horror

An Oversized Gun, a Prick of a Needle

Angel Barber — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:34:17 +0000

An Oversized Gun, a Prick of a Needle Angel Barber October 15, 2025 - 20:34

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Director Zachary Cregger has solidified his place in the canon of affectionately (if not pretentiously) named “elevated horror.” He inverts horror conventions, rejecting linearity by using multiple perspectives, timelines, and tonal registers to craft stories. Barbarian (2022) stages its horrors in one location: a rundown house in Detroit, Michigan. The standard horror of the first act escalates into sequences of grotesque lactation and multi-generational incest. Cregger’s expertise is pacing; he uses shocking moments of violence and humor to make chaos orderly. The cohesion of his debut is owed at least in part to the rigid spine of a central location.

With his follow-up, Cregger’s worldwide hit Weapons (over $266 million at the box office), his ambitions have expanded beyond the four walls of a single house to the psychological architecture of an entire town. The film begins with the disembodied narration of a little girl. She vocalizes the inciting incident: At 2:17 AM, a class of seventeen schoolchildren got out of their beds and ran outside into the darkness, never to be seen again. Cregger focuses on the uniformity of each child's actions, soundtracked to “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison.

The first thirty minutes of the film evoke Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), an icy thriller, where the residents of a town forgo the maxim “innocent until proven guilty.” In Weapons, the character at the mercy of these pitchforks is Justine, played by Julia Garner (Ozark). Justine is a flawed character who suffers from a pervasive lack of boundaries. Garner’s charisma and Cregger's ability to write fully dimensional characters prevent Justine from being totally insufferable.

Justine is only one of the deeply flawed characters whose perspectives Cregger gives us access to. We cycle through a neglectful father, a violent cop, a raving vagrant, and a dispassionate principal. The lone child who did not vanish from the classroom hovers at the center, and may know more than he lets on about the disappearance. There is fault to go around in this town; Cregger is much more interested in collective guilt than solving the mystery.

So… why exactly do these children disappear? While Cregger does a good job at linking these disparate stories into a satisfying narrative, if your only concern is solving the central mystery, you will be disappointed in the film. The most vibrant moments come from the characters and how their distinct lives intertwine – completely separate from the supposed A-plot of the story. The dispassioned principal eats an entire row of hotdogs with his husband while wearing matching Disney shirts. Justine makes a beeline for the vodka aisle, only to be violently confronted by an ex's girlfriend she intentionally homewrecked. After being pricked by a heroin needle, the cop asks the raving vagrant, “Do you have AIDS?” It’s moments like these–rife with humor and horror–that define the film, confirmed by the irreverence with which Cregger treats the ending.

For the first 100 minutes, Cregger is a surgeon who treats the balance between absurd comedy and terrifying horror with utmost precision. The balls-to-the-wall ending sequence reads as the punchline in an overlong Adult Swim television skit. It works. Ending Weapons on such an irreverent note may be one of the most inventive choices of Cregger’s career.

Weapons is about the texture of the town. Cregger dedicates time to exploring addiction, infidelity, homelessness, and the overarching idea that at some specific point in time, something went terribly wrong. Weapons is about real and imagined fears of degeneracy.

The largest weapon is seen in a dream sequence. A man follows his child into a house. Above them is an impossibly large gun that reads “2:17 AM.” It is the only gun in the film. This remains central to understanding the film. It is about Weapons. The instruments used to inflict harm on others. The instruments that lead to the decay of a society. The instruments that make the ending feel disturbingly comedic and painfully appropriate.

Cregger has succeeded at balancing lofty ideas, shifting tones, and breakneck pacing into an enjoyable film. It’s the second time he’s climbed this mountain; he’s proven he is not a fluke. - Angel Barber

Mr. Barber is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City interested in the relationship between tone, structure, and collapse in modern cinema.

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Zombies and Ghost Dogs and Sirens, Oh My

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:13:50 +0000

Zombies and Ghost Dogs and Sirens, Oh My Chet Kozlowski October 15, 2025 - 20:13

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These new thrillers straddle the horror genre and are now available on VOD and other digital platforms.

Forgive Us All

Directed by Jordana Stott

2025. Runtime 93 minutes.

Forgive Us All is being marketed as a post-apocalyptic zombie picture, but it’s a western at heart, substituting the Undead for Injuns.

In the remote New Zealand mountains, self-reliant Rory (Lily Sullivan) and her cantankerous dad Otto (Richard Roxburgh) live in seclusion and work their farm, fully aware that the world outside has gone to shit. Two years earlier, Rory lost her young daughter to a virus that has ravaged the world, turning normies into flesh-eating cannibals. “We’re surviving,” Otto tells Rory. “What are we surviving for?” comes the reply.

