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Abigail (2024)
Abigail feels very much like a spiritual sister for 2019’s Ready or Not, as it is a follow-up from the same writers and directors. It’s a bloody, funny movie about a hunt in a big mansion with a heroine who is battling against supernatural forces over the course of one long hellish night. We have a team of thieves kidnapping the young daughter of a man with money and having to hold her overnight. They don’t know one another and there’s an initial bristle to their discovery, like when an ex-police detective (Dan Stevens) and a recovering addict (Melissa Berrera) have equal measure not to trust one another. Things get worse when it’s revealed that their hostage, the titular Abigail (Alisha Weir), is not what she seems, a fact spoiled in the trailer. What follows is a topsy-turvy game of cat and mouse with some effective creepy moments and some lively humor without losing sight of the escalating stakes as well as the acclimation of new rules. The acting ensemble is highly enjoyable, particularly Stevens as a scuzzy authority figure, Kevin Durand as a himbo with an emotional core, and Weir, who has tremendous range to pull off the changes her character goes through. It’s not as fulfilling and finely developed as Ready or Not, one of 2019’s best films and one of the best endings to a movie ever, but Abigail is a first-rate bloody B-movie that might not hit as high but still satisfies.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Passion of the Christ (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released February 25, 2004:
The Passion of the Christ is a retelling of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ’s life (perhaps you’ve heard of him?). In these final hours we witness his betrayal at the hands of Judas, his trial by Jewish leaders, his sentencing by Pontius Pilate, his subsequent whippings and torture and finally his crucifixion. Throughout the film Jesus is tempted by Satan, who is pictured as a pasty figure in a black hood (kind of resembling Jeremy Irons from The Time Machine if anyone can remember). The Passion spares no expense to stage the most authentic portrayal of what Jesus of Nazareth endured in his final 12 hours of life.
For all the hullabaloo about being the most controversial film in years (and forgive me for even using the term “hullabaloo”), I can’t help but feel a smidgen of disappointment about the final product. The Passion is aptly passionate and full of striking images, beautiful photography and production values, and stirring performances all set to a rousing score. But what makes The Passion disappointing to me is the characters. You see, Mel Gibson’s epic does not devote any time to fleshing out the central characters. They are merely ciphers and the audience is expected to plug their feelings and opinions into these walking, bleeding symbols to give them life. Now, you could argue this is what religion is all about, but as far as a movie’s story goes it is weak. The Passion turns into a well-meaning and slick spectacle where character is not an issue. And as a spectacle The Passion is first-rate; the production is amazing and the violence is graphic and gasp-inducing. Do I think the majority of people will leave the theater moved and satisfied? Yes I do. But I can’t stop this nagging concern that The Passion was devoid of character and tried covering it up with enough violence to possibly twist its message into a Sunday school snuff film.
For my money, the best Biblical film is Martin Scorsese’s 1987 The Last Temptation of Christ (also a film mired in controversy). Last Temptation, unlike Gibson’s spectacle, was all about Jesus as a character and not simply as a physical martyr. Scorsese’s film dealt with a Christ consumed by doubt and fear and the frailties of being human. But the best part is the final 20 minutes when Jesus is tempted, by Satan, to step down from the cross and live out a normal life. Jesus walks away from the cross, marries Mary Magdalene, fathers children (this is where the controversy stemmed from but they were married) and dies at an old age. Jesus is then confronted by his aging apostles who chastise him for not living up to what he was supposed to do to save mankind. Jesus wakes up from the illusion and fulfills his mission and dies on the cross. Now, with the story of Last Temptation an audience has a greater appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus because they witness his fears and they witness the normal life he forgoes to die for man’s sins. There is a sense of gravity about what Jesus is sacrificing.
With The Passion Gibson figures if he can build a sense of grand sacrifice by gruesomely portraying the tortures Jesus endured. Even if it is Jesus, and this may sound blasphemous, torturing a character to create sympathy and likeability is the weakest writing trick you can do. Yes Jesus suffered a lot, yes we should all be horrified and grateful, and yes people will likely be moved at the unrelenting violence he endured, but in regards to telling a story, I cannot feel as much for characters whose only characterization is their suffering. Sure, The Passion flashes back to some happier moments of Jesus’ life, which I like to call the Jesus Greatest Hits collection, but the movie does not show us who Jesus was, what he felt (beyond agonizing pain) or the turmoil he went through in finally deciding to give up his own life for people that despised him. The Passion is not about character but about spectacle.
So let’s talk about the violence now, shall we? Gibson’s camera lovingly lingers on the gut-churning, harrowing, merciless level of violence. But this is his only message. It’s like Gibson is standing behind the camera and saying to the audience, “You see what Jesus suffered? Do you feel bad now? FLAY HIM MORE! How about now?” What was only three sentences of description in the Gospels takes up ten minutes of flogging screen time. Mad Mel has the urge to scourge. After an insane amount of time spent watching Jesus get flayed and beaten the violence starts to not just kill whatever spiritual message Gibson may have had in mind, but the violence becomes the message. The Passion does give an audience a fair understanding of the physical torture Jesus was subjected to, but the movie does not display Christ as fully human, enjoying life and love, or fully divine. The only thing The Passion shows us about Jesus is that the son of God sure knew how to take a whuppin’. For Gibson, the violence is the message and the point is to witness what Jesus endured. Some would call that sadistic.
The actors all do a fine job and it’s impressive that everyones’ lines is in two dead languages (Latin and Aramaic, though for the life of me I can’t tell them apart). But the acting is limited because of the nature of the film. Had there been more moments of character the acting would come across better. As it stands, the acting in The Passion is relegated to looks of anguish or looks of horror, interspersed with weeping. Monica Bellucci (The Matrix sequels) really has nothing to do as Mary Magdalene but run around in the background a lot. Jim Caviezel (Frequency, Angel Eyes) gives everything he has in the mighty big shoes he tries to fill. It’s too bad that his Jesus spends most of the screen time being beaten, which kind of hampers his acting range.
