Not rated, but let's be honest.  This is as R-rated as it gets.  The V/H/S movies have prided themselves on being low-budget special effects gore movies that want to show you every second of carnage.  There's language all throughout.  It's absolutely brutal to watch and that can be a bit much.  Also, there's an excessive amount of faces removed for one movie.  Still, not rated.

DIRECTORS: Jay Cheel, Jordan Downey, Christian Long, Justin Long, Justin Martinez, Virat Pal, and Kate Siegel

I keep saying that I'm leaving this franchise behind.  Then it's spooky season and I hear mildly good things, so I feel like I have to keep going.  It's a thing with me and franchises.  I hate not having seen every one of them.  I'm really resisting catching up on the Despicable Me movies and the Minions spin-offs because I think that would be a bit brutal...even though I'm powering through V/H/S movies.

As with most anthology films, I'm going to treat this as a series of mini-reviews.  If I do it the way that I want to do it, I'm going to close up the last day of spooky season with a final scary movie.  I don't know if I can do it, but it would be fun if it all worked out.

"Abduction" / "Adduction"

I want to love this.  So much about this is aesthetically pleasing.  Honestly, if I was to make an entry into the V/H/S franchise, I would want it to look like "Abduction."  I love the idea of a documentary --a fully funded documentary --being a way to tell the story of something unexplainable.  That's what the initial conceit of V/H/S was (a franchise, by the way, that is no fun to type out).  The idea was that someone found these old videos and they showed us the impossible and lost arcana of reality.  It was a way to look at the Deep Web of real life.  And, honestly, the documentary format almost works better than simply "Ooh, I found these old tapes."  

It seems like I would really like the "Abduction" framing narrative.  First of all, I miss the days when the movies used the framing devices to tie in all of the anthology stories.  That's not happening here.  What is happening is that there are stories that are contained to their own little segments, and then there is the one story that we keep coming back to.  Unfortunately, the story that we keep returning to has little to nothing to do with the other stories (except for the fact that all of these are sci-fi horror and that three out of the six stories have something to do with aliens).  But man, does this kind of crap the bed when it comes to the reveal of what the actual footage showed.  I was way more into the talking heads and the lore of this Asian family who moved into a scary old house than the actual footage of what was shown.  Maybe some of that comes from the fact that I've just been watching two hours of very similar gore that the big needle drop came across as anticlimactic.  It's a bummer, because I was going to preach about how much I dug the entire thing.  I'm pretty sure those YouTubers who do special effects are real dudes.  For all I know, all of the talking heads were someone important and I'm just not in those worlds to comment on them.  Still, I have to give the short film points for accidentally nailing what it is like to watch a bit of a disappointing documentary.  There's all this investment with real answers and then we just see some stuff we've seen before.  Perhaps our imaginations are far more interesting than what reality can show us.

"Stork"

Thank goodness they didn't tell us the title of the shorts beforehand or that title would have served as a major spoiler.  Also, you know my policy on spoilers. (Okay, I don't know my policy on spoilers.  It's amorphous.  Sometimes I give you a heads up.  Sometimes I don't.  Just be prepped for spoilers if you weren't already.) "Stork" went from one of the dumbest concepts of anthology films to potentially being the most fun of the group.  Listen, I'm preaching anti-gore.  These movies tend to be gore-aggressive.  "Stork" really wants to gross you out with what it shows.  If anything, "Storks" job is to be memorable for just how much violence you can fit into a short.  So keep that in mind when you are watching this.

For a long time, I was annoyed by how Resident Evil the whole thing was.  It has the acronym "W.A.R.D.E.N." hopefully as something so self-aware that you have to laugh at it.  But the point was almost like this was a Left 4 Dead style video game where this elite task force has to clear areas of spooky zombie like creatures --in this case, creatures from a meteor --using guns and other weapons.  There's the rookie, which is very video-gamey, who is videoing the whole thing. Sure, there's a subplot about one of the cops having lost an infant to these creatures.  I don't hate that, but I don't love how gore-heavy movies tend to love to show terrible things happening to babies.  I remember in Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead being horrified by the unborn zombie.  That was the first and last time that I could give any movie the "gnarly" answer towards scary undead babies.  It's just trite at this point and, if the big reveal didn't save it, I would be lambasting the movie.  The eponymous stork does make the entire thing a good time.  It's such an absurd concept for a horror movie that I couldn't help but kind of applaud how macabre the whole thing was.  It's silly, and the short does just the right job of winking-without-mugging at the camera.  It's pretty solid, despite the fact that it checks off every annoying thing that the V/H/S movies do.

"Dream Girl"

Oh man, this one does the opposite of "Stork" does. While I was wildly annoyed by "Stork" at the beginning, only to kind of love it by the end, "Dream Girl" had so much promise.  I love the fact that we could spread out to the idea of international horror, especially in the context of a Bollywood movie.  It was something different.  It had a different sensibility to the whole thing.  This is me playing a lot of shorthand with what I just watched, but I also kind of stand by it, especially in context of the next short.  American characters in horror movies is a specific kind of trope.  They have very American concerns.  Often, these characters are looking for a good time when something unfortunate happens along the way.  That's what "Live and Let Dive" did.  With "Stork", these guys were action movie archetypes.  We have such a shorthand for these kinds of characters that, especially with anthology storytelling, we don't need to do much heavy lifting.  But with "Dream Girl", we have this whole subculture that might not get widely recognized in American storytelling.

Also, the fact that they shot a pretty fun Bollywood dance number goes a long way with me.  The one thing that I kind of give props to Beyond for is the notion that we're not stuck on VHS anymore.  The idea of telling through Go-Pro or a phone is at least acceptable at this point. At one point in time, I would have gotten really upset about this. But everything about the look of the Beyond movies lets me forgive a different way to shoot the same style of movie.  But I love the idea that, if these characters are on a Bollywood set, some things would have been shot in 4K.  Yeah, we didn't need to have a Bollywood dance number, but I also love that nothing really seemed to be held back in the process of recreating the experience of a Bollywood dance piece.

It's just that, once the other shoe drops, the movie almost makes no sense. I don't hate the idea that the Dream Girl (whose name I refuse to look up right now because I have the perfect tabs open right now and I'm lazy) is the creation of a studio so they can just program actors.  It's AI adjacent and I can get behind that. But it does nothing with that. Beyond that (no pun intended), it just kind of becomes murderous based on very little info.  The protagonist tells the robot --not knowing that she's a robot --that she's a goddess.  So she rips off her own face and murders everyone?  Also, there's a lot of intentional wording to make the thinly veiled surprise happen.  It starts off so strong and then just becomes another V/H/S entry.

"Live and Let Dive"

This one is almost not a movie.  It's not bad.  But do you know what vibes I got from the movie?  This felt either like an R-rated Universal Studios park ride or a VR experience that would have been fun.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing.  I bet that part of the mission statement behind making "Live and Let Dive" was to give the audience an adrenaline rush unlike anything that they've seen in the franchise up to that point.  If that's the goal, absolutely nailed.  But the problem is...that's not what I was looking for.  If anything, it came across as kind of...dumb?

This is almost a criticism for most of the V/H/S movies.  These movies tend to be incredibly vapid.  They're meant to be distilled scares.  "Live and Let Dive" is giving me the excuse to make a comparison, so bear with me if I don't talk about this specific short a ton.  There's almost nothing to analyze with "Live and Let Dive".  It's a fun time that involves a skydiving set piece and being hunted by an alien.  Okay.  That's fun.  But I think that there's an expectation that anthology horror can't be thought provoking.  I put to the argument that Black Mirror fundamentally proves that wrong.  Both V/H/S Beyond and Black Mirror are sci-fi horror.  I will concede that Black Mirror has a ton of time to get the nuance of a complex story down. But both are anthology stories.  The thing is, V/H/S prides itself on its love of gore and special effects.  There are plenty haunting Black Mirror episodes that do nothing with gore or special effects.  Instead, they're there to make you question what is acceptable with science fiction.

"Live and Let Dive" doesn't do anything with the sci-fi element.  I'm now coming to the realization that the science fiction elements of this entry were kind of squandered.  I've always been in the camp that science fiction is meant to comment on who we are as people and a society.  "Live and Let Dive" is just survival horror.  Again, very VR.  If you want to feel like you are falling, cool.  Don't hate that.  But we get almost no characterization in this movie.  The Go-Pro Birthday Boy is our hero and people have to tell us that he's afraid of heights.  That's not characterization.  Mind you, the V/H/S movies are about the camera acting as avatar for the audience.  Maybe it's intentional that the guy behind the camera tends to be a bit of a blank slate.  But while I'm incredibly impressed by the production element of "Live and Let Dive", I was getting a little tired by this point in the movie.

"Fur Babies"

This is a short about course correction.  While "Stork" gets a little silly, but holds back the mugging, "Fur Babies" embraces the heck out of the mugging.  On the whole, "Fur Babies" is actually kind of fun.  The horror prioritizes itself over the science fiction with this one.  We have to accept that grafting dog parts onto humans necessitates science fiction.  I guess I can squint and pretend that the treatise of the film is intact, but I don't necessarily agree.  That's not the real problem.  Honestly, once the reveal happens with this one, I'm more on board than the beginning.  