The arrival of mysterious stranger Noah (Lance Giles), pursued by bad guys led by Logan (Callan Mulvey), sets the drama in motion. Who’s been infected, who’s righteous, who lays claim to the last bastion of civilization becomes the issue, all aware that on the fringes stalk the insensate scourge of man’s destruction.

Forgive Us All is an actor’s production: the principals wear two hats, in front of the camera and as producers. This is a DIY trend; every movie is an actors’ reel. In some cases, it affords a route for filmmakers, now that the studios are collapsing.

Forgive Us All’s budget is low, evidenced by how clean everything is, a condition DP Peter McCaffrey tries to muddle with somber digital tints. The mournful mountain music score is provided by Brandon Roberts. The movie adds nothing to the zombie mythos; it plays by the rules established by other movies. The walkers are always on the fringes, but the action is so sloooow you often forget they’re even there.

The pleasure comes from the performances. Lily Sullivan is rugged and sexy as Rory, and Callan Mulvey imbues Logan with a suitable creepiness. It’s especially good to see Richard Roxburgh, memorable from the TV series Rake, apply his calm, emotive presence. He’s perfect as the coot. He even knows the proper way to take off a cowboy hat, by the brim and not the crown.

The Drowned

Directed by Samuel Clemens

2025. Runtime 90 minutes.

Three men arrive at a remote seaside house to retrieve a priceless painting they’ve heisted. We, the viewers, arrive in medias res, after the robbery, and after a cohort of theirs has delivered the painting, rolled in a canister, and possibly suffered a terrible fate. The house is empty, there’s a bucket of blood in the closet, and the beach is strewn with body parts, which may or may not belong to their accomplice.

The three can’t agree on how to proceed, and tensions boil when three beautiful women inexplicably wash up on the shore. One must be CPR’d after drowning, and they are all brought into the house. Mind games ensue, the women circling and seducing the criminals. The thieves speak in code and non sequiturs—a language only they know, because they’re the only ones who know what they’re doing there.

The Drowned sports good acting all around, the thieves played by Alan Calton, Michelangelo Fortuzzi, and Dominic Vulliamy, and the sirens played by Lily Catalifo, Lara Lemon, and Sandrine Salyéres.

Fun fact: the director, Samuel Clemens, is the son of Brian Clemens—who wrote and produced the 1960s TV series The Avengers—and is the great-great-great-nephew of Mark Twain.

The Drowned has literary ambitions, woven with references to Greek mythology, most notably The Odyssey. The allusions are subtle but, cumulatively, make for an interesting, trance-like drama. Put logic aside and just let it wash over you, and The Drowned is an offbeat, hallucinatory entertainment.

Last Stop Rocafort St.

Directed by Luis Prieto

2024. Runtime 89 minutes.

Rocafort Station is a stop on the Barcelona subway, notorious as a suicide site. Young Laura (Natalia Azahara) has been assigned to manage it and immediately encounters a ghost who launches her on a quest to solve its riddle. She enlists an alcoholic ex-cop (Javier Gutiérrez) who has written about his experience with the Yellow Line Killer, a case that he worked twenty years earlier, had tragic consequences, and which sent him around the bend. Now he reluctantly looks back at it with Laura’s urging, uncovering shades of occultism, and a warning that if or when you encounter the specter of The Ghost Dog, you join the ranks of the damned.

Last Stop Rocafort St. is a suspenseful procedural, making the most of that creepy underworld that exists between stations in any subway system. Ms. Azahara and Mr. Gutiérrez make an unlikely yet compelling team, piling up clues that lead to a dramatic climax. They are joined in the cast by Valéria Sorolla as Laura’s incidental lesbian lover, Cris.

Luis Prieto is becoming an impresario of horror-based thrillers. Trained in the USA, Mr. Prieto returned to Spain and has since racked up an impressive resumé of feature films there and in the States, including a remake of Refn’s Pusher (2012), Kidnap (2017) with Halle Berry, White Lines (2020), plus TV series and Netflix originals. Last Stop Rocafort St. is his latest.

Confident storytelling by Mr. Prieto, clever staging, engrossing characters, and thoughtful scares distinguish Last Stop Rocafort St. as an entertainment. In Spanish with English subtitles.

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The Story So Far…

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:30:22 +0000

The Story So Far… Chet Kozlowski October 1, 2025 - 15:30

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Jimmy Skinford is a wisecracking petty thief who has run afoul of the mob. We join his story in medias res, him being forced by gangstas to dig his own grave. He accidentally unearths a woman buried in the ground (!), still alive (such as she is). She’s Zophia, who has been interred for being a witch. She has the power of immortality, which turns out to be handy to get Jimmy out of his fix. This leaves our hapless protagonist and his beautiful companion naked and bravely venturing forward.

