Stuff I watched in...July and August, 2024

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is a 3+ hour documentary directed by Kier-La Janisse about the history of folk horror (particularly in film, TV, and books). It took me two days to watch it and I LOVED it. The doc is broken into chapters and covers the "Unholy Trinity" of classic folk horror films (The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General, and The Blood on Satan's Claw) before delving into folk horror from the British Isles, the United States, and around the world.

If you're at all interested in folk horror, folklore, or witchy things, this documentary will be right up your alley. It features interviews with academics, directors, and actors and gave me a huge list of films to check out. It inspired me to rewatch The Wicker Man, and I feel like I had a deeper appreciation for the film the second time around.

It also has a gorgeous poster. It's streaming on Shudder and Amazon Prime, so check it out if you are able!

Grade: A

***

Hacks (TV series)

After hearing over and over how amazing this comedy (streaming on HBO/Max) is, I had to check it out. I was not disappointed. Hacks is a beautiful mix of drama and comedy, centered on the relationship between young comedy writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder), and veteran comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart). Ava is looking for work after getting in trouble for some political tweets and Deborah is (whether she admits it or not) stuck in a rut in a Las Vegas residency doing tired Boomer-humor type jokes about men not putting the toilet seat down. Their shared agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), pairs them together and of course they fight like cats and dogs even as they bring out the best in each other.

Hacks is often hilarious, but also occasionally devastating. Covering topics as wide-ranging as addiction, suicide, narcissism, familial alienation, and sexual assault, Hacks delivers serious gut-punches along with belly laughs. Jean Smart is phenomenal as Deborah Vance (a character inspired by comedians like Joan Rivers), a truly selfish woman who HAD to be selfish and ruthless to be taken seriously in cut-throat show business. Just when you think she's gone too far and you genuinely hate her, she'll do or say something to remind you that she's a human who has gone through an incredible amount of heartbreak. 

Hacks is a top-notch show that puts women front and center. I definitely recommend it.

Grade: A

***

Night of the Living Dead

What a disappointment. George Romero's first film and the granddaddy of the "slow zombies" genre, Night of the Living Dead is a historically important film (though it's important to point out that it is not the first film to feature zombies. Movies with zombies date back to the early 1930s). It's also a film that features an African-American lead (Duane Jones, the best thing about the movie) in a cast of white actors, which was still not very common in 1968. 

However, Night of the Living Dead is boring. It's very slow and not much happens. The majority of the movie takes place in a house where a group of people gather to avoid the cannibalistic, slow-walking undead ghouls outside. The group inside the house--two sets of couples, a daughter, Ben (Jones), and Barbara (Judith O'Dea)--listen to radio reports about the "ghouls" (the word "zombie" is never mentioned in the movie), bicker, and try to figure out a way to escape and drive to a rescue center. What can I say? It's a slow movie, the acting isn't very good (again, except for Jones who at least brings some emotion to his role), and the characters are mostly unlikeable and annoying.

Again, the movie is historically important and I don't regret watching it...but I doubt I'll watch it again. 

Grade: C

***

Hannibal

Ugh. I heard that Hannibal, the ill-advised sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, was bad. But this bad? 

Hannibal is a rare film that manages to be both campy and boring. Taking place 10 years after the events of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling (played by Julianne Moore) is an FBI Special Agent. After taking the blame for a botched drug raid, Starling is contacted by Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, under 30 pounds of makeup), a disfigured man who is the only surviving victim of Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is still on the lam after escaping police custody a decade prior and Verger wants to use Starling to lure Lecter out of hiding. So he can torture Lecter to death by being eaten alive by hogs. Just normal things. 

Upon hearing about the botched drug raid, Lecter does indeed reach out to Starling and the two engage in a cat-and-mouse game, which also feels very much like flirting. Hannibal really wants to be a fucked up romance and it falls flat because...gross (also, we know that Hannibal Lecter's truest love is Will Graham, not Clarice Starling). 

