Quick Reaction: We Are What We Are

So, cannibalism is bad. So is religious extremism. I saw some reviews of this movie which praised the themes and commentary in the movie. I mean, sure, I guess. It's not unique in what it has to say, but I too dislike cannibalism and religious extremism.

 

I don't see the point of looking that deeply into this. It's a creepy movie about a family with a grisly tradition that some people in town start to discover. My first question, of course is how long the family had been getting away with this. Was this some sort of Murder, She Wrote town where people don't question the absurd number of crimes? I appreciated the perpetually damp scenery and that the movie didn't over-rely on jump scares. It's always a pleasure to see Julia Garner in anything. Same with Wyatt Russell, who looked particularly baby-faced. Man, that ending was vicious. They built toward it well. I kept waiting for something like that, and, while gruesome, it was oddly satisfying.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Henry V

Premise: You know the play?

 

If you really like Shakespeare, then have at it. This was Kenneth Branagh's big coming out party to US audiences. He got actor and director Oscar nominations for it. It's the moment when everyone started saying "oh, is he our Lawrence Olivier now?" And I get it. This has a large and impressive cast. I especially enjoyed spotting Christian Bale and Judi Dench in small roles. Derek Jacobi as the chorus delivers that exposition with verve. Branagh does those rousing speeches justice. The Henry V play is a very cinematic one with the Battle of Agincourt as a centerpiece. Branagh does quite well with that battle scene.

 

This sure felt like eating my vegetables a lot of the time. I know this makes me a philistine, but I wish filmmakers would lay off with keeping the purity of Shakespeare's dialogue. This movie doesn't feel like a play, but they talk like they're in one. I can often feel the actors trying to make a line work that they'd otherwise say differently. I'm fine with movies that feel like plays in terms of the scope. Many of my favorite movies are limited to a couple rooms or a single location. Where adaptations lose me is when the actors would clearly rather be saying all this on a stage. Please quit trying to make Shakespeare accessible like this. Keep the stories, settings, and scope. Quit committing so strongly to the exact wording.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Something Borrowed

Premise: A woman sleeps with her best friend's fiancé and tries to keep it a secret for long enough to figure out what it means.

 

I suspect that something was lost in the translation of this from book to film. In the abstract, I see the appeal of this story. It's a movie about reshuffling of relationships. Much of it is a cautionary tale about always putting others before yourself (or at the very least, with never speaking up for what you want). It has plenty of RomCom hijinks. The cast is all pretty people of a similar age with romantic and comedy movie backgrounds. I pretty much picked this movie thinking, "with that cast, I'm sure to find something to like about it."

 

However, everything about this movie is calibrated wrong. It starts off, without any other context, with Ginnifer Goodwin sleeping with her best friend's finance. It's odd to give an audience someone as immediately likable as Goodwin and start her off with such an unlikable decision. Kate Hudson, playing the best friend, is awful for most of the movie to the point where I don't understand why she and Goodwin are best friends. More importantly, I don't believe that they are best friends. At best, they are two people who can't get rid of one another. Colin Egglesfield as the fiancé is a complete dud. Like, I guess he's good looking, but there's a reason why I don't know his name, couldn't tell you another movie he's in, or pick him out of a lineup. He does not work in his movie. He's not funny. He doesn't have chemistry with Goodwin or Hudson. I wonder how much casting Chris Pine instead would've salvaged this movie. John Krasinski is too much in "sarcastic Jim" mode and spends most of the movie bad-mouthing Hudson to Goodwin, which is not a good look. The movie is just plain contemptuous of Steve Howey and Ashley Williams most of the time. I don't know what I'm supposed to be rooting for throughout. Other than, of course, for everyone to be in a movie that used them better.

 

It's a shame that Goodwin didn't get more shots at leading this kind of movie, because she's really perfect for it. She even makes parts of this work for small stretches. Hudson is actually giving a good performance. The movie doesn't know what to do with it though. I wonder how closely this movie lines up with the book, because it sure feels like there's a way to reorganize some of the scenes and alter the characters to make this a very enjoyable RomCom. As is, it's just another example of the early 2010s RomCom wasteland.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Lost Weekend

It's wild to realize that this movie was a huge deal in the eyes of critics at the time. It's one of only 3 movies to win the highest award at Cannes and win Best Picture. It won all the major awards it could. It's in the National Film Registry...And it seems so quaint now. Ray Milland's alcoholism is excessive and oversimplified. I'm sure the movie was shocking and explicit when it was released, but there's been 7 decades of movies about the same topic that have added nuance to the story and been allowed to go even uglier.

