Danielle ( Rachel Sennott) and Max (Danny Deferrari ) have sex. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) answers her mom’s call. Danielle ( Rachel Sennott) recieves a bracelet from Max (Danny Deferrari ) .Danielle ( Rachel Sennott) and Max (Danny Deferrari ) make out. The camera stays in place for the opening scene, utilizing both the foreground and background of the frame to demonstrate the performances that our lead, Danielle, finds herself playing. First, she’s a lover and then she’s a daughter; both roles carry expectations that’s she’s expected to fulfill as she has to toe the line between them.
The film opens on a couple, Danielle (Rachel Sennott) and Max (Danny Deferrari), engaged in sexual activities. The duo is framed in the foreground of the frame, blurred out and out of focus. Yet, we can hear Danielle excitedly plays her part and scream “Daddy” before the encounter ceases. Then, she gets up and enters the frame’s foreground where she answers a call from her mother. As she talks to her parental figure, she covers up her lover, the bearer of the parental sexually-charged signifier – a point of contrast neatly communicated via the layers of the frame.
Max gets up to join Danielle as the latter finishes her conversation and tries to pry information out of her regarding her other activities; he’s most keen to figure out if she’s going to see other men. Thus, the relationship between “sugar baby” and “sugar daddy” is revealed – an extension of the parental comparison. She resists giving information as he valorizes himself for supporting young “women entrepreneurs”, revealing that his payments are going towards Danielle’s law degree. He gifts her a bracelet and pauses on giving her compensation till she reminds him; it’s clear he wants her to admit that feelings for him are her primary motivator instead of just the financial ones but he acquiesces as she engages in a passionate kiss with him.
Danielle (Rachel Sennott) smiles. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) lets her face rest. Joel (Fred Melamed) calls to Danielle. Joel (Fred Melamed) hugs Danielle. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) stares at Maya. Maya (Molly Gordon) stares at Danielle. Debbie (Polly Draper) warns Danielle. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) asks for info on the “shiva”. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) feigns compassion for the bereaved. The role’s Danielle is expected to playa continues to expand as she continues to come into contact with new persons. Distinct points of comparison are laid, the most obvious of which is the designator “Daddy” which she uses to refer to both her Sugar Daddy and her father proper. In an ever shifting sea of terms, Danielle must find her place while kowtowing to expectations – social, parental, and personal. The farcical nature of these interactions is made explicit.
We cut to Danielle walking along a street, now dressed in professional clothing; composer Ariel Marx’s score composed of discordant strings starts to play punctuating the moment. Danielle’s unenergetic face gives way to a false display of jubilation as she greets someone on the road before collapsing back into a more downtrodden expression. She’s clearly playing more than one part.
The camera pivots from her to a car where her father, Joel (Fred Melamed), calls to her. She calls out to “Daddy” before giving him a quick hug and going to the other side to talk to her mother, Debbie (Polly Draper), who immediately begins a painful, yet relatable interrogation of her daughter, calling attention to the bracelet on Danielle’s wrist; Danielle tries to conceal the origin of the bracelet and insists it’s a graduation present from her parents. Thankfully, her parents quickly move on and proceed to run Danielle through the latter’s “soundbites” for the event: she’s finishing finals and has a few job interviews. Yet another performance for Danielle to perform.
During this conversation, Danielle notices another party entering the scene. This young woman, Maya (Molly Gordon), looks quizzically on Danielle. Debbie fills in the blanks for the audience, informing us that Maya and Danielle were formerly dating, when she warns her daughter not to engage in any “funny” business. Finally, the trio is ready to enter the event. Right before getting in, Danielle reveals that said event is a funerary one, a “shiva”, a Jewish mourning ritual, when she asks “who died”. Immediately, the film cuts and shows Danielle expressing sympathies for the departed- a comedic edit by director Emma Seligman that makes explicit the farcical nature of the performances being enacted.
It’s this setting, the house where the “shiva” is taking place, where Danielle finds herself trapped in for the rest of the film’s run-time. Marx’s terrifying string-based score finds itself free reign here, as Danielle finds herself surrounded on all sides by “Other” parties, parents included, who seek to cast judgement and call attention to the multiple roles she finds herself playing.
Danielle (Rachel Sennott) notices Max. Max (Danny Deferrari) talks to Joel (Fred Melamed).Max (Danny Deferrari) n otices Danielle. Danielle (Rachel Sennott) makes eye contact with Max. The consequences of messing up this social juggling is revealed when Danielle’s Sugar Daddy, Max, is revealed to also be at the “shiva”. Thus, the profane is introduced to the religious and she finds herself truly trapped in an arena where a misstep could totally unravel everything.
The stakes of these potential encounters become fully revealed when Danielle notices Max, of all people, talking to her father in a doorway. She looks at him and he looks back at her in shock. Of all the places, the two find themselves face-to-face at a religious function where their illicit relationship can definitely not rear its head. Thus, the stage is fully set as Danielle finds herself in the presence of not only elderly figures who will naturally find some way to probe or disapprove but also finds herself in the presence of her former lover and current sugar-daddy; this is a recipe for disaster and Seligman commits to taking us there.
Despite being set in primarily one location, Seligman refuses to let things remain uncinematic and constantly utilizes close-ups and mediums with faces and bodies crowding the frame from all sides to create a never-ending feeling of discomfort. Given the films interests, the ability for a subject, in this case Danielle, to find themselves among a sea of persons, norms, and expectations, the focus on “Other” persons constantly invading one’s space is genius aesthetic move. This visual cluttering is accentuated by an auditory crowding; like the Safdie’s brothers Uncut Gems, characters constantly talk over one another and their pieces of dialogue are just as intrusive as the character’s bodies themselves. Seligman accentuates this noise with Marx’s non-diegetic score and allows harsh diegetic noises, like the cries of a baby, to blend in, creating an uncomfortable, harsh experience that genuinely generates a foreboding feeling; something feels like it’s on the verge of breaking at every point.
It’s telling that one feels a visceral fear upon seeing an unknown hand reach in from just outside the frame to tap Danielle; every interaction is a potential minefield to be navigated and the supremely crowded audio-visual landscape means that there are infinitely many of such encounters. Key choices made in the mise-en-scene, namely the use of red objects which accentuate the lighting during pivotal encounters, cast said scenes in a hellish ambiance that adds an expressionistic flair to the film and make the fever pitch Danielle’s decisions have led and are leading to explicitly clear. If she can’t find a “point” to ground herself to, she’ll end up swept in the current of the “Other’s” judgement. The film utilizes horror trappings and conventions to demonstrate the terrors that come with trying to find and carve out a space for one’s identity.
Consequently, the identitarian doublings set up at the film’s start – “Daddy” for a lover versus for a parent- only continue to expand as more terms and points of comparison get added with each additional encounter Danielle finds herself privy to. By bouncing between these points and their established counter-points, Seligman is able to emphasize the difficulty in establishing one’s agency regardless of whether or not they follow the proper edicts or go against them.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Shiva Baby brilliantly examines the pressures that come with trying to find oneself while juggling personal and social expectations. By utilizing the trappings of a horror film, namely a discordant string-based score, the film is able to transform awkward social encounters into confrontations with “monsters” whose sole purpose seem to be prying and uncovering one’s darkest secrets. The result is a fantastic blend of comedy and gripping tension that keeps you enthralled from start to finish.
Rating
9.7/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Haley Bishop as Haley Jemma Moore as Jemma Emma Louise Webb as Emma Radina Drandova as Radina Caroline Ward as Caroline Edward Linard as Teddy Seylan Baxter as Seylan
Haley starts the Zoom meeting at the start of the movie. Haley removes the tape from her camera.Haley (Haley Bishop) sends out invitations to the meeting.Someone else joins the meeting as Haley steps away from the camera.
We start in the virtual plane. A Zoom call opens up. The mouse moves to start up a meeting. The computer screen is the stage this play takes stage on. The physical pierces through the virtual as the filter tape that covers the meeting host’s camera is slowly removed. Privacy gives way for a chance at intimacy. We finally see our host, Haley (Haley Bishop), as she gets ready for meeting. Unbeknownst to her, someone else has joined her meeting room.
Haley moves the laptop down the hallway to look for the noise.Haley discovers Jemma (Jemma Moore) is the source of the noise.
Suddenly we hear a loud thud. Has something happened already? Does it have something to do with the unseen participant in the room? Haley leaves to find out, moving the laptop with her to bring us along on the journey. The screen is no longer bound to one place and is allowed to be active. As she makes her way to her living area, she realizes the sound is coming from outside. She peers out the window.
Crisis averted. She realizes that this noise, this false source of fear, is her friend Jemma (Jemma Moore), who’s outside making a ruckus in an attempt to get Haley to give her, Jemma, permission to join the zoom meeting; thus, the boundary between the physical gives way to the virtual as the encounter between the two transitions to the online call.
In just a little under 4 minutes, Rob Savage’s Host manages to showcase its themes, set up a scare, and foreshadow the structure of the story (along with finer plot details). As the rest of the members of the Zoom meeting show up, it’s revealed that the jolly group of friends, made up of 5 women – Haley, Jemma, Emma ( Emma Louise Webb), Radina (Radina Drandova), and Caroline (Caroline Ward) along with their male cohort Teddy (Edward Linard ), have come together under Haley’s instructions to perform an online séance. However, it becomes clear that things are going to take a turn for the worse as the group is inevitably forced to defend themselves against supernatural forces.
