Satanic Threesome!

Movies: Late Night with the Devil, Immaculate, Satan Wants You

Over the past few years, springtime has become horror time. I'm not sure exactly when this trend began, but I do remember that when Get Out was released in March of 2017 it felt like a rare good film to drop in the first quarter of the year, a time when studios tend to dump garbage while saving the blockbusters for summer and the Oscar bait for fall and winter.

Since then, it at least feels like (I don't have the numbers to prove it) we get a couple solid horror movie releases every spring. 2024 is no different and I seized upon the opportunity to have a themed blog post about two very devilish/anti-Christian new releases as well as a 2023 documentary about the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s.

And my post is coming out just in time for Easter!

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Late Night with the Devil

First up we have a little horror movie that seemed to spring up out of nowhere only to be immediately beset with controversy for the film's use of three interstitial title cards that were made using generative AI. I am perhaps slightly less upset by AI than the average cinephile because I am required to learn about it and face it head on in my job so it's less of a boogeyman to me. Still, there are concerning ethical issues regarding the use of AI in art and film--specifically, that it is a way to hire fewer people and pay them less. So I agree that directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes fucked up in their decision to use GenAI to make these title cards rather than just hire an artist to do it.

However, that didn't stop me from seeing Late Night with the Devil and I'm glad I saw it because it's really great. The movie opens with a voiceover explaining that in the 1970s the host of the late night show Night Owls, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian--more about him later), was competing with other late night shows for views. Specifically, Delroy wanted to steal the number one late night spot from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Delroy was also dealing with personal issues: his wife, Madeleine (Georgina Haig), died of lung cancer despite being a non-smoker. But after some time away from the spotlight Delroy was back hosting Night Owls and was more popular than ever.

Then, on the fateful night of October 31, 1977, things went horribly wrong on Night Owls. And what we the audience are about to see is recovered footage from that show in which Delroy brings on a parapsychologist, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), and 13 year old Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli), a girl rescued from a house of Satan worshippers who now claims she can commune with demons. 

What I loved about Late Night with the Devil is that it felt both familiar and new at the same time. All the beats of the film were a little predictable, but in a way that was delightful and pleasurable to watch. For example, Delroy's first guest of the evening is a psychic named Christou (Fayssal Bazzi). The minute he came out, I was like "ah, here is the psychic who is clearly a charlatan...but something ACTUALLY SPOOKY will happen to him". Well...that's exactly what happened. However, my ability to predict (maybe a little of Christou's powers rubbed off on me) didn't annoy me. It felt satisfying. 

Despite its short run time, Late Night with the Devil is a slow burn. It takes a while to get where it's going, but has a lot of creepy moments along the way. I appreciated this. The film was not dull or slow at all...it felt like slowly unwrapping a present you know you're going to like. And the climax is awesome. 

The film is headed by actor David Dastmalchian, a character actor who is in EVERYTHING (some of his more recent films credits include Oppenheimer, the Ant-Man movies, and Weird: The Al Yankovich Story). It's awesome that he finally got a lead role in a movie that feels tailored to his unique blend of charisma and creepiness. He is excellent as Jack Delroy, a man whose ambitions lead him down a dark path.

Late Night with the Devil is a stand out in a year that has already seen some really awesome movies. I had such a great time watching this in the theatre and I'm already psyched to watch it again when it hits Shudder in April. 

Grade: A-

***

Immaculate

Immaculate, starring Sydney Sweeney as the prettiest nun ever, has received some interesting press recently. Christians and "anti-woke" Twitter warriors are calling it "blasphemous", "feminist", and "evil". Of course, these same words are now being used to promote the film: "see the film Christians are calling 'blasphemous' this Easter!" You gotta love it. 

The fact is, Immaculate is more retro than progressive, at least in the sense that it recalls Italian giallo and gothic horror of the 1970s. "Eurotrash" is a pretty apt description. Basically, the movie is very pretty and has a lot of pretty women being tortured and running around half naked. It's really fun. 