Hannibal features some truly disgusting things, such as self-cannibalism, death by wild hog, and disembowelment. But what it doesn't feature is a compelling story. It also makes a mockery of the feminist empowerment of The Silence of the Lambs. It reduces Clarice Starling to a failure who is mocked and manipulated by men. Watching Starling reduced to a damsel in distress in Hannibal is 10 times more sickening than watching Ray Liotta eat a piece of his own brain. 

Skip this one and watch literally any other piece of media featuring Hannibal Lecter instead. Especially the show Hannibal.

Grade: C-

***

The Mummy (1999)

Of course this wasn't the first time I watched the movie that launched a million bisexuals. I actually saw The Mummy in theaters when it first came out in 1999 and had two intense feelings about it: 1) Goddamn, Brendan Fraser is hot, and 2) Fuck those flesh-eating scarabs. 

I probably watched it a few more times in the early 2000s, but it's definitely been at least a decade and a half since I last saw it. Rewatching it now, 25 years after its initial release, I can safely say that it still fucks. It's thrilling, funny, and just a fun time in general. It's not particularly scary, but I think The Mummy was always advertised as more of an action movie than a horror movie. Brenda Fraser is still extremely hot, as is Rachel Weisz as the charming librarian Evelyn. 

There's really nothing else to say. If you haven't seen The Mummy, you definitely should. However, you really needed to be a 15 year old seeing The Mummy in theaters (or at a sleepover) in 1999-2000 to actually "get it". It's lightning in a bottle in that way, and anyone outside of those parameters will never experience The Mummy the way that Millennials of a certain age experienced it.

Grade: B+

***

The Inspection

Directed by Elegance Bratton and based on his experience of being kicked out of his home as a teenager for coming out as gay and joining the Marines a decade later, The Inspection is a deeply personal film. 

Jeremy Pope plays Ellis French, a homeless young man who joins the Marines during the height of the Iraq War. While Ellis is physically able to get through bootcamp, he is unable to hide his homosexuality and becomes the object of torment from the other recruits and one particularly nasty training instructor, Leland Laws (Bokeem Woodbine). 

Ellis' doggedness to make it through bootcamp, no matter the physical and mental cost, is fueled by a desire to be held in high esteem by his mother, Inez (Gabrielle Union), a women who truly meets the definition of the word "cunt". Inez seems to take deep, personal offense to the fact that Ellis is gay. She kicked him out of the house, leading Ellis to be homeless for years. Even after Ellis completes bootcamp, Inez throws a fit after finding out that the Marines didn't make him straight. Union is GREAT in this role because she really, really makes you hate her.

What's interesting is that Bratton dedicated The Inspection to his mother, whom he calls out by name and with a family photo at the end of the movie. I truly do not know if this is a genuine act of love or an enormous "fuck you" to his mom because we just watched a woman reject her child in ways both cruel and stupid. The viewer is primed to think of this woman as lower than a worm crushed under a boot, and here Bratton is dedicating a movie to her. I kinda think this is a back-handed slap to his mother and I'm very ok with that. 

In terms of how the actual movie is, it's good! Just very, very difficult to watch. Ellis nearly dies as a result of hazing, but ultimately comes to earn the respect of his fellow recruits by both handling his torment with grace, and by beating up the biggest bully. The Inspection ends on an emotionally ambiguous note. Ellis is accepted (at least publicly) by his fellow recruits and even the cruelest training instructor, but is rejected by the one person whose opinion he cares about. I think there is a message in here about self-acceptance, but honestly the movie is just very sad and shows how people might end up in the Marines not because they care about serving their country, but because they don't have other options. 

Grade: B+

*** 

Storm of the Century

This made for TV miniseries was written by Stephen King and contains some classic King tropes: it's set on a small, close-knit island in Maine and has this general feeling of Boomer nostalgia: everyone knows everyone's business, but also people look out for one another. But then, King turns this nostalgia on its head when a stranger--Andre Linoge (Colm Feore)--shows up and murders an old woman right before the island is hit with...you guessed it...the (snow) storm of the century.

