Don't worry- your fave columns will be back in February, along with my reviews of the Valentine's Day episodes of Into the Dark and perhaps a few other Valentine's-related flicks. I don't expect to get into another franchise review until March, but you never know. I may also sneak in another article about my favorite actresses, as promised a long time ago. We'll see.
Until then, let's get back to reviewing the other stuff I saw over the holidays, with an emphasis on the spooky stuff this time around, along with some Creature Features, including the biggest, baddest critter of them all...
While a huge hit and generally well-received (see my review here), director Gareth Edwards was somewhat criticized for the lack of, well, Godzilla, in his Godzilla. Adopting the "less is more" approach of movies like Jaws and Alien, Edwards felt that doing so would build up anticipation for the beloved monster's eventual arrival, as well as the reveal of his "new" look. It's worth mentioning that he used this same approach, albeit in part because of budgetary restrictions, on his debut feature, Monsters, which basically landed him the Godzilla gig.
Well, some didn't care for this gambit, much less Godzilla's new look, and even less for the foes Godzilla faced, which were of the unfamiliar variety, rather than his famed adversaries like Rodan and King Ghidorah. They will be happy to hear that the matter has been rectified in the sequel, which, in addition to both of those beloved monsters making an appearance, also features an assist from Mothra, and a new director in cult favorite Michael Dougherty, of Trick 'R Treat and Krampus fame. And yes, the much-loved Blue Öyster Cult song makes an appearance, albeit in cover form- by System of a Down's Serj Tankian!
While still criticized for the flimsy nature of the characters and the uneven pacing, there's no denying that this is a much better movie than its predecessor, and one that absolutely delivers on the monster battles front in pretty spectacular fashion. Basically, this is the movie that fans wanted the first time around, down to polishing up Godzilla's look to make it more like the OG creature. I'll allow that the script is a bit on the creaky side, bringing to mind the likes of Pacific Rim (which I still basically enjoyed), but it's still a lot of fun when it stays focused on the monster matters at hand.
It's also got quite the cast, including new recruits Vera Farmiga (in a rare villainous turn), Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Bradley Whitford (firmly in Cabin in the Woods mode), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Thomas Middleditch (basically in Silicon Valley mode), O'Shea Jackson, Jr. (aka Ice Cube's son), Zhang Zi (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and several returnees from the first film, including Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn.
Granted, none of the above is exactly doing Oscar caliber work, but it's not as if this movie is angling for awards gold, either. It's just trying to be a fun monster movie, and in that, it succeeds, I thought, and much more so than the last one, which maybe took things a bit too seriously for its own good. As with Kong: Skull Island, it's as much a swashbuckling adventure as anything else- see also Rampage- but yes, it still does dwell a bit too long on sci-fi jibber-jabber. When it sticks to what its good at- monster battles- it flourishes, though, much like the glorious Mothra.
It will be interesting to see what the tone of the impending Godzilla Vs. Kong will be. Will it stick with the fun, adventure film tone of Skull Island, or will it veer closer to the sci-fi trappings of the Godzilla movies? I think a little of both would be well-advised, with perhaps a focus on the former over the latter, which is the reason this installment is more enjoyable that the last: it doesn't forget to have a little fun with it. We'll see, but until then, King of the Monsters gets the job done.
Speaking of Creature Features, this one has a sure-fire premise so great, you'll be shocked no one thought of it first: people trapped in a raging storm with deadly alligators afoot. The fun starts when University of Florida student Haley (Kaya Scodelario, Skins, The Maze Runner series)- there on a swimming scholarship, but letting her nerves get the best of her- gets a call from her sister, who's worried that she can't get in touch with their father, Dave (Barry Pepper, Saving Private Ryan), a home contractor.
Normally, that wouldn't be cause for alarm, but there's a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on his neck of the swamp, and Dave has picked up a bit of a drinking habit since his divorce from their mother not too long ago. Haley begrudgingly agrees to go check on him, and finally finds him at their old family home, which he has held onto in spite of having moved out some time ago, when the girls graduated high school and their parents eventually split up.
She's almost given up hope when his dog somewhat tracks him down in the basement, forcing Haley to go down and check it out. (The dog wisely opts to stay upstairs, knowing better.) She discovers him seriously injured and passed out and is in the process of dragging him back upstairs when she discovers why: they aren't alone in the house, which is occupied by several disgruntled alligators, who have gotten into the house via a drainage pipe.
After fending off an attack of her own, which also leaves her injured, Haley and Dave must band together to figure a way out, before flood waters fill the basement and they both drown- if the gators don't get to them first. And there are even more alligators waiting outside, even if they do escape- and did I mention that hurricane?