Now while creepy séance movies are nothing new, Host manages to raise the stakes by taking the process online. A séance is a ritualized procedure whereby individuals participate with one another to communicate with the spirits. The procedure involves the dissolution of the physical into the spiritual. It is not a coincidence that the nature of a séance matches up so well with the nature of an online meeting. Like the best J-Horrors (Pulse, Ringu), Host is focused on exploring the way the web has become the realm of a new spiritual – a site of connectivity where the the bonds between the living and the dead commingle. As communication transforms so does the nature of the haunting.
This is where the COVID-19 quarantine based setting of the movie comes in. Participants in a séance have to follow protocol to safely engage with the astral world. Breaking these rules can have consequences in the same way that breaking quarantine protocol can. Quarantine limits communication, relegating people to online messages as opposed to in person discussion. Without the physical presence of people around us, the way we engage in that conversation changes. We may be less inclined to follow rules of decorum or less likely to be as committed to engaging. In a more intimate sense, the forced closeness generated by quarantine protocol means that in-person relationships are forced to weather increased presences. People who you might have been able to ignore now are an everyday presence, and if they choose to ignore protocol they can end up infecting you with the virus potentially harming you and those you love. Privacy becomes harder to feign because the private is forced to seep into the public – another dissolution.
It is these qualities that makes an online séance during COVID-19 quarantine the perfect melting pot of ideas and themes. Barriers between the physical, spiritual, virtual, public, and private bleed into one another forcing us to ask tough questions about what we think about those closest to us and ourselves. Corona is compared to the nature of haunting. The breakdown of spirits is compared to the way the virtual space is made up. Each layer of the movie works on it’s own, but the strength of the movie comes from the way the ideas so easily build upon and proceed into one another.
This can most be seen in the way the movie marries its metaphysical vision to an equally exciting visual style. The way the script tackles its particular spirit(s) gives Savage and co. carte blanche to go hog wild with their ways of supernatural scares along with building up a mythos for what’s going on. Early on, the movie intentionally calls note to some small flickers on a user’s screen to goad you into focusing onto small details. That way when the screen changes from the group view to the individual view and back, you’re hyper focused on making sure nothing’s moving. The smallest flicker can elicit a scare. By layering moments like these early on, the movie manages to ratchet up the tension to incredibly high levels.
However unlike its most of its found-footage contemporaries, Host isn’t satisfied with just going for micro-scares and ending with one big scare akin to Paranormal Activity. It’s more ambitious and plays closer to something like James Wan’s The Conjuring; there are beautiful big set pieces, scares that are set up earlier in the movie, and practical effects are deployed wherever possible to help enhance the sense of immersion
Despite being constrained by filming (mostly) by themselves in their own apartments., Savage and his crew don’t shy away from going for big and impactful scenes with real heft demonstrating that embracing limitations is a powerful way to ground scares. Because it starts small and builds up progressively, the story is able to explore the development of the spiritual and offer space for questions to form on what’s actually going on.
By grounding the more horrifying elements of the supernatural encounter the movie’s individual elements can congeal. This is primarily achieved in two ways:
Careful attention to characterization details
Maintaing the feeling of a Zoom call.
Subtle interactions between the characters and in relation to the way they describe/deal with their respective living situations helps to fill in a lot of context as to what they’re doing and their respective histories with one another. Every piece of dialogue feels natural and conversations between the character’s feel consistent and proceed in a way that’s too natural to feel scripted but to well put together to fell fully done off the cuff. For example, early on the girls rag on Teddy before he shows up. Anyone who’s had friends can tell that under the playfulness is a real frustration at his presumed recent callousness at their group interactions. Moments like these are a testament to both the editor, Brenna Rangott, for picking clips that seamlessly flow off of one another and the cast and crew for playing off one another in a way that feels like actual friends would.
From left to right and top to bottom: Emma (Emma Louise Webb), Caroline (Caroline Ward), Haley (Haley Bishop), Jemma (Jemma Moore), Radina (Radina Drandova). The group uses the Zoom audio interface to boost up their ability to capture potential noises happening around them demonstrating both a commitment to the application and a neat way of using it to the movie’s advantage.
However, what grounds the film and makes it work is its impeccable formal consistency; never once does the film break away from the formatting of a Zoom call. It starts and ends on the application proper. The audio and video feeds range from high definition and nice microphone quality to scratchy and lagging video streams. The characters make use of functions in the application to problem solve a variety of issues. As they switch between mediums, from phones to computers, audio feedback delays and connection issues come about. Variation comes from the quality of the videos as the film cuts between the group participant views of the screen to solo participant views of the screen, and having the characters move the camera when the situation calls for it. The result is a movie that’s brimming with visual life despite being so limited in location and space.
Furthermore, there’s no score, because the movie is supposed to be a chronicle of a séance. But instead of silence, the soundscape is littered with bits of feedback and small creaks which manages to unsettle just as well as any compelling horror score. No noise or visual cue betrays the feeling of the movie which in turn makes the more grandiose moments feel satisfying, authentic, and unexpected.
Best of all, there’s no cheating with the use of awful glitch effects. Even the better found-footage horror movies like Hell House LLC tend to use cheap-feeling glitch effects where the camera presents a stream of static in an attempt to show the supernatural distorting things. It typically comes off as awful visual clutter that betrays the aesthetic of found-footage movies. Host completely avoids these issues because the practical stunts and effects are done so well that there’s no need to be afraid of showing the audience the horror.
However, the bursts of cinematic genius and narrative levity come to a close far too quickly. Many of the fleshier metaphysical ideas feel like they get truncated too quickly and consequently the depth present in each haunting is diminished. For example, the movie introduces the idea of personal totems that each character can use during the séance but makes very little use of it as the film goes on. Tying in some of the intense scary scenes with these more intimate character items would have helped give more definition to certain character arcs and relationship dynamics and made the supernatural subjectivity the film is trying to establish more apparent.
But in spite of these misses, Host is part of a select few found footage to evoke same sense of dread and unease that the The Blair Witch Project did at the turn of the century. By placing the narrative within the pandemic that many remains so fresh in many of our minds, it’s more easily able to get us to invest in the story and care about what happens to the characters because they’re like us: they’re trapped, forced to take responsibility for others, and susceptible to the smallest misstep from someone in their social group. It’s this empathetic identification that makes the sense of unease in Host so poignant and terrifying – a reminder of the shared horrors we’re still vulnerable to today.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Host is proof that budget matters less than the guts to commit to a vision and figure out the most effective way to demonstrate that vision with the tools available. Despite being made during quarantine and with a low budget, each member of the cast and crew came together to turn in a cohesive and well-oiled horror machine that looks and plays like a major horror blockbuster. There’s characters to cheer for, scares that get under the skin, and a story that’s easy to follow while remaining compelling to think about.
Rating
8.7/10
Grade
A
Go to Page 2for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Carey Mulligan as Cassandra/ “Cassie” Bo Burnham as Dr. Ryan Cooper Clancy Brown as Stanley Jennifer Coolidge as Susan
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
113 minutes
Charlie XCX’s “Boys” plays accompanied by a montage of men’s hips thrusting and gyrating in a bar setting. A pop song that means something more.
Montage of men’s groins as they dance in the bar. The early montage accompanied by Charlie XCX’s “Boys” sets the stage for the analysis of phallocentrism and agency to come.
The song’s accompanying music video is a view on alternative masculinity – men commit to performing “sexiness” in alternate fashions [1]Kim, M. (2018, March 17). We need to talk about charli xcx’s very important “boys” video. Retrieved February 09, 2021, from … Continue reading. The video showcases men acting like prototypical women in sexy photoshoots, but treats the whole endeavor as more wholesome. The result is a exploration of the ranges of masculinity. As a result, the song’s hook, “I’ve been busy thinking about boys,” comes to mean something far more. It’s thinking about alternative instantiations of masculine agency. Promising Young Woman operates in a similar fashion- it has a lot to say about the way power and gender operates under its stylized poppy exterior.
The montage ends and the movie moves to a conversation among 3 men in the bar who engage in “locker room” talk. It starts off with them trashing on some coworkers until they notice Cassandra, a seemingly inebriated and thoroughly “wasted” woman, laying passed out on some couches.
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) slumped against the red couches in the back of the bar. Unbeknownst to her prey, she waits for them to make a move patiently.
The group’s insults turn towards her as they cast judgement on her poor decisions. If anything happens to her it’s her fault for not taking care of herself – rape culture. One member of the group, Jerry (Adam Brody), feigns worry about Cassandra’s state and goes to help her get home. He lets his friends know and they immediately and holler – the implication is clear. Rape becomes an in-joke – consent is murky and she was asking for it, but it’s all a joke so there’s plausible deniability. The moment he gets her out of the bar and into a rideshare vehicle, he announces that his apartment is “close by” and actively changes the GPS end location. He tells Cassie they can have some drinks at his place. The man who was concerned about the drunk girl getting taken advantage of takes her home to give her more alcohol. Did we expect something different?
Meanwhile, the cab driver feigns ignorance. It doesn’t matter that a drunk woman is being escorted by a stranger blatantly taking advantage of her. We’ve met 4 men so far -3 were willing to look past the obviously drunk woman being escorted by someone she doesn’t know while 1 is fine taking her home despite knowing she can’t consent to anything . Complicity is not direct participation says the former group but that complicity is what serves as direct affirmation for the latter person. As such everything becomes forgiven.
Unfortunately for Jerry, he’s finally run into someone who can’t forget and definitely can’t forgive. As he removes her underwear despite her protests and questions about what he’s doing, she looks up directly at the camera- at the audience – to clue us in on on a little secret; she’s the one who’s in charge. No longer relegated to the periphery of society, she flips the script and reveals her drunk performance was nothing more than bait set out to lure prey to her.
