The Others (2001) [Review Re-View]
Originally released August 10, 2001:
Nicole Kidman has saved the summer of 2001 – it is now official. In what would have been deemed a pit of mediocrity and nightmares consisting of Angelina Jolie as some raider of tombs or Marky Mark making dough-eyes at attractive apes, has now been bookended by two terrific Kidman films. First Moulin Rouge ushered us in and now The Others is leading us the way out.
The Others is the tale of Grace (Kidman) trying to take care of her two ailing young children shortly after the end of World War II. Kidman is waiting for the return of her husband from the war and is all alone in a giant Gothic mansion. Her two children suffer from a rare allergy to sunlight that is so severe that if exposed long enough their bodies will develop markings and they will asphyxiate to death. To accommodate this illness the entire Kidman household is in the dark and grounded in stern rules. No door is to be unlocked without locking the last, like trapping water in compartments of a sinking ship.
Grace discovers that she does need help and accepts three mysterious strangers that have said they were caretakers to this house once before. Before long the children start reporting odd events occurring that resemble ghosts; a door is opened when it shouldn’t be, someone is making noise where there is no one, and the children report having interaction with otherworldly spirits. Grace scoffs at any notion of the paranormal and goes back to instructing her children with the Bible and its accounts of penance and hell. The incidences begin to build further and further until The Others becomes a full-fledged ghost spectacle.
Spanish writer/director Alejandro Amenábar’s first English feature film is one of carefully textured craft and effective mood. The Others follows the points of ghost stories closely from dark hallways to the creepy and slightly dilapidated house closely. Every move, though, is so well in tune that they are highly effective in creating actual suspense and spookiness. One may have seen the same items numerous times before, however The Others utilizes them so gracefully that it achieves the full desired impact each can bring. Amenábar has created a ghost story that is genuinely creepy and at times scary.
Kidman shines as the dutiful and determined mother. Her performance is one of great dedication and she just consumes whole-heartedly the distress, confusion, and fear of this lonely mother. She is a true anchor for a film. Watching every moment of her on screen is amazing as well as invigorating. This role may lead to possible Oscar buzz come the end of the year but that is just speculation for now.
The rest of the acting is very thorough and well handled by the few other cast members. James Bentley and Alakina Mann portray Kidman’s afflicted children and have much of the movie hinging on their performances. Not to worry, these two excel and give credence to being two of the more gifted child actors in a while. Their efforts greatly induce sympathy as well as great scares at key moments.
The story of The Others by Amenábar may seem simplistic, or even predictable, but the more I thought of the structure and the order of events the more well oiled and calculated it became. This is a delicate story told with great precision with a fantastic knockout ending that had me reworking everything. The Others is an example of why screenwriting is not yet dead in Hollywood.
The Others is a wonderfully brooding film with real scares and great performances, as well as terrific turns in writing and directing by Amenábar. Nicole Kidman has thankfully done it again, and if anyone dares doubt the power and newfound importance of her then see the rest of the summer of 2001’s offerings.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
They don’t really make movies like The Others any more. It’s a patient movie with lots of old-fashioned craft and has more in common with horror movies from a different era. While I would claim that the popular Conjuring franchise, at least the James Wan entries, is a successful Old School horror throwback, its execution can also become quite extreme and ridiculous. Something like The Others dutifully takes its time and nips at your nerves, knowing precisely what key piece of information to tantalize and when to provide more, just enough to grab you deeper into its central mystery and worry over the looming danger for the characters. Twenty years later, the movie plays just as splendidly as it did initially in 2001 but now I have more reverence and appreciation for how it goes about telling its ghost story in a very methodical manner. Not every horror movie ages well. I’m sure that modern audiences could watch The Exorcist and laugh at what, in 1973, scared people to the point of vomiting in theater aisles. If you’re not executing at a high level, it could make for a tragically boring movie. It’s a good thing then that The Others is a PG-13 horror movie that plays all of its limitations to its many artistic advantages.
Coming at the end of a mediocre summer slate of movies in 2001, The Others was a surprise hit, earning over $200 million dollars on a modest budget of $17 million. It helps when your entire movie takes place in one Gothic house and one of the biggest fears is being caught in the light. The premise involves a World War II-era estate where Grace (Nicole Kidman) is seeking help for her two children, Anne and Nicholas, who have a rare photo sensitivity allergy. Direct sunlight will cause them to break out in lesions and potentially asphyxiate (this is a real and rare condition afflicting around 1000 people on the planet). This is a brilliant turn because it means that most of the movie must take place in darkness and even the hint of light could be enough to start causing trembles. A late scare in the movie is simply the realization by Grace that all of the curtains have been removed from the house. Taken without context, that can seem laughable or ludicrous for a horror movie. With the proper context, it becomes a devastating turn. Much like A Quiet Place so brilliantly made sound the enemy, The Others makes the prospect of light the enemy. We start to associate darkness with safety, and then writer/director Alejandro Amenabar uses that environment to drive minimalist horror to great effect. The sound design of whispers, of footsteps, of something that shouldn’t be there is elevated, and the intrusion into the safe space of the vulnerable children makes us all feel a little more vulnerable. It takes the familiar setting of old Gothic horror tales about dark corridors and creaky attics and elevates it anew.
The story is simple but so excellently structured and performed. A mother and her two children are terrorized by ghosts in an old house. Three caretakers arrive to help who know more than what they let on. These characters allow Grace to have someone to question and share her emotional state of mind but they also provide dramatic irony and dread for the audience. They know what’s going on with the house and they’re hiding something, initially tombstones they will later reveal but who do they belong to? They know the house intimately but what is their actual connection to its history? Early on we already have our concerns, as the notice Grace sent out seeking help was never mailed. Halfway through, the caretakers discuss among themselves a secret they are hiding relating to the history of the house. By this point, we have already had a few ghostly encounters so our assumption is that it will relate with the otherworldly intruders. These characters are conflict stirring and keepers of secrets to be revealed in time. Amenabar has a divine instinct of when to drop a new clue, when to pick up the escalation, and when to finally lay out his plot particulars. The big twist has been hiding in plain sight from the start, from the very opening image of Grace gasping awake in her bed and coming down from her frantic distress.
