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

Huh. It's not something I've been noticing with other films, and I've been watching a lot of Shudder this month. I thought it was an editing choice for this particular movie.

Wait, Shudder has gone to ads?!!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shudder/com...hudder_movies/

The Deeper You Dig, 2019

Ivy (Toby Poser) makes a living as a psychic medium, supporting herself and her daughter, Echo (Zelda Adams). One winter night, Echo goes out sledding and is struck by local Kurt (John Adams), who is appalled at what he’s done, and decides to hide Echo’s body. But as Kurt tries to move on and remodel his new home, Ivy seeks out occult means to discover what has happened to her missing daughter.

Somehow just short of being great, this is still an engaging, creative horror thriller.

I have to admit to struggling a bit in trying to pinpoint what is keeping me from absolutely raving about this film. As I think through the categories that I care about---story, acting, writing, atmosphere, overall look, etc---I can’t name a place where I felt it fell flat.

The best aspect of the film is easily the surreal, harrowing journey that Ivy goes on while trying to find Echo. Ivy reconnects with an old friend named Dell (Shawn Wilson) who gives her access to a mysterious box that unlocks supernatural powers, but at a heavy cost. From this point forward, Ivy is never sure if what she is experiencing is real or not. Certain nightmarish sequences---such as a strangely paralyzed Ivy being forced to consume a table full of disgusting animal parts and then being forced by an eerie figure to swallow a whole snake---are obviously otherworldly. But what about when she stops her car, only to suddenly be underwater? The nature of exactly what is happening to Ivy is left wonderfully ambiguous. All we need to know is that she is drawing closer to her daughter as she is increasingly put through the ringer. Poser portrays this whole process with a certain grim determination that lets us know that she would do anything to find her child.

I also quite enjoyed the performances. (It’s worth noting here that the actors who play Ivy, Echo, and John are all the credited writers and directors of the film, and are a husband/wife/daughter family unit). Echo isn’t the nicest person, but she does feel like a real teenage girl. John is a relatively well developed character, someone whose guilt is just present enough to torment him, but who is selfish enough to knock it back down. John is being haunted by Echo’s spirit, and in small moments it seems that he even may be possessed by her. Adams plays these moments very well and keeps it understated. Likewise, Poser is really strong in her role, giving us a character who is clearly used to dominating the room but now finds herself vulnerable and helpless to find her child.

There’s also something very satisfying about this take on the psychic and the supernatural. Despite having visions and just some mom-instinct suspicions, it takes a while for John to even ping on Ivy’s radar. The two of them have several benign interactions, and we live in the dramatic irony of knowing just what John has done to Echo while they make small talk. Everyone in the film must go through it, and you end up wondering just where everyone will land by the time the dust settles.

Everything that takes place is heightened by the cold, winter setting and the sense of isolation. John alone in his house, Ivy alone in hers, and Echo alone in her unmarked grave. You believe that this is a place where a teenage girl could disappear and never be found.

I may need to revisit this one, as I was onboard with it from beginning to end. While I didn’t out-and-out love it, I’d definitely recommend it. The fact that a family made it together is really cool behind the scenes detail.

Oh shit, I am now encountering this on Shudder. Watching a movie and it keeps having what feel like commercial breaks but no commercials happen and it just goes to the next shot.

Daddy’s Head, 2024

Laura (Julia Brown) has just married James (Charles Aitken), an architect with an adolescent son named Isaac (Rupert Turnbull). But the two have barely started their new life together when James is in a horrible, disfiguring accident and dies from his injuries. Not wanting to be amother, per se, but also not wanting Isaac to end up in foster care, Laura reluctantly agrees to assume guardianship over the boy. But an already fraught situation only worsens when Laura and Isaac begin to be stalked by a strange creature that seems to be wearing James’s face.

A solid premise and relatable characters make this spooky story an engaging one, despite some faltering in the overall pace.