This moment is one of the most striking and demonstrates early on that this is Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) story. As she’s being stripped she stares at the camera, breaking the fourth wall, to let us know that this is all going according to her plan and that she’s more in charge of everything happening than we think. This is an important idea the movie expands on, using Cassie’s status as “writer” of the story to explore the way agency can manifest under oppressive circumstances. Notice how the Christmas lights surround her in the first and third images like a boundary of sorts, but as soon as she reveals she’s in charge the next shot shows her with the lights below her. She’s outside of the box.
Furthermore, the way she carries over her “gotcha” look from the audience to Jerry reflects the way that the problems the latter represents are endemic in society proper, not just the world of the movie.
She had “been busy thinking about boys” all along – their agency, their ability to inflict violence, their nice guy personas, the way society actively helps protect/enable them, and had decided that enough was enough.
The movie cuts from Cassie revealing to Jerry that she’s very much conscious to her walking down the street, a red smear on her leg. In a typical revenge movie, this smear would be blood- the presence of the torture that Cassie enacted on Jerry in her “revenge”. However, this is a movie that’s painfully aware of narrative conventions and subverts them in an attempt to interrogate the underlying logic of a phallocentric society – one where rape culture, as the movie demonstrates heads on , is pervasive and built into the “rules”. The camera continues to tilt up and reveals a similar huge red smear on Cassie’s arm. However, it’s made immediately apparent that the red smears aren’t blood but are jelly from the doughnuts instead. What we thought to be blood turns to be something far more innocuous instead – violence transformed into something sweet and sugary.
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) wipes off jelly doughnut filling after her rendezvous with Jerry. The way the camera tilts up along with revenge-story tropes makes us think this is blood, but the deflection is done purposefully. It’s an early sign to to the audience to be aware of revenge narrative tropes and to break down why they are/are not being implemented in certain ways and what that says about a character’s position in relation to power structures.
As she continues to walk, Cassie is accosted by cat-calling construction workers across the street who deride/shame her for having had a crazy night out. They laugh at her. She stares back at them. She is unmoving. She is unfazed. Her gaze unsettles them to the point of distress. They immediately call her a spoil sport and go off. Her refusal to play along to the scripted relation by frustrates them. She continues on her path until she gets home. Once she’s inside her room she retrieves a journal, flips through dozens upon dozens of pages, deliberately and aggressive adds a count to a tally which appears to be color coded, flips to another section of the journal, and then proceeds to write out the name Jerry in a list that contains a staggering number of names. What’s been done to Jerry or any of these other names is still unknown at this point.
This is simple, clean, and effective visual storytelling. It’s immediately clear that Cassie has been playing rape culture vigilante for a while. The throng of names and tally marks give an indication of the count, but the way that indentations bleed from page to page show brutal and destructive the whole endeavor has been for Cassie. Hundreds of people have tried to do God knows what to her to the point where she has a healthy running tally. No wonder she’s so fatalistic. How does one live in a world where one is constantly reduced to a passive object that can be casually used and discarded?
Her name Cassandra is fitting. In Greek myth, Cassandra is a princess who catches the eye of Apollo, rejects him, and then is cursed with the power to tell of prophecies that will come true but that no one will listen to. [2]“Cassandra.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Cassandra. A woman cursed by a man for rejecting his advances who is then condemned to tell the truth but be ignored. That description seems to hit a lot of marks especially as we proceed through the story. Given that Cassie’s prophecies are doomed to be ignored the question becomes how does she exercise agency? How can rape culture be fought when it’s part and parcel of society at large – when people hear the truth but choose to ignore it? This is where the movie’s play and subversion on narrative ideology comes in.
The revenge story is the cultural mythos of this society – a man who is wronged in some way musters up the wherewithal necessary to beat down whomever stands in his way whether it involve underground criminal organizations or covert government forces. Even when women are written in as the leads, the way they deal with the problems and scenarios doesn’t differ in a meaningful structural level. The “good” guys win and the “bad” guys lose. The overall result is a kind of propaganda that doesn’t meaningfully wrangle with subjectivity. Promising Young Woman does the opposite of this by having Cassie act with a distinct womanhood. It recognizes that the world forces certain vantage points upon people based on their social position and actively positions the narrative and its development around Cassie and her subjective orientation towards the dominant social order.
Everything from the way she deals with her night-time vigilante situations to the way she handles her fundamental revenge mission plays on familiar tropes (look back to the aforementioned doughnut example). By placing her in typical revenge confrontations and delaying the reveal of what she actually done, the movie forces us to examine just how brutal the rules of the social order are for some while they’re unfairly stacked in the favor of others. We have images of what we think Cassie has done which help reveal our complicity in/normalization of the system and the movie cleverly shows us how out of depth we are when it reveals what’s actually happened. Furthermore, Cassie’s relation to her trauma is kept as anonymized as possible – there’s no “face” to attach to it per say. It makes placing yourself in Cassie’s shoes incredibly easy because her relationship becomes something more universal – the anonymization helps showcase just how deep seated rape culture is and how devastating it can be to all involved.
The end result is a striking dialogue that engages the audience on multiple levels. It becomes clear just how integrated certain ideas are within our psyches and how they colors our view on envisioning the realm of possible action, both for ourselves and other people. It shows us just how easy it is to distract away from violence by framing it in more abstract terms – a sweeping under the rug that does nothing but tidy the mess. This is reflected in the structure of the movie, which uses Cassie’s orientation towards her trauma as a way to constantly change the genre. As her character arc progresses the movie goes from thriller/black comedy, to rom-com, to drama, to fantasy with some some great transitory bits in between. Each of these moments uses Cassie’s character disposition, the music, the use of montage (like the one that starts the movie), and so on to reveal a vantage point that women can occupy in respect to a male dominated order. Some of these genre moves feel abrupt (ex: a rom- com styled dance sequence that pops up out of nowhere is a common criticism I’ve seen in some reviews) because they are meant to critique the way these issues are normally pushed aside in favor of more lighthearted and palatable discussions – the range fantasies go in concealing the true nature of what’s going on.
The framing mechanism takes elements from Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) personal journal and makes them chapters in the story. This further emphasizes her agency in constructing what we’re seeing and helps to drive the point the story is making.
Structurally the movie makes use of a list of targets from Cassie’s journal as a framing device. This directly ties form to content – the story (movie proper) is Cassie’s tale. This is the story she’s writing and the framing mechanism does an important job in both establishing the way she thinks about how to deal with her trauma and what “winning” against the same looks like. Each genre shift forces you to think about what her agency means. There are multiple moments where you’re left wondering if her range of choices were really as limited as presented or if that limitation was meant to reveal something else entirely.
Holding all these strands together is Cary Mulligan’s standout performance as Cassie. She’s the emotional center of the movie and single handedly helps every story thread come together in a cohesive and moving fashion. Her deadpan delivery along with her witty dialogue makes her easy to root for. The anger by which she emotes make it easy to understand how serious what she’s dealing with is. There are moments where she moves around on the camera like a hunter- slowly pushing her target to the corner of the frame trapping them – cornering someone in the most literal sense of the term. The ease by which she controls situations makes it apparent that she’s skilled. It all coms down to one thing – Mulligan knows how to show the depth of what she’s going through which makes Cassie’s subsequent arc coherent and believable while still using it to explore social positions. This is also why so many members of the supporting cast were cast from likable comedians/actors who immediately make us trust as opposed to doubt them. The movie uses this previously built trust to reveal how deep seated and ubiquitous rape culture is and the danger inherent at the heart of it – anyone can hurt you and appearances are deceiving.
The end result plays likea Gothic fairy tale, albeit one with a bubblegum pop aesthetic as opposed to the traditional black and white palette. The traditional pop songs and the vibrant use of colors, namely pink and blue, come off feeling as something reclaimed as opposed to something campy -they are the artifice of womanhood that must be taken seriously. Likewise, the story actively forces you to engage with the point it’s trying to make, not in a way that’s preachy but in a way that demonstrates the ideological maneuverings we use to obstruct and get around difficult issues and conversations. Most importantly, it tells a story that needs to be heard because of how lasting and important it is. The way the movie tackles issues of culpability, consent, systemic injustice, and the manifestation make it essential viewing, but it’s presentation and examination of the way ideology plays into these demarcating these thoughts makes it an absolute masterwork.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Promising Young Women is the type of debut that gets you excited for the director’s future movies. Fennell takes an idea – what does “real” agency look like in a world where rape culture is built into the way that world operates – and explores it in a way that actively gets the audience involved in examining their own prejudice while being wholly committed to a strong singular vision. The movie utilizes a bubblegum pop aesthetic comes in both the c olor palette and music choice giving this Grimm fairytale an updated makeover that’s infectious, fun, and serious. The script’s genre jumping tendencies gives Mulligan a huge canvas to play on which gives the story the emotional core it needs to sustain its more intense beats. The elements come together in a truly ambitious fashion that help it more than deliver on its promise.
Rating
10/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Adrian Aldis Hodge as Detective James Harriet Dyer as Emily Storm Reid as Sydney
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
124 minutes
Leigh Whannell has never made a movie I haven’t enjoyed either as a screenwriter or director. The Insidious series is one of my favorite horror franchises and wouldn’t have been possible without him. 2018’s Upgrademade me appreciate how well he could move behind the camera and I was hyped up to see what he was going to do next. Then I saw the trailers for his latest feature, a remake of the iconic The Invisible Man. I’ll be honest when I say that I didn’t have faith the movie would be good. I thought the trailer spoiled too much and I thought the movie would be schlocky or boring as a result. If it wasn’t for my love of Whannell’s past works I would’ve given this a sit-out till reviews came out, like I did for Fantasy Island . Thankfully, I ended up seeing this opening night and left the theater blown away. Whanell has taken the core components of H.G Well’s beloved story and fitted them into a #MeToo movie that’s topical and nuanced without being patronizing.
