31 Days of Halloween: Weapons

2025, Zach Cregger (Barbarian) -- download

In 2022 (wait; that wasn't last year? it seems so recent), we loved Barbarian and like Kent, I am hesitant to label Cregger as the "next....". We've got a lot of those currently, and while I don't mind adding more standard horror directors to the roster, I don't care when they get labelled as the top of their food chain.

This movie was a fucking ride, just like the last one.

And just to get this out there, it almost felt like he got heavy-handed with the allegory early on in the story, just to get it out of the way. Then shit could get entirely fucked up without diluting his intent. 

The story is told from a few different viewpoints, doing the tape rewind, so we can see each person's perspective. But the bookended story is told like a campfire tale, from a little girl's voice, the kind of scary stories children tell each other, far fetched and unreal, like the ones I used to hear/tell, about the Butterscotch Palace (a large caramel coloured hospital in my home town) and the insane patients who escaped. One night, 17 children from Ms Gandy's class ran out into the night, at 2:17am precisely, and ... well, we assume, were never seen again. One child was left behind, and nobody knew what happened.

We start with Ms Gandy (Julia Garner, Wolf Man) and, yeah, she's a bit of a mess. She knows exactly where the vodka is stored in the large alcohol convenience store -- making a beeline right to the fridge and grabs two large bottles. Not that we would fault her, for she is being blamed by the parents of all the missing children, though the investigation for the following month found nothing to connect her. Nor did they find out why only Alex didn't run.... away. She really really wants to connect with Alex, but as Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong, 3 Body Problem) says, that's more to make her feel better than him.

Next up is Archer (Josh Brolin, Outer Range), the father of one of the kids. He's angry and upset and is demanding more be done to find the kids, and figure out whatever the fuck happened. He's the only one who seems to pay close attention to the weird way the kids run and the direction they head. He's also stalking Ms Gandy a wee bit, giving somewhat innocent explanation to the stalking figure she's been feeling. 

And there's Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, Beautiful Creatures) the cop she used to date, who shows up to comfort her. And opposite Paul there is James (Austin Abrams, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark), the local junkie who just blunders into the plot, trying to secure funds for his next fix. Just as Archer is catching onto ... something, and goes to Ms Gandy to see where she fits into it, she is attacked by Principal Marcus, who is wide-eyed (wide enough to have torn off his own eyelids?), maddened looking and covered in blood and scratches. Just before he bowls her over, we see he is running like the kids did. Archer saves her and...

Tape rewind, many tape rewinds filling in the story, stretching it far from the allegory of school shootings and gun violence into something... creepier and more traditionally horror. Archer has had his hallucination, a vision of an assault rifle in the sky, with 2:17 imposed on it. Why? What does it mean? Nothing directly connected to the story, but the hit-with-a-hammer metaphor that the US is caught up in a cycle where utterly terrible, confounding things happen and people need explanations, reasons why it keeps on happening, so they can ignore the real reasons it is happening. Here, there is a reason for the horrible, inexplicable event that impacted 17 children -- its a witch (Amy Madigan, Carnivàle), a simple horrible witch with her own Hansel & Gretel level manipulation going on.

I get what Kent was saying Cregger's sketch comedy past being prevalent. I found many scenes more eerie than comical, but there were a few, such as Gladys fleeing the children chasing her, where a guffaw escaped me. But so many many other scenes just overwhelmed the funny with chill; everything was well placed here, scary to me and my mind that fills in so many blanks.

We Agree.

KsMIRT: October bleeds

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (uhhh..?) Kent steps through the TV series he completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  These "reviews" were actually written at the end of October and just needed to be formatted...so precious little time/energy to do so. I mean, formatting documents is what I spend half my days doing as is, who wants to do more of that when the work day is done?

This Month:
Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy Season 1? (2024, Disney+, 4/4 episodes)
Only Murders In the Building Season 4 (2024, Disney+/Star, 10/10 episodes)
Midnight Mass (2022, Netflix, 10/10 episodes)
Agatha All Along (2024, Disney+, 9/9 episodes)
Lego Masters Australia Season 5 (2023, CTV, 14/14 episodes)

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Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy 

The What 100: Sig (Gaten Matarazzo, Stranger Things) is a total Skywalker fan-boy who also is force-sensitive kid and eager for adventure. His loving brother Dev (Tony Revolori, The Grand Budapest Hotel) finds out Sig is force sensitive he encourages him to follow what the Force is telling him, which takes them to an ancient Jedi temple. Sig accidentally pulls out a single brick holding the fabric of the universe together, and when the dust settles everything's fucked right up.

(1 Great) When I saw the trailer for this, it looked like a lark, a goof, just a ridiculous "what if" scenario where nobody is like we remember them. Turns out, underneath, there's actually a character-centric story which pits Sig as the new hope against Dev, who is now a sith lord.  Where I thought the story would just be stepping through all the changes eventually being made right, instead, it's really just about one brother caring for another while trying to do the most good he can.  Matarazzo and Revolori are great in their voice roles here, even if the character drama is simplified for a child audience.

(1 Good) In the end, the universe isn't righted, it remains all fucked up, and given that it's Lego, that's OK. It's more fun that way. It's kind of bold to abandon the known Star Wars universe in favour of this weird remixed one.

(1 Bad) I've seen a few Lego Star Wars productions at this point (on top of the video games) and what I have the most difficulty with is the Lego look. It's not the reality of Lego...where characters and spaces are limited to their blocky brickiness and the kind of knowingness that their reality is made of of brick parts. Instead, it's literally the look. With Star Wars I want amazing ships and cool lightsaber fights and oddball designed sets, and while those are here in principle, they look terrible in Lego form and I never stopped wanting them to be in nearly any other medium than animated Lego brick.

META: This is a 4-episode mini-series that...well, doesn't end. Altogether, the 4 episodes *could* form a short Lego Star Wars movie, perhaps the first in a trilogy? It features some great voice talent on top of Matarazzo and Revolori, including a bunch of Star Wars veterans reprising their roles in a different context: Mark Hamill, Naomi Ackie, Ahmed Best, Kellie Marie Tran, BIllie Dee Williams, and many of the Clone Wars voice cast. 

It's Lego Star Wars so it's not deeply memorable, nor is it as funny as The Lego Movie or even The Lego Batman Movie, but it's also surprisingly not as interested in being a joke machine as its trailer may have indicated. It's nothing I'll obsess over, but it's enjoyable enough with some fun little gags for the Star Wars nerds. 

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Only Murders in the Building Season 4

The What 100: In one of the biggest losses for the show thus far, Charles' longtime friend and stuntperson stand-in Sazz Pataki was shot and killed in Charles' apartment, a seeming case of mistaken identity. This leads Charles into a bit of an emotional tailspin. Mabel is verging on homelessness, and is unsure of the career opportunities before her. Oliver and Loretta try a long distance relationship which puts him in as much of an emotional tailspin as Charles. A movie is being made out of the podcast which brings celebrities, excitement and more attention to the Arconia and the mysterious west-building tenants. 

(1 Great) The central murder here is a pretty good one, with Sazz being killed, and then completely disposed of before anyone finds her, it's dark and haunting...at least to start. It gets pretty out-of-hand quickly, at times taking pretty broad strides away from the central mystery into complete other mysteries. It's a bit chaotic, but the show makes it work... even if it undercuts how seriously bummed, and angry, Charles is. But the sentimentality, the performance Steve Martin gives of Charles' grief (and maybe guilt) is very affecting.

(1 Good) The show's penchant for bringing in celebrities in smaller parts hits a whole new dimension this season. With the movie of the "Only Murders..." podcast being made, our trio gets casted, with Eugene Levy as Charles, Eva Longoria aging Mabel up, and Zach Galifianakis resentfully playing Oliver. And that's just the start, with Paul Rudd, Meryl Streep, Amy Ryan, Jane Lynch and Davine Joy Randolph all returning, as well as Molly Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, Kumail Nanjiani and Richard Kind among others. You can either find it very "stunt-y" or you can embrace how much fun the show is and how many people want to be a part of it. And, honestly, I have to give the show credit for not stunt-casting every role. There are still quite a few plum parts that are being filled by characters actors and up-and-coming comedic talent. As much as season 1's very story and character focus was the highlight and it's only been a bit in decline since, it's still committed to dishing out fun, and it's fun.

(1 Bad) I was initially very enthusiastic about this season, but that has waned a bit as it falls into its usual rhythms of drumming up a suspect Number 1 each episode and then writing them off by the end of the episode. While this season doesn't do so each episode, it does keep pedalling on that particular cycle. 

META: What I thought was going to be a pretty heavy season, based on how it started, has wound up being one of its sillier ones, but the final two episodes do start to circle back on the emotional aspects, particularly on the just mutual respect and admiration in Charles and Sazz's friendship. It all ends with, of course, yet another murder in the building (though I already have my theories) but not before Tea Leoni, looking very sterling, and with the huskiest "noir dame" voice tantalizes the crew with a seemingly unrelated mystery that's clearly going be the focus. 