The bigger problem is that "Fur Babies" knows it's a silly premise.  I hate that.  I don't hate a silly premise. But a lot of this entry doesn't take itself seriously.  Part of it comes from the over-the-top, almost comical archetypes of the protagonists.  The movie is taking pot shots at two separate philosophies.  It's making fun of psychotic pet people while simultaneously trying to take down social justice advocates like Peta.  Okay.  But we're so busy doing silly things that we only have a few minutes where the horror can actually have a little bit of weight to it.  When the horror does show up, I'm on board.  But if we're breaking this down, the short starts with the antagonist making a really goofy local commercial.  Then we see equally goofy animal rights activists stepping on each other's toes to be more culturally sensitive to the humor of all.  I'd like to point out: none of these jokes land.  If anything, they just seem lazy and underdeveloped.  Similarly, we don't actually have enough information for who are villains are.  It's a fun concept, even from someone who doesn't like gore. But otherwise, what is happening here?

Also, there's one thing that is vital to the plot that doesn't make a ton of sense.  The cameraman is investigating the antagonist's house because they saw all these stuffed pets on the mantlepiece.  The antagonist reveals that these pets died of natural causes and she couldn't bear to say goodbye to her loved ones.  Okay.  I don't realistically see this as being a priority for animal rights activists.  Seriously, there seem to be way bigger threats.  Maybe the characterization is that these guys are too small time for any serious issues.  But when the cameraman loses his cool, blowing their cover, I don't really get the incentive behind it.  Maybe I'm out of the loop on the taxidermy thing, but it's a weird choice.

"Stowaway"

Again, I almost gave up.  It's when I almost give up, that's when I'm sold.  Is it THE Mike Flanagan who wrote this?  If so, round of applause.  The reason I got so annoyed is that it felt like it was stepping on the toes of the other skits. Half of the skits were about alien abductions because that's where the brain goes when it comes to talking about sci-fi.  On top of that, this is a found documentary?  It's the thing we just came back from when we saw the framing narrative right before hand.  Honestly, I thought for a second the framing narrative was still going on. 

But "Stowaway" does more with the alien abduction doc than "Abduction" does. Part of it is that we completely embrace something hilariously tiny and make it the foundation of our horror doc.  As an alien investigation story, we keep waiting for the alien to show up and be this horrid creature that rips us apart, like with "Abduction" or "Live and Let DIve".  But the tech on the ship becomes this real bad guy.  If every other story is about death, I love the notion that the real horror in "Stowaway" is the burden of eternal life.  There's this scary moment where the nanites first appear and she thinks its poison.  It's great.  It heals her finger that she cuts, but leaves a little healing scratch behind.  I though, "Weird.  Technology is good enough to stop bleeding, but not enough to completely heal a finger?"  But that is such a cool foreshadowing for the nightmare of what is about to happen.

Now, as much as I liked this one, I was a little disappointed that the way I was going to write this one didn't happen.  We kept on getting this footage of a little girl's birthday party, where the documentarian discovers in the course of looking at her own footage, that she erased something precious to her.  She then drops this cool factoid about the Andromeda galaxy and how time is relative based on speeds and location in space.  Now, while I love --in the worst way possible --that the documentarian keeps getting pulverized as the ship travels at near light speed and then repaired as a concept.  I thought that the real horror was how much of her daughter's life she was missing with these two week jaunts through outer space.  I mean, the foreshadowing was right there, but instead we get body horror.  Very V/H/S.

Overall thoughts

I hate that I didn't hate it.  I keep wanting to leave this franchise behind.  It was way better than the last entry.  But that also didn't mean it was great.  It's a lot of gore and I want these movies to be smarter.  I don't need to be grossed out every two seconds.

Rated R for even more violent vampire gore.  There's a lot of blood.  There's a lot of death.  On top of that, some of these deaths get mildly creative, so you might not see them always coming.  If you are in the mindset of, "I can't handle vampire stuff", there's some nice turns of violence in here.  Also, exploding people.  That's a thing.  Couple that with language and conversations about drugs and that's the movie Abigail for you.

DIRECTORS:  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

I'm being greedy at this point.  There's no way that I'm going to get THIS much writing in one day.  I told myself today was going to be a vacation from writing.  Then I go off and write way too much.  Basically, I'm proud of myself.  Mind you, it's a borderline miracle that I got Oddity done today.  There's almost no prayer that I can get a blog on Abigail done.

I don't know why I was surprised that this movie was made by the Scream guys.  I'm going to get the point because I'm figuring out what I want to say while I'm writing this:  This is a really fun movie that is ultimately kind of forgettable.  I'm also stealing a lot of people's opinion with this one.  This is a movie that was absolutely wrecked by the marketing campaign.  This movie had the chance to be the next Prey but was spoiled that this was a vampire ballerina movie.  The fact that we all went to see it because it was a vampire ballerina is fine.  But the movie is structured under the assumption that you don't know who is causing the chaos in the house.  If I was the directors, I would be more than a little annoyed with the way that this movie was sold.  I would have made the movie completely differently if I had known that everyone knew that Abigail was the vampire in the house.  There's this record scratch moment that does not work once the reveal happens. We're all thinking it, right?  I mean, everyone who watched this movie didn't have that moment.  You can't even get close to approach this movie with the idea that Abigail isn't the vampire.  I watched it on Peacock.  The image for this movie is a vamped out Abigail. (Or maybe it is just her as a ballerina, in which case I mildly apologize. )

I think the directors might be ensemble cast people.   Man, they know how to make side characters interesting.  I'll be honest.  As much as I like the idea of a vampire ballerina ripping up a bunch of bad guys, I like the bad guys way better.  There are a handful of movies that kind of belong in their own subgenre and that is the "thieves in a pickle" movie.  You know that they aren't all going to make it out of there, but we're going to love how evil they are the entire time.  Honestly, Guardians of the Galaxy is the family friendly version of this genre of film.  I'm thinking also of movies like The Usual Suspects and Bad Times at the El Royale.  The things that make these movies fun to watch, if not completely memorable (I know, I just called The Usual Suspects unmemorable), is that each of the character fills the needs of a relatable archetype.  There's something so fun and edgy about making lovable monsters.  But as part of that, you need to have some archetypes that counter the mold.  For each Peter, you have a Frank.  You need to absolutely love Peter, who is just Drax by the way.  But you need to absolutely hate Frank in the process.  

And then we have Joey.  It's weird how bored I get with Joey characters.  Joey characters, in a weird way, ask us to give more sympathy than is actually deserved.  Maybe it's the former Republican in me, but Joey --and Joey types --are criminals.  They're just nicer criminals than the rest.  There's a tragic story, often involving a child.  There's always a little bit of hope.  I think the same origin story exists with Don't Breathe.  That kid exists almost exclusively on a phone in both stories.  They aren't characters.  They are there for sympathetic motivation.  We're not supposed to hate Joey.  She's the final girl.  She has this skill that got her into a lot of trouble at one point and now she's on her redemption quest.  But there's something so dull about that.  Maybe I'm just jaded at this point, but I honestly wanted Abigail to win.  Let's break that down and see what's wrong with me.

Part of what makes Abigail kind of a compelling villain is the fact that she is not a child.  She looks like a child, very much like Let the Right One In.  But she's a psychopath who will never age.  She has the power of a vampire and the skill of the most experienced ballerina of all time.  Sure, there's something satisfying about Abigail fighting Frank and Frank having the upper hand.  I can justify that in my brain.  But she makes a deal with Joey to defeat Frank, mainly because she's concerned for her own life.  See, I want Abigail to betray Joey so bad.  I don't need the other Downton Abbey actor to show up as the behind-the-curtains big bad.  That does absolutely nothing for me.  I want to be scared of Abigail.  If anything, there's something that is nerfed about Abigail in the final act of this movie.

See, the implication is that Abigail has done this over and over again.  Every choice in the film is all chalked up to Abigail playing with her food.  This is her master plan and everyone has gotten as close to defeating Abigail as Joey and Frank have.  But things quickly spiral out of control for Abigail, which makes me not fear her as much.  Yeah, we all want to see Frank explode.  It's worth it.  It gives it to you and it's everything you wanted it to be.  But I don't want the get out of jail free card for Joey.  I want the exhausted Joey to pull a Sarah Connor and fight through desperation to beat this girl.  Or, even better?  Abigail not following the rules.  The entire movie is about the fact that she completely lacks a moral compass.  There's no code for her.  After all, she does lie to Frank about And Then There Were None as a means to get out of the library.  The only reason that the door opens is because Lambert wants to betray Abigail.  (Again, why not take care of Abigail when she's incapacitated at the beginning of the film?) 

