From the opening shot of The Others, I could tell that Alejandro Amenabar had a very specific aesthetic and motif he wanted to play around with. The religious exposition is directly followed by a blood curling scream from Nicole Kidman as Grace and the mood is set. The story follows Grace as she hires a new set of servants to help taker care of her house and her children who suffer from a deathly photo-sensitivity affliction. As the curtains start closing the tension starts rising as the supernatural mystery plays out.
The film nails it’s aesthetic in every single scene. The lighting creates an murky feeling. There’s always a sense that something unknown is lingering with Grace and the other residents. The scenery outside is constantly filled with fog. Everyone feels cut off and the residents feel isolated from the outside world. The trapped feeling highlights the paranoid feeling that comes from constant feeling that intruders are present and about. This helps the movie feel scary without ever relying on gimmicks that plague a lot of the horror movies coming out now. There’s no gore. There’s no false jump scares. There’s just tension that’s created from the eerie and unknown atmosphere.
Kidman’s acting is on point and she transitions perfectly from manic and paranoid to a religious disciplinarian. Never once do her actions feel out of place and her expressions of pain keep an emotional weight in the movie that help give it very much needed substance. The child actors are also decent in the movie. Their performances never feel too out of place and make more sense as we learn more about how they’ve been raised and lived their lives.
This leads to the main problem with the movie- some of the bigger twists are certainly surprising and are subtly built up in terms of clues, but others feel out of place and disjointed. The film is aesthetically beautiful which helps mask the hollowness of certain story points. At times it feels like the beauty of the film is done to distract us from those flaws and it works for the most part, but by the end of the movie I was left unsatisfied with the way certain key questions were left.
Rating
TLDR:The Others is an aesthetically pleasing, suspenseful, ghost mystery. While it’s provocative in it’s Gothic presentation, certain story beats feel hollow and rushed.
Final Rating: 8.4/10. If you enjoy moody horror pieces that focus more on suspense and feeling, this movie should be right up your alley.
Guillermo del Toro’s supernatural piece, The Devil’s Backbone, is a beautiful humanist tale set during the Spanish Civil War. Familiarity with the factions during the war isn’t a prerequisite to watching the movie, but is something a viewer should understand if they want to get more from the experience. The story follows a newly orphaned child, Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as he’s forced to integrate and deal with the supernatural aspects of a orphanage for the children of those associated with the Republicans.
This movie is less scary and more eerie in an aesthetic sense. The first shot is a wonderful indication of this, as it starts as an introspection on ghosts to a missile being dropped into the ground. The real horror of the movie is the violence that people are willing to inflict upon one another for capital gains. In the war, a huge revolution was read by the authoritarians and fascists against the leftists Republicans and anarchists- a battle that served as a precursor to World War II and whose contents are still being fought about in the status quo. The characters proximity to the war helps provide a nuanced commentary on the same, while highlighting the heavy costs of warfare. As such, nothing feels heavy-handed, and thematic victories feel more earned.
Throughout the film, pan shots are utilized to great effect. The distance and layout of the orphanage feels well-realized, and I felt like I had a grasp of the basic floor plan because of how well the space is visualized and traversed. Furthermore, they create this constant sense of dramatic irony. Multiple characters have secrets that get revealed in this way, which helps flesh out the characters and explain their motivations. The transition is never overused, so it feels fresh every-time that it happens.
The movie constantly highlights agency and understanding. Characters stay less powerful when they know less. The children are constantly forced into action and feel like they can’t do anything. The adults feel forced into a situation and war that they hope ends well for them but has slowly taken everything away from them. Even though no character takes Earth-shattering actions, their personal journeys and attempts at regaining control in their lives is interesting and serves as a kind of microcosm of the Civil War going on in the background.
Certain character choices and decisions feel less justified in the third act. Some characters make bad choices, but there are definitely some events that happen that feel like the story needs them to happen as opposed to feeling like an organic response to what went on. Thankfully, these issues mainly show up regarding more of the side characters, but they do impact the story.
Rating
TLDR:The Devil’s Backbone, is a well-shot and gorgeous story about the depths of human solidarity . It tackles it’s themes in a poetic way that really take advantage of the story’s setting.