The story follows Cecilia, an abused women who decides enough is enough and attempts to escape from her controlling and manipulative husband. Despite knowing that she’d escape based off the trailers , I still felt my knuckles clench during the opening sequence. It is pin drop silent as Emily Moss tip toes around the mansion that serves as her castle. You can feel her tension in every action, in every moment, in every hurried look around her settings to make sure that her husband isn’t near. Thankfully for the audience, it’s only an appetizer for what’s to come. After she manages to get out of the situation, she receives the news that her husband has apparently died from suicide and has left her a huge sum in his will. Soon after this, she settles into an apparently peaceful life, that is, until she realizes that her husband may not be dead and instead might be stalking her as an invisible man.
Whannell gets what makes invisibility scary and manages to push the concept in new, bold ways. There are moments where the camera pans from a character to a supposedly empty area. It lingers there almost hinting that the invisible assailant is in the same space. It’s almost like Whannell is taunting you to pick out where the man is. Sometimes there’s a discernible sign something is there. Other times there’s nothing. I felt myself becoming more paranoid and off kilter as I desperately tried to find him in the frame. It’s brilliant move that places you in Cecilia’s frame of mind. Once she realizes she’s being stalked, no space is a safe space. Any space could house “him” in it and she constantly has to be on high alert at all times. The ingenuity of panning to different kids of empty settings is we’re never made aware if the titular antagonist is actually there. We, the audience and Cecilia, might just be staring at nothing, scaring ourselves at the idea of what’s there. It creates an immersive atmosphere that should pull anyone in , regardless of gender or sex.
What gives the movie it’s unique subtext is also one of the main differences between it and the 1933 original- the focus on the perspective of the victim and not the assailant. We follow Cecilia the whole movie, so the fear of being pursued by an invisible assailant feels more personal as opposed to detached. There’s a stronger sense of culpability which makes us even more sympathetic of the main character’s plight. That’s why it feels so frustrating to see her rebuffed at every opportunity. Of course it would sound crazy to talk about how you’re being stalked by your invisible dead husband. Even when the malevolent entity is literally in the room invading her space and psyche, no one believes her. It’s a poignant #MeToo call , as Cecilia desperately tries to get anyone to believe her abuse and help her. The fear of losing ones mind from constant gaslighting compliments and accentuates the fear of invisibility. It gives the movie layers of textured horror.
At the heart of all of this is Elisabeth Moss’s performance as Cecilia. Holy shit. Moss is asked to do so much this movie and delivers on all fronts. Early on when she’s just escaping, she nails the dread and anxiety of leaving her abuser. The uncertainty of her precautions working shows in her face and her constant glances. When she thinks her husband is dead you can see her body language change. Her face brightens and you can feel the hope set in, which is why when she realizes that he may not be as dead as everyone says, it hurts. You can see the confidence tear as it’s replaced by anxiety and paranoia again. The fatigue, the weariness, the feeling of being absolutely done; it’s all there. There are huge scenes where she’s literally talking to nothing visible in the room, but you feel like someone else is there, because maybe there is. When she starts to fight back, you can feel the fight or flight in her desperation and/or her tenacity. She’s the emotional core of the movie and without such an amazing performance, the story would fail to be as effective of compelling.
There are a few story issues that threaten the underlying logic of the movie, but I didn’t notice them in the moment. Some of them feel like more serious realism issues . Others are more nitpicky. However, none of them detracted from my enjoyment or from the story in a meaningful way. If you’re someone who can’t turn the “but how could they even” part of your brain off, you might get frustrated with some of thriller sequences in the second act. Thankfully, I was able to ignore that inner voice and just let myself be transported into Whannell’s world.
Report Card
TLDR
The Invisible Man knocks it out of the park. It captures the essential ideas of the original movie, but manages to make them more topical for our day and age. The story of an abused wife being stalked by her supposedly dead, abusive husband manages to surprise more than the trailers would let on. Whannell manages to deliver some well earned scares alongside an incredibly relevant message in the #MeToo era.
Rating
9.5/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Ben Schwartz as Sonic Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik James Marsden as Tom
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
99 minutes
Ever since elementary school, I’ve been grinding out Sonic games from Sonic Adventure to Sonic Mania. I can still remember waking up early every Saturday morning to catch Sonic X on 4Kids. Hell, I even read the Archie comic series whenever I could find an issue around. I think you get the point. The fast blue blur has one of my favorite fictional characters, so you can imagine my reaction when the initial trailers for this movie dropped. I know the games haven’t been amazing as of late, but the titular character’s render felt like a final nail in the coffin. That’s why I was elated when Fowler tweeted that Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) was getting a makeover to keep the fan favorite character more in line with expectations . When I saw the redesign, I immediately got excited for the movie again, and I’m happy to say if you’re a Sonic fan or looking for a cute family movie, this movie should satisfy you.
The movie follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic hedgehog with the ability to run at supersonic speeds, who finds himself transported to the planet Earth after violent forces threaten him on his home planet. He comes over at a young age and has to grow up lonely, without guidance, but eager to have fun. The movie wastes no time with boring dialogue or senseless exposition. It’s a straight dive to action. Soon after this initial set-up, Sonic finds himself in trouble and has to partner up with local police officer, Tom, as they try to escape the government and Dr.Robotnik.
This movie does that Deadpool-style (and more recently Harley Quinn) breaking the fourth wall narration, with Sonic recounting his experiences or talking about what’s going on, but I don’t think it comes off as gimmicky in this movie. He’s a kid forced to talk to himself to stifle off the alienation he feels, so talking out loud makes sense as a coping mechanism. It helps that Ben Schwartz nails the quirky, adventurous, comical traits that Sonic is known for, so listening to him talk is always fun. His interactions with Tom are a lot of fun, even if they feel a bit too cookie cutter. The dialogue between the two is what you’d expect from a cute team-up adventure movie, but is competently acted by all sides so you can let yourself just enjoy the spectacle unfold.
Sonic’s antagonistic counterpart, Dr.Robotnik, is brought to life by Jim Carrey, who brings his crazy patented action energy and makes the crazy scientist even more over-the-top. I was shocked at how much I liked the Doctor, because the trailers made him seem like a joke, and while he is to an extent, there’s a whole lot of dangerous scientist underneath. Robotnik’s comical but deadly, and outside of a few small moments, totally feels like a man who could destroy the world in pursuit of his twisted scientific desires.
Though the movie doesn’t do anything to blow your mind, you can tell there was a lot of love that went into the project. Action scenes feature a litany of small callback moments to the games (spin dashes and homing attacks anyone?) – fans will be happy and newcomers won’t be distracted by their inclusion. They’re integrated so as to feel natural and not as a “Hey do you see this reference – we are very clever with putting this here,” that’s so commonplace in adaptations/sequels/reboots. It’s clear to watch action progress, so if you’re someone that hates visual clutter or messy CGI explosion scenes, don’t worry about this one. For the most part, the movie runs a tight ship in making sure you know what’s going on. Furthermore, the theme of not running away from your problems feels even more poignant in a movie about a hedgehog who runs super fast, and I think Sonic’s subsequent journey into discovering himself is done well.
My only big issue with the movie is that ending came off a bit too comical and wish that it was treated with more purpose/seriousness. In an otherwise solid movie, it feels sloppy. That being said, I did think the overall sentiment of the ending was sweet, so I can’t fault the movie for wanting to please the families that would inevitably come to see it as opposed to doing something more grounded.
Report Card
TLDR
Sonic the Hedgehog should satisfy any fan of the massive video game franchise or anyone looking for a fun family movie. The story doesn’t break the mold or push any boundaries, but is competent and does what it needs to do. The movie has a very similar feeling to Detective Pikachu. It’s cute, has fun callbacks to the series, is easy to digest by any audience, and you can definitely tell a lot of care and effort went into portraying the subject matter.
Rating
7.5/10
Grade
C+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn Ewan McGregor as Roman Sionis/Black Mask Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Dinah/Black Canary Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helena/Huntress Rosie Perez as Renee Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
109 minutes
They should’ve just called this movie Harley Quinn (and the slight inclusion of the Birds of Prey) because that’s what this movie felt like. Despite great production value, neat action sequences, and some fairly good performances from Robbie and McGregor, Birds of Prey feels like a sloppy amalgamation of story ideas and plots hamfisted into a movie that feels empty at its core. If you enjoy Robbie’s performance of Harley Quinn in the current DCEU, this movie should hit some of the right notes, but for anyone hoping for more you’re sure to be left feeling a bit disappointed.
The story picks up some time after Suicide Squad, with the Joker and Harley breaking up. The story is narrated by Harley (to interesting effect) and chronicles her tale of trying to survive in a world without her beau or the protection his sphere of influence granted her. The plot is fairly simple and there are no big twists or turns. There are some fun action sequences here and there and Robbie narrates the movie in an Deadpool – esque way, breaking the fourth wall whenever she feels the need. It gives the movie some much needed character and helps cover up a lot of the more obvious narrative flaws.
The movie is really pretty and the color palettes used are vibrant and pop off the screen. Harley has a scene early on that’s bursting with color. I had a blast watching it and feel like it would be a ton of fun to watch in IMAX or 4k. Action sequences are over the top and make full use of the comic nature of the universe. For example in one scene , Harley bounces a bat off a wall like a boomerang to hit an unsuspecting foe. Moments like these showcase the potential at play and I wish the movie had more of this.
