Category: Horror

Clown in a Cornfield

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★ Clown in a Cornfield

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Eli Craig

Screenplay by: Carter Blanchard and Eli Craig

Based on the Novel by: Adam Cesare

Produced by: Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, John Fischer, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas

Starring: Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Vincent Muller, Kevin Durand and Will Sasso.

‘Hey, check it out.  It’s Frendo.’

A tongue-in-cheek teen slasher, Clown in a Cornfield begins in 1991.

There’s a first person point-of-view of walking through, yep, a cornfield.

There’s a party around a fire that has classic living-in-the-country teens getting drunk and making out.

But at this party there’s a wind-up toy.

A clown pops out of a box.

The girl holding the box catches a guy’s attention, giving him the come-hither, meet-me-in-the-cornfield look.

He follows.

‘What the fuck shoesize do you have?!’

Says the guy wanting to get high but happy enough to follow the girl taking her top off amongst the corn, only to find on the ground the imprint of a ginormous clown shoe.

Did I mention the tongue-in-cheek?

A silence.

A crow caws.

The blood splatter begins.

Fast forward to ‘Now’ and you have Quinn (Katie Douglas) reminding her dad (Aaron Abrams) singing 80s rap that the 80s for her is what the 40s would be for him.

That’s perspective for Dr. Maybrook, moving his daughter to a flyover country town to become the new GP.

But it’s a dying town.  The corn syrup factory, Baypen with Frendo the clown as its mascot, has closed leaving the townspeople desperate, yearning for the time when things were good.  Otherwise known as, The good ol’ days.

The first thing Quinn asks local red-neck, but polite neighbour, Rust (Vincent Muller) is, What do you do around here for fun?

It’s Federation Day tomorrow.

He warns, be careful of the weirdos.

It doesn’t take long for Quinn to meet the rebels of the school: Cole (Carson MacCormac), Matt (Alexandre Martin Deakin), Tucker (Ayo Solanke), Ronnie (Verity Marks) and Janet (Cassandra Potenza).

Pranking the teacher because he hates them so they hate him more.

Cole tells Quinn about the traditions of the town, how they keep entertained, and there’s enough to keep the film interesting with added funny bits like asides from Ronnie, ‘I’m seventeen-years-old and already hit rock bottom.’

It’s a teen movie taking the piss out of teens, here the humour is making fun of Gen Z.  But you get where the teens are coming from, even if they don’t know how to use a dial phone or how to drive a manual car.

And this is a difference in the slasher formula, using the Gen Z traits to highlight the current generation gap to make a horror movie funny.

Director Eli Craig states he wanted to hang the film on something more than just teens getting slashed, so he, ‘Went to the source — Adam Cesár’s fast paced novel the script was based on — and found it was really saying something about the generational divide that much of the country, if not the world, faces today. It holds a mirror up to the American dream; exposing the warped facade of capitalism gone wrong and the rage that comes from being on the losing end of it.’

Craig also states that the film was made on a tight budget, ‘The challenge was fraught from the start; with a tiny fraction of the budget we actually needed to make this work — a mere $6.5 million.’

So telling the story relied heavily on the actors – Katie Douglas as Quinn holding her own and able to make her character likable while embracing the character’s teen antics.

And I liked the camera work (Brian Pearson), the fading from watching a video on a screen to being put in the video to be part of the story to amp the scare.

I wouldn’t say there’s tension or much of a backstory, but there are surprises and jumps – a movie goer sitting in front of me literally jumped, throwing popcorn because of a scare.

So it’s kinda fun because the film can make fun of itself and be funny, on purpose, in between the creepy bits.

The Rule of Jenny Pen

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★The Rule of Jenny Pen

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: James Ashcroft

Based on the Short Story Written by: Owen Marshall

Screenplay Written by: James Ashcroft, Eli Kent

Produced by: Catherine Fitzgerald, Olando Stewart

Starring:  John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush, Nathaniel Lees.

‘Stefan, are you with us?’

An ant crawls across a table as Stefan (Geoffrey Rush) observes.