Now let’s address the anti-Semitic concerns. The Passion does portray a handful of Jewish religious leaders as instigators for Jesus’ eventual crucifixion, but there are also Jewish leaders who denounce their actions and just as many people bemoaning the torture of Jesus as there are calling for it. Who really comes off looking bad are the Romans. Excluding the efforts to make Pilate look apprehensive, the Roman soldiers are always seen kicking, punching, whipping, spitting on Jesus and laughing manically with their yellow teeth.
And like I said before, most people will be extremely satisfied with the film because it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t have an opinion on Jesus. Gibson is counting on audiences to walk in and fill in the holes of the character so that The Passion is more affecting. Gibson’s film is worthy spectacle, and despite the vacuum of character I did get choked up four separate times, mostly involving Jesus and his mother. The Passion is a well-made and well-intentioned film that will hit the right notes for many. I just wish there were more to it than spectacle. I really do.
Nate’s Grade: C
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
In 2004, Mel Gibson made an R-rated foreign film that was two hours of savage brutality against Jesus, and it wound up being one of the biggest box-office hits of the decade and forged a trail for other Hollywood execs to chase after a “faith-based audience.” It could be said that this grisly movie gave the people what they wanted, and apparently what they wanted was to watch their messiah suffer physical feats that should have killed any mortal five times over. Twenty years later, The Passion of the Christ is still a curiosity, a movie with so much technical quality and devotion to a specific purpose, but that purpose is so narrow: make people feel bad. If you were being charitable, you could argue that the sacrifice of Jesus is felt stronger when every whipping, beating, scourging, and blood-letting is endured from the audience. Except I don’t believe this, because that assumes that more time spent on visual carnage equals more appreciation earned, as if our empathy has an equation. The emphasis on the death of Jesus feels like a telling insight into certain elements within mainstream American religious culture, where the focus is on violence and loss and less so the resurrection of Jesus, wherein the man conquers death and preaches forgiveness of sin for all mankind. It’s the preoccupation with grievance and brutish power over the helping of others different and less fortunate from ourselves. I’m not going to say the hard-core fans of The Passion of the Christ are valuing the wrong spiritual ideals, but it was this Jesus guy who did say everyone should love thy neighbor as thyself.
This is going to be a rarity for my twenty-year re-review series, but I agree almost one hundred percent with everything I wrote in 2004. I can’t really improve upon that analysis and my explanation for the faults of the movie and its spiritual shortcomings. Some of these lines are still terrific: “…Twist its message into a Sunday school snuff film,” “The only thing The Passion shows us about the Son of God is that he sure knew how to take a whippin’,” and, “Mad Mel has the urge to scourge.” More time is spent obsessing over the blood of Jesus than any of his words. I’m still debating the exact legacy of this movie besides as a harbinger of a wider Christian marketplace as well as Jim Caviezel’s own god complex. Gibson only directed two other movies after, 2006’s Apocalypto and 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge. His personal failings also became hard for many to ignore after his anti-semetic drunken ramblings and allegations of abuse, relegating him chiefly to direct-to-streaming (13 films from 2020-2023). In many ways, The Passion of the Christ represents Gibson at his height of powers within Hollywood, and it was accomplished outside the studio system who thought he was crazy, though he proved them right for different reasons.
Some strange Passion facts lost to history. 1) This movie actually killed a viewer. During the crucifixion scene, a man suffered a fatal heart attack and later died. Sure, the man’s genetics and life-style choices are more likely at fault here, but had this man not seen Gibson’s movie he might have survived or at least been in a better capacity to deal with his eventual heart attack symptoms. 2) Gibson attempted to re-edit the movie for a PG-13 theatrical re-release in 2005, trimming five minutes of some of the more gruesome violence, yet the MPAA still said the movie was keeping its R-rating. 3) During filming, Caviezel was literally struck by lightning. 4) A sequel has been in development for almost twenty years, confirmed by Gibson’s Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace in 2016. In 2023, Gibson revealed he has multiple versions of the sequel script in the works, including one that visits hell. Caveizel has predicted the possible sequel would be the “biggest film in history,” but this is the same guy who declared Donald Trump as the modern-day Noah, so maybe let’s not regard this guy too credibly with his opinions.
The challenge with any on-screen depiction of Jesus is fleshing him out as man and god. Only focusing on one obscures the complexity of characterization, denying filmgoers a more engaging examination of the key figure of Christianity. I’d still advise everyone to watch Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ for all the important elements that The Passion of the Christ lacks. This is a movie designed only for brutal spectacle and nothing more, and it’s just as tedious and empty now as it was twenty years ago. Apparently, Scorsese feels like he still has more to say on the subject and is planning another Jesus movie based on a 2016 book by Shūsaku Endō, the same author of the source material for Silence. While I would maintain that Scorsese has already made the greatest movie about Jesus, as well as the greatest movie about the exploration and challenge of reckoning with faith (2016’s Silence), who am I to deny one of our living legends another bite from the apple? It’ll certainly be more spiritually meaningful than watching an execution of Jesus for two miserable hours designed as enlightenment.
Re-Review Grade: C-
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Night Swim (2024)
It feels like the genesis of Night Swim was somebody saying, “We need a new way to do a haunted house movie so… what if…?” and then just pointed to different parts of the home and questioned whether it could be haunted. What I’m saying is we were probably a coin flip away from a terrifying tale of a haunted barbecue grill (working title: Dead Meat). A haunted pool would naturally lead to the question, “Well, why don’t you stay out of the pool?” and, well, we don’t really have an answer, so the pool can’t do too much because it’s immobile. There’s a possibility here with some spirit linked to the pool water seeking sacrifices and offering rewards in return, but this is downplayed so much and eventually forgotten during the muddied reasoning that concludes this confusing movie. I don’t think the film can even stick to its own rules. It needs to be either goofier, fully embracing its ridiculous premise of a haunted swimming pool, or going even darker and deeper with its back-story and rules and how this corrupts the new family, not because of some evil possession but from the simple wish-granting opportunity of feeding this monster for personal gain. There’s a way to make this concept work, specifically bringing the revelation earlier and dealing with the devil’s bargain implications and moral relativism. Alas, instead we get a movie about a husband being possessed by evil spring spirits and literally playing a game of Marco Polo with his children and, upon stalking them, pounces by ominously shouting, “You’re supposed to say ‘Polo’!” Just keep swimming, folks.