The ultimate revelation that Grace and her children are not being haunted by malevolent spirits but are in fact the real malevolent spirits is a terrific rug-puller. Much like the best twist endings, many of which occurred in contemporaries like The Sixth Sense and Fight Club, you can re-watch the movie and see all the clues you missed or how the added perspective reinterprets sequences for added depth. It’s not just a great twist but a culmination of an emotional catharsis; much like The Sixth Sense, it’s a ghost coming to terms with accepting their ghostly identity. Unlike The Sixth Sense, our ghostly protagonist refuses to go gently into the light. Grace has her children repeat to her, “This is our house,” and they refuse to budge. One of the final images, of Anne dancing in the sunlight, is both a victory and condemnation. She can at long last not worry about the rays of sunlight harming her and can live life like an average child. However, she has no life to live and can never leave the house, never grow old, and refuses to part under the rigid determination of her mother, the same woman who killed her and doomed her to purgatory. In some regard it’s a happy ending because hooray the kids can relax, and in many other more disturbing implications, it’s a guilt-ridden murderous mother refusing to let go of her children even after killing them. The movie serves as an empathy experiment to provide back-story for the kind of specters that would haunt an old Hammer horror movie. It might make you rethink other ghost stories or at least try and see things from the ghostly perspective.
I will say that this movie was also maddeningly hard to hear at times. I had to crank up my TV to unheard of volume levels to clearly make out what people were saying. Kidman is quite good but she has a habit of falling back on very breathy acting, relying on whispered intonation. I’m glad I already saw the movie but the sound levels forced me to actively pay attention. Maybe your TV will be different.
Amenabar is a Spanish filmmaker that rose to international acclaim with 1997’s Open Your Eyes, starring Penelope Cruz and later remade into Vanilla Sky, also starring Penelope Cruz (coming to a Re-Veiw in December!). The Others was a significant breakthrough, and in 2004 Amenabar won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for The Sea Inside, a true-life drama where Javier Bardem portrays a man fighting for the right to end his own life. He seemed like an international director on an accelerated ascent, and it all came to a crash with 2009’s costly historical intolerance drama, Agora, starring Rachel Weisz and Oscar Isaac that examined the contentious relationship between Christians and Pagans in fourth century Egypt. It cost $70 million dollars, was over two hours, and made a pittance at the U.S. box-office. From there, Amenabar has primarily worked within the Spanish cinema (2019’s While at War), Spanish TV (2021’s La Fortuna), and one schlocky horror movie about a Satanic cult (2015’s Regression, a title that is too on-the-nose perfect). Admittedly, I haven’t watched any of these follow-ups and the Spanish productions could genuinely be great. I think Amenabar’s early success helped pave the way for another Spanish filmmaker, J.A. Bayona, whose 2007’s haunted manor movie The Orphanage was an excellent Old School horror that could be sincerely scary while still patiently building its unsettling atmosphere.
Looking back at my review from 2001, I think my love of Moulin Rouge carried over into my overly enthusiastic evaluation of Kidman’s increasingly unraveled performance. She’s good but she’s not quite at Oscar levels of accomplishment here, and yet Kidman was nominated for a BAFTA for this role instead of the singing courtesan. The child actors are both good, though neither acted again in credited roles after the mid-2000s, but for me to cite them as “two of the most gifted child actors in a while” reads like hyperbole. My original analysis didn’t get too deep into the mechanics of why everything worked so well, for fear of spoiling its big surprises, and instead kept to admiring its craft, care, and execution, aspects that are still easily apparent and admirable in 2021 as well. The Others is a splendid ghost story no matter the year and will likely still prove to be many years from now.
Re-View Grade: A
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Jungle Cruise (2021)
Disney turned a theme park ride that mostly involved sitting into a billion-dollar supernatural adventure franchise, so why not try another swing at reshaping its existing park properties into would-be blockbuster tentpoles? Jungle Cruise owes a lot to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and actually owes a little too much for its own good. For the first half of the movie, it coasts on the charms of stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt and some light-footed visual misadventures. Then the second half turn involves a significant personal revelation, and that’s where the movie felt like it was being folded and crushed into form to closely resemble the Pirates franchise. It gets quite convoluted and littered with lackluster villains, too many and too stock to ever establish as intriguing or memorable (one of them is a man made of honey, so that’s a thing). I found myself also pulling away in the second half because of the inevitable romance. Their screwball combative banter between Johnson and Blunt gave me some smiles and entertainment and then, as they warm to one another, it sadly dissipated, as did my interest. The comedy is really labored at points. Johnson keeps referring to Blunt as “Pants” because she’s a woman and she wears pants in the twentieth century. It was not funny the first time and it’s not funny or endearing after the 80th rendition. The supernatural elements and curses feel extraneous and tacked on. With the Pirates films, at least the good ones, there are a lot of plot elements they need to keep in the air and you assume they’re be able to land them as needed. The competing character goals were so well established and developed in those movies and served as an anchor even amid the chaos of plot complications and double and triple crosses. With Jungle Cruise, it feels like a lot of effort but also a lot of dropped or mishandled story and thematic elements. This feels more creatively by committee and the heavily green screen action is harder to fully immerse with. As a wacky adventure serial, there may be enough to keep a viewer casually entertained, but Jungle Cruise feels too beholden to the Pirates formula without bringing anything exciting or fresh on its own imagination merits.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Val (2021)
Watching the documentary Val, comprised from thousands of hours of home videos shot by actor Val Kilmer over the course of 30 years, may make you realize just how little you know about the actor. His reputation is that he’s difficult to work with, conceited, and Method to the point of losing himself in roles and pushing his co-stars to the brink of sanity. Coming from his own words, narrated by his son Jack, naturally allows the most empathetic read of the man and his rationale for his personal and professional decisions. I never knew about his family life, losing his teenage brother who was an inspiration and early collaborator. I never knew Kilmer wrote his own plays, including a student production at Juliard that broke new ground. I never even knew he was an early adopter of technology and had a warehouse filled with his self-documentation and behind the scenes footage (Kilmer is even credited with the doc’s cinematography). You get the sense of a wounded and restless soul, a handsome movie star who so rarely found a film role that allowed him to feel like an artist in his element. Kilmer can be one of his generation’s greatest actors, as evidenced in classics like Heat and Tombstone and as Jim Morrison in The Doors, still one of the greatest acting performances I’ve ever watched. Kilmer languished through plenty of studio dreck as well. His time as Batman is marked by dejection and loneliness, stuck playing the straight man in a movie of oddballs and trapped in a suit of limited mobility and an inability to hear (actors and crew started avoiding him in the Bat suit because he couldn’t respond). Strewn throughout the movie is contemporary footage of Kilmer after beating throat cancer, though the subsequent surgeries have left his speech haggard. Listening to the labored and tortured sound of his voice is a direct jab to your sympathy. Given that this is produced by Kilmer from his own archives, and narrated by his son, the documentary isn’t as critical as it could have been. I wish the movie provided more self-analysis for Kilmer, especially on some of his rockier relationships and onset disruptions, like for the notorious Island of Doctor Moreau. I don’t think you can still fall back on his deceased brother for decades of his behavior. There’s a limit to the level of insight because it feels a bit like Kilmer managing his reputation and legacy within the industry. Still, for nearly two hours, Val can be a poignant and illuminating expose of an actor with a reputation for equal parts trouble and brilliance.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
If you were entertained by the documented disasters of the Fyre Fest, then the re-examination of the many failures of Woodstock 1999 will provide that same rubbernecking fascination. With twenty years of clarity, the varied interview subjects, from wiser attendants to music journalists to the promoters themselves, try to best account for where things went so horribly wrong. Director Garret Price (Love, Antosha) methodically assembles the pieces that lead to Woodstock 1999 literally going up in smoke by the end of its volatile, three-day festival. Price opens the film, now available on HBO Max, by saying he viewed Woodstock ’99 not as some incredulous comedy, like the immediate response to the Fyre Fest, but as “a horror movie.” That’s an accurate summation, but it also plays out like a tragedy born of incompetence and ignorance.