Stefan folds a tissue to squash the insect, a metaphor for how, working as a judge, he towers over people, how he sees people.

He sits in judgement – a hard stance.

Before suffering a stroke.

Tough, unflinching, Stefan’s admitted into the Royal Pine Mews Care Home.

He meets his fellow resident and roommate, Sonny (Nathaniel Lees).

Previously a famous rugby player for New Zealand, Sonny tries to be friendly with Stefan, but he’s having none of it.  He’ll recover.  Go home.  He just needs time

Enter Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), first introduced as a blue eye watching through the cracked opening of a door, watching as Stefan uses a bottle to pee.

Dave Crealy always has a puppet doll with him, Jenny Pen.

He’s one of the ‘nutters’.

But Dave Crealy is strong.  He uses his strength to bully the other residents.  Each taunt becoming cruel.  Brutal.  An added dimension to the nightmare Stefan finds himself living.

Rehab sees Stefan reaching for a cup, a nurse encouraging him to reach out, to use his fingers while Dave Crealy laughs maniacally in the background watching predators on TV, but really, he’s like the predators, he laughs at his prey, struggling to hold a cup.

There’s a play of perspective as the film is seen from Stefan’s point of view, with Jenny Pen looming large, a silhouette dancing behind a red curtain; a giant to represent fear growing as Dave Crealy dominants the care home.

But I didn’t find the doll particularly scary.  It’s what the doll represents that’s the horror of the film, the loss of control, power; the not being believed.

The main setting of the film is within the care home, shown in a realistic view, that dry tone a backdrop to the performances of heavy hitters, John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush and Nathaniel Lees.

The nightmarish quality of Stefan’s illness is shown with gaps of time, the swing from a neuropsychological test showing what Stefan sees – a clock with all the numbers in order to what the clinician sees, the lateral damage of Stefan’s brain shown in numbers run askew.

The isolation of his illness is amplified by this quietly absorbing battle between the sadistic Dave Crealy and the grumpy, bitter judge slowly losing his faculties living in a world no one sees or pretends not to see so the torture is like a terrible secret hidden in plain sight.

There’s a good story here, based on the short story written by Owen Marshall, with strong performances and thought put into the perspective of the residents to take the audience into that secret world of feeling powerless.

Worth a watch.

 

The Monkey

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2The Monkey

Rated: TBA

Directed by: Osgood Perkins

Written by: Osgood Perkins

Based on the Short Story by: Stephen King

Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery.

‘Looks like God’s bowling strikes today.’

Based on a short story written by Stephen King (Gallery magazine (1980), then revised and published in King’s short story collection, Skeleton Crew (1985)), The Monkey (movie) leans into the absurd making the horror of a monkey that makes terrible, freaky, accidental deaths occur when someone turn its key, funny.

The Monkey isn’t so much a horror, splatter movie, but a satire.

Twins, Hal (Theo James) and Bill (also Theo James) live with their mum, Lois (Tatiana Maslany) who has no filter when talking to her boys about the realities of life and death.

Bill was born before Hal making him the elder twin and Bill never lets Hal forget it.

Bill’s the type of guy when you go to shake hands, he sykes and runs his fingers through his hair instead.

The boys’ dad (Adam Scott) was a pilot that went for a pack of cigarettes then never came back, is what their mum says.  Because their father never did come home.

But he did leave keepsakes from his travels, including an Organ Grinder Monkey with, ‘Like Life’, inscribed on the back, with freaky human-like teeth and staring eyes with the whites all around like a psychopath, glinting in the dark.

The Monkey is definitely not a toy.

When people start dying in weird and wonderful ways, the boys realise it’s the monkey and decide to get rid of it.

But the monkey never really disappears.

Fast forward 25 years sees the twin brothers estranged with Hal’s son Petey (Colin O’Brien) in the picture, but only one week every year.

It’s that time of year.

And the monkey has made a reappearance.

The bloody deaths, including fishing hooks in the face followed by the rubbing alcohol used to treat the cuts catching fire, then the flaming person running headlong into a post that empales their head, prove it.

The deaths are creative.

