Horror, Not Horror: white millennial problems

 "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 (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

Malignant - 2021, d. James Wan - Crave
Daniel Isn't Real - 2019, d. Adam Egypt Mortimer - amazonprime
Titane - 2021, d. Julia Ducournau - amazonprime
Fresh - 2022, d. Mimi Cave - Disney+

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I'm not a devoted follower of James Wan's career, but from what I've seen I do like him.  I'm not sure I've ever watched all of Saw, or if I've just read all about the Saw franchise.  I haven't watched any of the Insidious or The Conjuring series of films.  What I have seen are Furious 7 (though ask me to explain which one that is and I'm not sure I could tell you.  The Statham-as-villain one, I think?) and Aquaman.

As you might guess, given my proclivity towards superheroic things, it's the latter that really made me sit up and take notice of Wan as a director.  Aquaman is a delightfully bonkers movie and is a hundred times better than it had any right to be because the Warner/DC execs just let Wan's creativity explode and just jump through every type of genre.  That trust was his reward for having delivered an obscenely successful horror universe to Warner Bros.

And his reward for Aquaman being a billion dollar smash hit was a 40 million dollar+ blank check to make this, one of the most absurd yet entertaining pseudo-horror films in years.

Malignant is one of those movies that one doesn't want to say too much about as it might give too much away.  I can only imagine what it was like for someone unaware of the general premise of the film to sit through and discover what was really up.  And yet, after listening to the Malignant episode of How Did This Get Made, wherein Paul, June and Jason had no prior knowledge of what was about to be revealed, I think the movie plays better with a bit of that forehand info.  It's certainly a movie that was designed to be rewatched and to provide a little more upon second viewing.

There's a bit of setup that takes place up front using VHS video recordings of a psychiatric institute where something is brutally attacking the people in the facility.  The doctors seem completely aware of what is going on and have little concern for the lives being lost.  We never clearly see what being it is causing all this mayhem, but the last shot is of the feet of a child being dragged off.

Two and a half decades later, we meet Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis, Peaky Blinders) a pregnant nurse and living with a real shitheel of a boyfriend.  After disrupting his important UFC-watching and cel-phone twittering, he cracks her head against the wall, knocking her unconscious.  When she wakes up she finds her dirtbag brutally murdered, his body twisted and cracked from inhuman force.

Madison is spooked, and she reconnects with her estranged sister, while working with the police to try and figure out who or what could have done what was done.  And then there are more murders, only Madison is having real-time visions of those murders (there's a neat effect of the world melting away around her when she starts having these visions).  Is she psychically connected to the murderer/entity.  And the ...thing is killing the doctors we saw on video 27 years earlier.  When the detective encounters the murderer, it's clear this thing is humanoid, but how it moves, how it speaks (via electronics, able to manipulate electricity), it's not quite human.

The fun of the film is how all these threads are connected, but I knew going in exactly how they were all connected and I could delight in what the film was holding back on, but also kind of plainly showing you. It's pulpy and purposefully schlocky.  There's very much a heightened sense to this reality, Wan really interested in making a big-budget homage to the low-budg direct-to-video horror of the 1980's.  It's violent, and gross, and wonderfully action heavy, but it's not especially scary.  Wan's inventive camera is constantly in play finding very inventive and impressive ways of navigating spaces and following action.  It's such a gonzo film, and a delight for it.  It's absurd in the best way, not caring if it's not realistic, it's just having fun with what it's doing.

But, is it horror?  
Yeah, it's totally residing in the genre despite not being particularly scary.  It's a cracking good time.

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Playing in similar ground as Malignant, though getting a bit deeper in the psychological horror, Daniel Isn't Real starts incredibly strong with an opening moment that, when it transitions to the next moment seems utterly disconnected and random, only to quickly come back in play again.  Young Luke, his parents on the cusp of divorce, walking alone down the sidewalk, pushes his way through a crowd, only to be horrified to have a dead woman staring back at him.  The trauma seems to conjure up Daniel, and imaginary friend, who takes him away from the horror, and they become fast friends.   But Daniel pushes Luke to do things, nefarious things, and Luke's mom (Mary Stuart Masterson) forces him to lock Daniel away in a literal doll house (but a figurative mind prison).  Daniel pounds, pounds, pounds, screaming to be let out.  

