Category Archives: Film

Shook (2021)

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Is it low-hanging fruit to go after a social media influencer type as the victim of a “let’s play a game” horror movie? I mean, nobody likes them[1], it’s easy to play around with the idea that they’re self-involved and deserve whatever they get, and you can either go with a redemption arc or a just desserts arc, with equal facility.

Mia is just such an influencer. And one of her influencer… friends? co-workers? was just murdered by the dog killer that has been stalking town for the last few weeks. So instead of going out to party, she has decided to stay in and watch her sister’s dog while the sister is out of town getting medical tests. Which brings in a whole subplot about how her family has a genetic disease that results in full incapacity followed by death, and it has no treatment, and their mother has already died of this, but the sister was fully in charge of the parental care while Mia went to college to become an influencer[2]. And unless the medical tests go well, Mia will be in charge of sororal care before very much more time goes by. And who knows who might eventually care for Mia?

So there Mia is, watching the dog while her influencer friends nag her about coming to their party, which is just the three of them sitting in a living room broadcasting themselves hanging out. (The friends consist of her bestie, her boyfriend, and her frenemy who is clearly trying to win her boyfriend away.) And then she loses the dog, and a creepy dude friends her on the social media account, and calls her, and apparently lives across the street, and it quickly becomes clear that she is being taunted and stalked, which has her well and truly Shook. And then before you know it her friends and her dog and her sister are all in danger, and she alone can save them. Or at least some of them, since she mostly has to choose one or the other.

And this is the meat of the flick. Can she save any of her friends? Can she save her sister? Can she save herself?

Can she save the dog?

[1] Other than the countless thousands of followers who result in them having influence in the first place, sure. Be all technical, why don’t you?
[2] I have no idea what classes you take for this (other than marketing of course)

Star Trek: Section 31

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People have been lining up to deride Section 31, the most recent Star Trek movie that was originally supposed to be a TV series instead, and yeah, it definitely feels like a two episode pilot in a lot of ways. But is it really worse than Star Trek V? It seriously isn’t. Come on.

This is not to say the movie isn’t problematic. As a story, it’s perfectly fine. You take an anti-hero you’re already familiar with from previous stories, and she’s played by Michelle Yeoh in full scenery-chewing mode. And then you enlist her in a Suicide Squad caper with several other misfits-in-search-of-redemption, and they’re off to save… I dunno, probably the quadrant? …from utter destruction, in about 90 minutes. Dark antihero capers full of impossible odds, inevitable betrayals, and sudden death are cool.

But, and this is a big enough but that Mix-A-Lot is contractually obligated to like it:

But, this is Star Trek. Section 31 is the least Roddenberry thing that was ever introduced into Trek, and The Suicide Squad is about as big of a tonal mismatch with Trek as I can imagine, even when I acknowledge the existence of Section 31. (Which, if you don’t know, is the Federation’s black ops division.) So… yeah. As a story, it’s fine, like I already said. As a Star Trek movie… I’m glad they didn’t make it a series instead.

Wicked: Part 1

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The disclaimer is this: I saw Wicked (the stage musical) at Fair Park in Dallas some years ago. There was this amazing moment when the power went out due to a spectacular thunderclap, and whoever was playing Elphaba made a perfect in-character joke that I can only remember the feeling of, but not the content. It is a tragedy. But the point is, I know this story, and normally would not do a review.

However, it is the case that Wicked is a story that has substantially built upon the musical’s foundations. Due to pulling more material from the book? I cannot remember it well enough to say, sadly. But all the same, there are things worth talking about between them. And I’m qualified to do it!, since we watched a bootleg copy of a show from the original run, after we got home from the theater last night.

First of all… for being Broadway, man, that was a sparse and boring stage the majority of the time. Of course a movie and a special effects budget is going to surpass a stage, for the visual telling of a story. But like, I look at Hamilton and the staging is just so good that effects and period architecture would feel extraneous. Whereas, and okay being a fantasy setting certainly makes a difference, but the staging in the movie outstripped the Broadway version in every way, so extensively that I feel like I’m kicking Kristin Chenoweth in the voice just by saying so. It’s simply not a fair comparison.

Anyway, I was saying it’s longer, and boy is it longer. This Part One is like 15 minutes longer than the entire show, and it only covers Act One. And I’ll be real, yes, they could have trimmed it back some. But lavish pointless dance numbers aside, almost everything they added provided more and better context. Fiyero meeting Elphaba before he met anyone else? Adding the poppies into the Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond scenes? The backstory on the introduction of Elphaba’s hat? All of these were small but mighty improvements to the story, well out of proportion to the effort involved.

Lastly: Ariana Grande does an amazing job of channeling Chenoweth’s bubbly blondeness, while Cynthia Erivo actually surpasses Idina Menzel, I think, perhaps not in the singing[1], but in the acting. Not that Menzel was in any way bad, but she always looked so happy when she was singing, regardless of the context. Erivo’s stone face rarely cracks, and it means a lot when it does. Because, honestly, what would she have had to be happy about for the majority of her life?

