Review: ‘Prey’ (2022), starring Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope and Dane DiLiegro

August 3, 2022

by Carla Hay

Amber Midthunder and Dane DeLiegro in “Prey” (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Hulu)

“Prey” (2022)

Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

Some language in Comanche and French with no subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in North America’s Nothern Great Plains in 1719 (in the area now known as Canada), the sci-fi horror film “Prey” features a cast of predominantly Native American characters (with some white people) portraying people from the Comanche Indian tribe and white French trappers.

Culture Clash: A teenage girl from the Comanche tribe must prove her worth as a hunter when people doubt she can do it because she’s a female, and she encounters the deadly Predator from outer space. 

Culture Audience: “Prey” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Predator” franchise and anyone who doesn’t mind watching predictable, boring and idiotic horror movies.

Cody Big Tobacco, Harlan Kywayhat, Stormee Kipp, Dakota Beavers and Amber Midthunder in “Prey” (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Hulu)

“Prey” is a dull and lousy rehash and not a real origin story for “The Predator” franchise. Expect to see more of the same types of killings that are in other “Predator” movies, except that “Prey” takes place in 1719. This mindless horror flick clumsily panders to gender politics by having the theme that women are underestimated as hunters. The movie’s female protagonist literally says so in the movie, in order to explain why the Predator beast hasn’t attacked her yet.

Directed by Dan Trachtenberg and written by Patrick Aison, “Prey” is shamefully a wasted opportunity to explore and educate viewers on the Comanche Nation tribe of Native Americans, who are the primary characters in this movie’s story. Instead, the movie uses the same old tired and generic stereotypes of Native Americans in frontiers of North America (before the United States and Canada existed as nations), with “Prey” providing little to no insight on what makes the Comanche tribe special from other Native American cultures. Yes, some of the movie’s language is spoken in Comanche, but that’s about it.

Instead, “Prey” pounds viewers over the head with the concept that only one female in this tribe is brave enough to want to be a hunter alongside the men. Her name is Naru (played by Amber Midthunder), who gets constant reminders from the male members of her tribe that she’s not “good enough” to be their equal. Naru (who looks to be about 16 or 17 years old) and her tribe live in the Northern Great Plains of an area that is now part of Canada. (“Prey” was filmed on location in Alberta, Canada.)

Even though she is the focus of the movie, Naru doesn’t have anything that resembles a true personality. She’s just a combination of predictable and over-used clichés about teenage heroines who do action scenes. And that’s not a good sign when this character is supposed to be the central character in what should have been a compelling horror movie but instead is just a lackluster imitation of the worst “Predator” movies.

The first third of the movie consists of Naru trying to tell skeptical members of her tribe that there’s a predatory and deadly creature that’s not a bear or a lion. She doesn’t know what this creature is, but she’s not believed by the members of her tribe. Naru’s older brother Taabe (played by Dakota Beavers), who’s in his 20s, is one of the people who doubts Naru’s hunting abilities and what she is saying.

One of the more insulting depictions about Native American culture that “Prey” perpetuates is that it depicts Native Americans of this era as not being capable of having anything but simplistic conversations. Therefore, viewers will get mind-numbing dialogue in “Prey” such as a conversation between Naru and her disapproving mother Sumu (played by Stefany Mathias), who is barely in the movie. (Sumu’s screen time is less than 10 minutes.)

In this conversation, Sumu says to Naru: “My girl, you are so good at so many other things. Why do you want to hunt?” Naru replies, “Because you all think that I can’t.” All of the cast members are serviceable in their roles (which are hindered by the terrible screenwriting), but no one in the “Prey” cast does a great performance either.

People familiar with the “Predator” franchise already know that the Predator is a deadly mutant creature from outer space. The Predator’s standing height is about 7 to 8 feet tall, and its muscular body has human-like arms and legs. Instead of fingernails, the Predator has elongated talons. This creature has the ability to be invisible. The Predator also has vision similar to an X-ray. And the Predator doesn’t speak or give any indication for why it kills.

The way that the Predator (played by Dane DiLiegro) suddenly appears in “Prey” is an example of the movie’s tacky and cheap-looking visual effects. An origin story is supposed to explain why and how a saga started. It’s not supposed to rehash storylines that were already seen in other stories in the franchise. And that’s why, as an origin story, “Prey” is an utter and pathetic failure.

The middle and last third of “Prey” are just a series of soulless killings that have been seen in other “Predator” movies, with the only difference being that the people in the Comanche tribe and some scruffy-looking Frenchmen trappers are now the targets. The supporting characters in “Prey”—including a sexist Comanche warrior named Wasape (played by Stormee Kipp), a tribe woman named Aruka (played by Michelle Thrush) and the tribe’s Chief Kehetu (played by Julian Black Antelope)—are written as utterly forgettable or bland characters.

“Prey” is so lazy when it comes not bothering to come up with enough original ideas, it recycles the famous line uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character named Dutch in 1987’s “Predator” movie: “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” In “Prey,” Taabe says these same words to Naru. It might be the “Prey” filmmakers’ way of paying tribute to this very first “Predator” movie, but it comes across as a corny throwaway line of dialogue because no one on the “Prey” filmmaking team could think of anything better. And for people who are fans of 1987’s “Predator,” re-using this line of dialogue is just a reminder of how much of a better movie “Predator” is to “Prey.”

Naru encounters the Predator several times but manages to escape in several badly edited scenes. As Naru tells her brother Taabe, the Predator isn’t attacking her because the Predator doesn’t see her as a threat. Since when does the Predator care about the gender of its victims? Apparently, in “Prey,” the Predator somehow thinks that any female human is somehow “not a threat” and therefore less likely to be a target of the Predator. It reeks of sexism and going overboard to pander to some idea of feminism when a female comes along to challenge the Predator.

This ludicrous storyline in “Prey” is in fact the opposite of female empowerment, because the “Prey” filmmakers have now made it look like this notorious horror villain from outer space thinks female humans aren’t smart enough or strong enough to kill it. And only one female from the tribe has the courage to possibly do so. It’s the worst type of female tokenism that “Prey” takes to idiotic levels.

It should come as no surprise that Naru and the Predator do indeed have a showdown, but that doesn’t really happen until the last 15 minutes and only after Naru feels justified to do something out of “revenge.” Don’t expect anything resembling a coherent plot in this terrible movie. It’s easy to see why the movie studio decided to release “Prey” directly to streaming services instead of in theaters first, because a lot of people who would see this ripoff horror flick in cinemas would probably want a refund.

Hulu will premiere “Prey” on August 5, 2022. Outside the U.S., “Prey” will premiere on Star+ in Latin America, and Disney+ under the Star banner in other territories on August 5, 2022.

Review: ‘Abandoned’ (2022), starring Emma Roberts, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Shannon

July 24, 2022

by Carla Hay

John Gallagher Jr., Emma Roberts and Marie May in “Abandoned” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Abandoned” (2022)

Directed by Spencer Squire

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional small town of Duboisville, North Carolina, the horror film “Abandoned” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: A husband and a wife move into an isolated house that was abandoned for years, and then sinister things starts to happen. 

Culture Audience: “Abandoned” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Emma Roberts and to viewers who don’t mind watching shoddily made and monotonous horror movies.

Michael Shannon in “Abandoned” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

“Abandoned” is how to describe any hope that viewers might have that this dull and idiotic horror flick will be scary or interesting. It’s the type of derivative haunted house movie that’s just recycled trash. The terrible ending of “Abandoned” is just one of many examples of how this creatively bankrupt dud fails at even ripping off good horror movies.

Directed by Spencer Squire, “Abandoned” is so bad, it looks like the stars of the movie don’t really want to be there. Erik Patterson and Jessica Scott co-wrote the atrocious “Abandoned” screenplay, which tepidly regurgitates over-used plot devices that have been in dozens of movies about haunted houses.

There’s the family moving into a house that has a sinister history, but the family doesn’t know or doesn’t care. The house is usually in an isolated area. And there’s usually at least one young child in the house, in order for viewers to be more alarmed that any evil spirits lurking around could harm the child or children.

All of these clichés on their own or together don’t necessarily mean that a movie is going to be horrible. It’s when a movie does nothing compelling with these clichés that the filmmaking becomes lazy and irritating. “Abandoned” is an example of what not to do when making a movie about a haunted house.

“Abandoned” opens with an exterior scene of an isolated farmhouse in the fictional small town of Duboisville, North Carolina. (The movie was actually filmed in Smithfield, North Carolina.) An unseen young female can be heard screaming in the house: “You promised me I could keep one!” And then, gunshots are heard.

Forty years later, married couple Sara Davis (played by Emma Roberts) and Alex Davis (played by John Gallagher Jr.) are being given a tour of the house by a real-estate agent named Cindy (played by Kate Arrington), who is nervously eager to make this sale. Sara and Alex have brought their infant son Liam (played by Marie May) with them. Liam seems to get agitated as soon as they go inside the house, and he begins crying. Get used to hearing a baby shrieking and crying, because this movie overloads on these sound effects.

Of course, viewers can easily deduce from the opening scene that this house’s history includes at least one brutal murder. Unlike other haunted house movies where the new residents didn’t bother to get that background information, “Abandoned” has the house buyers getting that information before they purchase the house. Predictably, the house is being sold at a “too good to be true” bargain, but the house has been on the market for years.

Sara asks Cindy why the house has been for sale for such a long period of time. Alex quickly says, “I don’t want to know.” Sara responds in an insistent tone, “I want to know.” Cindy then reluctantly tells Sara and Alex that years ago, a teenager named Hannah Solomon shot her infant brother, her widowed father and herself in the house.

Cindy also hands Sara a legal-sized envelope with all the details. Later, when Sara opens the envelope, she sees news clippings about the killings and police photos of the dead bodies. How morbid. What kind of real-estate agent gives this gruesome file to a house buyer? Only a weird real-estate agent in a dumb horror movie like “Abandoned.”

Sara has this nonchalant reaction when stating that she still wants to buy the house: “We’ll take it. You know, I don’t mind a little haunting. Besides, it’s all in the past. We’re focused on the future.” Who talks like that? Only stupid house buyers in a terrible horror movie like “Abandoned.”

Alex is a veterinarian who plans to use the barn on the property as his veterinary clinic. However, the barn doesn’t have electricity. Alex expects farmers to be his main clients. However, the property is at least a one-hour drive away from the nearest farm. And so, with no electricity yet for his would-be veterinary clinic, and his potential clients living so far away, Alex has already set up major obstacles to get his veterinarian business started in this home.