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Midnight Mass

The What 100: Crockett Island is home to a small, remote fishing village off the east coast with a populace of around 120. A new priest is assigned to the island church, noting that the vacationing octogenarian monsenior fell ill while on holiday in the holy land. But Father Paul has a secret, a secret he's sharing with the faithful, and only the faithful. The sudden spate of "miracles" cause some islanders to question whether these are truly gifts from God, or something else entirely.

(1 Great) The first episode is an absolute masterpiece. It's an ensemble mini-series and the first hour so adeptly introduces us to every major player in the story without needing to drop gobs of clunky exposition. We get a sense of some characters by their actions, or their demeanour, or how other characters talk about them. We learn about some characters more from what they're hiding than what they're showing us. We meet probably two dozen characters in this town in this first episode, and we kind of know each of their deal, at least on an instinctive level by the end of that first hour. Plus we have a total sense of the island, its tempo, the dynamics of working and living there...we know the confines, the limits of the place and how people are able to reach the mainland. It's just an incredibly immersive environment, even without the creepiness and weird shit that is just lurking in the backgrounds. This isn't a show about a horror visited upon people, but a show about people who have a horror visited upon them...and they're convinced its a godsend, so they welcome it. 

(1 Good) I am not a religious person. My spirituality could best be described as "absent for attendance". While I have no patience for overtly religious productions that largely serve as confirmation bias propaganda, I do always appreciate a production that clearly comes from a point of examining what it means to be faithful and religious, especially in modern times.  And I have even more respect when it's critical of blind faith, or faith weaponized as a tool of power or control, or faith as superiority complex. In having a large cast of characters Flanagan could explore faith and religious belief in layers, with Bev (Samantha Sloyan, Hush) on one end of the spectrum -- the most vile of people who choose to interpret the text of the bible to serve their own selfish, racist and judgmental nature -- to Riley (Zach Gilford, There's Something Wrong With The Children) who has completely lapsed in his belief, to Ali (Rahul Abburi) a Muslim teen who gets caught up in the fervor of the miracles at the church and abandons Islam for Catholicism. It's a rich show, with a lot to say while still very adeptly delivering some good spooky shit.

(1 Bad) There's a moment where former childhood sweethearts Riley and Erin (Kate Siegal, Hypnotic)  talk about what happens when you die that was really overwritten. I liked the sentiments each of them had, but the way in which they were conveying them to each other was not like two people in a room who were having a conversation, but like stage monologues with the performers projecting out into the audience. Its relevance comes back again later on, twice even, so it's not purposeless, but it's like Flanagan just had these ideas which needed to be expressed, point-counterpoint essays that carry the themes of spirituality vs science in the show forward, just very awkwardly. To be honest, I'm really nitpicking. I absolutely loved this mini-series. It was incredible.

META: Toasty's been singing the praises of Mike Flanagan for the better part of the last decade, and I'm only now catching on. I blame Toasty for not selling me on it hard enough.  Midnight Mass is very, very Stephen King influenced, but for me King is an idea man who writes to his idea, where Flanagan, from what I've seen of his work so far, is a planner. I don't know if I've ever gotten the sense that King knew where he wanted a story to end where I thing Flanagan, at the very least with Midnight Mass, the path, while not at all obvious, seemed entirely deliberate and purposeful. It's an exceptionally satisfying watch.

[ToastyPost: we agree, other Toastypost: we still agree]

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Agatha All Along

The What 100: Since the events of Wandavision, having been bested by the Scarlet Witch, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn, Free Agents) is caught in an unreality, and can't seem to find her way out, until a witchy ex-lover (Aubrey Plaza, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre) snaps her out of it, and a teen injects himself into her life looking for help to find the legendary "Witches Road". They're going to need a coven...

(1 Great) Episode 7 "Death's Hand in Mine" is a particularly great episode of television and just an incredibly well constructed character spotlight piece for Patti LuPone's Lilia. The structure of the show started with two episodes of getting the coven together and discovering the Witches Road, making the journey through a series of trials that should ultimately provide them with a power upgrade. The episodes that follow had a pattern of being character-centric to a member of the coven, and then they die at the end (spoiler). So when this episode put Lilia in the crosshairs, its end result was inevitable. And yet, it's the journey, and the journey is one incredible example of timey-wimey storytelling that would make even the best Doctor Who scribe green with envy. 

Also great, Aubrey Plaza. Always.
Kathryn Hahn too.

(1 Good) If there's one thing the basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing neckbeard trolls hate, it's an empowered woman. If there's another thing they hate, it's an empowered gay character. If there's a third thing they hate, it's a d-tier superhero character getting a prominent spotlight over whatever "kewl anti-hero" is in their top-50 personal favourite of boy-rage-power-fantasies.  So, just on its mere existence, Agatha All Along gets a big thumbs up from me. But even more so because it's not in any way, shape or form intended as a loogie-in-the-face to the aforementioned trolls. If anything it's not even paying any attention to them, not considering them in the slightest. It's just selling the shit out of this witches adventure that's part folklore, part Wizard of Oz, and part escape room horror (it's not too far askew from Cube, in its own way).  It's the right mix of genre premises with a nod to both its MCU history and future but dwelling in neither. 

(1 Bad) If there's a "bad" to Agatha All Along at all, it's that it's saddled with "Marvel" expectations. The show is small, and contained. It's a cast of seven primarily, with each episode introducing a fairly static set-piece as the "escape room" they need to solve. I'm sure just because it's Marvel it cost more than the average show, but for Marvel, it still pared things down in a way that some might call ...theatrical-looking.  The road, for instance looks every bit its on-set homage to Wizard of Oz, complete with painted backdrops that, at one point a character literally cuts into and walks through. But even that is an intentional choice in the end, to not completely mask the pastiche. As I said, being "Marvel" is going to set expectations, even when expectations have seemingly been dashed over and over, that Agatha All Along isn't going to live up to. But it did quite well anyway. 

META: There's a scene early in Star Wars: The Acolyte (I seemingly bring this show up once a week) where a group of space witches start an incantation that leads to singing and moaning and undulating, and in my head, if not out loud, I said "this is where it loses people". And I smiled. I was challenged by that scene of women moving and moaning not with any sexual connotation but as a moment of power induction, as a moment of collective purpose. I acknowledged my immediate reaction to it, which was to balk, but I then analyzed that reaction and came out on the other end appreciative of the fact that we don't get much representation at all of the power of feminine collective, especially in the masculine-dominated space opera and superhero genres. So when the coven in Agatha All Along begins their, well, far more harmonious chant that was the song "The Ballad of the Witches Road" (from Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) I got the same feeling of this event being about feminine unity and solidarity, even as I whinged a little bit (the song is reinterpreted many ways throughout the show, and I think this initial example was maybe my least favourite?).

Was this whole show all an excuse to bring Wanda's superhero offspring Wiccan into the MCU for the inevitable (and anticipated) Young Avengers? I think if it were a far lazier show that didn't really care about any of its other characters, it would be an easy criticism to lob, but it does so much without putting too much weight or expectations on Billy's shoulders, nor without the burden of setting up expectations. It lives entirely within its own microcosm of Wandavision and Agatha All Along without needing to easter egg the hell out of it.

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Lego Masters Australia Season 5

The What 100: Contest of champions (and almost-champions), the winners and runners-up and a wild-card or two from the past four seasons of Lego Masters Australia return in their teams of two to see which pair will be dubbed "Lego Grandmasters". Some of the most insane challenges and incredible builds in all of Lego Masters, globally, happen in these 14 very bingeable episodes.  

(1 Great) I don't watch a lot of "reality" or "competition" television, but, next to Taskmaster (original UK flavour), Lego Masters Australia is my happy place. I've written before about some of the differences between LegoMA and the American version, but what really, really comes through in LegoMA is the sense of community, not just between the contestants but the also host and judge. Especially with all these contestants being returning contestants, there are established dynamics and running jokes that continue. Plus, the contestants are fans of the show and know each other's work, so they know the calibre of the competition, and it's pretty fierce. Also pretty loving. But they're pushing each other to the breaking point.

(1 Good) Lady Kent and I have watched a lot of brick laying between four seasons of US Lego Masters, the prior 4 seasons of Australia, whatever that was in Lego Masters UK... and episode 7 might have been the most stressful and intense build of them all. It finds the remaining teams having to collectively build a Rube Goldberg machine that will move a tennis ball through a continuous obstacle course from one build to the next, start to finish. There are easy ways and hard ways to go about it with design challenges needing to be met in each segment, but with square blocks and notoriously finicky motor systems, there's a lot of potential for things to go awry.  