The pounding is heard over the scene transition, as we join Luke (Miles Robbins) to a little over a decade later,  now a quiet, studious college student who is sharing a dorm room with a total he-bro.  But there's that noise in the back of his brain, that knocking that has never left him, and his therapist (Peacemaker's Chukwudi Iwuji) tells him that by locking Daniel away he's locked a part of himself away, that's holding him back from being more socially engaged and threatening his happiness.

When he returns home for a visit, he finds his mother deep in the throes of a manic episode, her schizophrenia serious enough to hospitalize her.  Luke, left to his own devices, unlocks the dollhouse and sets Daniel (now Patrick Schwartzenegger) free, immediately appearing, having seemingly aged along with Luke.  Their friendship immediately rekindles and Daniel starts pushing Luke into doing more in the world, engaging more with the world, being social, sleeping with girls.  But Daniel also starts pushing Luke to behave in ways that don't seem like his kind, sensitive self, and ultimately Daniel learns how to take control of Luke's body.

Throughout, the film expertly toys with the question "Is Daniel real, or does Luke have schizophrenia like his mother, or is he possessed by demon?"  There are possibilities.

Is this a creature feature, or a metaphor for mental illness? There's a definitive answer (which I'm avoiding spoiling) but I'm not sure if the film is any more satisfying as a result of being so definitive.

Good performances from Robbins,Schwartzenegger,  Masterson, and Sasha Lane, but could have used more of Peacemaker's Chukwudi Iwuji as Luke's therapist (both cause I like Iwuji and I also think that character should have played a larger part as a barometer for Luke's sanity). The electronic score from "Clark" is quite good, it stands out and you take notice.  Director Mortimer and Cinematographer Lyle Vincent have quite a few well composed shots that add a bit more artistic flare than the average horror.   

This apparently is part of a trilogy along with Mortimer's Archenemy, and a yet unproduced third film that the writer/director teases as crossing the two films.

Be it now horror? 
Yes, it's very squarely in the horror genre, and really seems to be positioning Daniel as an old school horror franchise creature.

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I'm not sure what's going on in France but they're just not happy unless they're really, really, really pushing the limits of what a movie can be about.  I don't even go into French films that often, but even just using High Life and Annette as barometer, things are definitely getting weird over there.

Titane is by far the weirdest of them yet to come (though I've still to see Aline the bizarre quasi-Celine Dion bio-pic in which the writer/director/star plays an analog to the French-Canadian singer at every age!).  But clearly, with winning the Palm D'or at Cannes, this kind of madness is what French cinema wants, and celebrates.

AmazonPrime, the current rights holder in North America, classifies the film as "science fiction, suspense, horror".  I'm not sure that covers it.  It start with Alexia, a real shitheel of a kid, being really annoying while her father is trying to drive the car...first being really loud imitating the motor's hum, and then kicking the back of his seat, before disconnecting her seat belt and moving freely around the back.  This causes an accident, and Alexia gets a big chunk of metal in the side of her head.  20 or so years later Alexia is a dancer at car shows, where she wears trashy clothes and crawls all over cars for the pleasure of men around her.  Another dancer has taken an interest in her, hitting on her in the shower, while a fan tries to profess love to her in the parking lot.  What none of these people realize is Alexia is a killer.  And after a kill she likes to have sex with cars.

If you think you know what this film is based on that brief description, well, that's just the first act, and it definitely does not remain what you think.  

Now pregnant with a car baby, and a failed attempt at a self-performed abortion, Alexia's proclivities catch up with her, and she has to go on the run.  Where she hides, and with who, and how that relationship play out is the meat for the rest of the film, and given the set-up you never quite know where it's exactly going.