Meanwhile, it’s soon revealed that Alex and Sara are moving out of an unnamed city to a rural area because Sara has been battling depression, and they want a calmer environment for her. Because the most logical place to go for more peace and quiet is a house that you think might be haunted. Who makes moronic decisions like this? Only the targets who put themselves in harm’s way in a mindless horror movie like “Abandoned.”

Soon after moving into the house, Sara notices that Liam refuses to breastfeed. And so, expect to see a lot of tedious whining from Sara about how she doesn’t like it that she has to bottle-feed milk to Liam. There are also time-wasting scenes of Alex visiting the nearest farmer to try to get some work for Alex’s fledgling veterinary business.

Sara likes to snap a rubber band that she wears around her wrist. Don’t expect the movie to explain why she has this odd habit. There’s a vague mention that Sara was getting medically treated for her depression. However, she stopped taking her medication because she was breastfeeding Liam. And now, Liam refuses to breastfeed. Sara still doesn’t want to take the medication in case Liam will start breastfeeding again.

But wait: “Abandoned” isn’t quite done using up all the over-used haunted house clichés. There’s also the creepy and secretive person who just shows up in the lives of the house’s new residents. In the case of “Abandoned,” it’s Chris Renner (played by Michael Shannon), a neighbor who wants people to call him Renner. And the way that Renner shows up is very rude and stalker-ish.

When Sara is in an upstairs bedroom, she turns around to find Renner in the room. He’s holding a case of beer as a housewarming gift, as if it’s perfectly normal to walk into a stranger’s home uninvited. During this conversation, where Sara doesn’t seem bothered at all that a stranger came into her house uninvited, Renner says that he knew the Solomon family that was killed in the murder-suicide. He also mentions that Sara looks like Hannah Solomon.

It isn’t long before Sara starts having nightmares, none of which looks very original or horrifying. In one of the nightmares, she’s surrounded by a swarm of flies. When she tells Alex about these nightmares that seem real to her, it just leads to yet another horror movie stereotype: the woman who is not believed and is then labeled as mentally ill.

Alex thinks that Sara’s depression is the reason for everything bad happening in their lives. And irresponsibly, he believes the depression will just go away because he thinks it’s post-partum depression that will disappear when Liam gets older. For someone who has a medical degree, Alex is certainly a dimwitted doctor.

Sara confesses to Alex how she feels about parenthood: “I thought it would be the best thing that would ever happen to me. It’s not.” Sara says of Liam: “I look at him, and I feel so uncomfortable, like he’s an intruder or something.” Alex’s response is the worst “in denial” medical advice ever when he tells Sara: “That’s just the depression. It’s not you. It’ll go away.”

Eventually, secrets are revealed about the house and the Solomon family. These secrets are not surprising at all and are foreshadowed very sloppily in “Abandoned.” In addition to having mediocre-to-bad performances from all of the cast members who mostly play witless characters, “Abandoned” is extremely lethargic and fails to deliver any truly terrifying scenes. Simply put: At any point in watching “Abandoned,” viewers are more likely to fall asleep in their seats rather than be at the edge of their seats.

Vertical Entertainment released “Abandoned” in select U.S. cinemas on June 17, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on June 24, 2022.

Review: ‘Nope,’ starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun

July 20, 2022

by Carla Hay

Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Brandon Perea in “Nope” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Nope”

Directed by Jordan Peele 

Culture Representation: Taking place in Santa Clarita Valley, California, the sci-fi horror film “Nope” has a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white, Asian and Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A brother and a sister, who work together on a horse ranch, join forces with a Fry’s Electronics salesman to visually document an unidentified flying object (UFO) in their area.

Culture Audience: “Nope” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Jordan Peele and stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, but this frequently monotonous and unimaginative movie is an unfortunate case of hype over substance.

Steven Yeun in “Nope” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

Does the sci-fi horror flick “Nope” live up to the hype? The title of this disappointing bore says it all. It’s a rambling, disjointed, self-indulgent mess that does nothing innovative for movies about UFOs. It’s obvious that writer/director/producer Jordan Peele got this movie made without anyone stepping in to question the very weak and lazy plot of “Nope,” and to ask for a screenplay rewrite to make drastic improvements that were desperately needed.

After the memorable originality of the previous two movies that Peele wrote and directed (2017’s “Get Out” and 2019’s “Us”), “Nope” looks like a movie that was made from a half-baked, unfinished screenplay draft that got greenlighted simply because Peele had enormous commercial and critical success with “Get Out” (which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) and “Us.” “Nope” was filmed for IMAX screens, but having a bigger screen doesn’t always make a movie better. Considering all the outstanding and classic movies about UFOs, “Nope” has the substandard story quality of a UFO movie that was thrown together for a fourth-tier cable TV network or a direct-to-video release. Yes, “Nope” is that bad.

One of the reasons why “Nope” fails to live up to the hype is because before the movie’s release, the plot was shrouded in secrecy, as if “Nope” were some kind of masterpiece whose details dare not be leaked out, in order not to reveal a brilliant plot. There is no brilliant plot or even a clever plot twist in “Nope.” It’s just a tedious, badly structured movie about some people who see a UFO in the sky and decide to visually document it because they think it will make them rich and famous.

Too bad it takes so long (not until the last third of the movie) for any real action to take place in “Nope,” which should have been an exciting sci-fi horror film, but it just drags on and on with no real substance. Just because “Nope” has some Oscar winners and the big-budget backing of a major studio, that doesn’t automatically mean that the movie is going to be good. Peele is capable of doing much better movies (as evidenced by “Get Out” and “Us”), but “Nope” just looks like a cynical cash grab from filmmakers coasting on Peele’s previous successes.

Making matters worse, the talented cast members of “Nope” are stuck portraying hollow characters with vague backstories and a lot of cringeworthy or monotonous dialogue. Keke Palmer’s Emerald Haywood character is the only one in “Nope” who comes close to having a fully formed personality, but her character is quickly reduced to being a bunch of one-note soundbites and wisecracks. Everyone else in “Nope” is written as an incomplete sketch.

Characters in “Nope” end up working together in implausible ways. “Nope” also telegraphs way too early which character will have the big “heroic” scene during the inevitable showdown in the movie’s climax. The movie’s visual effects are adequate, but definitely not spectacular for a movie concept of this scope. Intriguing subplots are dangled in front of the audience, only to be left hanging. And many of the action scenes have some horrifically subpar editing.

And why is this movie called “Nope”? It’s because during certain scenes that are supposed to be scary, one of the characters says, “Nope,” as in, “No, I’m not having this right now.” It’s supposed to be an engaging catch phrase, but it’s really very tired and unoriginal. Most of the so-called “comedy” in “Nope” is fleeting and often falls flat.

An early scene in “Nope” (which takes place in California’s Santa Clarita Valley) shows Emerald Haywood and her older brother OJ Haywood (played by Daniel Kaluuya) on the set of a TV commercial, where they have been hired as animal wranglers. OJ and Emerald have inherited a horse ranch called Haywood Ranch (in the desert-like Agua Dulce, California) from their deceased father Otis Haywood Sr. (played by Keith David, who has a flashback cameo), a groundbreaking horse wrangler who worked on a lot of Hollywood productions. The Haywoods rent out their horses in a family business called Haywood Hollywood Horses.

The siblings’ mother is not mentioned. Don’t expect to find out how long Otis has been dead. Don’t expect to find out why OJ and Emerald have a ranch with about 10 horses, but they’re the only workers on the ranch. (It’s very unrealistic.) Don’t expect to find out if OJ and Emerald really love their ranch jobs or if they’re just doing it out of family obligation. These are some of the many reasons why “Nope” is so frustratingly shallow and poorly written.

On this particular TV commercial (what the commercial is for is never stated in “Nope”), OJ and Emerald have a black horse named Lucky that has been hired to be in the commercial. The horse is being filmed indoors, in front of a green screen. It’s OJ and Emerald’s job to handle the horse and tell people on the set how to interact with the horse.

OJ and Emerald have opposite personalities. OJ is quiet and introverted. Emerald is talkative and extroverted. Kaluuya, who gave a compelling Oscar-nominated performance in “Get Out,” plays a dreadfully dull character in “Nope.” It’s not Kaluuya’s fault. The character was written that way. And it’s a waste of Kaluuya’s talent.

Emerald is so talkative that she gives a mini-lecture to all the assembled cast and crew members about how the very earliest moving picture is considered to be Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 loop of cards titled “Animal Locomotion, Plate 626,” the very first scientific study to use photography. “Animal Locomotion,” an early example of chronophotography, featured an unidentified black man riding on a horse.

Emerald then asks the assembled group if they happen to know the name of the man who rode the horse. No one knows, of course. Emerald than proudly states that the man was actually an ancestor of Emerald and OJ, and his last name was also Haywood. There’s no way to verify if what Emerald is saying is true. And the people on this set don’t really seem to care. They just want to get the job done for this commercial.

There are some racial undertones to the cast and crew’s bored reaction to Emerald’s story, since OJ and Emerald are the only African American people on this set. It might be Peele’s way of showing that people who aren’t African American are less inclined to care about African American history. OJ seems slightly embarrassed and annoyed that Emerald is telling this story to people who obviously aren’t interested. Emerald also uses this moment to announce to everyone that she’s available for work as an actor, filmmaker, stunt person and singer.

The cinematographer for this commercial is a jaded elderly man named Antlers Horst (played by Michael Wincott), who will end up encountering OJ and Emerald again much later in the movie. Also on the set is actress Bonnie Clayton (played by Donna Mills), whose job is to interact with the horse. Although it’s nice that the “Nope” filmmakers hired former “Knot’s Landing” star Mills for this movie, because she doesn’t get enough work that she deserves, her role really is a cameo, with screen time of less than five minutes.

Emerald and OJ advise everyone on the set to remain calm around Lucky. And it’s at that moment you know things are going to go wrong. Lucky gets nervous about something and starts bucking and lunging in a way that’s dangerous. Because the horse is deemed unfit to be on this set, Emerald and OJ are fired. OJ says that they need this job, but the decision has been made to let them go.

OJ and Emerald then go to Jupiter’s Claim, a California Gold Rush theme park owned and operated by Ricky “Jupe” Park (played by Steven Yeun), a former child star who often acts as a show emcee at this theme park. Jupe is married and has three sons, ranging in ages from about 7 to 12 years old. Jupe’s wife Amber Park (played by Wrenn Schmidt) works with him at Jupiter’s Claim. Their sons Colton Park (played by Lincoln Lambert), Phoenix Park (played by Pierce Kang) and Max Park (played by Roman Gross) have brief appearances in the movie.