And like Lois their mother says, ‘Don’t think about it too much.’

Because the movie isn’t so much the deaths but the deadpan reaction of Hal to the deaths.  And, ‘I’m his next of skin,’ brother hell-bent on being a douche.

Some of the humour is cheap, it’s a laugh-a-minute kind of movie.  But there are genuinely hilarious moments.

Like a decapitation referred to in a coin toss of, heads or tails.  But let’s not mention the heads because of, you know.  The missing head.

The timing of some of the shots still have me grinning.

The movie is a heavy lean into the dark humour of the idea of this killer monkey, and most of the time, I liked it.

FYI, Oz Perkins plays Uncle Chip.  Gold.

PRESENCE

GoMovieReview Rating: ★★★Presence

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: David Koepp

Produced by: Julie M. Anderson, Ken Meyer

Starring: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland.

‘What was it like, do you think?’

Filmed from the point of view of the presence, there’s a perspective of looking out a window to then turn inside a house, to wander the empty rooms.

A family of husband and wife, and two teenaged children arrive.

The mother, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is the decision maker of the family.  She makes an offer on the house.

The daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang) asks, ‘Does anyone else get a vote?’

Chloe looks towards the screen, the camera, towards the presence, knowing something is in the house.

She calls out, ‘Nadia?’ Wondering if her recently deceased best friend has returned.

The family don’t believe Chloe, her brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) angry, not wanting Chloe to ruin his cool at school with Ryan (West Mulholland) now his friend.

And then Chloe’s boyfriend.

Talking about her best friend dying, Eddy asks, ‘What was it like, do you think?’

‘I have no idea.’

The beginning of the film is silent.

The dialogue the soundtrack so it feels like a stage production.

The presence attached to the house means the film is entirely filmed in the house so the storyline is the interactions between the family, that’s slowly falling apart.

‘It’s OK to go too far for the people you love,’ says Rebekah to her favourite, her son Tyler.

The father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), tries to keep an eye on Chloe as she grieves.

But it’s the presence who sees everything.

This is a stark film that took a while to become something creepy, not because of the ghost aspect, but the quiet build of something not right.

It’s a unique device, using a subjective camera as point of view for the presence, director Steven Soderbergh states: ‘We want to see the reaction of the character that we’re supposed to invest in. And I’ve been convinced you don’t have a movie if you don’t have that — if you can’t see what the character’s feeling emotionally, you don’t have a movie. But here I am literally tearing down the structure that I’ve built. And my only justification is: Here, if you did a reverse, there wouldn’t be anything to see.’

There’s success with this unusual perspective because the strong performance from each character makes the presence believable.

Using the subjective camera within one location is the foundation of the film.  Writer Koepp states,’ I love a restriction. “It’s 24 hours.” Or “it’s one long road trip.” Or, in this case, “It’s all in the same house,” It’s a sort of creative Hays Code that restricts your thinking and therefore opens up your thinking.’

It’s just not a vastly entertaining film.  I’d even go as far as saying the first half of the film was boring.  But then it becomes something else like an underlying need for control.  It creeps up.

Worth a watch.

Companion

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★ Companion

Rated: TBA

Directed by: Drew Hancock

Written by: Drew Hancock

Produced by: Zach Cregger, Raphael Margules, J. D. Lifshitz, Roy Lee

Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén and Rupert Friend.

‘Smile.  Act happy.’

Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher) are the perfect couple.

They meet in a grocery store where Josh fumbles his way into Irises heart.

It’s a sweet, meet cute.

‘I just want you to be happy, Josh,’ Iris tells him.

Then the relationship begins to fray.

The love a little needy.

Josh, despondent to Irises attention.

When Josh and Iris drive out to an isolated lake house to spend time with Josh’s friends, Cat (Megan Suri) and her rich Russian boyfriend, Sergey (Rupert Friend) and Eli (Harvey Guillen) with partner Patrick (Lukas Gage), Iris is afraid she’ll embarrass Josh.

Josh tells her to smile, act happy.

She does her best.

The innocent Iris who couldn’t lie, even if she wanted to, is someone to feel sorry for.