In some ways, this is far worse than the Fyre Fest, which drew widespread mockery and couldn’t even get off the ground with its fledgling festival. Woodstock ’99 was born of a desire to further cash-in on the brand of the seminal concert experience, but the promoters made significant decisions that would later spell their doom in the name of capitalism. Festival planners Michael Lang and John Schuer lament that in ’69 and ’94 so many people got in for free by slipping under flimsy fences. This was going to be corrected, and so ’99 was set on an old Air Force base with a razor-wire fence line. The base was woefully ill-equipped to host a multi-day festival. The copious blacktop was reflective of the scorching heat and the infrastructure wasn’t present for the human scope of waste management. The port-a-potties were quickly overrun and overflowing, and in one of the most stomach-churning moments, festival attendants are seen rolling in what they think is mud, much like in 1994, but it was actually human feces. Hundreds of people had to be carted out from dehydration, and one person died. Bottled water was four dollars, the same price as the beer, and the “free water” stations were quickly compromised by drunk festivalgoers breaking them or bathing in the supply. The hundred-degree temperatures were boiling the thousands of attendants who slept under meager shadows of boxes and carts where they could. The two main stages were literally a mile apart, which required long walks in powerful heat and without adequate hydration and hygienic installations. The festival put together a line-up packed with artists and points of attraction, from all-night raves to a skate park to a film festival to advocacy boards gathering signatures and passing out free candles (whoops). They just didn’t plan on the needs of the festivalgoers. They only saw them as consumers, people to buy buy buy, and not as guests needing to be properly cared for too. The old ’69 festival meant to symbolize the Counterculture was selling overpriced T-shirts and water on a military base? The cascading results of tragedy and chaos are already in play by day one of the three days. From there, it’s waiting and watching missteps add up until its calamitous and fiery conclusion.
Where the movie starts to lose its focus is when it aims to make Woodstock ’99 a significant and important statement about a shift in culture. It seems clear to me that the reason that everything went so disastrously wrong in ’99 was because of its poor planning and lack of foresight, oblivious and enabling promoters, and its misreading of its audience. I’m not going to broadly categorize every lover of Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock as a wannabe fraternity bro looking for vulnerable women to harass. That’s unfair. Lang and Schuer place heavy blame on Fred Durst whipping up the audience into a froth of impressionable anger. The movie’s many interview subjects also take more time to describe the makeup of the people at the festival as young, white, male, and aimlessly angry. They blame the musical artists for the destruction and chaos of ’99, but who hired these bands and scheduled them, huh? Who hired Jewel to perform before Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine? These same rock bands being singled out for blame toured together under the imprinter of the Family Values Tour, and not one of those stops resulted in the destruction and fury of Woodstock ’99. It’s the same crowd, right, and even more condensed together, so then why weren’t the results repeated? Because the music, whatever you think of it artistically, and there’s plenty to grouse about with its misogyny and general ear-sludge quality, is not to blame for the failures of bad management and lapsed security.
As a meaningful epoch in society, Woodstock ’99 doesn’t quite add up with the import that several interview subjects want to project onto it. The problem is the mystique of Woodstock itself. The 1969 festival is a cultural touchstone for the Boomer generation, but it’s also been cultivated thanks to selective memory, nostalgia, and media myth-making. The negatives and failures of the original three days, like the fires and deaths and logistical shortcomings, are mitigated by the perception of the festival and its five-and-a-half-hour Oscar-winning 1970 documentary. The reality of the festival was transformed into a transcendent experience that never really existed as advertised, and so when Land and Schuer repackaged Woodstock for a new generation, they had a willing audience ready to have their own generation-defining experience. The ’99 festival isn’t any more of a meaningful cultural statement as was the fabled ‘69 festival. It was just crass commercialism disguising itself as “peace, love, and rock and roll,” and no different than the hopeful influencers and Millennials that flocked to the Fyre Fest. It’s all selling a cultivated perception. Woodstock ’99 has no more lasting cultural impact than any Coachella festival. It came at a bizarre crossroads in time between music, technology, and a coarsening of masculinity, but that doesn’t mean that it was some larger truth being revealed. The assertions to provide larger, thematic meaning come across as too searching.
Another sticking point for me is that the film criticizes the exploitation of women and yet the movie falls under the same traps of exploitation for questionable value. Price’s gamut of condemnations for the ’99 promoters hits a level of extra righteous fury when it comes to the treatment of the female attendants, many of whom were groped, sexually assaulted, and raped. Lang and Schuer acknowledge the lecherous behavior of the heavy population of agro-males but dismiss the accusations of sexual violence as statistically minimal for the massive three-day festival. In the documentary’s most incendiary moment, Schuer accuses the very women who elected to go topless of being culpable for their own assaults. Rightfully so, Price immediately cuts from this noxious statement to a female journalist who calls out this jaw-dropping example of gross victim blaming. Not every woman who was groped or assaulted even chose to go topless; many of them were simply vulnerable and present and could not get away. The documentary discusses at great length the reality of the prevalence of sexual assault during the ’99 fest, enough so that even the lead singer from The Offspring was pleading onstage with the revved-up audience to stop molesting women who just wanted to crowd surf in peace.