Produced by beloved horror great Sam Raimi, of the Evil Dead franchise fame- to say nothing of the OG Spiderman trilogy- and directed by one of the more underrated horror filmmakers out there, Alexandre Aja, who also brought us the fun Piranha remake (see review here), the solid The Hills Have Eyes remake, as well as original fare like High Tension, P2, Mirrors and Horns; Crawl is another feather in the director's cap which should please both his longtime fans and Creature Feature fans alike.
There's plenty of alligator attacks on display, including some unfortunate looters, who picked one hell of a time to try and steal stuff, and local cops, one of which dated Haley's sister back in the day, and may be a little sweet on Haley, so you know what that means: gator bait. At under ninety minutes, it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome, and ends right where it should, as soon as the primary action is done.
The end result is a nifty little horror film that ended up being a box office sleeper hit, grossing nearly $100 million on a mere $13 and-a-half million budget. It was also one of director Quentin Tarantino's favorites of the year, for whatever that's worth. I'd have to say that it's easily one of my favorite horror flicks of the year, at the very least.
I went in expecting little, but was perked up when I found out about Raimi and Aja's involvement. I should mention that it isn't the gore-fest these two are more typically known for, but it is exceptionally well-made, with two central characters you really care about that are both exceptionally well-acted by Scodelario and Pepper (to say nothing of that dog, who's adorable), and which do not emerge unscathed, to say the least.
There's a lot of (high) tension, and the film is expertly plotted by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, of John Carpenter's The Ward fame, who have proven in the past to be able to write solid female protagonists before. I will definitely be seeking out their other work, which also includes the horror flicks Dark Feed and The Inhabitants. Absolutely check this one out, especially if you love Nature Gone Wild and Creature Feature flicks. It's a great ride.
Another flick with a horror legend in the production chair, this one boasts none other than Guillermo Del Toro behind the scenes, who also contributed to the story. (I'm a big fan- see here for more.) In the director's seat is the inventive André Øvredal, of Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe fame. The film is, of course, based on the legendary book series, which if you are a horror fan of a certain age, you almost certainly read once upon a time, and probably had the stuffing scared out of you by at least one of said stories.
I assumed the film would take an anthology approach and I wasn't entirely wrong, but said stories are enveloped into a clever wraparound overarching plot revolving around a group of teens that hide out from a bully in a local house that's alleged to be haunted. There, they find a book of stories written by a girl that once lived there and reportedly died under tragic circumstances.
One of the teens, Stella (Zoe Colletti, City on a Hill), absconds with the book, and is shocked when it starts filling itself with more stories, and even more so when they start happening for real. (Shades of the movie Goosebumps.) Naturally, said stories are based on the stories from the titular books, including the one about the missing toe, the scarecrow, the spider bite, and the pale lady.
This being a movie, said stories- most of which run a few pages at best, if I recall correctly- are elaborated on considerably. I liked the way some were handled (the spider one, the Jangly Man) and not so much others (the big toe one could have been better). Overall, though, this was basically like a scarier version of the Goosebumps films. If those are fine for kids, this is fine for tweens and up.
I will say that the special effects and creatures are pretty cool, though the pale lady, as much as she resembles the one in the book's famed illustrations, is a bit laughable- some things work better on the page than IRL. Points also for having protagonists that are actually pretty likable, for once.
I feel like horror filmmakers have started to hear these sorts of criticisms from fans and are finally doing something about it, as evidenced by the fact that I've been seeing some well-done ones lately- interestingly enough, most aimed at teens. (See also the Are You Afraid of the Dark? reboot, Facebook Watch's The Birch and the most recent Annabelle movie.)
Overall, this was reasonably enjoyable- if, like I said, aimed more at a younger crowd than the stuff I typically watch. I did like it better than Goosebumps, though, and it was certainly scarier. I also liked the way it left the door open for another movie, and the fact that it was a period piece, set in the late 60's, which was unexpected.
Oh, and nice job, recruiting actual witchy woman, Lana Del Rey, to cover Donovan's classic folk rocker "Season of the Witch." The score, by Marco Beltrami (the Scream films) and Anna Drubich is great, too, and references "The Hearse Song," also from the books, to which there are plenty of other nods throughout the film, which will be fun for fans going Easter Egg hunting. (See also the DVD/Blu-Ray bonus features for more clues to the many references scattered throughout.) If you like the books, this is a must-see, but know that they do their own thing with it, which I suppose is to be expected.