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the movie is Joey's insistence on keeping Abigail alive.  Part of me wants to tie back to the pinkie swear.  (Note:  I think that the movie forgets its own rules about how old Abigail is because it calls back the pinkie promise.) As much as Joey's archetype is the regretful mother, she's also perhaps the most practical person in the film.  The notion that she has been deceived is a powerful motivator to get rid of Abigail.  I'd also like to note that, despite Joey being the protagonist of the film, she's horribly wrong about her plan to incarcerate Abigail.  Again, this is all a game for Abigail.  The only reason that she's in the elevator as long as she is is chalked up to see if she can get the squad to turn on each other.  It's just a little bit of a weak choice to me.

But if you are watching Abigail for fun --which is not a terrible motivator --this movie is pretty darned fun.  Again, a lot of it comes down to just watching this girl rip apart this crew as their stuck in a bottle episode.  Yeah, that's a good time.  They don't all need to be genius.  Did I enjoy Abigail?  Yeah, but I will not be able to name a detail of this movie down the line.  That's okay sometimes though.

Rated R for lots of murder (but most of it off screen!), gore (but most of it caused off screen!) language, implications of rape, some ableism, and a wealth of wonderful jump scares.  There's also some spooky, spooky imagery, which the movie does incredibly well.  Still if you are easily haunted by visuals, this movie has enough of that to mess you up a bit.  R.

DIRECTOR: Damien Mc Carthy

I didn't think that I was going to be writing at least part of this today.  I just had the most productive writing session this morning and I'm trying to take advantage of the sheer stress of getting a lot of this done in the next fifteen minutes.  I know I can't finish this in an unreasonable amount of time, but I can lie to myself, can't I?

I had never heard of this one before the recommendation I got.  I have to say, 2024 might be an excellent year for horror, despite my very low threshold for horror in my old age.  But Oddity hits this sweet spot that made me completely reevaluate what I like in horror.  I may have talked about this in my Salem's Lot blog, but I have to stress that I've understood what kind of scares that I really like.  I always hear from people who swear that they don't like jump scares and it took a movie like Oddity to make me realize that I might only like jump scares.  Here's the logic, to catch you up.  I don't want to see people brutalized.  I want to know that there are real threats to characters so the suspense is high.  But a  good jump scare should have the following emotional response.  One:  You should be scared.  After all, it's a horror movie.  That's why you are watching it.  Two: You should laugh and say "That got me."  I know some people don't agree with either of those ideas.  Some people get mad when they get scared and then get really emotional at step two.  Nah, I'm all about the laugh afterwards.

Besides being incredibly Irish (It's Irish, right?  I'll be mortified if it wasn't.), the movie has a lot of plates up in the air.  (Back to the Irish bit, I can probably get people to watch this on the sheer idea that it's an Irish ghost story in a lovely abandoned cabin / castle.) Every time that I try solving what kind of movie this is, it keeps kind of shifting around the rules.  It never breaks its own rules, but it does play with the notion that there is a lot that might not be explained the easy way.  For a minute, I almost got frustrated with the movie.  That might come with my old age because, in minute ten,  I said, "Who's that?  Who are these people?"  That's what old people do.  They don't give the movie a chance to explain anything.  Still, I figured it out pretty quick and when I did, the movie just became a joy to watch.  Traditionally, I like a movie being a ghost movie or a slasher movie.  This movie really ties the two together really well.  Honestly, the ghost element of the movie, while appropriately haunting, is more of a super power than it is a traditional, "were gonna get you" situation.   Darcy is the protagonist of the piece.  She is trying to unspool this mystery and she's using the supernatural to do it.  Sure, Darcy is an incredibly unlikable character.  Well, maybe "incredibly" is a bit harsh.  She is caustic and honest with people and that can come across as a bit much.  But as a protagonist, she really reads as someone who isn't even pretending to play the game.  Instead, she's a sledgehammer when it comes to achieving her goal.

I do love the flashback stuff.  I love the Olin stuff a lot.  The movie really did sell me on the entire opening of the movie.  The man speaking through the door was the ultimate campfire ghost story.  There's something fascinating with that situation.  The killer is either inside the house or outside the house.  Because this is the beginning of the movie and we need to have an inciting incident, we knew that no matter what choice Darci made, it was going to be the wrong one.  She stayed in the house, ignoring the freakish (it's intentionally freakish and I feel bad for saying that) man warning her about the killer in the house.  Okay, cool.  We, by that knowledge, that she was going to die by killer.  Had she trusted Olin --poor, poor Olin --then Olin would have been the killer and that would have been a cautionary tale about trusting a stranger.  

But that payoff?  Chef's kiss!  The way that Mc Carthy splits up that narrative is perfect.  And the thing is, I'm not sure why he does so outside of the desired suspense that accompanies such an event.  Narratively, nothing is really added to the story by splitting it up.  Once again, spoilers.  By this point in the film, you can suspect Ted all you want of having arranged a killer to take care of his wife.  If you pulled that off, good for you.  I don't think I was even in the headspace to take the story apart like that for the first time.  Instead, I was too busy trying to stay on the treadmill after a sick jump scare.  But narratively, we gain nothing except for finding out that Olin isn't a bad guy and that she should have trusted him.  This is right before the other shoe drops about Ted and Ivan's schemes to get rid of Ted's wife.  I started out this whole thing basically saying that there are a million plates in the air.  Apparently, to pull that off properly, you might need to do things a little nontraditionally.  Everything in this movie matters.  I might need to rewatch it before I can say that confidently.  But it feels like this is meticulously crafted.  But to make it a proper horror movie, you also need to be a real stickler for pacing.  I don't know how this scene works so well, but I don't think I've ever enjoyed a flashback more.

One thing that might be a hat on top of a hat?  The golem.  The golem is creepy.  I don't deny that.  A lot of the imagery from this film comes back to the golem.  Part of it has t do with Darcy being more than a one-trick pony.  (Also, before I forget.  Why does Ted give Darcy something that could potentially incriminate him?  I get that he doesn't believe it.  But if he doesn't believe it, why not give her something that had nothing to do with him?)  The golem is a way to set up the final act.  There needs to be some kind of confrontation.  Darcy can't be that confrontation.   Darcy is spooky through her weakness, not through her physical abilities.  We're supposed to be on Darcy's side, but we're all not looking forward for a fight with her and anybody.  Instead, the Golem acts like a mech suit.  (Why did I capitalize it there?)  But we don't really have a lot of information or investment in the golem outside of the fact that Darcy specializes in oddities.  Hence, the title of the movie.  But I'll stand by that.  The golem is a bit of a hat on top of a hat.  There are so many spooky things in this movie that we almost don't need the golem.  It's weird that I'll defend Ivan's spooky mask, but won't give the golem a chance.  Also --and I'm pretty proud of this --the golem didn't really scare me in the way that it was supposed to.  Did I find the objects in the head a bit cool?  Absolutely.  Was the golem, when it was used, somewhat creepy?  Yeah.  It's just that, narratively, it doesn't do much for me.

But Oddity completely slaps.  I know that those in the know aren't hearing anything new.  But I wasn't in the know.  Is it worth getting a Shudder account?  Probably not.  But if you were going to spend a month with a free trial, Oddity is a must watch on the streaming service.  Golly, if I could hand this DVD to people, that would be my recommended form of selling this movie.  But it is one of those greats.  Best recommendation this year.

Rated R for a lot of death --like on a next level --including some of the child characters.  There's swearing throughout and some stuff that might touch a little on blasphemy for the more theologically sensitive.  There's alcoholism, which is oddly a recurring motif throughout the movie.  Still, this is a pretty gnarly vampire movie that has some cool-yet-terrifying vampires.  Or maybe they're cool BECAUSE they are terrifying.  R.

DIRECTOR:  Gary Dauberman

See, I did catch a scary movie that wasn't a commentary on other movies.  Okay, this is one of those vampire movies that is aggressively a retelling of Dracula.  But I also feel like Salem's Lot as a story is its own thing because it's not directly tied to the whole Dracula thing.  But I need to tell you.  There's a lot of reviews that call this movie's greatest sin as being "only okay."  See, I have that criticism about a lot of movies.  I don't think that Salem's Lot falls into that camp.  I think Rise of Skywalker falls into that camp.  This is no Rise of Skywalker.

Honestly, my biggest frustration with the middling reviews on this movie is that it almost has the same quality as It.  Both are written by the same dude, and I'm not talking Stephen King here.  Gary Dauberman is an anchor in both movies and Salem's Lot owes a lot to the success of the It remake.  Aesthetically, it almost feels like Salem's Lot falls into the same universe.  Now, I know that there are Salem's Lot megafans.  I'm talking about the book here.  I can even guess that one of them that I know down the hall might be reading this and, you know what?  Good for him.  Do I understand that the adaptation of Salem's Lot is different enough that the book?  Absolutely.  I even read the book and remember parts of it.  But as a movie?  As a movie that does a lot of the book (while parts may be different)?  This movie absolutely slaps.  Sure, it will never be on the top tier vampire movies.  I'm super glad that I watched it on streaming because I probably wouldn't necessarily own this movie unless it was truly affordable and Meijer had it on a sick display saying "Buy me."  (I'm easily swayed by level of effort to buy physical media.)  But I do know that I had a heck of a time with this movie.  Now, it might be down to the idea that all of you talked some real trash about this movie.  I did go into it with trepidation.  But I'll tell you what?  This might be as good of a Salem's Lot adaptation that we can get.