Linoge happens to know everyone's secrets, from illegal marijuana trade to an undisclosed abortion. He freaks out the whole town as Constable Mike Anderson (Tim Daly) takes Linoge on a perp walk to the one jail cell on the island. From this cell, Linoge is able to control the minds and actions of people on the island, causing them to commit atrocities they would never even contemplate under normal circumstances. Linoge says repeatedly "Give me what I want and I will go away". When he reveals what it is that he wants, it's an absolutely devastating request that threatens to tear the community apart...or bring them together to get rid of this supernatural man who has come to torment them.

Storm of the Century is...fine. It's got a cozy feeling to it, but it didn't need to be 4 hours long. It could have easily been 2 hours and gotten the same message across. Interestingly, director Mike Flanagan (a HUGE Stephen King fan) said that this series inspired his own series Midnight Mass, which, in my opinion, is superior to Storm of the Century.

Grade: B-

***

Drive-Away Dolls

Directed by Ethan Cohen and co-written by Cohen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, Drive-Away Dolls is a delightful, if not very substantial, wisp of a film. Clocking in at 84 minutes, the film feels like it was edited down from a longer cut. But despite the fact that there's not much "there" there, Drive-Away Dolls is sweet, funny, and an easy watch.

The year is 1999. Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are friends even though it seems like the only thing they have in common is that they're both lesbians. Jamie is outgoing, party-hearty, and very sexual whereas Marian is introverted, bookish, and hasn't slept with anyone since she broke up with her girlfriend 3 years ago.

After Jamie gets dumped by her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), she convinces Marian to take her to Tallahassee, Florida since Marian is traveling there anyway to visit her aunt. Jamie thinks that a road trip and change of scenery will do both of them good. They decide to travel using a drive-away car (basically, a one-way car rental where you're delivering the car to a specific location). It just so happens that there is a car that needs to be in Tallahassee pronto at the drive-away service Marian and Jamie patronize. But what they DON'T know is that two goons were supposed to pick up the car because it contains precious goods in the trunk. 

So now they are on the road from Philadelphia to Tallahassee with two goons on their tail. They're carrying something in the trunk that powerful people will pay good money for and they don't even know it...until they find the briefcase in the spare tire well after getting a flat tire. And what is inside will shock you.

I think Drive-Away Dolls disappointed some folks who were expecting a much better movie. I went in with low expectations and was delighted at this light, lesbian, comic caper. It's a goofy little film that's perfect to watch if you're feeling down or don't want to think too hard. And Qualley and Viswanathan are both delightful.

Grade: B

Girls Chase Boys and Boys Chase Girls

Two movies about gender and violence...

Spoiler warnings for entire review.

Blink Twice

Blink Twice, directed by actress Zoe Kravitz in her directorial debut, is the first movie I've seen that comes with a trigger warning before it begins. And not a "flashing lights" warning, which I've seen at the start of another movie, but a content warning. Specifically, a content warning for sexual assault. 

The film follows Frida (Naomi Ackie), a waitress who, along with her roommate and best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), works the reception for an event held by tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum). Frida has a huge crush on Slater, in spite of the fact that Slater has been accused of some unspecified "inappropriate behavior" of the "Me Too" variety, which forced him to step down as CEO of his own company. In order to "heal" and "learn" from this experience, Slater...bought a private island. He also goes to therapy! But mostly he throws parties on the private island.

After catching Frida's eye and flirting with her the entire night, Slater invites her and Jess to the island along with his group of friends which include aspiring tech moguls, D-list celebrities, and various hangers-on. Frida and Jess jump at the chance to party on a billionaire's private island, so they say yes and hop on Slater's jet.

Once on the island, they find that it was totally cool that they didn't pack anything because there are clothes and toiletries provided for them. However, they are asked to give up their phones. But Slater assures them "you won't have to do anything you don't want to do". Sure, buddy.

What follows is an absolute orgy of drugs, drinks, pool-lounging, and haute cuisine. Slater has an army of people working on the island, including landscapers, cooks, security, and cleaners. The days and nights pass by in a blur to the point where Jess and Frida don't even know what day it is...and they don't really care. Or do they? 

