I watched all these movies over the past month or so, some in theaters, and some at home on my laptop. I go to see most any horror that comes out, even though most are kind of bad these days. I’ve seen articles saying this has been a “banner year” for horror, which is true I guess, if you go by Rotten Tomatoes. Personally I would welcome something that shook up the formula a bit, something that went beyond the ComicCon style of “hehehehe spoooooky!” horror that’s in vogue these days. I blame Sam Raimi for that, by the way. And look, I love The Evil Dead. It’s a great film, and so is the sequel. But it’s still his fault, okay? Also, the whole Marvel thing is his fault, too. It all started with that gay ass Spider-Man bullshit. Everything is Sam Raimi’s fault basically. But it’s not all bad. You can still find a lot of cool shit to watch online, if you know where to look. For horror and cult stuff, I recommend Arrow, which my friend Bradley turned me onto. They’ve got lots of weird, obscure shit you can’t get anywhere else. Shoutout Bradley.
SMILE (Parker Finn, 2022) Out of all the recent milquetoast horrors to come out in theaters, this one was probably my favorite, which is funny, because it’s also probably the least formally daring. Compared to Pearl or Barbarian, Smile doesn’t take many risks, but there’s a certain inventiveness in the way it builds tension, and I actually found it scarier than I was expecting to. There are off-kilter stylistic choices that create an unnerving, intense atmosphere of dread, like how Finn shoots his creepy actors looking straight at the camera, or the nausea-inducing upside-down establishing shots of trees and city buildings, or the gray-blue pallor of the interior shots. The style and plot borrow heavily from the American remake of The Ring, adeptly mining audience nostalgia while providing just enough original imagery to keep you entertained.
HALLOWEEN ENDS (David Gordon Green, 2022) I didn’t like the first two Halloweens in the new trilogy, but I did like this one, which is funny because it leans into certain aspects I disliked about 1 and 2, sometimes even harder than those ones did. Maybe it’s that here the filmmakers felt more committed to the weirdness. Ends begins with a nasty little prelude that far surpasses anything in the first two films, and then proceeds to go off the rails, oscillating wildly in tone and bouncing awkwardly between discordant plot threads. I loved that it felt like a schlocky, silly, ‘80s style slasher, instead of adopting the dreadfully somber tone that afflicts all the slasher reboots starting in the early oughts. There was something so much more disturbing about cartoonish, tonally discordant, makeup-heavy freakouts like Nightmare on Elm Street 3, compared to the like, Ridley Scott/Jerry Bruckheimer-i-fied hyper-realist/action-y reboot aesthetic that began in 2003 with Marcus Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I thought the filmmakers tapped into that anarchic ‘80s spirit quite well. Character deaths were disturbing and visceral. Jamie Lee Curtis got to have her “moment.” Overall, not bad.
PEARL (Ti West, 2022) Was anyone really clamoring for an origin story about the murderous crone from X (Ti West, 2022)? I read somewhere that West and Mia Goth wrote the script for this in two weeks, and when I read that, I was like yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if they did a lot of coke when they were writing it. I don’t know if this was a good movie or not. I didn’t get why the mom was German. A lot of the details didn’t make sense. Plus I just wanted it to be way more unhinged. The scarecrow sex scene was pretty unhinged, but then it kind of got more and more “hinged” from that point on. The Technicolor Wizard of Oz aesthetic was nice to look at. Mia Goth has an awesome, crazy, giant face, which is incredibly nice to look at. She really carries the whole movie. Without her, it would have been an absolute bust. The dance audition sequence was wonderful. I just wanted them to push everything way, way further. Everything should have been 10x more over the top.