That's the biggest selling point about Salem's Lot.  This is a movie that is not forgetting to have fun, despite the fact that it might be incredibly creepy.  I was lamenting the fact that horror movies are probably not good for me.  I don't like watching people get ripped apart.  Yet, while watching about an infestation of vampires, those concerns went out the window.  It's not like there's no gore in the movie.  It's more along the lines that I'm not watching the movie for the gore.  I know that a lot of people have a hard time accepting jump scares.  I'm going to make the argument that jump scares are healthy scares.  As a guy who just watched In a Violent Nature, I'm going to preach about how gore seems exploitative and jump scares just feel fun.  In a Violent Nature, by its very structure, cannot have a jump scare.  So all of the weight goes into watching people get butchered.  But it gets wildly depressing.  However, these vampire hunters being picked off one-by-one?  That gets my heart racing and makes me laugh.  I'm not saying that Salem's Lot is not violent.  It totally is.  At times, you might even argue it gets excessive.  But it never really feels like I'm watching people get butchered.  

Instead, the movie hinges on the idea that anyone, at any point, can bite it (pun intended).   That's genuine suspense.  Here's the deal!  I've read the book.  I've stated this, but I cannot stress this enough.  I read the book and I was still shocked by certain deaths in this movie.  Dramatic irony is important to the horror movie.  While Salem's Lot is not exactly treading new ground, the individual elements of this movie carry a lot of the movie to make it borderline something special.  It doesn't hurt that it has a '70s aesthetic.  I do love the fact that Dauberman learned from It that setting something in another era totally helps make the setting something unique (ironic, considering that I want all movies to take place in a bygone era).  But King and Dauberman made these characters likable.  We want all of them to survive and very few of them do.  Heck, this movie gave us a romance to root for and that romance is undone before the final act of the film.  That's insane to me.  Don't even talk to me about the multiple bromances that get torn apart.

Let's talk about MVP Mark.   In my head, this was a movie about Ben Mears and how he was the outsider who ends up fighting the whole town.  Yeah, Ben still gets the lion's share of screentime.  But this movie has more in common with The Lost Boys in terms of comic book kids fighting vampires.  I don't know what it is about Mark and how just cool with fighting the undead this kid gets.  He makes every scene so much better.  I'm not being hyperbolic.  This isn't, "I really like this character or performer."  This is, Ben the protagonist does what most people would do and flail in the face of evil.  Mark is there to pull the pin out of every grenade in the best possible way.  I'm sure that there were a vocal percentage of the people who watched this movie and were upset about the end drastically changing.  (I, too, think it is silly that all of the vampires would park out at the drive-in, leaving them vulnerable.  But I also think that a giant fight sequence at the drive-in was absolutely sick, so I'll turn my brain off for two seconds.)   But Mark taking out the screen to let the sun in was cheer worthy.  CHEER.  WORTHY.  I couldn't believe how much cool stuff that they gave to this character.  It also stays with the theme of the outsider having to expose light (pun intended) on the flaws of this small town.  Making him a Black teen goes even further, especially given a town of mostly white people.

I don't know, man. I loved this movie.  I thought it was one of the more fun horror movies that I've seen in a while.  I'll even be honest.  I thought that Salem's Lot wasn't my favorite King.  It's not bad, but it was never my favorite.  This movie makes me consider rereading the book just so I can have the same amount of fun that I have while watching the movie.  It's a solid time that ticked off all of my boxes.

Not rated, but that's because the movie is over-the-top brutal.  If this is a send up of the sleepaway camp / cabin in the woods slasher movie, this movie (at times) tries to outdo the very thing that it is sending up.  There is one death that is so absolutely bonkers that I'm sure that the internet has been talking about it all year.  It's a lot.  There's implied sexuality and sex talk on top of all of the violence.  Also, there is some drinking and drug use coupled with language.  The movie even addresses its own ableism.  Regardless, somehow not rated?

DIRECTOR: Chris Nash

And we're back to spooky season.'  I don't know how many of these movies I'll be able to get in.  The funny thing is that I have watched a handful of movies that have all been bangers so far, yet I'm already tired of all the gore. I  don't know how people do the 31-for-31 October horror movies.  Maybe it's good that I'm starting to become sensitized to all of this infernal carnage.  But it still doesn't stop me from appreciating a well-made horror movie.

But I do have to question whether my blogging and my film class has only made me receptive to movies that act as commentaries on the genre.  Am I such a snob that I can't just enjoy a standard horror movie within a subgenre?  I'll admit.  I'm in the camp slasher fandom.  Out of all of the horror subgenres, I think that the slasher movie tends to be my favorite.  Witches do almost nothing for me.  Slashers I feel like I can cheer along for the survivors.  The funny thing is, outside of movies like In a Violent Nature (a title I keep forgetting given fifteen minutes of not engaging with the title itself.  For those who don't know about this one, this is another movie that turns a subgenre on its head.  The change is a simple one.  Instead of making the victims the focal point of the story --making them the protagonists --we are following the killer.  Over the course of the movie, we learn rudimentary things about the story behind the story and that keeps us going.  If anything, it's meant for us to distance ourselves from the partygoing teens in an attempt to explain what is happening with the killer.

If anything, this movie might be a response to video games.  There is a subgenre ("Say 'subgenre' one more time!") of horror video game that has a 1-4 dynamic.  One person plays the monster; the other four play the survivors.  The goal is to escape or kill the monster, who is overpowered and has abilities that the survivors lack.  Now, to play this kind of game, the person who plays the monster has intimate knowledge of what the killer is doing. They have all of that in-between time that the movies tend to ignore.  There have been many a movie where I've shouted at the screen "How did he get there so quickly?"  After all, as Johnny does in In a Violent Nature, running seems to be borderline offensive to the character.  So for the sake of storytelling, this movie posits the notion "What is the killer doing for the majority of the film?"

The most double-edged sword I can offer to In a Violent Nature is either the word "clever" or "neat."  Listen, I enjoyed this movie.  I signed up wholeheartedly to watch this movie in the hopes that it was going to scratch an itch and it definitely does that.  But in terms of objectivity towards a movie, it can only go as far as "clever" or "neat".  The movie is serving as a commentary on a subgenre.  The commentary is that there is more to the story than just the victims.  Okay, that message is pretty clear.  It's not that we get a rich emotional story.  Johnny's backstory, while very in the realm of the camp slasher tradition, isn't something groundbreaking.  If anything, it might be a bit more reductive than the stuff we get with Jason.  There's only an impression that Jason in Friday the 13th has some kind of disorder.  But In a Violent Nature spells out Johnny's mental disorder.  What we do get is not a sympathetic killer.  I know that if I was making this movie, I would be tempted to give something beyond the tropes presented in this film's ancestors.  But the movie is not trying to do Wicked.  It's dogmatically attaching itself to its progenitors almost to a fault.

But, and I really have to make myself clear, that's a good thing in terms of fun.  In a Violent Nature never laughs at itself, but you also can't help but having fun with it.  Aesthetically, the movie is dead on in line with the greats like Sleepaway Camp, Halloween, or the aforementioned Friday the 13th.  If this movie was not shot on film, I would have to tell you that we are living in the future.  Frame-for-frame, the movie tries to duplicate its retro pastiche both in aspect ration and graininess of film.  The color palate, despite being a movie that is supposed to take place in contemporary times, does more to feel vintage than anything else.  There's one moment that might be overlooked by others.  I don't know.  I haven't read a ton about this movie in an attempt to keep the movie fresh.  But early in the movie, Johnny looks into a mirror and they do this perfectly campy mirror flashback that, again!, never laughs at itself.  Instead, it just creates a sense of authenticity to a movie that is standing on the shoulders of giants.

Can I tell you my favorite secret thing?  I have to imagine that this movie is someone's baby. I'm going to point to Chris Nash, of whom I know nothing.  Nash is so in love with this genre that there are so many nods to other movies.  He never takes a flashlight to these moments.  Instead, he acknowledges that the people who get the references will love the references, but it doesn't matter if you do.  My favorite little detail is that the movie is a sequel to a franchise of movies that don't exist. When we meet the park ranger, we're given all of this backstory of a legacy that has been passed down.  Not only is In a Violent Nature a sequel to a movie that didn't exist, but it feels like Part IV or V of a franchise of movies that we are only peeking in on now.  Yeah, the medallion thing is spelled out.  Chris Nash doesn't want us completely lost on the rules of Johnny.  But we only get just enough to understand that there's greater meaning to how Johnny works.  I adore that.

I do want to talk about the end.  The jury is still out on how I feel about the end.  (Aren't I the jury?  Yup.) There are some moments where the movie is handed off to the teenagers and I don't necessarily hate that. If we're using the structure of a sleepaway slasher, we'll occasionally flash to the killer for the sake of suspense.  Nash hands the story off to the teenagers when we need vital information.  After all, Johnny being mute limits how much content we can actually get from this character.  But the end of the movie shifts to the final girl, who (and I don't care for this moment) abandons her plan to fight the monster in the woods dead-on.  I just haven't seen an "abandon ship" ending for a film.  Instead, she's picked up by a Good Samaritan, who talks her ear off for maybe eight or nine minutes of screen time.  Now, in terms of suspense, I really like this ending.  I think that the movie is betraying its central conceit: make the movie about the killer.  When the Good Samaritan picks up the Final Girl, we have to assume that she's got ties to Johnny.  We're supposed to think that.  But the movie ends anticlimactically.  She's just a Good Samaritan and that's how the movie ends.  