(1 Bad) Why did they need to bring Kale back? In season 1 of Lego MA, there was this wee squeaky-voiced know-it-all who was so full of self-importance and arrogance that would constantly tell the judge, Ryan "Brickman" McNaught (recognized as one of the world's premiere Lego builders) that he had no idea what he was talking about. Kale's partner in that season you could tell was suffering by the end. Here he returns with a runner-up from Season 1, Trent, and, at the very least, Trent seemed to know what he signed up for. It's hard to see Kale as anything but a drama-generator, and it's minutes before he starts pissing people off (least of all, me).  If what works for the show is the sense of community, this man is like The Big Bang Theory (that's a joke for me and my Greendale Human Beings out there) 

META: Unlike American reality TV shows, LegoMA doesn't eliminate contestants every episode, or even every other episode. With 8 pairs of contestants, 14 episodes and 3 sets of contestants advancing to the finale, that means 5 of 13 episodes are elimination episodes. It would be easy to say there's drama every episode when we don't find out until the end whether it's an elimination contest or not, but I've figured out the formulae. Basically the first two or three episodes are non-elimination as they are showcases to see what the contestants can do. Then if there are any challenges of a technical nature, those are non-elimination because the technical side can unfairly advantage the experienced (and a lot of randomness present in technical challenges). And, if there's ever a "sponsored" episode (eg. Disney, Marvel, Star Wars) there's no elimination. So, I think with only one exception, I predicted when an episode would be non-elimination.

 

KWIF: I Saw the TV Glow (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. Been busy with TV, particularly a binge watch of season 5 of Lego Masters Australia which I found all-consuming most of the week, and a Mike Flanagan series the week before. But this isn't KWIT, it's KWIF.

This Week:
I Saw the TV Glow (2024, d. Jane Schoenbrun - Crave/HBO)
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024, d. Brian Taylor - rental)
Hard Target 2 (2016, d. Roel Reiné - Netflix)

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I Saw the TV Glow is bound to perplex some people...maybe even most people who watch it. It is a highly stylized psychological horror film that acts primarily as - but not exclusively as - a Trans allegory. Actually, it's not even allegory. The text of it seemed so overt to me, but I also went into the film knowing only that it had something to do with Trans identity.  I can't imagine what most cisgender people who went into this without the Trans coding knowledge just what exactly they might make of it. 

But with the knowledge, I picked up on the subliminal very early. In the opening moments as young 11-year-old Owen is watching TV, a commercial for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer-esque program (by way of Canadian-produce kid's horror) "The Pink Opaque" provokes a reaction out of of their otherwise slack-jawed viewing. Later he's with his mother at a high school where she is voting to re-elect "the saxophone man", so that alerts us to it being around the start of Bill Clinton's second term. But in the booth, Owen's mom lets them press the voting buttons, and even though they knows who they're supposed to be pressing the button for, their finger starts trailing off for other options. "Don't ask, don't tell" is hard to ignore when his name comes up in an LGBTQ-framed context.

Milling about afterwards, Owen meets Maddy, a grade niner reading the season 1 episode guide to "The Pink Opaque". Owen is curious. Maddy, at first dismissive, senses something in Owen and engages. Owen can't watch the TV show she loves and she can sense that it will come to mean as much to Owen as it does to them. Owen fakes a sleepover at a friends in order to get to Maddy's to watch the show. It's a revelatory moment for Owen and a bonding moment for both. Two years pass and Owen is in high school and though they don't socialize together really, but Maddy leaves Owen messages and tapes of the show, and they start hanging out together to watch the show, season 5.  Late in the school year Maddy says they're skipping town, escaping it's small-minded trappings as well as an abusive stepfather. They encourage Owen to come with them, but Owen gets scared and tells on themself to get grounded so they can't be with Maddy when they leave.

Then Owen's mom dies, leaving them with their abusive, neglectful father. Shortly after that Maddy disappears, their TV set on fire in the back yard. Eventually everyone thinks Maddy is dead. And then "The Pink Opaque" is cancelled.  (The question I ask, was the burning of the TV in response to Owen's betrayal or was it in response to the cancellation, or are both, effectively, one-and-the-same...how real "The Pink Opaque" is is part of what makes this film so layered and fascinating)

This is the first half of the film, roughly, and generally. It's very much vibes...the music and the score, the neon haze and/or crackle of TV static as illumination sources. It's almost as if Owen and Maddy were floating between two worlds. Maddy says that, sometimes, "The Pink Opaque" feels more real than real life. 

The film is beautiful and atmospheric. It's patient and full of surrealism. It blurs lines between what we (and Owen) are seeing and what Owen is feeling (and therefore what we should be feeling). It's a difficult thing to really catch onto unless you understand Owen, the quiet, apologetic, mumbly kid trapped in their own head, narrating their own life from the inside. If you get the meaning it's like being sliced open and having your guts spilled out. Jaden Smith, who plays Owen, captures this hesitancy so effectively, as if Owen is this awkward bag of flesh and bone that seems to keep moving in spite of itself. 

The second half of the film jumps another 8 years ahead in time and we observe Owen's life...without Maddy, without their mother, as if there's nothing left in the world for them, but they keep going through the motions anyway. Owen is now in their early 20s, and their asthma is affecting them so direly that it's like they can barely breathe. But it's not asthma. Their skin is literally choking the life out of the not-Owen person within. Strange events keep happening to Owen, strange apparitions of TV static or pink haze that seem so alluring and yet Owen is so utterly wary.

And then Maddy, but not Maddy, returns. They return for Owen, but not Owen. They return for Isabel, the main character of "The Pink Opaque", but Owen is confused and doesn't understand. Not-Maddy tries to explain, to relate their life since they left this shitty town and its constricting mindset. Layers of analogies that should punch through only seem to make Owen dizzy, unable to accept anything they are saying.

More time passes, Owen ages faster than the rest of the world around them. They are trapped in a cage of their own making. Revisiting "The Pink Opaque" exposes to Owen an entirely different show than what they remember, something far more juvenile (much more the cheap Canadian Are You Afraid of the Dark, less of the Buffy), and containing none of the importance and meaning that it did to them for so long. They are lost in the world they've built around themselves, still apologizing for their existence.

I can tell you the broad beats of this whole movie and it won't even elicit a tiny fraction of the actual emotional wallop the film does. I was devastated throughout watching this film, tears streaming from my eyes uncontrollably. For an hour or two afterwards I just couldn't compose myself and I would still find myself sobbing in response to the intention of the film.

If you don't get it, it's not easy to explain. From a very high level, it's a film about being trapped. The Trans and non-binary messaging is the foremost intention, but the resonance, the emotion of feeling trapped, just in general, should feel at least somewhat familiar to most people. And finding escape, in television, in friendship, in shared experiences is so liberating to a point, but it's not everything if you're just not able to live life as you want to live it.

I refer to both Owen and Maddy as "they". When I call Owen "they/them" it's because there is who Owen really is and who they are pretending to be. Maddy's more subliminal story is about them understanding that they're not the lesbian everyone (including themself) though they were in high-school, but non-binary.

This definitely falls under the "horror, not horror" moniker, as there are no scares and not even really scary moments, but as a whole it is horrifying just the idea of being trapped in one's own skin, to have to wear not just an image, but an identity that is inauthentic, and to be aware of it, whether suppressing it or confronting it on a day-to-day basis. The film could have went really far into outright horror with metaphors of body dysphoria but Owen has so buried their authentic self that it's only in the films final moments that Owen is directly addressing that side of it.

After that the very end is so painful to watch if you are connecting with what you're looking at, a human in such excruciating emotional turmoil, a cage not entirely of their own making, but one they do actually have the key to escape from. It would be sad if I didn't have such empathy for Owen...instead it's heartbreaking.

The film has definitely connected with some (like me) and puzzled others, but it didn't break out into a cultural phenomenon, nor even a cult one...yet.  There's a lot of David Lynch in this, but where Lynch often doesn't seem to know where his ideas manifest from, leading to stories and scenes that are inexplicable, here Schoenbrun seems to know every intention they have in every moment, and every scene. There is not a single piece of absurdism or surrealism that doesn't have a specific purpose.  I felt a kinship between this and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Schoenbrun themself has also said Donnie Darko was a big inspiration. The inspirations are many beyond that. And it transcends them all. 

Maybe my favourite film of the year? I regret not seeing it in theatre.

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When Hellboy debuted in comics in, I want to say, 1994 (what, research?) I was very much in. I loved the artwork of his creator Mike Mignola a tremendous amount and the mythos of the world of Hellboy expanded beautifully. Very quickly Hellboy became the best original creation of the 1990s.

But Mignola wasn't content to let Hellboy remain his sole vision, and the world of Hellboy grew, the stable of writers and artist participating in telling the legacy of the character expanded, and soon I was overwhelmed. I wouldn't say it was a deluge, but it was much more than I was prepared to take in. I don't know if any of it was watered-down, but I felt my connection to the character slipping.