Until the doll made to serve turns up covered in someone else’s blood.

There’s twists and turns in Companion, with moments of violence amongst the tongue and cheek; comments like, ‘I know it must be a lot to process.’

Companion feels a little like a Barbie version of, Ex Machina with the subtitles of manipulation replaced with overtones of domestic violence.

Yet the tone of the film is light, holding back on the ridiculous so it’s a watchable film but made more for entertainment than depth.

Or if there was depth, it wasn’t a message that resonated.  Maybe something like, Beware of treating your partner like a doll because they might grow a brain and turn on you.

So, I guess there’s something in that.

 

Wolf Man

GoMovieReview Rating: ★★★1/2 Wolf Man

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Leigh Whannell

Written by: Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck

Produced by: Jason Blum p.g.a

Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly and Milo Cawthorne.

‘It’s my job to protect you.’

There’s a build to Leigh Whannell’s reimagined Wolf Man.

Set in rural Oregan, Blake (Christopher Abbott) is living a farm life with his father.

There’s a, ‘No Trespassing, there’s nothing here worth dying for,’ sign on the gate.

It’s 1995.

At 07:00, father and son go hunting only to find themselves stalked by a creature just out of sight.  Only a movement, a glimpse through the crosshairs of a shotgun.  A growl.

Hiding, father and son see the condensation of breath rising above a door with scratch marks left as a warning.

It’s a frightening existence, a young boy growing up with a survivalist father communicating with a neighbour via radio about the sighting of the creature seen just out of sight like an apparition.

As soon as he’s old enough, Blake leaves the land to move to the city where 30 years later he lives with his successful journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth).

Currently ‘in between’ jobs, Blake dedicates his life to looking after his daughter.

After his missing father is presumed dead, the house in Oregan is left to Blake.

To try and close the distance growing between husband and wife, Blake convinces Charlotte that going to the farm would help bring the family closer together.

Until a single scratch makes a once loving dad and husband become a monster.

Returning with another universal classic monster character after the success of his previous monster film, ‘The Invisible Man,’ Whannell states, ‘These classic monsters have endured for a reason […] Something about them is just too fascinating, creepy and mysterious to go away.’

There’s a clever device used here, to show the infection taking hold of Blake, with the light focusing on the monster he’s about to become.

He’s dying but doesn’t know it yet.

Words become jumbled but sounds are amplified so even the crawl of spider legs across a wall beat a heavy drum.

Even the perspective of a car accident is at an angle so the audience can feel the characters’ upturned world.

Working with cinematographer Stefan Duscio, the evolution of the infection is shown by adjusting the lighting using different lenses, so Blake’s night vision is seen in contrast to how his family sees the world, sees him, changing.

So the audience can see both sides of the evolution, Whannell stating, ‘One would live in the human world, and one in the animal one.’

The idea of a werewolf remake wasn’t very exciting to me, and the family drama felt heavy handed at times, but I was won over by Whannell’s focus on the evolution of infection rather than a monster baying at a full moon.

Whannell’s signature jump scares, and what I appreciated the most, the  perspective of change as the family becomes more terrified of their once loving husband and father makes, Wolf Man worth a watch.

Nosferatu

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★☆ (3.8/5)Nosferatu

Rated: TBA

Written for the Screen & Directed by: Robert Eggers

Inspired by the Screenplay: NOSFERATU by Henrick Galeen

and the Novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker

Produced by: Jeff Robinov, John Graham

Produced by: Chris Columbus, p.g.a., Eleanor Columbus, p.g.a., Robert Eggers, p.g.a.

Starring: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Tayor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney.

What is the dark trauma that even death cannot erase? A heartbreaking notion. This is at the essence of the palpable belief in the vampire. The folk vampire is not a suave dinner-coat-wearing seducer, nor a sparkling, brooding hero. The folk vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal, and unforgiving way. This is the vampire I wanted to exhume for a modern audience.

-Robert Eggers

‘Blood is the life.’

Come to me, come to me.

You, you.

The wind blows through the sheer curtains.