That’s how Part One starts.

Jimmy is in the petty thief business because his father, himself a crime kingpin, is dying of cancer and in need of expensive care. This will lead Jimmy on adventures that are proudly in the pulp mold, featuring gangland figures, demonic children, traps, seductions, fancy dancers, and faces blown off and rebuilt. Jimmy will be brutalized, drowned, hung, spun, and left out to dry while Zophia pursues a mission of her own.

The action of Skinford Part 1: Death Sentence is mostly earthbound, concerned not least with a bevy of women kept in cages, tortured, and trafficked.

Part Two, otherwise known as Skinford: The Curse, goes down fresh horror-thriller avenues, pushing immortality — the having and bestowing of it — into supernatural territory. It introduces new characters and stretches the pulp concept into the underground club scene.

Skinford is a walking, talking, blood-spattered comic book (or, pardon me, “graphic novel”) of a movie, and, surprisingly, it isn’t based on one. It’s reminiscent of Frank Miller’s Sin City (and Robert Rodriguez’s film of it) in its lurid edge. Skinford springs cinematically full-blown from the imagination of Nik Kacevski, who proudly lists his creds as director, writer, and visual effects. He has several shorts to his credit; the Skinford saga is his first feature-length vision.

Where do you start with Jimmy Skinford? The Curse (2018) is the sequel to Skinford: Death Sentence (2017), and it too ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting a Chapter 3 which, seven years on, has yet to be made. COVID-19 intervened, judging from the dates, and the distributor says funding glitches followed. But scripts are written, waiting for the green light.

The 2025 re-release is to new markets, including the US, that have not yet experienced Skinford’s crazy grandeur. It’s Australian in origin and features young Aussie actors who keep things interesting. Joshua Brennan plays Jimmy with scruffy charm. Charlotte Best makes a sexy and surprisingly demure Zophia. Ric Herbert is Jimmy’s father, Guy, grizzled and irrepressible, and while ill, still very much in the gangster game. Jess Bush plays Helen, whose friend-or-foe role has yet to be determined.

As ambitious as the series is, however, it often settles into TV blocking and soap opera plotting. Some scenes go on for too long. Sets suffer from underdressing and undercooked effects.

Are the two parts of Skinford worth watching, even as you’re aware that the story is short-sheeted? Sure. The action is high velocity, the people are pretty, and if bloody, occult fantasy is your thing, it more than fills the bill.

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Skinford: The Curse, Chapter Two. Directed by Nik Kacevski. 2018, released in the US in 2025. On Tubi and Amazon Prime. Runtime 86 minutes.

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A Warning… To Whom?

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:18:52 +0000

A Warning… To Whom? Chet Kozlowski September 24, 2025 - 09:18

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We’re Not Safe Here is a hostage video shot by the hostage.

It belongs to that increasingly popular horror subgenre that’s visceral and open to interpretation. I’ve heard it called Elevated Horror. I like to think of it as Deep Dish Horror: dense and multilayered, with a hint of narrative topping. It doesn’t have to make sense if it tastes like something. (Great. Now I’ve made myself hungry.)

The poster for We’re Not Safe Here shows a person of indeterminate gender tied to a chair, head covered with a blood-stained pillowcase. A big ass knife is pointed above their head, poised to skewer. This image, cartel execution iconography, will appear at intervals throughout the film.

The story goes like this: Neeta is a young painter experiencing Artist’s Block. She lives alone and sits in front of a big canvas that remains blank. Her friend Rachel arrives unexpectedly and shares a tale from her childhood, about how she and a friend explored a big old house. “You know how every neighborhood has that one house, and little kids dare each other to step inside?” Rachel is jittery: she acts haunted, always looking over her shoulder. “Did you hear that?” she asks Neeta. Neeta doesn’t.

Rachel really is haunted by the pillow-headed presence described above. This figure whispers and drones, and for all we know, is imaginary. Pillow Head appears in dreams. Neeta comes to understand that Rachel isn’t there just to relate her trauma but to pass it on, bequeath it to her friend, after which she, Rachel, will be free of it.

Story within story, trauma upon trauma. We’re Not Safe Here works up some genuine creepiness, finding menace in long static shots of shadowy hallways. Mundane gestures, even buttoning a sweater, take on unnerving significance. The actors work hard and are extremely watchable: Sharmita Bhattacharya and Hayley McFarland bring empathy to Neeta and Rachel, respectively. Both give good closeup and are familiar from their TV work. Caisey Cole appears briefly as Sarah, Neeta’s friend and confidant. The sound design by Matthew Devore is a symphony of whispers, gender-switching voices, gasping breaths, and disembodied pleas for mercy. A turntable plays ersatz Hank Williams, mournfully punctuating the proceedings.