Each of the other “Birds of Prey” are incorporated into the story with varying degrees of success. Because the movie takes place from Harley’s point of view, it’s hard to understand how and why certain sequences are even known to her but that’s besides the point. As Harley introduces each member of the titular squad, you can tell there’s something off. Their inclusions in the story feel weak at best and awkward at worst, as they magically just keep finding themselves all closer to the heart of Black Mask’s scheme. Huntress gets shafted the most and her inclusion into the larger narrative feels like an afterthought. Furthermore, no other character has a genuine change of arc besides Harley, so it makes caring about their eventual team up hard to do.
McGregor is great as the main villain and brings his full energy to the role. Black Mask is narcissistic and fueled with over confidence. Watching him react to fickle circumstances demonstrates how fractured and on the edge he is. Unfortunately, like most of the Birds of Prey, McGregor is rarely given a chance to shine, so his cruelty and manic personality only feel comical and not threatening. I wish we really got to see him fully embrace his dark side and be more present. If you’re going to have this level of talent might as well make use of it.
The main issue with the movie is it doesn’t know what it wants to be or do. The movie wants to be feminist and tries to channel in some faux female energy by having “bad ass” female characters, but the characters never work because their powers and personalities never feel justified or developed enough to persuade you to care about them. The movie shows us sexist microaggressions and a comically hyper masculine bad guy almost as if to show us that it’s woke and against the masculine world order, but it doesn’t ever justify that take or develop it.
The movie is rated R, but I rarely felt like the rating was justified. There’s not a lot of violence , and most of it feels overly comical when it does happen. There’s a serious tonal imbalance between the tension and comedy. The movie wants to make you nervous or scared that something will happen, but constantly makes wisecracks or goes to over the top too ever let that feeling set in. The way that the more serious moments are edited also makes them funny, and I laughed more than once at the way certain bits of dialogue played out. I wish the movie either pulled a full Deadpool and ramped up the comedic violence and played more things for jokes, or toned back the comedy and tried to inject a real sense of high stakes pressure.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Birds of Prey feels like a re skin of your typical superhero team-up movie, this time featuring Harley Quinn with some small moments from the other members of the titular gang. The production value is nice and the action scenes are enough fun to watch, but the story, tone, and theme all feel underdeveloped and all over the place. I’d only reccomend watching if you’re a hardcore DC fan or love Margot Robbie’s interpretation of Harley Quinn. Hopefully, she gets a movie that really demonstrates what she can do with the character. One can dream.
Rating
6.2/10
Grade
D
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
A child is born. The villagers are nicely blocked. The father treks. The father journeys forward, framed in the background as lonely among the elements. The father approaches the enchantress. The enchantress (Melody Carrillo) extracts the illness. The enchantress (Melody Carrillo) sits framed by a triangle. The enchantress dissolves to the child with second sight. The child is returned to the forest. Spectral children surround the Beautiful child. The beautiful child (Giulia Doherty) looks at the audience. The title card appears in the triangle surrounded by the reach of the tress. The fairy tale of the “Beautiful Child” serves as the fictional heart of this fairy tale adaptation and and takes broad strokes from the fairy tale serving as the film’s source, Hansel and Gretel: a witch, a forest, a child being abandoned. Yet, this telling differs in that the source of malevolence is the child who stares at the audience once the story is done and the moral has been imparted. We know we should be wary of gifts, givers, and receivers before the title drops, framed in the triangle, warning us of the supernatural events to follow.
We open on a black frame as a narrator invites us to listen to her tale, a story which “holds a lesson” that “might keep” its childish listeners “safe.” This is the story of “the Beautiful Child with the little pink cap.”
We cut to a scene of labor. A child is born to a couple through great pain and we’re treated to beautiful shots of the environment (utilizing both depth and blocking to accentuate the milieu in highly evocative fashion) of her upbringing.
This child is ill and her father (Jonathan Delaney Tynan) seeks alliance with an enchantress (Melody Carrillo), a denizen of “darkness”, who can heal any ailment. Her father bravely trusts the powers of this iconic figure, one whose silhouetted presence in a distinctive triangle emphasizes her narrative importance and the extent of her domain. The framing of her reveal needs no other dialogue to highlight her power.
A treatment is given and an ooze is extracted from the child, the illness rendered corporeal; in its place, a gift is given: the child (Giulia Doherty) is granted “second sight.” The film marks this transition from the witch to the child with a wonderful, dream-like dissolve which emphasizes the mystical connection between the two figures.
The town, eager to hear their futures, is ultimately made uncomfortable by the girl who predicts their “bitter” ends, an emotional response which is only exacerbated by the manner in which the gifted child ensures her prophecies come through via her use of supernatural gifts ; she even goes so far as to execute her father, the man who braved everything in his journey to heal his daughter, by hypnotizing him into taking his own life.
The child is returned to the deep woods, an attempt to isolate and seal the darkness resulting from her presence. But the girl, far from powerless, acquires new “friends”, the undead resurrected, who surround her in lieu of her former town and family.
With the tale concluded, the narrator warns her audience to be wary of gifts, those who offer them, and the willing benefactors willing to take them.
Fittingly, the “Beautiful Child” stares menacingly towards the audience, a 4th-wall breaking shot which serves as a wonderful footnote to the nature of the monologue so far, affirming to the audience that the deconstruction of the fairy tale will start promptly as the evils lurking behind the fantastical framework of the narrative form will be allowed to break through.
We cut to black and travel upwards through the reaching limbs of crooked trees, an evocation of the forest which served as the point of abandonment and magical mystery, before the iconic triangle, the symbol of the powerful enchantress, pops up back in frame and captures the film’s name within its domain, a title, Gretel & Hansel, which inverses the order of its Grimm fairy tale counterpart, Hansel and Gretel.
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) walks through the woods as the camera tracks her. Gretel looks at her upside-down reflection in the water while contemplating. Hansel (Sam Leakey) and Gretel (Sophia Lillis) grunt at one another, a piggish affirmation of their relationship. The switch to another narrator, Gretel, marks a formal shift in the film. The tale being told goes from an epic, fable to a personal recollection of one’s life, a switch from objectivity to subjectivity. The frame goes from wide to boxy to reflect this. Gretel laments on the manner by which tales psychically become embedded within listeners and the manly deus ex machinas that inhabit the genre, usurping the potential of feminine agency.
Then, we’re entreated to new narration, one that operates in a psychic conversation with the opening, deconstructing the gendered apparatus of fairy tales and the way they subordinate identity through strict normative paradigms and establishing the thematic posturing of the film itself: a genealogy examining the fairy tale as heuristic along with its gendered machinations and the manners in which they frame the morals commonplace to the format.
This switch of type of narration — narrating a fable (third-person) versus narrating the subjective thoughts of one’s own life (first-person) — is visually indicated in the change in the frame’s ratio which goes from a wide, elongated, epic shot to a more personate, intimate shot; we’re going from a tale told externally to one told internally.
Our new narrator, a young girl, Gretel (Sophia Lillis), refers back to the story of “the Beautiful Child with the little pink cap” and remarks on the manners in which such tales can “get” into one’s head like the way this fable has burrowed itself into hers. She examines and questions the nature of the tale, the history of how its come to be burrowed within her psyche, and the manners by which real stories are elevated into the grandiose mythical encounters. Finally, she laments on the way “princes” come in and resolve a good portion of such stories, rendering the question of the female characters’ agencies a trite manner.
But there are no princes in her surroundings. Her tale will be a different one, focused on a journey of femininity finding itself in a world that seeks to consume this freedom through its socialization processes. The film’s titular choice begins to poke through as we understand the vantage point that will color it.
Her quest for agency begins with a journey where her brother, Hansel (Sam Leakey), a young boy, questions her incessantly as she walks with him through a forest in search of a job.
The siblings come to stand in front of an expansive building, press their faces against one another, and grunt like pigs, affirming their solidarity and making us aware of their struggles. Their choice to celebrate their relationship through an animalistic parlance reminds us of the underlying manner by which fables utilize non-human creatures to impart messages and simultaneously reinforces a motif of consumption (the children, acting as animals which are traditionally rendered food, are seeking labor in order to acquire nourishment)— a reminder that lurks ominously in the backdrop given the source material.
Gretel sits in an interview room, silhouetted against wondrous stained-glass windows. The master (Donncha Crowley) of the house interviews Gretel. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) speaks her mind. The shot widens as Gretel (Sophia Lillis) is reminded of her place. Gretel sits in the interview room filled with colorful stained-glass displays, a mosaic of colors which serves as an ironic counter-point to Gretel’s limited pathways. Her interview is derailed by sexist comments which she refuses to succumb to. This failure, her decision to find a new identity, is made clear by the cut to a wider shot of her which reveals the colorful windows once more alongside her, a sign of the possibilities that she yearns and seeks to tap into.
Her interview quickly devolves into a didactic interplay as her interviewer (Donncha Crowley) quickly corrects Gretel when she openly speaks her mind and criticizes the bureaucratic structures which oppress her brother and her. He tells her to address him as “milord” and questions her “maidenhood”, quickly affirming the oppressive milieu and reminding Gretel of her uniquely vulnerable, feminine place within the social apparatus.
The shot tracks Gretel (Sophia Lillis) as she walks back home. Gretel and Hansel are framed by a dark entryway as they return back home. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) sits while being chastised. Gretel’s mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) berates Gretel. A flame sits in the middle of Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and her mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy). Gretel’s mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) moves towards her daughter (Sophia Lillis), covering the flame between them. Gretel’s mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) perverts the piggish affirmation with Gretel (Sophia Lillis). Gretel’s mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) axes the table as a final warning. Gretel’s inability to get a job forces her back home in the rain. But she is unable to stay here and her mother, through heinous and twisted remarks, lets her daughter know as much. A perverted piggish affirmation from the matriarch which covers the only light in the room, signals the dissolution of this family unit, a proclamation which is confirmed by an axe which she lodges into the table as a final warning to leave. Left with no other options, the siblings must depart that place which they called home and seek new shelter.
