2024, Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike's Last Dance) -- download
This is a haunted house movie, but oh my what a lovely house that I wouldn't mind haunting at all. Wildly successful Rebekah (Lucy Liu, Elementary) and her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan, This is Us) buy it after something tragic has happened with their daughter Chloe. This is the "we need a change" trope at play, but by someone with money, because they aren't far from where it happened, and the kids seem to be at the same school. Chloe (Callina Liang, Tell Me Everything) doesn't seem to be recovering fast enough from her mother's point of view, nor from the view of her nigh-sociopath popular-at-school brother Tyler (Eddy Maday, feature debut). Dad does his best to be a lovely, supportive dad but some other kind of shit is going related to whatever well paying work Rebekah does, the kind of shit that has her deleting emails and hiding it all from her husband.
The entire movie is told through the eyes of whatever is haunting the house, a presence that Chloe can sense. It was shot with a simple camera (i.e. not a big film rig) on a gimbal attached to Soderbergh himself. Its a conceit meant to simplify and contain how the story is told. He's done well enough to be able to play with whatever style he wants, box office success or not. Horror movies, or maybe Halloween movies as this is not a horror movie per se with barely a whiff of fear present, also like to play with stylistic choices to center a story element. I really liked how it worked here.
There's no question of a spirit being at play here, and despite some initial mockery of Chloe for her "feelings" eventually the evidence that something is haunting them is too much to ignore. They bring "the expert", a medium who brings up the idea of spirits are often out of time and space so the tragedy that anchored them to the house might have not happened yet. Everyone but Dad and Chloe dismiss her, and if there is some failing in the script, its that despite their initial concrete belief in something, they ... just move on. The story wants to slowly explore its coming climax, a not-quite-Shyamalan-reveal but honestly, not what I expected. Its a thing about me, in that once I am wrapped up in something, I tend to slide right past the Hollywood structures, and just ... enjoy myself.
Aside from enjoying Soderbergh doing a haunted house movie, as I enjoy pretty much everything he has done (I guess I need to knuckle under and watch some strippers?) I really enjoyed his vignette style characterizations. Rebekah is very very dedicated to her son, almost to a creepy mom level, maybe past the creepy level, once we hear her reveling in her son's story of how he pulled a bully-level prank on a school mate. Meanwhile, her husband is spinning out on whatever the fuck terrible thing she has done in her business, but distracted by taking care of his daughter, whom his wife doesn't seem to care an iota about. Its never explained, never resolved, just ... there. And I loved it; quality story telling which I wish I could capture in my "never to go anywhere" notebook story ideas.
That house, right!?
ReplyDeleteSoderbergh has such a diverse and varied career, most of it pretty dang good, but also a lot of it highly experimental. He's done so much and so prolifically, i don't know that my director's podcast will ever get around to him (it'd take up the majority of a year just going through films, nevermind tv) but I would at some point like to go through it all...I dont even think i've seen half of his work
He's done 39 movies, and at least 5 tv series where he directed all episodes. I've seen maybe 19 films (can't remember some of them) and only one of the tv shows.
DeleteHe's got another new film that debuted at TIFF...his third release this year