That's a lot of screen time for someone who isn't the killer when the movie is supposed to be about the killer.  If the movie used the escape from Johnny as a hand-off to a Mrs. Voorhees type, then I would have applauded.  But that doesn't really sync with the film.  Also, the words have lesser meaning if she's not the killer.  I do kind of applaud the notion that we're all tricked into thinking that there's a knife behind someone's back when, in reality, it's just a conclusion to a movie about Johnny.  I don't know if there could really be a movie where the Final Girl doesn't have the showdown with the Big Bad. Considering how much effort was put into making this seem like a real horror sequel, I just don't see the movie from the other perspective with an avoidance of the final showdown. It's just such a lost opportunity to make a commentary on formula.  (Although, avoiding a formula is a commentary on formula.) 

But still, the movie absolutely slaps.  Do I think I'll rewatch it?  Probably not.  While the movie is charming as can be (which is weird to say about a brutal murder movie), there is something almost academic about watching the movie.  The fun is there, but not in a joint communal experience.  Instead, my brain was constantly analyzing scenes.  Since Johnny is a copy of Jason, I couldn't stop making comparisons to Friday the 13th movies.  That leaves me kind of hanging in terms of rewatchability.  But did I enjoy it this time?  Absolutely.

PG because it does get a bit frightening at times.  While not necessarily being a story about mortality, there is a fair share of death in this movie.  None of it is gratuitous, but you might --as a parent --be having a conversation about characters dying.  Children's movies also like frightening scenarios that make younger children nervous.  But the movie is also incredibly emotional, which might make your kids cry.  My six-year-old, who tends to be emotionless, actively wept for the finale of this movie.

DIRECTOR:  Chris Sanders

What?!  I know.  It's not spooky season themed.  But do you know what?  Family movie nights don't count.  Also, it was one of those movies that has gotten so much good press, that we absolutely had to watch it.  I don't know what the marketing strategy is for this movie, though.  It's absolutely crushing at the box office and then they made it available for home ownership?  I don't mind.  We did a chilly garage movie and it was everything I wanted from garage family movie night.

What is it about robots feeling emotions that hits the nail on the head?  Seriously.  Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wall-E, The Iron Giant?  Now this?  Something about the potentiality of feeling is something that is so glorious to us.  I have a theory.  After all, this blog forces me to have theories about what is going on inside the human consciousness that makes us react the way we do.  The Wild Robot completely understands what it is that makes us cry.  As pointed out in the MPA section above, my six-year-old, who traditionally does not care about anything, was openly weeping for the end of this movie in the best way.  I can't weep at movies and here is this kid, completely getting the emotional resonance of the end of the film.  She was right.  I wished that I could cry like she was crying at the end of the movie.  Again, I have to stress that I'm positively dead inside.  But if I had to be clinical about it, it almost makes no sense that we bond over cybernetic, unfeeling characters more than we do ones that over-emote.  

Part of that comes from the appreciation of emotion.  With robots, there's the understanding that the robot doesn't need to do what it is doing.  Robots aren't part of the social contract.  A recurring motif in The Wild Robot is the notion of programming, especially in terms of completing goals.  These robots all tend to get emotions accidentally.  They view humanity from the perspective of the outsider.  In the case of The Wild Robot, humanity is parsed off to personified animals, but you get where I'm going with this.  Human like traits are initially seen as absurd and counter to logical ways of functioning.  After all, Brightbill is meant to be discarded as the runt of the litter.  The notion that Brightbill has value should be completely lost on this robot, who is simply completing a job.  But it is the overriding of programming that is somehow an emotional choice for us.  So, we could look at the value of the robot who has emotions in different ways.

The first value might be the idea that we, as people, are programmed to do things.  After all, most protagonists serve as avatars for the audience. Our entire lives, we are programmed with the things that make us who we are.  It's why we might mirror our family's politics growing up.  But it is when we discover our actual beliefs, often in situations of great diversity, that we have that emotional resonance with others.  Maybe the robot isn't such a bad idea in that case.  We open our eyes to the greater things in life.  With the case of Roz and Brightbill, it is the awareness that comes with being a parent.  Double so, if you consider this from the perspective of an adoptive parent.  If you do, which I hope is actually the case, it is tied to the notion that people weren't necessarily born parents.  It's the idea that the process of parenting is a bit of give-and-take until one becomes something else as the child develops.  That's a glorious thought.

But the movie can also be from the perspective that all feeling is important feeling.  Roz very rarely has happy moments in the story.  Maybe as a means of locking that evidence in place, most of the happy moments actually occur before Roz is able to process these feelings.  The playfulness that comes with Roz, Fink, and Brightbill are all in those early Eve moments from Wall-E, where she is unable to see the greater value of the simple.  Roz sees herself as a robot for the Rozzum Corporation, first and foremost.  Play is simply a means to achieving a goal.  But when Roz actively chooses a course of action beyond what is considered foreign to programming, every single one of those moments is sacrificial.  There may be joy to Roz teaching Brightbill how to fly. But that moment is bittersweet, given the fact that the skill taught will only lead to Brightbill leaving sooner. Roz, due to her outsider and practical status, is almost hyperaware that everything that she is doing will lead to her own sense of loss.  

You can see why my six-year-old cried.

From a film perspective, the structure of The Wild Robot is a bit confusing to me.  If you have not picked up on this, I do think that the movie is fantastic. My son, who has read the book, says that this movie is his favorite.  I genuinely believe that to be true.  Mind you, I'm going to have to do another check in once we get another Spider-Verse movie.  But he's right.  This movie does absolutely deserve all the accolades it is getting. The only thing is the structure that I started talking about.  I'm really used to children's tropes at this point.  We have The Little Engine that Could element of the story.  We have The Mitten element of the story.  We have the false utopia of Toy Story 3.  All of these have done with one of these elements and had the entire movie built around that concept.  Getting Brightbill to fly seems like the foundational piece of the film.  But that's also a hard sell for a concept.  I have The Little Engine that Could as my example, but we could also look to Vanelope learning to drive in Wreck-It Ralph as our example as well.  The entire film of Wreck-It Ralph is, at its core, trying to get Vanelope to be a racer.  It has B-and-C storylines.  That's not what is going on with The Wild Robot.

To a certain extent --and I apologize for painting with a wide brush --the movie is a series of mini-stories.  Getting Brightbill to fly is the first story and it will have consequences later in the film.  But the movie keeps giving the movie more stories. And, somehow, each story works. After Brightbill leaves, the story becomes about loneliness and purposelessness.  It --and if I was being a real jerk, I could talk about how absurd it is having the predators and prey live together --becomes something about finding value in fundamentally different communities.  It's beautiful and painful as Roz struggles to survive as everyone else thrives.   That story ends and then the movie becomes about found family versus being attached to one's roots.  And the kicker!  The movie ties all the disparate plots back together.  This seems a lot less impressive than it is.  But the odd part really lies in how the movie makes clear delineations between the separate stories.  Usually, all of those elements are muddied together and The Wild Robot was just cool with making them separate stories.  I love it.

I have been vocal about how cool animation looks today.  I saw an X post complaining about how new animation looks like trash compared to the old Snow White era Disney stuff.  I hate the comparison.  These are different things. Do I tend to like Pixar stuff more than DreamWorks?  For the most part, yes.  But DreamWorks hasn't been phoning it in lately.  Sure, there's going to be a moment when I have to admit that all of this cool stuff is starting to look a bit similar.  That's the course I imagine that we're going to get post Into the Spider-Verse.  But, my goodness!, does The Wild Robot look pretty.  It feels so frenetic and lived in.  I don't know why robot battle damage goes a long way to making a movie look glorious, but it does?  I can't explain it.

I'm going to be a bit open about something that could be considered a bit of a weakness when it comes to The Wild Robot.   I don't consider this to be a weakness, but I can be kind of objective at the same time.  The movie has the same problem that Steven Moffat's time on Doctor Who did.  Now, I consider the Moffat era to be the quintessential era of Who out there because of this choice.  But I'm also aware that I don't have a leg to stand on (much like Roz!) when it comes to this argument.  I love when Doctor Who wins because of love.  I do.  I think it's top tier storytelling when the goodness of someone is what overcomes the threat of the story.  Moffat's Doctor did that a lot.  People believed in love, thus the bad guy who left packing.  It's touching.  The Wild Robot has scores of these moments.  Fundamentally, none of this movie should work out the way a logical movie would demand.  It's all that emotional value, which some might find annoying.

​Not me.  I like that stuff.