Final Rating: 8.8/10. History buffs who know more about the Spanish Civil War would love this. Fans of humanism or empowerment stories would also like this. Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!
Adrienne King as Alice Peter Brouwer as Steve Laurie Bartram as Brenda Kevin Bacon as Jack Mark Nelson as Ned Jeannine Taylor as Marcie Robbi Morgan as Annie
The full moon appears. The campers sing at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958. Campers gather around the campfire while singing. A POV shot through the the children’s cabins.The moon gains prominence. A young couple starts to make love while being watched by an outside party. The couple is killed. The camera freezes the frame on the victims face, pushes into it, and then fades to white. The title screen breaks through the glass along with score. The opening scene evokes shades of John Carpenter’s Halloween. A POV camera stands in for a killer who murders a couple after they’ve begun to intimate as the track whispers “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” in the background to the swell of an orchestra. It’s effective, to the point, and a perfect encapsulation of what the movie is about.
Clouds go over the full moon as the camera tracks down from the celestial object to a campground, Camp Crystal Lake. The year is 1958. People inside one of the cabins sing a cheery camp song. The film cuts away to an POV shot. It’s subject wades through the campground and looks at the children. Meanwhile, the cheery diegetic track gives way to a more foreboding non-diegetic set of orchestral noises accompanying a whisper-like chant: “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma ma”. The film cuts back to the cabin where the cheery song is being sang and the ominous track dissipates for a moment.
After the singing is done, two of the camp counselors sneak off to enjoy the indiscretions of youth. A close-up of the foreboding moon comes up for a brief moment before the film cuts back to the couple as they vacate to a empty cabin and go upstairs to enjoy more sensual pleasures. However, just as they start getting intimate, the film cuts back to the POV shot and its subject. The non-diegetic chant comes back in and continues to increase in intensity. Suddenly, the subject is face to face with the couple who realizes they’re being watched. The two of them get up and make some excuses to the figure – clearly someone they both know. However, the subject slashes and kills both of them. The camera pushes in on the final victim’s face, cementing the expression of fear before the screen dissolves into an intense flash of white light; the title card shoots forward and breaks the glass screen.
Now, the year is 1980 and the story picks up on a group of camp counselors who have been hired by the owner of the Camp Crystal Lake campground, Steve (Peter Brouwer) to help him with his attempt at re-opening the location. As each of the youthful characters makes their way towards the camp, they run into locals who inform them of site and its terrifying reputation. The townspeople try and warn the new counselors of previous incidents at the camp like a drowning in 1957 and the murders of 1958 to get the youthful bunch to quit, but the youngsters refuse and set-up shop at camp with Steve, getting the campsite ready for a grand re-opening. Unfortunately for them, the movie’s opening moments has informed the viewer of the threat of murderer, so the seeds for the carnage are now allowed to bloom.
If the structure of the opening feels familiar, it’s because the movie intentionally emulates the footsteps of John Carpenter’s seminal classic, Halloween. There’s a scene of conjugal innocence interrupted by a killer whose point-of-view becomes the camera’s view. There’s an iconic theme and music profile associated with the terror; composer Harry Manfredini’s “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” whisper replaces John Carpenter’s terrorizing synths. This is all intentional; director Sean Cunningham and screen-writer Victor Miller wrote the film explicitly to ride on Halloween’s success and capitalize on what they thought were its strong points for as cheap as possible. [1]Kennedy, M. (2019, December 7). How Halloween directly inspired Friday the 13th. ScreenRant. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://screenrant.com/halloween-movie-inspired-friday-the-13th-franchise/.
However, it’s precisely where the movie openings diverge from one another where the issues effecting Friday the 13th can be made clear. Halloween ends its opening sequence by revealing that its killer is a young boy, Michael, shocking the audience and setting it’s story’s dark tone. The film’s use of the P.O.V shot disguises the identity of the killer but reveals their modus operandi and points of focus. However, once the initial act of murder is done, the P.O.V shot is flipped to a traditional view of the subject and the viewer is aghast and made aware that the killer is not normal and is out of synch with the “morally righteous” world. Because the killer is treated as a heinous monster the film is able to focus less on developing their character; through just their screen presence, the killings are made terrifying enough and the tension stems from following the victims that have to deal with the killer who is beyond any reason or comprehension. This creates multiple points of interest and tension.