Fun, but deeply unrealistic. Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia, a young nun from the United States who moves to a convent in the Italian countryside after her parish in the states shuts down. This particular convent serves as assisted living/hospice for older nuns who are close to death. Interestingly enough, many young, attractive nuns also live there. 

A few months into her stay, Cecilia begins having strange symptoms and it turns out that she is, well, pregnant. She is also a virgin. The church declares her pregnancy a miracle and Cecilia is now treated as a precious vessel to be revered and protected at all costs. But that protection comes at the price of her freedom. When she asks to go to a real hospital, she is denied that request. When she attempts to trick the Father who oversees the convent into bringing her to a hospital, he brands the soles of her feet to punish her and remind her not to stray. Immaculate has a feminist, pro-choice message and boy is it heavy-handed. Big Handmaid's Tale vibes.

The reveal about exactly how Cecilia got pregnant is...unsatisfying. It involves science but they don't really explain the science, so I was like "and...how...does that work?" But, look, Immaculate is "Rosemary's Baby, But Make it Catholic", not a show on the Discovery Channel, so I guess it doesn't owe us an explanation. People are here for Sweeney's boobies, not a biology lesson! 

The final scene of the movie is the one that the haters are most angry about and you can guess what happens from a mile away, which didn't stop people in my movie theatre from gasping in horror when it happened. I will say this: Sweeney is not the best actor, in my opinion, but she is a great screamer. Her screams are true and real and from the gut. 

Immaculate is a fun, gory, trashy movie that takes a lot of inspiration from better movies. Is it feminist? Sure. Is it pro-choice? ...kinda? Is it accurate in its depictions of the Catholic church? EXTREMELY DOUBTFUL. Even this Methodist-turned-agnostic was like "yeah, they wouldn't let a novice nun handle a religious relic with her bare hands". But we're not here for realism, we're here to see a sexy nun covered in blood run screaming through the catacombs. And Immaculate definitely delivers.

Grade: B

***

Satan Wants You

In 1980 Michelle Smith and psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Pazder co-authored a book titled Michelle Remembers. It chronicles Smith's work with Pazder in uncovering memories she supposedly repressed from when she was 5 years old. Smith claims that she was essentially sold to a group of Satanists and used in Satanic rituals. These rituals included animal sacrifice, the murder of babies, sexual abuse, and violence. Yet, Smith emerged from her ordeal without a scar on her body because she was visited by the Virgin Mary who saved her and healed her wounds.

Smith also didn't have any scars because none of this actually happened. 

However, not only did Smith and Pazder's claim that her story was true, they also claimed that groups of Satanists all over the United States and Canada were currently doing the exact same thing to thousands--nay, millions--of children at this very moment. 

The runaway success of Michelle Remembers kicked off the "Satanic panic" which peaked in the 80s, but still exists to this day (accusations of Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of children sound familiar?). Accusations of ritualistic sexual abuse were flung at daycare providers, some of whom spent years behind bars after unethical psychiatrists coaxed false memories out of children to fit the narrative that grown-ass people created. There's a lot more information here if you want to read about it, but it basically comes down to a bunch of self-righteous nutcases ruining peoples lives because they were hysterical, gullible, and just plain stupid. 

Satan Wants You is a documentary that connects the Satanic panic directly to the publication and success of Michelle Remembers. One thing I never knew was that Smith and Pazder were both married (to other people) when they were engaging in the years-long work of "recovering" memories and they ended up divorcing their spouses and marrying each other. So obviously that boundary between doctor and patient got very blurry. Pazder's daughter and ex-wife and Michelle's sister are interviewed and they reveal how much Pazder wanted to be famous. They speculate that he used Michelle to achieve his goal of fame. In doing so, he not only destroyed his own family, but an untold number of families affected by the hysteria of the panic.

Over 40 years later, Michelle Remembers has essentially been debunked. Smith never admitted to making anything up, but the claims she makes are just too outlandish. Even if she was abused as a child (definitely possible, especially given that her dad was a violent alcoholic), she was almost certainly not the captive of a Satanic cult who rubbed mashed up fetus on her or anything like that. We also know that the psychological practice of helping children "recover" memories is deeply suspect. Adults can lead children to the answer they want to hear and children want to please adults so they agree with the suggestions that adults make. And as for adults with "recovered" memories...some of those were recovered under hypnosis, when the patient is in a deeply suggestible state. And some adults just want attention, validation, and sympathy--and will make up stories to get it. 

