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Reviews
Black Narcissus (2020)
I don't understand all the negative reviews!
I was fully prepared not to enjoy this miniseries based on the lack of positive reviews but I found it really engrossing and very well done. Phenomenal acting and a slow-creep story that I thought perfectly suited the gradual collapse of this attempted convent high in the Himalayas. It was beautifully shot and the performances were wonderful, pitch-perfectly cast and completely engaging. Yes, there was suggestion at times that more was going on than was ultimately revealed to be, but I thought that a relatively dry story was told here in the most consistently entertaining and interesting way possible. If you're into stories that are unsettling and creepy without a clear, on the nose reveal of a centralized villain or antagonistic driving force, I think you'll really enjoy this show. Sometimes it's enough just to watch a journey, especially when it's told as capably as this one.
The Possession of Michael King (2014)
Not without its problems, but a strong effort nonetheless.
I'm gonna start with my main complaints and work into the good stuff.
The audio in this movie is maddening, and not in the ways that I think the filmmakers intended. The dialogue is so quiet that I needed to turn the volume almost all the way up (on a sound system, not even just TV speakers) just to hear what people were saying. I finally turned on the captions. The movie might as well have been in another language for all I got out of the spoken dialogue. At the same time, the "scary noise" stabs are so insanely loud that they were, yes, scary, but more so than that, they were unbelievably annoying.
Cacophonous, yes. Ridiculous and unnecessary, also yes. I could not possibly feel worse for whomever had to caption this movie.
There's also the issue of the deep lack of originality and laziness in the writing even amongst what I honestly do think is a cool, unique idea for a found footage movie. One of the first scenes in the movie features the main character greeting his sister with "hey, sis". Seriously? We haven't collectively moved past "hey, sis" to establish a sibling relationship yet? And the tug-on-your-heartstrings home footage of the loving wife and mother moments prior to her death? I knew nothing going into this movie and I still knew she was about to die off of that alone.
All that said, I think all of the main performances in this movie were totally decent. Shane Johnson's descent into possession is very well played and I felt like the undertone of a grief he was trying to ignore was present consistently. Ella Anderson as his daughter was adorable and genuine. There are some extremely haunting and deeply disturbing moments which don't rely on the sound stabs or jump scares to get a reaction and those are the ones that make this movie fully worthy of a watch.
All in all, I recommend this for someone looking for a decent Saturday movie night. But for the love of God, please don't watch it with headphones on.
American Horror Stories: Drive In (2021)
Manny Coto should be banned from writing dialogue for teens forever.
I'm not a teenager anymore but I can say for sure that I was definitely one more recently than episode writer Manny Coto. The plot of "Drive In" is okay, if tired, but the dialogue is where we cross a line into unforgivable territory. It was like someone's deeply uncool dad wrote a spec script in a desperate attempt to seem relevant to his teenage kid and their friends. The saddest part is, when it comes to the dialogue spoken by the adult characters, there are actually some totally decent, fun lines which is the sole reason that I even gave this episode three stars, that, and the fact that a lot of the performers did the best they could, given the material. It is just so clear that Coto believes he has a firm grasp on what "the youth" are like nowadays, but the chasm between his perception and reality is so wide it could fit every cringeworthy moment in every season of AHS inside of it.
"An oyster ready for shucking"? Namechecking 4Chan in 2021? How is this person getting work??
Pig Hag (2019)
I'm glad I sat through to the end.
I was definitely unconvinced about this movie in the beginning and, honestly, up until about halfway through. The constant anger spouted by Jodie, the protagonist (although she's kind of also the antagonist), is definitely exhausting. Everyone knows or has known someone like her, someone who has so much anger inside of them that it comes out in every word they say, no matter what they're talking about, and in her you are bound to see your own person and feel the exhaustion you've felt around them. In the first half of the movie, it definitely starts to feel like this is all this character has to offer, like the writer forgot to give her dimension or even just a setting below "full blast". This, coupled with the borderline offensively stereotypical "LA gays" and the way that they're portrayed as little more than a Greek Chorus doesn't make for a particularly stimulating or even pleasant watch. However, the further into the movie we get, we start to see more of the real pain Jodie is in, and it does absolute wonders for the way a viewer can connect to her. The emotional range of Anna Schlegel becomes so much more apparent in these moments, and it's the first time you get the feeling that any of the filmmakers really understood how to utilize her talent.
This is not a comfortable movie to watch and it might even feel somewhat pointless when all is said and done, but the fact of the matter is, not every movie needs to have a moral or even a sense of closure. While this movie has neither, it does provide a character study that I think isn't seen very often, a truly unglamorous and relentless look at the ugliest places we go in our own heads when we feel unloved.
Vivarium (2019)
A great concept with an amateur execution
When I watched the trailer for Vivarium I was immediately intrigued. The concept was definitely enticing, it seemed fresh and unique, and I do love Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. The concept, admittedly, IS both enticing and unique- the issue lies not with the central plot or themes, but, unfortunately, with the execution of the story.
Any good story is dependent on one thing: "yes". The characters must say "yes", literally or figuratively, to their surroundings. "Yes" to fighting their individual battle. "Yes" to acknowledging their circumstances. "Yes" to each other, whether or not that means supporting each other in their decisions or simply acknowledging that they are taking place. Vivarium is a story full of "no", and that is its ultimate downfall.
"No" is not a compelling story arc. "No" is boring. "No" not only stops plot development in its tracks, it stops the audience from caring a lick about the characters or what happens next. I can't imagine how much more interesting and compelling this moving would have been had either of the main characters decided to acquiesce to their surroundings, even falsely or superficially, to pay attention to the incredibly simple directions they were given of "raise the child and be released". It seems like a no brainer that they were being observed or tracked after a certain (very early) point, yet they seem to rage against that reality constantly. I can imagine resisting for the first bit of their time in this strange and isolated environment, but to constantly maintain their denial is not only totally unrealistic, it is objectively boring.
Film writers who write characters which are made to seem smart, yet constantly make incredibly stupid decisions, alienate their audiences.
Fantastical sci-fi narratives, especially when they feature human or humanoid characters, still need to be rooted in realistic human emotion. That's what makes a story about aliens or fairies or wizards relatable. It makes a totally unrealistic narrative something that people can place themselves in, which keeps us invested. This movie was centralized on two people who continuously made the most nonsensical, stupid decisions at every turn, which, in my personal case, made me feel completely alienated from them. I didn't care about their emotional arcs because they were so lazily touched upon. By the end, I really couldn't have cared less about what happened to them, because I was never given a reason to care.
Vivarium was a wonderful concept executed lazily and haphazardly, a waste of two phenomenal actors, and a waste of my time. At least they got a good editor to make their trailer. Watch that instead, and then move on with your day.