 

It's a fine movie. The performances are strong for the style of the time. It's a movie of its time though. At this point, I almost felt talked down to by the movie. It's nice to know that this is what a Best Picture winner looked like in 1945 though. That explains a lot.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Boy

I have so little to say about this. This is a horror movie I watched more as filler than as one I expected to scare me. Let's ignore the plausibility of the premise. When it's revealed that Brahms is a real "boy" wearing a mask, living inside of the walls, I mostly found it funny. Brahms just looks silly. Why's he even wearing the mask? I often joke about characters not realizing they are in a horror movie. This is the opposite. The characters seem alarmingly aware that they are in a horror movie. It would be nice if Lauren Cohan could get some better leading roles. This is just fully forgettable without being actively unwatchable.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Creep 2

Premise: An aspiring YouTuber spends a day with a man from a Craigslist ad who she doesn't realize is a murderer.

 

I think I'm out on this series. Fair or not, I just don't find Mark Duplass threatening. It may be that simple. There's a lot I should like about this movie. I have an established weakness for found footage. Unlike the first movie, this immediately establishes that Duplass is actually a threat, so most of the thrill in the movie is the dramatic irony. Desiree Akhavan has a great sarcastic energy that reminded me a lot of Natalie Morales. I appreciate how much the movie does with so little. The cast is literally 3 people. It could all be filmed using a cabin rented on Air BnB. These are all things that work in its favor. I even generally like Mark Duplass. I've seen many, many things with him and almost always like him.

 

I just don't buy him in this role. It feels like Mark Duplass doing a bit. It reminds me of Fred Armisen or Jason Mantzoukas when they are in a sketch or scene where they seem more focused on making the other cast members laugh than playing as funny to the camera/audience. That's Duplass' tone except it's not intended for laughter. It's not a threatening performance, and the character is more annoying than alarmingly weird.

 

Oh, and the fact that she doesn't double-tap him with the shovel at the end is inexcusable. You always double-tap the crazed murderer.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Destroyer

Premise: A former undercover officer tracks down the leader of a gang she infiltrated 16 years before.

 

I wish I could figure out why I didn't like this movie more. It has Nicole Kidman in a very committed performance. I love Nicole Kidman. I also love Tatiana Maslany. I really like Toby Kebbell, Scoot McNairy, Bradley Whitford, Sebastian Stan, and Toby Huss. This kind of LA crime underworld movie tends to work for me. I also like stories told in two different timelines that inform each other. On a technical level, I can't find anything wrong with the movie. I even like director Karen Kursama's previous work, especially The Invitation. Oh, and she directed the Halt and Catch Fire episode which includes the IPA vote and is a masterclass in tension.

 

I think that gets to the core of why I couldn't get more into this movie. It lacked the tension I'd expected it would have. Sure, there's some stuff like the Russian Roulette flashback (which felt over the top), but I didn't really feel like Kidman was under the gun or in much of a hurry. Sure, she wants to track Silas down. It's interesting seeing her get deeper into this underworld again. The "present" scenes felt really workmanlike though and the flashback scenes went where I figured they would. I actually like the idea of her immediately killing Silas when she finally tracks him down, because it's an unexpected anti-climax. However, the flashback before it doesn't inform that much and it all felt unsatisfying on a narrative level.

 

There's a good chance that this is one of those movies I'd like more with a second viewing, but my first viewing was mixed enough that I don't feel motivated to do that.

Nicole Kidman sure is good though. That's almost enough to give it a pass.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hooking Up

Premise: Two relative strangers go on a cross-country sex trip in order to ignore other problems in their lives.

 

Can someone please sit down any filmmakers who want to make a RomCom and remind them that it's OK to just be light and fun? I've broken down the fractioning of the RomCom over the last 15 years many times already, so I'll spare you that full diatribe again. I just want to focus on the fact that basically all the movies that look like RomComs these days are RomDramComs, and that's bumming me out.