Despite the fact that we as a society should "know better" now, we are arguably more gullible than ever. The psychological and social factors that led to thousands of accusations of Satanic ritual abuse are the same factors that lead people to believe, with zero evidence, that the 2020 election was "stolen" or that Pizzagate is real. You don't need evidence when you have faith and prejudice. It's terrifying to think about, but it's also all too human. Our brains are wired to suspect and fear outsiders and to go along with the crowd in order to not have the mob turn on us. It's what was behind witch hunts, McCarthyism, and any kind of rigid groupthink. 

Satan Wants You is a solid documentary that lets the facts (or lack thereof) speak for themselves. I found the interviews with those closest to Smith and Pazder to be the most interesting, but the filmmakers also interview police involved in investigations into Satanic ritual abuse and members of the *real* Church of Satan (way less scary than you'd think). 

Grade: B+

Love Lies Bleeding

In 2019 Rose Glass directed Saint Maud, a film in which a young woman's religious hysteria and self-righteousness end up consuming her. Saint Maud was a film based firmly in reality but with specific scenes and moments where the line between reality and fantasy blurred. 

Glass's sophomore effort, Love Lies Bleeding, is similar. The movie is realistic right down the shitty, constantly overflowing toilets at the grubby gym the main character, Lou, manages. And yet the film has moments of body horror and fantasy that break out of the otherwise gross and dingy realism--just like Lou and her love interest, Jackie, want to break out of the confining, dead end realities they currently inhabit.

Love Lies Bleeding is a lot of things: it's a pulpy, erotic, queer neo-noir. It's a rollercoaster of shock and outrageousness. It's gross. It's sexy. It's funny. It's wild. It's tonally all over the damn place. Glass takes inspiration from David Lynch, the Coen brothers, and Thelma and Louise (one of the characters is even named Louise!). I do wish the film was a tad more centered and less all over the place, but I don't hate that it's messy. It's got heart and it's raw and authentic, even in the moments where it becomes pure fantasy.

Kristin Stewart plays Lou, an openly lesbian gym manager living in nowheresville New Mexico. She doesn't speak to her father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), the owner of a gun range who is also involved in gun-smuggling across the border. She begrudgingly watches over her older sister, Beth (Jena Malone), who is regularly beaten by her husband, J.J. (Dave Franco, with just the grossest little rat-tailed mullet I've ever seen), yet refuses to leave her or press charges. 

Lou's life stinks as much as the poopy toilets at the gym...until Jackie (Katy O'Brian) walks into her gym and into her heart (and bed) one day. Jackie is hitchhiking around the southwest with the goal of making it to Las Vegas for a women's body-building competition. She ends up in Lou's little town and the two women have immediate chemistry. They also have chemicals...steroids, specifically. Lou doesn't use them, but she has a ton of them that she illegally acquired at her gym and gives them to Jackie, who quickly becomes addicted to the 'roids. 

I'm going to go into plot spoilers below, so I'll just say that if you want to go into the movie blind be aware that there is a lot of visual imagery that could be uncomfortable: lots of needles (the steroids), violence, and even stuff like vomit and gross bugs pop up quite often in Love Lies Bleeding. Like I said, it's raw. But if you're looking for a trashy, pulpy, queer crime drama that doesn't take itself too seriously, Love Lies Bleeding is your movie.

Spoilers below

***

The action really kicks off after J.J. gives Beth a beating that leaves her hospitalized. Jackie, all hepped up on 'roids sees Lou's anguish at her sister's situation and makes...well, a bad decision. She goes to J.J.'s house and when he comes home, she kills him. She takes his head and smashes it against a table until his jaw falls off and, yes, we see the aftermath. During this scene, Jackie appears to be so tall that she grazes J.J.'s ceiling. I gotta admit, I liked seeing a big, strong, tall woman violently kill an abusive man. 