More of a psychological thriller than an outright horror film, Spinning Man revolves around a college philosophy professor, Evan Birch (Guy Pierce, firmly in Memento mode, minus the tattoos), accused of having something to do with the disappearance of a local high school student, Joyce Bonner (Odeya Rush, The Giver). Did he murder her? Or was it someone else, someone close to him? Was she even murdered? Or did she run off for other reasons?
Other suspects include his suspicious wife, Ellen (Minnie Driver, Good Will Hunting), who he cheated on before with another student (albeit not one as young as the one who's missing), which is why they moved to their current location from another city; best friend and fellow professor, Ross (Jamie Kennedy, the Scream movies), who's a bit of a perv when it comes to the younger ladies; and worshipful student, Anna (Alexandra Shipp, the younger Storm in the last few X-Men movies), who's a bit of a stalker, and with whom he may have had an inappropriate relationship in the past.
Not helping matters is Evan's tendencies to forget things, not exactly helped by his drinking or his habit of daydreaming things and mistaking them for things that actually happened. (See what I meant about the whole Memento thing?) This quality puts him firmly in the crosshairs of local detective, Robert Malloy (former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, here reunited with his Goldeneye co-star, Driver), who isn't sure what to think of the slippery Evan, who has a tendency to talk in circles and in philosophical terms.
A lot of what your final opinion is of this film will likely rest on how you feel about the final twists- yes, twists, as in more than one- and whether they live up to your expectations. I watched this with someone and we both had our theories about what actually happened, and we were both wrong, and we weren't so much disappointed by that as we were about the route the film actually did take in regards to the resolution of the story.
There were things I liked about it- mainly the fact that it didn't go with the obvious solution- and things I didn't: just because a writer takes the road less traveled doesn't inherently make it good storytelling. There is such a thing as being too clever for one's own good, and this film may well leave some more confused than satisfied.
To that end, the film was written by Matthew Aldrich (Cleaner, Disney's Coco), adapting the book of the same name, by George Harrar (The Infiltrator, aka Reunion at Red Paint Bay). Swede Simon Kaijser does the directing honors and boy, can you tell- this is basically a foreign film in American clothing, which may be part of the problem. As much as I love some foreign films, some of them can be a chore to sit through because of their oft-languid pacing, and it's not helped by their commitment to leaving things ambiguous in many cases.
Don't get me wrong- in some cases, that's also what I like about them. But I would be lying if I said they weren't an acquired taste in many instances, especially to Americans unfamiliar with this sort of approach. And, to be sure, there are exceptions to the rule- no one can accuse, say, Takashi Miike or John Woo of being boring in their most extreme films. Or Italian horror films, like those by Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento, of being too subtle or underwhelming. And so on.
This is definitely one of the more casually-paced and "let's leave what really happened up to the viewer" kind of films, though. To be sure, I get what happens in the end, and what is implied by the final twist, but not everyone is going to like it, and whether you like this film or not is definitely going to hinge on those final twists. Memento this is not, though, that's for sure, as much as the film wants you to remember that film and your love for it and apply it to this film.
Nice try, but, as they say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and this film is much ado about nothing, IMHO. If you're a big fan of the actors, or a big murder mystery fan in general, you might feel compelled to check it out, but fair warning: there's a lot of bait-and-switch going on here, and a lot of it does NOT pay off. Don't say I didn't warn you, and tread lightly, those who dare to check it out anyway, and keep those expectations low.
Hereditary was much-beloved in the horror community, with many voicing the opinion that if it wasn't Oscar-worthy, particularly in the case of star Toni Collette, then what horror movie was? I enjoyed the film, and though I pointed out, much to the consternation of many, that it was basically a highly-compressed variation of the Paranormal Activity series, that didn't make me enjoy it any less, or stop it from making my Best of the Year list for 2018. After all, as they say, there's nothing new under the sun- you just have to learn to make those old plots your own.
Writer/director Ari Aster has certainly gone a long way towards proving that he's capable of doing just that, and though his work has admittedly rubbed some people the wrong way- so has the director, for that matter- there's no denying he's gotten people talking, especially via the internet.
And that's not always a bad thing, though it certainly can be, depending on who you're dealing with. But one thing people can agree on, especially horror fans, is that it's always nice to see someone at least try and bring some legitimacy to the oft-reviled genre, even if they don't always succeed.
This time around, Aster has set out to essentially make The Wicker Man 2.0, and I don't mean the much-ridiculed Nicholas Cage remake, but the original 70's version, with Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland. Mind you, I'm not alone in these two assessments- see here, for instance, though I don't agree that Paranormal & Wicker are "bad" horror movies at all- indeed, the latter is one of my all-time faves- but it's worth mentioning that I published my take on Hereditary long before this writer, so I wasn't just parroting other people's opinions back then.