But Friday the 13th treats the identity of its killer as the driving force of the narrative, generating tension from the possibility of the killer being any of the characters. Yet, because the story gives no clues about the nature of the identity of the killer till late into the third act when the reveal is all but inevitable and also doesn’t make any of the victims interesting in their own right outside of being possible red herrings, there’s absolutely no narrative momentum. Given the movie’s release context and the nature of its killer, it makes sense that Miller wanted to ensure there was no chance the killer’s identity would be revealed. However, because the focus is so stringent on maintaining “perfect” mystery until the moment of the reveal, there’s no reason to care about the movie, sans bits of gory fun, until that moment happens. Naturally, this puts the brunt of the thematic and emotional weight of the narrative on the killer’s reveal and reasoning for acting as they did, but Friday the 13th’s set-up is convoluted to say the least and does not spend nearly enough time laying the seeds for these revelations to feel earned.
Even within the context of the violence, there’s no effort made at establishing any kind of clues regarding the killer’s psychological profile. While Halloween spends little time characterizing its killer, it does relish in showing off its killers macabre decisions to give the viewer room to think about the nature of the killer’s thoughts; there’s an unease generated by trying to and and eventually making sense of the grim choices being made. Friday the 13th doesn’t even try to show personality behind the butchering; while the nature of the kills sequences are all creative by the standards of the time, there’s no connective tissue between them that would lead even a diligent viewer to gleam any meaningful information about the killer’s identity or reasoning for acting in the way they do.
This means the movie, up till the killers reveal, is functionally irrelevant character interaction and nicely put together gore sequences. No character, sans the killer, has a motivation that the viewer can latch onto as a reason to root for anyone through their trials and tribulations. While the group of “protagonists”, though calling them that feels like a stretch in itself, is generally likable, nothing inventive or fruitful ever happens because of or between the characters to distinguish them in meaningful fashion. Unfortunately, this makes the murderous moments ones with low stakes and subsequently renders the characters’ deaths as nothing more than beautiful bits of carnage candy.
But even without stakes, delightful gore with no narrative fat is certainly appealing, depending on the viewer, in its own right and that’s what Friday the 13th excels at delivering. The characters become blood-soaked paintbrushes in makeup designerTom Savini’s hands, conjuring up visions of the macabre and grotesque. Cunningham relishes in the sensuality of the violence and setting up the bodies in cruel and tragic fashion. This effect is accentuated because the movie only shows a few of the murders; selective moments of mutilation engender a matrix of fear which makes the reveal of other bodies all the worse. Because the moments of brutality are incorporated selectively, they actually manage to be shocking. This is why in spite of being light on plot, the film still manages to unnerve. While the characters may not be all that relatable, the way their bodies are violated certainly makes one a bit squeamish concerning their own flesh. It’s no wonder then that in spite of its own inception as a Halloween clone, Friday the 13th has managed to leave its own indelible mark on the slasher genre, demonstrating that good enough gore can make up for a lot.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Friday the 13th functions more as a vehicle for slaughter than a deeper foray into the human condition, providing the audience little more than momentarily evocative carnage candy until the explosive reveal of the killer’s true identity and motivations. Though there’s little subtext and the mystery driving the heart of the story is unfairly withheld from the audience until its reveal, the ride the movie takes viewers is fun even decades after its initial release in theatres. For those fans looking for quick, brisk, and to the point slasher-fare, Friday the 13th more than holds up.
Rating
7.4/10
Grade
C+
Go to Page 2for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Paul W. S. Anderson’s science fiction horror film, Event Horizon, is an ambitious attempt at telling a haunting and Lovecraftian space adventure. The story follows a space response team, sent on a top secret mission related to a star ship, Event Horizon. What follows is an interesting premise that nails some moments quite well, but overshoots and makes other portions of the story feel more like a joke.