OJ decides that he’s going to sell Lucky to Jupe. Emerald is upset by this decision, but OJ reassures her that he plans to buy Lucky back when he has the money to do so. It’s a transaction that OJ and Jupe have done before, so Jupe is aware that his ownership of Lucky will probably be temporary.

Jupe knows about OJ’s financial problems and has been offering to buy OJ and Emerald’s ranch, but so far the offer has been declined. Later in the movie, OJ explains he’s not willing to give up Haywood Ranch because he wants to continue his father’s legacy: “He changed the industry. I can’t just let that go.”

It’s during this horse-selling transaction scene that viewers find out a little bit more about OJ and Emerald. OJ is the main caretaker and operator of the ranch. Emerald considers the ranch to be her “side job,” but she doesn’t really have a permanent career, because she jumps around from job to job as her main source of income. Emerald is also the “partier” of these two siblings: She likes to vape and is open about her fondness of smoking marijuana.

The siblings have some unspoken resentment about responsibilities for the ranch, as well as unresolved feelings about the death of their father. Later in the movie, Emerald confesses to OJ that when they were children, she was jealous when their father asked OJ to help train a Haywood family-owned horse named Jean Jacket, a horse that Emerald says she hoped would be the very first horse she would train and own. Get ready to roll your eyes: Later in the movie, the outer space entity in “Nope” is given the name Jean Jacket.

Emerald is openly queer or a lesbian, because she often dates women she works with or meets through her jobs. OJ mildly scolds Emerald about it because he thinks it’s unprofessional for her to mix her love life with her work life. Emerald brushes off his concerns. Meanwhile, as an example of how “Nope” doesn’t have a lot of character development, nothing is ever mentioned about OJ’s love life or anything about his life that isn’t about the ranch.

As for Jupe, he has an interesting background that is sloppily explored in “Nope.” Jupe’s main claim to fame as a child actor in the 1990s was playing a supporting character named Jupiter in a big hit movie called “Kid Sheriff” and then starring in a TV comedy series called “Gordy’s Home,” which was on the air from 1996 to 1998. In the meeting that Jupe has with OJ and Emerald, Jupe shows them a secret room where he keeps “Kid Sheriff” memorabilia. Jupe proudly mentions that a Dutch couple paid him $50,000 just so the couple could spend a night in this room.

Jupe’s experience with “Gordy’s Home” is what led him to quit being an actor. In “Gordy’s Home,” Jupe played an adopted child in a white family of two parents and an older sister. The family had a pet chimp named Gordy, and a lot of the show’s comedy revolved around this monkey’s antics.

Something shocking and traumatic happened one day while filming an episode of “Gordy’s Home.” And as an adult, Jupe still doesn’t want to talk about it, based on how he reacts when it’s quickly mentioned in a conversation between Jupe and OJ. What happened on that fateful day on the set of “Gordy’s Home” was big news. And this incident is shown as a flashback in “Nope.”

However, the way this flashback is dropped into “Nope” is so random and out-of-place, it’s very mishandled. This flashback is then never referred to or explained again in the movie. It’s a suspenseful scene, but it almost has no bearing on the overall story of “Nope” and seems to be in the movie only for some shock value.

It doesn’t take long for “Nope” to show the UFO (a generic-looking saucer-shaped object), which is first seen by OJ when he’s at the ranch. After he tells Emerald about it (his description is vague, because OJ is written as someone who’s barely articulate), Emerald immediately thinks they should try to film the UFO so they can get rich and famous from the footage.

And so, Emerald and OJ go to Fry’s Electronics to stock up on video surveillance equipment. Fry’s Electronics and the company logo get so much screen time in “Nope,” it’s brand placement overload. (All of this promotion of Fry’s Electronics in “Nope” is not going to do Fry’s Electronics much good anyway. In real life, Fry’s Electronics went out of business in 2021, the same year that “Nope” was filmed.)

At the store, OJ and Emerald meet sales clerk Angel Torres (played by Brandon Perea), who is overly talkative and curious about why OJ and Emerald are getting so much video surveillance equipment. Angel correctly guesses that it’s because OJ and Emerald want to film a UFO, but OJ and Emerald deny it. Angel also happens to be the Fry’s employee who delivers the equipment and helps install it. And you know what that means: Angel eventually finds out the truth, and he teams up with OJ and Emerald in their quest.

Angel is prominently featured in “Nope,” but he’s another example of an underwritten character in the movie. Viewers will learn nothing about Angel except that he was recently dumped by an actress ex-girlfriend named Rebecca Diaz, who was in a relationship with him for four years. Angel overshares this information the first time that he meets OJ and Emerald while lamenting that Rebecca broke up with him to star in a TV series on The CW network. OJ and Emerald don’t care, and neither will viewers of “Nope.”

Angel also goes on a mini-rant about how he doesn’t like how UFOs are now expected to be called UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), because he likes the term UFO more. And once again: OJ and Emerald don’t care, and neither will viewers of “Nope.” Angel isn’t too annoying, but he will get on some viewers’ nerves because of his condescending, know-it-all attitude.

Without going into too many details, “Nope” makes some weird decisions on what technology is used to visually document the UFO. Even with a lot of modern digital technology at their disposal, the people in this UFO-sighting group use some very outdated and clunky cameras that require film. The explanation provided is very phony and overly contrived.

Apparently, the “Nope” filmmakers thought it would like cool to have the characters using retro cameras that require film, even though film could be ruined a lot easier than digital footage. It makes no sense, except to add unnecessary hassles for the people trying to visually document this UFO. And yes, there’s a scene where a camera’s film needs to be inconveniently changed at a pivotal moment.

It should come as no surprise that the alien life form that’s hovering in the sky abducts living beings. The way this alien life form looks is not very original at all. However, even these abduction scenes are handled in an idiotic way in “Nope.” And none of it is truly terrifying.

There’s a scene where 40 people are abducted at the same time, but the abduction is mostly suggested and shown in brief flashes. This mass abduction makes the news. However, “Nope” has no realistic depictions of the huge investigations and military reactions that would ensue, or how much of a circus the abduction scene would be for the media and curiosity seekers.

When Emerald goes back to the abduction scene later in the movie, the place is deserted, and she has free access to the place, with no law enforcement, military, security personnel or media in sight of this notorious crime scene. It’s all just so stupid. And it’s very easy to predict which characters will survive during this mess, based on how often and how close the alien life form “chases” certain characters out in open fields (making them easy targets), but the alien life form never abducts them.

But the worst plot hole of all is that viewers are supposed to believe that for a certain period of time, only OJ and Emerald have witnessed this giant UFO that appears numerous times in the sky and would actually be seen for miles. It’s as if the “Nope” filmmakers want viewers to think that the only people who can see the UFO in the sky during these times are either at the ranch or looking at the ranch’s closed-circuit live surveillance footage, which Angel does because he’s nosy. It’s pathetic storytelling.

“Nope” also has pretentiously titled chapters, such as “Ghost” (named after the ranch’s white horse that doesn’t do anything but run away and come back a few times), “Clover,” “Gordy” and “Jean Jacket.” There’s not a consistent through line for these chapters, which are as haphazard as a mismatched jigsaw puzzle. The chapter titled “Gordy” is the one that shows the tragic incident that happened on the set of “Gordy’s Home.”

“Nope” has a few moments that effectively build tension for viewers to wonder what’s going to happen next. (There’s also a fake jump scare scene that would have been more interesting if it were real jump scare in the story.) But as a horror movie, “Nope” fails miserably to be frightening. There are parts of this movie that are so boring, some viewers will fall asleep. Don’t expect “Nope” to give a reason or a purpose for any life forms that come from outer space. In fact, don’t expect “Nope” to have a reason to exist other than to make blockbuster money and fool people into thinking that it’s a high-quality, entertaining movie.

Universal Pictures will release “Nope” in U.S. cinemas on July 22, 2022.

Review: ‘Monstrous’ (2022), starring Christina Ricci

July 17, 2022

by Carla Hay

Christina Ricci in “Monstrous” (Photo by Mercy Hasselblad/Screen Media Films)

“Monstrous” (2022)

Directed by Chris Sivertson 

Culture Representation: Taking place in California, the horror film “Monstrous” has an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A divorced mother moves from Mesa, Arizona, to California, where she and her 7-year-old son start being attacked a ghostly monster that appears to live in a backyard lake.

Culture Audience: “Monstrous” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Christina Ricci and anyone who doesn’t mind watching dull haunted house movies that recycle the same old clichés.

A scene from “Monstrous” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

The only thing that’s monstrous about the limp and boring horror film “Monstrous” is how it’s a waste of time for viewers and a waste of Christina Ricci’s talent. It’s yet another unimaginative horror flick about a family living in an isolated wooded area while being attacked by an evil spirit. There’s a surprise “reveal” toward the end of the movie which is not shocking at all because viewers can see the very obvious clues long before this plot twist is divulged.

Directed by Chris Sivertson and written by Carol Chrest, “Monstrous” is a poorly conceived misfire from start to finish. The movie appears to take place in the mid-1950s, based on the cars in the movie and the way that Ricci’s lead character Laura Butler dresses and styles her hair. Laura, who is divorced, has secretly moved from Mesa, Arizona, to an unnamed city in California with her 7-year-old son Cody (played by Santino Barnard), a generic horror movie kid whose only purpose is to act wide-eyed and scared. You can almost do a countdown to when Cody starts having nightmares.

Laura and Cody are living in a rental farmhouse in an isolated wooded area near a lake. The house owners are an elderly couple named Mr. Langtree (played by Don Durrell, also known as Don Baldaramos) and his wife Leonora (played by Colleen Camp), who both live not too far from the farmhouse. Mr. Langtree (whose first name is never mentioned in the movie) is a lot friendlier than Leonora, who is cranky and suspicious of Laura. Observant viewers who notice how Leonora talks and how she’s dressed won’t be surprised by the “twist” that comes later in the movie.

Laura starts a new job as a typist/secretary in a 1950s-styled office. There’s really no point to these office scenes except to show that Laura’s co-worker Jane (played by Carol Anne Watts) appeared in a prior nonsensical hallucinatory type scene where Laura imagined herself as a terror victim in a 1950s-styled horror movie. Jane appears in this imaginary horror flick and tells Laura, “Don’t be afraid.”

