Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic".

There's a reason why an appeal to empathy and compassion usually works better than an appeal to reason and logic. This is visible everywhere. If you tell somebody that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, they take it as a statistical fact and that's it. But if you show them a video from a freeing of a camp, now that hits differently. And one of the reasons is that we see individuals in this video. It's no longer an ambiguous mass of some 6 million people, but we see every one of them as a separate person.

This is why it's easy to give the order to murder, say, every redhead under 60 who wears glasses and has at least two tattoos. But when such a person is in front of us, pulling the trigger requires an incredible amount of hate. (Or pressure.) For the same reason, soldiers who bomb cities from aircraft or use mortar have an easier time doing this than those who kill people in close combat. The first group just potentially kills a lot of people. The second group sees most people they shoot at.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

And I think that conversations about where a satire lands, where it falls short, and where it unintentionally reveals biases of the creator are the interesting conversations. Even as someone who feels a bit repulsed by a lot of Crumb's work, I can concede that there are a lot of layers to unpack. But you can't just laud the layers you like and pretend the ones you don't like don't exist or, worse, pretend like those layers are that way ON PURPOSE.

Right. It's not a coincidence that a lot of what I thought worked about La Llorona is stuff that I thought worked for Schindler's List in terms of making such a large scale tragedy somewhat a thing you can wrap your mind around.

Summer of 84, 1984

Davey (Graham Verchere) lives a quiet life in the suburbs, along with friends Woody (Caleb Emery), Tommy (Judah Lewis), and Curtis (Cory Gruter-Andrew). It’s all newspaper deliveries and late-night meetings in treehouses until Davey comes to suspect that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackay (Rich Sommer) is the serial killer who has been abducting teenage boys in surrounding communities. Along with the older girl Davey has a crush on, Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the crew sets out to prove Mackay’s guilt without arousing his suspicions.

Largely notable for its last act, the departures from convention don’t quite work out on balance with the rest of the film.

Ah, yes, one of those movies where the only part you really want to talk about is so deeply spoilerific that even trying to stay vague feels precarious.

But here goes: for most of its run time, this is a very familiar horror/thriller that hits the beats you’d expect, and yet hits them pretty well. Davey, with his initial suspicions, trying to convince his friends to help him in his quest. The absolute thrill of not only talking to his crush, Nikki, but discovering that she likes him, too. Davey’s parents, enemies of the cause because of course they won’t believe such a conspiracy theory from a son whose walls are covered with clippings about aliens, murderers, and cannibals who live in the sewers.

Verchere is a likable enough lead. Fans of the TV series Monk might give a little cheer on recognizing Jason Gray-Stanford as Davey’s dad. There’s a decent rapport between the boys, and Skovbye is also enjoyable as a woman who is young herself, but who seems so much more grown up by virtue of having just two or three years of age on them. Sommer’s energy in the role of the suspected neighbor is just right. I spent most of the movie wondering if he was guilty or not---the guy sure buys a lot of dirt!--and the film admirably doesn’t tip its hand either way until late in the running.

And then the last act---or really, the last 15 minutes rolls around---and everything changes. I won’t say a word about how, but there is definitely a single moment where it all goes a very different direction from what you would suspect. Does it work? Ehhhhhhh. The problem is not that the ending is bad. Quite to the contrary, I think the ending is very effective. But not only does it not follow from what came before it, 70 minutes is a lot of movie to watch in service of a bait-and-switch. Some last act shifts can wildly change how you see the film that came before it, but that’s not the case here. There is no illumination, no sudden awareness of missed cues or wonderful recontextualization.

It also must be said that the way that the movie looks, the way that it’s shot, all of those technical elements really don’t distinguish themselves much. And this doesn’t change in the last act. Perhaps if the jarring shift had truly altered the very DNA of the film from that point on, I’d have felt differently. As it stands, what happens at the end mainly made me wish that the whole film had been made from the same cloth. That rather than being saved as a surprise, the whole thing had just been a better, more original, more engaging film.

Some extra credit for the last act, but only so-so as a complete package.