The first act was quite interesting and managed to hook me in with it’s mysterious and offsetting nature. We’re presented a series of confusing and gruesome visuals with no explanation which keeps the sense of tension and horror up. When answers finally do come from Dr. Weir (Sam Neil), even more questions are raised. A lot of these early moments are scary because they’re unknown. They seem like delusions and mirages. In fact, one thing the movie consistently does is deliver frightening moments. There’s a lot of gore and unsettling imagery that makes the environment seem like a form of space hell.
Acting from the main leads is great and keeps the tension up the scenes they’re in. Laurence Fishburne makes Captain Miller feel like a confident, in-charge kind of leader. He’s commands a sense of authority and never feels out of place. Neil is also asked to do… interesting things by the script in the third act, and he delivers as serious a performance he could give, given the way the pacing and development of these scenes went. It helped me retain some level of interest, despite the strange and hilarious lows the plot goes through.
If I had to describe the movie, I’d say it’s the cinema equivalent of a roller coaster- very high highs and laughably low lows. The biggest issue with the movie is a lot of the moments randomly go into overdrive- almost like the script said “exaggerate this moment.” There are dreadful and terrifying scenes in the movie, and I wanted to be more disturbed by them, but it’s hard when characters are yelling obscenities like it’s some kind of slapstick comedy. The third act honestly felt like a different movie at some points because of how strange the inclusion of certain pieces of dialogue felt in relation to the tone the movie wanted to establish. I would be scared, then laugh, then incredulously gawk at the screen, and loop this behavior.
The movie also feels a bit gimmicky at times.There’s an inconsistent “power-scaling” of the antagonist in the movies. It feels like they’re invincible in certain scenes but then immediately after, they don’t protect themselves from taking damage despite seemingly having the ability to. There’s also this weird use of Latin in the movie that’s used to explain certain things, but it feels shoe-horned, unnatural, and like a cheap way to get twist scares. I felt like the environment could’ve used a different method to do the same kind of thing.
After reading about the production issues that plagued the movie, I felt like some of my concerns would have been alleviated if a more true version of the movie had been released in line with the director’s vision, but regrettably those unseen portions of the movie have been destroyed. Given what the movie could have been, it would’ve been great to see it’s more gruesome interpretation. That’s the real tragedy here.
Rating
TLDR: Despite being a bumpy ride, Event Horizon, was surprisingly entertaining. Thought the story is best early on, there are more than enough gory and unsettling moments to hold your interest in the more tumultuous second half.
Final Rating: 7.4/10. I personally enjoyed the movie more than the score indicates and will probably watch it again. If you can handle some goofy and cheesy moments and some inconsistent rules, this film might be in your ballpark. Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!
As a child nothing scared me more than “Bloody Mary.” I was only in elementary school when I heard the tale, and the “true stories” of the awful bloody things that happened to their second-cousins-brother’s friend (you know what I’m talking about) , and I promised myself I would never play the game. Even now as an adult, I respect that oath out of the fear of what could happen. After watching Bernard Rose’s supernatural-slasher, Candyman, I have one more name to add to the list of names never to utter in front of any mirror.
The story follows a pair of graduate students, Helen (Virginia Madsen) and Bernie (Kasi Lemmons) as they write their thesis on urban myths. As luck would have it, the Cabrini-Green housing project near them , has experienced a death, supposedly at the hands of the urban myth, Candyman. A murder and a community believing in that the murder was caused by a spirit? That sounds like the perfect location for students writing about urban myths and Helen quickly springs into action learning all about Candyman. Like Mary, he can be summoned by anyone who chants his name 5 times in front of a mirror. Upon being summoned he will brutally eviscerate the one who dared to summon him. Helen, being a firm non-believer, treats the rumor as a myth and proceeds through with the ritual. What follows is a tightly knit tale about gender, race, gentrification, and the mystical nature of belief.
What helps the story work is how real it feels. The community at Cabrini-Green aren’t caricatures of our worst fears of what the “hood” is. They’re heterogeneous and breathe life into a community that gets demonized, not only in the movie, but in real life as well. The shocking reality of social imbalances set in, and the way that characters react and approach different situations highlights those fears. When the cleaning ladies talk about how Ruthie Jean called the police twice about someone coming for her she gets ignored. It’s palpable and reveals just how warped the system has become. Violence becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in a community when they’re arbitrarily relegated to the periphery for no other reason than their skin color.