I swear, she promises.

It’s a dreamy yet stark beginning; the girl, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) in a trance as she awakens Nosferatu (Bill Skarsgård) from his slumber to become an awoken corpse, walking upon the earth.

A corpse with appetites.

There’s a nightmarish quality to this gothic tale.  This is not a romantic version of a vampire story.  This vampire is a plague.

Jumping from 1830s Baltic Germany to years later shows Ellen married to Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult).

Newly home from their honeymoon, Thomas’ employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) sends Thomas into the depths of Transylvania to complete a transfer of title to an ancient descendant from a long blood line; the count described as, eccentric.

For extra money, Thomas is willing to go even as Ellen begs him not to.

It’s the travelling to Count Orlok’s (Nosferatu) castle that mesmerises; the silence of Thomas walking down a road through an ancient forest as snow falls.

The beat and chink of horses pulling a carriage through the dark, the tilt as the world shifts, the perspective bending to the will of Nosferatu as the carriage door slowly opens an invitation.

Then the wolves that follow.

It’s an invitation to a new world that’s dark, where fire casts shadows of reaching fingers and pointed nails and nightmares of blood.

The soundtrack feeds the mood of foreboding, the rise and fall of breath.

It’s moody movie.

Composer Robin Carolan states, ‘There’s a lot of dread and claustrophobia in the film.  The score helps with the feeling of escalation, and of this thing that you can’t quite see but that you sense is closing in on you.’

Nosferatu knows Thomas is married to his bride.  Nosferatu travels across the ocean to reclaim Ellen.  She knows he’s coming.

Inspired by the Screenplay: NOSFERATU by Henrick Galeen and the Novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker, there’s the same lines of story, the travel of the husband to Transylvania to transfer the deed of a new home, the long-lost love.

There’s the best friend, here, Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) who wants to protect Ellen from the call of the monster.

But this is an inspiration not an adaptation so there’s something new here.

Unlike the tease of humour in the Frances Coppola film, like the unforgettable scene where a vampire’s head is cut off, a gruesome scene, that cuts to the professor tucking into a roast dinner – a well-timed shock to evoke a giggle.  There’s no humour here in Nosferatu.

This is cinematic horror.

There’s a spare feeling to the angles of panning, the movement of characters, the endless corridors of a castle that resonates with Bram Stoker’s classic novel, where Nosferatu is nothing more than a monster.

Collaborating with production designer Craig Lathrop, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, costume designer Linda Muir, and editor Louise Ford, all of whom worked on The Northman, The Lighthouse, and The Witch, Eggers has created something that builds into a vision both magical and horrific.

Heretic

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★☆ (3.8/5)Heretic

HERETIC

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Written by: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Produced by: Stacey Sher, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Julia Glausi, Jeanette Volturno

Starring: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace, Elle Young.

‘How do you feel about awkward questions?’

Seeing Hugh Grant play a villain in a horror movie is a bit of a treat, especially when he flexes his storytelling skills.

Meet, Mr. Reed.  A man in search of the one true religion.

Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) take a break from door knocking and looking to recruit converts to sit on a bench, facing a huge mountain talking sex and if the magnum condom is actually as advertised, massive.

It’s two innocent girls talking about something unexpected yet gives insight into their character – Sister Paxton showing a naive curiosity, Sister Barnes from the streets of Philadelphia with a tougher backstory where she lost her dad to illness.

After tolerating yet another humiliating show of people’s dislike or misunderstanding of their calling, ‘they think we’re weird,’ the two Sisters’ ride their bikes through the snow and rain to knock on the door of a potential convert.

Sister Paxton can barely hide her determination.

It’s the little things that hint of Mr. Reed’s intention.

‘I’ve never had a Wendy.  I mean, met a Wendy.’

The film’s foundation is word play, dialogue and the dance of theological argument; but the build of suspense is about the close up of the eyes, the sharpness of a look.  Of looking too closely.