Take Hooking Up. This is a movie with two winsome leads in Brittany Snow and Sam Richardson. Both are best known for comedies. Richardson has some of the best comic timing of anyone I've seen. In Pitch Perfect, Snow makes up for her lack of pure comic chops with boundless energy. The idea of this movie is that Snow is a sex advice columnist looking to save her job. Richardson's wife divorced him, because they'd been together since high school and she wondered what other experiences they deprived themselves of. So, Richardson and Snow go on a cross country sex trip reliving all her past dalliances. There's a charming, lightly dramatic version of this premise which would be a very nice movie. In Netflix's hands, we probably would've gotten that movie.

 

Instead, Snow is a recovering sex-addict who has never been in a relationship because her mother did a number on her. Richardson is a testicular cancer survivor who found out he's gotten it again. At one of the locations during their road trip, Snow tells a story about a distraught wife who was paralyzed in a car accident after discovering her husband cheating on her with Snow. This movie is a bummer. This might not be a problem if it was something like The Big Sick where the moments of hilarity balance out the darker moments. Hooking Up isn't that funny though. That's the part of the 90s RomCom formula that people forget. Most of those aren't very funny either. But, since the drama never gets too intense, they don't have to be. If the drama is at a 1, the comedy only needs to be a 2 for it to remain a pleasant experience. In Hooking Up though, the comedy is still only at a 2 while the drama is at a 4 or 5. That's a balance that wastes the cast assembled.

 

That's the other thing about this movie. The cast is wasted. The fact that there weren't any Sam Richardson line readings that made me laugh in this is almost inconceivable. And, I love Brittany Snow, but I don't buy her in a rude, crude, and socially unacceptable role. Not everyone is Cameron Diaz. Lucky for this movie though, even when they are badly misused, Snow and Richardson are still appealing enough to make this movie decently watchable.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Unpregnant

Premise: A teenage girl goes on a thousand-mile road trip to the nearest abortion clinic that doesn't require parental approval. 

This is a tough movie to get right. Even if you don't have an issue with abortion, it's tough to pair the seriousness of the decision with the wackiness of a road trip comedy without undermining one aspect or another. Oh course, if you are against abortion, this movie is a hard pass.

As a road trip movie, this is OK. It's more of a smile comedy than a laugh out loud comedy. It strings together a nice assortment of misadventures and complications from the stolen car to a state fair. The anti-abortion family abducting them was a bit much. Personally, I'm for abortion while doing my best to understand the complexity of the issue, but that family is too arch in a way that isn't interesting. It ends of cheapening both sides of the debate without even getting some good jokes out of it. What bothers me the most though is that this is a "needless complication" movie. Most of what goes wrong is because someone is needlessly stupid or seems to be aware that they are in a teen road trip comedy, where they know they have plot armor.

Mostly, I'm referring to Barbie Ferreira. You know, some kids are social rejects for a reason. It's not that no one is giving them a chance. They just suck to be around. That's Ferreira's character, Bailey. To be fair, the movie does call her on that. It's part of the reason she and Haley Lu Richardson stopped being friends. I don't think my issues with this character are Ferrerira's fault. I think she's a fine actress. She's good in Euphoria. I'm not sure anyone could've played this character in a way that I would like, because she's more of a plot contrivance than a character.

Really, if you are seeing this movie, it should be for Haley Lu Richardson. I really think it's a matter of when not if she's going to be a big star. She's good in everything I've seen her in. She's just plain likable no matter the character. Think, Emma Stone a decade ago*, right before she was getting cast in "grown up" roles. It's a little hard to buy Richardson as the detail-obsessed, fastidious character in this, because she's best when she's cutting loose. Again, that's more of a function of the script than the performance. When the movie calls on her to sell the seriousness of a moment, she delivers.

*It shook me to my core that I nearly said "a young Emma Stone".

I'm not sure what the great version of this movie would look like. With less contrivance, there wouldn't be a movie, but that's the exact thing that bothered me about it. It needed a softer touch in a lot of places. The boyfriend is way too extreme. Same with the anti-abortion family. And the abortion clinic scene goes a little far idealizing the process. Then again, who really wants the heavier version of this movie? That would be such a slog.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: All the King's Men

Premise: A once idealistic politician is corrupted by the very institutions he's trying to clean up.