Furthermore, the juxtaposition of Helen, a young white women, and Bernie, a young black women going into a black community was magnificent. They respond to different scenarios in ways to highlight not only character differences, but also social differences. When they enter the downtrodden community, Helen’s primary concern is finding information about the myth, while Bernie scared for her life. The whole way their first interaction plays out during this act only amplifies the way their positions change the way they think about themselves and what can/cannot happen to them. This becomes even more interesting when Helen goes through multiple revelations that complicate her relation to both the community and the legend of Candyman.
Speaking of Helen, Virginia’s performance is nuanced and emotionally resounding. The long reaction shots on her eyes help convey the depth of her emotional state. She goes from confident, to resourceful, to mystified, to paranoid, and so on. At no point do any of these shifts feel out of place or odd. They all feel authentic and make emotional beats in the story feel that much more poignant. After doing some background reading, I appreciated the extra effort she put in. For certain scenes, she actually let herself get hypnotized so that she would look dazed and mystified. Although, after witnessing Tony Todd’s performance as Candyman, and hearing his authoritative but hypnotic voice, I could see how someone could be entranced by him. But make no mistake, he is sinister.
The film is also shot well. The use of long pan transition shots makes the dread feel like it’s moving along. But the most interesting thing the movie does is insert stills constantly. Iconic images from the movie appear at key moments. They don’t feel intrusive, but are provocative and help foreshadow the meaning and metaphysical positions of key characters.
Rating
TLDR:Candyman, is a well-woven tale that analyzes multiple pressing social issues without ever feeling preachy or patronizing. It’s provocative and aesthetically haunting.
Final Rating: 10/10. Anyone who wants to experience a beautiful commentary on social positions/issues while also being scary, in a more visceral way should watch this movie. It’s a masterpiece.
Zombies- check. Misanthropy- check. Examination of alienation – check. Awesome music – double check.
Danny Boyle’s science-fiction zombie film, 28 Days Later, checks off all the necessities of a great movie, adds on a great deal of nuance and criticism, and wraps all of that in a beautifully shot and scored piece. The story follows Jim as he wakes up 28 days after a terrifying “rage” virus has spread and destroyed most of England. He eventually meets up with and forms a rag-tag team with other survivors as they struggle to find a way out of the living hell they find themselves in.
I knew I was in for a cinematic treat just based off of the parallels in the opening scene of the movie, and the opening scene on Jim. We start off looking at a monkey, tied up to a series of wires, being forced to take in violent awful media. When Jim wakes up, he’s also covered in wires on a hospital bed causing an immediate association between him and the primate. It beautifully foreshadows his journey as he’s forced to view and deal with gruesome and morbid scenes of violence. It also raises one of the films main thematic questions- what is humanity and how is it different than animality? Based on this opening scene it might be that humans and animals aren’t so different after all. The feeling never really goes away and the film constantly plays with it.
Every camera shot has a purpose in this movie and I was constantly kept off balance by their variation in use. The use of a gritty realistic recording makes the setting feel grounded and haunting. A darker color scheme is used for most of the film so when lighter ones are front and center, it feels intentional. It serves as a visual and thematic pallet cleanser, which for the most part, keeps the movie fresh and invites deeper answers to the questions being posited.
The frequent use of angled shots highlight the upturned nature of the world around them. Any semblance of the social order that they know of is gone. There are a lot of wide open shots that make the characters feel puny in comparison. They feel like ants- showcasing not only our groups’ alienation, but also questioning the general place of humanity in relation to the planet at large. The quick panicked shots when the zombies come in is also jarring and was frightening each time it was used. The zombies being as fast as they were only made the effects more pronounced.
Speaking of that, I love how fast the zombies were. They’re aggressive killing machines and present a real sense of urgency. The film ensures we know of that by having an incredibly tense and shocking zombie/reaction scene out of nowhere, highlighting the absurdity of it- a mistake at any point, even a small one could be deadly. Even a small speck of blood end our protagonists, so every zombie encounter becomes even worse- we’re constantly on the lookout for blood and cadavers because those present as much of a threat as the zombies themselves.