The Wild Boys, 2017

Rich, indifferent teenagers Romauld (Pauline Lorillard), Jean-Louis (Vimala Pons), Hubert (Diane Rouxel), Tanguy (Anael Snoek), and Sloane (Mathilde Warnier) have a nasty habit of indulging in any vices they like. But then they take things too far---sexually assaulting and eventually killing one of their teachers--their families agree to turn them over to a man known only as The Captain (Sam Louwyck) who claims to have a foolproof method for taming wild boys. A violent, tense voyage eventually leads them to an island where they begin to understand the true extent of the Captain’s method.

I can’t tell if this movie is great, dumb, insightful, offensive, or just plain silly. All I know is that I couldn’t look away.

Right off the bat, this movie made me think very much of Guy Maddin’s films (specifically Brand Upon the Brain), and also Todd Haynes’ Poison. So immediately, yes, you are talking about a very distinct visual and narrative sensibility. If you’re a fan of those films/directors, you might just find yourself feeling very at home in the energy of this film, which is aggressively weird in a way that surpasses any pretense at deep art and allows itself to simply be wickedly funny and overtly perverse.

Begin with the fact that all of the boys are played by women, immediately lending a bizarre tension to a story centered on very “male” violence and imagery. (If you do not like ejaculation, or things that look a lot like ejaculation, this is NOT the film for you.) The Captain’s cure for the boys involves, by force, taking away the boys’ power, something that the film links directly with their masculinity and male bodies. Is feminine the same as not masculine? In this film, at least physically, the answer is a resounding yes. The boys are being subjected to an extreme version of chemical/physical castration. It’s disturbing generally speaking---though it must be said that they are definitely not all that likable as characters---but there’s some interest in the fact that the boys themselves are enforcing notions of power and masculinity.

I can’t say for sure that the film had a coherent idea about gender roles, whether women are inherently more docile, whether men are inherently more violent, etc. But I can say that despite gender being smack dab in the center of the film’s plot and visuals, I didn’t find myself all that consumed with trying to figure out the movie’s point of view.

Because of the penis plants.

The film’s phallic focus begins in a more disturbing and symbolic manner. Nudity from the boys during the teacher’s assault, the Captain frequently exposing his (much tattooed!) penis to the boys. But once they hit the island, it’s a phallic phree-phor-all! The boys must drink from plants whose shape is so distinct that the word “suggestive” doesn’t even begin to cover it. They must eat fruit that dangles above them in clusters designed so that you can practically feel the prop-master elbowing you in the ribs and winking. And that’s to say nothing of the way that the boys at times become trapped in webs of . . . . well, let’s call it viscous white fluid and let you take it from there.

It’s so overt that I couldn’t help but just give in and giggle. Every act becomes an immediate vulgar stand in for sex. Placing the boys’ shifting power and gender dynamics in this ludicrous setting makes it wickedly funny, but also disturbing in a weird way. The cruel streak in the boys isn’t being taken away---they are merely being placed in a position where they don’t have the same power to act on it.

Oh, also the boys worship a god they’ve invented called Trevor, who is basically a neon-bejeweled version of the Damien Hirst diamond skull and oh, my god someone else please watch this movie so we can talk about it or just give each other meaningful looks because you can’t put your feelings about it into words.

Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl, 2016

Adele (Erin Wilhelmi) gets talked into moving into her aunt Dora’s (Susan Kellermann) house to help care for her. Dora is agoraphobic, to the point that she doesn’t leave her own bedroom. Things are okay, if a bit boring, at first. But then Adele meets Beth (Quinn Shephard) and her life turns upside down. Beth is sexy and wild, and easily convinces Adele to begin shirking her responsibilities, taking shortcuts in the shopping to have a little extra pocket money. Unfortunately, it’s not long before serious consequences follow.

Slight to the point of inexcusable thinness, this horror-drama merely gestures at its most interesting ideas.

I don’t automatically throw great ratings at films just for having certain attributes, but like any movie fan I have leanings that make me more inclined to enjoy a film if it’s built a certain way. So when I see a movie that looks kind of retro, kind of atmospheric, kind of subdued, kind of gay, and also there’s a cute cat, we should be talking at least a B- experience.

There were things I liked about this film. The cat is certainly cute. There’s a tense, barely-relatable section where Beth begins to push the boundaries of what Adele will do to stay in her good graces. I liked that Adele does seem to have some genuinely fond feelings for her aunt, but that the chance to be with someone as engaging as Beth warps her morality.