I can't figure out if it's depressing or comforting that nothing is new in politics. No type of politician is really unique. Every generation thinks that some election is the most important election we've ever had. Ironically, everyone thinks they are the first ones to really understand the saying "If you don't learn from history, then you are doomed to repeat it". All the King's Men is a story that feels timely in literally any era. In my own notes for it, I wrote "The first half of this is what Trump's fans think he is. The last half is what Trump's haters think he is". At certain times, I could've said the same about Obama or Bush. What makes me like All The King's Men more than something like Network is that I don't think the people making this movie believe they are making a new point. All The King's Men is telling a story as old as time. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Politics is dirty. This is why even the politicians with noble intentions don't succeed with their hands still clean. It's actually quite surprising that the Sean Penn remake of this didn't find more success. It's such a timeless story.

Overall, I liked the movie. I have one pretty big issue with it though. It skips over the most interesting part. There's the period between Willie Stark's first and second gubernatorial campaigns where his most interesting character development happens. That's where he turns his momentum into power and makes all the deals with the devil. Why was that left out? It's similar to my complaint about There Will Be Blood's final act. It skips a step. Sure, I can imagine how the character got from one point to the other, but that's the part I was most hoping to actually see in the movie. Pretty much, as soon as Jack reconnects with Willie for that successful run for governor, he's already gone through most of his story arc. Apparently, there was a one point a 250-minute cut of this film. I wonder if a lot of Stark's transition was cut for time. It's pretty easy to believe this worked better as a book.

Still, it's a pretty terrific star performance from Broderick Crawford. It is quite surprising how few people I actually recognize in this cast. It's a worthy Best Picture winner in a holistic sense (I haven't seen any of the other nominees that year, so I can't compare).

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Uninvited

Premise: A girl returns from a stay at a mental hospital after an attempted suicide and comes to believe that her new step mother has nefarious intentions.

Do you know "The Game"? You know, the one you lose by thinking about it. The one that we both just lost because we thinking about it right now? That's how I feel talking about The Uninvited. So, this Reaction is really for people who have already seen it or don't care at all about it. I have no idea how people actually reviewed this movie when it was released. That's because this movie works best if you think it is incompetent. I only watched this because I was curious what this horror movie starring Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbell, and Elizabeth Banks was. I knew nothing else about it. That's for the best. I treated most of this movie like a lazy studio horror movie that was ripping off What Lies Beneath. I kept assuming it was pretty bad which turned out to be the best way to watch it. The big twist at the end took me completely by surprise. I didn't even suspect that the sister was really dead. I didn't notice that only Browning's character ever actually talked to her. The movie plays fair but it plays dirty. It has the sister talk to other people in ways where it makes sense that they'd ignore her.

Now, I don't know if the twist about the sister being dead would've worked if I thought the movie was savvy enough for a real twist. I would've either sniffed it out or at least been waiting for a twist. Instead, I was side-swiped, which was really cool. I often say that I love that my brain doesn't watch movies like puzzles. I'm only ever trying to "solve" a movie when I'm not liking it, and still I'm not very good at it. So, twists work on me a lot, and that makes me happy. Like a lot of twist movies though, The Uninvited's twist only works because I didn't know to expect it. I'm still looking for the right wording in these Reactions to say "Don't read this" but not clue anyone into the fact that there is a twist.

The cast is pretty good. It's made in that generic mid-2000s style like Hide n' Seek or The Amityville Horror remake. I can't describe it. There's just too much polish. Like the studio dimmed the lighting on a RomCom, added a spookier score, and mixed the sound more harshly. I can't say the twist makes up for how anonymous the movie otherwise felt. I think the movie shoots itself in the foot when it does a flashback to all the scenes where they leave clues about the sister not being real. Sure, show her killing the boy she liked and the stepmother since we didn't see those before. Show the flashback to how the mother and sister died. Don't remind the audience of that scene of them talking in the bathtub or the sister yelling at the dad who is sitting there silently. If you leave those out, crazies like me would probably rewatch the movie at some point to find all the clues. I still might. I did it for The Sixth Sense, although The Sixth Sense is a much better movie than The Uninvited.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Strangers: Prey at Night

Premise: A family stops as a secluded mobile home park and is attacked by mask-wearing strangers.

