking, the film is told in the abstract narrative of a drunk, with random thoughts, memories, fears entering his consciousness while he's trying to focus on work and family and everything. The reality is, his drinking affects everything and the portrait here is of a man a slave to his devices but so desperate to give the appearance of being in control. But his sense of control, especially at work, seems simply reckless. He fires more than one person throughout the investigation, mainly because John, well, he's kind of an asshole, even more so when he's drunk.
There's a quasi-murder mystery underneath all this, but it's just one of the driving factors in John's story, it's not the only story and it's not the main story. That the film doesn't even really give us the option of piecing together the mystery or devising our own suspect list speaks to the fact that it's not playing at a true murder mystery. Couple that with the fact that it point blank shows us a wolfman attacking a couple of his victims (and only when there's a full moon) only heightens the fact that something supernatural may in fact be occurring. But John only entertains the idea of werewolves in trying to understand where the origin of the myth comes from. In fact, the film holds back *just* enough to keep John on the table as a suspect without anyone ever verbalizing it. I think Cummings did that intentionally, to leave the audience just *hoping* that it's not John, because that would be a bad twist.
Turns out there's no twist here, except to say that John is an alcoholic, maybe even a functional alcoholic, and this film is a murder mystery and family drama and irreverant black comedy that shows how that disease gets in the way of someone who want to be in control of everything actually having no control at all.
The real hero of the film is Riki Lindhome's Detective Julia Robson, who, were this a season of Fargo would be the absolute lead of this thing.
Can it be horror though?
Maybe a little. Where She Dies Tomorrow never thinks about jumping over the line into anything outright horror, The Wolf of Snow Hollow steps over the line cheekily like a child stepping past the yellow line on the subway platform then quickly stepping back like they did something really daring.
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