We’re Not Safe Here has the quality of a lucid dream. We the audience are simply, like Neeta, along for the ride. The film is an allegory about women’s fear of abduction and captivity, and the waves that emanate from uniquely female anxiety.

Thing is: We’re Not Safe Here is made by a man.

It’s the work of first-time writer/director Solomon Gray, who has stated that his only purpose is to explore the “magic of storytelling.”

But think about the dynamics, and it’s a little queasy-making. Is Pillow Head an emissary or a predator? Is it a metaphor for inspiration? Mostly, Pillow Head functions as a shock hallucination, except when Mr. Gray enters its point of view and we in the audience are put in the position of stalking the women. In one jolting scene, the pillowcase is lifted to reveal impressive scare makeup (at least I hope it’s makeup). Are we meant to assume this will be Neeta’s and Rachel’s fate?

Mr. Gray might well say, “Stop overthinking it! It’s all just scary fun!” But for a man to take it upon himself to tell a singularly female story is a revealing choice. Which begs the question: why aren’t those in danger men? In fact, the only significant male role in We’re Not Safe Here is that of the ghostly voice and vague silhouette of the “demon,” played by Arthur Higbee.

We’re Not Safe Here borrows heavily from It Follows in its theme of subjugation by an irresistible force, fate comin’ for ya. But even It Follows had a male component. Other films have used the grim specter of sexual violation as an allegory (the recent French film Animale comes to mind), but none are completely devoid of male ethos.

Mr. Gray goes so far as to quote the Charles Simic poem “Fear” in the press notes:

Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing
As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.

All at once, the whole tree is trembling,
And there is no sign of the wind.

Yeah, except We’re Not Safe Here is not about fear passing from man to man, but rather from woman to woman, of a fear usually propagated by men.

Pillow Head is built for franchise—imagine a whole series of movies with Pillow Head threatening women— but the idea is half-baked and facile. In Mr. Gray’s film, then, women are chess pieces in a game that’s meant to warn, not to be won.

______________________________________

We’re Not Safe Here. Directed by Solomon Gray. 2025. From Saban Films. Runtime 93 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.

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No Boundaries

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 19:11:13 +0000

No Boundaries Chet Kozlowski September 22, 2025 - 15:11

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What starts out as Mean Girls at the Beach turns into one of the most delightfully quirky movies of the season. Where did Infinite Summer come from and what exactly is it up to?

Quiet, studious Mia is eclipsed by Grete’s new friend, Sarah. They challenge each other to go on Extreme Dating, a VR app that projects romantic matches in your room and in 3D. One suitor is a hippie throwback named Dr. Mindfulness. He’s a self-professed “guru” who puts on them a Darth Vader-like mask that, in turn, introduces them to Eleusis, a “meditation” creature made of smoke that promises enlightenment. “Come out of the cocoon,” Eleusis’ pixie voice croons, extending winding tentacles of fulsome fingers that probe their psyches and soft parts. Ecstasy turns into terror as the wearers become marauding zombies.

With me so far? But wait, there’s more: Mia’s father and grandmother appear to her as holograms, Dad buckling under Grandma’s domineering control. They want Mia to study international relations, but she wants to go into anthropology. Then enter Interpol, and Infinite Summer is suddenly an action film featuring two stone-faced squabbling agents who’ve been following Dr. Mindfulness’s antics, while launching into diatribes about international surveillance and the quality of certain sandwiches.

Infinite Summer is the brainchild of Miguel Llansó, who also wrote and directed projects like Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway and Where Is My Dog? He’s given free rein to concoct a crazy quilt of images, ideas, and philosophies. He approaches all the lunacy with conviction, making it even more appealing. He might just actually believe in Eleusis.

The actors play into the madness: Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock as Mia, Hannah Gross (of Joker and TV’s Mindhunters) as Sarah, and Johnna Rosin as Grete. Ciaron Davies plays Dr. Mindfulness, Katarina Unt, and Steve Vanoni are the detectives. The special effects aren’t half-bad, either, or just good enough to stay with you.

“This film is my confession,” says Eleusis, but confession of what? It all boils down to the creation of a “new zoo” of animals — including humans — in Tallinn, Estonia, a sanctuary to preserve animal life on the planet.

Logic isn’t the point of Infinite Summer. At its best, it reminds me of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension; the original 1953 Invaders from Mars comes to mind as well. You never know where it will take you next, what movie it will become. It has a delightful DIY quality, yet a serious undergirding. Mr. Llansó means business, whatever the hell his business is.