This first (yes, first) murder sets off a chain reaction of events that lead to more and more violence and roid rage. Lou hatches a plan to dispose of J.J.'s body in a location that will lead the police to many other dead bodies...that her dad is responsible for. However, Lou's dad is a dangerous man and he immediately knows that Lou is involved. Plus, there's a witness: a girl, Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), who has a crush on Lou, sees Lou and Jackie leaving town the night of the murder. And Daisy isn't as dumb as she looks.

The walls begin closing in on Lou and Jackie, even as Jackie insists on getting to Vegas to compete. Lou is basically left to clean up all the messes that Jackie makes along the way...yet remains deeply in love with her. This isn't a couple to emulate.

My only criticism of Love Lies Bleeding is that it kind of goes off the rails in the last 30 minutes or so. A bunch of shit goes down in such quick succession that I felt whiplashed. Also, the characters stopped behaving in ways that would make sense given what we know about them. For example, Lou's dad kidnaps Jackie, but when Lou threatens her dad with blackmail, he just...leaves Jackie tied up in a sports equipment shed on the his tennis court. Like, this man is a killer and he doesn't kill Jackie when it would make complete sense for his character to do so. It's a film where there is a ton of violence, yet the main characters never seem in danger of actually being killed, which just doesn't square with me.

Despite the movie going bananas at the end, I really enjoyed Love Lies Bleeding. It's a really fun, gritty, gross movie that I think I will enjoy watching again.

Grade: B+

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest is a film that focuses on the daily lives of Hedwig and Rudolf Hoss: an upwardly mobile German couple raising 5 children in the early 1940s. Also, Rudolf was the commandment of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Hoss's lived literally right next door to the camp. This is a true story. 

The film, based on a novel by Martin Amis and directed by Jonathan Glazer, has been very controversial in film circles for focusing entirely on the Hoss family and their daily activities while ignoring the death camp right next to their house. But this is entirely the point of the film: it can't be ignored unless one systematically compartmentalizes the genocide they are participating in and benefitting from. The sounds of gunshots, guard dogs barking, and people screaming echo in the distance while Hedwig applies her lipstick. The flames of the crematorium can be seen burning at night (unless you don't look out the window, of course). Prisoners from the camp occasionally come to the house to polish Nazi officer's boots or drop off goods--they are ignored. 

The Zone of Interest is less about the "banality" of evil (although much of what we see is quite banal--some have accused the film of being "boring"), and more about how natural and normal genocide and torture become when you yourself are benefitting from it.

This film, in all it's mundanity and quietness, is incredibly confrontational on a psychological level. It's hard for the viewer to distance themselves from Nazis when the Nazi officer's wife is showing her 18 month old baby the flowers in the garden. When we see not just human behavior, but sweet and kind human behavior from people we've been taught for decades to regard as monsters it signals in our minds--"they're just like us". And of course they are, because the Nazis were all too human. We are all too human.

Rudolf Hoss was a high-ranking Nazi official who was known for running Auschwitz "efficiently" (and yes, I cringe to use any word we associate positively with a concentration camp). In the film, we see him in meetings discussing a new crematorium that will reduce hundreds of dead bodies to ashes far more quickly than previous iterations. This man is despicable. But he's not a grinning, leering, mustache-twirling caricature. He's also a soft-spoken father. This is what makes The Zone of Interest so gut-wrenching to watch. We cannot look away from the humanity of evil people and we have to consider where the line of evil lies within ourselves.

In our capitalist society, we do, in fact, benefit from the suffering of others. And most of us know this. We know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that our iPhones were put together by sweatshop workers and that our purchases on Amazon benefit a billionaire. We know that when we drive our cars, take a plane on vacation, or leave a light on at night, we contribute to climate change which will likely harm people in already precarious countries. Does this make us the same as Rudolf Hoss? Of course not. There is a spectrum of damage we cause to the world and to others, and there's a difference between actively participating in the murder of millions versus kind of passively contributing to the world's many ills for our own comfort and convenience. But we must--we must--resist the idea that we are incapable of great harm to others under the right circumstances. The more we ignore and deny that fact, the less prepared we'll be when the big test comes. 