Because the zombies were so threatening I expected them to be the highlight of the film, driving the main source of tension. But the film spends a large chunk of time developing our group. They really do feel like a family, and some of the character moments in the second act are well realized. They help flesh out the characters without feeling out of place with what we’ve learned about everyone earlier.
John Murphy’s sound makes all of the above elements even better than they would be otherwise. He uses music to precisely accentuate the emotional undercurrent of the scene. The music is never just there for the sake of being there. For example, during one scene in the first act, a soft song plays in the background as the characters explore a certain area, but upon the discovery of a deceased couple, the music cuts out. Instead, the audience is left with silence- highlighting the somber and tragic nature of the scene, before the song comes back in- snapping us, and the character who discovered the scene back to real life. Furthermore, “In the House, In a Heartbeat”, is one of the the best horror/theme tracks I’ve ever heard and its use in the third act was chilling.
The ending of the movie feels rushed and thematically inconsistent, even if I personally thought it was a pleasant change of pace from what I expected. Certain character arcs feel like they come out of left field, but are still beautiful symbolically and thematically. The issue is that after setting up a series of expectations that would allow for the rushed characterization to feel symbolically meaningful, the film directly sidesteps what it just did in favor of something else. The end result, is a surprising ending that a lot of people might find unsatisfying. Personally, I liked it and I’ll get into that in the spoiler section, but I’m definitely going to look at the alternative endings to see if they change my view of the movie at all.
Report Card
TLDR
28 Days Later, is a rich and tense zombie film that’ll have you asking questions about the depraved extents we go to survive. Thought it falters in the ending, it is tense and filled with a sense of isolation that lasts until the very last scene. Watch if you enjoy tense and well-paced action scenes, examinations/criticisms of anthropocentrism, or want to watch a beautifully shot and scored work of art.
Let go. Maintain control. The two impulses seem diametrically opposed to one another. Letting go implies a sense of giving in to drive and impulse, but maintaining control is always portrayed as a denial of the same. Perfection is the balance between two and Darren Aronofsky’s psychological-thriller, Black Swan, follows Nina (Natalie Portman) as she attempts to find that balance in her upcoming ballet performance in Swan Lake.
The first shot of the movie is phenomenal and sets up both the surreal and phantasmic nature of movie , but also places Nina’s life squarely in the context of Swan Lake. She is the white swan- placed in the position of the pure and innocent. Incredibly fragile. It’s the first thing we see her thinking about- her ability to perform in the piece is something that is constitutive of her and her sense of being.
Portman’s performance is haunting and shows the strain and anguish that comes from the pressure to achieve perfection. She feels like a child- diverting her eyes away during conversation, whispering to herself, and crying in fear. Watching her brutal and tense transformation feels that much harder because of how well the anguish is shot and portrayed. Every injury and bruise feels visceral and hard to keep looking at. I could not stop clenching my wrists during certain tense scenes.
Mirrors are utilized with precision. They’ve always been symbolically associated with ourselves. A way of ascertaining our identity- looking into our true selves. Every scene with a mirror in this movie feels like it has a purpose- not just in a superficial “identity is multifaceted” kind of way – but as thought they represent a deep inner conflict between multiple inner selves. They also represent duality which reinforces the divide and conflict between the black and white “swans” Portman must embody.
The movie never spends too much establishing detail- there’s always a suspicion that certain things are afoot- characters are more perverse than they let on. Not focusing on the details does help create the fleeting artistic feeling which accentuates the transformative nature of the movie . Personally I liked how certain things were more open ended, but if you like everything clear cut and laid out for you- this may not be your cup of tea.
However, this does cause a weird sense of lack to develop. Certain subplots are brought up to help accentuate themes, but they don’t get resolved which makes them feel like plot devices as opposed to natural interactions. These inconsistencies also stick out more given the lengths the early portions of the movie take to make the environment “dark”.
Rating
TLDR:Black Swan is a beautiful tale of the price of perfection that will have you questioning what you’re really seeing. There are some slight narrative “forces”, but they don’t detract at all from Portman’s haunting and disturbing performance.
Final Rating: 9.4/10. If you enjoy deep character takes or movies that play with reality vs fantasy this movie should be right up your alley. I felt tense the entire film and was left speechless at the ending.