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Infinite Summer. Directed by Miguel Llansó. 2024. In English and Estonian. Premiering exclusively on Indiepix Unlimited. Runtime 86 minutes.

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Batsh*t Crazy Meets Bridezilla

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:57:26 +0000

Batsh*t Crazy Meets Bridezilla Chet Kozlowski August 28, 2025 - 11:57

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Borderland belongs to that variety of films that takes its inspiration from 2019’s Joker, which many believe set the trend. Joker itself is actually a flashy remake of Martin Scorsese’s 1982 The King of Comedy, a more singular and insidious picture, and Borderland’s template, down to characters resembling those in the original.

Let’s call the genre Batsh*t Crazy Fan Stalks Celebrity. Paul (Ray Nicholson) is obsessed with pop superstar Sofia (Samara Weaving), who is unaware of him. Ray has deluded himself into thinking she loves him, too. With his ragtag pair of degenerates (Alba Baptista and David Jaycox), Paul invades her toney mansion, gets past her significant other, Rhodes (Jimmie Fails), and her erstwhile bodyguard, Bell (Eric Dane), and holds her hostage in anticipation of their wedding. Hilarity and bloodshed ensue.

Ms. Weaving and Mr. Nicholson throw themselves into the mayhem. As the self-absorbed Sofia, she acts convincingly abashed, then defiant of Ray’s advances. As Ray, he’s over the top. He preens and mugs and laughs through the tears and tears through the laughs. After Borderline, Mr. Nicholson will never have to audition for a part again. Ray runs the gamut of outsized emotions while made up to look like King’s Rupert Pupkin. His henchperson, Penny (Alba Baptista), is his Sandra Bernhard. Oddly, Ms. Weaving herself resembles Margot Robie, who is oddly listed as Borderline’s executive producer. (I’m so dizzy).

Jimmie Fails of Nichol Boys underplays as Rhodes, Sofia’s BF, and the film’s only dimensional character. Eric Dane is the sturdy center of the storm. Bell is a father, after all. He has an eight-year-old daughter who is systemically abused in the film and winds up comically covered in blood. Batsh*t crazy is funny, right? Are you not entertained?

Borderline is clever, kinetic, and full of energized performances. It’s also joyless and pointlessly sadistic. I’m no stranger to film violence, but even for me, the carnage was a bit much. We get stabbings, crushed bones, squashed heads (and that’s in just the first 20 minutes), followed by a strangling, a character (begging to be) set on fire, and another drowned (in holy water, no less, which implies Borderline has an attitude. It doesn’t. It’s just blithely blasphemous. In one scene, a character asks Ray about a kidnapping victim. “You put a priest in a box?” they ask. “No, I put a pastor in a box. We’re Protestant.”)

Borderline is the directorial debut of Jimmy Warden, the guy who wrote Cocaine Bear, so I suppose chaos is a given. He halfheartedly implies depth, including some metaphorical stuff about puzzles, which comes to nothing. He plays with time, Tarantino-style, messing with the chronology so that it feels like we walked into the middle of a movie with no beginning or end. The jaunty absurdist score, bordering on oom-pah, is an attempt to make the bloodbath zany.

Why is the movie called Borderline? Well, it might have to do with borderline personality disorder, or it might just be derived from the cover version of Madonna’s hit, one of the plethora of pop tunes included to tell us how to feel. Question: How does one put out a movie about a crazed lunatic and call it, nondescriptly, “Borderline”? It’s indicative of the creative laziness that infects the film. It’s gratuitous, but then everything about Borderline is gratuitous. It’s all about shock, but very little awe.

____________________________

Borderline. Directed by Paul Warden. 2025. From Magnet Releasing. Runtime 95 minutes.

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Stephen King's The Monkey Gets All Wound Up

Brandon Judell — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 21:26:32 +0000

Stephen King's The Monkey Gets All Wound Up Brandon Judell August 11, 2025 - 17:26

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Publicists are a scarily imaginative bunch, both the fictional and the real-life ones. I guess they have to be.

For example, in the TV series Younger, a campaign is successfully launched that has women around the world, including in Goa, bearing their breasts to promote an upcoming Joyce Carol Oates novel.

Topping that, I received a link to an online video promoting the latest Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey, that has its star, Theo James, and its director, Osgood (Longlegs) Perkins, watching some rather brutal Monkey clips with two certified morticians. () The foursome intermittently discussed with semi-calm facial expressions whether the manner in which the film’s characters are decimated can actually occur. Can electricity blow off body parts? Can the eyes in a recently decapitated head follow you across the room? And how would you display a body run over by 67 horses in an open casket?

This oddly engaging featurette had me a bit unnerved because I don’t handle horror on screen all that well. Youthful confrontations with Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket, Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill, and Renée Zellweger in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation all had debilitating effects on my psyche.