But a fundamental problem here is that Adele starts off in not too sympathetic of a position. We don’t get to see enough of her being a decent person to really feel the tragedy of the way that Beth pulls her astray. And, frankly, Adele doesn’t seem to try hard at all to do the right thing. One word is all it takes for her to skimp out on her aunt’s CRITICAL HEART MEDICATION. Watching a good person be pulled to the dark side is awful. Watching a mediocre person be nudged off the barely-right path just doesn’t have the same zest.

I was also distracted by a few plot points that simply didn’t make sense to me. Adele is stuck in the aunt’s house for hours and hours at a time, yet she fails to notice a certain something that is in plain sight? Adele’s aunt is the kind of woman who is hyper-specific in her shopping lists and also has strict rules and protocols down to how the sardines are arranged on her toast. You’re telling me this kind of woman doesn’t count or at least check her medications when they arrive? For such a short movie, too much happens that just doesn’t wash, and it distracts from the slight plot.

A film after my heart on paper, but one that sadly underdelivers.

They Look Like People, 2015

Reeling from a recent breakup with the woman he thought was the one, Christian (Evan Dumouchel) invites his long-time friend Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) to stay with him. Christian is trying to rebuild his confidence, including pursuing a romance with an intriguing co-worker named Mara (Margaret Ying Drake). What Christian doesn’t know is that Wyatt is convinced that the world is being taken over by possessing demons that inhabit the bodies of every-day people. As Christian grapples with work and romantic dramas, Wyatt is preparing for the end of days. The only question is: when the time comes, will Wyatt see Christian as an ally or an enemy?

Benefiting greatly from a very solid last act, this is a solid directorial debut and entry in the independent horror canon.

I will admit that I grappled a bit with this film for the first half. I think that there comes a point where a film can be almost too successful in its portrayal of something, and for me that was the case with the characters of Christian and Wyatt. Listen: I know anxiety when I see it. I know the way that manic speech and noise can be a way of covering up fear or doubt. Part of my job is keeping a neutral manner when I see kids behaving this way. But darn if I wasn’t ready to put my foot through the screen if I had to hear another single “Hurrah!” from them!

I also had concerns about what felt like predictability when it came to the plot. It’s a pretty common horror trope at this point---especially in independent/lower-budget horror---to spend a whole film with a person slowly losing their mind, always questioning if they actually are mentally ill or if it’s real. And while some beats of this film are somewhat familiar, the performances and the plot itself go in unexpected directions.

I really enjoyed Drake as Christian’s love interest, Mara. While her character flirts with some manic-pixie-dream-girl elements---she has an adorable voice! She does judo! She makes a sock into a little puppet!--she’s also a certain kind of no-nonsense that cuts through both Christian and Wyatt’s self-involvement. In most other films she’d be reduced to the terrorized girlfriend, and I appreciated the way that she appeared (or didn’t appear) in specific parts of the story.

There’s also an interesting balance of the drama and horror elements. Christian and Wyatt are essentially living in different movies---one a romantic drama, the other a sci-fi horror---with those stories set on a collision course. The film doesn’t pick a single character as our main point of view, and so we hop back and forth between them as their destinies are drawn closer and closer together. Christian has one idea about what’s happening when Mara visits after a rough day at work, while Wyatt has a completely different take on it.

And then comes the final act. I won’t spoil it at all. I’ll just say that I thought it resolved both of its plotlines in a way that from a more clinical point of view I found a little silly, but that on an emotional level somehow works. There were a handful of surprises for me in the last 10 minutes, and I always appreciate that in a horror film.

Certainly worth a watch, and an impressive directorial debut.

Lyle, 2014

Pregnant Leah (Gaby Hoffman) moves to New York with her wife, Jane (Ingrid Jungermann), who is on the verge of a big break in the music industry. Their new apartment seems wonderful, but as Leah spends more and more time there with their young daughter, Lyle (Eleanor Hopkins), she starts to sense that something is not right. These feelings come too late to save Lyle, who dies in a tragic accident. But as Leah’s due date grows closer and closer, she begins to fear for the safety of her unborn child and specifically begins to suspect that there is something or someone in her apartment building who hurt Lyle and wants to hurt the new baby.

Immensely anxiety-ridden and full of quiet unease, this is a fantastic and horrifying tale of pregnancy and isolation.