The consideration the movie shows is just and justified; however, this advocacy is muddled by Price’s prurient editing decisions. His interview subjects, and by extension the perspective of the filmmaker, admonishes the pay-per-view cameras for seeking out as many exposed breasts as possible to satiate its young male audience. This included scenes of women flashing their breasts but also women having their clothes ripped from their bodies. This exploitation is echoed in Price’s problematic editing. There are dozens and dozens of topless women intertwined throughout the movie and, most troubling, scenes of women being molested, women desperately trying to pull their tops back into place while grabby hands reach for their exposed bodies. I can understand not wanting to dull the disturbing reality of what these women endured but how many visual examples do we need to make the point stick? How many examples of literal molestation, groping, and assault should the audience endure? Is this onslaught of visual examples not further exploiting these same young women and their trauma? Price could have even obscured the identities of the victims or blurred out their nudity, something that would have felt more in keeping with the righteous indignation and consideration to the victims. Even if you could argue seeing this is necessary to understand, do we need to see dozens of victims?
An unintentional connection I made with the documentary was with the promoters, who definitely come across as negligent and defensive. Lang and Schuer are combative early in the archival footage, jostling with journalists asking pertinent and critical questions about the failures of the festival as they are happening. These two old men, who misread the nostalgia the ’99 crowd had for their own Boomer culture, point the finger of blame at anyone else. To them, it’s MTV’s fault because their coverage made the festival look like a hellish nightmare. To them, it’s the band’s fault for not defusing audience anger. To them, it’s the fault of the women for being groped and abused. To them, it’s the fault of the security team for not upholding order, never mind that these people only had to pass a three-hour course where they were given the answers for. To them, it’s everyone’s fault but their own, and this dismissive scapegoating reminds me, in many ways, of President Donald Trump and his own complaints about media coverage. For the former president, it’s not his cruel and inept policies that were bad, it was merely the skewered media coverage and thus the media was to blame. Hey, if Woodstock ’99 interview subjects are going to make sweeping cultural statements, then why not me too?
The Woodstock ’99 documentary is a fascinating train wreck to relive with some questionable artistic decisions that can distract or mitigate its power and entertainment value. It’s a definitive look at a disaster of an attempt to recapture something that was ineffable and unattainable. I don’t believe there’s a larger lesson to be learned, beyond criticisms of capitalism and poor planning. It’s hard to watch at times, infuriating at others, and deserving of scorn and eye-rolls. There hasn’t been an attempted Woodstock festival since 1999 and it’s time to let it go.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Pig (2021)
Whatever you may think Pig will be, chances are that you will be wrong. On the surface, it appears like it’s going to be another John Wick clone, with criminals stealing the beloved animal of a loner who happens to be a dangerous man who unleashes a path of vengeance. There is no real action in the movie at all. The missing pig is the catalyst to bring Rob (Nicolas Cage) back from the outskirts of Oregon and to retrace the old haunts of his old life, but the pig is more a symbol of companionship and traces back to his time with his deceased wife (another John Wick nod?). Pig is really more a meditative and reflective character study to unpack slowly. There are deeper themes and messages here, and the fact that they’re attached to a movie starring Nicolas Cage where he must find his stolen pig is all the more bizarre and exciting. This is unlike any Cage movie and, in its own way, feeds on the culmination of his own career of movies great and far from great.
This movie feels deeply personal for Cage. There is an elegiac tenderness that permeates the whole experience. It’s about loss but ultimately it’s a movie about chasing your dreams. There’s a reason the tagline for the film is, “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.” If you’re expecting a gonzo Cage irony fest, this sincere summation will seem completely mismatched. But this movie isn’t a gonzo Cage irony fest. It’s very much about different people dealing with pain and sorting through heartbreak, disappointment, disconnection, and taking stock of one’s delayed pursuit of happiness. There is no irony to be found here, folks. This movie, called Pig, is bracingly sincere. There’s a standout scene where Rob and Amir are dining at a fancy restaurant and Rob asks to meet the chef. It takes a moment but the chef recognizes Rob and is starstruck and asks if Rob remembers him working in Rob’s own restaurant. He does, and Rob asks this man about his old dream, which was to open a pub-style restaurant, and why he capitulated. The man is initially defensive, citing the local market, but then he has to sit and think it over. It was his dream. It still is, and the fact that this man not only remembers him but also remembers his exact dream and calls him out, it’s like having an intervention from someone who you never knew cared as much as they did. Maybe this man will proceed with his dream of opening a pub. Maybe he won’t, but Rob reminds him and us how little time we have and to really spend it on the passions that positively consume us.
To that end, you can see the parallels with the main character and Cage’s own career. Nicolas Cage has long been an actor defined by excess to the point that he has a catalogue of outsized performances with ironic air quotes attached to them. The man owned his own island and named his son after Superman’s birth name. He has been starring in more and more direct-to-DVD low-budget thrillers, as have John Travolta and Bruce Willis, who both rarely seem to attach themselves to theatrical releases at this stage of their careers. Some might term this the decline of his career, that he is slumming it, but to Cage it’s just another gig. Unlike Willis, famous for shooting his part in a weekend while his stand-in works the rest, Cage is still putting forth quality effort. This might be a little psychological projection on my part, but Cage strikes me as a professional who enjoys his craft even if he makes some unorthodox choices. He has a passion for movies and he’s going to seek that out because it’s what defines him. We might not appreciate the projects he selects, we might not understand them, and they might even be bad, but Cage is taking the roles offered because making movies and acting is the thing he really cares about. His performance here is somber, touching, and suffused with ache. It’s one of, if not the, most restrained performances of Cage’s career and a reminder that the man can be a world-class actor.
Structurally, Pig seems to reinvent itself with every scene, providing new answers and insights as we unravel Rob’s past. It allows you to consistently re-evaluate the movie and characters and makes for a genuinely engrossing viewing because you know there will be something worth paying attention to with every scene change. There are people in the city who revere Rob, who despise him, who seem to be jealous of him, and we’re discovering more and more what that life was like and what drove Rob to being a recluse. The movie rides a line of nuance and ambiguity where not every character detail and connection is spelled out; it’s up to the individual to process meaning. Is this character grateful to Rob because his wife, who battled depression for years, had one significant happy moment she would reminisce over, Rob’s delicious dinner? Is he jealous that a meal could make her happy when he seemingly couldn’t? What emotional response does this man have? It’s up to the viewer to determine the human response to passion and the evaluation of what passions are prioritized. The character writing finds that artistic middle ground of being nuanced but also being accessible. For a movie about a man searching for his missing pig, it’s much more concerned with the man and his demons and dreams.