Jess confides in Frida that something feels wrong, but she just can't put her finger on what. It feels like she's forgetting something. Or more like everyone is forgetting something. She wants to go home. Frida tries to console her, but Frida is really starting to like Slater and they're spending a lot of time together on the island...she doesn't want to leave.

The next morning, Jess is gone. And no one remembers her except for Frida who promptly starts freaking out. One of the other women, Sarah (Adria Arjona), comes by Frida's room with Jess's lighter, the one everyone has been sharing during the entire trip. The name "Jess" is written on it. Sarah points to a bruise she has that she can't explain. Frida says that every morning she wakes up and there is dirt under her fingernails but she doesn't know why. They realize that something horrible is happening on the island and somehow they don't remember it.

It's rape, you guys. The men rape the women every night. And they use this perfume made of flowers that are cultivated on the island to erase the women's memories. In flashbacks we see some pretty graphic depictions of the men chasing down the women, tying them to various pieces of furniture in the house, and raping them while they scream and cry. So, yeah, that trigger warning was a good idea!

So how do the ladies end up remembering these events? Snake venom, obviously! There are snakes on the island and if you drink their venom or get bitten by one it reverses the effects of the perfume. Jess got bitten by a snake the night she had her freakout and so Slater murders her since she won't be able to forget all the...rape. 

So....ok, here's the thing. The whole perfume for forgetting/snake venom for remembering shit is not necessary and is really confusing. It leads to a bunch of questions about how exactly it would work. It's really dumb, in my opinion. It's unneeded. Slater King is a tech mogul billionaire. He could just create a designer roofie to slip the women every night that would have the same effect. I feel that the whole perfume/venom stuff took away from the movie big time, especially since so much time was spent on figuring it all out. Like...why? The time spent on Frida and Sarah discovering HOW Slater is doing this could have been spent on character and plot development. 

Blink Twice is a rape-revenge movie and I love rape-revenge movies. Sure enough, there is a reckoning when all the women, after doing snake venom-infused tequila shots, remember what the men do to them every night and...well, they try to murder all the men but it doesn't quite work and the only women left alive at the end of the night are Sarah and Frida. For a rape-revenge movie, Blink Twice kinda disappoints when it comes to the revenge. Yes, a bunch of the men die. It's basically a bloodbath which culminates in Slater's mansion burning to the ground. But it doesn't really feel like justice. It just feels sloppy and anti-climatic.

I think there were some good ideas in this movie, but ultimately Kravitz goes in for too much style and not enough substance. It seems that Kravitz intended Blink Twice to be both a fun thriller but also a message movie about abuse of power, and it doesn't fully succeed as either. It's too upsetting and intense to be a fun thriller, but it's too...goofy with the perfume/venom shit to be serious. 

I will say that the ensemble cast, which includes (besides Ackie, Shawkat, Tatum, and Arjona) Simon Rex, Geena Davis, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, and Kyle MacLachlan, is great. These are are phenomenal actors (and all very funny, too) and they work well together. There's a lot to enjoy about Blink Twice even if it's a bit disappointing in the end.

Grade: B

***

Strange Darling

I didn't know about Strange Darling until about a week ago and all I heard was "it's great" and "don't read anything about it. Go in cold". So I did! And while it has some flaws, I'd say overall it was a really fun experience.

If you think you might want to see it, stop reading now and go see it! This review will give the entire plot away.

The film, which stars Willa Fitzgerald as "The Lady" and Kyle Gallner as "The Demon", is presented in six chapters, starting with chapter 3, titled "Somebody Please Help Me". It opens on the Lady running desperately through a field trying to avoid the Demon, who is chasing her with a rifle. They end up in a car chase that results in the Lady crashing her car and running into the woods. She stumbles across and house and begs to be let inside.