Horror is full of evil, scheming stepmothers, out to torment and sometimes literally suck the life out of their unsuspecting husbands and/or unfortunate stepchildren. (It should also be noted that evil stepfathers have their own place in the horror canon). It’s always really lovely to see a horror movie willing to subvert the usual tropes, and a lot of my appreciation of this film comes from the way it tackles the relationship between Laura and Isaac.

The set up of the film overall just works really well. The accident does so much damage to James that in the hospital bed his head is completely swathed in bandages. In a discussion in the middle of the film, Laura must explain to Isaac that while James was technically alive, he was brain dead and so she made the choice to have him taken off of his breathing machine. Out behind the house is a special tract of land that holds the body of Isaac’s biological mother.

The movie pulls this very neat trick where we can see both Isaac and Laura’s point of view. Which of them is driving this strange haunting? Are either of them to blame? As the film goes on, we’re never totally sure about how is responsible for which part of things, or even the nature of what is haunting them.

The film also handles the characters with a very deft hand, allowing both Laura and Isaac to be flawed but highly sympathetic. Isaac is a child who has already been through the death of one parent. From a scene before James dies, we see that he and Laura don’t fully click, and it’s understandable that he would be full of pain, confusion, and resentment at the loss of his father. When the creature greets Isaac in his father’s voice, it’s easy to see why some part of Isaac wants it to be true that his father is still alive.

Laura is also nicely nuanced. She does care about Isaac, but at the same time she has no desire to be a single mother. Laura grapples with alcoholism, something that only worsens as the stress of parenting Isaac and dealing with the malevolent creature ramps up. We see in Laura someone who wants to do the right thing, but is presently unequipped to do so.

The horror aspect of the film is interesting. While on a walk in the woods, Laura and Isaac discover a very strange construction: an odd hut/art piece that they assume James must have created. Through the film, the exact nature of the creature remains an intriguing mystery. Did James really die? Did James actually build this strange thing? If so, was it designed to bring him back in some way? Were Isaac or Laura in some way responsible for his death? What does the creature actually want? And, of course, is the creature actually James at all, or merely a cruel imitation?

Overall I quite enjoyed this film. I would say that the one downside is the old “maybe just leave?” issue. At one point, Laura and Isaac endure a frightening attack from the creature, including shattering a large window in Isaac’s room. And somehow afterward they are just going to stay in the house? And Laura just takes Isaac back to his bedroom and is like, “Well, anyway . . . . good night!”. As things intensify, as both Laura and Isaac start to crack, no one puts any energy into getting them out of the house. It feels contrived, and it’s a familiar trap/trope of films that deal with hauntings in a specific home.

On the whole, though, I enjoyed this film and would easily recommend it. It also has a satisfying final act.

Like I said over in the other thread, I got a pretty decent feeling from this movie in what little I saw (it was on Shudder TV when I opened the app) and then when I actually saw Daddy's Head scuttle around the room I thought, "Ok, either you watch this whole movie or you don't, cuz this requires some buy-in."

All You Need is Death, 2023

Anna (Simone Collins) and her boyfriend Aleks (Charlie Maher) spend their days tracking down obscure folk songs. When they get a lead on an ancient song known only by a woman named Rita (Olwen Fouere) who lives in a small village, they track her down. Despite Rita’s warnings that the song must only be heard or sung by women and must never be recorded or written down, a fellow song hunter named Agnes (Catherine Siggins) sneaks a recording device into the room. Once the song “escapes”, strange things begin to happen to all who have heard it.

Aimless and not cohesive, this is a frustrating example of too many minutes and not enough ideas.

I will often bemoan having watched a film that had a solid or intriguing premise and simply didn’t live up to it. But in the case of this film, even the basic premise feels untethered and unclear. Today I sat with a child and asked him to tell me what fraction of a figure was shaded. The answer was 8/5, he told me the answer was 8/5. But he had written 10 as the answer. Trying to understand where that 10 came from was like a carousel of confusion, and that’s the same vibe I got off of this film.