Nate’s Grade: C
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It Lives Inside (2023)
It’s a horror movie as examination on assimilation from an Indian-American standpoint and giving a different culture its own big screen boogeyman. It Lives Inside is about Samidha, a teenage Indian-American girl trying to fit in her suburban high school, which often involves her downplaying or abandoning her cultural roots and practices. She’s all but abandoned her childhood friend Tamira as an impediment to her social acceptance by the cool Caucasian kids. She then feels even more guilt when her friend goes missing and might be possessed by a demon of Hindu lore that feeds off negative energy (no wonder it’s targeting high school girls). This is the latest movie that uses the vehicle of horror to examine more personal themes, bringing a specific culture into the forefront and allowing wider audiences to learn from the horrors of trying to fit in when you feel different and ashamed for being different. As Samidha searches for her missing friend, she’s also forced to seek out help from her disapproving and more conservative mother, a woman steeped in her heritage. Where the movie left me wanting was in the exploration of its specific mythology as well as the development of the divide between mother and first-generation daughter. That’s the core of what can make this movie special, and yet what we get are more scenes of jump scare PG-13 terror and canoodling. It’s not a terribly scary movie, though the eventual creature design has some nicely unsettling angles. There’s one moment of hair floating that really unnerved me, but most of the movie falls on generic atmosphere effects. There are so many sequences of one high school English teacher working alone in the school (where is anyone else? Does this woman do nothing else?) and running through corridors as lights flicker and sinister sounds linger. By the end, It Lives Inside is an acceptable horror movie that would have benefited from spending more of its time on the perosnal elements that would have made it stand out rather than fit in with the horror crowd.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Beau is Afraid (2023)
Beau is Afraid is a ramshackle mess of a movie, and that is both the highest compliment and an indictment on its tremendous excess and lack of focus. It’s Ari Aster’s big swing after his modest successes in elevated horror (Hereditary, Midsommar), so the indie maven studio A24 gave him a thirty-million budget and three hours and full artistic reign to do whatever he wanted, and love it or hate it, one has to objectively admit, Aster really went for something all right. I’m still deliberating where that final something falls on the artistic merit equation. There’s undeniable ambition and artistry here, but there’s also so many ideas and moments and bloat, it genuinely reminded me of 2007’s Southland Tales (did your stomach just drop, dear reader?). It’s because both movies are stuffed to the brim with their director’s assorted odd ideas and concepts, as if either man was afraid they were never going to make another movie again and had to awkwardly squeeze in everything they ever wanted into one overburdened project (in Richard Kelly’s case his suspicion might have been correct, as he did only direct one more feature -so far). While I certainly enjoyed -if that is the right word- Aster’s movie more, Beau is Afraid is not an easy movie to love, or enjoy, or even simply sit through, and not just because of its bloated time.
If I had to boil down this sprawling movie into one easy-to-digest concept, it’s about Jewish guilt. If you’re not a fan of feeling uncomfortable or anxious from the intensity of a movie, I would skip this one entirely. Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) might as well be a stand-in for the biblical figure of Job for all the cruel punishments and indignities he endures. Just when you think, “Well, it can’t get any worse,” Aster rolls up his sleeves and rises to the challenge and makes things even worse for his pathetic put-upon plebeian. This is a movie of escalating discomfort, chiefly meant to convey the constant state of anxiety that is Beau’s daily existence, and for the first hour or so, Aster works marvelously at making you squirm. It’s a movie less meant to reflect our objective reality and more a projection of one man’s anxious feelings and paranoia, the unsettling urge that everyone secretly hates you and something bad is always ready to lethally strike.
Beau is Afraid is an absurdist comedy of heightened almost screwball proportions, with Beau becoming increasingly frazzled and muttering “Oh no” hundreds of times as fate has it out for him. Small worries become all-consuming, like the simple task of trying to get water to swallow his new prescription medication, and how this eventually spirals to the ransacking of his apartment building, which is also all Beau’s fault, inadvertently, though that won’t mitigate the guilt. There are numerous fears and worries amplified to breaking points, inviting morbid chuckles and nervous titters. Beau sits in his bathtub to stare at an unknown man squeezed against the walls of his ceiling and about to slip and fall. Why is this man there? Why does Beau not immediately leap out of the tub? Why do both men remain fixed in their positions until the inevitable? It’s because it’s a ridiculous paranoid fear manifested into a ridiculous scenario made even more ridiculous. It’s the same with ignoring his mother’s calls only to have a stranger answer her phone to inform Beau that she has been killed and happens to be without a head now. It’s a realistic fear, avoiding phone calls and the draining emotional energy required to answer, and following it up with a consequence of darkly absurdist proportions to make him feel even worse. The movie leaps from one squirm-inducing, grueling sequence to the next, testing your limits and patience. There’s a post-coital revelation debunking, and then confirming, an outlandish worry that made me laugh out loud with tremendous auditory force. What else could I do? It certainly feels like Aster is inviting the audience to laugh at Beau’s pain and tragedy because what other human response can there be but to laugh in the face of unrelenting torment?
Where the movie loses momentum is about halfway through, after Aster has established the drive of the movie, Beau’s attempts to get to his mother’s funeral so they can finally bury her. Every hour he is delayed, Beau is reminded that his mother’s body is rapidly decaying and only furthering her “humiliation” at the hands of Beau’s inaction. The second part of the movie involves Beau recovering from injuries in an upper class family’s home, the same family (Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan) that accidentally ran him over and is now kind of holding him hostage against his weakened will. We have an urgent goal, we have obstacles keeping him from that goal, and this is where the movie continues to work, as each new attempt to escape only confirms how much stranger and dangerous this family unit is. This dynamic plays into the established heightened fears and absurdist complications. It’s keeping him from his goal. But when he does eventually free himself from this hostage scenario, he literally wanders into the woods and discovers a troupe of thespians that refer to themselves as the Orphans of the Forest, and then a theatrical production may or may not present the rest of Beau’s natural life. This was where the movie’s momentum, which had steadily been ratcheting up along with the dark comedy, began to flag, and when I started to worry, then suspect, then confirm my sinking feeling that this all isn’t going to add up to something more cohesive and thought-provoking. It’s really more a movie of sustained memorable moments and unpredictable, tone-shattering twists and turns. Beau is Afraid is unpredictable, and that both works as an asset and eventually as a handicap. That’s because every scene is hammering the same overall thematic point just with a different stylistic arrangement of fears and anxiety. Following this redundant framework, a 130-minute version of this movie world would feasibly have the same thematic impact as the 180-minute version, merely eliminating some of the many detours.