Why did Laura and Cody abruptly and secretly move to California? It’s because Laura is living in fear of her abusive ex-husband Scott (voiced by Matt Lovell), who is never seen in the movie but is heard on the phone when he makes menacing calls to Laura. Scott’s physical and emotional abuse of Laura, which Cody has witnessed, is the main reason why Laura divorced Scott.

Laura has sole custody of Cody, but Scott has visitation rights. Laura has decided she wants to go into hiding because she doesn’t want Scott to see her and Cody anymore. Somehow, Scott finds out Laura’s new phone number. And when Scott calls her, she’s horrified and hangs up immediately before any conversation can happen.

Soon afterward, Laura’s mother (voiced by Nancy O’Fallon) calls. Laura tells her mother (who doesn’t have a first name in the movie) that Scott called Laura just a few minutes earlier. And then, Laura’s mother admits that she went against Laura’s wishes to keep Laura’s new phone number a secret, and she gave Laura’s new phone number to a few people. Scott could’ve have gotten the phone number from one of those people.

Laura scolds her mother for this breach of trust. And now, Laura fears that Scott might be coming to California for a confrontation. Laura’s mother says to her: “He just wants to talk to you. He feels so bad.”

Laura replies, “I don’t care how he feels. I don’t know how you can speak to him after what he did. You’re supposed to be on our side. Grandma would be!”

The “grandma” Laura is speaking about is the mother of Laura’s mother. “Monstrous” has some tedious flashbacks of Laura remembering her childhood that she spent with her grandmother. (Lola Grace, also known as Lola Grace Holmes, portrays Laura as a child.) These flashbacks are filmed in a hokey way.

For example, the adult Laura is seen sitting in a chair underneath a blanket, which segues to a flashback of Laura as a child sitting underneath a blanket in the attic of her childhood home. Her grandmother (played Rachael Edlow) then approaches Laura, removes the blanket, and then says to Laura, “I thought it was Mrs. Seton’s ghost.”

The purpose of the flashback scenes is to show that Laura’s grandmother had psychic abilities to see ghosts. And maybe Laura does too. When Cody starts having nightmares, he tells her that a female ghost comes out of the backyard lake and attacks him. At first, Laura doesn’t believe Cody until it starts happening to Laura.

Cody wants to go back to Mesa, and he says he’s forgiven his father. However, Laura feels the opposite way. Expect to see some arguing back-and-forth between Laura and Cody over these issues. Oscar-winning “Green Book” co-writer Nick Vallelonga has a small and useless role as a legionnaire who dances with Laura when she goes to a bar to meet new people.

The monster continues to appear at the farmhouse and takes many forms, with none being truly terrifying. Sometimes it looks like a creature with tentacles. Sometimes it looks like a swamp woman. During one laughably bad part of the movie, the monster ends up on the house’s roof, looking like someone in a cheap Halloween costume.

Laura tells the Langtrees about the monster attacks, but these two landlords are skeptical. Leonora insists that Laura probably just saw a raccoon. And then another horror cliché kicks into gear: The woman who’s attacked by an evil spirit is not believed, and people start to think she’s mentally ill and that she’s the one who’s the problem.

Laura has a psychiatrist in Arizona named Dr. Weaver (voiced by Chris Mullinax), whom she calls and asks if she can go back on the medication she was on before she moved to California. He tells her it’s not a good idea. Laura also calls a local Catholic church to report that there’s a demon in her house. A nun named Sister Agnes (voiced by Anjoum Agrama), takes the call, but then hangs up on Laura.

All of it is just so mind-numbingly predictable, as the movie drags on and on with more uninspired scenarios of the monster emerging from the lake and continuing to go after Cody and Laura. “Monstrous” is such a relentlessly dull horror move, the intended jump scares could put people to sleep. Ricci seems to be trying hard to make everything convincing, but she’s stuck in a horror movie that is thoroughly unconvincing at being scary or even the bare minimum of interesting.

The “reveal” in “Monstrous” is quite anti-climactic, but you can tell the “Monstrous” filmmakers thought it would be a clever twist, even though there are many other horror movies that have already done versions of this plot twist. In other words, it’s not clever at all. It just exposes more plot holes in “Monstrous.” Viewers will forget this dreadful movie quicker than you can say “M. Night Shyamalan ripoff.”

Screen Media Films released “Monstrous” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 13, 2022. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 5, 2022.

Review: ‘The Black Phone,’ starring Ethan Hawke

June 16, 2022

by Carla Hay

Ethan Hawke and Mason Thames in “The Black Phone” (Photo by Fred Norris/Universal Pictures)

“The Black Phone”

Directed by Scott Derrickson

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in Denver in 1978, the horror film “The Black Phone” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 13-year-boy, who gets kidnapped by a serial killer, is kept in the killer’s basement, where the boy gets phone calls from the ghosts of the other teenage boys who were murdered by the killer. 

Culture Audience: “The Black Phone” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Ethan Hawke and anyone looking for a tension-filled horror movie that isn’t a remake or a sequel.

Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw in “The Black Phone” (Photo by Fred Norris/Universal Pictures)

Creepy and suspenseful, the horror movie “The Black Phone” has the ghosts of murdered children as story catalysts, but the movie’s equally harrowing moments are in depicting realistic child abuse that can come from a stranger, a family member or a schoolmate. “The Black Phone” does everything a horror flick is supposed to do: keep audiences on edge, have well-acted memorable characters, and deliver plenty of moments that are genuinely terrifying.

Directed by Scott Derrickson, “The Black Phone” reunites Derrickson with several key players involved in the making of Derrickson’s 2012 sleeper hit horror film “Sinister,” including co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, producer Jason Blum and actors Ethan Hawke and James Ransone. Just like in “Sinister,” Hawke has the starring role, while Ransone has a pivotal supporting role in “The Black Phone.” Both movies are from Blumhouse Productions, the company owned by Blum, whose specialty is mainly horror. Both movies are effective horror films, but “Sinister” was a haunted house story based entirely on supernatural occurrences, while “The Black Phone” taps into the real-life horror of child kidnapping and murders with some supernatural elements as part of the story.

“Sinister” had an original screenplay by Derrickson and Cargill. The screenwriting duo adapted “The Black Phone” from a short story of the same title in author Joe Hill’s 2005 collection “20th Century Ghosts.” (Hill is the son of horror master Stephen King.) In the production notes for “The Black Phone,” Derrickson says many aspects of the movie (including the scenes of the movie’s protagonist being bullied at school) were directly inspired by his childhood growing up in Denver in the 1970s. “The Black Phone” takes place in Denver in 1978.

The movie opens with a seemingly idyllic scene of teenage boys playing a casual game of baseball. Two of the players in the game are 13-year-old Finney Blake (played by Mason Thames) and Bruce Yamada (played by Tristan Pravong), who are both classmates in the same school. (Some movie descriptions list Finney’s last name as Shaw, but his surname in the movie is definitely Blake.) After the game, Bruce is kidnapped by someone driving a mysterious black van.

Bruce’s abduction is the latest in a series of incidents in the northern Denver area, where other teenage boys have gone missing and are widely believed to be kidnapped. Bruce is the fourth boy to have disappeared. The other three missing kids are Griffin Stagg (played by Banks Repeta, also known as Michael Banks Repeta), the neighborhood paper boy Billy Showalter (played by Jacob Moran) and an angry troublemaker named Vance Hopper (played by Brady Hepner). The police who are investigating have very little information to go on, since most of the disappearances had no known witnesses. All of the boys are believed to be have been kidnapped while they were outside on the streets.

While people in the area are feeling that children are unsafe on the streets, Finney (who sometimes goes by the name Finn) and his 11-year-old sister Gwendolyn “Gwen” Blake (played by Madeleine McGraw) fear for their safety inside their own home. That’s because their widower father Terrence Blake (played by Jeremy Davies) is a violent alcoholic. Terrence is especially brutal to Gwen, because she has psychic abilities that he wants her to deny. Gwen’s psychic visions usually come to her in dreams.

Based on conversations in the movie, viewers find out that Gwen inherited these psychic abilities from her mother, who committed suicide. Terrence blames the suicide on these psychic abilities because the kids’ mother (who doesn’t have a name in the movie) claimed that she heard voices. Terrence says that these voices eventually told her to kill herself. The movie doesn’t go into details about when Terrence became an alcoholic, but it’s implied he’s been on a downward spiral since his wife’s suicide.

After Bruce disappears, somehow the police find out that Gwen told people about a dream she had that Bruce was abducted by a man driving a black van and carrying black balloons. Because two black balloons were found at the place where Bruce was last seen alive (the police did not make the black balloon information available to the public), investigators from the Denver Police Department—Detective Wright (played by E. Roger Mitchell) and Detective Miller (played by Troy Rudeseal)—interview Gwen at school and at her home. She is defiant and defensive over the cops’ suspicions that she knows more than she telling.

Gwen starts cursing at the cops and swears she has nothing to do with the disappearances of Brandon and the other missing boys. When Gwen is asked to explain how she knew about the black balloons, all Gwen will say is, “Sometimes my dreams are right.” Terrence is present during this interview. He’s nervous and apprehensive that the cops are in his home. He’s also angry that Gwen is being disrespectful to the cops.

After the police detectives leave, it leads to a heart-wrenching scene where a drunk Terrence viciously beats Gwen with a belt and demands that she repeat, “My dreams are just dreams.” Sensitive viewers, be warned: This is a hard scene to watch, and it might be triggering for people who’ve experienced this type of violence. During this beating, Finney just stands by helplessly and watches, but later in the movie, he expresses guilt and remorse about not stopping his father from assaulting Gwen. As abused children, Finney and Gwen often rely on each other for emotional support.

Finney is introverted and doesn’t have any close friends at school. However, things start looking up for him a little bit in his biology class when the students have to do dissections of frogs and are required to have a lab partner. No one wants to be Finney’s lab partner except a girl named Donna (played by Rebecca Clarke), who is a fairly new student. Donna indicates that she likes Finney and probably has been noticing him for a while. His bashful reaction shows that the attraction is mutual.

Finney experiences physical violence at school, where he is targeted by three bullies. One day, in the men’s restroom at school, these three bullies corner Finney and are about to assault him. However, a tough teenager named Robin Arreland (played by Miguel Cazarez Mora), who’s also a student at the school, intervenes and scares off the bullies because Robin is known to be a brutal fighter. Robin advises Finney to be better at standing up for himself.