I haven't seen the original The Strangers, but I figured I'd be safe watching this anyway. I got the gist: Three masked strangers attack random people. Good, I'm caught up. As I always like to point out, it's hard to be mad at a movie that's less than 90 minutes long. This is in and out, without wasting much time. The family has pretty typical dynamics. It's a little frustrating that Christina Hendricks didn't get to be more of a focus in the movie, but this is a genre about final girls. So, of course Bailee Madison is the real center of this movie that owes a lot to 80's horror.

Something I do find interesting about this movie is how it rejects the idea of the first movie. The 2008 The Strangers ends with the terrorized people getting killed and the Strangers all getting away. This one kills off the Strangers. That's pretty surprising. After they survive in the first movie, you'd expect 3-4 sequels repeating the same formula before killing them off. This movie just unexpectedly says "No, this is going to be a two-installment franchise". I mean, I guess the Strangers could just mysteriously come back for another movie, but that would negate what was established in these first two movies. Now, had the Strangers been killed in the first movie, then I could assume the ones in Prey at Night are different people; that the franchise is more like the Purge: there's a network of people doing these killings. These two movies establish that it's the same group though.

I guess I'm just not that afraid of random people deciding to kill me for no reason (If I'm killed, I assume it's because I did something to motivate it, but maybe I'm an optimist), so this type of horror movie doesn't do much for me. It's more of a jump scare and "people make dumb decisions" kind of horror movie. I think it's done decently well. The empty mobile home park is a nice variation of a horror setting. It sort of feels like an abandoned summer camp but a little different. The cast is solid. I'll never object to Christina Hendricks showing up in a movie. It's nice spotting Lewis Pullman in movie movies. I hope Bailee Madison keeps getting time to do more than the Hallmark Good Witch movies/show (I'm not sure what to call that series). Oh, and Martin Henderson. A generic white guy I recognize from things...I'll have an opinion about him eventually...I think. I don't really need another Strangers movie, but I could be convinced to watch one.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: I Spit on Your Grave 2

Premise: A woman gets abducted from her home, assaulted, and trafficked to another country before escaping and getting her revenge.

Remember how I said I Spit on Your Grave really wasn't for me? Yeah, I'm not sure why I did this to myself again. The second movie in the franchise was very much the same thing. There is a long period of distressing rape sequences that go on too long. Then, when it finally gets to her turning the tables, I'm reminded that long sequences of torture aren't any more pleasant to watch.

The reason I watched though was that I was curious how they would franchise this and what corrections they'd make. To my surprise, they actually do fix a number of things that bothered me about the first movie. I didn't care for the "cultured New York woman gets raped by uneducated southern boys" angle of the first movie. It's been done to death, so I appreciated the move from the country to the city in this. Although, Eastern European sex traffickers is nearly as common a trope. Most importantly, this doesn't take the story away from the lead actress. It follows her return "from the dead" and preparations for revenge. It also foregrounds some of her survival skills early on. That's nice, because I was pretty confused how the woman in the first movie got so good at all of this.

The escalation of the sequel is both expected and too much. A rape in a remote town happening to a writer on a retreat is sort of plausible. A woman getting drugged, secretly transported to another continent, then surviving because the bottom of her shallow gave drops her into a sewer is a lot.

So, I'm still not a fan of this franchise, although, god help me, I'm kind of curious to see the third one, since it's brings back the protagonist of the first movie. I want to see how that's supposed to work. I Spit on Your Grave 2 makes me long for the simplicity of the first movie in many ways, although I appreciate a lot of the corrective steps that the screenplay makes. All in all, I rate both movies about the same. Decently made but not for me.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: All of Me

Premise: Lily Tomlin dies and inhabits Steve Martin's body, although he also has control too.

And this is why I love Steve Martin. On paper, this idea doesn't sound like much. The screenplay has to do backflips to set up the premise of Tomlin and Martin sharing his body, but the results are worth it. Steve Martin is a skilled physical comedian, and I can't think of a performance that lets him show it off more. He's wonderful at portraying his body being controlled by two minds. This is a brief 93-minute comedy. Martin's performance alone makes it worth anyone's time.