Another nagging aspect of the movie that failed to add up to much more for me was how little Beau seems to matter in his own story. He’s more intended to be the universe’s lone fall guy rather than a person, a victim whose chief characterization is his ongoing victimization. He suffers and that is his identity. Considering the movie is more a loose fable, this can work since Beau is essentially a stand-in for all of humanity, but there are more personal aspects of him worth exploring in finer detail. The toxic relationship with his mother is worthy of further examination, especially the decades of emotional manipulation to ensure Beau would never replace her with another woman. I wish Aster had devoted more of his 180-minute run time to exploring Beau as a person rather than pitting him against a proverbial assembly line of pies to the face. Phoenix (Joker) has so little to do here except stare wide-eyed, helpless, and mumble as the world constantly befuddles and antagonizes him. It’s a performance purely of pained reaction.
Can I recommend Beau is Afraid? For most viewers, probably not. It’s too long, too sporadic, and doesn’t come to anything cohesive or cumulative or even meaningful beyond a mean-spirited sense of pessimism directed at our titular human punching bag. It’s wildly ambitious and off-putting and bloated and outlandish and the kind of big artistic swing that artists usually only get so rarely in their careers. And yet I have to admire the sheer gusto of Aster making a movie this strange and alienating, a movie that’s constantly altering its very landscape of possibilities, usually to the detriment of Beau’s physical and mental well-being. It is an exhausting experience, so that when the end finally arrives, we, much like Beau, are simply ready to accept the finality we’ve been waiting for after so much abuse. There are moments throughout these ungainly 180 minutes that are sheer brilliance, and sequences that are sheer torture, some of which are on purpose. There’s also just way too much of everything, and without variance or finer exploration of its themes and specific characterization, it becomes a cosmic game of whack-a-mole where you might be the one actually getting hit over the head, and after so long I can’t blame anyone for not enjoying the prolonged experience.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
I’ve learned so much more about pre-teen horror video games in the years since I’ve become a parent. There is no shortage of horror-themed games, many of them available through Roblox, that act as gradual entry points for burgeoning new horror fans that might not be emotionally ready for more intense horror (for my money, the creepy smiley creatures with dozens of teeth are more frightening than Michael Myers on any day). This brings me to the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie based on the insanely popular video game series that essentially said, “What if Chuck E. Cheese was, like, evil?” The game involved shifting between security cameras to keep watch on some frisky animatronics that have a hard time staying put, and of course jump scares and bloodless deaths. It’s a game about alternating camera feeds and waiting, and so the big screen version is also a movie very much about waiting for the creatures to stir. That’s probably why a quarter of the feature is watching Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) travel into a dream-space to try and communicate with mysterious children to figure out what must be some of the more obvious plot revelations that he just can’t seem to grasp about this sleepy town and its history of missing kids. Why are we spending this much time on the human character’s back-story when we have killer robots to maim dumb teenagers? There are more scenes with the ghost kids than the animatronics of fame. The protagonist’s motivation seems wishy-washy since he’s putting his life on the line to keep his little sister and then makes an ill-advised bargain with the robots to get rid of her because… we need a moment for him to realize what really matters most? Huh? The scenes of horror rely much more on impressions, favoring shadows and implied violence than featuring anything too overt. I found the revelation of the ultimate villain to be laughable, no matter if it matches up with whatever the convoluted lore is for a game that, again, is flipping through TV channels and trying not to get eaten. There just isn’t a whole lot going on here, and the human drama of Hutcherson trying to win custody of his little sister feels a bit too dramatic and real for something this silly. He can’t get any other job than guarding an abandoned pizza parlor? Why does anyone just not enter the restaurant? He keeps returning to the job even after he realizes the danger. Unless you’re a diehard fan thrilled to just see live-action versions of your favorite furry friends, Five Nights at Freddy’s fees like four nights too many.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Talk to Me (2023)
If you were at a party and were told that if you shake hands with a severed hand you could allow a ghost or spirit or whatever into your body, would you agree to this? I may be naive but I think most free-thinking adults would pass on this opportunity, but then again people are chasing all sorts of dangers as distractions or coping mechanisms, so perhaps I’m dead wrong. Now, if you present this same question to teenagers, I’m positive of different results. This is the kickoff for Talk to Me, the new hit horror movie of the summer. Mia (Sophia Wilde) discovers that this magic hand can allow her to see and talk with her mother, who killed herself about a year prior. How far will she go to reach out to her mother and what consequences is she willing to bear?
Reminiscent of Smile, the small horror hit from last year, Talk to Me is a small-scale horror thriller that might not have much extended thematic commentary but it knows how to goose an audience and ratchet up your sense of dread and compiling unease. The premise is gloriously straightforward and creepy from the start, allowing a possibly malevolent spirit to inhabit your body as a thrill. There are plenty of places to go with this premise, as flirting with the “other side” has been a staple of horror movies, just as much as teenagers making bad decisions. It’s a possession movie by way of an addiction metaphor, finding a new and impossible to replicate high, and this too as a vehicle for our protagonist to try and obliterate her grief. The characters feel downright euphoric afterwards, having communed with someone or something, and it certainly makes for fun spectator viewing. The vulnerability of losing control, and especially to a power that you have little understanding of, is a potent direction for the story. Naturally, once we’ve established “safe parameters,” we must then break them and suffer the consequences, and Talk to Me does a truly excellent job of making you feel that omnipresent trepidation. This is a creepy movie that makes fine use of practical effects and an engaged sound design. It’s nothing new from a technical standpoint but it’s yet another example of someone knowing what to do with their tools to create an affecting and uncomfortable atmosphere of uncertainty. It’s more a well-engineered thrill ride, much like my assessment of Smile, but when it’s this well done, you’re just happy to have a conductor who is operating on such a high level of execution.