We know that things have gone poorly when Gretel rushes out of the location, brother in tow, as the rain pounds on them accentuating her failure in procuring employment. She questions whether or not it would have been proper to slap the man for his controlling, disgusting demeanor and the camera, fully focused on her face and tracking her movements, imparts her deliberation with a subjective heft that emphasizes her agency. But before we get an answer, the film cuts to her house, framing both Hansel and Gretel within the closed-off and darkened boundaries demarcating it.
The manor, lit in a depressing, overwhelming blue makes the siblings’ mother’s (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) chastisement of Gretel sting all the harder. Gretel is questioned as to her insolence but attempts to push back against the unfair debasement. Yet, the matriarch continues and tells Gretel that the latter must leave. There’s not enough room in this house for “ghosts”, a haunting proclamation which ties the house and its inhabitants towards death, and Gretel is told to take her brother and try to make it to a convent.
Gretel argues logistics but her mother quickly ends the conversation, telling her daughter that if they’re unable to do as much, they should dig their own graves and make sure to make one for their mother as well. She reaches over to her daughter, places their faces against one another, and grunts like a pig; yet, the utterance is perverse, an explicit acceptance of annihilation, a far cry from the earlier evocation which hinted at perseverance in the face of tribulations.
Immediately, this disjoint is emphasized. A loud thud shocks as an axe falls onto the table and the matriarch threatens to kill her children if they do not leave; the family unit is broken apart and must be re-forged once more.
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and Hansel (Sam Leakey) are covered by the forest. The siblings head to a manor in the darkness. An upside down overhead shot of Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and Hansel (Sam Leakey). A man (Jonathan Gunning) appears behind Gretel (Sophia Lillis). The emaciated man (Jonathan Gunning) has Hansel in his grasp. The huntsman is revealed, framed by the doorway of the abode. The children are framed in the hazy fog and looming trees of the forest. They are small and feeble, vulnerable to the powers that reside within this environment. They head to a manor in the darkness and think they’ve found security. An upside-down overhead shot of them showcases this temporary unity which is broken as a man rises behind Gretel and reveals that this abode is no longer safe. He almost takes out Hansel, but a Huntsman, framed and given importance by the doorway of this manor, saves the duo and takes them in temporarily.
As a result, the siblings find themselves swallowed in the “terrible mouth” of the forest, a metaphorical rendering which paints the world as a consumptive machine with its denizens being nothing more than foodstuffs waiting for their turn to eaten, subject to the whims of the trees stretching across the backdrop, limbs reaching down for the next tasty morsel, and the hazy fog pervading the area, obscuring their fates and diminishing their presence; they are truly at the whims of nature.
Hansel, innocently unaware of the gravity of the situation, questions Gretel on her obstinance to accepting the seemingly easy solutions to their problems. If she had just accepted the earlier offer of employment and subjected herself to the decorum required of the same, the family might still be together; food (particularly cake) might be on the horizon. But Gretel, unperturbed by the childish problem-solving, explains the reality of the world: “Nothing is given without something else being taken away.”
While her use of the adage is in reference to the sexual politicking she had to and will have to navigate, there’s a uncomfortable undercurrent catalyzed due to the nature of the opening’s tale of the girl whose illness was traded for power; sickness is transfigured not as purely negative, an impediment stopping natural functions, but instead as metonymical humanity, one that has been traded for supernatural powers; humanity, and it’s reliance on over-arching norms, poison from a certain point-of-view, agreed to upon by the powers that be, is rendered fungible and can be sacrificed for that which exists beyond in the realm of the supernatural.
This overarching connection, subtly implied through the film’s posturing, lingers in the air like the malevolent fog surrounding the kids and makes Gretel’s plan to find shelter at another woman’s house suspect, especially when she reveals that she sees this abode not through her normal vision but through some special sight.
The two tepidly approach a solitary building with a fire out front and enter the dim, cavernous building with flickering lights. They decide to rest in a bed and we see a top-down view of them oriented upside-down — domesticity has been established but at an unseen cost is waiting to let itself be made known.
The situation completely flips on itself, when a hidden figure (Jonathan Gunning) slowly rises behind Gretel as the siblings attempt to comfort one another, stripping away any sense of security and warmth the duo had managed to clench onto.
The kids run out of the building but the menacing man takes hold of Hansel in the chaos. Gretel attempts to take him out, injuring his eye and rendering him even more of a monstrosity, but he only appears to get more powerful, threatening to bring the duo’s journey to a premature halt.
Suddenly, an arrow flies through the man’s head and removes him from the equation. A huntsman (Charles Babalola), framed neatly in the doorway of the building announcing his presence, comes forward and takes the children in before questioning them about their unfortunate circumstances. They converse in room lit by a musky, yellow haze which saturates the area, making grime on the children’s’ faces more prominent and pessimistically highlighting the realities of what they must do in order to survive.
Hansel (Sam Leaky), Gretel (Sophia Lillis), and the Huntsman (Charles Babalola) sit around the dimly lit table, enshrined by yellow hues. Gretel bathes. The huntsman (Charles Babalola) gives advice. Dissolve from Gretel (Sophia Lillis) to the forests which she must once again navigate. The siblings return to their trek through the woods. The encounter with the Huntsman, an event whose magical underpinnings Gretel questions, leads the siblings to a new path back into the forest. They will have to make their way back to society and slot back into the socially ordained order of things.
The huntsman offers to help the two by leading them towards labor, work defined by explicit gender roles that remind Gretel of the way her femininity has been coded and the way she can be taken (in even the darkest senses of the term) by the realm of men. However, with no other options, the two acquiesce to the huntsman’s suggestions and depart the location; all the while, Gretel questions the coincidence of the encounter and its fantastical nature, neatly tying her journey back to the earlier discussion about fairy tales.
The siblings once again journey through the forest and director Oz Perkins uses a series of nice dissolves which accentuates the environment’s fogginess and the dreaminess of the endeavor.
While taking a break, Hansel once again breaks into a tirade of childish inquisitions and Gretel is forced into an uncomfortable position, forced to deal with her younger brother’s lack of knowledge regarding sexual processes (and the disturbing manners in which gender roles are implicated in them) and the responsibilities that she faces in spite of her own young age. He believes in the fairy tales about procreation involving children being delivered by birds while she knows the involves processes underlying such myth, but her only response is sardonic disavowal instead of deeper explanation; what else is she to do?
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) looks out into the forest. The silhouettes of enchanters fills the forests’ negative space. A shot looking up at the reach of the forests.The siblings walk in the dark, silhouetted against the forest. An enchantress’s silhouette appears in the fog of the night. The siblings’ journey is marked by silhouettes, their own and those of the enchantress who follows them. This spectral figure, framed by trees and fog, stares at them and then disappears into the night as a black-bird emerges, the storybook sign of the witch.
He asks her to tell him the “pink cap” story again but she refuses, not willing to scare him and cause him to fall victim to delusions: the repetition of the story will only exacerbate their unwieldy conditions and cause the younger of them to see things which “aren’t there.” But as the older sibling looks into the woods and sees the silhouettes of enchanters in the forest, covered in the haze, we’re left wondering as to the nature of her visions and feel the pernicious effects of the story in her psyche that she alluded to earlier. Is her warning to Hans based off her own circumstances or is she truly gifted with a second sight like the character from the fable embedded within her?
Nighttime falls and the journey becomes increasingly treacherous. A solitary silhouette stands in the forest blocking the children’s path and the camera slowly zooms onto it. What does it want?
A whisper: “Gretel”.
Then, a dark bird, an evocation of the supernatural, flies up ending the moment. The figure is missing and reality becomes suspect. We’re left wondering the figure’s motivations and its reasoning for reaching out to Gretel while being unsure of its status as dream or reality.
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) narrates until she is interrupted by a noise. A tracking shot follows Gretel (Sophia Lillis) as she searches for this disturbance. Hansel is pretending to cut a tree. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) attempts an amends with Hansel (Sam Leakey). Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and Hansel (Sam Leakey) do a pig affirmation in a closer shot, affirming their reunification. Gretel’s narration is cut off by a noise which she promptly goes to investigate. We track on her as she moves to the site of this disturbance which is revealed, in a wide-shot, to be Hansel trying his luck at chopping trees. She initially responds with anger and upsets the bond between the two. But then the camera cuts to a more intimate framing of the two, and their piggish affirmation unites them once more.
Back in the daytime, Gretel narrates again about her powers and how her mother told her to put such thoughts out of her head, but this internal discussion is interrupted by an unseen noise which Gretel begins to trek towards. The interruption in thought reveals the “real-time” aspect of the film proper, informing us that this tale, unlike the fairy tale, is far from set in stone and is being carved out. The camera adopts a handheld quality as it tracks her, imbuing the shot with a subjectivity that affirms this moment of urgent agency.
We’re initially tense with her. Is this her nightly visitor coming back again?
No.
It’s just Hansel, who bored in the moment, is “practicing” his craft by whacking a stick against a tree, an affirmation of his future role as a manly woodcutter. A wide shot that frames the duo within a larger scope of the trees and reveals the truth of the situation: objectivity reigns once more.
Initially, Gretel is cross with her brother for worrying her but the discord is cut through as the two affirm their piggish bond, coming closer within a more enclosed frame, and continue forwards.