Usually a shorter review means that I didn’t like a movie, but here I find myself holding back because I don’t want to give away a single twist or turn of this incredibly satisfying and upsetting film. Clocking in at barely over an hour, the amount of character development this film squeezes into ten minutes of runtime surpasses many much longer feature-length films.

I am comfortable saying that the cast here is absolutely fantastic. Hoffman spends the first 5-10 minutes as a loving mother to the feisty Lyle, and then the rest of the film as a woman trying to keep it together with varying degrees of success. I can’t overstate how good I thought Hoffman was in this movie. You can literally watch the thoughts and moods pass over her face, like clouds passing over the sun. One minute she has convinced herself that all of her fears are just in her head---results of the grieving process. The next minute, she’s sure that she and her baby are in immediate danger, and she has the drowning look of a woman who needs help but won’t get it from anywhere.

The rest of the cast is also very good, and that includes little Hopkins whose Lyle makes enough of an impact in her brief screentime to carry Leah’s grief and anger through the rest of the film. Without showing a drop of blood, we feel the loss of Lyle because the film lets us hear the little clip-clop of her shoes, or watch the way she leans out of a doorway to babble at a visitor.

Jungermann, whose character’s energy seems more devoted to her career than her family, runs hot and cold as Jane. While she says that she feels Lyle’s loss as deeply as Leah, you can see that Leah is always in some disbelief that Jane isn’t also wanting to tear things apart at every moment. Then there’s the marvelous Rebecca Street as the couple’s landlord, Karen. Karen, who is probably in her late 50s or early 60s, is obsessed with pregnancy, even pretending to be pregnant for attention. As the film goes on, this escalates from quirky to menacing. Kim Allen is a likable, calming presence as a model who lives upstairs from the couple and is sometimes a confidant to both of them. Michael Che also makes an impression as Threes, a musical artist whose signing cements Jane’s arrival in the big leagues of music agency.

Now as for the plot itself? Woof! Loved it! It’s creepy and the film maintains a lovely ambiguity even as it builds to a climax that gives an entirely different understanding to a ton of what came before it. In the spirit of a lot of great lower-budget/indie horror, this one creates terror through the world it builds and the capacity for evil, all layered under the question of just how much of that evil is in the protagonist’s head.

I’ll admit that I have been eyeing this film for ages, based mostly on its fantastic poster. For me, it more than lived up to my hopes.

I ended up really enjoying this for its gonzo nature, its darkness, its pluckiness, and its blatant re-use of footage from earlier in the film.

I didn't notice the re-use of footage (I never seem to notice that stuff). I liked the grimy aspect of it and I think that the ending is pretty great.

I love this movie and I agree that Gloria Grahame is perfect to the point of elevating the whole film.

Witching and Bitching, 2013

Jose (Hugo Silva) and Antonio (Mario Casas) rob a jewelry store with the help of Jose’s small son, Sergio (Gabriel Angel Delgado). Fleeing the scene of the crime along with a hapless taxi driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordonez). Intending to make it to France, the men soon run afoul of a group of witches, including the imposing Maritxu (Terele Pavez) and the lovely Eva (Carolina Bang). Can the men evade the pursuing police and whatever depraved ritual the witches have in store for them?

Funny and high-energy, this is a rollicking good time.

In the first moments of this film, the witches sit around a cauldron trying to read the meaning in prophetic cards. With both anticipation and perplexity, they talk about a group of men consisting of someone who is green and also someone who is a . . . large sponge? Cut to the robbers dressed as cartoon mascots as part of their plan to infiltrate the jewelry store.

One of the running gags in the film comes from a conversation that the men have early in the taxi ride about the advantages that women have over men, and the many ways that women ruin male lives. From there, the witches often become a very funny, supernatural exaggeration of these fears. When one of the witches takes a liking to Jose, she will literally destroy him if he doesn’t decide that she’s more important to him than his own son.

What elevates this above being just a funny allegory is the fact that the witches themselves are so fun and full of personality. They banter and lovingly chide one another. At any given time, at least one of them has a smear or dribble of blood---usually toad, sometimes human--across a cheek or down a chin. Bang is incredibly sexy and fun as the mercurial Eva, and she does a fantastic job of transitioning from sexy seductress to clinging girlfriend in a short time.