If there is a strength in this film, it’s probably the acting. Collins is solid in her role (though really not helped at all by the writing). Fouere has limited screen time but makes a strong impression, and she’s slowly cornering the market on upsetting women in their 50s. Maher, Siggins, and Nigel O’Neill (playing Rita’s disturbed son) don’t fare quite as well, but it feels as if the script is largely to blame.

And that’s about the end of the nice things I can say about this film. In every other respect it’s half-baked, confusing, and uncommitted.

The worst sin that the film commits is simply the disjoint nature of the haunted song and what happens in the present. There’s this whole backstory about a king who marries a woman, but she cheats on him, so she punishes them by starving her lover in a cave until he gets so hungry that he eats their baby. And the song is . . . about that? But also the song is possessed by . . . something? And letting a man listen to the song releases that something? It’s not just that it doesn’t make sense---movies don’t have to make sense to work---it’s that it doesn’t feel like it makes sense and neither does it feel like the incoherence is an intentional choice. In fact, there are several sequences of conversation that are exposition, though they do little to clarify things.

One promising idea in the film is that the song’s curse is having to bend in weird ways to accommodate the triangle between Aleks, Agnes, and Anna. There’s one fun and disturbing detail involving a VERY surprising pregnancy. But it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. When things need to hit a fever pitch, it all just gets messy and frustrating.

What fundamentally sinks this film is the lack of character development with all three leads. Who are they, really? What do they want, really? The entire movie hinges on the way that their relationships shift and warp and turn sweet or sour, and the foundation simply isn’t there to hold up the finale. A lot of screentime is handed to Rita’s son, Breezeblock, but it’s just pouring more bland sauce over the narrative. Breezeblock is also limited to mediocre, blah exposition about dark shadows and a reveal that’s meant to be shocking but is just out-of-place.

Not one that I can recommend, sadly.

I hate to say this but, honestly, I'm glad you watched this so I don't have to. This sounds like it would really piss me off.
And I've said all month that the thing that gets missed so often in Horror movies is that, admittedly with some exceptions, you have to give the audience characters. The better your characters the more they can carry the weight of a film, even if the ideas aren't amazing, even if the execution could be better, characters can carry your film. And sometimes you can establish a good character in just a few lines or even an action with no dialogue at all. But ya gotta do it.
Also, I'm stealing this and using it often (as I would have for Smile)...
"...too many minutes and not enough ideas."

I'm always hesitant to warn people off of movies. And this one isn't a total fail. But it was frustrating and ultimately did feel like a waste of my time.

Just saw Oddity and I agree with absolutely everything in Takoma's review. Particularly this:

Yes, exactly. Perfectly done. Some tiny little understandable everyday carelessness that you could indulge in every day of your entire life and not have it matter. The perfect little horror moment because you'll definitely think about it in your day-to-day life afterwards.

Good little movie. I think it missed some obviously better codas than the one it chose (in terms of execution more than concept), but a lot of good stuff there, even if the first half is twice as good as the second.

Yeah, I gotta try to get to this before the month is over.

I agree that the first half is stronger than the second half. That said, I was genuinely very surprised by many things that happened in the second half. Yes, I figured out some plot elements, but I was not ready for how it panned out for several of the characters.

And I really loved the simplicity/humor of .

If you haven't seen Caveat, I'd highly recommend that one as well.

Same. Sometimes this was nice, but other times I was surprised specifically because I thought there was an obviously better thing to do that they didn't do. So mixed bag, at least for me.


Anyway, really enjoyed it, lot to learn from this one, even though I think it stops short of being especially great.

That was going to be my next question, thanks.

For me, the film threw in several places where I just didn't see things coming, and the novelty of that for me outweighed being bothered when certain choices were made for effect. The final shot, for example, is a choice made to lean into the dark humor of it.