Eventually, Robin and Finney get to know each other too. They don’t become best friends, but they become friendly acquaintances. This budding friendship is interrupted when Robin disappears, not long after Bruce has gone missing. The cops visit the Blake home again, but Gwen has nothing further to add, mainly because she terrified about divulging to the cops what she has dreamed.

It isn’t long before Finney is kidnapped too. This isn’t spoiler information, since it’s shown in the trailers for “The Black Phone.” His kidnapper is nicknamed The Grabber (played by Hawke), and he approaches Finney on a late afternoon when Finney is walking down a residential street by himself. The Grabber (who has long hair and is wearing white clown makeup, sunglasses and a top hat) is driving a black van with the logo of a company named Abracadabra Entertainment and Supplies.

When The Grabber sees Finney, he pretends to stumble out of the van and spill a bag of groceries. Finney offers to help him pick up the groceries. The Grabber tells the teen that he’s a part-time magician and asks Finney if he wants to see a magic trick.

Finney agrees somewhat apprehensively, and his nervousness grows when he notices that there are black balloons in the van. When Finney asks this stranger if he has black balloons in the van, the stranger kidnaps him. Finney has now become the sixth teenage boy to disappear in the same neighborhood.

Finney is kept in a dark and dingy house basement that has a mattress and a toilet. On the wall is a black phone that The Grabber says is disconnected. “It hasn’t worked since I was a kid,” The Grabber tells a terrified Finney.

The Grabber (who usually wears grinning clown masks that look similar to DC Comics’ The Joker character) tells Finney not to bother yelling for help, because the entire basement is soundproof. There’s only one door to and from the basement. It goes without saying that the door is locked from the outside. The Grabber also has a black pit bull as a guard dog.

“The Black Phone” has several scenes that show how The Grabber is a completely twisted creep. There’s a scene where Finney wakes up to find the masked Grabber staring at Finney because The Grabber says he just wanted to spend time looking at Finney. When Finney says he’s hungry and asks for food, The Grabber won’t feed him right away. There are other scenes where The Grabber uses intimidation and mind games to keep Finney under his control.

Even though The Grabber says that the black phone in the basement doesn’t work, shortly after Finney becomes imprisoned in the basement, the phone rings. The first time that Finney picks up the phone, he doesn’t hear anything. The next time the phone rings, he hears static and a voice of a boy who sounds far away. It’s the first indication that Finney has psychic abilities too.

It was already revealed in the trailers for “The Black Phone” that much of the movie is about Finney getting calls from the ghosts of the boys who were murdered by The Grabber. The only real spoiler information for “The Black Phone” would be the answers to these questions: “Does Finney escape? If so, how?” “Does Gwen use her psychic abilities to help find Finney?” “What will ultimately happen to The Grabber?”

Another character who is part of the story is a man in his early 40s named Max (played by Ransone), who gets on the radar of police because Max has become obsessed with the cases of the missing boys. Max is a cocaine-snorting loner who thinks of himself as an amateur detective. His home is filled with newspaper clippings and other items related to the investigations about the missing boys.

Even though a lot of information about the “The Black Phone” plot is already revealed in the movie’s trailers, there’s still much about the movie that’s worth seeing. (Audiences also got a early showings of “The Black Phone” when it screened at film festivals, including the 2021 edition of Fantastic Fest, where “The Black Phone” had its world premiere.) The scenes where Finney communicates with the dead boys are absolutely haunting and often mournful. These scenes include some flashbacks to the boys’ lives before they were kidnapped.

Vance’s flashback scene is artfully filmed as a 1970s hazy memory, as are many of the flashback scenes. Sweet’s 1974 hit “Fox on the Run” is used to great effect in this scene, which takes place in a Shop-N-Go convenience store where Vance is playing pinball. Gwen’s dream sequences were filmed using Super 8 film, which was the standard film type for home movies in the 1970s.

The production design, costume design, hairstyling, makeup and cinematography in “The Black Phone” all give the movie an authentic-looking recreation of the 1970s. The movie’s soundtrack includes some well-chosen songs, including the Edgar Winter Group’s 1972 hit “Free Ride,” which is played in the movie’s happy-go-lucky baseball game scene that opens the movie. (Coincidentally, “Free Ride” and “Fox on the Run” were also prominently featured in writer/director Richard Linklater’s 1993 classic comedy “Dazed and Confused,” which is an ode to 1970s teens.)

“The Black Phone” also has pop culture mentions to movies of the era. Finney and Robin talk about the 1974 horror movie “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” which Finney says his strict father would never allow him to see because he’s underage. Robin says he has an uncle who takes Robin to movie theaters to watch rated R movies. They also enthusiastically discuss the 1973 Bruce Lee action film “Enter the Dragon,” which is “The Black Phone” filmmakers’ nod to how popular Lee was with teenage boys in that era. Later, Finney is seen watching the 1959 horror movie “The Tingler” on TV one night, which is a scene inspired by director Derrickson doing the same thing when he was a child.

“The Black Phone” also accurately depicts the limited resources that people had if children went missing in 1978, long before the Internet and smartphones existed. It was also before missing kids’ photos were put on milk cartons, inspired by the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who was kidnapped while walking by himself to school in New York City. It was also before the 1981 abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, who was taken from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida. As a result of this tragedy, Adam’s father John Walsh later founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The 1970s decade was also a prolific time for notorious serial killers, including Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, the Hillside Stranglers and the Son of Sam. According to the production notes for “The Black Phone,” The Grabber character was at least partially based on Gacy, who did part-time work as a party clown. Most of Gacy’s victims were teenage boys and young men whom he lured into his home by hiring them to do temporary housecare jobs. Gacy’s crimes had a sexual component that’s not included in “The Black Phone,” although there are hints that The Grabber could also be a child molester when it’s mentioned that The Grabber likes to play a game called Naughty Boy.

In his portrayal of The Grabber, Hawke gives a viscerally disturbing performance that will linger with viewers long after the movie ends. Thames makes an impressive feature-film debut as Finney, who goes through a wide range of emotions in the movie. McGraw is also a standout in her portrayal of feisty and sometimes foul-mouthed Gwen. “The Black Phone” has some comic relief in how Gwen is ambivalent about the Christianity that she has been taught. And although Robin’s screen time is brief, Mora is quite good in this portrayal of a character who makes an impact on Finney’s life.

Despite some predictable plot developments, “The Black Phone” is a better-than-average horror movie because it doesn’t forget that the story and characters should be more important than showing a lot of violence and gore. The movie does have violence and gore, but it’s not gratuitous. “The Black Phone” also makes a point of showing that abuse crimes don’t always come from strangers, but that abuse is often hiding in plain sight in schools and in families, where the abuse is committed by people who seem to be “upstanding citizens.” It’s this message that should resonate as a warning that a lot of horror in this movie continues to happen in real life.

Universal Pictures will release “The Black Phone” in U.S. cinemas on June 24, 2022.

Review: ‘Crimes of the Future’ (2022), starring Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart

June 4, 2022

by Carla Hay

Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart in “Crimes of the Future” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Crimes of the Future” (2022)

Directed by David Cronenberg

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city, the horror film “Crimes of the Future” has a predominantly white cast (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two performance artist collaborators, who multilate bodies and perform organ surgeries as part of their act, encounter people who have their own bizarre agendies on how to change this act. 

Culture Audience: “Crimes of the Future” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker David Cronenberg and squeamish-inducing movies that don’t offer easy answers.

Scott Speedman in “Crimes of the Future” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Crimes of the Future” is not a crime drama but a body horror movie that has something unique to say about a society that becomes numb to mutilations. The movie’s striking visuals and enigmatic story can intrigue viewers who are ready for a slow-paced cinematic challenge. “Crimes of the Future” is definitely not writer/director David Cronenberg’s best movie, and it’s sure to be divisive, depending on people’s expectations before seeing this film.

“Crime of the Future” takes place in an unnamed part of the world where most people speak English with an American or Canadian accent, but there are plenty of people with accents from other places outside of North America. (The movie was actually filmed in Athens, Greece. “Crimes of the Future” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France.) Wherever the story takes place, it’s in an unnamed era when certain people’s bodies have evolved to be immune to pain, and they have the ability to grow organs that are outside the “norm.”

As such, it’s become a form of entertainment for live, invasive surgeries to be performed on these people. If a new organ is discovered during this type of surgery, it’s extracted and treated almost like a rare jewel or a prized trophy. These organs are then put on display. At the same time, a secretive National Organ Registry exists to find and register these taboo organs, which are often tattooed for identification purposes. The National Organ Registry keeps records of as many tattooed organs as it can find.

One of the people who has this ability to grow new organs is Saul Tenser (played by Viggo Mortensen), a solemn and pensive type who walks around wearing a black hooded cloak when he’s in public. If Saul had a scythe, he would look like he’s in a Grim Reaper costume. At home, Saul spends a lot of time in an OrchidBed, a half-cocoon-like device with tentacles, where he is routinely examined for possible new organs growing inside of him. Saul also uses a chair called the Breakfaster, which has arm rests that resemble and move like human arms.

Saul lives with his work partner Caprice (played by Léa Seydoux), a former surgeon who left the medical profession behind to become a full-time performance artist. Caprice is someone who does livestreamed surgeries as part of her performance act with a willing Saul. They both think that what they are doing is high art, but Caprice is much more fanatical about it than Saul is, and she’s the one who often does internal body examinations of Saul. Caprice and Saul’s act is called “Body Is Reality.”

Meanwhile, the beginning of “Crimes of the Future” shows the murder of an 8-year-old boy named Brecken Dotrice (played by Sozos Sotiris), who was smothered to death with a pillow by his mother Djuna (played by Lihi Kornowski) while Brecken was sleeping in his bed. Before he was killed, his mother observed Brecken eating a plastic garbage can in the bathroom, in a way that suggested that she’s seen him do this before. After Djuna killed Brecken, she called someone to come pick up the body.

“It will be here, but I won’t be,” Djuna said matter-of-factly to the person she was talking to on the phone. But when she hung up the phone, she started crying. The scene then shows that the man who arrives at the house to retrieve the body is Lang Dotrice (played by Scott Speedman), Brecken’s father. When Lang sees Brecken’s body, he also starts to sob. What is going on here? It’s explained later in the movie, which also shows what happened to Djuna and Lang.

The harvesting of organs has become a lucrative business. Some people see it as art, while others see it as a crime. But what concerns law enforcement the most in this story is that people with the ability to grow organs abnormally can pass down this ability genetically, thereby possibly creating a population of mutants. It’s the movie’s way of commenting on how eugenics play a role in this society.