The first Guillermo Del Toro movie re-sparked an interest, but my re-approach of the comics only showed me how far behind I had fallen and it felt daunting to catch up. The second Del Toro movie dove into fantasy in a way I couldn't connect with and I pretty much left Hellboy behind after that. That was 16 years ago.

I tried to watch the 2019 Neill Marshall-directed, David Harbor-led Hellboy feature and I just could not get into it. It's in a very small group of film that I've started watching and never finished (like, count-on-one-hand small).  I liked Harbor as replacement for Ron Perlman, but that's about it. This new, very low-budget (about 20 million) Hellboy is at the very least much more watchable than that.

Here Hellboy and fellow Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Agent Bobby Jo Song are trying to take a demon spider back to home base, but get derailed. They're stranded in the Appalachian Mountains, coal mining territory which, they learn is besieged with witches. A World War II veteran, returning home after a long absense, seems to have much familiarity with what's happening and why. He tells the story of the Crooked Man, one of the first settlers to reach American shores, who played both sides in the Civil War, who was hanged for his treason and greed, but was given the task of collecting souls for the devil, with payment of one penny per.

Witches seem to be in vogue right now (see also Agatha All Along, Star Wars: The Acolyte for just two prominent examples) almost with a sympathetic eye towards them. Here, however, they're nasty creatures with nasty ways of dealing with things nastily, treating witches as humans-turned-creatures, less as humans transcending humanity.

Hellboy here is played by Jack Kesy, an actor I'm not all that familiar with (though I did watch some of the first season of The Strain which he was the lead in). He's seemingly emulating Ron Perlman's depiction of the character, and I'm not sure if that's for "consistency" (from the producers/director) or lack of his own definitive take. It's a good performance, even if he's not quite got the same presence as Perlman or even Harbor. 

Of the other key performers in the film  Adeline Rudolph as Bobby Jo I thought was the strongest actor in the film (and maybe got a little swooney over). She's a novice to the field, primarily an in-house researcher, and so Hellboy is quite protective of her (he's also a little swooney over her, but subtly). I also liked Jefferson White as Tom Fennell, the not-a-witch-man returning home and finding his old world in a bad state and feeling very much responsible.  Even the old, blind reverend, played by Joseph Marcell, is low-key incredible.  It's a good cast overall.

The film is, at 20 million, cheap for these kinds of things, and it feels it. In his review Toasty [we agree, almost] cites "fan flick that had been given a budget", and for sure it feels that way especially in its opening prologue where it uses a lot of unrefined cgi-effects to, well, ill-effect. I would say extract the prologue altogether and it would be a better film, but it does circle back into the story and is sort of necessary. I really wish they figured out a practical effect for that spider instead of a cheap digital render.

Most of that "fan film" feeling falls at the feet of director Brian Taylor, a filmmaker who has been in the Hollywood system since 2006's Crank, a movie I very much did not like. He made a lot of films with Crank co-director Mark Neveldine, including Crank 2: High Voltage, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Gamer, all of which I very much did not like.  I have seen some of Taylor's solo work, like some of the TV series Happy! (which I also did not like) and Mom and Dad (which I found ok). 

The feeling of a Taylor-Neveldine film was one that is frenetic, high energy, but not in a controlled way. It's ADD on acid, just out of control and I found them very unpleasant to watch. Taylor on his own is more toned down but he still doesn't seem to know how to resist constant cutting between obtuse angles and weird stylizations with little consistency or always carrying purpose. Here, with probably one of his lowest budgets, but highest demands on that low budget, his lack of stillness winds up looking quite cheap quite often. That said, he also captures some fairly stunning shots, and there are some very visually striking frames in this film. Buuuut, for every one moment framed so acutely, there are two that are not, and they can be distracting.

As Toasty opined, it "presents as a horror movie but without embracing it". And that's true. But in true Hellboy sense, at least that of what I remember of Mignola's 90's works, it was always a bit more "supernatural adventure" than "horror". This lives in a John Carpenter's Vampires vein, and in that vein it works for me. It's not a spectacular production, but I think for what Hellboy has been in film in the past, we've hit the right budget and style to be an ongoing franchise of 20 million dollar direct-to-streaming productions, especially if it's going to have Mignola and long-time collaborator Christopher Golden on scripting duties.  It's not rekindled a fervour in me to start cramming more Hellboy comics in my diet, but I really would watch more of these it they can sustain this upper-echelon-of-90's-DTV sensibility.

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I'm writing these in reverse order of what I watched them in. I watched I Saw the TV Glow immediately after watching Hellboy: The Crooked Man, and within literal seconds of Shoenbrun's film starting I said to myself, "this is what a real movie looks like". Not to diss Taylor any further, but there's an assuredness to Shoenbrun's craft that Taylor just never had. Oh, Taylor's work has often seemed cocky, but it rarely backs that cockiness up with ...well, being objectively "good".  But compared to Roel Reiné, Taylor looks like Scorsese... at least he's getting 1 out of 3 shots that are really something appealing to look at (and most of the rest at least have some level of competency even if they are erratic and sometimes ugly), watching Hard Target 2 was even like watching a fan film. At least fan films the people involved care about what they are trying to do. I think Reiné, whose credits include The Scorpion King 3, Death Race 2 & 3, SEAL Team 8: Behind Enemy Lines, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded, and seemingly a dozen other cheap-and-quick in-name-only sequels and/or paycheck vehicles for action movie has-beens and never wases.

Now, I've said it before, I inexplicably enjoy the "most dangerous game" man-hunting-man movies, so seeing a Scott Adkins sequel to the not-a-classic classic John Woo/JCVD film Hard Target pop up on Netflix's "coming soon" roster made me uncontrollably "oooh", and click that "notify me" button. You can bet I watched this dogshit as soon as possible. 

It was on a sick day. I laid in bed, not wanting to move. The only reason I finished this film is because I let myself be held captive by it. It's definitely not a so-bad-it's-good, it's just bad. Bad-bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Stupid, and bad. And cheap. Lazy. Dumb. Nonsensical at times.

There's a whole world of direct-to-video/streaming/on-demand filmmaking that's been in operation since the 80s. Before that it was sci-fi and horror B-movies, or cheap foreign knockoffs, or Spaghetti westerns as opposed to the regal American ones. There's always been a place in cinema for this type of garbage. But ever since the digital age made the "film" part of filmmaking unnecessary and the accessibility of editing and other digital tools a thing of the past, these types of movies have gotten so cheap, and churned out so lazily that I fail to see how anyone gets any joy out of watching them, nevermind making them. They're soulless product that are soon to be even further deprived of soul by being entirely AI scripted. We probably won't even know the difference.

Scott Adkins is, in this sphere of modern direct-to-whatever a well known and respected commodity. He's a fairly handsome guy, not too shabby an actor sometims, and he's fucking fit at hell and loves doing stunts. In this film, the stunts seem like an afterthought so they're as cheap and lazy as everything else in the film. 

As far as the man-hunting-man element goes, this is a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a ....well, you get it. Nothing, absolutely nothing original is happening here that has not been done in another story of this type, and any attempt to add "flavour" to this by way of some form of romance or intrigue or political message is handled, well, stupidly as to make the effort irrelevant. 

We know Adkins is going to escape his very stupidly set up predicament. We know hes going to give his ill-gotten riches to his newfound local lady friend, and we know his comidically burdensome guilt that he carries is going to be absolved by an external force rather than any internal resolution. Its climax is one of the worst boat chases I've ever seen ending in one of the stupidest standoffs I've ever seen. 

I couldn't watch 2019's Hellboy for more than 30 minutes but I watched all of this garbage? I must have been sick....

31 Days of Halloween: The Inevitable TV Insert

There is always some TV watching to be had at this time of year, shows that emerge just before, that are thematically connected to what we watch at this time of the year. Remember, its not just horror movies. I have been leaving most of my TV writeups to the now adopted Kent format, and only posting them once seasons complete, but for this thing, I may just use the series as inserts for bad nights. We shall see. Also, giving that I am not using the Watching format, I will just muse on the shows for now. Maybe they will each get their own segment post-Halloween. We shall see.

Agatha All Along, 2024 - Disney+
Grotesquerie, 2024 - Disney+
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, 2018 - Netflix
Teacup, 2024 - Download

If witches aren't Halloween, I am not sure what is. Buut admittedly, I am not sure about this show, and I guess I am kind of playing into the, "Who wanted this?" camp. I didn't find her all that compelling of a "villain" in the Wandavision show, which I didn't write about for some reason. But the show was there, and I guess we are solidly in the "watch everything MCU" camp.

The first episode amused me in its campy nod to Mare of Easttown and a genre of TV we watch a lot of. But as Agatha (Kathryn Hahn, Glass Onion) emerged from the character imposed upon her by Wanda, I lost interest. BUT once the rest of the coven were added in, and they went on their warped & twisted version of the Yellow Brick Road, I was caught again... and then very soon after, lost again. I guess I should have stayed on The Road?