Jonathan Glazer, a director of dreamy and disturbing films, is the perfect director for this movie. He films The Zone of Interest clinically, but also beautifully. The efficiency and organization of the Nazi war crimes is echoed in the dollhouse-like shots of the Hoss home. The belief that there is a "clean" way to commit genocide is mirrored in the constant churn of chores within the Hoss home. Mica Levi's unsettling score makes the film feel like a horror movie (which, of course, it very much is). The contrast between Levi's upsetting score, the sound design (where we hear bullets and screaming coming from over the wall), and the organized, efficient, clean, beautiful house is chilling. Here are people who have a place for everything, including a place for their love and empathy: neatly sectioned off and saved for their children while hundreds suffer and die right next door.

I'll end this review by discussing the one scene of true human decency in the film. Throughout the movie, there are several scenes, shot in night vision, where a young girl leaves apples for the camp workers. This girl was an actual historical person. Her name was Alexandria Bystron-Kolodziejczyk and she was 12 years old at the time. In the film, she discovers a small box with a piece of paper inside. It is a piece of music titled "Sunbeams" and was written by Thomas Wolf, a prisoner in Auschwitz. After leaving the food, she goes home and plays the music on the piano and we hear the lyrics narrated by the actual Wolf, from a recording he made of the piece in 1960:

"Sunbeams, radiant and warm / Human bodies, young and old; / And who are imprisoned here, / Our hearts are yet not cold,” 

I almost don't want to mention this detail, but we do hear some dialogue about camp prisoners fighting over apples and being sentenced to death for it, which means that Alexandria's act of resistance could be seen as futile. However, I want to posit that while it was the Nazi officer's decision to punish the prisoners for fighting over food, the act of hiding food for desperate, starving people was an act of bravery and good within a situation overwhelmed with evil and hatred. An alternative way of reading this is that the Nazis--and, indeed, all evil people and evil ideas in the world both historical and current--could not completely squash good, hope, love, and resistance. We can walk away from The Zone of Interest crushed by depression and hopelessness, but we can also walk away from it thinking about how we can be that very small, bright spot in a world of evil. So shines a good deed in a weary world. The Zone of Interest implores us to never forget that we, too, are capable of great evil, of great harm, of great selfishness...but we're also capable of hiding apples for people. 

Grade: A

Dune: Part Two

As someone who has very little interest in space and science-fiction media (I find Star Wars...boring [I'm sorry! I'm sorry!]), I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Dune: Part One when I saw it in theatres in 2021. In addition to having a lot of actors I like (Chalamet stan here), I thought the film shared a lot of similarities with a genre I DO love: horror. The unsettling soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and the incredibly disturbing language and throat-singing of the Sardaukar made my stomach do flip-flops. The floating spectacle of Baron Harkonnen creeped me out. And the enormous ships...well, the enormity of everything in the movie made me feel small and in awe. And I haven't even gotten to the sandworms yet!

So, Dune: Part One had an entry point for me and I loved it. 

Dune: Part Two is even better.

I saw the nearly 3 hour epic in an IMAX theatre, which definitely added to the experience. My seat rumbled and trembled underneath me during action sequences, making me feel a tiny bit like I was on a roller coaster. The film brings back nearly all of the beloved characters (pour one out for Leto Atredies and Duncan Idaho--y'all were real ones. RIP) and adds a few new ones: Javier Barden reprises his role as Stilgar, a true believer in the prophecy that suggests that Paul Atredies is the Messiah who has come to lead the Fremen to paradise (and Bardem serves as the film's only comic relief); Austin Butler plays the sociopathic fuckboi nephew of Vladimir Harkonnen; Christopher Walken plays the Emperor of the known universe (that crown must rest heavy) and Florence Pugh plays his daughter. 

Chalamet continues to be, in my opinion, very good as the reluctant (or is he?) Messiah of the Fremen. Paul's character arcs moves from complete denial that he is the "outworlder" that the Fremen speak of who will come to lead them to paradise, to a genuine fear that worship of him will lead to a Holy War and many deaths, to an acceptance that he must lean into his role as the Messiah in order to bring together the cynical Fremen of North Arrakis and the fundamentalist Fremen of South Arrakis. Now, I haven't read the books so I don't know how Paul is portrayed in the original source material, but to me there was ambiguity at the end as to whether Paul was, essentially, pretending to be the Messiah in order to unite the Fremen...or if he actually believes he is the Messiah.  