It’s also fun watching the way that Jose and his ex-wife Silvia (Macarena Gomez) argue over the care and custody of Sergio. The film works relentlessly to cast---in a comedic way---Silvia as the bad guy, despite the fact that Jose took his son TO AN ARMED ROBBERY. I did think that there was some good comic tension in the fact that Silvia becomes part of the “enemy”, despite probably being the better overall parent. I think that asking us to be on Jose’s side is one of the funnier aspects of the film, intentionally funny or not.

And part of why this all works is the overly comic nature of the violence. I was honestly never actually all that worried for Sergio’s safety, as it felt like actually hurting a child was a line that the film wouldn’t cross. And with that safety net in mind, it was easy to enjoy the way that the adults around Sergio do a pretty terrible job of protecting him. There’s a great “rule of three” moment in the film as a frightened Sergio tries to hail down help on the highway.

The action is also right in line with that comedic sensibility. As with some of Alex de la Iglesia’s other work, I find the action effective when it’s more small scale, but less so when it moves to a larger scale. Big set pieces often don’t do it for me, but I still mainly enjoyed the action in the final act.

A good time, and a great spooky season film.

Simon Killer, 2012

Simon (Brady Corbet) is a young American man spending some time in Paris after graduating from college and reeling from a breakup with his girlfriend. Exploring the city’s night life, he meets bar host and sex worker Victoria (Mati Diop). After their initial encounter, Simon finds ways to get himself into Victoria’s life. As their unstable romance develops, it seems that Simon wants more and more from Victoria, even putting her safety on the line.

While definitely not meeting my expectations as a horror movie, this was a well-acted and nice-looking film that doesn’t quite make the most of its premise.

It’s so hard to review a movie when you’re still adjusting to the fact that you didn’t get anything like what you were expecting. In this case, several sites list it as a horror film, though to me it was a drama and a thriller. I know that this doesn’t seem like a huge deviation from horror, but when you are in what you THINK is a horror movie and a character goes on and on about how he studied eyes, at a certain point in the film you start grumpily thinking, “When is someone going to get stabbed in the eye already?!?!?!?!”.

Setting aside the gap between my expectations and what I actually got, I think that this was a film with some strengths that didn’t ultimately add up to a strong final product.

I picked this film in large part to due it starring Brady Corbet, who I thought was really excellent in Mysterious Skin and also very good in the Funny Games remake. I think that he is also very good here as a person who has figured out how to elicit enough sympathy from people to get them to do what he wants. Simon is functionally a sociopath--a man who is willing to get beat up by a group of men just so he can earn pity points from Victoria. There is an indifference to his behavior, as well as a thinly veiled contempt, that is chilling. This is truly a man who serves only his own needs, and values people only for what they can provide to him.

Diop is also very good as Victoria. Victoria has seen some things, both in a past abusive relationship and in her current sex work. She knows early on, from a blank face she assumes after Simon is pressuring her into the blackmail scam, that this is not a pure or good relationship. Just as Simon’s deeper motivations remain a mystery, so do the reasons that Victoria chooses to stay with him. Though it must be said that we can put a few ideas together: coming from a past relationship with physical violence and a job where she has to feign attraction to men she finds unattractive, we can guess why Victoria might settle for a handsome, young man whose sexual tastes are on the mild side.

The film looks good, overall, with lots of reds and pinks hinting at the fate that awaits at least one of the protagonists. The film also sounds good, with a pretty kicking soundtrack.

But ultimately, the story spins its wheels for much of the middle third and even heading into the final act. This is the double-edged sword of a movie centered on a sociopath whose depths we cannot access (and whose depths might just . . . not really exist at all). While there is some interest in watching just how Simon’s various schemes work out (or don’t), there’s a distinct lack of momentum here and the film begins to feel like it’s grinding along. While there is a conclusion, of sorts, I didn’t find it very satisfying, or feel that it was worth the journey.

This one didn’t need eyeball-stabbing, per se, but it did need a bit more electricity and about 20 fewer minutes of runtime.

Choose, 2011

Fiona (Katheryn Winnick) is a college student who is haunted by her mother’s death by suicide. When a mysterious figure begins accosting people and forcing them into terrible choices, Fiona ends up working unofficially with her father, Tom (Kevin Pollack), a police detective, to get to the bottom of the horrific attacks. As Fiona realizes that the bad guy has his eye on her, she must also determine how she is connected to him.