During the course of the story, three people are heavily involved in finding and investigating people who have these “mutant” genetics. The National Organ Registry is operated by a stern agent named Wippet (played by Don McKellar), who calls “desktop surgery in public” a “fad” and “repulsive.” Wippet has a subordinate colleague named Timlin (played by Kristen Stewart), who is scientifically curious and less judgmental about these surgeries. And there’s a law enforcement officer named Detective Cope (played by Welket Bungué), who’s on the lookout for people with mutant genes. All three of these people encounter Saul and Caprice at various times during the movie.

Detective Cope works for a department called New Vice. He jokes to Saul that the department got that name because it sounded “sexier than Evolutionary Derangement.” Detective Cope adds, “Sexier gets more funding.” The detective also has a personal reason to hunt for mutants, because he believes that one of his colleagues was deliberately killed by a mutant. It has to do with a plastic candy bar that looked like real chocolate and was ingested by this cop, who died from eating this fake candy bar.

The live surgeries attract elite crowds that have the money to see this type of “high art.” The movie is a not-so-subtle commentary on how morality boundaries can change in a society that reaches a point where something such as paying to see live surgeries is acceptable, as long as it makes a lot of money. At the same time, anything that makes a lot of money is open to getting scrutiny from those who want to regulate and control it.

“Crimes of the Future” also shows how anything that makes a lot of money is often deemed sexy and desirable. More than once, people make a comment that says that this type of surgery is “the new sex.” There are multiple scenes that show how open surgery wounds or surgery scars are considered erotic.

One of the movie’s more visually memorable images is of a man—who has ears that look like skin growths all over his body—getting his eyes and mouth sewn shut before he does a provocative dance for an audience. And there’s a subplot in “Crimes of the Future” about the concept of internal organs being “inner beauty,” with Saul being encouraged to enter an “inner beauty contest.” If all of this sounds too weird to watch in a movie, then “Crimes of the Future” is not for you.

Many scenes in “Crimes of the Future” are meant to make viewers uncomfortable. The live surgery scenes are not for viewers who get easily squeamish. On the other hand, the movie is not as gruesome as many other “blood and guts” horror films. What might make people more uncomfortable than the sight of seeing someone’s intestines being poked, prodded and extracted is the fact that the society in this movie is so casual about these procedures being so public.

“Crimes of the Future” is by no means a perfect movie. The story gets somewhat repetitive in making its point about how art, commerce and morality can get twisted into something unfathomable by the standards of today’s society. It can be labeled science fiction, but it’s not too far off from reality, when in this day and age in real life, there are plastic surgeons who make money from doing livestreams of their surgeries, with the participating patients’ permission to do these livestreams.

Some of the acting and dialogue in “Crimes of the Future” can be stiff and dull. In fact, one of the movie’s biggest flaws is that the characters could have used more depth to their personalities. Mortensen’s Saul is the only one of the main characters who’s written and performed as someone who has more on his mind than these surgeries and mutant genetics. Stewart, who whispers a lot of her dialogue in a way that will thoroughly annoy some viewers, portrays Timlin as fidgety and often insecure—in other words, someone who’s a lot like other characters that Stewart has played before in movies.

The movie introduces a few subplots that ultimately go nowhere, including a possible love triangle between Saul, Caprice and Timlin. Caprice tells Saul almost from the moment that they meet Timlin that she doesn’t trust Timlin. Caprice has a reason to be suspicious, because as soon as Timlin finds out that Saul and Caprice are not lovers, Timlin lets Saul know that she’s romantically interested in him. It’s never really made clear if Caprice is secretly in love with Saul or not, but Caprice acts very possessive of Saul throughout the movie.

Another useless subplot is the introduction of two technical experts named Berst (played by Tanaya Beatty) and Router (played by Nadia Litz), who don’t add much to the story. Berst and Router do repairs on the devices that Saul uses, such as the OrchidBed and the Breakfaster. The last time Berst and Router are seen in the movie, they’ve climbed naked together into an OrchidBed because they want Caprice to do some kind of surgery on them.

“Crimes of the Future” is a very “male gaze” movie, because Caprice is in another scene where she’s shown fully naked too. It’s a scene implying that Caprice is getting sexually aroused by a surgical procedure. Meanwhile, there is no full-frontal male nudity is this movie at all. Caprice could have been a more fascinating character, but she’s very underwritten. She’s coldly clinical for most of the movie, except for scenes that have a sexual context.

Lang ends up seeking out Saul and Caprice for a reason that’s revealed in the last third of the film. This reason is sure to turn off many viewers of the movie, but it’s an extreme example of how far people in this “Crimes of the Future” world will go to get attention for these live surgeries. The messages and themes in “Crimes of the Future” are sometimes delivered in a disjointed and muddled way, but the movie serves up some uncomfortable truths about how human nature can be fickle and how ethical standards of society can fluctuate.

Neon released “Crimes of the Future” in U.S. cinemas on June 3, 2022.

Review: ‘Hell Is Empty’ (2022), starring Spencer Peppet, Nia Farrell, Travis Mitchell, Laura Resinger, Aya and Meredith Antoian

June 4, 2022

by Carla Hay

Aya, Meredith Antoian, Nia Farrell, Travis Mitchell, Spencer Peppet and Laura Resinger in “Hell Is Empty” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

“Hell Is Empty” (2022)

Directed by Jo Shaffer

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror flick “Hell Is Empty” has a predominantly white cast (with one African American and one person of Middle Eastern heritage) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A teenage runaway ends up joining the small harem cult of a deranged and controlling man who thinks he’s a messiah. 

Culture Audience: “Hell Is Empty” will appeal primarily to people who like don’t mind watching dull and badly made films about cults.

Pictured clockwise, from upper left: Aya, Laura Resinger, Meredith Antoian, Spencer Peppet, Nia Farrell and Travis Mitchell in “Hell Is Empty” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

“Hell Is Empty” is an apt title for this terrible horror movie: It’s a type of cinematic hell to watch this empty, soulless and incompetent filmmaking. This relentlessly stupid movie about a brainwashed harem cult is an assault on viewers’ brain cells. The only viewers who might be spared the full idiocy of “Hell Is Empty” are those who can’t bear to finish watching this time-wasting garbage, or those who fall asleep because “Hell Is Empty” is so boring.

Directed by Jo Shaffer (who co-wrote the abominable “Hell Is Empty” screenplay with Adam Desantes), “Hell Is Empty” has nothing new, clever or interesting to say about a not-very-original concept for a horror movie: A tyrannical man keeps a group of women captive and abusively controls their lives. In the case of “Hell Is Empty” (which takes place in an unnamed U.S. city), the women have been brainwashed to believe that that he is a messianic, human incarnation of God.

The movie’s protagonist is a teenage runaway named Lydia (played by Spencer Peppet), who finds herself quickly joining this cult after she leaves home. “Hell Is Empty” opens with a title card saying: “On Sunday, she was declared a runaway. Her mother declined to post a reward.” This information implies that Lydia is under the age of 18, although Peppet looks a lot older than someone who’s supposed to be 16 or 17 years old.

The first time Lydia is seen on screen, she has facial injuries and appears to be barely conscious or unconscious when she’s kidnapped and brought to an isolated area that’s surrounded by water. Even if you’re a runaway who doesn’t want to go home, being abducted and dragged to a strange area is a terrifying experience. But when Lydia’s regains consciousness and finds out that she was kidnapped by a cult, she ludicrously never even asks where she is during the entire story. That’s how absurd “Hell Is Empty” is. Get ready for more stupidity, because this movie is full of it.

The cult leader’s name is Ed (played by played by Travis Mitchell), but he insists on being called Artist by the small harem of women who are under his control. These women are the only people who are the members of Ed’s cult. They all live in (horror movie cliché alert) a remote wooded area. Ed has the persona of a religious messiah, who tells his followers that he is a human incarnation of God and that they have to do whatever he says. They live in a crudely built house with no electricity and no modern technology.

Because Lydia never asks where she is and doesn’t make any attempt to find out, viewers can immediately see that she’s less than smart. It’s supposed to be the movie’s not-very-believable way of showing that Lydia has such little regard for her life that she doesn’t care where she lives. But “Hell Is Empty” is so poorly written, an early scene in the movie directly contradicts this notion, because Lydia tells Ed that she wants to leave. Ed says that “tomorrow” he will take her back to where he found her. But he never does, and Lydia never asks to leave again.

An example of how bad the screenwriting is in “Hell Is Empty” is in the scene showing Lydia and Ed’s first conversation with each other. Ed asks her, “Who made you?” Lydia says, “Nobody.” Ed scolds her: “Liar! When you were struck down on the side of the road, I found you and raised you up, gave you glory.” (Exactly where is the glory in being kidnapped? Lydia never bothers to ask.)

Ed continues, “The world has mistreated you. I can see that. You’ve been abandoned.” Lydia replies, “I left.” Ed then says, “You could be home. I’ve seen your salvation in the water.” The only thing to come out of this nonsensical conversation is that it implies that Ed found Lydia not fully conscious on the road. The movie never bothers to explain why Lydia was found barely conscious, and Lydia never talks about it. It isn’t long before Lydia becomes a member of this cult, which now consists of five female members:

  • Lydia, the mysterious and abducted runaway, who won’t reveal hardly anything about her past except that her father died and her mother didn’t want her. Later in the movie, Ed calls Lydia a “dumb Kentucky slut,” which implies that somehow he knows she’s from Kentucky.
  • Saratoga (played by Nia Farrell), who is about seventh months pregnant with Ed’s child. Saratoga, who sometimes is called Sara, has a welcoming and friendly personality. She hugs Lydia a lot, as if she’s desperate to have a real friend in this oppressive atmosphere. Saratoga is certain that her unborn child is a boy. “He has to be,” she tells Lydia.” He’s the son of God.”
  • Vivian (played by Laura Resinger), the oldest woman in the group. Vivian, who rarely smiles, is very bossy toward the other women in the group when Ed isn’t around. Viewers later find out that Vivian (who met Ed when he worked at a carnival in Champaign, Illinois) has been with Ed the longest and had a monogamous relationship with him until he decided to have a harem. It’s why Vivian is jealous of the other “sister wives” that Ed has brought into the cult.
  • Millie (played by Meredith Antoian), the most restless and rebellious woman in the group. Millie is desperately unhappy and acts like she wants to leave this cult. And you know what that means in a horror movie.
  • Murphy (played by Aya), the quietest and meekest woman in the group. Murphy, who sometimes goes by the name Murph, is the most likely to blindly follow orders from Ed and Vivian.