As for the Stephen King adaptations, such as Carrie, The Shining, and Misery, although of a higher cultural merit, they affected my emotional and digestive well-being in a similar manner.

Consequently, for the very first time, I packed both Pepto Bismol and Tums in my knapsack before I headed for The Monkey screening. I shouldn’t have worried.

The Monkey is apparently an absurdist horror/comedy with a few splendid special effects, and by “few” I mean “few.” There are also several highly comic scenes that work, and a sprinkling of surprisingly touching moments.

But as a Stephen-King adaptation, this mechanical-ape tale has as nearly as much in common with the prize-winning short story collected in Skeleton Crew on which it is based as a can of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli has in common with gourmet dining.

Edibles aside, on-screen, the tale is quite a simple one. Twin brothers (Christian Convery, superb), raised by their take-life-as-it-is mom (Tatiana Masiany), find a hefty wind-up monkey in a storage space in the house they are living in. The boys crank it up, and soon their relatives, neighbors, townsfolk, and pets start winding down.

Consequently, the lads, albeit not soon enough, get rid of the surly simian, or so they think. But as you and I know too well, the devil never sleeps for long.

Twenty-five years pass by, and the kids have aged into addled adults, both portrayed by Mr. James, and yes, the horror begins again.

To be honest, when I first left the screening room on West 29^th Street on the 12^th floor, I had one thumb down and was not quite sure what I was going to do with my other thumb. Having not viewed the director’s acclaimed, box-office smash Longlegs or any of his other works, I started reading the dozens of interviews with Mr. Perkins, who, because of his storied gene pool, was in high demand.

His dad, Anthony Perkins, was a laudable actor best known now for Psycho and in my apartment for his recording of “Never Will I Marry” from Broadway’s Greenwillow. He died from AIDS on 9/12/1992. Oz’s mom, Berry Berenson, a much-in-demand photographer and occasional actress, was aboard the plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 nearly nine years later.

Possibly, especially if you are a Freudian, you might guess that Perkins’ past might be the reason The Monkey is all over the place tonally. There’s one highly scary midnight climb down to the basement and one well-wrought death-by-bugs escapade, both scenes interspersed with Hee-Haw-worthy antics. Imagine if director John Waters were straight and a bit less funny, and you’d have The Monkey.

Yet, there’s a moment in church where a child mourns for his parent, disbelieving his loss is genuine. That moment hovers above all the preceding and succeeding shenanigans, reminding me of what philosopher Viktor Frankl once said, "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering." Maybe that’s the not-so-hidden theme of Oz’s biographically tinged take on The Monkey.

(Now available on Hulu and Amazon Prime.)

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Bonding With Beasts

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 13:43:48 +0000

Bonding With Beasts Chet Kozlowski August 4, 2025 - 09:43

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Nejma just wants to run with the bulls. She’s the only woman on a cattle ranch in the south of France, and she’s out to prove herself. In this rodeo-style stunt, the bull is not harmed but baited and taunted, making it charge while the runner leaps out of its way. Agility and dominance are everything.

Nejma’s fellow bull-runners, all men, tease her and cast playful insults. A night out drinking with them leads to her imbibing “magic candy,” then venturing into the night fields to confront her nemesis Thunder, a young bull with whom she has a psychic link. In the ring, they understand each other. Searching in the dark for the beast, Nejma falters, then blacks out, and awakens the next morning in her bed, aching. She has unaccountable wounds. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’d been ravished by Thunder.

Fever dreams follow. Tony, a kindly ranch hand, tends to her and advises her to slow down. But Nejma is going through changes: her senses are heightened; watching others eat steak repulses her. She becomes more animalistic. The guys kid Nejma about becoming a “bull-woman” and a “were-bull.” Bovine moans echo through the fields, beckoning her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’s transforming into… a bull?

Soon, entrails are found in the fields. Something’s killing bulls. Corpses of fellow runners are found. Something’s killing cowboys. It’s bad for business: Thunder is the suspect, and he is hunted, even as Nejma’s bond to him tightens, leading to some bloodcurdling body horror.

Humans morphing into animals is a film premise that can go goofy fast, but writer/director Emma Benestan is up to something sincere. She uses the horror genre to make important points about passion, power, and accession. Her previous directorial effort was 2021’s Hard Shell, Soft Shell.

Ms. Benestan’s casting of Oulaya Amamra as Nejma is a smart choice. She’s dark and diminutive, in sharp contrast to the hunky dudes that surround her. Nejma is a stranger in a testosterone-fueled land. She’s determined. She will not be subordinated. Her relationship with Tony (Damien Rebattel), who is gay, deepens the thematic undercurrent and turns what could have been a facile gimmick into a compelling study of sexual transference.