As the movie progresses, we start to put the plot together. The woman and the man (I can't just keep calling them the Lady and the Demon, because that sounds fucking weird) meet in a bar, drive to a motel, and discuss getting a room. The woman straight up asks the man if he's a serial killer (he says he is not) and says that men have no idea the risks women take to "have a little fun". After he assures her that he's not going to kill her, she reveals what she wants him to do to her and we cut to him choking her while she's handcuffed to the bed. She keeps begging him to choke her harder and harder and finally tells him to stop out of frustration. "This isn't working" she says. "It was your idea" he says. After she insults him a bit more, he recuffs her to the bed and slaps her, and genuinely chokes her and berates her. She begs him to stop, but he tells her she asked for this and she tearfully agrees...

...before saying the safeword, "Mister Snuffleupagus". He stops and unties her, comforting her while she cries. After recovering a bit, she asks if he wants to do coke with her. "It makes me very horny" she says and he reluctantly agrees. After they do their bumps, she begins acting cold and rude to him again, pissing him off. But when he says "coke doesn't seem to make you horny, it just puts you in a bad mood", she reveals that while indeed she did coke, what he took (from a separate bottle she hid from him) is ketamine...and he's about to fall deep into that k-hole, baby!

Well, it turns out that little Miss Snuffleupagus is a serial killer known as "The Electric Lady". We don't know all the details except that she favors using a knife and a taser to torture her victims. She spends some time carving her initials into his chest and torturing him and then goes to stab him in the throat, but he happens to have a gun hidden in his ankle holster and he shoots her ear off with it. She runs out of the room, steals a car, and the chase is on. Oh, by the way, the guy is a cop. Not that it saves him in the end. 

Strange Darling owes a lot to the movies of Quentin Tarantino. The out of order plot, the ultraviolence, the retro feel of the movie--all markers of Tarantino. And the way Tarantino approaches female characters is mirrored in Strange Darling as well. Basically, exploitative sexism dressed up as feminism (don't get me wrong, I love Tarantino movies, but they are very much NOT feminist movies, even when they feature kickass women). Similarly, Strange Darling shows the ways in which people can be easily fooled by feminine wiles. Our Electric Lady here is a psychopath...she is able to manipulate the various people she encounters using sex appeal or tears depending on what she wants and who the "mark" is. Willa Fitzgerald is a revelation in this movie. Her performance is genuinely unnerving. We watch her turn on the tears and beg for help, only to cut the throat of the people who help her minutes later.

There's one scene that brings the movie down from an A to an B+ for me. When the already very clear message about how easy it is for this woman to get people to underestimate her is made so explicit and on the nose, that it felt like we got dropped into a Daily Wire movie for a minute. The man is able to handcuff the woman to a chest freezer after overpowering her. He calls for backup. She is able to grab him and bite his jugular and he bleeds out. When the cops arrive, she is whimpering and has pulled her pants down. A young, female cop looks at the scene and assumes that the man she killed was trying to rape her. The older, male cop points out that they don't know what happened and need to call for more backup. The young, female cop says "Just because I have a VAGINA doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing!" 

Well, of course, after they uncuff her and put her in the squad car, she ends up holding them at gunpoint because she grabbed the gun off the guy she killed. Turns out the dumb lady cop was wrong and the older male cop was right!! Who would have thunk it? It's a really tone deaf scene that feels like it would make sense in a conservative movie making fun of those wacky liberals and feminists who just assume that all women are victims and all men are rapists! It really made me wonder about what director JT Mollner intended to say here. Because it sounds like he's saying "feminists are stupid and gullible". 

So yeah, that scene aside, Strange Darling is a pretty fun and unique film. It's unhinged, it's perverse, it's sleazy, and it's a wild-ass ride. Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald are great as the leads. Strange Darling kept me guessing throughout the movie...although now that I know all the plot twists I'm not sure it would be a fun movie to revisit. 

Grade: B+

Meh Horror Summer

Last summer, I was surprised at how underwhelmed I was with three extremely hyped movies: Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Don't get me wrong--none of these films were bad. But I expected them to be great and then thought they were just ok. Having rewatched both Barbie and Oppenheimer (I don't think I'll bother rewatching the 206 minute Killers of the Flower Moon for a while)...I stand by my initial underwhelmed-ness. Both of those films have their charms and their moments, but overall I find them just ok. "B" movies on my rating scale, which means not bad but not great.