Rated R for some demonic stuff and some pretty gnarly horror effects throughout the movie.  There's also language, violence, gore, and some upsetting imagery that has to do with cancer.  A lot of the movie is tame until it is not.  It has the structure of a Paranormal Activity movie that is framed around suspense until it unleashes the drop, so you can watch a chunk of the movie waiting for something to happen.  Still, I would not let kids watch any part of this movie.  R.

DIRECTORS:  Cameron and Colin Cairnes

I'm so bad about spooky season this year, guys.  I really have a list of movies that I want to watch.  But I'm also watching too many TV shows (now that fresh episodes of shows are coming out weekly) that have spoilery things that will happen and I don't want them ruined for me like the reveal of the Teen on Agatha All Along was spoiled for me.  My life is really hard, guys.  Secretly, I'm a little happy that all this TV watching has given me a short break when it comes to updating the blog, but I do want to fill this space with some really great horror that I haven't seen before.

I almost got a Shudder account for Late Night with the Devil.  This is a specific button that I have probably talked about on here, but faux nostalgia done right is one of my favorite things.  I understand that, if I like Late Night with the Devil, I would probably like the WNUF Halloween Special.  I don't know what it is about really well done found-footage that gets me so well, but Late Night with the Devil hits almost every button I have.  To be sure, there are beats that I think might need some polish.  I hate to comment on any one performance, but a lot of the stuff coming from Ian Bliss's Carmichael Haig seems a little more archetypal than nuanced.  But he has a lot of good beats, so I'm willing to excuse some shortcuts for the sake over the overall story.

I can't deny that a lot of my attraction to this film is because of the late '70s aesthetic and attention to detail.  I'm easily swayed to begin with on a lot of movies. But this movie won me over pretty well with its focus on making this really feel like a documentary.  It felt like I was watching something truly underground and elicit.  Honestly, if someone handed me a copy of Late Night with the Devil on a VHS with a scrawled version of the title on the label, that's the only thing that could have put the whole thing over the edge.  Do I have some whiny stuff to say?  Absolutely.  That should be the name of this blog:  "Whiny Things to Complain about Movies".  But there are a few moments where the verisimilitude is lost for the sake of storytelling.  I'm going to just list them here because they aren't dealbreakers for me.  It just pulls me out a bit.  I didn't love the behind the scenes stuff.  While all of that stuff narratively matters, it is absolutely absurd to think that the behind the scenes stuff was being filmed that way.  The information, as boring as it would have been, should have been caught by an abandoned camera poorly framed.  The whole point is that there was a filmmaker who discovered all of this footage from a watershed moment in television history and cobbled it together.  The notion that someone was walking around with high def cameras gathering every detail is a bit silly.  But again, let it go. 

A similar gripe is the HD finale of the film.  If the point of the movie was to make this movie feel like found footage, seeing Jack get his comeuppance in an alternate dimension --while good for the narrative --has very little explanation.  I know that there's a bit of a tease to make us question if the high def portion of the movie really happened or was part of a mass hysteria is a cool idea.  I just don't think the film finally sold that ending as concretely as the movie thinks it did.  Still, we kind of needed to have our hand held a little bit to close up all of this world building that was being sprinkled throughout the film. 

But to complain about these things is missing the point of the film.  While I don't necessarily think that movies like Late Night with the Devil are loftier films, it is addressing an almost alternative narrative that preys on fears that we keep returning to.  I adore that the film introduces itself with the smallest amount of context with the Satanic Panic.  It's funny.  The Satanic Panic was a throwback to an era where people were incredibly gullible.  It was something to point at and show how far we've come as a people in terms of understanding of how information works.  But I'm in the shadow of Marjorie Taylor Greene spreading misinformation about Democratic hurricane machines and maybe Late Night with the Devil plays something fairly interesting with us.  Now, if I was to say that Late Night with the Devil is a commentary on how misinformation is dangerous, that'd be wrong.  Part of the thing that we're rooting for -and, by proxy, against -is for the devil to be real.  Carmichael's entire character is there to be annoying.  He's Walter Peck for the EPA.  We understand that what he's doing is probably the moral thing in the room, but the way he approaches it is insufferable.  It's marrying the bad person with the moral crusade.  When Abraxas reveals himself, it's almost cathartic knowing that the silver lining to the whole thing is that Carmichael is seen to be an idiot.

But I also love that there's almost a haunted house quality to the film.  I'm not talking as if the film was about a haunted house.  I'm talking about something that you do at Halloween.  (At least, I did as a kid.) There's this sideshow element of trying to get the audience involved in the scares that is fascinating.  For a minute, I was incredibly skeptical about the hypnosis scene.  I just did not care for it.  I thought that it didn't make sense for us to see what Gus is seeing.  But by the time the giant worm came out of Gus's eye (yup!), I was completely on board.  If the conceit of the film is that you are watching something elicit and underground, there's no greater reveal than you, the viewer, being part of the show.  It works really well.  Like, I went from being a skeptic about that scene to maybe doubling down on how that might have been one of my favorite reveals in horror that I've seen recently.

The oddest part of the movie --which is actually a horror staple that I missed --is the odd moral character of Jack Delroy.  Jack is incredibly sympathetic for a lot of the movie.  It's amazing that the directors managed to get us to sympathize with Jack considering that his goals for the film are incredibly superficial.  He wants to be the most famous man ever.  That's not something that you give a character that we're meant to sympathize with.  That's usually the bad guy's trait.  In fact, as the film goes on, we learn that Jack is almost in no way sympathetic.  My biggest complaint about Smile is that the protagonist doesn't do anything immoral to deserve all of the torture that is laid upon her for the film.  But Jack?  Jack keeps pushing that button a little further.  Then we found out the very thing that elicits our sympathy is actually caused by the protagonist.  I love that.  I mean, it's not subtle.  Jack is almost too endearing to be true as a late night host.  We've also been programmed to understand that hubris needs to be punished and the filmmakers knew what to do with that as a character.  The odd thing is to juxtapose him with Gus.  

Gus is the moral dope of the movie.  I don't mean that those with morality are dopes.  Gus is a dope.  He's also the voice of reason in this movie.  But you combine those two archetypes, you get yourself questioning your own morality.  You need a Gus.  Jack can't keep pushing for the story to go bad.  Instead, the movie gives us the angel and devil tropes though the form of Gus and the producer.  But we also know that we only get Gus in the form of complaining Gus.  It's a bit unfair, but it's also the exact character that you need for that spot.  It's the character that warns us about stuff, only to be right the entire time.  Yeah, I don't like Gus. But I think that's more damning about the state of people that we don't like Gus.

Honestly, Late Night with the Devil is top tier horror.  I wasn't disappointed with this one, which is rare for me in spooky season.  Do I want this on VHS?  Absolutely.  Will I probably watch it again?  You know what?  This might make a perfect party movie.

Rated R for a lot of sexual references, including clothed on-screen sexuality.  There's also a ton of drug use and drug use. There is death, but more of the issue is how people react to death as opposed to outright murder.  But there is some violence in here as well.  Along with language.  Along with adultery. Really, this movie has a lot.

DIRECTOR: Greg Jardin

There's so much writing today.  I wrote too much for the book today and now I'm trying to get this blog done.  Also, the weird part of it all is that this is my inaugural entry for 2024's spooky season, when really it's more horror adjacent.  That's okay.  I'm not looking for over-the-top gore in my spooky season, even though that's for sure happening soon.  Anyway, I had to throw this movie at the top. io9 did a whole article on it and how genius it was, so I had to check it out for myself.

They're right.  It's pretty brilliant.  Maybe I was a bit more forgiving because I'm often taken by a twist.  This is one of those movies that really caught me off-guard.  Part of the reason it might have worked on me so well is that I stayed away from anything informative going into it.  I just knew that, aesthetically, it looked like it could get creepy.  I mean, I wasn't wrong.  It's more of an upsetting movie than it is a straight up horror movie.  It's a commentary on how people are absolutely terrible and it takes very little for inhibitions to get wiped away.

The odd epiphany I had with It's What's Inside is what horror movies (again, bear with me) comment about teenagers generationally.  It's not a surprise that horror tends to appeal more to teenage audiences than other demographics.  There's something rebellious and new about being able to see horror. Horror for children stays away from tropes introduced in R-rated (and, now, intense PG-13 movies), which leads to these films having teenage protagonists.  Now, once again, we're dealing with semi-teenage protagonists.  The narrative technically starts in high school or college and these characters are in their early 20s.  I'm in my 40s, so I hate to say that I treat 20-somethings like children.  I'm a bad person and I'm working through my personality defects.  But let's treat these characters like teenage representatives.  I was thinking about slasher movies in the '70s and '80s.  There are characters who are unlikable, who tend to be cannon fodder for the killer.  But for the most part, there's a handful of characters who we are meant to like.  We lose some of these, but our final character (tends to be a final girl) is the paragon of virtue.  The '90s and 2000s had characters a little more callous towards death.  They host parties in spite of a problem happening around them.  But ultimately, most of them are loyal to, once again, the paragon of virtue.  