Gretel runs towards mushrooms framed in the foreground. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) laughs. Hansel (Sam Leakey) laughs. Hansel (Sam Leakey) is perturbed. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) is enamored while Hansel runs past her. Witches appear in the foggy trees. A carriage goes by in the forest. The beautiful child (Giulia Doherty) and her mother ride in a blue-lit carriage. The trip sequence marks the start of the film’s disorienting form, once which discombobulates space and time through its edits to reveal the effects and powers of the supernatural forces which, stemming from nature, govern all. The siblings’ trips from their mushroom consumption starts off well with both of them in giggles but quickly becomes unnerving. An edit which shows Hansel broaching Gretel’s space is the first disorienting step which is followed up when the latter sees new witches in the surroundings. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a carriage appears in the woods, its proximate location to the children unexplained. We cut to the inside of this impossibly blue-lit carriage and see the figure of Gretel’s tale, the pink-capped child, along with another woman riding along. The sequence, evocative yet confusing in its progression, calls to question the reality of the situation and where the siblings’ trip has ended and where the magic has started.
Incredibly hungry, they come towards mushrooms growing on the forest floors, growths which appear prominently framed in the foreground. Gretel dresses the moment up with make-believe, pretending to talk to the fungus (although given her claims of magic, we’re also slightly convinced that her dialogue may in fact be real) and gets the “okay” to eat them. Hansel eagerly accepts her affirmation and the two eat the mushrooms.
We cut to the delirium: both children are framed in their own spaces and the two laugh before the soundscape becomes more intense. Hansel becomes perturbed and begins to walk out of his position. An immediate cut disorients us, as the continuity of Hansel’s trajectory within Gretel’s shot is whiplash-inducing in how it changes our spatial perception of the environment the two are in.
Figures, once again hidden in the fog, appear in response to this spatial schism, and call to question the reality of the setting. Are they a drug induced vision or something more nefarious?
Then, another childish whisper: “Follow me. Come and find me. Follow me, sister.”
A carriage pops out of view, once again usurping our orientation of the environment through the intentionally obfuscating editing; where did this vehicle come from and where is it in reference to the children?
The questions only pile up as the visuals continue to become more abstracted as; suddenly, we cut to “the Beautiful child” and a woman in a carriage lit in impossibly deep blues, a luminescence similar to the children’s’ house at night. Then, the dream temporarily abates, leaving only questions in its wake.
The siblings are framed by the gates. A doll is hidden among the grasses. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) is one side of the gate while Hansel (Sam Leakey) is on the other. The red-glass of the house stares at the siblings. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) tries to hold Hansel (Sam Leakey) back. The house watches the siblings. Gretel looks through a triangular peephole. She sees a bountiful feast in front of her eyes. Gretel (Sophia Lillis) keeps watch in front of the window. Holda (Alice Krige) appears behind Hansel (Sam Leakey), framed off by the door. The children happen upon a new house which is littered with ominous signs that would serve as deterrent for anyone in the area. A gate which demarcates the two, dolls on the floor, and an ominous red-window (which the camera pushes on imbuing with its own supernatural agency) all scream ill tidings, but the smell of food from the house serves too powerful a force and compels the siblings to ignore their better judgement. Gretel looks through a triangular peephole, a sign of the enchantress’s domain, and keeps watch for Hansel who sneaks in to retrieve some food. But the house’s owner, an older woman, Holda, appears in a doorway behind Hans, an eerie callback to the manner by which the emaciated man appeared behind Gretel moments earlier, and whisks him away. Gretel’s attempt at saving her brother make no progress and she is forced to take refuge with this mysterious stranger who warns the young girl off of any foolish plans.
A gate frames the siblings as they walk towards the source of the voice and they find a partially hidden doll-like figures on the floor, a sign of civilization and a marker of lost innocence, that points them towards a house where the smells of cake are overwhelming and tempt the hungry children desperate for any source of meaningful consumption.
But the revelation of the triangular structure of the house informs us of what we now know: this is the abode of absolute power.
Yet, the sibling’s drive to consume overwhelms all other senses and notions of common sense. Gretel cautiously peers into the house, one lit in ominous yellows, but her eye, framed within a triangular peephole, a confirmation of the overarching architecture, sees only a bountiful feast on a table. There is only one goal Gretel and Hansel care for now: satiating their hunger which takes full control of their faculties.
Hansel sneaks in with Gretel’s help and starts to steal foodstuffs. But then, a figure appears from the background (seemingly out of nowhere like the horrific emaciated man from earlier), isolated in a doorframe, and whisks Hansel away with the flip of her cloak. Unfortunately, there are no princes (or huntsmen) to save the duo from their current perils and the older sister is tasked with figuring out her own solution to the major impediment facing her.
She decides to throw a rock at the building in an attempt to save her brother but is unable to make any meaningful dent as the projectile weakly bounces off the abode. While she begins to start a fire in another rescue attempt, the woman (Alice Krige) and Hansel come out and the former warns the young woman to not “start something that she can’t stop”, clearly alluding to a more sinister double meaning lurking beneath the words.
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) finally decides to eat the food gifted to her. Holda stores Hansel’s hair. Hansel (Sam Leakey) and Gretel (Sophia Lillis) sleep, comforted by the fact that they are seemingly safe. Gretel eats the food, left with no other options, while Holda puts aside a piece of Hansel’s hair, an ominous sign of the costs of these gifts. But the children, asleep in their own beds now, are comforted by their temporary safety. This has at least started better than their failed encounter at the house of the emaciated man. But we are well aware, their newfound freedom will turn upside down once more.
Finally, the visions and reality collide: Gretel is tasked with dealing with this strange and mysterious woman, a seemingly kind soul named Holda, who offers the first positive words in regards to Gretel’s femininity and the roles available to her. With no other path to turn down, Gretel joins her brother and begins to consume the bounty in front of her all while the elderly woman takes a strand of Hansel’s hair and stores it away.
The opening’s warning, made all the more poignant due to the slow burn nature of the narrative creepily crawling towards this preluded epiphany, is brought to sinister light as all the visible pieces — gifts (the food and boarding), those who offer them (Holda herself), and the willing benefactors willing to take them (Gretel & Hansel) — make us eerily aware that a cost will have to be paid when the battle between the parties plays out.
Perkins perfectly encapsulates the nature of this triangular antagonism through the metaphor of chess; as the children get acquainted with Holda she has them play the great strategic game and uses the pieces and rules to further extend the gender discourse: “the king is afraid, and he should be. Because the queen can do whatever she wants.” In this battle to determine her own fate against the powers that be and seek to domesticate her, Gretel is tasked to play in this game, her opponent being the woman who seeks to educate her, the other “queen” on the other side of the board.
The characters (and their affects) become pieces in an overarching game and the cinematographic decisions reflect as much, demonstrating the effects of their movements on the wider state of the “board”.
The primary players are typically framed in manners that never highlight their entire body (usually in medium shots) with the characters in the center of the frame (usually in the lowest vertical register of the frame at that) to emphasize the characters’ subjectivity and their current situation. In addition, these types of shot usually isolate the character by themselves, emphasizing their status as individual pieces. This makes shots where characters intercede in another’s space immediately evocative, suggesting that a “power play” is occurring even if the nature of the maneuver is not immediately apparent.
Tracking shots, both stable and handheld, follow the characters as they make specific decisions —movements on the board in order to strike the enemy down. The speed of these shots is perfectly calibrated, going as slowly or quickly as the moments need, carefully establishing just who really is in control of a situation.
Wide shots, which usually are the only such shots to reveal characters’ entire bodies, represent the results of the clashes by respective parties which is why they emphasize the totality of the players qua pieces and their surroundings.
The film oscillates between these visual registers, taking advantage of elliptical editing and the Kuleshov effect to visually depict how each respective party asserts their power within this (primarily) psychological space. We see them isolated thinking of their next move, privy to their pressing interests and their psychological states due to the symbolically rich and evocative mise-en-scène (in particular, the lighting achieved through the stained glass). We see the momentum of their agency as we see them proceed towards action. Then, the battlespace is revealed and we can re-assess who’s “winning” before the next “move” is played.
This flow in the film’s rhythm is what keeps it captivating, accentuating the poetic flourishes of the script’s dialogue and buoying the weaker such parts (usually involving either dialogue that’s too on the nose for it’s own good or, less often, line deliveries which bely the tone of the scenarios in which they’re spoken) with visual schemas that safeguard the tense, oneiric mood (even during basic shot-reverse-shot sequences). Even when the story goes slower, quieting its more traditional narrative in favor of affective mood-setting, the heart of the battle is always present within the frame, captivating any viewer willing to parse the piece’s form.
Even without the schematic underpinnings imbuing the frames with their respective meanings, Perkins and his cinematographer, Galo Olivares, achieve a fairy tale aesthetic that’s oozing in personality. Watching the film is akin to viewing a moving storybook, filled with breathtaking and nightmarish images that certainly dip their toes in surrealism to great effect.
The score operates in a harmonious (mostly) subdued sense, augmenting the mood but never overdetermining the moments with an unearned elicitation of feeling due to the music alone. The effect is one that surprises as we’re caught unaware when the sonorous stylings do rear their head during the profound moments when characters’ make legitimate headway in their strategies.