In lieu of the usual spoiler page, click here, to read my spoiler intensive analysis of the movie.
When I was a young child I remember walking into a room at a family friend’s part and watching the first gruesome scene in the movie. The moment was so unexpected and shocking that I ran out of the room and desperately tried to forget this movie. Nearly 15 years later, I have to say I’m happy I ran out of the room that day, because a younger me could never appreciate the philosophical complexity inherent at the heart of Vincenzo Natali’s science-fiction thriller, Cube.
The plot follows a group of randomly plucked strangers who have all mysteriously found themselves in a cube-shaped room. Each wall of the cube has a doorway to a similar shaped room. But from the first scene, the movie assures us that nothing is safe or truly secure. Certain cubes will kill anyone that enters them- so moving always risks possible death. This simple, yet elaborate set-up, constantly keeps every scene tinged with suspense.
From the very first moments, the movie feels tense and disturbing. The screen always feels claustrophobic because of the closed off nature of the set. The special effects on display are amazing and made the early deaths believable. In fact one of them feels like a real “omae wa mo shinderu” moment, and I visibly gasped when I saw it. The dread of knowing that you’re already dead and having to experience – that’s blood-chilling. The best part? This is just the first death of the movie.
What makes the movie work so well is how believable and well fleshed out all the characters are. Most members of the group take actions that seem justified- making them feel competent and REAL. The second act is where a lot of the dialogue happens and the characters become fleshed out and nuanced. Some of them even feel like call outs of tropes of the “roles” each of them fit in the genre. This made me care for them, good or bad, so the more gruesome moments were more resounding.
Philosophically, the movie shines. It felt like an examination into humanity’s attempts at creating patterns and meaning. For example, if I see a pattern like “12312312_” I’d assume that the next number in the chain is a “3” but that’s because I assume the base of the pattern to be “123.” If the base was actually ” 1231231245″ then next number from the above chain would be “4”. As such any attempt at understanding a pattern assumes some kind of context that can help discern them from merely random fluctuations. The movie plays on the characters and the audiences use of this behavior and deliberately creates a sense of doubt over the truthfulness of certain assumptions the group has made.
Throughout the film, the characters try to find patterns in the cubes or reasons for the presence of random objects , but because they’ve been placed in a situation where they don’t have any real context, they’re forced to guess on the “bases.” This creates this terrifying philosophical undercurrent the entire movie that helps highlight not only the thoughts and feelings the characters are having, but also remove any and all sense of expectation from the audience. Every time the characters traversed, I felt nervous something was going to happen. This feeling continues till the ending, which is what I loved most about it- based on how you fall on the issue, you can come to a different conclusion over the final fates of the characters.
The problems with the film become more prominent in the third act. Certain character choices don’t make a lot of sense given previous events, and other character changes seem sudden and rushed. There’s also a weird suspension of disbelief that happens regarding some traversal issues that make the movie feel inconsistent in it’s rule-set, but also feels like it could thematically align with some earlier points. It’s not something I hold against the film now, but it is something that others may not like as much.
Rating
TLDR:Cube is an ambitious philosophical thriller through cube shaped hell. It’s fun, though provoking and invites the audience to think along with it until the ending credits play. Some of the character decisions and transformations feel out of place near the end of the movie, but they’re not even close enough to derail the fun here.
Final Rating: 9.2/10. If you enjoy philosophy this is the movie for you. You’ll be sitting there talking about the plot long after the movie ends. Fans of suspense should also give this a go.
Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck Robert De Niro as Murray Zazie Beetz as Sophie
Release Date
2019
Language(s)
English
Running Time
122 minutes
Todd Phillips’s “comic book” film, Joker , feels less like a comic and more like a serious study of a man’s slow descent into a nihilistic force of violence. The film follows Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a man neglected and relegated by society until he finally snaps and embraces his persona as “Joker”.
Phoenix is the star of the show and is magnificent in his portrayal of a relegated pariah who slowly loses all hope. What makes the performance so haunting is the genuine sense of how real it feels. Arthur is constantly hopeful, someone trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps- trying to live the “American Dream.” Joaquin evokes a man, desperately trying to live out some dreams- to get back up in spite of everything. This was necessary, because without it the transformation from Arthur to the Joker would be more villainous and less sympathetic.