But since watching Bodies Bodies Bodies and It's What's Inside (which would make an amazing double-feature), Gen Z might be the natural evolution of the awful teenager.  I feel incredibly old complaining about "kids these days".  But Gen Z horror (and horror adjacent!) doesn't mind making the protagonists completely insufferable.  Now, part of me believes that it is because, as storytellers, we've become far more comfortable with making our protagonists --regardless of age --as morally complex to the point of being straight up evil.  I'm a guy who loves Breaking Bad.  But the characters in It's What's Inside are, top to bottom, all terrible people.  Now, part of that comes from the central conceit of the movie.  Everyone, no matter how morally grounded they seem, are awful people given the opportunity to take advantage of it.  There are a handful of moments that have whiplash like moments where morality is thrown out the window.  Sure, it's in the face of trauma.  (Hey, I get why the word "Trauma" is right beneath the balcony now!) 

The second that these characters get a pass to be their worst selves --especially culminating in the death of the two on the balcony --they instantly do horrible things.  Dennis (I think he's inside Cyrus's body) instantly frames Cyrus for murder. Admittedly, it's an odd choice considering that Dennis wants to stay inside of Cyrus's body.  But even Shelby is willing to completely destroy Nikki as a form of blackmail over someone that she not only calls a friend, but also partially idolizes.   Shelby, for the bulk of the movie, is the one that has our sympathies.  But Jardin does something really smart.  The movie demands concentration.  No one knows who is who, so there's moments where you have to actively be thinking about character motivations.  Yet, Shelby does some things that make us sympathize with Cyrus.  Listen, you're supposed to hate Shelby and Cyrus.  That's the point of the movie. But when Shelby goes dark with her motivations, she becomes a straight-up villain.

It's funny how both Bodies Bodies Bodies and It's What's Inside are about rich Gen Zers (Zoomers?) at a really swanky house, spending God foresaken amounts of money before something goes horribly wrong.  Both movies are stories of circumstance.  But I wonder if Gen Z is starting to return to the narrative of economic prosperity.  It's weird.  The story I've been hearing my entire life is the story of how nothing is affordable.  Yet, every single person at that table enjoys a moderate amount of financial and social success.  It's a story of jealousy among the upper crust.  I hate that I watched Metropolitan right before this because I keep seeing rich people having rich people problems. But I am thinking that if the previous generations commented on specific vices, like premarital sex and drugs, I wonder if the bigger commentary in these rich Gen Z movies is about empathy.  

These characters have sex and do drugs.  We haven't shifted off of those moral norms as reasons to kill of characters yet.  But it seems like the drugs and sex is almost an afterthought to the fact that these characters don't really care about anyone else.  In the same way that elder Millennials have a hard time relating to younger Millennials, I wonder if elder Zoomers have a hard time relating to younger Zoomers.  The elder Zoomers that I taught were incredibly imbued with empathy while the younger ones tend to look out for number one.  That's the movie that I feel like I'm watching.  It's odd, and mainly it comes from the fact that I'm seeing someone else's face attached to the wrong character, but I don't even feel bad for Forbes at he end of the movie. We have the joy of everyone's life being destroyed.  Lord knows I rooted for the big bad behind everything when the movie ended and I adored it.  But it's because everyone is really unlikable.

But even all of this generational analysis aside, the movie works. The movie works like crazy.  Greg Jardin has such a sense of style coupled with a really clever take on the body switch story.  Yeah, it's not outright scary.  But it is fascinating and the proper amount of brain breaky.  It's a fantastic good time.

PG-13 because a lot of stuff happens off camera or is heavily implied.  It's awful people doing awful things.  One part that is particularly offensive is the implication that one of the characters did a lewd sexual act to someone in the past.  But in terms of actual R-rated language, the movie keeps it pretty mild.  There's some drunkenness and vomiting at one point in the movie as well.  

DIRECTOR: Walt Stillman

See, now I have a predicament.  Usually, it takes me a minute to get into spooky season.  My friends tend to go spooky season early. I think I'm often too exhausted to be soaking in that much gore, so I tend to delay it.  But my list of horror movies this year?  Top tier.  There are some real bangers that I'm excited to watch for the first time.  But now I'm stuck writing about a movie that I am no longer mentally excited to write about, so please tolerate my malaise as I power my way through this slog of Metropolitan.

I think, if you really tried, you could organize Criterion releases into "Things that Criterion really likes."  This is the same category as Richard Linklater movies.  It's a celebration of late '80s and '90s indie cinema.  There's indie cinema that is actually pretty darned impressive.  But a lot of the American indie movies from this era tend to be talking heads almost espousing witty bon mots.  Now, during the '90s and early 2000s, I was really into this kind of stuff.  I was obsessed with Clerks because we were all obsessed with Clerks.  But something in me got incredibly exhausted with this kind of cinema.  This almost seems like the cinema of the college student.  It was so different from everything else we were watching.  It seemed so smart (man, I'm being really rough on an entire genre of film mainly because I wasn't in love with Metropolitan).  Maybe it was the constant "looking at the strings" and forgiving things that were meant to save on a budget.  After all, indie cinema is a celebration of pure cinema, removed from the control of the motion picture studios. But Metropolitan, especially dealing with the last twenty minutes, is incredibly frustrating.

Let's talk about the end of the movie first, because it made this movie from being a tolerable three-out-of-five star rating to a two.  (I'm assuming that I'm standing by that by the time I hit Letterboxd later today.) My initial take was that Metropolitan was the least romantic romantic comedy that I have ever seen.  Part of it, understandably, is a send up of the bourgeoisie.  (Note: despite teaching the word "bourgeoisie" means "middle class", every single real-world context for the word "bourgeoisie" illustrates upper class.  I need more information.) These kids, who have few problems, seem so self-involved that even the smallest slight seems to be a major deal.  I get that Stillman wants us to be critical of these kids because they, in many ways, are the absolute worst of the worst.  Even Tom, who is our protagonist, is kind of awful because of his hypocrisy.  Yet, I'm also criticizing myself with that commentary because I'm frustrated with the cast --particularly Charlie --for hating Tom and his few mistakes.  

Back to my topic sentence!  The end!  The entire thing, as critical as it is about the insular nature of the upper crust, is the white male wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Tom and Audrey's relationship initially is quite grounded.  Audrey likes Tom.  Tom is friends with Audrey, but is dating Serena.  Okay, that's reasonable.  He's allowed to not be in love with Audrey.  It's weird that he's keeping his relationship with Serena close to the vest, but that's also his own thing.  (Also, Serena sucks, but that's not really on Tom.)  But Charlie and Tom have a complicated relationship with Audrey.  Charlie has always been in love with Audrey, but she's not into him. (There's a wonderful irony that she can't understand why Tom doesn't love her but won't give Charlie the time of day.)  But the movie needed to make a bad guy.  Listen, Charlie and Tom both have lost their shot with Audrey.  She's frustrated with both of them.  The movie, honestly, should embrace the fact that she's lost to them and dismount on that.  Instead, we have to have a cardboard cutout of a villain: Von Sloneker.  

Von Sloneker is Clerks villain.  Golly, the ponytail and everything. The stiff delivery.   (I apologize greatly to Will Kempe, who played this part.  I often blame wooden performances in these kinds of films to directors.) He's everything a shortcut of a villain should be.  On top of that, any attempts to make him somewhat relatable are instantly undone.  He is an archetype unto himself.  The odds that Audrey, who completely out of character, runs into the arms of Von Sloneker --who has the most devious of intentions for this girl.  If we're talking about the White male fantasy, especially if we're throwing around terms like "beta male", this is it.  There's always this wish-fulfillment of the underdog beating up the bully to win this vulnerable woman.  Some grand romantic gesture will undo tons of self-involved, problematic behavior because that's kind of how we're wired.  For a movie that is divorcing itself from the studio system, it embraces a trope that, in no way, reflects reality.  Even if all of the elements of this narrative led to a confrontation between Tom, Charlie, and Von Sloneker, there's no way that the results would resemble anything that we actually see in the movie.  It just lacks verisimitude.

Perhaps my greatest takeaway from Metropolitan is Nick Smith.  (Is the naming of Nick and Tom homages to The Great Gatsby?  If so, why aren't these characters inverting their names?  Tom is the outsider looking in on the wealth of the aristocracy, carrying that imposter syndrome with him everywhere he goes.) Nick is meant to suck.  He's, again, the archetype of the upper class.  He's rude and boorish, not out of abuse but out of boredom.  We've seen this before. The odd thing is that --and a lot of this comes from the fact that Chris Eigemann is the most recognizable actor in this movie --Nick is oddly likable.  I kind of love the dynamic between Nick and Tom while I find Charlie insufferable. (We're meant to. Don't worry.) I love that, as awful as Nick's methods are, he's ultimately right about Von Sloneker.  Nick can easily be diagnosed as being perhaps the most childish and insecure amongst the UHB while demonstrating overcompensatory behavior to cover up his own insecurities.  Still, I like Nick and Tom.  That goodbye in disgrace is a great moment for the character and the rest of the film suffers for him leaving.

Unfortunately, a lot of my takeaway from this movie is that I've grown out of this era of filmmaking.  It's completely unfair and I'm commenting more on myself than I am on the film.  Sure, I loathe the end of this movie.  But I also didn't care for most of it, giving me more ick when it came to the end.