Of note, later on in the show, we see the "Mare" bit from another character's viewpoint and its hilarious.

Meanwhile on Grotesquerie the new horror/thriller/murdery show from American Horror Story (which also has an anthology series I might check out, American Horror Stories) creator Ryan Murphy seems to want to embrace that sub-genre of murder-mystery focused on grotesque scenes of murders, shows like Hannibal or True Detective. But the underlying aspect is the simultaneous grotesque nature present in real, mundane life.

Sure, the religiously symbolic murders are horrific, but that doesn't seem to bother Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash, The Rookie: Feds) as much as it should. But like all these shows, she has her own shit to deal with, including a husband in a coma and a daughter prepping to be a contestant on a reality TV show I think was about morbidly obese people? Pop culture always seems to be caught in a swinging pendulum of how it feels about being fat -- either they embrace all bodies and shapes, or its on display as body horror. And there is the weird nun insinuating herself into the crime scene investigation, who has all the background details on the religious symbology used to stage the murder scenes.

We only watched one episode and I might have returned to it if I hadn't been spoiled as to an aspect of the show that eliminates the whole point of watching such a show. Even so, it might be interesting to see the production values of how they play it out.

We returned to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina after having dropped it. Riverdale did not interest me and this show is ostensibly a spin-off of that teen drama show, but it is also an adaptation of a horror-based comic version of the "Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch" comics (from "Archie") by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, under the Archie comics own horror line. Just writing that is weird but I do remember when I would read those digest comics of Archie, there was a fondness for campy horror.

Anywayz, we dropped it (again) for one reason or another, likely tiring of the teen drama, the same way I did with Riverdale, but more likely Oct 1st coming up. But in this rewatch/continuance, which we started in September I noticed a different reaction, as in one of amazement that the Satanic aspect of the witches in the series is so obvious, blatant and embraced. Maybe its the climate of the last few years, but I cannot believe it was greenlit. Would such happen in 2024, and since this show only started in 2018, what has changed so much in four years that makes me wonder if the world would accept a show where teens literally worship Satan would make it.

Either way, I still found the base idea of Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka, Totally Killer), a half-witch (its blood based), trying to find her way in the world ... charming? I hope I can push past the stuff I don't like and watch it for what it was.

Finally, the Robert R McCammon adaptation of his book Stinger is from Peacock and I am enjoying it immensely, not in spite of but probably because it is by the books horror-scifi. Its Under the Dome without a dome. A family is trapped inside a circle around the land, that captures their farm and a few others. If you cross over, your body does horrific things to itself. Inside the circle the family is dealing with family drama, as all horror TV usually depicts, and the discovery of what is going on.

Excceeeept, as the show went deeper, and things started being explained I was less enthused. The "not knowing WTF is going on" was a strong part of what caught my attention and once we knew (SPOILER !!) it was aliens, good aliens vs bad aliens, my keen interest faded. Oh, I will finish, but the gloss of the first few episodes become duller. 

We also have Sweetpea in the hopper, and Hysteria but likely they will get their own "Watching" posts.

31 Days of Halloween: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

2024, Brian Taylor (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) -- download

As this movie started I had the distinct feeling I was watching a fan-flick that had been given a budget. In a fan-film there is no time for backstory or explanation, they just jump into the action, full understanding that anyone watching the movie/short understands the world into which the viewer is entering. Sure, there have been three Hellboy movies prior to this one, from two other franchises (that's being liberal with the word), but usually a movie at least tries to establish itself assuming a viewer may have not seen the previous examples. But nope, boom, Hellboy is on a train with a coworker transporting something evil when everything goes wrong and he is deposited in an Apalachian Hillbilly Themepark. 

Unlike the other examples, this one is adapted straight from an actual Mignola story. The thing about Mignola comics is that they are often contained stand-alone stories, refined examples of horror-meets-adventure. He infuses them with world building, in this case Appalachian witches, war profiteers returned from Hell and haunting the land, magic trinkets, etc. I applaud trying to turn it into a movie. Trying. 

The previous Hellboy movies were definitely all adventure, and this one wanted to embrace the horror elements, whiffs of Evil Dead in that the woods are haunted, demons and witches are everywhere in the mists and shadows, and there is a local legendary "devil" called The Crooked Man. Hellboy (Jack Kesy, Without Remorse) and his sidekick Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), a BPRD researcher out for some field work, are trying to be focused on getting back their cargo but are distracted by the local story.

The problem with this movie, which surprisingly wasn't as humdrum as the last example, presents as a horror movie but without embracing it. I have been writing stories in my head & in my notebooks for years about characters, like the brothers from Supernatural, who come into a horror movie as heroic adventurers to defeat the evil. I am saying I am fully onboard with Hellboy wandering into a horror movie and sarcastically fighting all the monsters that would frighten the average horror movie character, but you have to fully be onboard with the horror movie you are presenting. This one just seemed to jump from one example of the trappings to the next. If the last Hellboy movie jumped one mythological example to the next, this pretty much did the same with horror examples. 

In the end I still say I was surprised it did rise above feeling like a low budget fan-flick, but it did not satisfy anything for me, neither my Hellboy interest, nor my horror movie fan.

31 Days of Halloween: May the Devil Take You

2018, Timo Tjahjanto (Portals) -- Netflix

Or  Sebelum Iblis Menjemput.

OK, I don't care if someone is doing an enthusiastic homage to Sam Raimi; to me, if the movie ends up looking a patchwork of pieces lifted from other horror movies, and yes, many of those patches are Evil Dead ripoffs, then I am not impressed. So, if you are going to do such, at the very least you have to have a tightly done movie with consistent internal structure and a decent plot. Instead, here get an hour & half of screams from the antagonists and protagonists.

Way to just jump into the disgruntle !

Indonesian (horror) films, for us at least, have almost entirely been about tragic family situations in rural areas. So, when this movie started in the city, with Alfie (Chelsea Islan, Headshot) being called about her father in the hospital, I was thinking, "OK, something different." Bzzzzzzt, nope, because no sooner does Alfie have a nasty encounter with something clawed & terrible in the hospital (just a typical jump scare vision, followed by daddy blood fountain), then she returns to her father's house in the country. This is the house she knew as a child, before her mother committed suicide, before her father remarried and started another family she didn't fit into. There is literally a line, "We are her family, but she is his biological daughter."

Now, let me not forget the preamble where father dearest is shown making a pact with a evil priestess lady for... well, for cash. She shows up at his house, knocks on the door (evil shamans knock?!?!), and is shown to a pre-prepared ritual chamber in the basement, where she eats hair and fills up his briefcase with cold hard cash. Then we transition to opening credits where he is suddenly, unexpectedly rich, gets richer through real estate but soon after tragedy befalls him. Guess evil witch hair magic is temporary? Don't trust Satan based ponzi schemes? Who woulda known...

Not moments after Alfie arrives at the house, her not-family shows up. They want Alfie, who has the deed to the house, to liquidate it, partially to cover hospital bills, but mostly because failed actress New Wife needs to be kept in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Her husbands financial downfall and really nasty, obviously demonic disease is truly inconvenient.

Of note, there is a basement door, covered in those little rune printed prayer sheets, the kind you should never remove in anger or disgust. Its also nailed shut and padlocked. What does that mean? GOOD STUFF DOWN THERE ! In most movies they contrive a reason to go through the Scary Go Away Door, but not this family. Devil Gotten Gains must lead to ludicrous levels of greed. No sooner do they open the door then New Wife (mom!!) is dragged into the dark, only to return moments later Possessed By a Demon. After a bit of fighting, a nibble on one of her daughters and some more blood fountaining, Mommy Demon jumps through the window.

OK, what? That's it? She just wanted to leave? Well then, everything should be fine, right?

Alas no...

The movie continues, finding unending reasons to have the kids confront demons, spirits and anything else the director has seen in other horror movies, usually Japanese or American. For example, having someone trying to climb their way out of a muddy, water filling grave, but... why is it raining the basement? In the Sam Raimi spirit, some go mad and turn on the others, while Alfie remains true to saving the family that has rejected her. Eventually we have to actually go into the basement to have Visions of Exposition, and background visions of a Horny Goat Fellow -- I have mentioned before my dislike for having scary imagery in the background that is purely for our benefit; like, if the Devil is taking time to show up, why not reveal himself to people? Oh, the exposition? Dad came back to the house to sacrifice his family for more money but... changed his mind? He stabbed the witch and she cursed him with the blood fountain disease. So now Alfie has to unravel some blood hair paper magic to stop it all but not before pretty much everyone dies.