Cruising along as a fun, if silly, horror-thriller, this one seriously derails in the last 10 minutes or so.

There’s a happy zone of stupid where some truly great horror movies live. No shame in that game. And this movie sits nicely in that zone of dumb for almost all of its run time. Police letting a college student help out with a grisly serial murder/assault case? Check. Absurdly complicated messages and codes that are solved in stupid or weird ways? Check. Murder tableaus inexplicably left in place by police because it makes for a nice visual? Check! For almost all of the film, this is in that sweet spot where you’re sort of laughing at it, but also genuinely trying to sort out how it all fits together. (I was sure I had it cracked, and repeatedly and confidently asserted that my solution was the only plausible one).

And while the film is in that good zone, there’s plenty to like about it. Winnick is a very solid lead, and with a few exceptions, her actions seem reasonable in the grand scheme of the film’s plot. Kevin Pollack is engaging as always, though he seems to be one of the only actors with that “what kind of movie am I in” vibe at times. Bruce Dern shows up for a few minutes as a psychiatrist who is tangentially connected with the case. Everyone here is fine, with no real negative standouts. (Okay, Fiona’s boyfriend is THE WORST, but that is a writing/character problem, not an actor problem).

In a movie this silly, I don’t actually want to be all that disturbed by the gore/violence, and thankfully it’s all in the right degree for my taste in this kind of film. More often than not, the violence here is conceptual and briefly visual. A pianist forced to cut off his fingers is more pondered than portrayed (and when it is portrayed, sorry, I did laugh). Sometimes silly films go with graphic violence, and to me that always feels like a mismatch.

I was already writing essentially a C+ review for this movie in my head, but then the last act kicks in. I think that thinking of a neat horror concept isn’t all that terribly hard, but figuring out how to follow that idea through to an ending is. The closer the movie gets to the end, the more you feel it begin to sweat. You wonder how on earth the movie is going to pull all its threads together, and the simple answer is that it doesn’t. It also can’t resist the bane of the modern horror film: A FINAL SURPRISE! In this case, something that made me boo outloud and also managed to raise like ten questions on top of the ones that were already going unanswered. This is a film that makes rules and then, when it tells you why, you realize that it’s also breaking them just to make the pieces fit.

Very close to a lazy afternoon goofy horror slightly-above-average success, but the wheels really come off at the end.

A Horrible Way to Die, 2010

Sarah (Amy Seimetz) is three months sober, but she’s also coming up on a much more serious anniversary: it’s been a few short years since her boyfriend, Garrick (AJ Bowen), was arrested and convicted of killing multiple women. Sarah begins to tentatively pursue a romance with Kevin (Joe Swanberg), a man from her AA Group, but her future with Kevin and her life itself are threatened when Garrick escapes from prison and begins to make his way toward her.

Making good use of a flash-foward/flash-back structure, this one doesn’t quite go the full distance due to an underdeveloped central relationship.

Several familiar faces---specifically Seimetz, but also Bowen and Swanberg--enticed me to check this film out. And I have to say that when it comes to performances, this film is pretty strong. Seimetz never disappoints, and I think she’s pretty great here in what is almost a dual role. Past-Sarah is drunk, and maybe even using her drunkenness to stave off the sense that something with Garrick is not right. But Present-Sarah is sober and grappling with the twin blades of fear and guilt. In one conversation at an AA meeting, Sarah reflects that maybe things would have been different if she weren’t drunk all the time. It’s hard to parse exactly what she means by this. Does she mean that if she’d been sober Garrick wouldn’t have killed those women? Does she mean that she would have figured things out earlier, possibly saving some women? Or does she possibly mean that he might have killed her if she weren’t so believing and complacent for so long?

Swanberg is unsettling as Kevin, a guy who is all smiles and tenderness, but who is clearly not quite right. Watching his character interact with Sarah is painful, because you can see how this woman ended up with a man who was a killer. On their first date, Kevin takes Sarah to a restaurant where they are surrounded by wine bottles. Clearly uncomfortable, Sarah accepts Kevin’s weak excuses and doesn’t insist on leaving, a bad sign moving forward. Swanberg gives every one of Kevin’s transgressions or quirks an uncomfortable edge, making you wonder how much we are seeing the real man, and how much of his behavior is actually intended to get under Sarah’s skin.