I actually rarely read other people's opinions about anything before seeing or listening, as the case may be, for myself and making up my own mind. Only then do I read other people's thoughts on the matter at hand. It's something I've done since I became a critic myself, as I don't want to be influenced by other people's opinions before committing my own to the record. Of course, when you do that, you can often find yourself in the minority, but such is the way I've chosen to do things. Oh well.
Anyway, I gathered that this film was as divisive as Hereditary, but I had no real sense of what people were saying about it in general, and why it was divisive in the first place before seeing it. I also knew very little about it, and hadn't even seen the trailer. All I knew was that it had one of my favorite rising stars, Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth, Fighting with My Family) in it, and that the imagery I'd seen of it reminded me of The Wicker Man, and it's been a hot minute since anyone's tackled a story like that in a mainstream film, so I was excited to see it.
Turns out my excitement wasn't misplaced, as the end result was indeed pretty awesome. What the film has in common with The Wicker Man is someone visiting a place where the community practices an approach to life that is decidedly at odds with that of the typical populace. With Wicker, it was Paganism, long after such a thing had fallen out of favor. That's basically what we get here, too.
To be a little more specific- though, the less you know going in, the better- a young woman, Dani (Pugh), has just suffered an awful tragedy when her distant, self-involved boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor, Transformers: Age of Extinction)- note the name, which is a bit on the nose, but, you know, it is what it is- reminds her that he's going out of town for the bulk of the summer, thus leaving her alone in her grief. The two argue, and he eventually relents and invites her along, saying that he has to go, regardless, as his proposed college thesis hinges on it.
She begrudgingly accepts, in part because of the warm invitation from Christian's friend, the Swedish Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who insists that the trip to his home will be a healing, life-changing experience. He ain't kidding. Turns out that Pelle is from a commune that, shall we say, does things a little differently. Burning Man, this ain't.
It's pretty clear that, almost immediately after their arrival, that the group of friends aren't in Kansas anymore, to put it mildly. Not unlike something like Hostel or The Sacrament, they are strangers in a strange land, and things are only going to get stranger- and perhaps even deadly. (Duh- it's a horror film, after all.)
I won't say too much more, except to say that the thought put into the commune itself- the design of the temples and residential homes and the like, as well as the costumes and art strewn around the grounds, is nothing short of remarkable- it really makes this film a unique experience quite unlike I've seen in any horror film: save, of course, The Wicker Man. The good news is that, if you haven't seen that film (in either incarnation), you're in for a treat, but even if you have, it adds just enough to the proceedings to be its own thing.
Midsommar is, at its heart, a character study, with Dani as its main subject at hand. We experience nearly everything from her eyes, with the exception of a few scenes from the guy's perspectives, all of which just serve to tell us what we already know: for the most part, these are myopic, self-serving idiots that don't give a hoot about culture. They just want to party, and, at best, use the experience to pass a class in some cases. Even Pelle has his own hidden agenda, and though it's self-serving as well, I do think he means well, at least to a certain degree, particularly when it comes to Dani.
This is, in nearly every way, a much better film than Hereditary. It has a much stronger sense of what it is, and the execution is near-flawless, buoyed by an exceptionally strong central performance by Pugh that, like Collette before her, would be a shoe-in for an awards nod, if not a win, if such people were inclined to award such challenging films. It's not an easy watch, to be sure, especially if you're someone who's been through the same sort of loss as Dani, but boy, is it a worthwhile one.
Aster has succeeded in creating his own world here, and it's an astonishingly detailed one- don't miss the making of documentaries on the Blu-Ray, which are near-essential to the process and will 100% make you want to watch the film again. That is, if you liked it in the first place. Much like the aforementioned Spinning Man, this one has a distinctly foreign vibe to it, at least once they get to Sweden. As such, it won't be for everyone, and may well be too slow-moving for some.
I just loved it, even while I'll allow that it nicks a lot from The Wicker Man. The important thing is that, for those who could have stood for more where Wicker came from, well, you're in for a real treat. I can't say I've seen a lot of movies like this- only the ones I've mentioned, and maybe Kill List come to mind.
It's a genuinely singular experience, and it will absolutely stick with you, if you can get into the vibe of the film. It definitely rewards multiple viewings, and has a lot going on underneath the surface than most horror films. It's easily one of my favorites of 2019, that's for sure. By all means, check this one out, ASAP! 👹😉
Well, that about does it for now- join me next week, as we launch into my Best of the Year lists- see you then, and thanks, as always, for reading!
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