Rated R because it is fundamentally about fun crime.  These are guys who don't need to get into crime, but embrace the biker lifestyle.  Apparently, if you want to be a biker, you gotta like crime.  That means that there's a lot of violence, death, and sexual assault in the movie.  There's also a ton of alcoholism and drug use in the movie.  Add to that some pretty gnarly language, and you have The Bikeriders with an R-rating.

DIRECTOR:  Jeff Nichols

Oh man, I'm kicking and screaming writing this right now.  I just wrote 1,667 words and now I have to write this?  I'm exhausted.  Honestly, I'm plum tuckered out.  The easy answer is to caffeinate myself, but my tum-tum is a little queasy and tea sounds like it wouldn't quite help that.  So what am I going to do?  I'M GOING TO POWER THROUGH THIS AND MAKE IT SOMETHING WORTH READING!

I was going to embrace spooky season.  I really was.  It's October 1st, and how exciting would it have been if every movie that I wrote about in October was somehow horror related?  But every year, Spooky Season feels more and more like a chore to me.  I was going to watch Abigail on Peacock, but then I saw The Bikeriders was also on there.  Now here's the reason that I'm really full of crap.  (Something I freely admit!) I know nothing about The Bikeriders outside the fact that I saw the poster all over France and the movie looked prestige as heck.  Spoiler alert: It absolutely was.  You know how you are not supposed to judge a book by its cover?  Yeah, I totally did that and succeeded.  I have to say, I'm a pretty big fan of this movie.  Not absolutely.  There was actually a long stretch of the movie where I did not care for it, and that mostly came down to poltiics.

There's something so fundamentally toxic at the core of The Bikeriders.  The Bikeriders harkens back to that Jack Kerouac, On the Road vibes.  There was something so counter-culture about getting on a bike and forgetting society's norms.  At its core, it should be transcendental as can  be.  It's forgetting that the world shapes people to match society.  Instead, it's embracing nature and the open road.  It's finding community in like-minded individuals and it values the individual members of the group.  Fine.  I get that.  But we also live in a world where the Proud Boys exist.  Now, if you didn't stay for the whole movie, you might think that The Bikeriders is a story embracing the chaos of biker gangs.  Johnny makes the Vandals seem to be the perfect club for finding oneself.  I should note here, before I get too far, that this is a movie based on a true story --the book being a long-form expose on the Vandals and their culture over the course of years.  I don't know how much of the adaptation is true because I never read The Bikeriders book.  Again, as much as I applaud the counter-culture element of it all, I'm definitely not into motorcycle culture.  Anyway, Johnny starts off the story as the most wholesome character imaginable.  He liked to race his bike with his friends.  He liked to talk bikes.  He's a big fan of The Wild One, a movie I now need to watch.  But because Marlon Brando likes to get into fights, Johnny models his bike club after this band of rebels that he watches on screen.

And for a while, there's something really sexy about being a rogue or an outlaw.  There's a reason that the rebel is such an appealing archetype.  THe notion of not playing by other people's rules is an appealing concept.  It's something I probably won't do.  I love me some rules too much.  But I get it.  It's that fantasy that I'm harboring.  But to bring it back to the Proud Boys, the Vandals under Johnny's watch gets pretty disturbing.  It's rebellion for rebellion's sake.  I kept having this thought that, as dark as the movie got at times when it came to violence and whatnot, that these were children out of something like Lord of the Flies.  Once these man-children had free reign and found out that no one was going to stop their awful behavior, everything had escalated to the point where it was no longer about the bikes.  That final scene with Johnny, most of the motorcycle club is sitting out in their cars, watching the carnage ahead of them unspool.  It misses the points of being passionate about what is liked.  

I'm having a stray thought that I want to follow.  I hope I don't lose my original thoughts.  Is The Bikeriders a criticism on fandom?  I tend to embrace some pretty healthy fandoms.  I'm a Star Trek and a Doctor Who fan.  I also like movies; hence the blog.  While there are incredibly toxic elements of any fandom, including the ones that I'm a part of, it seems like the more obsessive any fandom gets, the more awful it gets.  This is my whole sports thing.  Hardcore sports fans scare me.  They honestly do.  The amount of vitriol and investment that goes into that kind of tribalism is scary.  If today, I renounced my Star Trek fandom, few people would care.   Heck, the number might border on no one.  But when we look at The Bikeriders, people are almost killed for turning their back on their passion.  There's something repugnant about the shifting of priorities.  The most obvious example in the movie is Cockroach, who --in a drunken haze --reveals his passion for wanting to be a motorcycle cop.  Now, part of that comes from the anti-establishment guy embracing something that is so polar opposite from what Cockroach has embraced in the past.  But very little of it seems to be about the cop element.  It's the idea of turning in one's colors that illustrates obsessive fan behavior.  That's where Jeff Nichols sells me on the film as a whole.

The more obsessive the fan, the more it forgets the core of the belief.  Johnny is a victim of his own press.  He's a  guy who started a riding club.  The boys looked to him and he modelled himself after the rogue Marlon Brando.  It was boys playing dress up.  But as the film progressed, we see Johnny losing himself to the very cult he created.  The entire movie, he bemoans his position as the head of the Vandals.  He's always in a place where he wants to pass it off.  Part of that seems from personal exhaustion, being Johnny the Leader all the time.  But the other part of that is that he personally might not like what the Vandals have become.  The violence and debauchery is escalating.  Kathy is almost raped by the new members, whom Johnny laments as people who don't listen to him.  He has created a monster and he has to both feed it and kill it at the same time.  When he's gunned down by a zealot of the faith, it only makes the more sense.  Johnny goes from being the guy who is indulging in everyone's worst instincts to being the guy who has to be the stopgap on gangland criminality.  It's a fascinating role.  

I hate that I'm talking about Johnny so much, but his character was core to my initially not accepting this film to fully embracing it.  The part I actually liked throughout is the fact that Jodie Comer's Kathy is the main character of the film.  Okay, that might be easily debated.  She's definitely the narrator of the film.  We view all of the chaos from her, the closest thing we have as an avatar for a non-chopper culture. Comer is an amazing actress.  She's always been an amazing actress.  She might be the most underused and underrated actresses out there right now.  Comer takes Kathy and almost makes her a caricature, which is kind of brilliant. (This sounds like a backhanded compliment, so please bear with me.)  A lot of Kathy's relatability comes from the fact that we get that she was a Midwestern housewife who embraced a life of chaos because of love.  There's such a shorthand for how Kathy and Benny fall in love that we need Comer to make strong choices.  We get to understand that relationship that seems impossible and Comer does the heavy lifting on that.  I don't know what the real Kathy sounded like.  For all I know, Comer is dead-on doing an impression of the real Kathy and I'm giving her so much credit for making a strong decision.  But Kathy might be my favorite Jodie Comer role, and that's coming from a Killing Eve fan.  

Nichols challenges himself with this movie.  Considering that The Bikeriders isn't so much a traditional narrative --hence having a threadbare plot --it does act more like a cleverly crafted documentary.  Again, I'll always preach documentary over biopic.  (It's kind of a biopic, right?)   But he's got so many balls in the air, I'm amazed he lands them all.  The movie dances between Johnny, Kathy, and Benny.  Sometimes the three are all in the same scene. But Kathy's narrative is about what all three are doing, so she dances between all three personalities.  But every so often, we get this almost sympathetic story about a psychopath only referred to as The Kid.  The Kid is the White Walkers of the story.  He's there and he's closing in on our main characters.  We don't always know what The Kid's motivation is, but we know something major with this kid is going to happen.  Yeah, about ten minutes before the big Kid reveal happens, we can guess what that is going to be.  But by the time he shows up in the film, he feels inevitable.  It's a punch in the gut that the movie needs for the conclusion.  So good.

It's funny.  I haven't talked about Benny and I really consider a good chunk of this movie to be Benny's story.  Benny is the acolyte.  He's not a zealot, but he appears to be a zealot in so many scenes of the film.  I will clarify: Benny is unhealthy as can be.  I don't want a Benny in my life.  But Benny is almost the difference between a parishioner and a cultist.  The cultists need escalation.  Benny, for all of the crap that he doesn't want to do in this movie, is about the bike and the relationship.  The movie starts off with Benny refusing to take off his jacket in a bar.  Ultimately, this action leads to him in the hospital with a very real chance of losing his foot.  But the big fear isn't that he's going to lose his foot.  The real fear is that he will not be able to bike without a foot.  And for a long time, we're left really angry at Benny.  He makes his priorities clear.  The club comes first.  Kathy comes second.  His own needs come last.  (In a way.  He's incredibly selfish and self-sacrificing at the same time.) When that ending comes, it teases an element of doubt while still reassuring that Benny genuinely does love Kathy.  It's this really subtle change in him that had to be a nightmare to get just right.  Part of this probably goes to Austin Butler (who still has a bit too much Elvis to shrug off).  

The Bikeriders was something that I went into excited, lost that excitement, and then got it back in spades.  It's a mafia movie, if truth be told. But it's one of the good ones.