Bowen’s character and performance is the trickiest of the film, and I think that he mostly pulls it off. I started watching this film something like 10 years ago, and stopped very shortly into it because the dark themes and dizzying camerawork (more on that later) weren’t what I needed that night. But one scene that I have always remembered is the opening sequence: Bowen’s Garrick wakes up in a car, realizing he’s dozed off. He goes to the trunk where he retrieves a bound woman. Talking to her in a comforting manner, he rubs her shoulder and tells her that she’s going to be okay . . . all before choking her to death. He exudes a kind of good guy energy, and it’s jarring to see that transition from kind words and comforting tone to brutal murder. The film asks a lot of the character and the actor: wanting him to be scary, likable, maybe kind of sexy, and someone you can root for even as you fear for what he’ll do to Sarah. He’s a dizzying mix of a boogeyman, flawed protagonist, and classic horror slasher killer. I think it’s a credit to Bowen that he makes the character work as well as he does.

I also think that the structure of the film is interesting and engaging. We spend most of our time with Present Sarah, but the long stretches of flashbacks add depth to her story. We watch as she goes from gently questioning her boyfriend to deciding to figure things out to fear and denial about what she’s learned about the man she loves. The lingering question in the film is what will happen when the escaped Garrick finally closes the distance between himself and Sarah, and the flashbacks work to help us make our own predictions.

There are two things that don’t quite work in this film, which is a shame because it does have a lot going for it. The first is that the flashback sequences don’t feel quite adequate to me in terms of carrying the weight of justifying certain character decisions. Garrick feels very much like a character who was written for a movie. Yes, we’ve all heard stories about men whose wives had no clue that they were killing on the side. But we’ve all seen those guys, right? They aren’t empathetic teddy bears, they are narcissists who lived double lives. Garrick’s loyalty to Sarah doesn’t quite check out for me. The movie needs him to be a monster and a loving boyfriend, and I’m not sure that there really are people who actually have those two halves, only people who are good at role playing the latter.

Then there’s the camera work. I mean, guys. Guys. There’s the slightly-shaky hand-held camera work, and then there’s whatever is happening in this film. At several points it looks more like a parody of modern filmmaking style than something trying to be good. Many scenes begin with the camera out of focus, okay, fine. But then as a character is speaking the camera will veer wildly from side to side, or drift up and to one side. There are a handful of times that this technique manages to serve as an extension of Sarah’s intoxication or her fear and disorientation. At other times, it comes off as being “artsy” without purpose.

The conclusion to this film is very interesting. I’m not sure I buy it, but I like it.

Certainly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the on-screen talent.

Those wheels really came off at the end.

Strigoi, 2009

Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) returns home to his Romanian village from a stint in Italy to find a local man named Florian is dead and his name is on the death certificate as the doctor who ruled the death accidental. But delving into that mystery soon leads him to another, more supernatural puzzle: why is the wealthy Constantin (Constantin Barbulescu) so sweaty and hungry? Why is Constantin’s wife (Roxana Guttman) consuming everything in sight? Tales of vampirism intertwine with a land-theft conspiracy, and Vlad must fight through layers of secrecy and tradition to sort it all out.

While I found the political allegories a bit challenging to parse, this was overall a fun, frothy little horror comedy with a charmingly laidback pace.

I do sometimes feel a bit undereducated on world matters/politics when time after time I watch a film from another country and find myself writing things like “I think I would have appreciated the film more if I knew more about the history of [insert place/political movement/etc here]”. And this film falls into that same category. I don’t know enough about either the Romanian folklore of strigoi (vampires) or the politics of post-WW2 Romania to feel confident about interpreting any of what I saw in this film. The good news is that this film doesn’t need interpretation to be a good time.

This horror-comedy leans pretty hard into the comedy side of things, and it’s quirky small town humor. What keeps the film moving is a solid cast of characters who manage to elevate even very slight conversations into something funny and engaging. Case in point is Vlad’s circular interrogation of the men he finds sitting watch over Florian’s body on his arrival back into town. Where did one of the villagers get those nice new shoes? What are those strange marks on Florian’s neck? The men deflect, talking to Vlad about Italy with its amazing women and pizzas. It’s a genial run-around, and Vlad will spend much of the film trying to pry the truth from the closed-lipped locals.

