Reviews

.. just the free trial and cancelled when I couldn't figure out how to download it and keep it forever.. had watched and liked Host during the early covid days and later stumbled on this and needed to see it from watching teaser trailers - I found it leaps above Host - the "live" horror moments and effects - the gore and gross-outs - as a whole scarier, weirder, freakier, funner and furiouser.. with the added plus of introducing me to a brand-new crush: I, unlike nearly everyone else whose reviews/opinions/belly-aches I've read regarding this movie - totally fell in love with Annie Hardy who I'd never heard of before and promptly started listening to her music and following her IG all of which only further solidified my total head-over-heels for her.. I'd put her in a movie in a second.. and I thought her kind-of "non-horror-y" ridiculousness worked great against the building dread and increasingly tense, scary situation - and made her freaking out feel kinda.. "real".. I got scared.. and scared for her! She's awesome, Dashcam is awesome - it should have more fans - get seen more - get around more in the horror-fan world..

Pretty much loved this through and through - the blaring pop-punk soundtrack - Francis Raines' believable acting/characterization - the weird off-kilter blend of the banal and truly bizarre - the use of real apartments/clubs/videostore/Waterbury streets in which it all takes place - guaranteeing nothing feels like a "cheap set" despite (and/or because of it) being a low-budget production.. there's great choices being made all over the place here including a plethora of odd-ball, random little details - like shrimp newberg for dinner (!?!) - realizing she lives right across the street from the cemetery - or the ridiculous Groucho Marx statue in her apartment (that takes on a truly creepy demeanor at one point) - make it much richer a watch than expected and not just a by-the-books/let's-make-a-buck exploitationer.. and when it shifts from being (mostly) "I know where this is going" into something darker, more sinister and more somewhat incomprehensible - it manages to become truly frightening and nightmarish.. and that cacophonous noise coming out of her phone is pretty darn unsettling.. all of the reviews I read (positive or negative) pointed out a particular shot as a complaint towards being amateurish - a shot that actually had me almost leaping outta my seat thinking how bold and beautiful a choice it was - and it doesn't feel out of place in a movie that is doing a lot of things its own way.. Director Bechard's Psychos In Love is probably better known - possibly better regarded - than Disconnected - but I found this one to be more enthralling, more particular, more interesting - and less straining to be funny or quirky.. and in the words of the Disconnected nice-guy-but-a-serial-killer, Franklin's trade-mark sign-off that I got a kick out of once I realized he was going to keep saying it: "ok - see ya - bye"..

(so far) my favorite of these Ryan Callaway micro-budget, handmade, homegrown horrors - inspirational filmmaking that shows what a person can do with creativity, imagination and commitment with a close-knit crew/cast just as committed to it - they're rough around the edges and maybe not everything works - but more exciting in their idiosyncrasies than the pre-processed, factory-made, easy-to-swallow blandness of the same-old-same-old.. there's some weird and creepy stuff going on in these movies - with an off-kilter blend of strange naturalism and stranger anti-realism and a kind of organic randomness that gives them a kind of believability - mixed with familiar, classic horror tropes - from "real-world" horrors, stalker/slasher horror, lost-in-the woods scares - to the fantastical like Satan worshiping cults and demons.. I somehow stumbled onto this one and then watched 2 more -The Ghost In The Darkness and Let's Not Meet - all three are connected and work off of each other - dealing in different ways with the same "mythology" that runs through them - like world-building on a small, personal, do-it-yourself scale.. not without flaws and shortcomings - but the sheer individual-ness of these have me hoping to be able to track down some more of them.. Biggest gripe with Let's Not Meet In The Woods: the too-brief scene on the boardwalk of what looked to be a favorite Jersey Shore beach town of mine left me wanting to see more of it - but they promptly went and split for woods of the title instead..

Speed Racer: a mind-numbingly awful movie with a grotesque NASCAR-mentality that doesn't even attempt emotions real or fantasy-based... not an ounce of grandeur here that's needed in a fantasy film - just a big, overblown grunt of a movie that feels like it was the result of the sound John Goodman makes whenever his "character" is upset at something.. (I don't think it would be considered a spoiler to point out that he makes this sound a few times - a sound that can only be described tactfully as a sound that might be made by someone sitting on a toilet who's just taken Metemucil).. I saw it with a whole row-full of friends at the IMAX theater hoping to have a fun time and every one of us were deeply offended by it. The movie (and, consequently, I guess "The Brothers") doesn't even seem to mind that it's view of "the future" or this fantasy world it presents is so horribly ugly and mean and desperately bleak. And not in a good way bleak, either...

As the title suggests, it focuses almost solely on the famous murders in the Tate house - interspersed with flashes of the preliminary court hearings and flash-backs to life on Spahn Ranch. These scenes at the ranch have an authentic kind of feel - due to a mixture of stuff (supposedly) being shot on the actual location and the film's own low-budgetness that works in it's favor... the actors all look and act like lost kids (although all are much better looking than the majority of the real Family members). The "documentary" footage the film purports to have seems isolated to one scene - a pretty good one, though: the hippie-rock-jam in the desert.. a real far-out scene, man... It's good and some of the Family actors wander in and out of it to connect it to the rest of the film. But that's it as far as documentary footage goes. The settings, however, have authenticity and a sense of place that give a good, if limited, glimpse into the L.A. of the time. The look of the film, in general, is really inspired - beautifully shot with many creative choices that, sometimes, get a little TOO arty... but, for such a seemingly low-budget movie - it does have a really polished look. (And a great soundtrack.. well scored and with good period-rock - including Manson's own recording of "Mechanical Man"...) It does, however, have some major flaws - the hardest to get past being the complete lack of characterizations... not one person has a personality. No one is developed - not even Charlie. This leaves us with a film we can only look at - there is no one to feel for - even the victims are only that: bodies that get victimized. In a way, it's interesting - we don't need or want to feel a human connection to these killers - but, by stripping all human-ness from everyone all we can do is watch. There's very little to FEEL, here - save a creepiness in the playing out of the murder scene. It is brutal and flatly played - and, maybe, that was part of the point in the film... it does have a strangely haunting quality to it. There's the real-ness of the settings and Family group, the disquieting night drives up the canyon - headlights on a dirt road - and the bleak, almost real-time playing out of the murders, themselves - that linger after it's over. Also, the unfamiliarity with any of the actors - none of whom seem to have done any thing other than this - give it an even creepier, too-real quality. There's a feeling that the filmmakers were trying to show a kind of "facts as they're known" at a time very close to the actual events - when not all the facts were really known. This adherence to what, supposedly, happened; combined with it's lack of characterization and lack of scope outside of just the night of the murders - leave the film somewhat one dimensional and, ultimately, drains it's emotional impact.