I also interpreted that final moment maybe a bit differently. For me

Caveat is a film I've returned to many times. I've probably watched it all the way through three or four times, and watched bits and pieces of it five or six times. I would say that the humor/horror balance leans a little more to the horror side than Oddity. The first half does a very good job establishing a creepy premise. The second half is where you find more of the overt horror.

Much like Oddity, you'll be able to see certain things coming. And sometimes the movie explicitly will be telegraphing something and you still can't look away. I think that the two lead actors are really good and it creates a unique setting out of the location it chooses.

And also like Oddity, I think there's a pretty deft balance between dark humor and empathy for the characters. One of the main characters in Caveat is seriously mentally ill (this is not a spoiler, it's part of the whole premise), and the movie manages to have her behave in erratic ways (very much the movie version of mentally ill, if you know what I mean) but also still be a human being with understandable fears and motivations.

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it when you get around to it, and how you think it stacks up to Oddity. I'd give Caveat the edge between the two, but I really like them both.

Curse of the Werewolf, 1961

In rural Spain a starving beggar (Richard Wordsworth) makes the mistake of begging at the wedding of a cruel Marques. Thrown into the dungeon for years and years, he loses his humanity. When a mute servant girl (Yvonne Romain) is thrown into the dungeon for refusing the Marques’ advances, she is raped by the beggar and becomes pregnant. She finds refuge with Don Alfredo (Clifford Evans) and his housekeeper Teresa (Hira Talfrey), who kindly take her in and ultimately adopt her baby. But the young Leon (played as a child by Justin Walters and an adult by Oliver Reed) has a curse on him, and soon it begins to impact those he loves.

Taking its time to develop characters and relationships, this is an impressive and memorable tale of horror.

It’s astonishing, thinking back on the film, to realize just how many stories are embedded in this film, which clocks in at just about an hour and a half. Some of the stories get only a few moments of screentime, such as a single scene that speaks volumes in which the Marques’ young wife (Josephine Llewellyn), already realizing the crass cruelty of her new husband, begs for him to spare the life of the beggar. This character, who only gets maybe 4 minutes out of the whole film, is memorable and tragic. It’s a very deft trick whereby we witness tragedies big and small, and yet woven between those stories are moments of love and affection that keep the whole thing from being a slog. Running through almost the whole film is the story of Pepe (Warren Mitchell), the town watchman, and his wife Rosa (Anne Blake). Pepe is sure that he shot the mysterious creature attacking local livestock, and he endures years and years of abuse and mocking from the locals, with only his wife steadfastly standing up for him.

It is also very moving that the film takes time to tell the story of the servant girl, not treating her assault as just a garish piece of place-setting, but letting us understand what she’s been through. She has been one of the people who took care of the beggar in the dungeon, and so his attack on her feels particularly cruel and perverse---a sexual assault on someone he has known since she was a small child. While her story is a sad one, the care and kindness she receives from Alfredo and Teresa underscores a theme of the film about the redemptive power of love.

I was very moved by the way that this film departs from the traditional werewolf origin story. We don’t have some dashing man getting attacked by a wild wolf in the misty woods under a full moon. Instead, the curse is one that Leon is born with. And to further the tragedy, what awakens the curse in him is an act of empathy and mercy as he rushes to comfort a squirrel that has been shot by a hunter. Leon is far too young to understand what is happening to him, and Alfredo and Teresa must do their best to keep him under control.

When Leon grows up and moves away, the temptations of the adult world reawaken the curse. The love of the attractive young woman across the road, Cristina (Catherine Fuller), may act as an antidote to the curse, but is it too little too late? Catherine is being pushed by her father into a relationship with a real dud, and there are echoes of the Marquesa’s story in Catherine.

As a film, this is just very strong and character-driven. You feel for every character who crosses Leon’s path, just as you feel for Leon who doesn’t understand the pain and destruction he causes in his “nightmares”. None of the characters, and none of the deaths in the film, are throwaway. Even a somewhat annoying sex worker isn’t portrayed as a caricature, and the only death not mourned is that of someone who is overtly cruel and predatory.