It’s a beguiling realization that a movie where Nicolas Cage searches for his prized pig might be one of the better films of 2021 and one of the actor’s finest performances. The movie appears like it will be dark, scuzzy, and depressing but it’s actually quite compassionate, humane, and encouraging. It’s not a story about a man cracking skulls and crossing names off a list to retrieve his stolen pet. It’s a movie about a man who left his suffering and who comes back and re-examines his life’s choices and the choices of others. He may look like a bleeding hobo for the majority of the movie, but Rob is a force for good, reminding others of their passions, the urgency of time to chase them, and the importance of spending time with the people, and pets, that matter to them, our own selective families. Pig is an absorbing, poetic, and eminently kind movie and one that doesn’t feel like it could have worked the same without Cage’s professional legacy to build from. It’s a small movie that will surprise many and reaffirms that Cage is always an actor worth watching.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
For a generation of millennials, those of us who came of age in the 1990s, Space Jam has miraculously accrued a nostalgic fixation. Michael Jordan starred alongside cartoon favorites and we all learned valuable lessons about teamwork. The soundtrack also, as the kids say, slapped, with that titular banger welcoming us to the jam and the R. Kelly eponymous ballad, “I Believe I Can Fly.” Flash forward 25 years, and a new basketball superstar is looking to relaunch the franchise and reinvigorate the Looney Tunes pals for a new generation. Lebron James plays a fictionalized version of himself struggling to connect with one of his sons. He wants the boy to take basketball seriously but worries about his commitment and thinks video games, the child’s true passion, are a distraction for him. He and his son get sucked into the “server-verse” of Warner Bros. studios thanks to an angry A.I. (Don Cheadle) who just wants respect. The scornful A.I. challenges Lebron to a basketball game while tempting Lebron’s son to the dark side. Lebron teams up with Bugs Bunny to reunite the classic Tunes to put together a winning team.
This movie is clearly not intended for adults but at the same time it feels engineered from their references. Are children going to understand William Shatner impressions? Parodies of The Matrix, or Mad Max: Fury Road, or Casablanca? To that end, I question if we’ve come to a point in popular entertainment where the Looney Tunes characters have been eclipsed. When I grew up, cable television, let alone channels devoted to entertaining children, were just beginning in the 1980s, so I did grow up with classic cartoons from decades prior. I knew about Bugs and Daffy and Tom and Jerry and Hannah Barbara and the old guard. Modern American children have grown up with a generation of original cartoons and programming and I would argue they have more nostalgic reverence for shows like The Fairly Odd Parents, Gumball, and other popular Cartoon Network originals. I strongly doubt that the majority of the movie’s stated target audience, children, have any emotional investment or recognition for the old Looney Tunes characters. Perhaps the entire Space Jam sequel is designed to reignite interest in a certain younger demographic, and this wouldn’t surprise me as its real source for existence. To be fair, the original 1996 Space Jam was created to sell sneakers, so it’s not like this is out of step for the franchise’s integrity.
The conception of this movie is less about Lebron James interacting with the classic Looney Tunes characters than Lebron James being the spokesman for a catalogue of Warner Bros. intellectual property (IP). What children are sitting around saying, “I can’t wait to interact with all my favorite Warner properties?” Children do not think like this, they don’t segregate into tribes for different corporate masters. They like what they like and don’t think about whether its corporate parentage is with Disney or Viacom or whatever. Space Jam: A New Legacy feels less like a story or even a movie and more like a catalogue launch for the Warner Bros. gift shop (get your Grandma Matrix sweaters just in time for the fourth movie coming out these holidays!).
The intermingling of different worlds and properties can be done, see The Lego Movie, but more needs to be done other than transporting characters into a world they do not belong. Watching Granny perform moves from The Matrix isn’t funny because what is even being set up for comedy? It’s not a tweaking or commentary on the original, nor is there any recognizable comedy angle; it’s what Family Guy typically does – repeating the scenarios but with different faces. There is a key difference between reference and parody (a point I have discussed at EXTENSIVE LENGTH in my reviews of the very bad Friedberg and Seltzer spoofs). Nobody cares that much about these characters that just seeing them in a different environment is enough. Watching Wile E. Cayote as one of the War Boys in Fury Road is not enough, and I absolutely adore that movie and consider it an instant classic, but if I wanted to just watch Fury Road, I would gladly just watch Fury Road (they do not even call it “Furry Road,” come on!).
By far, the most confounding part of this new Space Jam is the decision-making process over what IP should be included and what should be excluded. I would be fascinated to watch a documentary series just on the creative clashes with studio execs. There are some bizarre choices selected to attend the culminating basketball game as rowdy spectators. I can understand memorable figures like King Kong, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, the Iron Giant, and the Scooby Doo van. Those are immediately recognizable for modern-day children. However, why is Jim Carey’s Mask character there? Why is the grotesque Danny DeVito version of the Penguin there? Why is the Night King from Game of Thrones there? Why is Pennywise the Clown, a vicious and frightening character, there? Why are the droogs from A Clockwork Orange there? Who is that supposed to appeal to? Why would anyone in their right mind include a gang best known for wanton violence and rape to be faces in the crowd to cheer on a basketball game? It would be akin to taking the hillbillies who rape Ned Beatty in Deliverance and placing them side-by-side with cartoons for a movie intended for children. If the droogs and Pennywise made the cut, what inappropriate characters from the vaults of Warner Bros. were denied? This fascinates me.
I also have problems when Bugs and the other Tunes step into the third dimension. Characters that were intended for two-dimensions always look awkward when transported into a three-dimensional realm. It was a smart move keeping the cartoons as their standard hand-drawn selves in the original Space Jam. When the big basketball game commences, the Tunes and James are pulled into three dimensions and the characters do not look good. The circumference of their heads and how it relates to their mouths moving looks all wrong. Bugs looks like a Mylar birthday balloon that has somehow gained sentience. This extra step is likely meant to appeal to modern-day audiences who have turned their noses on more traditional hand-drawn animation in feature films (Tangled and Frozen began as 2-D animated films before going to 3-D). It’s another curious case meant to modernize the Looney Tunes and appeal to a younger demo, and yet it runs counter to so much more of the programming choices and contradictory decision-making.