Tomlin is good too, although it feels like a waste to only have her for mirror reflection shots for most of the movie. It makes me long for a movie about her and Martin bickering in person for 90 minutes. But then I'd be deprived of his physical performance. Thus, my conundrum.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: I Spit on Your Grave

Premise: After a woman is brutally assaulted, she gets revenge on her assailants.

I don't know what I was expecting from this movie exactly. I knew there'd be an assault. Probably a rape scene. I knew there'd be revenge. Probably bloody and painful revenge. None of this suggests a movie I'd like. I prefer my horror more cerebral and slow burn. I don't care for seeing extended misery. I think I was intrigued by the idea of this as a franchise. I wasn't sure if it was the same woman getting revenge or a different woman every time. Was it something where she was the victim in the first then a proactive avenger in the rest? So, I decided to give this a try and see.

Here's what I really didn't expect: nearly half the movie is the woman's assault and those scenes go from bad to worse. That is just brutal to watch. I even turned down my TV a couple times because my windows were down and I didn't want my neighbors judging me. That was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I figured the movie would be a quick 10-15 minutes of this toward the beginning. Maybe they'd even cut to black early enough that it could mostly be implied. Then, the rest of the movie would be following her around as she plotted and executed her revenge. I didn't even get that in the last half though. The men who assaulted her become the POV characters. She just turns into a bogeyman arranging creative deaths. I like aspects of that. It's a fun idea to make the protagonist the outside, mysterious force. It doesn't ask us to pity these men at all. It's tough though when the only character I actually like only shows up for scenes of unspeakable violence.

I Spit on Your Grave is very effective at what it's trying to be. It's true to its exploitation film roots. It's uncompromising and commits to making the audience feel uncomfortable. Not that I really needed one, but it's a reminder of what it really means when we throw rape around in entertainment. The revenge kills are creative and brutal. This is just fully not my kind of movie. (Which is going to make one of my next Reactions a little odd)

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Dead Birds

Premise: Confederate bandits hide out overnight at an abandoned farmhouse where crazy things start happening.

With TV, it's commonly accepted that a good pitch does not necessarily make a good show. High concept shows have nice hooks that are easy to sell, but so often, the most successful shows come down to simple concepts like "there's these six friends" or "there's this bar". It's hard to pitch those, but they have longevity. The same principle doesn't exact carry over to movies. Plenty of my favorite movies are based on ideas that are designed to be attention-grabbing ("Harold Crick begins to hear a narrator in his head who announces his impending death"). Just as many though have trouble expressing what's good about them from pitch alone ("Two co-dependent friends try to make it to a party" undersells Superbad significantly). So, I should know better than to be attracted to a movie just because the premise sounds wild.

Look, there aren't many Western supernatural horror movies out there. It's a fun idea. That's not a period where many people think horror. That's the main reason I decided to give Dead Birds a try. It was also written by Simon Barrett, one of my favorite horror writers (V/H/S, V/H/S/2, You're Next), but I didn't realize that at the time. The promise of the pitch didn't carry through to the actual movie. Dead Birds is a pretty traditional horror movie at its core. Specifically, it's got a lot of the dumb tropes that annoy me. People constantly split up. They repeatedly ignore huge warning signs. I get that the characters don't realize they are in a horror movie, but how are none of them that freaked out by the creature they kill at the very beginning? The Western setting doesn't even add much. The script could be used for virtually any time period with hardly a rewrite. There's nothing uniquely Western about it other than the production design (which was good, but not impressive enough to justify the decision).

It had a stronger cast than I was expecting, with Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, pre-Oscar nomination Michael Shannon, pre-Sons on Anarchy Mark Boone Junior, and pre-Grey's Anatomy Isaiah Washington. Nicki Aycox is the only person who was fully new to me. Horror doesn't really need big names though. Shannon had room for a breakout performance. Instead, he played this one pretty much as expected.

The movie is decently exciting. It has some good jump scares. The ending is nicely anti-climactic. This movie is pretty rightly forgotten, but it's OK.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Inferno

Premise: A man investigates the disappearance of his sister in an old apartment building.