The only complaint I had about the film is that the final act seems to rush by. The relationship between Leon and Catherine needs just a little more room to breathe. And after some intriguing set-up about her possible influence on his curse, it feels as if things are left hanging in regards to certain plot points. I couldn’t help but feel that there were 5-10 minutes missing from the final third.

In terms of werewolf films, this would probably be a top 5 for me. Just incredibly solid and a masterful example of managing a sprawling cast of characters.

The Entity, 1982

Carla (Barbara Hershey) is a single mother raising three children in a house in Los Angeles. One night, out of the blue, Carla is physically and sexually assaulted in her bedroom by an unseen assailant. Initially perplexed---and understandably traumatized---by the unexplainable incident, Carla soon suffers another attack and then another. Desperate for help, Carla goes to Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver), who is convinced that the attacks are really just bouts of hysteria. Will Carla find someone who believes her before it’s too late?

A nightmarish scenario and a solid lead performance make for an impactful, if not entirely well-executed, horror movie.

I joked while halfway through the film that it could have been called “A Woman Trying to Get Medical Help: The Movie”, and honestly I think that this stays true for almost all of the runtime. A few days after watching the film, a woman told me a story about how her kneecap spontaneously dislocated and she fell down the stairs, and the doctor in the ER told her, “Well, as a woman that’s going to happen sometimes.” I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about experiences my female friends, relatives, and I myself have had trying to get help with a medical problem, only to be told it’s just a “woman thing” or that it’s “all in your head.”

Someone raised the very valid point that all of the “based on a true story” framing adds a slightly icky sheen, because in reality, yes, someone who thinks that they are being attacked by ghosts is probably mentally ill and needs psychological help, not an exorcist. But in the context of the film, the events and interactions frequently capture the absolute frustration of needing help with a real, painful, visceral thing, only to be told you’re imagining it. (The peak of this, for me, is when a senior doctor refers to Carla as a “little girl” who is “masturbating”).

The film is notable for its special effects, and they certainly make an impact. Using a prosthetic body, we see the invisible entity groping and restraining Carla as she is assaulted. It’s disturbing to witness as an audience, and obviously disturbing for Carla to witness as the victim of the assault. These sequences are interesting in terms of the effects, but do veer a bit toward the exploitative because in wanting to show off the neat effects, we’re also constantly being shown Carla’s exposed body.

I really liked Hershey in the lead role. She manages to portray fear and vulnerability, and the experience of someone who knows her experiences are real, but keeps coming up against people who say it’s all in her head. A standout sequence for her is when she talks to the doctor following the entity sexually abusing her while she was asleep. Unaware of what was happening, Carla experiences an orgasm and then must grapple with the deep, deep shame of that moment. I also enjoyed Margaret Blye as Carla’s friend Cindy, one of her strongest allies. There is a recurring theme of people wanting to explain away what Carla is experiencing, and a wonderful moment of allyship happens when Carla is being attacked and Cindy and her husband walk in on the attack. Cindy’s husband wants to hand-wave it all away, but Cindy stands firm, and just the act of her bearing witness has a restorative effect on Carla.

One of the strongest themes in the film, along with the maddening experience of not being believed, is the soothing nature of being seen. Most of the people who acknowledge what Carla is experiencing can’t actually do anything to help her. This entity is not going to be deterred by waving around some sage or saying a few prayers. But just the fact of knowing that she is believed does wonders for Carla.

Where the movie does sag quite a bit is in the internal logic of everything. The entity is not at all subtle. In fact, it is willing to attack Carla or otherwise manifest in the presence of other people. While at first this includes only more “subjective” characters like Carla’s son, it’s later shown that the entity will put on a show for just about anyone. It makes it harder and harder to get that tension of the doctors not believing her. If one of them spent even 20 minutes in her home, they’d be likely to see compelling evidence of Carl’s experiences. I would have found the story much more believable from a character/plot standpoint if the entity confined itself to tormenting Carla only when she was alone.