Claude Chaballier is Leonard, Tony’s father, and the ranch owner. He has a stirring scene with Nejma, in which he tells her, “Bulls […] give you everything. But they take absolutely everything.” His paternal presence deepens the theme even more. The fine supporting cast includes Vivien Rodriguez, Elies-Morgan Admi-Benssellam, Pierre Roux, and Renaud Vinuesa. Marinette Rafal as Nejma’s mother is the only other woman in the cast.

Animale’s setting, the south of France’s Camargue region, immerses the viewer, from the propulsive scenes of bull-running to the shadowy tableau of long horns and eyes of the herd glowing in moonlight. Fine work of Ruben Impens (cinematography), Clémence Diard (editing), Stéphanie Caron (makeup), Olivier Afonsso & Marine Despiegelaere (SFX), and Éve Martin (production design).

The ending risks appearing dorky, but it is meant to be mythic, defined by Nejma’s primal scream. It forces a reconsideration of what went before and makes Animale a potent allegory.

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Animale. Directed by Emma Benestan. 2024. French with English subtitles. From June Films. Runtime 98 minutes. ON VOD and digital platforms.

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Marital Blitz

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 16:59:31 +0000

Marital Blitz Chet Kozlowski July 9, 2025 - 12:59

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Film Review

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horror

Two new movies mine marriage for horror-thriller mayhem.

In Vitro

Directed by Tom McKeith and Will Howarth. Runtime 89 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.

In Vitro is set on a remote farm in Australia. Jack and Layla breed cattle and bemoan the absence of their teenage son. Jack is the cow-cloner and has expanded his inventory—and species—with the help of a ranch hand named Brady and without his wife Layla’s knowledge.

Directors Tom McKeith and Will Howarth maintain a consistent tone of dread throughout; their bucolic milieu maintains its ordinariness and ups the suspense by slowly revealing ominous high-tech underpinnings. They are aided by DP Shelley Farthing-Dawe and production designer Alexi Wilson, who provide razor-sharp visions of a desolate landscape.

The actors will be familiar, and you might be surprised that they’re Australian. Talia Zucker (Layla) has been in Lake Mungo. Ashley Zuckerman (Jack) has been in the U.S. TV series Silo, Succession, and Apple Cider Vinegar. Will Howarth (Brady) has Beast and much Australian TV to his credit. Competent technicians and artists all.

So, In Vitro has good bones. With all this talent, it’s a surprise that there’s so little meat on them. Mr. McKeith and Howarth aspire to big ideas. Their directors’ statement says the film aims to express “something important about the times we live in,” and the hope that audiences “will reflect on their own ideas around love and control.” Shoehorning cultural speculation into compelling drama is a tough balance. In Vitro never achieves the poignancy of, say, Never Let Me Go, and lacks the intellectual punch of, say, Shane Carruth’s Primer.

While In Vitro is very watchable, its subject demands more. Humanity has, like the truth, become a fragile notion. A potentially provocative topic is diluted by a lot of running around. In Vitro’s purposes are thin, even as we enjoy watching pros at work.

Bury Me When I’m Dead

Directed by Seabold Krebs. Runtime: 99 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.

Married couple Catherine and Henry run a flower shop. Catherine is diagnosed with cancer. All she asks of Henry is that he bury her at a spot in the woods where she was happy in her childhood. Henry promises to do so. Catherine dies.

Henry is pressured by Catherine’s devious father, Gary, to bury her back at home. Henry succumbs. Henry is also involved with their employee Rebecca, who tells him she’s pregnant. Rebecca tells Gary she wants to keep the baby and start a new life.

Promises are made, promises are broken. Henry’s luck turns bad, and he blames Catherine’s ghostly presence.

It’s a decent premise. The problem is, while Bury Me When I’m Dead is sold as a horror film, it’s devoid of scares, and most of Henry’s travails can be explained logically. (The poster’s psychedelic trauma image accounts for only a few minutes of the film, essentially a bad dream.)

As Henry, Devin Terrel’s expression remains grave (no pun intended) as he moves from one bad decision to the next. Charlotte Hope gives Catherine a sprightly and yet noble aura. Makenzie Leigh (Rebecca) maintains her second-choice mistress's dignity. Richard Bekins and Roxanne Hart are Catherine’s parents; both are consistently good, low-profile actors, Ms. Hart being most recognizable as a regular on TV’s Chicago Hope. Mike Houston is Buck, who haplessly provides the deus ex machina denouement.

Bury Me When I’m Dead is moody, more a study of a person on the edge. But the edge of what, exactly? Most of the action is shot in extreme close-up and in near-darkness, characters being little more than their silhouettes. It only brightens up to show off its limited CGI.