There isn’t much in the way of commentary with the movie besides some fleeting criticisms of transforming personal pain and discomfort into a spectator brand. The movie doesn’t have much to say on this front other than teenagers are predisposed to make bad decisions, and giving them cell phones, social media, and a magically cursed totem might be a damning combination. The different characters treat the possessions like a party, everyone with their phone ready to record the crazy and unexpected results, many of which they cannot fully understand. There’s something there about messing with forces beyond your control and feeling protected, possibly even nigh invincible, because you’re a bystander and not a direct participant, that holding a screen in front of your face somehow stops you from being complicit in the activity. The movie utilizes the severed hand as more of a plot device than a starting point for intriguing dimensions of social commentary. Thanks to how well executed the movie is, I forgave the oversight.
I wish the movie had explored some of its intriguing avenues a little further, but one area I’m glad we didn’t need to delve into was the origin of the severed hand. Many of these curse movies push the protagonist to investigate the mysterious origins of the Evil Thing and try to find the beginning of the chain of death and destruction, such as The Ring, Smile, and It Follows. There may be a fascinating story behind this totem but I’m more than comfortable just accepting it on its own vague terms as our catalyst for unrest. I don’t require its unholy backstory. This devotes more of the 90 minutes to focusing on the characters and their emotional turmoil, which allows the grief metaphors to really simmer. It also makes for an intriguing dilemma because Mia has been granted access to her deceased mother through these very unusual circumstances. She misses her dearly and is willing to break rules to continue that connection, which puts others at risk and brings about lingering consequences. Once mom is back, it becomes an ongoing game of whether or not this could be her real mother or something malevolent manipulating her. I found this storyline to be more compelling than a series of clues connecting to more clues to reveal the history of the severed hand, likely learning about a litany of prior owners who have experienced tragedy and ruin. This centered the movie more as an extension of our main character’s grief and the limits and risks she was willing to meet in order to find closure.
The directors have been a mainstay on YouTube for a decade as the popular RackaRacka channel, and the Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou make a seamless transition into big screen horror. They don’t overload their movie with stylistic distractions, and the editing is very confident and patient to better build a sense of dread. It’s that atmosphere that proves to be the best element of Talk to Me, as the second half pushes the audience to question what we’re seeing and whether it’s reality or hallucination (also like Smile). When there are stylistic flourishes, it’s almost like its own form of a jump scare, a break from the normal. The opening house party sequence is filmed like one continuous tracking shot and it succeeds in building your unease and anticipation that some very bad things will be happening soon enough. I was especially impressed by the ending, which I won’t spoil in any significant sense, except to say that it’s a fitting and humbling conclusion that also provides a nicely morbid reversal.
If you’re in the mood for a spooky spine-tingler that delivers the goods with a streamlined story and extra emphasis on its protagonist’s fraying emotional state, then Talk to Me is for you. It’s nothing revolutionary but it is creepy and quite effective and evidence that the filmmakers have been taking careful notes about what makes horror stories and movies succeed. Sequels and prequels are likely inevitable, though I don’t know if the premise supports an extended universe of lore and complications, but I’m willing to be wrong. Go ahead. Take hold.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Obstacle Corpse (2022)
Hope Madden has been an esteemed critic, journalist, and writer for many Columbus media publications and television for years. She and her husband, George Wolf, run MaddWolf, a popular film blog, and head the Fright Club podcast and horror film programming at the Gateway Theater. They know movies inside and out and they know horror. So it makes sense for Obstacle Corpse to be Madden’s first feature as a writer and director. It’s a high-concept horror comedy filmed in the Columbus, Ohio area and now available to watch on Amazon. Madden and Wolf are both part of my Columbus film critics’ group, and so I will, as I always strive for with reviewing Ohio-made indies, attempt to be as objective as possible knowing many involved in the cast and crew. Obstacle Corpse is, above all things, enjoyably demented. It’s a low-budget horror movie that understands that an indie horror movie is going to succeed through concept, personality, and mood, and Madden pays attention to each of those winning dimensions.
Sunny (Sylvie Mix) just wants to impress her domineering and dismissive father. She signs up for the Guts and Glory competition, a twelve-event obstacle course, to prove herself. Each contestant is expected to bring a partner, so she brings her best friend Ezra (Alan Tyson) who is ready to get back home and out of the woods pronto. That’s even before they discover that the teams have gathered for some brutal competition. Each team is also required to kill their teammate over the course of the grueling events, so will Sunny and Ezra survive, and will they possibly turn on one another to save themself from the deadly games?
The premise is a quick hook, a deadly version of an obstacle course, and makes twisted sense, not just from a canny take-something-from-childhood-but-make-it-deadly calculus of recent gimmicky horror. There are plenty of adult-oriented obstacle courses known for their physical endurance, like the Tough Mudders and Spartan Race and Ninja Warrior, so an escalation into literal life-and-death stakes as an experiential attraction makes sense in a twisted fashion. Madden has also done what I wish several other indie filmmakers would and distinguished her large net of crazy characters. There’s a wonderful sense of personality to the different groups, which helps the audience keep track of the many different faces, but it also allows the characters to be more playful. I don’t care why some would dress up like clowns for this competition and others as baseball players, I’m just glad that these characters are happy to stand out. I enjoyed a middle-aged man eager to transform every moment into a phony social media tableau. I readily enjoyed the hyper-competitive nature of Stephanie (Gareth Tidball), an intense woman who gets off on the thrill of each challenge. I enjoyed one grumbling angry man (Wolf) who could be counted on to struggle in last place no matter the obstacle. I enjoyed a tracksuit-clad bickering couple. I liked a family of siblings that distinguished itself in paired T-shirts, with one pair wearing “single” and the other wearing “double.” I didn’t quite understand it since they were both pairs but I liked the effort all the same. Even little details can add much.