The real acting MVPs here are Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's pregnant mother who becomes a religious figure as the Reverend Mother of the Fremen and who actively promotes Paul as the Messiah, and Zendaya as Chani, a Fremen warrior who falls in love with Paul the man (not Paul the Messiah, which she thinks is bullshit), only to have her heart broken. But make no mistake: Chani isn't solely defined by her love for a man. She's a fierce fighter and an independent thinker who believes that the Fremen can save themselves--they don't need this (white!) outworlder to do it for them.

The actions sequences, which range from a gladiator-style fight on Giedi Prime (the planet where the creepy-ass Harkonnens live) to the infamous sandworm-riding scenes, are great. I'm also not much of a lover of action sequences in movies, but I was enthralled. Dune's out here getting me to love all the things I normally don't! 

But what I loved the most was the whole "reluctant Messiah" plot and the focus on how faith can be something that unites people for a common good...and also can lead to the deaths of thousands. Kind of relevant, huh?! I know that the next Dune movie will explore the consequences of Paul's acceptance of his Messiah role, but this film already sets up that big question: at what cost?  

Chalamet (and in the Lynch version, Kyle MacLachlan) is an usual Messiah type: boyish, not a big, burly man. Someone who could easily be underestimated...and therefore all the more dangerous. I love that in the world of Dune some of the most deadly people look like they would immediately lose in a fight. Take Charlotte Rampling as a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who can bring men to their knees with her voice...well, all men except Paul of course. The way gender is used in Dune is fascinating. The Bene Gesserits, who are among the most powerful people in the universe, are all women (well, except Paul, LOL). They basically run the show through their influence. Then you have the Harkonnens, which are Andrew Tate's wet dream: a world in which men are violent, cruel, and judged by their ability to fight...and women are nearly non-existent slaves. And then you have the Fremen, and especially the Fedaykin (Fremen warriors), where the genders are equal. 

There are a lot of layers to Dune, and I have only uncovered a couple of them as a casual viewer of the recent films (believe it or not, I haven't seen the David Lynch version of Dune yet!). I'm not sure if I'll read the books, but I will certainly watch any future films in this franchise. The Dune movies present a wonderful alternative to the superhero exhaustion in cinema these days: how about an action-packed film with stunning visuals, great actors, and a little moral ambiguity? 

Grade: A

What's better than a forbidden butthole? THREE forbidden buttholes!

Stuff I watched in...February, 2024

Dream Scenario

You ever have that experience where you dream about someone and they do something mean to you in the dream and then you're mad at them when you wake up even though you know they didn't actually do anything? That is this movie. Nicolas Cage plays a professor who starts randomly showing up in people's dreams. Like, everyone's dreams...to the point where he becomes a national celebrity. He starts off mostly as an observer in the dreams--just watching crazy shit happen to the dreamer and not doing anything to intervene. But then, over time, he becomes the aggressor in the dreams--violently assaulting people like a balding Freddy Krueger. 

Dream Scenario is a (pun-intended) nightmare for anyone who fears social rejection, especially social rejection where you didn't actually do anything. Paul (the Nic Cage character) loses everything: his job, his wife, his friends...all because he did bad shit in people's dreams. The connection to "cancel culture" is pretty obvious, especially when Paul attempts to make an apology video that people find pathetic and self-serving. Paul ends up exiled in France even after everyone stops dreaming about him and moves on with their lives.

Dream Scenario was just ok. The premise is really, really good and Nic Cage sure is the ideal guy to play this milquetoast sad-sack. But the film just can't keep up the momentum and eventually peters out. The satire isn't quite as razor sharp as it could be and it doesn't really feel like director Kristoffer Borgli commits to a clear message, so any points the movie makes feel banal and toothless. There is one hell of a fart joke, though, if you're into that kind of thing.