The tension builds with the back and forth between the Sisters as they come to understand the game Mr. Reed is playing is a trap.  And it’s the realisation of the game Mr. Reed has trapped them into playing that heightens the suspense – the surprise of each character as they reveal themselves in dialogue that twists through intellectual debate about religion in order to navigate a way through the psychology of a madman who has gotten lost in his search of the one true religion.

He’s not wrong.  And neither are they.

It becomes a matter of argument.  Of faith.

Most of the film is set in the house of Mr. Reed.  A deceptively simple stop to highlight the dialogue and closeups of facial expressions.  To show the fear of: Belief or Disbelief.

Both are terrifying.

Hugh Grant states, ‘I found Heretic to be daring, not just because it questions a lot of things that many people hold sacred, but for the fact that it’s set in one house over the course of one long night and features a lot of talking — hardly normal practice for a horror film.’

The house itself becomes part of the game.

Director and writer, Scott Beck (also screenwriter, along with Bryan Woods of, A Quiet Place (2018)) states, “We had to figure out the psychology of Reed early on in order to understand why his house appears the way it does, serving as a kind of weapon against his young visitors,” says Beck. “Reed is God-playing in a way, pulling these characters through each room so it feels like a gauntlet or a game, consistently evolving to worse and worse places. It became about marrying the character of Reed with the production design and finding a methodology behind it to show how his mind works.”

Heretic is unique in that it’s a storyteller thriller.  Not explosive but a well-rounded creeping poetry based on theological argument from a man driven mad by the search for meaning.

For me the film peters out a little at the end but as Beck states, ‘Hugh has quietly become one the greatest character actors working today,’ making Heretic worth a watch.

 

Hellboy: The Crooked Man

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★1/2Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Brian Taylor

Written by: Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola, Brian Taylor

Based on: Hellboy by Mike Mignola

Produced by: Mike Richardson, Jeffery Greenstein, Jonathan Yunger, Les Weldon, Rob Van Norden, Yariv Lerner

Starring: Jack Kesy, Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Joseph Marcell, Leah McNamara, Martin Massindale, Suzanne Bertish.

Screwed, chewed and tattooed.

In this fourth instalment of Hellboy, it’s 1959.  And Hellboy (Jack Kesy), along with Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) from the bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD), are on a train transporting an arachnoid that is more than just a spider.

The opening of, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, is fast-paced.  The arachnoid breaking free, the scene out of control as the train dislodges from the track, landing Hellboy and the certainly-has-a-thing-for Bobbie in the Appalachia Forest, lost.

The storyline meanders until landing on the re-negotiation of a soul.  Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) losing his soul when he happens upon a beautiful witch (Leah McNamara) bathing in the river in his younger days.

The witch encourages Tom to make a deal with the devil, where the bone he holds in his hand when he sees the devil becomes a lucky bone saving him from injury during the war.

In 1959, Tom comes home to the Appalachia mountains to search for his family and girlfriend Cora (Hannah Margetson) whom he left, trying to escape the pact he made all those years ago.

The forest is full of witches, serving, The Crooked Man.

When alive, The Crooked Man was made rich playing both sides of the Civil War.  Hanged, his reward from those who live in the mountains, The Crooked Man was returned by the devil to collect souls, receiving a copper penny for each soul, including Tom’s.

The only sanctuary in the mountains is the old church where blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell) holds the dark forces at bay.

The passage of the film is earmarked with chapters that don’t really signpost the story:

‘The Lucky Bone’,

‘Witch Ball’,

‘The Hurricane’.

But lend a fable to the storyline, like the witch acknowledging the screen as the audience watches through the eyes of a crow as she explains the spell of making a witch’s ball.

There’s trickery with the camera work, the perspectives adding a foreboding feeling:

Guts splatter across the lens of the camera.

Sudden darkened scenes click to switch from one place to another.

There’s that Hellboy flavour to, The Crooked Man but there’s also a distinct feeling of a glossing over, creating a superficial tone.

Hellboy’s mother’s introduced into his origin story, the film clicking into this other dark world where she hangs in suspense, tortured.  A giant crow represents the devil as he incites her pregnancy with Hellboy.

It’s another dimension to the film.

But the threads of the storyline barely hold together in this movie.