The mood of Obstacle Corpse is chiefly one of carefree fun, an amiable tone that brings a comedic lightness to even the most ghastly of circumstances. It’s prevalent throughout the movie and makes the 80 minutes easy to digest. Madden’s good times are best summarized by the scene-stealing performance of Mason (Donovan Riley Wolfington, Madden’s son), a costumed chef dishing out cold vengeance from his ice cream truck. This character is presented as a change agent, an unexpected wildcard who is disrupting the establishment overseeing the games. He’s a live-wire of energy, channeling Deadpool or a Looney Tunes cartoon at different points, and he will dismember contestants while gleefully singing his violent versions of Christmas carols. It’s a standout performance in a large cast of varied characters, and Wolfington is just operating on another level of insane amusement. The character also becomes one to easily root for because he’s an antihero underdog taking advantage of others underestimating him, and he’s also that change agent, bringing a bloody sense of justice to those involved in the continuance of the games. A late-in-the-game revelation about his history made me wish for more development to better utilize the key info, but Wolfington is the best mascot for the movie’s demented charms.
Given its large cast, there are several that made a favorable impression as they navigated the comedy aspects. Mix (Poser, Double Walker) is a definite find for Columbus cinema and will be going places in no time. She is a natural actor and serves as our baseline of normality, a shifting concept in a world of violent mayhem. Tyson (Stowaway) is a great foil as Sunny’s friend. He’s more effete and unimposing, at first glance, so his incredulous reactions are a welcomed source of comedy and reason. Tony White does a lot as a clown/mime who befriends our “normal” characters. He gives a very expressive and charming performance, and yet there are a couple of moments where his tortured emotions serve as a surprising well of feelings (he is labeled as Sad Clown, after all). Even producer Jason Tostevin (Hellarious) has a laconic menace as the head of the games security, and he delivers a monologue about achieving your peak greatness that sounds like a self-help guru comfortable into the exploitative routines. He’s our face of the establishment, so as things begin going haywire from our anarchic chef, his discomfort provides a consistent outlet for satisfying comeuppance. You can tell the cast is enjoying themselves, and that casual camaraderie helps to add to the overall silly and bloody fun of the movie.
I wish the parameters of this killer event had a bit more clarity and development to really maximize the possibility. First, I thought that these many obstacles were themselves going to be part of the killer challenge, something akin to Squid Games where familiar childhood playground games have been transformed into life-and-death contests. That’s not the case, so watching characters overcome a cargo net or a set of tires feels somewhat disappointing because what would the appeal of this physical track be beyond the murdering? I think part of the joke is that these are ordinary park obstacles that are causing so many so much struggle. The rules of this course can also be rather murky. We see the enforcement of what happens when a contestant kills outside of an official obstacle course event, but the rest of the rules are left too vague. Contestants are welcome to bring their own weapons, like bats and knives, so could someone simply bring a high-powered gun and mow down the entire competition? How does this work exactly? What prize do the winners receive at the end other than having killed their partner? Did Sunny’s father understand what exactly she was getting into and approved? I’m also left slightly bewildered how many of these teams are family members that are so eager to kill one another. I’m not opposed to the possible fratricide plot, but I think the movie needs to present more conflicts within the couples to present as possible explanation for this murderous intent (maybe an old score to settle like stealing a girlfriend, maybe it’s an inheritance battle, maybe it’s sussing out what the particulars are of the familiar tension, etc.). It’s shocking to watch an older brother pitch his younger brother into a fire and kids killing kids (off-screen), but the shock value only goes so far, and having more setup or context could have added more satisfaction. I guess many are just wannabe psychopaths looking for any excuse to indulge their darker impulses.
I think about the brilliant simplicity of 2019’s Ready or Not. The movie’s premise is essentially a killer game of hide and seek, already a rather uncomplicated children’s game. But the filmmakers carefully established the rules and stakes, with the family holding to he belief they need to kill the person hiding before sunrise or else they will all die thanks to a generational curse. It’s outlandish but the movie presented all the vital information and then let things rip. In the case of Obstacle Corpse, it’s around the fifty-minute mark before our main characters, the normies, discover the actual deadly stakes of the game, and their response seems a tad… relaxed. Part of this is, as earlier described, the amiable low-stakes charm of the movie, so nobody ever brings too much of a sense of actual reality to the absurd competition and its slapstick violence.
I also wish Obstacle Corpse had coalesced more of a class-conscious political commentary. We are introduced to a wealthy couple who are bankrolling the games under the auspices of live online betting, a concept also explored in many other movies that summarize the villains as bored rich people betting on the lives of the poor (Squid Games, Escape Room, The Hunger Games, etc.). That works, though the script only gives us one or two check-ins with our wealthy couple as they seem more interested in canoodling than keeping up with their own spectacle. Maybe that signifies how blase they are about human life but it felt like a missed opportunity. I kept envisioning a version of Obstacle Corpse that really trained its fire on the callousness of the rich, with the teams each being a boss or CEO and some lackey or intern that they’re stringing along, meaning each competitive couple already has a class distinction. The plot informs us that the veterans know they are inviting their guest to their intended doom, so why not project onto a corporate or wealthy head and their contempt for a lower-class worker they see as literally disposable? Perhaps these fragile wealthy men think they’re so much more capable or threatening than they really are, a concept given some attention through the hyper-macho character of Richard (Brian Spangler) who can’t live up to his overblown expectations. There’s an overinflated sense of toxic masculinity that relates to physical dominance that was worthy of even more deconstruction and criticism. I think this dynamic would have allowed the movie to hone and target its ire with more potent satirical firepower.