In much the way western horror movies often draw upon Christianity motifs, while this one is wrapped up in such to a degree, the meat of the movie is about family. Alfie just wants some, Dad is horrible for sacrificing his for money and mom (Old Wife) did not commit suicide, but was his first sacrifice. Sure, most American horror movies have a focus on family as well, but the direct focus of this movie is on them as a unit -- only Alfie is an individual. Much of the screen time, when not presenting us with low-budget monster makeup, is about the trials and tribulations of keeping a family together, especially ones that don't deserve it.

And again, if you are going to wear your Sam Raimi love on your sleeve at least do something interesting with it. 

31 Days of Halloween: Baghead

2023, Albert Corredor (feature debut) -- download

This was Corredor's first feature, adapted from his award winning short of the same name. Unfortunately, this movie fell into the all too familiar category of ... streeeeetch it until you have a feature film. There were some genuinely creepy things about it, all drawn from the original premise, but to make a full film, with a proper ending, they needed to expand the story.

I really need to find how many movies I think fall into that trap, but obviously enough for my brain to say "they made a short, now its a full length feature!" It has to be more than "Mama".

This season is going to be like most, rife with "meh" movies wading through the dross to find gems in the muck. Its not like we are choosing to watch bad movies, for if we wanted to do that we have Tubi or the "suggested" piles under Amazon movies, but an interesting premise and a decent trailer does not always beget an enjoyable movie, and rarely a good movie. At least we also rarely run into those that force us to turn them off.

Premise. A man (Peter Mullan, The Vanishing) somewhere in the UK owns a pub with a creature in the basement. A young man (Jeremy Irvine, Treadstone) is demanding access to "her" which the pub owner denies, as he goes into the basement, finds a witchy looking womanly creature strapped to a chair with a bag over her head. He basically claims that her hold over him is at an end, douses her in flammable alcohol and ... click, his lighter fails. When it finally works, she knocks it from his hand and he catches on fire. Screaming, he escapes the inferno in the basement only to die at the top of the stairs, as the fire dies as well. We also see these scenes interspersed with the "in case I am dead" video he is making, the exposition to tell us the viewer WTF is going on here.

Enter his daughter, his heir, Iris (Freya Allen, The Witcher), a screwup breaking into her own apartment/art studio that she has been evicted from, when she Gets the Phone Call. She immediately flies, which in UK-set movies means a really long distance, like the length of England, but possibly another country? She meets a "solicitor" (Ned Dennehy, Zone 414) who hands her keys and a deed, but claims he can have the pub sold off before the end of the week.

The wikipedia article says this is Berlin but absolutely NOTHING in the movie implies they are in Germany beyond a few, small details that could be easily hand-waved away. I am pretty sure the original script had it as such (Germany) but it was edited out and left... ambiguous.

The pub really is a character here. While it does the annoying thing of depicting the structure inside (cramped, ornate, lots of wood) not matching what we see on the outside (industrial building, big windows, lots of space) the whole space is really cool. Beyond having some alcohol on the premises it doesn't strike me that dad was running the place as a proper pub but Iris is intrigued, more as an opportunity to better understand her estranged father.

Then the young man with the money arrives. He offers her a lot of money to see what is in the basement. He walks her through what is going on. They draw the woman out, force her into the chair, give her something "the deceased" owned and then the baghead woman transforms into the dead one, so questions can be asked. But only for 2 minutes; any longer and the interaction is corrupted. The first time the young man tries, he gets his mother and lots of abuse heaped on him.

It may be indicative of horror movies, or my writing style, but I more often than not start with a detailed play-by-play of the opening, but then... fade out into the broader strokes. I think it is part of how these movies play out for me, especially the "adapted from a short" ones, in that once the premise is played through, and they have to get an entire rest of a movie from it, things get ... strained. I get bored.

Iris really likes the idea of getting money for this utterly fucking scary, insane, truly supernatural situation. Sure, her dad is finally, in death, giving her something. But she has numerous warnings this won't go well, but as per the equivalent of "don't go down into the basement" shouted (by the audience) entreaties, Main Characters never do the smart thing.

They don't even do a good job of expositing what she actually is. A witch. OK, yeah but she's immortal and angry and.... what? There needed to be something more than a secret society with an undead woman trapped in their basement.

In the end, the movie follows some tiresome trope laden paths until it does a weird WTF twist, which I guess is supposed to leave things open to a possible sequel? Too bad the only character I cared about (the pub) is finally successfully burned to the ground.

KWIF: constant Crave-ings

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie of which he writes a longer, thinkier piece, and then whatever else he watched that week he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts (and fails...in the "quick" part).

This Week:
Incendies (2010, d. Denis Villeneuve - Crave)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987, d. George Miller - Crave)
Total Recall (2012, d. Len Weisman - Crave)
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009, d. Garreth Carrivick - Crave)

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Denis Villeneuve made four films in his native Quebec before he transitioned into Hollywood fare with the star-studded Prisoners in 2013 and evolving into the preeminent director of science fiction over the past 8 years (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, the Dunes).  Though I've yet to see it, I've heard Prisoners it's a bit of a rough watch. The Academy Awards-nominated Incendies, I can with confidence proclaim is an even rougher one.

The story of Incendies is an adaptation of the stage play of the same name by Wajdi Mouawad, partially based on the life story of Lebanese dissident Souha Bechara but with extensive liberties taken. It tells the story of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) who, upon her death, reveals in her will to her twin children, Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) that they have a brother.  The will provides a letter to each of them one for their father whom they always presumed dead, one for the brother. Once they deliver the letters, a third letter will be provided. Simon wants nothing to do with this game, clearly he has some resentment towards his mother, while Jeanne immediately ventures to her mother's homeland (unnamed in the film) where she starts to investigate both the whereabouts and identity of her father and brother.

The film cuts between Jeanne's steps through her investigation and each new location triggers another flashback to her mother's past. The bulk of the film is actually told in these flashbacks, with just enough of Jeanne and Simon (and their dutiful lawyer, played by Rémy Girard) to be invested in their response to their discoveries of their mother's history.

Needless to say, for Nawal to have hid her past from her children, it must have been full of trauma, and, indeed it is, starting with her brothers murdering her refugee lover, her grandmother forcing her to give up her love child and getting ostracized from the village. The latter is both the fortunate and unfortunate turn, as Nawal is forced to go to university and receive an education, but there she becomes further involved in fighting the nationalist discord that has erupted into violence, and she takes on the role of assassin, attempting to kill the leader of the anti-refugee government.

And that's just the starting point. Where it moves from there is deeper into a well of both survival and almost utter despair. I was reminded a lot of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy though vengeance is in very short supply in Incendies. 

Villeneuve's direction, along with André Turpin's cinematography, show distinct signs of what is to come in the director's career. Impeccably composed shots, grounded performances in even the most phenomenal of circumstances, and being able to deliver a heavy, weighted tone while still being compelling and entertaining.  There is minimal score outside of the use of two Radiohead songs, "You and Whose Army?" and "Like Spinning Plates" -- both used to tremendous effect.

I have to contemplate representation with this film, as it's a curious issue. Nawal's home country, left explicitly unidentified, allows some wiggle room in the storytelling to play with details, history and culture. It doesn't have to answer explicitly to any particular gaffes in presentation. But would it be more potent if it were trading in very specific historical details, or would that just be even more problematic to base a fiction around it, especially given the dramatic extremes occurring. As well, it would seem none of our three leads, Azabal, Désormeaux-Poulin, and Gaudette, are of middle-eastern decent despite the film taking place in the aforementioned unnamed middle eastern country.  I'm not sure what the crossover is in French-speaking actors of middle eastern origin but, excellent performers all, I doubt that Villeneuve would make the same casting choices today with Hollywood money behind him.

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I have to admit I've spent most of my life not engaging with Cher... her music, her acting, her stabs at middle-aged sex symbol status...none of it I found appealing in my younger years, and everything she did in the 80's and beyond seemed to me to be trying too hard.

Now, in my very middle-age, I have to admit I was perhaps foolish to be so dismissive. I believe this viewing of The Witches of Eastwick will lead me to more peak-80's actress Cher: Moonstruck, Mermaids, Mask, MSilkwood and MSuspect (did you know that Cher voiced a role in 2020's Bobbleheads: The Movie, and did you also know that in 2020 there was a fucking Bobbleheads movie!?!). Cher is so compelling in this role, and stunning. I'm seeing her through much different eyes and I'm completely entranced. I've had crushes on her co-stars Pfeiffer and Sarandon for ages (duh, who hasn't) and yet I found myself captivated by Cher so much more.

The film, in general, perplexed me. From a gender politics angle I'm not at all sure what it's trying to say. Is it a feminist movie, or is it retrograde anti-feminist? It's based on a John Updike novel and I don't think anyone has ever confused him for a feminist. Jack Nicholson's devilishly horny Daryl van Horne is seemingly summoned to Eastwick by two divorcees and a widow who collectively want the perfect imperfect man, which describes Daryl to a T. He is a louse and a letch, but has a gift of saying exactly what each woman wants to hear as he sets out to seduce them all, and succeeds. His playbook is faux humility, negging, flattery and bribery, plus he's stinking rich. It's not long before the three women are ostensibly his harem, though clearly of their own choice.  It doesn't bode well for the town, or them, especially once they start rejecting him.