Hellboy, the character, is strangely monotone, with a rare wisecrack, ‘Smells like death.  And birdshit,’ so it didn’t seem like Hellboy at all.

But there is a unique strangeness to the film.

It’s dark and creepy but so very disjointed.  Which makes me think of a piece of meat.

It’s that kinda movie.

IN CINEMAS OCTOBER 10

Also screening at MONSTER FEST 2024

Hellboy – The Crooked Man – Monster Fest Australia

Click HERE for dates & venues

 

The Substance

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2The Substance

Rated: R18+

Directed by: Coralie Fargeat

Written by: Coralie Fargeat

Edited by: Coralie Fargeat

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid.

‘Pretty girls should always smile.’

A film of extremes, The Substance is a commentary about Hollywood’s middle-aged, white male’s view of the female form.

There is a male version of, the Other: a beautiful young male doctor introduces an aging fitness guru, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) to The Substance, himself a demonstration to the Oscar winning actress that she can create a better version of herself.

‘It will change your life.’

Goes to show that men are feeling the push to be beautiful as well.  But here the focus is on the aging actress, Elizabeth.

The action of ‘the substance’ is shown by the injection of green liquid into the joke of a raw egg.  The yoke then pushes out another yoke, like a clone of itself.

And the film continues with this demonstrative view of the procedure, of the process of aging, to the birth of a young body; the splicing of a pupil into two, to another eye growing within another, all shown in macro, close so there’s no-where else to look but at the unfiltered image of the beautiful juxtaposed with the grotesque.

Director and writer, Coralie Fargeat states, ‘Bodies here are going to be tyrannized, ridiculed, destroyed, the same way I truly believe society destroys women with all the rules that we are silently taught to follow.’

‘Women’s bodies. THE SUBSTANCE is a film about women’s bodies.’

After Elizabeth Sparkle is told by Harvey (Denis Quaid) – while feeding his face with prawns, sound included- the producer of her fitness show, that at age 50, It Stops, Elizabeth can’t help but think a better version of herself could be the answer to her lack of self-worth.

Elizabeth is the Matrix, the Other is Sue.

They are one person.

This is a visceral birth, with close-ups of blood, injections, the splitting of the spine to the gush of another pushing outwards from Elizabeth’s lifeless body.

To the high impact beauty of the Other, Sue.

It’s all pink shiny leotards and perfect bodies – Sue becomes the fresh new face of fitness.  She’s new and she’s young and she’s perfect.

It takes 7 days for Sue to rule the world.  And as human nature dictates, Sue wants more.

The concepts of the film are portrayed with clever devices, aging is shown with a static view of Sparkles Hollywood Star cracking in the pavement over time. Of people walking across the star, admiring the star, to then show snow and rain and dirt and feet and food being spilled across her star.  Like time has forgotten her face.  To the giant image of Elizabeth in her apartment with the fractured glass around her eye – a loss of perspective, her self-hatred pinned up on the wall.

It’s an interesting title, The Substance, the focus on the outer beauty and social comment about aging, about what’s supposed to go where, replacing the true substance of a person with a chemical that births a younger, fresher you.  Makes me wonder about Picasso’s cubism and his deconstruction of perspective.

Coralie Fargeat takes apart the idea of beauty and creates a satire with Elizabeth Sparkle using the mantra, ‘Take care of yourself,’ that Sue imitates with a wink because what is taking care of yourself when the expectation is to have medical procedures to try to stay young forever?

Fargeat comments, ‘This movie is going to be bloody gory. And it’s going to be bloody funny at the same time. Because I don’t know any stronger weapon than satire to show the world the absurdity of its own rules. And most importantly: I believe it’s going to be bloody timely. This is what this movie is about in the end. A liberation. An empowerment.’

Throughout the film, there’s an evolution of the grotesque as the weight of society’s expectation is perverted into an embrace of the gross with too much enthusiasm for my taste, to turn a fascinating film with a difference into something so awful it’s laughable.

This is a unique, determined and grotesque film.

This is body horror people.  Prepare yourself.

 

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