Paraschiv is very understated in his role as Vlad, but his character is gently persistent. When he discovers shenanigans related to land-ownership paperwork, he steadily works to get to the bottom of things. All the while he comes up against very human corruption and very supernatural vampires. Vlad’s no dummy, but he’s also no strapping action hero. Instead, he’s just a nice guy who wants to do the right thing. He’s a much needed rock of normalcy in a town filled with oddballs.

While none of the townspeople get a whole lot of character development, they are surely pretty fun to hang around with. That’s especially true of Vlad’s overbearing grandfather (Rudy Rosenfeld), who himself may be a vampire. (A great exchange involves Vlad grumpily accusing his grandfather of drinking his blood, in a tone you might associate with asking someone to stop putting empty milk cartons back in the refrigerator).

I also liked the way that the townspeople themselves are seen to grapple with the folklore. When one woman asserts that wife, Ileana, is a vampire, the townspeople debate whether that can be true because Ileana in her binge eating has consumed garlic. “Not strigoi!” one man asserts. “Then what is she?” asks the woman. No one has an answer.

But looking around at some other reviews---which I perused hoping for some enlightenment about the political background--I found that I wasn’t the only one a bit confused about exactly how vampirism is functioning in this movie. It’s communism! No, wait, it’s post-war corruption! It’s kind of scattershot, which gives a sense of aimlessness. Now, because the lead character is so laid back and the villagers are so charming, this isn’t the worst thing. But it does mean that as the film enters its final act it lacks some momentum or a satisfying sense of closure.

I also must mention the absolute nostalgia bomb that was the film’s use of the song “Postcards from Italy” by Beirut, which transported me back to grad school and a mix CD I had in my car.

Fun cast and characters, but just lacking enough direction or punch to be really memorable.

Repo, the Genetic Opera, 2008

In a future where organ failure is rampant, the powerful GeneCo company offers loaner organs that, lacking payment, are subject to repossession. Repo man Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head) does the gruesome work of collecting said organs when the bills are past due. Nathan cares for his sickly daughter, Shilo (Alexa PenaVega), while dealing with the ruthless owner of GeneCo, Rotti (Paul Sorvino). When Rotti discovers he is terminally ill, it sets off a power struggle between his squabbling children and an unwitting Shilo.

This movie is probably one of those love-it-or-hate-it deals, and I did not land on the nice side of that split.

This should have been my jam, really. Anthony Stewart Head showed he could really sing in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical. A grunge horror musical has me sold on the sub-sub-genre alone. The concept of someone repossessing organs has the promise of an intersection between the grisly and the hilarious.

But . . . it’s bad. It pains me to say it. It’s bad!

There are some glimmers of brightness. Head can sing, and I’ve always enjoyed him as a presence. His role as the conflicted organ repo man and worried father is a good one, and he plays it well. His is the most fleshed out (not sorry) character of the bunch by a wide, wide margin. And while none of the other actors made quite as strong an impression, I loved some of the character concepts, especially the opera singer (Sarah Brightman) who has been given loaner eyes that are soon coming due. I also liked the final setpiece, which takes place at the opera, something that elevates the camp of the whole film. Finally, shout out to the special effects, which are just gruesome to make an impression but squishy and rubbery enough to also be funny.

And that’s it. Everything else not only didn’t work for me, but was actively grating.

Why, why, why, why, why was there so much talk-singing?! Look, yes, sometimes you have that one person in your movie/play whose voice isn’t as strong. And you kind of look the other way as they speak their song with just a hint of melody. But in this film it felt like that was 90% of the “music.” Head and Brightman are the exceptions, but they put the rest of the cast to shame in this regard.

And despite a good effort from actor Terrance Zdunich, the omniscient character of the graverobber was awful. From the overly-expository songs to the character/costume design that looked like something you’d buy at Party City, ugh. Every other character just falls into this neutral/forgettable place.

Different and good are not the same things. I was rooting for this one, but I can already feel it slipping out of my memory.

Need more werewolves. K? Thanks.

Will you settle for zombie sheep?

Hm. How about Killer bunnies?
Night of the Lepus anyone?