From a metaphysical angle it's a film that feels like it has no roots, no rules, no guiding principles. It's called "The Witches of Eastwick" and yet, Cher, Sarandon and Pfeiffer are barely witches at all. They certainly wouldn't describe themselves as witches in-film.  And who Daryl exactly is never is made clear. The actual devil, or just a devil? A demon? What?

George Miller, of Mad Max and Happy Feet and Babe fame has a gift for irreverently told stories with a different sense of timing. But with those films, Miller had the utmost creative control.  This being his first (and really, only) studio film, it didn't seem like he had full control over the story being told.  I think this should feel more Beetlejuice-like, but the pacing of the film just felt so off with so many takes seemingly lasting a couple seconds longer than they should, or shots that seem to imply something more worth looking at only for nothing more to appear.

It is a horny movie with questionable tastes. It didn't fully work for me, but it didn't not work for me either.

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I had dismissed Total Recall (2012) as a real "who asked for this?" movie, with the presumption of it being tired Hollywood remake garbage from a that b-movie action franchise director. But, when I spied Kurt Wimmer on the screenplay credit, I though maybe there might be some fun to be had. Not that Wimmer has the most stellar track record, and not that I've seen all of them (I have prejudged the Point Break and Children of the Corn remakes just as I have judged this Total Recall remake) but I think many of his B-movie scripts as elevated B-movies. And yeah, damn, it's a pretty fun sci-fi action movie with some big, big set pieces and Kate Beckinsale being a doggedly fierce antagonist. I think had this film just used a different title and character names, most people wouldn't have even noticed it was *that* similar to the 1990 Total Recall (though the three titty'd lady would have totally tipped it off).

The future tech on display in the film is pretty great. In one scene a security force breaks a small hole in the door and fires a small projectile in the room. The projectile explodes with dozens of self-adhering cameras affixing to every surface at all angles. The leader of the squad then rips down a flap off the back of one of his men revealing a monitor which projects every camera's view, each one selectible for a better view. This sequence later transitions into a foot chase through a very surreal and confounding cityscape that I would love to just sit and admire all the design work gone into it. This then transitions into a car chase which tries to one-up Minority Report and maybe doesn't succeed, but it also doesn't suck.  Even most of the fight sequences are quite entertaining. In the long pantheon of elevator fights, this one's not at the top of the top ten list but could easily be in the middle.

It's not a groundbreaking plot, of a man, discovering he has been living a false life, and that he has a greater destiny before him, and a hot girlfriend from another life, while his hot wife from his false life is on the warpath to kill him.  You know, that old story.

By no means is it a great movie, and no it is not as thoroughly entertaining or adventurous as the 1990 film (which, yes, had a sense of humour this one doesn't), but as a sci-fi action spectacle it delivered the goods very, very well and far better than its reputation would imply.

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Three British lads go to pub after work. Two of them are nerds, one of them's a jock, but they're all pals. One of 'em (let's call him Nerd 1, because I can't be arsed to look it up, as played by Chris O'Dowd) got fired from his job at the start of the film, but that's pretty irrelevant to the rest of the film. Nerd 1 goes to buy the next round and winds up having a chat with a pretty girl from the future. The other lads don't believe him until the Jock goes to the bathroom and comes out at a later time and everyone's dead in the pub. He goes back into the bathroom and returns to his regular time. Then all the lads go to the bathroom together and start time traveling to other times in the pub's future, sometimes running into time travel girl (Anna Farris). Over time (ha) the boys find them looping back around on the other times they've already seen until they solve the thing that they need to solve and save their own future. Or something like that. You know the drill.

Maybe if I'd never seen a time travel film before, I'd find this clever. As well versed as I am in the milieu, I found it utterly predictable. 

I love Chris O'Dowd but his character here has no character, and even O'Dowd's considerable charms brought almost nothing to make the character more interesting or appealing. The other leads too are similarly lacking in anything of interest in their individual journeys. Just three lads caught up in something, yet there's no weight to any of it. And for a comedy, not much levity either, maybe the odd chuckle here or there, but little to stick out in memory long term.

31 Days of Halloween: Even More TV

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, 2022, Netflix

This spread over a few nights and fills some gaps in our viewing. The series runs 8 episodes and we watched about two a night, thoroughly enjoying each one. Yes, we are already del Toro fans, but I am also a fan of anthology series, and these are all shot/done around the Toronto area, so we get a lot of familiar faces. AND del Toro worked with some of the most popular horror names currently in the business, as well as a boat load of familiar TV and movie faces, to create an incredible series. Unabashed adoration here, so I will do something I rarely do with TV write-ups, I will go over each episode.

Lot 36, Guillermo Navarro (Sleepy Hollow)

Nick (Tim Blake Nelson, Angel Has Fallen) is an asshole, in deep with his loan shark, looking to make some good money from a storage locker auction. What he gets was owned by some old guy who hid something weird behind all the old furniture and tchotchkes. The episode does a good job of establishing Nick, as surly and unlikeable, virulent to immigrants, and vitriolic even to those he has to work with. When he discovers a couple of books in an obviously magical table, his eyes light up with dollar signs at the suggestion the final volume could net him more than $100k. In tearing apart the locker, he ignores the warnings the buyer, who is assisting him, provides, even after finding a desiccated corpse in a hidden space at the end of the locker. Dude, when the creepy German occult expert tells you to not disturb the demon corpse trapped within a pentagram on the floor, listen to the fucker. Nick ignores him, disturbs the circle to get at the final book, and the tentacle-y, Cthulhian awakens to give chase, well, after eating the creepy German guy. 

The fun in this episode was in the minor details. The lights in the storage facility are on short timer, so Nick is constantly twisting dials, as he moves things out. So, when chased by a demon, we get to do a version of things-move-during-lightning-flashes via the timer lights. Everything that happens is entirely by the trope, but its all so well executed.

Graveyard Rats, Vincenzo Natali (Splice)

Salem, late-1800s; Massam ("Hey, its Rodney!", David Hewlett, Stargate: Atlantis) interrupts some grave robbers, not because he is a studious caretaker of a prestigious grave yard, but because they are interloping on his real job, which is taking the most choice pieces of jewelry from his charges. But Massam has been down on his luck of late, as rats have invaded his graveyard via subterranean tunnels and ... well, are stealing corpses. It sounds like a far fetched tale, but no sooner is he digging up the motherload of buried treasure than he sees the corpses being dragged off into Hell knows where. So, against everyone's (us) better judgement, he gives crawling chase.

Yeah, tunnels again; yay. But not just rats, but ... well, a rather large, blind, hairless rat, something best left fought by 1st level dungeon delvers, than a single man with a revolver. The crawling leads to falling, and Massam ends up in some deep, ancient chamber dedicated to an eldritch god. OK, so two episodes in, and two Lovecraftian references. But ancient chambers to ancient gods mean ancient treasure, but as all good D&D players know, ancient treasure protected by undead guardians!! "Mine! Mine!" the thing squawks as it gives chase, and soon Massam is running from TWO creatures better left to ... OK, 3rd-5th level adventurers. Just when he thinks he has escaped the things, he ends up in... standard karmic response, a buried coffin, and the rats he has been chasing now spill .... into him.

This was just fun. Hewlett embraces the maniacal character on a mission with glee. He does things only a man utterly desperate for shiny things that could net him coin does. Its creepy, full of claustrophobia and fear of unknown things in the dark.

The Autopsy, David Prior (The Empty Man)

Possibly the best of the lot, a story of eldritch creatures from beyond the stars instead of deep in the ground. After a mine explosion, Dr. Winters (F Murray Abraham, Mythic Quest) is brought in by his friend, Sheriff Craven (Glynn Turman, The Wire) to find out why the miner triggered the explosion. The miner is also tied to the disappearances and deaths of many other locals. Inside the miner is an alien parasite/symbiote that inhabits other bodies, using their senses, and eating them from within. And thus begins a battle of wills between creature and coroner.

At it's core, the episode is just a battle of wits, as the Dr. has to defeat the alien creature which wants to inhabit his body. The thing has already freaked him out, and restrained him naked to a table, as it abandons the decaying body of its last host. How will the Dr, who knows he is already dying of cancer, stop this evil thing from continuing. That is the core, but its the construction of the episode around it that wins. The place where Winters does his autopsy is not an ideal location, as Sheriff Craven has asked his friend to do this off the books, so as to foil the insurance company. The story leading up to the mine explosion was already sordid enough and Craven is fully invested in defeating this evil, before he knows what is going on, before he involves his friend. All this, along with a heavy dose of gorey body horror make the episode just fun.