This summer I am facing a similar situation with my most anticipated horror movies. I've already reviewed MaXXXine and Longlegs, neither of which are "bad", but also neither of which are particularly good. MaXXXine was the third in a trilogy where the first two movies I thought were wonderful. To have the trilogy end on a dud is pretty disappointing. And Longlegs had brilliant marketing, leading many viewers to believe the claims that is was going to be incredibly disturbing and terrifying. It had some jump scenes for the history books, but that doesn't translate into "a great movie" for me.

In this review I have two more disappointing horror/thrillers as well as a horror movie that surprised me. I think it's important to keep in mind that horror is very personal. Not just in the sense that different things scare different people, but also that the circumstances under which you watch a movie and the headspace you're in can really impact how you feel about a movie. 

***

Cuckoo

Hunter Schafer is one of the breakout stars of the, er, problematic (yet addictive) show Euphoria. I was excited to see that she would be the lead actress in what appeared to be (going by the preview) a truly terrifying and bonkers horror movie. Directed by Tilman Singer and also starring Dan Stevens, Cuckoo is about a family that moves to a resort town in the Bavarian Alps for the summer. Gretchen (Schafer) is the extremely moody eldest daughter who is grieving the death of her mother. After her mother's death, she was forced to move to England to live with her dad, Luis (Martin Csokas), stepmom Beth (Jessica Fenwick), and stepsister Alma (Mila Lieu). And now she's being forced to spend the summer in a boring resort town while her parents help design the new hotel for Mr. Konig (Dan Stevens, putting his bilingualism to good use playing the very creepy Herr Konig). 

Basically, creepy shit starts going down from day one. Konig gives Gretchen a job at the reception desk of the main hotel (the resort consists of a hotel with little bungalows nearby) and people randomly come in and throw up at night. Alma starts having seizures, which take Luis and Beth's full attention, leaving Gretchen to her own devices. When she is chased by a terrifying woman while she rides her bike home after a late night shift at the hotel, she realizes that something very bad is happening at the resort.

And you'll never guess what it is because it's so batshit insane that I really couldn't take Cuckoo seriously. The movie feels very incoherent and half-baked. The acting and cinematography are excellent, but they cannot make up for a plot that feels both silly and stupid. By the end of the movie, I was thinking "When will this be over? I want this movie to be over." which is not what you want to feel when watching a movie! 

I was reminded of the movie A Cure for Wellness while watching Cuckoo, which is similar in that there is a kernel of a really interesting idea buried deep in the movie, but the execution is just bad. It's almost more disappointing to watch a film that has unrecognized potential than a movie that is just plain bad. I'll bump up Cuckoo's grade for the above-mentioned acting and cinematography, as well as some truly terrifying imagery, but overall this is one to skip.

Grade: C+

***

Trap

M. Night Shyamalan is a divisive filmmaker and more often than not I find myself on the "yeah, no" side with regards to his films. In my mind, he made one truly great film (The Sixth Sense), a bunch of mid-level films, and some absolute stinkers. Having only seen six of his movies, I'm not the best judge of his overall oeuvre, but I'd say that Trap falls somewhere in the middle.

More of a thriller than a horror film, the main "twist" of Trap isn't a twist at all since the marketing revealed the premise of the film: Cooper (Josh Hartnett), takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert. Upon seeing the huge numbers of police at the concert, Cooper asks a guy selling merchandise what's going on. The guy says that the police know that an infamous serial killer, the Butcher, is at this concert and so they've set a trap for him. They'll be detaining every male leaving the concert until they catch the guy. Problem is, Cooper is the Butcher.

So the rest of the movie is "How is Cooper gonna get out of this?". Well, and also a lot of time spent lingering on the concert of fictional pop singer Lady Raven, played by...M. Night Shyamalan's daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan. And I'm not going to lie: she's a pretty good pop singer! But also, this is really taking the nepo baby thing to the next level.