BARBARIAN (Zach Cregger, 2022) Honestly? It’s giving improv comedy. I got serious “Yes, and…” vibes from this one. I liked the first half, which was clean, tight, and suspenseful. The two lead actors were well-matched and perfectly cast. The Detroit setting was effectively creepy. I hated the plot twist. I hated how the movie abandons its protagonist halfway through and starts over with a new main character. It just felt like the writers ran out of ideas and started adding a bunch of random shit without any regard to what came before. You could tell they thought they were making something outrageous and unhinged, but in the end it was way less than the sum of its references. I felt deeply irritated any time Justin Long was onscreen. The “MeToo” plot felt already dated, and also just annoying and pointless.
THIS IS THE END (Seth Rogen, 2013) I watched this on Netflix because I think Jay Baruchel is cute. Baruchel was okay in the movie, which had one or two chuckles but no belly laughs. The special effects at the end were entertaining. Seth Rogan tries so hard to be affable and likable, all his characters are these lovable doofuses. I wish he would do a movie where you see him as a raging, sociopathic, narcissistic, evil, shithead. Maybe like, as a murderous acid casualty or something. I doubt he would do it, though. He seems very self-aware and conscious about his image. Oh well.
UNFAITHFUL (Adrian Lyne, 2001) A filthy sex movie for perverts. I loved it! I want to write a 7,000 word essay analyzing this movie according to the different sweaters the characters wear. If you’ve ever dreamed of having raunchy, filthy sex with Diane Lane inside of a Williams Sonoma catalog, this is the flick for you.
FALL (Scott Mann, 2022) This is a B movie about two hot rock climber chicks who get stuck on top of an abandoned 2000-foot radio tower in the middle of the desert. If you hear that description and think you might enjoy it, you almost definitely will. I think the filmmakers made the absolute best possible version of their concept. My palms were sweating to an uncomfortable degree. The scene with the turkey vulture was terrific. Probably wouldn’t play as well on a small screen. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was criminally underutilized. They should have cast a no-name in his part, or deleted that character entirely.
JACOB’S LADDER (Adrian Lyne, 1990) A bleak and disturbing film which posits life on Earth as a kind of purgatory between life and afterlife. I love the way the film resists traditional narrative structure, and operates instead according to the surreal, associative logic of dreams. There is something of Kafka in its labyrinthine, Chinese finger-trap, nightmare-you-can’t-wake-from structure. The film is especially lauded for its horrifying imagery, which famously inspired the design of the Silent Hill video games, and it’s easy to see why. The hospital sequence in particular will haunt your dreams. Great performances from Tim Robbins and Danny Aiello.
DELIVERANCE (John Boorman, 1972) Whooooo-eee! Wow. I thought I knew what was coming, but I was totally unprepared. A truly shocking movie, which combines extraordinary artistry with brutal exploitation. It kind of reminded me of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It has the same kind of visceral, down-n-dirty, twisted redneck energy. The scene where Jon Voight reaches the summit of the cliff and looks down over the rapids is breathtaking. The “squeal like a pig” sequence is certainly among the greatest ass rape scenes in American cinema, if not the outright best. Highly recommend this one.
TERRIFIER (Damien Leone, 2016) Felt like I needed a shower after watching this. It is grubby and disgusting, and utterly pointless except as a means to depict the nastiest, grisliest violence you could possibly imagine. There were times I had to look away from my computer screen, it’s that gross. No plot, no character development, just brutality. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone really. HOWEVER. In my opinion, there is an undeniable power and grit to this film. There are layers on layers of grimy texture in the production design. The acting is much better than it has any right to be. And the character of Art the Clown…I mean. Damien Leone, the writer-director, clearly has a direct psychic link to some sort of malevolent demonic entity. Which is kind of what horror is all about, no? At its root? Showing us our demons? If you like snuff-adjacent, radical, pornographic horror…well, I still can’t in good conscience recommend this movie. But, you know. If that’s what you’re looking for, I can’t stop you. Consider yourself warned.
TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Joseph Kosinski, 2022) This is the greatest motion picture ever made. And if you disagree, you’re clearly a puppet of Vladimir PUTIN!!!!