Grade: B

***

Eileen

Based on the book by Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen is a film with so much promise that ultimately doesn't pay off. The film, directed by William Oldroyd, takes place in the mid-1960s in Massachusetts. Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman who works at a juvenile detention facility for boys by day and takes care of her belligerent, alcoholic, ex-cop dad by night (played by Shea Wigham). Not a very glamorous life. But when a new lady psychologist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), is hired by the corrections facility and takes an interest in Eileen, it looks like Eileen might finally have some fun and excitement in her life.

I pretty much can't tell you anything else without going into a pivotal spoiler, so this is your warning to stop reading if you want to watch Eileen with a blank slate. 

So, Rebecca invites Eileen over to her house one night and Eileen, in full-blown lesbian crush mode, accepts and even gets all dolled up for the occasion. Well, it turns out that it is not actually Rebecca's house in which they are sitting and drinking wine, but the house of the mother of one of the boys at the corrections facility. A boy who killed his father. Turns out, Rebecca asked the boy, Lee Polk, what drove him to such an extreme act (I guess the last psychologist never bothered to ask) and he confessed that his father had been raping him on a near nightly basis for a long time. So Rebecca decided to confront Lee's mother, a scuffle ensued, and whoops now Mrs. Polk is tied up and gagged in the basement.  

The scene where the two women interrogate Mrs. Polk, played by the always amazing Marin Ireland, is a GREAT scene. Ireland gives a haunting monologue about being complicit in the abuse because she basically didn't know what else to do. The only problem is that the movie ends really abruptly afterward. During Mrs. Polk's confession, Eileen shoots the bitch (who wouldn't?), not killing her but seriously harming her and Eileen and Rebecca force-feed her pills to put her to sleep and then hatch a plan to kill her, get rid of the body, and go on the lam together.

And then the movie, like, just ends. Eileen drives Mrs. Polk's body to her house and Rebecca doesn't show up. She abandons Mrs. Polk in her car, which fills up with fumes (presumably killing her) and then later is seen on a bus leaving town. The end. It's a really frustrating, anti-climatic film where just as it's getting good, it's over. I'm kind of annoyed I even wrote this much about it, haha! 

So, I have to give it a B because it's a good movie...there's just not enough of it. A real tease. 

Grade: B

***

Out of Darkness

I saw this movie in the threatre on Superbowl Sunday, so there were maybe 6 people total in an enormous theatre. I read a review that compared this film to 2005's spelunking horror film The Descent, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, so of course I had to check it out. It did not live up to my hopes.

The film takes place 45,000 years ago, during the dawn of homo sapiens. A family, consisting of a father, pregnant mother, son, uncle, grandfather, and a stray woman, is looking for shelter and food. They left their previous home and have yet to find a new, safe place to settle. But things are about to get worse. They start hearing noises in the dark of night and one night, the son is taken from them by someone--or something--in the dark. 

There are two interesting aspects of Out of Darkness: 1) the use of the dark to spook and disorient the audience (and I was indeed spooked) and 2) the fact that the director, Andrew Cumming, basically commissioned a new language to be invented for the characters to speak. More info about that here.

Other than those two things, the movie is pretty meh and forgettable, with a hamfisted (in my opinion) message shoved in at the very end. This movie is fine to skip unless you're a huge horror fanatic. You might enjoy it even if it's not an all-timer for you.

Grade: B-

***

Fingernails

Oh god, Fingernails was SO BORING. The film is labeled as a "science fiction romantic drama", but the film is not romantic, not dramatic, and the science fiction is kinda lame. In the world of this movie, science can tell you whether you're in love or not with a simple test that involves pulling out your fingernail! Ouch, but a worthy sacrifice to find out whether or not you're *actually* in love with your partner, right? 

Anna (Jessie Buckley) lives with boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White, the only reason I watched this damn movie) and they've done the test and they're both in love....even though their relationship is clearly very dull and routine. When Anna takes a job at the Love Institute (where couples are put through a series of experiments and situations to increase love between them), she meets Amir (Riz Ahmed). LOL can you guess where this movie is going?