In any case, Trap has the two things you can always expect in a Shyamalan movie: crazy plot twists and schmaltzy pap. I've called Shyamalan a "hack" before, and I'm not sure if that's fair. I think he is actually a decent director whose directorial style and values as a storyteller are just not for me. The guy wants to direct movies about horrific things but he is unwilling to go all the way to the dark side. And because of this unwillingness to get dark and dirty, his movies come off as phony and cheesy (to me). In the case of Trap it's the fact that this so-called "Butcher" seems like a real stand-up guy for a serial killer. The way he kills people, or at least the specific victim he has hidden away in a basement somewhere at the time of the concert, is the most humane and non-painful way to kill someone. Also, he's a good father and he has Mommy issues, which water down his inherent evil.

I hate shit like this. The Butcher supposedly has killed 12 people at the time of the concert. If you kill 12 people in cold blood, you're a psychopath. It doesn't matter if Mommy didn't love you enough. Something is wrong with your brain if you kill 12 people. So don't give me this "serial killer with a heart of gold" bullshit. They tried to do the same thing with the show Dexter and I couldn't buy it: there is no such thing as a "moral" serial killer. But in M. Night's wholesome worldview, even serial killers aren't that bad. M. Night is a soft director and that softness is too soft for me. 

Credit where credit is due, though: Josh Hartnett is great in this movie,

Grade: C+

***

In a Violent Nature

Directed by Chris Nash, In a Violent Nature was a pleasant surprise. It's meditative, ambient, and slow. The killer, Johnny (Ry Barrett), is awakened from death by a some 20-somethings who take a locket from a fire tower where Johnny is buried. This was Johnny's mother's necklace, so he awakens and goes on a killing spree. A lot of the movie, which follows Johnny's perspective, is just him tromping through the woods. It's the most relaxing slasher you'll ever watch. Filled with the crunching of leaves underfoot and birdsong, a significant portion of In a Violent Nature feels like an ASMR video. Only peppered with insanely violent murders.

I watched this movie with a friend and there was one kill in particular (IYKYK) where we exclaimed, "whoa. Whoa!! WHOA!!!" as we watched--just absolutely disgusting, graphic, and probably impossible to actually do to a human body. 

There's not much else to say about In a Violent Nature. It's not a movie with a ton of symbolism or a deeper meaning. It's just an undead guy killing a bunch of annoying 20-somethings in the woods. Simple and surprisingly satisfying.

Grade: B+

I Saw the TV Glow

Spoiler warning for entire review.

Director Jane Schoenbrun's film I Saw the TV Glow is, in a word, captivating. I was nervous I wouldn't like it because I didn't care for Schoenbrun's previous film, We're All Going to the World's Fair, which I found incredibly boring. While I Saw the TV Glow is slow and meditative, it isn't boring (in my opinion). It's deeply emotional, devastating, and gut-wrenching.

In 1996, Owen (played by Ian Foreman as a 7th grader and by Justice Smith as a 9th grader and beyond) is a lonely kid who meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), an older girl who is obsessed with a TV show called The Pink Opaque, which airs at 10:30pm on Saturdays. Owen isn't allowed to stay up that late, so Maddy encourages him to lie to his mom about going to a sleepover and instead come over to her place to watch.

Two years later, Owen and Maddy aren't quite friends, but Maddy records video tapes of The Pink Opaque and gives them to Owen since, despite being a 9th grader now, he still isn't allowed to stay up and watch the show. While Owen is fascinated by the show, which features two teen girls--Isabelle and Tara--who communicate psychically and fight off monsters sent by the big bad, "Mr. Melancholy", Maddy is obsessed with it. She says that it seems like the show is more real than real life. Maddy also hates the small town she and Owen live in and tries to convince Owen to run away with her, but Owen chickens out the night they're supposed to go.