Is Space Jam: A New Legacy a good movie? Quite simply, no, but then by objective standards neither was the original Space Jam. Lebron James may still be trailing his Airness in a few more NBA records but King James has more natural charisma and acting ability than Jordan who settled as straight man/pitch man. There is an occasional joke that earned a laugh from me, the best being the bait-and-switch reveal of Michael Jordan returning to the Tune Squad, which also seems to imply that Sylvester the cat is kind of racist. I liked Lil’ Rel. Congrats also to the filmmakers for bringing back Lola Bunny, having her voiced by Zendaya, and realizing she can just be a lady bunny good at playing basketball. The original Lola Bunny was hyper sexualized and I’ve already read too many comments from dregs on the Internet upset this new rabbit doesn’t make them feel funny in their pants (“IF I CANNOT OBJECTIFY THIS CARTOON RABBIT, THEN WHY AM I EVEN WATCHING A MOVIE INTENDED FOR CHILDREN?”). The moral or message is pretty simple about accepting others for who they are and not how you demand, which is weirdly exemplified in a cross-generational conflict where Lebron will not allow his son to play video games because his coach growing up thought they were a waste of time. As if he’s only allowed to play basketball with every waking and sleeping second of his existence. Lebron grew up in the late 90s when video games were mainstream and great. His son is an obvious game design prodigy, but it will take him the whole movie to see.
Feeling like the unholy IP orgies that were Ready Player One and The Emoji Movie, the Space Jam sequel (or reboot) feels more like a catalogue launch or a streaming channel opening its vast archives for ready-made consumer consumption. There are several moments where I just shrugged and said to myself, “Well, that happened,” like Granny doing her fancy Matrix moves or Porky Pig battle rapping. I think the idea of Lebron helping the classic Looney Tunes characters in another wacky edition of basketball would have made for a suitable children’s movie. The original only focuses on the Looney Tunes and gets by. For whatever reason, the studio execs insisted to the six credited screenwriters (pity them all, and the sixty un-credited) that this serve not as a franchise relaunch but as a corporate portfolio branding showcase. The movie gets lost in the shuffle from all the haphazard and contradictory impulses to see this through, turning from the game of basketball into decades-past-their-prime Austin Powers jokes. Regardless, Space Jam: A New Legacy is less new and more everything Warner Bros. owns the rights to in the past that they would like to remind you about. Watch it all now on HBO MAX, folks!
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
The reason we typically watch crime/action movies is for the slick style, the gonzo action, and the over-the-top characters cutting loose in the most violent of manners. We watch these movies to capture that whiff of cool, something flashy and entertaining with its eye-popping combo of sight and sound. Think Snatch, and Drive, and Atomic Blonde, and what appears to be the upcoming James Gunn Suicide Squad sequel. By these standards of stylized violence and colorful anti-heroes, Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake falls too flat to be duly satisfying.
Sam (Karen Gillan) is a hired killer working for the secretive order, The Firm. Her handler (Paul Giamatti) has accidentally assigned her the son of a commanding mobster who now demands vengeance. Her lone way to keep the protection of her employers is to kill a man who robbed them, which she does, but then regrets her actions. The troubled man had stolen the money to pay the kidnappers ransoming his daughter, Emily (Chloe Coleman). Sam decides to get involved and save this girl, and in doing so loses protection. The scornful mobster sends teams of goons to track Sam and kill her, forcing her to find refuge with her absentee mother (Lena Headey).
The problem with playing in this stylized sandbox is having little to back up the attitude and style. Admittedly, those two aspects go far in a sub-genre dominated by appearances, but if you just have tough-looking shells of characters posturing and acting tough, it doesn’t matter how much style you dump onto the screen, it will only distract for only so long. The characters in Gunpowder Milkshake are so powerfully bland and all adhere to the same lone character trait. They’re all glib and badass and brusque and smug and fairly boring. It’s like somebody took the John Wick universe of clandestine killers and copied and pasted the same default personality.
If everyone is super cool, and super deadly, and super nonchalant, then you need to put even more work into making the characters stand apart. They’ll need specific quirks, competing goals, faults and obsessions, some key nub of characterization even if its superficial (a guy with one eye he’s insecure about it, etc.). With Gunpowder Milkshake, there’s nothing to work with. The screenwriters made this so much harder on themselves. I guess we’re merely supposed to be won over by the casting and the imagery of these bad ladies holding powerful weaponry. The protagonist is boring. She is the familiar hired killer who grows an inconvenient conscience. That’s an acceptable starting point but the moral growth is hindered when her young charge, the little girl that forces her paradigm shift, wants to be her apprentice to learn to kill people. The fraught mother/daughter relationship resorts to a lot of “I didn’t want this life for you,” “It’s the only life I’ve known” roundabout conversations, and neither furthers our understanding of either side.
With all that being said, there are moments of bloody fun that can be enjoyed. There’s a middle portion of the movie that gave me hope the film had transformed. At one point, Sam is indisposed and unable to use her arms, which dangle without any muscle control. She’s about to be beset by angry if bruised bad guys and must plan what to do. The resulting clash is a burst of creative choreography and an excellent demonstration of Sam’s resourcefulness and drive. Watching her dispatch a dozen armed men so indifferently, always knowing where and when to turn and dodge is not nearly as entertaining or engaging as watching her struggle and solve a problem. This sequence is extended and makes clever use of its location and the elements that would be available. Then we go a step further, as Sam and her youngster must drive a car to flee except the uncontrollable arm problem persists. Sam will pump the pedals and give directions while Emily sits on her lap and turns the steering wheel. This made me excited. We had organic complications and potential solutions that involved both characters having to rely upon one another. That is solid screenwriting and finding a way to spice up an ordinary parking garage chase sequence. By the end of this sequence, my hopes started to dwindle because Sam reverted to her earlier super cool, impervious version. She knew every exact move to make, and the small-scale car chase started losing my interest even with the extra driving dynamic. I wish the filmmakers could analyze how these sequences differed to better harness that creative surge.
The concluding act of Gunpowder Milkshake is a deluge of false climaxes and waves of bad guys that never pose any discernible threat. It all feels too repetitive and like a video game. This group of people need to be killed, and then this next group of people need to be killed, and then this next next group of people need to be killed, and I just started getting bored. There is the occasional fun burst of violence and style, but the enemies are stock and dispensable, so it doesn’t feel like it matters what the numbers are. Whether it’s a dozen or a thousand, nothing really seems to matter because our super team of badass women will never be stopped. If you’re going to establish the protagonists as so far ahead of their competition, then work needs to be done to provide another outlet for audience interest. Use that time to explore the peculiarities of the cracked-universe world, like in the John Wick franchise. Use that time to meaningfully push the characters toward personal confrontations with one another. Alas, it’s all slapdash style with the same dead-eyed cool stare from start to finish (with the noted exception above). The entire final act could have been five minutes or fifty. It’s filler violence until the director tires out.