Look, I couldn't tell you how any two scenes of Inferno fit together. I'm only two films into Dario Argento's filmography, and I've already learned that I'm not supposed to watch him for plot. Maybe it all makes sense if I watch the movie a bunch and do some supplemental reading. I still doubt all the scenes fully track though. It's better to just enjoy the style with his movies.

The first of his movies I saw was a remastered cut of Suspiria at a midnight showing, and it instantly became one of my favorite horror movies. I was completely transfixed by the style and sound. Inferno had no hope of capturing me in the same immediate way. I knew what to expect this time. A lot of blues and reds. The weird Italian-style overdubbing. Cryptic talk about old texts. Probably the devil. And, overall, everything in Inferno felt about 80% as good as Suspiria. The music was a little less fun. Leigh McCloskey wasn't as exciting to follow around as Jessica Harper. The apartment complex isn't quite as interesting as the dance academy. The witch coven also pays off a lot more than seeing death in a mirror. The main thing that Inferno has over Suspiria is way more fire.

I want to be very clear though. I like Suspiria more, but Inferno was still pretty great. I want to find many more Argento movies to see. This movie is good. Just don't expect it to all make sense.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Lake Mungo

Premise: A "documentary" about the strange things happening to a family after the death of their daughter.

There are episodes of Unsolved Mysteries that have shaken me to my core more than most horror movies ever have. It doesn't seem like that should be possible. That show was just interviews and maybe a couple videos or pictures with some unexplained phenomena. Surely, movies designed to scare people, that have killer clowns jumping out from under the bed should frighten me more. I think it comes down to the feeling of unfinished business. I'm unsettled when I come out of something where the world no longer makes sense. That's much of the reason why I'm drawn to found footage. It's hard to have closure when the person holding the camera is also being chased. Normally, the footage just ends and I'm left to guess what happened.

In many ways, Lake Mungo is a theatrical cut of an Unsolved Mysteries episode. It's about a family getting over the death of their daughter/sister and running into unexplained occurrences after her death. It's a movie about wanting closure and not getting it. It doesn't rely on special effects. It's almost entirely talking heads. Just people telling us about spooky stuff that happened. The fake footage is almost all of mundane stuff with eerie images caught in the back of the frame. There's nothing I couldn't do with a nice camera and a little know-how. But the way it's presented is really effective. I'd be remiss to ignore the significance of the haunting but understated score throughout the film. It's great music that doesn't call attention to itself.

The end is what will stick with me, because it's a bravado move. The reason twists are hard in movies is because misdirection is more difficult with an audience watching a screen. A filmmaker, if they are playing fairly, must put the evidence on the screen and hope that the audience it's looking for it. In Lake Mungo's case, it had to hide Alice sightings and just hope the audience wouldn't notice. I'm not going back to inspect, but I'll assume the filmmakers played fair and didn't change up the pictures at the end to include the hidden Alices. Assuming that's true, then they completely succeeded. I didn't catch any of those Alice sightings originally. Revealing them at the end then made me wonder what else I could've missed. And that's how you break my brain. Congrats Lake Mungo.

I guess my only complaint about the movie is that I'm still confused about the why of a lot of it. Like, the whole business with the neighbors who had sex with Alice. It was a nifty reveal and all. I like what it says about never really knowing someone. I don't fully get the need for it though. In general, I don't understand why Alice was haunting the family. Did she have unfinished business? I don't think I would've liked hard answers, but perhaps I would've appreciated some more convincing theories. I just wanted the filmmakers to show their hand a little more than they did. Overall though, it's a small gripe, and I understand if they didn't want to risk oversharing.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Devil's Candy

Premise: A mad man terrorizes the family who moves into the house where he and his parents lived before he killed them.

Wasn't I just complaining about movies that assume horror fans love metal? This movie did nothing for me. It was a lot of my least favorite things in horror. I found the heavy-metal loving daughter annoying. She's written like the daughter every Metallica fan wished they had. Other than the fact that Ethan Embry was almost unrecognizable, his character was a bust. He's the edgy dude who can't believe he's doing art with butterflies in it, like he's some sort of pansy. No, his real art is when he starts making demonic imagery with fire and upside-down crosses. Rad, right? The villain is annoying too. He plays his electric guitar really loud, because it's the only way to drown out the voices (and look bitchin' at the same time). He also watches religious programming really loud, because we all know, watching any religious show immediately makes you brainwashed yet also possessed. Really, the only person I didn't have an issue with was Shirri Appleby who played this like she was going to take the paycheck, not ask any questions, and try to act like she fit in this world.