To sum up: unless they somehow dramatically foul up Part 2, this will be the definitive version of the story, just as Judy Garland’s 1939 outing will always be the definitive version of the mirror story. And yes, that’s meant to be high praise.

[1] Although I wouldn’t want to judge that contest

Cam

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It’s been so long since I last heard my podcast that I no longer remember exactly what the category was that led them to choose Cam. At a guess, modern and doppelganger? But I’m not sure that’s right. (It would really help if I could remember other movies they discussed watching instead, but, here we are. Or I could write most of this review, then listen to the beginning of the podcast episode about this movie to get the answer, but I have another review yet to write, so that seems like a bad idea. So I’ll just shrug and move on.)

So there’s this camgirl, Lola. (Or Alice.) She’s trying to move upward in the ranking on her site, which I think is determined by donations rather than views? Though it’s hard to tell since they correlate. Anyway, her character thumbnail sketch is “cambitious[1], not out to her mom, out to her kid brother, has a devoted following and a few industry friends”. What sets her apart from anyone else is she knows enough about practical effects to do pretty extreme shows that go in directions you would maybe not expect of a porn biography but maybe would expect of a horror flick.

Anyway, that would be the whole movie, except one day she wakes up to find herself on cam, by which I mean the stream is running and she’s onscreen, but she’s also in bed watching it, because whoever is on the stream isn’t actually her. And then the rest of the movie is a genre I like very much, wherein it’s impossible to prove to anyone that you’re really you, because if the system is rigged, the system always wins. Even the people who know you, they’re not inclined to doubt the evidence of their eyes, especially if you’ve been keeping secrets.

Naturally, therefore, I loved the rest of the movie[2]. …right up until the end, where it kind of just sputtered out. Alas.

[1] This is a word I made up, not a term of art. But I can believe it could be, you know?
[2] Except for the scene with the whale, which was more than a bit disturbing.

Moana 2

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Exciting milestone: we successfully took the kids out to see a movie! The boy was entranced from start to finish, and only had one or two moments of “nope this is too scary I need to yell ‘stop!'”, which is tolerable in the scheme of things, especially for a kid-friendly showing with nobody else in the theater. Likewise, the girl was entranced, but not so much that she wasn’t also mobile. However, the furthest away she got was two seats down and on the floor peeking through the next row’s seats. Which, again, entirely tolerable under the circumstances.

Anyway, the movie we saw was Moana 2, as the original is a pretty big hit in the house. I don’t know whether these movies are based on any specific Pacific Islander legends, or a mish-mash of them, or made up from whole cloth to look authentic to people who are willing to shell out money to Disney. (Probably the second one?) What I do know is a) they are convincing and b) they definitely have that quality of good fairy tales and mythologies where you want to know what will happen next and it doesn’t turn out the way you’d expect.

But what I’m really here to talk about is the music, and there this movie was disappointing, albeit not in the way you might expect. Yes, obviously, whoever they hired to do the lyrics did not live up to Lin Manuel Miranda. Yes, obviously, the song they put at the end of the credits is the song that in the movie most closely evokes the main song of the first movie. (But honestly, it’s a little too much like Into the Unknown from Frozen II for my taste.) There was maybe only one song I did think I’d be excited to hear when the kids are listening to the Disney music station on Sirius for years to come, honestly. But none of that is my point.

My point is, usually Disney movie sequels are aggressively mid, so you’re allowed to not care much about what the music even sounds like in the first place. But Moana 2 is not only actually pretty decent (except for the music), but it’s also clearly setting up a trilogy. And if I have to care about the movie, then why couldn’t it have had either comparably good music or else not been a musical in the first place?

Knowing the answer to both forks of that question does me absolutely no good.

La noche de Walpurgis

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It’s so weird that I nearly watched a movie named Walpurgisnacht. I have some regrets, now, about how it was sold to the English-speaking world instead.

My horror podcasts’s requirements this time were 1970s as the setting and werewolf as the monster. Thusly, I have now watched The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, which is…. well, honestly, it was very silly, is what it was. See, these chicks named Elvira and Genevieve are looking for the grave of a vampire countess, but they find a guy that we-the-audience just learned in the opening scene of the movie is a werewolf who was good and dead, until the coroner removed the silver bullets from his body. So now he’s back to living in a castle with his crazy and more than a little non-consensual lesbian-grabby sister, but it turns out he’s also looking for this vampire woman, because she’s supposed to have a silver cross that he wants, for reasons of his own[1].

Later, a sequence of events loosely based on Dracula plays out, and later still the werewolf and the vampire woman have a versus, if you know what I mean, and I think you would have if I hadn’t used this particular phrasing to describe whether you do. Honestly, it’s all very boring and I’m not sure I can figure out how the podcast people will fill an hour of air time on the topic.

There’s basically nothing to recommend here[2], unless you are a long time fan of the series of movies in which this werewolf character appears, and are also a completionist.