All of the women sleep in the same bed together. Vivian complains to Ed that because Lydia is now living with them, the bed has gotten too crowded. Ed ignores her complaint and replies, “The Lord has sent us a new lamb.” Vivian is the only one in this group who really dares to show that she has a mind of her own, but she’s still very much under Ed’s control.

How controlling is Ed? During Lydia’s first meal with the group, a miserable-looking Millie, who is menstruating, asks Ed to be excused from the table because she needs to change whatever she’s using as a sanitary pad. At first, Ed won’t let her leave the table, and he only changes his mind reluctantly after he berates Millie for interrupting the meal with this request.

Later, when the women are in their bedroom, Millie sobs that Ed/Artist doesn’t love her anymore. Vivian says that all that matters is that Millie loves Ed/Artist, and that this love is “better than the needle.” This comment implies that Millie was a needle-using drug addict until Ed “saved” her.

And who exactly is Ed? In a private conversation that Ed has with Lydia, he tells her that he used to be an airplane pilot, but he quit because “I’m not meant for their machines.” And in a cringeworthy pickup line, Ed tells new cult member Lydia: “Having you here has been a little breeze on my soul.” Millie later tells Lydia about Ed’s seeming affection for Lydia: “He’s no good. He only likes you because you’re new.”

“Hell Is Empty” becomes a monotonous chore of watching repetitive scenes with the women doing whatever Ed says and listening to his religious rants. There are multiple useless scenes showing some of the women chopping wood, or Ed showing off his telescope. Ed also likes to smoke cigarettes and curse, so he isn’t so “pure” and “godly” after all. These cigarettes become part of a subplot about betrayal in the group.

Lydia and Saratoga predictably become friends. And the more Lydia spends time with this cult, the more uncomfortable she becomes. Her discomfort increases when Lydia sees that Ed does not show the compassion that he preaches. One day, Lydia and Saratoga are walking together on a nearby beach and find a barely conscious wounded stranger named Christian (played by Liam Ouweleen), a good-looking guy in his 20s.

Lydia immediately wants to bring Christian back to the house to give him medical treatment. Saratoga disagrees because she says that Ed wouldn’t approve. (And it’s obvious because Ed wants to be the only man in the house.) Lydia and Saratoga somewhat argue over this matter, until Saratoga relents and helps Lydia carry Christian back to the house, where Ed and the rest of the women are outside when Lydia and Saratoga arrive with Christian.

Ed has a very angry reaction when he hears what happened, and he refuses to let Lydia and Saratoga bring Christian into the house. Lydia begs Ed to have mercy on this bleeding stranger who needs help. Ed then huffs that this man can be brought into the house: “Fine! Don’t put him in the living room. It’ll ruin the goddamn carpet!” It’s a very campy moment that might bring one of the few laughs that this dreary film can muster.

It turns out that Christian is a lecherous creep. When he regains consciousness, he makes lewd and derogatory remarks about the women to Ed and the women. “It’s an interesting group you’ve got here,” Christian tells Ed. “You must be drowning in it.” Christian also makes it known that he’s sexually interested in some of the women. Because Ed is the type who wants to be the “alpha male,” Christian’s fate is a foregone conclusion.

One of the biggest problems with “Hell Is Empty” is that it’s a horror movie that’s not very scary at all. Because very little is told about the women in the cult and their backgrounds, viewers never really find out what the stakes are if these women leave this cult. Do they have loved ones who are looking for them? What do they want to do with their lives if they leave the cult? The filmmakers don’t seem to care much about these characters, and neither will viewers.

The last third of “Hell Is Empty” is nothing but predictable and badly staged scenes with very little suspense. The acting in the movie ranges from unremarkable to unwatchable. “Hell Is Empty,” just like the title suggests, ultimately adds up to nothing but an appalling void that’s a drain on the time and energy of anyone who has the misfortune of experiencing it.

1091 Pictures released “Hell Is Empty” on digital and VOD on March 1, 2022.

Review: ‘The Innocents’ (2021), starring Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf and Lisa Tønne

June 3, 2022

by Carla Hay

Rakel Lenora Fløttum and Sam Ashraf in “The Innocents” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“The Innocents” (2021)

Directed by Eskil Vogt

Norwegian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Norway, the horror film “The Innocents” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one black person, one multiracial person and a few people of Middle Eastern heritage) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Four children discover that they have psychic powers, and at least one of the children uses those powers for sinister and deadly reasons. 

Culture Audience: “The Innocents” will appeal primarily to people interested in watching creepy and disturbing horror movies about homicidal children.

Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim in “The Innocents” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“The Innocents” sometimes falters with sluggish pacing, but this horror movie excels in immersing viewers in an atmosphere filled with deliberate torture and dread. A lot of the terror happens without a word being spoken. A warning to sensitive viewers: “The Innocents” is not the type of movie you will want to see if you get deeply disturbed by seeing on-screen depictions of fatal animal cruelty and children who murder people.

Written and directed by Eskil Vogt, “The Innocents” had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, which also world premiered “The Worst Person in the World,” a romantic comedy/drama co-written by Vogt. “The Worst Person In the World” (which received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay) has much better character development and more engaging pacing than “The Innocents,” but Vogt should be commended for writing two very different movies that are quite memorable.

“The Innocents,” which takes place during a summer in an unnamed city in Norway, begins with a middle-class family of four moving into a high-rise apartment building. As an example of how the adults in the movie are secondary to the kids in the story, the names of the parents in “The Innocents” are not mentioned. The adults in this movie also leave their underage kids without adult supervision for long stretches of time.

The family moving into the apartment complex has relocated because the father (played by Morten Svartveit) has gotten an unnamed job in the area. The mother (played by Ellen Dorrit Petersen) is a homemaker. These parents have two daughters: Anna (played by Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) and Ida (played by Rakel Lenora Fløttum), who have some problems in their relationship, but the two sisters mostly get along with each other.

Anna, who is 11 years old, has regressive autism. At 4 years old, she stopped speaking, although she can make sounds to express herself. Later in the movie, Anna begins speaking again, using limited vocabulary. Ida is about 7 or 8 years old. Ida is often tasked with looking after Anna, and it causes Ida to sometimes feel resentment toward Anna. Ida also feels that Anna gets too much attention from their parents.

Two other children who live in the apartment building will have their lives forever intertwined with Anna and Ida. Their names are Ben and Aisha. And all four children find out that they can connect with each other on a pyschic level. Because all of the children are on a summer break, there’s no mention of them going to school.

Ben (played by Sam Ashraf), who is about 9 or 10 years old, is a sullen loner who likes to say and do cruel things. Ben is an only child who lives with his single mother (played by Lisa Tønne), who often yells at him because she thinks he can’t do anything right. Ben’s father is not mentioned in the movie, which implies that this father is not in Ben’s life.

Aisha (played by Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), who is about 7 or 8 years old, is also an only child. She lives with her mother (played by Kadra Yusuf), who seems to be recently divorced or separated. Pictures of Aisha’s father are in the household, and he’s talked about as if he’s still alive, but he is not living in the household. Unlike Ben, Aisha is a kind and empathetic child. When she sees her mother crying, she feels her mother’s emotional pain too. Aisha can also feel other people’s physical pain.

The apartment building where the children live has other apartment buildings nearby. There’s a playground at the center of these apartment buildings. It’s at this playground where Ben and Ida meet for the first time. There’s also a wooded area nearby where the kids play. The playground and the woods are the two areas where most of the kids’ activities happen in the movie.

Shortly after meeting in the playground, Ida and Ben walk into the nearby wooded area. He tells her that he used to live in a place where he would climb up in a tree and fire a slingshot at “people I think are mean.” It’s the first sign that Ben has a sadistic side to him. And if it isn’t obvious enough that Ben is going to be the biggest villain, there are multiple of scenes of Ida seeing Ben creepily looking at her and other kids from a distance.

Anna and Aisha are the first to show a psychic connection to each other. When Anna thinks something, Aisha often does it, and vice versa. They can also feel each other’s pain each time one of them gets an injury. At first, Anna and Aisha don’t understand what’s going on, until they meet each other and find out why they have an instant bond.

Ida and Ben also discover they have their own pyschic powers, but they find out at different times. Ben’s psychic power includes telekenisis and mind control, thereby making him much more threatening than the other three kids. At first, Ben keep his power a secret, but all four kids eventually find out about each other’s powers. How they all find out are among the best scenes in the movie.

When Ben and Ida start hanging out with each other, Ida thinks that Ben is rebellious but harmless. Ida believes she’s a rebellious loner too, so she’s at first happy to meet someone who seems to be like she is. Ida changes her mind about Ben being someone she can trust when Ben does something heinous to a cat. After witnessing this animal cruelty, Ida tries to avoid Ben, but Ida figures out that things often don’t end well for people who reject Ben.

A long stretch of the “The Innocents” is kind of a monotonous zone where not much happens after the killing starts, because it’s about the kids keeping their powers a secret from anyone else. They don’t tell any adults because they don’t think the adults will believe them. Or even worse: If they are believed, the kids think that they will be considered “freaks” and possibly taken away for scientific experiments.

Not that the adults seem to notice a lot of what these kids are doing anyway. If there’s any big flaw in the movie, it’s that the parents seem very neglectful and uncaring about what their pre-teen kids are doing when adults are not around. The parents seem vaguely aware that their kids are making new friends and hanging out at the playground, but they don’t seem to care to meet these new friends or the parents of these new friends.

Are there parents in real life who are this thoughtless? Absolutely. But it’s a convenient contrivance that all four of these children happen to have parents who don’t seem at all curious about what their kids or doing when the parents aren’t there, or concerned about the kids’ safety when trusted adults are not with children. Haven’t these parents heard that this type of neglect is how child abductions from strangers are most likely to happen?

But most of the horror in “The Innocents” wouldn’t be as impactful if the parents in this story acted like responsible and fully attentive parents. The movie seems to want to make the point that with these psychic powers, these children are more dangerous than adults who don’t these powers. A lot of horror movie viewers can take bloody scenes of adults killing each other, but there’s something particularly unsettling about a child committing first-degree murder.

The child actors in these roles are perfectly adequate, but all of the child characters except Ida have personalities that come close to being very hollow and two-dimensional. Ida is the only one who seems to have a complex personality, so Fløttum gives the best performance. Ben is a predictable sociopath and only seems to get emotionally hurt for selfish reasons. Aisha is the character that needed the most development.