I'll just say straight out the gate: this movie has no gay couples whatsoever and immediately shoots down the idea that you can be in love with more than one person at the same time. So right away, you can tell this isn't a serious film and its views on how love functions are childish at best. There is no nuance to this story, no heat, no chemistry, no drama...NOTHING. I'm talking NOTHING. You know what, I originally gave the movie a "C", but imma change it to a D right now. "D" for lack of dick and lack of drama. It's shocking to me that a film with three objectively excellent actors at its center could be so dull and listless. 

100% skip...Fingernails takes an intriguing premise and commits the worst possible sin with it: making it boring. 

Grade: D

***

The Death of Dick Long

Oooohhhh boy. What a movie. This is another one that I can't really talk much about without giving away a pivotal spoiler... so for those who want to watch it knowing nothing (which I recommend), stop reading now and be sure to *not* watch this movie with children or your parents.

Directed by Daniel Scheinert (one half of the "Daniels" directing team that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once), The Death of Dick Long is a black comedy that takes a ridiculous premise and treats it with total sincerity, thus causing major discomfort and shocked laughs. 

Three friends, Dick, Zeke, and Earl, are in a garage band together (their signature song is a cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me") and after drinking one too many beers, decide to get into some trouble. Or "get weird" as Dick puts it. Later, we see Zeke and Earl dropping Dick in front of an emergency room and running away. We don't know why Dick is injured and if/how the other men are responsible.

Over the course of the next day or two, it becomes clear: the autopsy shows that Dick died of severe rectal hemorrhaging. Semen is found, but the results are "inconclusive". Also, Dick owns a horse named Comet. You put the pieces together, Sherlock. 

Although Zeke and Earl (played to perfection by Michael Abbott Jr. and Andrew Hyland) didn't cause Dick's death, they try to cover it up since they would be implicated in some crimes that would likely ruin their lives. However, these two guys are the most bumbling of bumbling idiots and they screw up in every way imaginable as the walls slowly start to close in when the cops start connecting all the pieces. 

The Death of Dick Long is outrageous and "funny" but in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for obvious reasons. If a black comedy in which a man is "fucked to death" by a horse sounds like something you're interested in...then saddle up, pard'ner!

Grade: B

***

Self Reliance

This cute but uneven comedy is the directorial debut of New Girl's Jake Johnson. Johnson plays Tommy, an average dude living an average life until Andy Samberg, playing himself, pulls up in a limo and offers Tommy "an adventure". Tommy says yes and is taken to a shady warehouse where some guys with vaguely Eastern European accents offer him a chance to play "the most popular reality show game on the dark web". The premise: Tommy will be hunted by random people for 30 days. If he survives, he wins a million dollars. BUT...there is a critical loophole: he can only be killed when he is by himself. If he is able to remain within "striking distance" of another human being for the full 30 days, he won't be killed and he'll win. Confident that he can exploit this loophole, Tommy takes them up on their offer...

...and then no one believes him. His family thinks he's nuts. No one is willing to stay by his side (which includes sleeping in the same bed and being in the bathroom when the other person is taking a shit) for an hour, let alone 30 days. Tommy scrambles to find a way to stay safe and resorts to paying James, a homeless man, 100 dollars a day to shadow him. Honestly, it's a pretty good deal for James who gets a warm bed and square meals for the duration of the game. But since Tommy is living at his mother's and his mom doesn't want James living there, she kicks him out.

I think where Self Reliance stumbles is when it tries to become a romantic comedy. Tommy is contacted by a woman, Maddy (Anna Kendrick), who says that she is also playing the game and the two see if they can work together to win. It was much more interesting watching Tommy basically live in homeless camps with James than getting into romantic, twee shenanigans with Maddy while the threat of immediate death looms over them.

There were aspects of Self Reliance that were genuinely thought-provoking, but like I said, it's very uneven. There was a lot of "weird for the sake of weird" stuff going on, which seemed unnecessary for a movie with a bizarre and unlikely plot in the first place. It also just wasn't as funny as I hoped it would be. If you're in the mood for a light, bizarre comedy, you could do worse than Self Reliance.  

Grade: B