Not long after, Maddy disappears without a trace...and The Pink Opaque is canceled after a cliffhanger of a season finale in which the evil Mr. Melancholy buries Tara and Isabelle alive. 

Eight years later, Owen's mom has passed away from cancer. He lives with his deeply unfriendly dad (played by Fred Durst!) and works at a movie theatre. Owen leads a life of quiet desperation and Justice Smith plays him so well, with big eyes that seem both empty and filled with sadness. 

Maddy suddenly appears one day and while Owen is initially overjoyed to reunite with her, he quickly becomes concerned when Maddy tells him that The Pink Opaque is real and that after years of trying to live a normal life and feeling like time was slipping away, Maddy paid a coworker to bury her alive and she woke up in the show. She is Tara and Owen is Isabelle. What's more, the show ended with Isabelle also buried and alive and she's running out of oxygen. Maddy wants to bury Owen alive in this world so that he'll wake up as his true self, Isabelle, and he and Maddy/Tara can continue to show and battle Mr. Melancholy.

Maddy almost convinces Owen to go through with it, but he pushes her down and runs away, never to see her again. Decades later, Owen is a grown man with a family of his own, working at the "Fun Center" (basically a Dave & Busters), with crippling asthma and and even sadder look in his eye. During a kid's birthday party at the Fun Center, he freaks out, screaming that he is dying and calling for his mommy, while everyone around him freezes in place and doesn't hear him. In the bathroom, he tears his belly open with a box cutter to find a glowing TV inside. Owen doesn't die, he simply leaves the bathroom and apologizes to the partygoers, who don't even acknowledge his existence. This is where the movie ends.

So what is I Saw the TV Glow about? Well, it's most clearly a metaphor for being transgender. According to Maddy, Owen is "really" Isabelle. There's even a scene, remembered in flashbacks, where he dresses as Isabelle--in a pink dress--and Maddy dresses as Tara. His unsupportive dad remarks that The Pink Opaque is a show "for girls". And by denying who he truly is, Owen leads a sad life that never feels really real. He also makes a comment to the effect of, "If I don't think about it, it's not real". 

Schoenbrun is nonbinary and queer, and I Saw the TV Glow just feels very, very queer. But I think that straight, cisgender people can relate to it too because it's also about growing up and growing into someone you didn't think you'd be. Not living true to yourself and wondering what could have been. It's also about nostalgia. As an adult, Owen rewatches The Pink Opaque and finds it ridiculously juvenile and even embarrassing. Who among us hasn't gone back and watched a favorite childhood movie or show and realized that it...wasn't good. Or feels much "younger" than it felt when we were kids? 

But the thing about nostalgia is that it can be a tool for us to see how far we've come and how much we've matured. Personally, I don't deify my childhood at all. I didn't have a bad childhood, but I feel much more "me" as an adult. Aging suits me. Watching childhood faves makes me feel warm and fuzzy, not sad. I Saw the TV Glow has a much darker view of nostalgia. It suggests that maybe some of us were our truest selves when we were kids before, you know, life got to us. For Owen and Maddy, The Pink Opaque represents adventure, purpose, and true friendship whereas real life served up disappointment, conformity, and settling for something you tell yourself is happiness. Maddy chose a life of adventure, Owen chose to settle for less and lie to himself everyday, and now it's literally killing him. Suffocating him, as his alter ego suffocates in her shallow grave within The Pink Opaque.

Whether you feel the trans metaphor or the "life of quiet desperation" metaphor more, I Saw the TV Glow will devastate you in the end, and a lot of that has to do with the deeply embodied performance by Justice Smith. He doesn't not have to overact to express how the years of denial, repression, and boredom have turned him into a shadow by the end of the movie. I felt that achy-hot feeling behind my eyes in the last scene, wanting to cry for poor Owen. I Saw the TV Glow is a movie that aches. 

I'm so glad I gave this movie a chance. It's one of my favorites of the year so far, though I don't know if it will be an easily rewatchable film. But it is fascinating and deeply moving piece of art and I'll definitely be looking out for Schoenbrun's next film.

Grade: A