Furthermore, the laugh he emits due to his “illness” is genuinely haunting. It has a choking sound to it and completely reveals Fleck’s emotional state. Phoenix constantly manipulates and utilizes the laugh with different “intonations” to highlight the undercurrent of the characters state of mind. This helped chronicle Fleck’s progression from down-trodden dreamer to nihilist psychopath.
The humor in the movie is perverse. It never feels right because it comes about through a sense of awkwardness. I kept laughing during my viewing, along with the audience, at scenes that were unsettling, but I couldn’t stop. It’s like the absurdity of Joaquin’s laugh or the unsettling nature of whatever scenario was on the screen necessitated a laugh as a response. There are genuine moments of black humor that don’t rely on perverting the disturbing, but they’re more spread out through out the movie.
The movie is shot beautifully- everything feels gritty and realistic. The usage of different color palettes really helps make certain transformations more mesmerizing, but also help cast doubt on the reality of the situations. In fact, the movie plays a lot with reality and interpretation. Very early on, the film sets up a fantasy sequence of Arthur in a comedy show. It helps inform the audience that Arthur is prone to engage in delusion, but because of the way it’s placed in the narrative with no kind of “announcement” that this was no longer reality, the audience no longer has any expectation that what they’ll see on the screen is real. This tinges the movie with the idea that things might just be hallucinations. The feeling is maintained well until a certain juncture in the movie which feels a bit too heavy handed. It ruined the immersive and unnerving feel the movie had had up till that point.
Thematically the movie falls a bit flatter than I thought it would. The progression of the riot and the protest movement feels rushed and is something I wish was more fleshed out. The themes of class consciousness feel a bit more muddled and become even more confusing given the film’s attempt at cutely including actual Batman characters. Like having Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) in the movie is cool, but he feels like a big bad as opposed to some artistic depiction of the character from the comics- so the feeling doesn’t play out as well.
Report Card
TLDR
Joker is a beautiful deep dive into the psyche of a broken and battered man. Phoenix’s performance is mesmerizing and the theme is provocative , even if slightly inconsistent, in the questions its asking. Joaquin ‘s performance justifies the price of admission by itself. One of the best movies of 2019. If you can handle some painful scenes, buckle up for one of the wildest rides.
John Landis’s horror-comedy, An American Werewolf in London, follows the tale of two backpackers, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Duance) as they travel through England and are subsequently attacked by a werewolf. The rest of the film that follows tracks the characters and their respective responses to the attack. Though comedic, Landis’s story works better is more often scary and tragic.
A lot of the humor works because it feels so “normal” and nonchalant in the absurd circumstances. Characters reveal serious information in very calm ways, which makes them feel like jokes, but the juxtaposition with the seriousness of the situation creates an unsettling feeling in the scenes that only underpins the horror. The sound choice in the movie also helped amplify this feeling and disjuncture. A lot of the songs were werewolf related and up-beat and positive in contrast to the macabre scenes proceeding the same. Often times I’d be laughing, but then feel dread upon thinking of the actual implication of what’s being said.
Furthermore, the special effects in the movie are phenomenal. Rick Baker’s make up work and practical design work makes the werewolf transformation in this movie the scariest and most spectacular I’ve seen- and the movie has now been out for close to 4 decades. It was refreshing to see real makeup instead of an overabundance of CGI.
The atmosphere of the movie, especially in the third act, feels out of step because the comedic and terrifying elements are hard to balance out. It works for the most part, but some of the more serious aspects of the movie felt less so because of the inconsistent tonal transition. This in turn made the end of the movie feel more abrupt to me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes the ending feel somber.
Rating
TLDR:An American Werewolf in London is funny and tragic. For the most part, the comedic bits serve to highlight and drive home the absurdity and make the tragic nature of the situation more amenable. It comes off unevenly at some points, but the film remains enjoyable and gripping till the end.
Final Rating: 8.7/10. If you enjoy irony, comedic juxtaposition, or enjoy great visual effects design I’d check this flick out. It was surprisingly to the point and emotionally resonant.