Ultimately, Bury Me When I’m Dead reveals itself to be a one-joke joint that relies on tropes from older, better movies.

(BTW: Henry’s last name is Samsa, and Rebecca’s is Gregor. Gregor Samsa is Kafka’s protagonist-turned-insect in the story The Metamorphosis. Significant or a coincidence? Sadly, that mystery is more intriguing than what goes on in Bury Me When I’m Dead.)

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We Need to Talk About Isaac

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 01:06:31 +0000

We Need to Talk About Isaac Chet Kozlowski June 23, 2025 - 21:06

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Film Review

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horror

What’s a cult to do with somebody like Isaac?

The leaders have tried everything. They’ve punished him. They’ve slapped him around. They’ve forced him to swallow pills and glug vinegar. They’ve thrown him in a cell. He’s “acidic,” you see. And if he keeps this up, expounding impure thoughts, he won’t ascend in the Rapture with everybody else.

Worse still, he’s no breeder. Give him a comely female supplicant to impregnate, and Isaac can’t seal the deal.

When we first meet Isaac, he’s alone in a cell. The bare walls are festooned with primitive crucifixes. Isaac is dressed Amish style—collarless shirt, pants with suspenders—and is suffering terrible visions of ancient rites: people wearing animal masks performing a human sacrifice. He bolts awake, unsure if what he’s witnessed is real.

Soon he’s released from his dark cell into the sunshine. The location is a lavish mansion, surrounded by majestic mountains against a stunning blue sky. It’s an idyllic scene: maidens in similarly modest dress sing traditional songs and merrily cavort. They all serve at the pleasure of the Wentworths, a husband-and-wife team who command the cult. They work hard to keep their flock “clean” despite the immoral excesses of the outside world.

And so it goes in the new film Dirty Boy. Think of it as a stew of Midsomer seasoned with The Handmaid’s Tale and a dash of Wicker Man. It was shot in the ‘Ausseerland/ Saltzkammergut’ in Austria, the same location as The Sound of Music.

Dirty Boy writer/director Doug Rao is known mostly for TV work. Here he plays with an intriguing notion: is Isaac’s condition religious fervor or mental illness

Dirty Boy has an impressive cast. Graham McTavish (you’ll know him from Games of Thrones) plays Walter Wentworth, the patriarch. Walter’s done up in furs and very droll, and when not ravishing maidens has lines like “If God is always watching, the least we can do is be interesting.” Mr. McTavish could’ve been used to better effect; we see him either propped in his chair or unbuckling. Susie Porter plays Walter’s wife, Verity Wentworth, who sure loves her some baptizing. Her mission is to cleanse Isaac of the “acidic signs of Satan,” inclinations toward pornography, the internet, and hedonism.

Stan Steinbichler plays Isaac to the hilt. He’s gaunt and wired, resembling a young Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. The women in the flock are named for virtues, and he’s ably aided by Hope (Honor Gillies, who looks like she’s stepped out of a Bouguereau painting) in his defiance of the order. Olivia Chenery is fashion-model legs and cheekbones as the sinister psychiatrist.

Mr. Rao and cinematographer Ross Yeandle make the most of their widescreen by mixing stunning panoramas (those mountains are the Alps) with sequences of sharp shadows and a limited color palette. All are well-blocked; particularly an expository scene midway through the runtime with Isaac and the maidens that perfectly sums up the stakes.

The scenario is divided into parts—Lamentations, Revelation, Genesis, and Exodus—though they don’t serve much purpose. Isaac confronts his demons, one in particular named Frankie, and tries to clear his name; he’s been accused of those ritual murders from his nightmares. Dirty Boy uses an ironic voiceover which may have been included to fill plot holes but actually puts a unique spin on the proceedings.

Dirty Boy combines my primary complaints about recent films: it has a misleading title—which in this case trivializes its themes—and a facile climax that results in carnage or deus ex machina. Poor Isaac has nowhere to go, narratively or story-structurally. The outside world isn’t a factor until the denouement (which further reinforces the Psycho connection). Isaac can’t escape. Where’s he going to go? He was born on the compound and has never left—so he deals predictably with his situation.

Too many good dystopias are wasted by ending them and neutering their allegorical sting. A climax commodifies; the tale is no longer cautionary. It’s a completed dramatic unit, so can be put away and ultimately forgotten.

Dirty Boy works itself into a corner and chooses to fight its way out. Too bad: when it works, Dirty Boy showcases some fine performances and raises some interesting questions about insanity and divinity.
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Dirty Boy. Directed by Doug Rao. 2024. From Mystic Dream/Stone Hill/Saint Halo. Runtime 97 minutes.