The cast is blameless and eminently watchable. I’ve been a fan of Gillan’s since her early Doctor Who days, and it’s been fun to watch her come into her own with the major spotlight afforded from franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy and Jumanji. She’s more than capable of kicking ass and looking cool doing so but this is the thinnest of characters. Once Sam chooses to put her safety at risk to save an innocent girl, it’s the end of her character growth. I suppose you can argue everything she does from there further proves the lengths she will go to solidify this important choice. Gillan deserves a worthy star vehicle. It’s fun to watch Angela Bassett, Michell Yeoh, Carla Gugino, and Headey push back with a grin against the misogyny of the overconfident wicked men who wish to do them harm. I wish they were better integrated into the world to have more significance other than as old allies who double as a weapons depot. There’s only so many guns-in-books jokes you can have before it too feels overdone.
For fans of stylized violence, there may be enough cooking with Gunpowder Milkshake to meet out its near two-hour investment. The neon-infused, candy-colored production design and cinematography can enliven moments. The actors are fun to watch. Some of the fighting is brutally choreographed and cleverly executed, like the sequence where Gillan has no control over her arms. It’s got slow-mo violence set to wailing pop music tracks. If you’re looking for a pretty movie with some style, then it might be enough. If, however, you’re looking for a movie with interesting characters with memorable personalities, well-developed action with variance, and a story with a nice array of twists and turns and payoffs, then maybe look elsewhere.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Black Widow (2021)
If you ask anyone who their least favorite Avenger is, every one of those participants will have the same exact answer: Hawkeye. If you ask that same group who is their second least favorite Avenger, chances are that a clear majority are going to next say Black Widow. The character has been part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since 2010 in Iron Man 2, a full decade of idling to gain her solo movie to the point it became a long-running question in the fanbase. Then they killed the character in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and then also announced she would be getting her solo movie, and the fanbase said, “Wait, now?” Delayed a full year thanks to COVID-19, Black Widow is Marvel’s first theatrical release in almost two years and will likely benefit from some low expectations and eagerness to get back to the big screen spectacle of summer movies.
It’s not Black Widow’s fault that she’s paired with a super soldier, essentially Batman in a flying suit, a nigh indestructible god, and a giant raging id monster. There’s a significant gap between that upper tier of the super powered Avengers and the two non-powered members, Lady with Guns and Guy with Bow and Arrow. It’s hard to compete with all of that, and the glimpses we’ve been given with previous MCU movies haven’t exactly been the most nuanced or dimensional for Black Widow (remember her dubbing herself a “monster” because the state took away her ability to bear children?). We’ve had hints about past troubles and regrets, but it’s never been explored with any significance… until now.
Taking place shortly after the events of 2016’s Civil War, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is on the run from American authorities. She reunites abroad with her estranged sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh), who has recently broken free of the chemical mind control of the sinister Widows program. Yelena and Natasha were living as sisters for three years as a cover family of Russian agents, with Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz) as their parents. They were whisked back to Russia, separated, and thrown back into the Widow program where they were trained to be elite assassins by Dreykov (Ray Winstone, barely flirting with a Russian accent). The combative sisters are being chased by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, other killer Widows still under the chemical-induced mind control, and Dreykov’s best hunter, the ruthless Taskmaster, a masked warrior who can learn and mimic the moves from other fighters. Natasha and Yelena decide the only way to stop Dreykov is to reunite their old family once again.
I’m a little confused by the general indifference Black Widow seems to have generated from critics and fans because I thought, while with some flaws, that this is still a good movie that I would say is on the cusp of being above average for the MCU’s already high bar. Perhaps, again, this movie is benefiting from lowered expectations. I wasn’t going in with too many demands considering my personal investment with the Black Widow character was minimal prior to her sacrificial death. I wanted a fun movie that provided further insight into her character, considering this would likely be the last time we see Natasha in the MCU. I was surprised how emotionally engaged I became with her movie. While the action is fine, it was the dramatic parts that really grabbed me. This is the first MCU movie where I was looking forward to the breaks in action more than the actual action. The pre-credits flashback (to mid-90s Ohio no less) sets up this fractured family dynamic that serves as the core of the movie, the question over whether these relationships ever really mattered on a deeper level or whether each person was simply playing their assignment. It makes for intriguing drama about vulnerable characters sifting through the small measures of happiness they’ve had and the difficulty of reaching out to people that are important to you. Natasha is in a delicate yet reflective place considering her isolation. The movie is structured like a Jason Bourne-style spy caper, jumping from one locale to the next, but it’s more of a family drama about hurt people reconciling and reconnecting. On its own terms, it’s a real family movie.
There are some major themes and some serious subjects with Black Widow and they are well handled and tied to the character journeys. The opening titles, set to a melancholy cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” covers human trafficking. This is a story about the systems of abuse, primarily abusive men demanding control from throngs of women, and it’s about overcoming abuse and establishing support systems. For Natasha, she made some hard choices to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D., and many others have suffered because of her decision to escape. Many women could not escape their tormentors, and the level of control only became more methodical. Yelena talks about being conscious of everything but unsure what parts of you are really your own doing, and this seems eminently relatable about victimhood. The movie is about breaking free of unhealthy relationships, coming into your own control, and finding healthy families even if they are troubled and a work in progress. That’s why the family moments resonated as much for me. Real attention was given to the supporting characters in Natasha’s orbit.
To that end, the villains exemplify the themes by design, especially Taskmaster serving as a literalization of Natasha facing off against the sins of her past, much like in 2017’s Logan where Old Logan fought young Logan. Fans of Taskmaster from the comics may well be disappointed by the adaptation because the character was very sardonic and, in here, never utters a word (there is a certain Deadpool-in-X-Men Origins: Wolverine reminiscence). More could have been done but the villain represents the consequences of abandonment. I appreciated that even until the final moment, the villain could be redeemed and meant something more than simply another masked heavy to be blown apart. Dreykov, on the other hand, is just a typically awful abuser and his lack of definition fits. He’s a general stand-in for the toxic control of men accustomed to power and the dismissal of female agency. He’s dull but more a designated symbol.