Even with some of my misgivings about clarity and untapped thematic potential, Obstacle Corpse is an enjoyable horror comedy for fans. The blood gushes constantly and the gore is impressively grotesque for its minimal budget. There are some impressive shots for a movie 95 percent filmed in the woods. Madden has crafted a movie that works regardless of budget, with its larger-than-life characters and conflicts resulting from a strong and memorable high-concept premise. The emphasis is more on comedy than horror, like the world’s most demented summer camp outing. Given the large cast of characters, the movie always has a new batch of people to jump through, which keeps the movie fresh even when the suspense can slacken because of the comedic emphasis. It’s not a one-joke movie, and the fun of the cast can often be felt, especially the grand ball of a time had by Wolfington. There are things left out I wish had been explored further, but this is a solid start for Madden and her team in the realm of indie genre filmmaking. If you enjoy your comedy with a heaping helping of blood and bad taste, give Obstacle Corpse a chance.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Three Quarters Dead (2023)
I don’t normally review short films but I was asked to by an Ohio filmmaker, and so I agreed to do my best in providing a review of a movie that runs a total of only seven minutes. Three Quarters Dead is the latest from writer/director Angelo Thomas, a rising Ohio filmmaker who already has two movies under his belt, The Incredible Jake Parker and the documentary, DeRosa: Life, Love & Art in Transition. Short films must still function under the same guiding rules as feature-length films: there needs to be a beginning, middle, and end; characters should be engaging; conflict should be clear and developed; and the audience needs a reason to care. Granted, you expect more from an 80-minute movie than an eight-minute movie but you’re still expecting the basics of story, character, and entertainment to land. Three Quarters Dead is a cute little movie that nibbles at the edges of some profound concepts but settles a little too quickly.
We begin at the end, well the end of Zach’s (Eric Six) life. He’s moved on from the mortal plane and wakes up inside a peculiar movie theater. There are only three other patrons sitting in attendance and two of them are skeletons. David (David Reid Hatfield) is the only other living patron, though perhaps that term doesn’t even qualify. He has a sickly, zombie-like pallor and prefers to munch on popcorn sprinkled with maggots. David serves as a guide for wayward spirits, helping them transfer to the Great Beyond outside the theater. Until then, they can sit and watch movies for possibly an eternity of downtime.
The premise of a movie theater as purgatory is a fun concept and has several areas to connect with the theological and philosophical aspects inherent in any life-after-death story. I liked the projectionist being the equivalent of God looking down from above, offering light and diversion while the mortals sit and wait for answers that might never come. I liked the idea that David has been here so long that he forgot who he is. He is literally deteriorating physically and mentally. The presence of skeletons implies that you can possibly rot away and never even make it to the other side (unless these are just for ambience). Whenever you present a fantasy setting, the audience is going to be keen to adjust to the rules and expectations of this abnormal setting. The premise begs plenty more questions. I was surprised at no point does the short imply what the souls are even watching. This would provide more material either for comedy, like complaining about being stuck watching only so many movies so many times, for character exploration, maybe the movies are chosen that have a specific meaning to each soul, or some melodramatic rumination, like the characters are watching home movies of their own life and its ups and downs, regrets but also the joys that fill the bounds of a life lived. Considering that Zach is revealed to have taken his own life (he even has the note still with him, though its words are not shared either), it would have been helpful to either shed more details about this unique space and its connections for our newcomer or the newcomer’s life that he’s bidding goodbye to. I was left with an unrequited desire for more than the story was willing to offer for its seven minutes.
The central metaphor of a movie theater as a supernatural setting is a good starting point. The script was a little too locked-in on the discovery period and needed more development. Zach is such a blank from a character standpoint, which is acceptable since he’s the audience’s entry point. He seems to emit no real strong emotions or defiance about his strange situation. This may be a result of just being overwhelmed by the sheer existence of another spiritual plane, or this could also be him trying to remember who he was when he was alive. The dynamic of New Guy/Veteran is a comedy staple, learning the ropes from the charming and wily veteran. It seems like a storytelling disadvantage to limit the knowledge base of both parties. We’ve just spent a few minutes with David when he learns that Zach will actually be his replacement. I wish this had been revealed upfront rather than reserved for an ending meant to provide some uplift and reward. We still could have had the same end results but now there would have been an immediate urgency, David only having so many minutes (maybe even make it real-time) to teach his replacement the ropes before he gets recalled to that Great Beyond. If Zach is taking on this new responsibility, you would think he’d need to understand how exactly he’s supposed to help souls transition.
The movie is technically polished and has a nice score from Brooks Leibee (DeRosa). The shot selections are somewhat minimal, likely a result of budgetary time limits, but it also makes the movie visually staid. Many of the edits are simply from two shots from the same angle. It’s efficient but can also be bland over time. Also, I’m surprised there wasn’t a godlike point of view shot from the projectionist booth, at least a high angle looking down from above, but that might have given away the fact that nothing was actually on the screen during filming. The makeup effects for David are simple but effective and do well to assist the actor’s mordant performance.
I enjoyed both actors, though Hatfield (Dogwood Pass, Quarantwinned) has the more fun role as the decrepit veteran teaching us all about this unique space. He gives glimpses of even more honed comedic skills that I wish the short could have utilized. Six (Christmas Collision) is given the less fun role of being responsive but the character is so subdued that he can feel like a proverbial and literal seat-filler. I liked the two actors together and wished their interaction had a bit more energy to it.
Three Quarters Dead is an amusing and light-hearted short even as it skirts over some more meaningful and darker material. It’s a promising idea with more intriguing directions that are unexplored. Partly because of the limits of short-form storytelling but also partly because the concept just wasn’t creatively pushed further. It’s a quick seven minutes that elicits some smiles and maybe even a chuckle (I enjoyed the quarters classification of its title). You won’t regret watching it, and trust me, I’ve watched dozens of short films that I do very much regret ever having seen. Even with a few precious minutes, bad filmmaking and a paucity of coherent ideas can become most evident. Three Quarters Dead is a fun little horror comedy that coasts on charm, good vibes, and the tantalizing possibility of more, but like the characters trapped inside that theater, you’ll be left waiting.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Scream 6 (2023)
When horror franchises dramatically shift their locations to somewhere new, like New York City, it’s usually a bad sign that the series is desperately looking for new creative life. Not every franchise can rebound like a Leprechaun in Space. Most of them just become another Jason Takes Manhattan, where now instead of Character Group A running and dying from the masked killer, it’s now Character Group B running and dying from the same masked killer. It’s more reminiscent of cartoons where the backgrounds might change but the on screen events are stuck in the same drab routines. The Scream franchise was rebooted with 2022’s satisfying fifth installment, so I hoped that a sixth Scream could at least exceed where so many others have failed. Those hopes were quickly fulfilled in what I consider to be one of the best sequels of the seminal slasher series with all of its air-quote irony.