Agathe Rouselle, playing Alexia, delivers a very bold performance, spending much of the film naked (though rarely seeming vulnerable) and in prosthesis as well as heavy make-up on her head and body.  It can't have been a comfortable shoot, but she delivers a really off-putting but also compelling portrait that I don't think can ever be completely understood.  It's certainly a performance I wouldn't feel comfortable, at all, receiving from a male director (*cough* Blue is the Warmest Colour*cough*), but Ducournau's lens never ogles, somehow it's more belwildered.  I don't know if the body-binding, the body-oil, the metallic uterus, or even the metal plate are specific allegories at play (body binding is now very much trans-male coding but I don't sense that there's any specific trans commentary at play her), or if this is just the most bizarre story to show how far the desperate need for human connection will take us.

Boy howdy, that sounds horrifying, but is it?
It's not playing in any of the usual tropes of horror, it's simply by offering us a very disarming, potentially damaged personality in the opening that does horrific things that we can get a supremely intense tale about connectivity where you're on edge because anything could happen...even dancing.  A lot of dancing.  So, maybe?

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And catching us up to one of the most recent releases that's just buzz-buzz-buzzing around the socials, it's Fresh, a not-entirely-successful allegory that, at the same time, is just too well made to ignore. 

I'm going to just spoil it, because there's no easy way to talk about it without doing so...but here's a stab at it with minor spoilers below.

Fresh relies on presenting the unexpected, but how many people are going to get the true unexpected experience of this? If you hear a review, or someone tells you about it, even just a little, even if they just mention it's basically in proximity of the horror genre, the whole first act loses its potency, and if you see a poster, you can kind of see what's coming.

But it's still a harrowing story, like the Human Centipede but with an actual emotional core and a bit more purpose.  And there's definitely influence from  Bryan Fuller's Hannibal series, though comparatively a little light on the gratuitous food porn. Mimi Cave works the hell out of her environments, covering the space beautifully. I liked her use of portraits and forced perspective, just a great looking film that visually guides us where words do not.

I was quite engaged, but did check the runtime at least twice. It could have used a little shave here and there, carve another 10 or 15 off, really tighten it up. The end and doesn't wholly satisfy, and you really gotta wonder what's next. As much as I'm saying trim it down, it also could have used a (different) coda.

BIGGER SPOILERS below

So the first half hour of Fresh is directed and performed like a romantic comedy. Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) coming off bad "swipe right" app dates, finally meets cute at the grocery store as very charming and handsome reconstructive surgeon named Steve (Sebastian Stan) gets her going with talk about grapes.  A couple dates later they're sleeping together and Steve invites Noa out to a weekend getaway, much to the chagrin of Noa's best (and seemingly only) friend, Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs).

Their first night away, where there's no cel reception, Steve drugs Noa, and when she wakes up he informs her that he fully intends to carve her up and sell her to a cabal of the 1% of the 1% who get off on eating young women.  Noa gets the lay of the land, gathers her wits and, looks to survive what Steve says she most definitely will not.  Meanwhile, Mollie gets her amateur sleuth on and starts trying to track Steve down.  It's both easier, and harder than you would expect.

At play we have a commentary on rape culture and human trafficking, and while Steve isn't sexually abusing his victims, he's still assaulting them and using their bodies for his own pleasure and profit.  The commentary is pretty surface level and the resolution is very Grindhouse, yet still somewhat satisfying in the turnaround, but it's just in how the story closes that it feels like we should still know more.

The opening act fake-out, in hindsight, really only works if you don't have any clue at all as to what you're walking in to, and as such it's overlong when you know this "romcom" pretence is just masking the terror that's to come.  As much as I like that it plays out this way, and that the credits drop 30 minutes into the film, separating the two genres if you will, it's probably not all necessary.

Horror, or not horror?
It falls into the genre of chained up people having terrible things done to them, but it's more about head games than gore.  That said, like Titane before it, it's second and third acts are pretty low key but then tremendously intense because of how their set up.