The Outside, Ana Lily Amirpour (The Bad Batch)

Speaking of body horror. Ew, ick, icky! As a man who suffers from occasional flare ups of eczema, this episode just made me itch and cringe.

Stacey (Kate Micucci, Be Cool Scooby-Doo!) just wants to join the clique of "pretty" women at work, who gossip about everyone and spread hand lotion over themselves obscenely. Eww, ick. Stacey's more than a bit weird & wonky, not aware that taxidermy is not everyone's cup of tea, with a wobbly eye and big teeth. But her husband (Martin Starr, Silicon Valley) loves her, and their mundane suburban life, dearly. But nope, Stacey won't have it, as she wants it all, so when a late night TV ad shill (Dan Stevens, Legion) talks her into buying a truck load of previously mentioned hand lotion, she listens to the man on the TV talking to her, the man with the weird mix of European & American South accent and big ol white hair. BTW, by this point, Stacey is already having quite the allergic reaction to the cream, leaving her with bright red patches, peeling skin and an obsessive scritch scritch scritch. Eww, icky, ewww!

Apparently the hand lotion has its own agenda, which Stacey is buying into. I will leave it there, and I am itching already.

Pickman's Model, Keith Thomas (The Vigil)

Back to the HP Lovecraft influence, but more directly this time, adapting one of his short stories.

Its been decades since I read anything Lovecraft directly, but this one reminded me of why I soured quickly on his writing. Sure, the stuff is lush and creepy and full of world building, but its so very often just creepiness for the sake of creepiness, without much real point. It was a technique of pulp-ish spec fic writing back then, for the short stories to be much more about the author's flourid style than plot, but it just doesn't work as well for me.

Anywayz, Thurber (Ben Barnes, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) is an early 20th century art, doing OK for himself, when weirdo Dicky Pickman (Crispin Glover, American Gods; channeling Burn Gorman) shows up. Almost instantly Thurber is drawn to Dicky's work, following him into a cemetery where Pickman sketches dead things, and almost instantly, beginning to feel the affect of being around Pickman. He's seeing weird things, and feeling overwhelming sensations of fear. Exposure to Pickman's work has unsettling affects. If this was a Call of Cthulhu game, Thurber would have failed his sanity check.

Years later, Thurber has divested himself of Pickman's unsettling influence, until the man insinuates himself back into Thurber's life. It leads to Pickman inviting Thurber into his sanctum, likely recognizing the affect it has had, and seeking a like soul, someone who sees the otherworldly in his horrific paintings for what they really are -- doorways to actual supernatural corrupting forces. Instead, Thurber shoots Pickman and escapes. Alas, his paintings were on display, and his family has seen them. End episode with classic utterly horrible ramifications.

I didn't like the episode much, despite really good production values. It just didn't seem to have any point other than depicting the affect that Lovecraftian mythos has on some. Obviously, not on all, for many had seen Pickman's work and just dismissed him, commenting on how weird he and his subject matter was. But Lovecraft was obsessed with the "descent into madness", and liked to explore it, but that's about it.

Dreams in the Witch House, Catherine Hardwick (Twilight)

Some of them stay with me, some of them just leave an impression. While I recall thoroughly enjoying this one, I must have been hitting the Old Man time of the night, as its fading already (ed. note: it could also be the fact that you are writing it long after that date at the top of the post, which is being retained for the sake of the 31 Days event?)

Director of Twilight you say? Not exactly an accolade in my books, but sure, accomplished director. Also, another Lovecraft short story, but lesser on the sanity checks.

It begins with Walter (Rupert Grint, Harry Potter & the ...) and Epperly (Daphne Hoskins, The Baby-Sitters Club) as kids (sorry, what is her name again?). She is very ill, and he is the doting twin. She dies, appears briefly before him as a ghost and then is dragged by vines into some strange forest. And thus begins Walter's quest to find out what happened to his sister.

In most stories, this would mean finding out about some sinister thing that their family had been wound up in, something that ended with Epperly being relegated to a woody purgatory, instead of the afterlife. But being Lovecraft, it just has Walter seeking forbidden knowledge, seeking out charlatan mediums and the like, until he imbibes a narcotic that lets him enter the forest, the Forest of Lost Souls. He does find his sister, but is torn away before he can "save" her. He returns with a bit of her dress.

Also note an encounter with a painter (Tenika Davis, Hudson & Rex) obsessed with a witch's house, which felt like a straying from the ghost story, but does find its way back to the main plot, when on a second journey to the Forest, Walter sees her painting and states to him, he is not supposed to be there. But soon after, zooooop, back to the real world. Without any further funds to continue his journey to save Epperly, he seeks out the painter.

So, the painter lives in an old house that was owned by a persecuted witch, who was killed by whose body was never found. Since moving in, the painter has been haunted by visions. Walter decides that if he stays in the house, maybe he can once again make contact with the Forest and save Epperly. 

The climax and conclusion are rather chaotic involving an undead witch, resurrection, sacrifice, foretold rituals, the bonds between twins and a human faced rat (DJ Qualls, The Core). It all looked spectacular, but didn't really stick with me.

The Viewing, Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) 

Ouch. My mind got fucked.

This was one weird, brilliant, messed up episode severely lacking any point beyond experience, but was so utterly fucking enjoyable in how it played out, I forgive it entirely.

Its the 70s. A bunch of famous people are invited by an eccentric billionaire to his famous concept abode, the Sandpiper House. They have no idea why they are going, nor why they were invited, but each considers it the greatest opportunity. There is the novelist Guy Landon (Steve Agee, Peacemaker), the astrophysicist Charlotte Xie (Charlyne Yi, House MD), medium/psychic/charlatan Targ Reinhard (Michael Therriault, Locke & Key) and music producer / musician Randall Roth (Eric André, 2 Broke Girls). Each is famous and each understands how famous the other is. 

At the incredible house, all angles and colours (no pink or purple though!), they are greeted by Dr. Zahn (Sofia Boutella, Star Trek Beyond) and Lionel Lassiter (Peter Weller, Star Trek Into Darkness), their hosts. Lassiter has the perfect gift for each of them, seeking to set them at ease, and then dives into a monologue about how they are about to experience the greatest of experiences, because of who each of them is, will help him interpret it via their unique perspectives. The dialogue coming out of Peter Weller's mouth is riveting and steeped in dank bullshit, while Dr. Zahn seduces them with her confidence and giant bowl of cocaine & custom designed additive. She is seeking to open minds.

To what, you ask? Well, a freaky looking rock from space. Its entirely impenetrable, physically or any scan on the know spectrum, but obviously not a natural geographic formation. And obviously Lassiter knows something about it, for he has asked these others to come into its influence. Annnnd, well almost instantly, that doesn't go well. Faces melt, heads explode and the thing cracks open, spewing forth goo. Xie and Landon escape, tearing off into the night while the goo forms into a creature that also escapes into the drainage tunnels that surround LA.

End Scene.

Fuckity, it was trippy. But when is Cosmatos not? Not only does he embrace a 70s aesthetic, but he also triple-down'd on the drug & alien mind induced altered reality feel. The dialogue was incredible, every character chewing on their scenes, convincing us that they are intelligent people, even if some were more than a bit of a DB. And the visuals! I would love to see a Cosmatos attempt at a space opera.

And to end things off, a thoughtful, pensive ghost story...

The Murmuring, Jennifer Kent (The Babadook)

Kent (director Kent, not this-blog Kent) brings back Essie Davis (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) to star in an incredibly well-done, if not unfamiliar story of a couple dealing with the ever present grief of losing a child, and the ghosts in a house they visit. Nancy (Davis) and Edgar Bradley (Andrew Lincoln, Love, Actually) are renowned in ornithological circles for their knowledge of the Dunlin, a migratory bird known for its murmurations, those eerie formations of bird flocks that swoop & dive, creating mesmerizing cloud-like formations. They take an opportunity to study the birds in one of their migratory stops, on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, in a vacant house storied by tragedy. But despite their focus on their work, the not equally shared expressions of grief threaten to derail their marriage.

This is a gentle episode, challenging and pain filled. Its a familiar story where one member of a couple deals with her grief differently from the other, leaving them at odds. Even if this was current days, most couples don't well communicate their troubles, and the addition of ghostly figures doesn't help Edgar further his support of his wife's torments. In the end, she has to deal with it head long, on her own, but comes out stronger on the other side, for all concerned, even the dead. As the cliche goes, Davis is masterful in her depiction of this woman, as she was in The Babadook, even considering how underwhelmed I was with that movie, one cannot deny she was grand. In the end, good performances, a tightly told story and eerie, otherworldly real-world ties to ghosts (I once spent an afternoon, watching mumurations over Toronto's waterfront, feeling like I was witnessing something supernatural) and flocks of birds.