The ending of “The Innocents” is not too surprising. But getting to that ending is a very uncomfortable ride for viewers. And since horror movies are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable, “The Innocents” certainly achieves that goal in an original story.

IFC Films/IFC Midnight released “The Innocents” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 13, 2022. The movie was released in Norway in 2021.

Review: ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2,’ starring Tabu, Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani

May 29, 2022

by Carla Hay

Kiara Advani and Kartik Aaryan in “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2”

Directed by Anees Bazmee

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Indian cities of Bhawanigarh and Chandigarh, the horror comedy film “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” has an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: In order to get out of marrying a man she doesn’t love, a young woman and her new love interest pretend that she died in a bus accident, while he pretends to her family that he’s a psychic who can communicate with her spirit, and the woman hides in the family palace that is believed to be haunted by an evil female ghost.

Culture Audience: “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the stars Tabu, Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani; the 2007 movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa; and engaging movies that skillfully blend horror, comedy and musical numbers.

Tabu in “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)

A horror comedy is a difficult subgenre to make entertaining because there could be problems with blending tones of being scary and funny, but “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” succeeds on almost every level. The movie’s plot twists and musical numbers are intriguing. Unlike a lot of horror comedies that hold back on being terrifying, “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” doesn’t skimp on ghoulish footage (which has impressive visual effects), while still maintaining a comedic edge in the story for several laugh-out-loud moments.

Directed by Anees Bazmee and co-directed by Pankaj Kumar, “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” is a sequel to 2007’s “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” but viewers don’t need to see “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” to understand “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2.” (The words “bhool bhulaiyaa” translate to “labyrinth” in English.) That’s because both movies have entirely different stars, with the only thing both movies having in common is a female ghost named Manjulika Chatterjee, who is haunting a family palace.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” (which was written by Aakash Kaushik and Farhad Samji) begins with an evil female ghost raging through a palace in Bhawanigarh, India. The palace is owned by the well-to-do Thakur family, and priests eventually capture this malevolent spirit, trap the ghoul in a room, which is sealed. Because the ghost is a direct threat to the Thakur family, they abandon the palace and find another place to live. At the time this haunting incident occurred, one of the members of the Thakur family is a girl, who’s about 7 or 8 years old, named Reet Thakur.

“Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” the fast-forwards about 15 years later. Reet is a recent college graduate who is engaged to be married to a man named Sagar (played by Sparsh Walla), whom she does not love. However, it’s an arranged marriage, and Reet is being pressured by her father Vijender Singh Thakur (played by Milind Gunaji) to go through with the wedding. She is traveling by bus from Chandigarh back to her hometown of Bhawanigarh to reluctantly prepare for the wedding.

During this bus trip, Reet meets a handsome and flirtatious bachelor in his 20s named Ruhaan Randhawa (played by Kartik Aaryan), who almost immediately asks for Reet’s phone number. Even though Reet tells him that she’s engaged to be married, and her wedding is in a matter of days, Ruhaan is undeterred in showing a romantic interest in Reet, especially since she says she doesn’t love her fiancé Sagar. Reet is obviously attracted to Ruhaan too because she gives her phone number to him.

However, Reet plays hard-to-get during much of the time that she and Ruhaan spend together. Ruhaan (whose family is never seen in the movie) can sense that Reet is independent-minded and doesn’t want to be forced by her family to do things that she doesn’t want to do. And so, Ruhaan tells her that she should just abandon this trip to Bhawanigarh and go with him to a music festival instead. Reet quickly agrees.

Reet and Ruhaan have a lot of fun at the music festival, as their attraction to each other begins to grow. But then, they find out some tragic news: The bus that they were supposed to be on crashed, and there were no survivors. Reet’s family members are devastated, because they think she died in this bus crash. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief for this part of the movie, because Reet’s body would have to be found, in order for her to be declared dead. Perhaps another woman’s unidentified body could have been mistaken for Reet’s, but even that is a stretch of the imagination, since DNA tests and/or dental records would realistically determine a dead body’s identity.

Reet decides to use this bus crash as an opportunity to hide from her family and start a new life with Ruhaan. In the meantime, Reet and Ruhaan decide to hide in the Thakur family’s abandoned palace in Bhawanigarh. While they are in hiding, Reet overhears in a phone call that her fiancé Sagar and her cousin Trisha (played by Mahek Manwani) have been secretly in love with each other. Because the family thinks that Reet is dead, Sagar and Trisha decide to go public with their love affair and get married to each other. Reet is surprised by this news, but ultimately, she’s happy for Sagar and Trisha, because Reet never wanted to marry Sagar.

The Thakur family decides to have Sagar and Trisha’s wedding celebration at the palace, which has been in a state of neglect for years. And so, preparations are made to clean up the palace to prepare for the wedding. Members of the family also believe that there’s a chance that Reet’s spirit has returned to the palace. Reet and Ruhaan don’t know yet that their hiding place is about to be visited by members of Reet’s family and people who work for them. But this “fugitive” would-be couple will soon find out that they won’t be left alone in this hiding place.

Ruhaan is discovered on the palace property, but he is able to avoid getting in trouble as an intruder, by convincing the Thakur family and he is a psychic friend of Reet’s who can communicate with her from the dead. It’s a lie that Ruhaan makes up on the spot, and the rest of the movie is about him going through with a charade that he’s a psychic who can talk to Reet and other spirits. While Ruhaan is able to talk his way out of being kicked off of the property, Reet has been hiding in the palace, but she’s able to see much of what’s going on from where she hides. Ruhaan also fills her in on the details.

Meanwhile, Reet supplies Ruhaan with personal information about herself and her family so that he can appear to be a convincing psychic. There are many comedic scenes where Ruhaan makes over-the-top statements and gestures, in the movie’s obvious parody of psychics. Ruhaan even says, “I can see dead people,” in an obvious spoof of the famous line from the 1999 movie “The Sixth Sense.” News of Ruhaan being a psychic eventually spreads through the community. He becomes a local celebrity and is given the nickname Rooh Baba.

Of course, Ruhaan and Reet desperately keep the lie going and go to great lengths to keep Reet hidden in the palace. However, some people begin to suspect that Reet is still alive, or at least that her spirit is haunting the palace. Ruhaan finds out the story of Manjulika, so he tries to blame any suspicious activity on Manjulika. Other family members who are involved in the story include a cousin named Uday Thakur (played by Amar Upadhyay); his wife Anjulika (played by Tabu); and a boy named Potlu (played by Samarth Chauhan), who’s about 9 to 11 years old.

The village’s senior priest (played by Sanjay Mishra), his wife (played by Ashwini Kalsekar) and the village’s junior priest (played by Rajpal Naurang Yadav) all become skeptical about Ruhaan’s psychic abilities. They also think that Reet might still be alive. And so, the three skeptics hatch a plan to “expose” Ruhaan.

All of the cast members rise to the occasion by playing their roles well. Aaryan has to do a lot of comedic lifting in the movie, since his con game is frequently the focus of the movie’s jokes and shenanigans. Tabu is also very good in the movie, where her acting gets more prominent as the movie progresses. Yadav’s performance as the buffoonish junior priest is strictly for comic relief.

Most of the twists and turns “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” are in the last third of the movie, which has a much darker tone than the previous two-thirds. It’s no surprise that Reet and Ruhaan fall in love with each other. What might surprise people is how the movie ends. “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” has some moments that are more predictable than others. The unpredictable moments are where the movie shines the most.

T-Series Films released “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2” in select U.S. cinemas on May 20, 2022, the same date that the movie was released in India.

Review: ‘Wyrmwood: Apocalypse,’ starring Luke McKenzie, Bianca Bradey, Shantae Barnes-Cowan, Tasia Zalar, Jay Gallagher and Nicholas Boshier

May 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Bianca Bradey and Luke McKenzie (center) in “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” (Photo by Thom Davies/XYZ Films)

“Wyrmwood: Apocalpyse”

Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner

Culture Representation: Taking place in Australia, the horror film “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few Aborigines) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A mercenary soldier has his loyalties tested during a battle of humans against zombies in an apocalypse. 

Culture Audience: “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of zombie movies but don’t care if the story is good and just want to see a lot of bloody violence.

Tasia Zalar and Shantae Barnes-Cowan in “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” (Photo by Emma Bjorndahl/XYZ Films)

With a forgettable story and even more forgettable characters, the zombie flick “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” is just an idiotic and incoherent mush of violence that quickly becomes boring. No one is expecting a zombie movie to be high art, but an entertaining zombie should at least give viewers some suspense over what’s going to happen in the story. There are absolutely no surprises in “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse,” which is just an obnoxious and very predictable mess.

Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner (who co-wrote the “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” screenplay with his brother Tristan Roache-Turner), “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” is the sequel to 2015’s “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead,” with both movies taking place in Australia during an apocalypse. (How unoriginal for a zombie movie.) The screenwriting is so lazy, it’s essentially the same story as the first movie: A woman, who has become human mutant zombie, has to be saved by a sibling, who is trying to not let this zombie sister get captured by authorities.

In “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead,” the zombie sister is Brooke (played by Bianca Bradey), who is supposed to be saved by her mechanic brother Barry (played by Jay Gallagher) during a series of inevitable gory scenes. Brooke and Barry are also in “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse.” In “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse,” a zombie sister named Grace (played by Tasia Zalar) is supposed to be saved her sister Maxi (played by Shantae Barnes-Cowan), while both sisters encounter a mercenary soldier named Rhys (played by Luke McKenzie), whose job is to capture zombie civilians to force them into a military that doesn’t have enough people.

The chief villain in “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” is Surgeon General (played by Nicholas Boshier), the corrupt leader of the military. In the beginning of the movie, Grave and Maxi are looking for Barry and Brooke, because Brooke and Grace have something in common: They’re both a “hybrid”: a human who has not completely turned into a zombie yet. Rhys ends up capturing Grace, but his alliances might or might not be with Surgeon General during the course of the story.

As a sequel, “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” does a terrible job of explaining who Brooke and Barry are, as well as their backstories from “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead.” As a narrative film, “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” barely does anything to make viewers care about any of the movie’s characters, who say nothing but trite and embarrassingly bad dialogue. All of the acting in this movie is mediocre to horrible. “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” is just a sloppily directed zombie film that has a lot of blood and guts, but this movie has absolutely no heart or soul.

XYZ Films released “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” on digital and VOD on April 14, 2022.

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