It’s no surprise then that the film has still struggled with finding its audience as its focus is less on the story and more on the nature of its telling; the fairy tale is merely a springboard to discuss the ideas inherent within the narrative form and the film’s exploration of these vis-à-vis the particular mode of film, the nature of the image and the ways they can have an impact on the psyche of the viewer through the way the assert implicit meaning and connection, allows the viewer to disappear within the world of the film, fully captured within texture of the frame. The measured pacing and lack of conventional narrative thrust intentionally forces the viewer to play the film’s game on its terms, a decision which may alienate those looking for a more propulsive, kinetic horror experience; however, by that same token, the confident formal and aesthetic decisions should also earn the film fans itching for a mood piece which reckons with genre in a lush, painterly manner as it excavates the darkness present within the popular childhood fable.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Gretel and Hansel is a beautiful looking, slow-burn telling of the Grimm Brother’s fairy tail with a feminist slant that plays perfectly within director Oz Perkins moody, evocative wheelhouse. While the script fails him at times, the depth he’s able to imbue through his direction, which prioritizes mood over narrative propulsion, elevates the piece and makes it a truly haunting experience for viewers willing to lose themselves in the film’s spell.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S
Go to Page 2for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Mackenzie Davis as Kate Finn Wolfhard as Miles Brookylnn Prince as Flora Barbara Marten as Mrs.Grose
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
94 minutes
January horror is something special. The Grudgedisappointed me. Underwater surprised me by managing to deliver a surprisingly effective thrill ride. As a result, I went into The Turning not knowing what to expect. I left the theater confused and shocked. I personally enjoyed the movie, but think the litany of flaws and issues makes it impossible to recommend outside of a few niche people that can find enjoyment in less than ideal movies.
The story follows Kate, a teacher who takes on a new position as a live-in tutor for a young girl, Flora. As she begins her position and becomes acquainted with her new student, thing start going bump in the night. Soon after, Flora’s brother, Miles drops on in and the absurdity ramps up even harder. In fact, the movie constantly builds up to its climactic reveal. There were multiple times where I thought I had a theory of what happened, but then something else would happen that would contradict what I thought. Then within the last TEN minutes of the movie, the rug is pulled out from the audience’s feet and after a few WTF scenes, the movie ends. The audience at my theater burst out into a sea of “Huhs”, “What just happened?”, and “Are you f*$king kidding me?”. I may not remember the movie, but the ending is something that will stay with me. It’s hard to even categorize as good or bad because it just is.
A lot of the issues in the movie stem from a huge identity crisis. The movie want to teeter on the edge of psychological and supernatural. It wants the audience to not be sure. The issue is that instead of ambiguous directing that hints that there might be more at hand, every hint towards one genre or the other is heavy handed. They explicitly make the genre present as opposed to debatable which takes away a ton of the nuance. This problem becomes even more egregious in the third act, where certain characters start bringing up plot points that were barely touched on before. It feels like the movie didn’t want to commit to any path so it tried to be everything. The result is a mess that’s incomprehensible. It’s disappointing because the movie does a lot well.
For example, I think all the performances are on point. Mandell starts off bubbly and enthusiastic at the opportunity to teach and it comes off genuine (if a little too excited). She slowly becomes a wreck during the movie and feels just as confused as the audience (which definitely helps you relate to her frustrations). Both Wolfhard and Prince are great as the kids. They bounce off each other well and I can totally believe their sibling relationship. I loved Wolfhard in this movie. He’s usually the nice/funny kid but here he’s a total creeper. Weird lines, ominous edge, aggressive tendencies – he displays it all with gusto. That being said, the star of the show is Marten as the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. She rides the line between creepy and doting well enough to maintain a sense of mystery about the true extent of her involvement in the unraveling horrors.
The movie is also shot and scored well. The camera is steady and there are a lot of picturesque scenes. I expected more shaky cam and jump scares, but the movie is fairly good at scares. There are jump scares, but none of them are patently false. Scares also linger in the background with noise, so you’re always asking yourself if you saw something move. Nathan Barr’s score is also great.
If the elements were just put together in a more coherent plot, I think the movie could’ve been something special. I personally love weird, ambiguous movies that are open to interpretation. The movie either needed to commit to the heart of the mystery it wanted to tell and then make the hints related to the same OR it needed to be consistent in direction at showing certain phenomena (this makes more sense in the spoiler section).
REPORT CARD
TLDR
The Turning is a movie that tries to be too many things and fails to be anything. It’s a suspenseful, harrowing journey that unfortunately doesn’t go anywhere. If you’re okay with awful/incoherent endings or like weird ambiguous movies there might be something here for you. I liked it and still think the movie leaves a lot to be desired. I do think waiting for a rental might be the move though.
Rating
5.5/10
Grade
F
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Will Smith as Mike Lowrey Martin Lawrence as Marcus Burnett Jacob Scipio as Armando Armas Kate del Castillo as Isabel Aretas
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
124 minutes
I’ll be upfront and say I don’t really remember Bad Boysor Bad Boys II outside of a few moments, and I wasn’t going to go through the effort of re-watching them for this newest release. Thankfully for me, the movie doesn’t require knowledge of the previous movies, but does reward people who have kept up with Mike and Marcus’s journey up to now. I left the movie immensely satisfied and think this movie will please old and new fans alike.
The movie follows a more mature Mike and Marcus, the former desperate to continue fighting bad guys while the latter is getting ready to retire and enjoy the comforts of life, including his newly born grandchild. However, a string of murders brings the two together for one last ride (pending the imminent sequel). While I may not remember the last two movies, I know I will remember parts of this one for a bit. The reveals in the third act were fun and well-earned- definitely not what I expected when I was walking in. That’s not to say the story is perfect. It definitely has some moments of fat that could be trimmed off, especially in the second act which feels like it goes on for a while. There’s a lot of “find X” guy sub-plots happening which feel like they could have been condensed and streamlined. But in spite of all of that, it’s entertaining.
If you were a fan of the frenetic cut based directing of the previous movies, you may be upset with how tame this movie feels. There’s still a ton of action and movement, but it feels more contained and refined. I personally enjoy this style way more and appreciated how clean the action sequences looked. I could tell you exactly what was happening on the screen as it happened, which I rarely can in modern action movies.
Like the action, the character development and pacing of the plot feel more refined than ever. Both Mike and Marcus have meaningful character arcs in this movie. Martin Lawrence’s performance as the latter proves he still has his acting chops. He’s just as funny but has a clarity about him. Even the side characters get some love here. The buddy-cop duo find themselves joined by tech-driven operations team (AMMO) and each member brings a little spice to the formula. I loved watching them bounce off the main duo and their interjections keeps the movie feeling fresh. The crazy part is – none of the above are even my favorite character from the movie. That honor goes to the villain Armando, a man who’s as complex is he as dedicated to executing justice. He’s a hardened criminal who has a moral compass and nothing about it feels off. Ruthless and violent, but not a deranged monster. I dig it.
Honestly, my biggest issues concerning the movie stem from its identity crisis. The movie wants to be funny (which it most certainly is), serious, have a message, and be action-packed. The issue is that it mixes those elements in ways that make them oppose one another. For example., there are moments where something serious happens and then someone makes a funny joke almost undercutting the impact of what was said. I get that it’s funny and is poking fun at the scenario, but it really takes you out of the moment. Likewise, the humor compounded with some missed opportunities, takes away a lot from some of the themes presented in the first act.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Bad Boys for Life should satisfy fans of the franchise and newcomers alike. It’s bold and has genuinely fun moments that set it apart from predecessors, but it never takes the following steps to become something truly innovative. Good popcorn flick and one of the better buddy-cop movies.
Rating
8.0/10
Grade
B
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Kristen Stewart as Norah Price Vincent Cassel as Captain Lucien T.J. Miller as Paul Jessica Henwick as Emily
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
95 minutes
After the disappointment that was The Grudge, I wasn’t that excited to see another January horror movie. So I set my expectations to 0 and went into Underwater with an open mind.I’m really glad I did, because the movie is a hell of a lot of fun. Yes, it’s an Alien derivative that doesn’t push the monster survival genre in any unique ways, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun time.
The movie is paced phenomenally. It doesn’t bloat the run time with a bunch of useless information or tired sequences – instead, it starts off with immediate action. Norah, a mechanical engineer aboard a corporate underwater drill, has to act fast when a breach in her station threatens to flood and destroy everything. Her and a few survivors have to band together and find a way to get out of the situation, but unbeknownst to them there’s some beasts lurking in the sea waiting to strike. Once the action starts it rarely lets up and I was surprised at how interesting the movie was. I never felt bored once, which I think is a mark of success for a thriller/horror.
All the members of the crew are adequate. The pacing of the movie gives little time for character development and it definitely feels like some of them are underutilized. This doesn’t mean there’s no character work – watching the characters deal with the stress of the situation in different ways definitely keeps the movie feeling fresh. Emily’s constant over-analysis or need to explain versus Paul’s humor add some levity to an otherwise tense and claustrophobic experience.
Performances are decent all around. Stewart does a great job as Norah projecting vulnerability and a resolute bad-assery. She’s the only character with a real arc, and it’s satisfying to watch it play out. Everyone else is just kind of along for the ride, so they don’t really get opportunities to add a lot of their own flair to their characters.
The movie is shot way better than I thought it would be. It’s only shaky when it needs to be which keeps the chaotic moments feeling distinct. There’s a great use of darkness and the movie follows the cardinal rule of not showing the “shark” too early. The creatures are hidden until they need to come out so I always felt tensed when I saw something flicker on the screen. The color palette is also murky and has a submerged feeling to it. Some people might be irritated by that. I personally wish it was used less, but it never felt like an issue.
The only real issue the movie has is a lack of purpose? I put a question mark here because I think the ending hints at a more complex “story” which would resolve this issue, but I can’t know until a sequel comes out. This is written with that in mind. Even though the movie is shot and executed well, outside of some awesome moments in the third act, there’s nothing really here that’s unique. It’s not bad- but if you want to see something that completely re-invents the Alien style of movie, you won’t find it here. Instead, you’ll find a competent thriller that’s action packed from beginning to end.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Underwater is a tense,claustrophobic, and exciting from start to finish. It may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s a well executed thriller with some incredible moments in the third act. If you like Alien derivates or underwater thrillers, you should check it out!
Rating
7.5/10
Grade
C+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