The traveling Black Widow family van is the real draw of this movie. I have been a Florence Pugh fan since her star making turn in 2017’s emotionally disquieting Lady Macbeth, and I welcome her and Yelena into the MCU with open arms. Pugh (Midsommar) is terrific and full of sarcastic wit, at one point criticizing Natasha’s familiar three-point “superhero landing.” She’s also convincing in all the action and gunplay. Even better, there are several dramatic scenes that allow the talented actress to tap into her prowess. She could make me cackle, then the next minute impress me with the finesse of her leg-swinging attack movements, and then the next make me feel something as she tearfully reflects that her cover family was the best years of her life (as the youngest, Yelena had no idea until they ran off that they were all Russian agents). Her combustible yet affectionate relationship with Johansson imbued so much more emotional investment into the Black Widow character for me. Harbour (Hellboy, Stranger Things) is inhaling any available scenery as a past-his-prime Russian super soldier still holding onto his glory days as a communist answer to Captain America (he eagerly asks Natasha if Cap ever mentions him, so hopeful it’s adorable). He’s a regular source of comedy but also has a credible paternal warmth to him as he tries to don the mantle of fatherhood like a costume that no longer fits quite as well. Unfortunately, Weisz (The Favourite) isn’t on screen as much as the other members of the family unit but I still greatly enjoyed watching her finely attuned deadpan delivery.
From an action standpoint, Black Widow will mostly suffice but there is little to really get the blood pumping. The chases and fights are entertaining without delivering anything new. The third act involves an extended set piece with characters plummeting from the sky amid fiery debris. It’s at least visually interesting and the action high-point of the movie. Under director Cate Shortland (Lore, Berlin Syndrome), the action is easy to follow even as it escalates into big video game carnage and explosions. The lack of development in the action would be more of an issue for me if the non-action elements, the story and acting, weren’t as involving. I feel like Shortland was hired for the dramatics and performances and character moments, less so the explosions.
It took eleven years, one more thanks to COVID, but Black Widow finally has her starring vehicle and the MCU is finally back on the big screen (or your home screen via Disney Plus and thirty additional dollars). I watched the movie with my girlfriend and cheerfully noted it would be the first theatrical Marvel movie we watched during our year-plus courtship, thus a real milestone in modern geek dating (we’ll have many opportunities ahead as there are six more Marvel movies scheduled between now and summer 2022). I was surprised how much I enjoyed Black Widow once it had reassembled its family dynamic and I hope to see the extended Romanoff family members in future MCU editions. It’s a late but welcomed swan song for Natasha Romanoff and her checkered past. For the first time, I felt for her character, and part of that was the result of enjoying her family nucleus and the pathos they brought. Black Widow is a serviceable action movie with fun characters and potent dramatic interactions with heavy, well-realized themes. I’m baffled by the general critical indifference (I have a lot fewer qualms than I did with 2019’s Captain Marvel). It’s the rare big movie where the quiet moments are the high-points, and twenty-plus movies in, that’s at least something new from the juggernaut that is the MCU.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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No Sudden Move (2021)
A star-studded collaboration between director Steven Soderbergh (Logan Lucky) and screenwriter Ed Solomon (Bill and Ted Face the Music), No Sudden Move is a class in how to effectively use tension and confusion to a movie’s benefit. Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro play a pair of low-level criminals struggling to make ends meet. They accept a quick job “babysitting” a family while the husband (David Harbour) retrieves a very valuable document that certain higher-ups are after. Very early on, you feel like something is wrong and something will quickly go wrong, and this feeling persists throughout the film’s two hours. Our two protagonists sense they’re being set up, take action, and from there the movie becomes them trying to cash out with this valuable document while constantly looking over their shoulders. There are many different parties that are willing to do whatever it takes to obtain this document. In all honesty, the screenplay by Solomon is a little too over-plotted. There are several betrayals and schemers and acrimonious relationships built upon past betrayals and mistakes that it can all be a little hard to follow at times. The dread I felt was palpable. You don’t expect these guys to get away with this, not against the forces they’re going against, and so it becomes a nerve-wracking game of assessing every moment and whether this is when disaster will strike. Soderbergh’s dashes of style don’t always jibe with the 1954 Detroit setting, like his penchant for fish-eyed lenses communicating the distortion of this murky world of shadow brokers. It feels like Soderbergh has to resort to some new gimmick to get himself excited about movie projects (at least is wasn’t filmed on an iPhone). The acting is strong throughout, though Cheadle can be hard to hear at times from his guttural, frog-in-throat speaking voice. The movie kept me guessing, with some surprise cameos, and it left me dreading what would happen next. A modest success for glamorous discomfort.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Werewolves Within (2021)
Surprisingly based upon a PlayStation VR video game by Ubisoft, Werewolves Within is a fun horror comedy that plays out like a demented Agatha Christie drawing room mystery. Sam Richardson (The Tomorrow War) is a new park ranger assigned to a small snowy town that may or may not be threatened by a werewolf hiding among the townspeople. A series of bloody murders and mangled gas generators points toward some monstrous beast, and over the course of one long night, characters will accuse one another of being the hidden werewolf, and tensions and paranoia mount as the body count rises. Part of the fun comes from the wild whodunit speculation that the filmmakers are aware of. Early on, I started accumulating my band of suspects, and then my red herring suspects, and the movie seems to be fully knowledgeable of this as well, so there’s plenty of little details spilled that, in an ordinary movie would prove conclusive to the detail-oriented viewer; however, Werewolves Within is full of motivations and clever fleeting details to throw you off. Richardson is wonderfully nonplussed as the supremely nice and easy-going ranger who finds himself frantically trying to be the voice of calm and security as the town breaks down. The supporting characters are rather one-note nutjobs but each has a different personality to sprinkle into the chaotic mix. The eventual reveal of the culprit involves a lot of explaining to cover hidden character deception that could have used more setup to feel less forced. I also wished the humor and the horror was a bit crazier. I knew the horror wasn’t going to be pronounced, as most horror-comedies typically favor one more than the other, but I wished the comedy had escalated as the characters further gave in to the insanity of the ridiculous situation. It’s a movie that’s easy going in charm and finely punctuated with some sharp one-liners and silly visual gags. It’s agreeable to its core and a lighthearted yet gory way to spend 90 minutes. By default, it’s also one of the best video game adaptations made into a movie. That’s primarily because it’s a recognizable murder mystery structure just with a genre kick. I wish everything had been given an extra dose of elevation and hijinks, comedy and horror, but that might detract from the overall droll charm, lead by Richardson. Werewolves Within makes me wish for an anthology franchise just transplanting its premise across new settings. Imagine The Hangover but having to also figure out which of your recovering blackout drunk friends was a werewolf. It just works.
Nate’s Grade: B
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