There’s also the really weird relationship between Carla and her children. To begin with, her relationship with her teenage son is just . . . hmm. Worrying? The way they talk to each other at first I couldn’t tell if they were meant to be married or parent and child. I also thought it was incredibly bizarre that Carla never seems to worry at all about her daughters. As far as she knows, her home has been invaded by a sadistic sexual predator. And she never even talks about being worried that they will be assaulted, nor does anyone ask the children if they have experienced any unwanted touching, voices, etc. I can’t imagine knowing there’s a sexual predator on the loose in my home and not having a single conversation about getting the kids out of the house. The movie makes some gestures at Carla not having the financial means to move them to a new place, but come on!

The premise itself is solid, and there’s enough to recommend it, but it does have several elements that detract from it feeling fully coherent.

Fatal Games, 1984

Annie (Lynn Banashek) is a gymnast at an elite athletics academy in Massachusetts. With a large Nationals event looming, the gymnasts are under tremendous pressure to prepare. Unbeknownst to the young athletes, their mentors and medical supervisors are dosing them with illegal and possibly dangerous amounts of steroids. As the week wears on, various athletes fall victim to a mysterious figure wielding a deadly javelin.

Unimaginative leering and an offensively stupid ending thoroughly sink what could have been an effective horror-thriller.

I would wager that I’ve written up quite a few movies where I’ve lamented the squandering of a good or even great premise. Well, throw this one on the heap as well, because a slasher set in an elite athletic school is a really excellent concept and in almost every way it flops hard.

Falling at the first hurdle (yes, pun intended), the movie is unbearably leering at the female cast. Almost every sequence with the female athletes involves them in a locker room, shower, or sauna, totally nude and shot in these inelegant wide shots that make it clear that the purpose is just getting flesh on screen. There’s so little imagination or eroticism to these scenes that they just feel like what I suppose they are: eye candy for sad pervs. The leering extends to a sequence where one of the athletes is sexually abused by one of the medical staff, which is gross on all levels. You can at least get a good laugh out of the contrasting sequence in the men’s locker room, where one actually nude actor is carefully obscured by another actor, and the one actor in the full view of the camera showers in his jock strap (!!!).

The second serious challenge in this film is its decision to focus on Annie. Banashek is fine in the role, but she’s something of a limp noodle as a character. The character of her boyfriend, Phil (Sean Masterson), is a total dud. He’s manipulative and a loser, but not in an interesting way. Much more engaging are secondary characters Lynn (Teal Roberts) and Frank (Michael O’Leary). Roberts and O’Leary have a fun, easy chemistry, which makes two different sexy scenes with them actually enjoyable. They are just likable, charismatic characters and it makes it baffling when they are pushed into second-tier screentime.

Most frustrating, though, is simply the waste of a really solid premise. These young people are basically at the mercy of their doctors/coaches, who are dosing them with dangerous drugs. They are away from their friends and family, and so don’t have anyone looking out for their best interest. There’s competition between the different athletes, each hoping for a spot at the competition. But within this framework, the anonymous javelin killer just doesn’t register. There’s little rhyme or reason as to who gets killed, and all of the kills follow that “What are YOU doing here? *skewered*” pattern, lacking personality. And because Annie, Lynn, and Frank are the only characters with any hint of depth, most of the kills don’t even raise your pulse.

And then, finally, there’s the last act. It’s just dumb and offensive. And I’d love to say that the bigotry on display in that last act is dated, but sadly it’s still very much a thing. The whole thing made me cringe.

Please someone make a good movie about people at an academic academy being taken out by a javelin-wielding maniac! The only points I’m giving this film are for Lynn and Frank and their adorable naked swim race.

Funny that you just watched this one, since Rock just did so too, and wrote something about it here: https://letterboxd.com/the_rock/film/the-entity/1/

Yes, I noticed that when I posted my review!