[1] I will never tire of that ambiguously-badguy phrase.
[2] I wonder how much of my disdain for the movie is based on it being 4×3 aspect ratio and unrestored. At a guess: more than zero, less than would be relevant to turn things around.

Smile (2022)

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Based on the year of release[1], I wonder if this was a late in the game victim of Covid? I ask this question because the first time I learned there was a movie called Smile was when I saw the previews for Smile 2 in the theater earlier this year. Which is weird; I don’t often completely miss the existence of horror movies. (Of course, maybe I missed it because of how few previews I see anymore, too,)

Anyway, the setup for the movie is as follows. There’s this ER psychiatrist who is asked to handle a newly intaken woman who has had a really bad few days since she watched one of her professors beat himself to death with a hammer. Over the course of their conversation, the patient claims to be entirely sane but hunted, and describes the nature of the hunt. Then she suffers a really spectacularly dramatic seizure, after which she stands up, smiles widely, and slits her own throat. Then, the movie’s title card appears.

The remainder of the film follows our psychiatrist as she gradually begins to break down, while the viewer is left to wonder whether anything is actually happening beyond her own deteriorating mental health. I mean, other things happen too. But mostly trauma, and trauma response, and a shameful lack of empathy from the majority of the characters. As a psychological horror movie, it really is outstanding, and all the moreso horrific as you come to the dawning realization that, yep, this is what would happen. Way more adversaries than helpers in the world, you know? Alas.

[1] In fact, there is a second horror movie named Smile that came out in 2022. I cannot do much about this, except never watch it I suppose, because how then would I differentiate?

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

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Some time ago, before October 2018 in fact, I saw The Maze Runner, which is a movie (and also prior to that a book) about some teens in the middle of a maze, who are tasked with solving that maze, because… well, it’s a secret. To them, at least.

The problem with that movie is, it’s often on streaming, but its sequels never are. (And I don’t own the other books.) The result of this fact is I’ve seen the first movie three times now, but, good news citizens! I accidentally discovered The Scorch Trials were on Max until the end of November. So, I was all ready to watch it, until Mary says hey, I don’t remember the first movie. (I was pretty sure she’d seen it, but either I’m wrong or she wasn’t paying attention, which is why I’ve seen it thrice instead of twice.)

That still left us with enough time to watch the second movie before it got delisted, whew. I will say straight up, this is not as good as the first movie, for the simple fact that nobody is running in any mazes. (Not 100% true facts, okay, but it’s true that nobody is running in any mazes that were specifically purposed as mazes.) See, our escapees are rescued by some other group let by the always eminently trustworthy Petyr Baelish, and they along with a lot of other kids from a lot of other mazes[1] are all gathered together and being processed by batches out to safety.

Unless, you know, it’s just another trapped cage to be escaped.

In the end, there’s a lot more running, a lot more fighting, a lot more rage zombies, a lot fewer cyborg monstrosities, and a metric fuckton of sand covering at least two post-apocalyptic hellholes that used to be cities with skyscrapers. Oh, and Alan Tudyk, who is as ever a delight.

At the end of the movie, I’m once again excited to watch the next chapter. (This time without waiting 6+ years and multiple viewings in between, though.) I am left with one question that I have no idea if it was answered by either this book or the previous one, but that I’m pretty sure was not answered by the movie: how can we tell which kids are immune to the Blaze virus[2], and which ones are not? Or why? Because I’m highly confident that some of the boys in the glade were not immune, which indicates that escaping the maze doesn’t prove everyone is immune, even if it proves someone was (and I’m not so sure whether that was proven either).

[1] One of which was all girls and one boy, resulting in my apology for back when I said we’d never learn why this maze was all boys. Apparently they just tried a bunch of different combinations.
[2] Not a spoiler for this movie per se. It’s what the cyborg Grievers were injecting people with in part one, which the kids called “getting stung”.

Creep (2014)

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Shudder just started a new series called (I want to say) The Creep Tapes, that I decided to take a look at, because why not. And then I learned it was based on a movie from ten years ago, called Creep. The show was good enough for me to say (again), why not, and here we are.

So this guy named Aaron has been hired via Craigslist by this guy named Josef, for the princely sum of one thousand dollars, to be his videographer for a day. Josef explains that he is dying of an inoperable brain tumor, and has an unborn or very young child[1] that he wants to leave a remembrance for. And that’s it, that’s the whole set up.

The only thing worth knowing from here forward is that Josef is incredibly awkward. His sense of humor is almost but not quite mean-spirited, his sense of boundaries is non-existent, he gets way too emotional with a complete stranger way too fast… it’s more or less one of those embarrassment / shame / The Office (British) style of scenarios.

….or is it?

I have a feeling this is more worth watching if you’re not spoiled, and I also have a feeling that the TV show might actually be better than the movie in some ways, mostly relating to improvement via shortened run time. All that to say: both are pretty good, if you’re okay with the premise.

[1] I forget, for the justifiable reason that these are the only two characters in the movie. Hmmm. I guess there are two and a half, but the half also isn’t the aforementioned child, so.