There are more than a few entertaining new turns as the bloody hi-jinks head to the Big Apple. It feels bloodier and gorier than most of the Scream movies, but it also has well-developed suspense sequences that work extremely well at making you squirm. Every brutal burst of violence elicited a “oomph” exhalation from me, and I found myself tensing up as the initial scene constructions transformed. I was quite enjoying myself from set piece to set piece. Take for instance an escape that requires the characters to flee from one high-rise window to another across an alley via a rickety ladder. Or take a subway escape packed with masked Halloween revelers to make you paranoid who among the many Ghostfaces might be the potential killer (I enjoyed the other costumes of horror old and new – I saw you Midsommar May Queen). Even a hide and seek sequence inside a convenience store can be thrilling. All credit to returning Scream 5 directors Matt Bettinelli-Opin and Tyler Gillet, the same pair that delivered 2019’s wonderfully twisted Ready or Not. These gentlemen have proven that they know how to squeeze the most tension from any scenario no matter how bizarre. I loved that the opening kill (Ready or Night alum Samara Weaving) goes in a different direction, revealing the culprit right away, and then it goes in even another direction. There are still some new cool tricks to be had with the sixth installment in a 27-year-old horror series.
I was asked if you had to watch any of the prior Scream movies to enjoy Scream 6, and while it’s not necessary, you will be missing out on some of the larger connective tissue and themes. You should definitely have familiarity with Scream 5 since it’s a direct sequel and continuation of the core (four) characters. I was surprised how much more emotional resonance I found with the Carpenter sisters than any of the other characters, new or legacy, from the earlier movies. I think it was smart having Sam (Melissa Barrera) be the daughter of the first Ghostface as was her seeing visions of her late father, this time as an adult Skeet Ulrich, which might have been the wrong choice considering the character never lived to be this age (is her imagination doing one of those age approximations you see for runaway kids?). Our lead heroine is trying to navigate where her instincts are taking her, which might be a darker path that she feels trepidation about ignoring for only so long. Sam’s therapist balks when he discovers her actual parentage, which makes him maybe the worst therapist. Her relationship with her younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) is more complex than any of the close friendships of Sydney Bristow. Even with all the carnage and bloodshed, Scream 6 still finds breather moments to let the sisters react realistically to their dilemma and how it affects their own relationship. I’m glad these characters returned because they serve as the emotional focal point of an otherwise famously glib franchise.
The biggest drawback from Scream 6 is the tacit understanding that this will not be the final film in the franchise given its box-office success, the first film to cross the $100 million-dollar threshold since 1997’s Scream 2. This feels like a culminating climax as the characters now view their lives not as their own but as part of a “franchise,” which means the stories will keep going on beyond them and that nobody is safe, not even the “leads.” For a series entrenched in heavy meta-textual irony, it feels like it’s reaching the end of its genre self-awareness cycle when the movie acknowledges itself as its own IP. The scope of the movie is retrospective, not just reaching back and acknowledging the history of where things began for the legacy characters but for every movie. Each one of the former Ghostfaces is being collected and commented upon, with murder nerd Easter eggs left at each crime scene or in its contextual arrangement. It’s the kind of totality that I would expect from a movie franchise coming to an end, and nodding at its various twists and turns, finding places to even include elements from the lesser beloved Scream sequels. There’s even an unspoken satirical jab at the number of characters that miraculously survive, as if the film is throwing up its hands and saying why not, as if this is the last movie and the rules of who survives and who dies are inconsequential because we’re subverting expectations, as we’ve been explicitly told, so expect the unexpected.
The other aspect of this drawback involves some slight spoilers but I’ll try and tread lightly. After our genre-savvy movie geek explains the stakes of this new episode, the characters start to review one another as potential suspects, and the new supporting characters even cast an accusing eye on the returning characters saying they could have cracked from their trauma. There’s emphasis on the drive to subvert expectations and break away from the patterns of old.
And here is where I’ll venture into some light spoilers so if you want to skip ahead to the next paragraph, please do so, dear reader. There is an ongoing thread where an Internet subculture has re-framed the Carpenter sisters as the real villains of their own horrendous story, and it’s an intriguing element that brings the echo chambers and confirmation bias and novice sleuths-in-the-making of the Internet to further examination. It’s reminiscent of any bottom-feeding conspiracy that asks people to pick apart their reality for “the real story” magically hidden in plain sight. The Scream franchise is famous for its fun guessing game of who the real killers could be from our gallery of suspects, and Scream 6 is no exception. However, the subversion that could have really separated this Scream from its elders is by having the killers actually be… nobodies (the Rian Johnson twist). What if the mask comes off and it’s a brand new character? I’m sure many viewers would feel like they had been betrayed, but then the point emerges that it’s simply some conspiracy theorist who has gone full-tilt crazy into the cult and taken matters into their own hands, attempting to hold “the real killers” to account or to prove they were truly guilty. And the larger point is that the “fake news” has already won out. It doesn’t matter what happens from here, what news coverage should stamp out ignorance, because you can’t pull every cult member out of their self-inflicted cocoon of delusion, which means there will always be more to take their place. That’s the legacy of what has transpired, that there will never be a real escape any longer. I thought that would be such a jarring and thematically intriguing and summative ending.
For the many fans of the slasher series, I believe Scream 6 retains plenty of the same pleasures of its prior movies while stretching out into new and interesting directions. It helps that I cared about the central sisters, at least enough by the low bar of horror movie standards. It’s bloody, fun, twisty, and satisfying enough that it could have served as a capper for the entire franchise. But it won’t be. I look forward to this new creative team re-evaluating trilogies better than Scream 3 did. In the meantime, this is a bloody good time to be had for long-term fans and newcomers from the 2022 reboot alike.
Nate’s Grade: B
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