What really annoyed me though is that Pruitt Taylor Vince's Ray was an implausible threat. How is he so hard to find? This isn't a big town. He's not exactly a cunning guy. As soon as there's a police report on him, shouldn't they be like, "Oh he's the guy we're getting all those noise complaints about at the hotel"? He seems to be on foot most of the time and walking to a remote farm house. It's not like he's sneaking around. The cops are unbelievably incompetent at the end. And I don't mean "unbelievably" like "very" or "extremely". I mean the degree to which they are in competent is a degree that I don't believe. Again, remote farmhouse. How the hell does he sneak up on them and pin one cop between cars? And how is the other cop not 100% ready to shoot him down? People just aren't responding to situations like humans in this, and that's really annoying. Like, remember when the large creepy guy shows up unannounced at the house, chatting up the young daughter, then the wife and daughter get mad at the father for forcefully getting rid of him. Remember how implausible their reaction to the situation was?

As I said, none of the stuff I like about horror is in this movie. Except maybe Shirri Appleby. I could see her as the mom in a Blumhouse horror movie. It actually doesn't have to be a mom role either. I'd just like to see her in more than this and what UnREAL became.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Rebecca

Premise: A young woman marries a rich man who seems haunted by the death of his first wife.

I saw this movie back in the 8th grade. My teacher required everyone to watch and write about an older movie from a list he compiled*. Looking back on that, I have two thoughts: 1) That was a cooler assignment than I realized at the time, which isn't surprising, because 8th graders are the worst. Even me when I was one. 2) I really wish I still had that list. I'd love to see what he pulled from or judge his assessment of worthwhile older movies. Regardless. I chose Rebecca, because it happened to be on the night I remembered about the assignment. I can't say it made a huge impression on me at the time, but I think I liked it.

*For that same teacher, I had a project on India where I needed to find a TV program to watch about it. I found one called Land of the Tiger that covered a different aspect of Indian nature each episode. I caught episode 3, "Unknown Seas" and got a point deduction on my assignment because what I wrote about had nothing to do with tigers. That happened 20 years ago and I'm still not over it. I didn't name the damn show, Mr. Trueblood.

One thing I love about getting older is remembering things. I think it's so cool to completely forget about something, then have an image or video unlock so a cache of memories. It's not quite nostalgia, because the purpose isn't to long for those times. It's more about indexing memories that were just images floating in your head before that. And that's what it was like watching Rebecca. I didn't think I remembered it all until certain scenes would trigger recollections. I think I liked this movie just a little bit extra because of it.

This is famously Alfred Hitchcock's only Best Picture winner, which is something that is as perplexing as it is understandable. Because, for all the praise we heap on Hitchcock for his brilliance, so many of his movies are experiments in some way. Rope is the single-take(ish). Rear Window is the stationary protagonist. The Birds is the mystery of the bird attacks. Generally, with a Best Picture winner, you can't reduce it down to the idea that it began with, which you seemingly always can do with Hitchcock movies. So, I'm actually somewhat surprised Hitchcock ever won Best Picture. It's much more surprising that he never won Best Director. Rebecca makes sense as his one though. It's a pretty lavish production. Before we get to the big twist, there's a love story, especially during the first 30 minutes, that is a more traditional studio romance. Hitchcock isn't steering too hard into the gimmicks yet (and I say "gimmick" lovingly).

It's weird. Watching this, I realize I haven't seen that many Lawrence Olivier movies. Just Spartacus and this, I think. I can't say I see why he's such a legend yet, but I'm excited to eventually get to some of his Shakespeare movies. Similar story for Joan Fontaine. I've only seen her in this and as part of the ensemble in The Women. She is stunning in this movie. And it's a pretty impressive performance for someone who was only 23 at the time.

This is just a really solid movie all around. I like how it literally turns into a different kind of movie 30 minutes in, then still finds time for a twist later the shakes everything up again. I don't know that I love the way Maxim is able to get away with it all, but a lot of that has to do with my modern understanding of the burden of proof.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend