THE MENU (2022) is part of the 2020s wave of “rich assholes go to an island and something fucked up happens there” movies (see also: GLASS ONION, BLINK TWICE, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS [though they end up on the island by accident there]). Juror #2 Nicholas “Nux” Hoult plays Tyler Ledford, a food-nerd who proudly paid $1250 a plate to bring his less-interested date Margot, played by Furiosa #2 Anya Taylor-Joy, to a private island where celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, THE AVENGERS) presents extravagant themed meals for exclusive clientele. Right away you know Tyler sucks because he calls Margot “babe” and lectures her about her palate, and that Margot is the final girl because she’s the only one looking back to see the boat leaving and the doors closing behind them. We side with her anyway because when Tyler raves about the lemon caviar and raw oyster with mignonette and mansplains that alginate is made of algae she says, “Yeah. Pond scum.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
This is Fiennes: THE MENU vs. CONCLAVE double feature
Thursday, February 20th, 2025Street Trash (2024)
Thursday, February 6th, 2025
Yep, they made a new STREET TRASH in 2024, it recently had a limited theatrical release, it’s produced by Bloody Disgusting and Screambox so it’s probly on there, and also it’s on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. When I say “a new STREET TRASH” I’m intentionally being vague about how it relates to the 1987 slime epic of the same name, like those entertainment reporters who announce an upcoming “reboot” and the more you read the more clear it is they didn’t ask if it was a remake or a sequel or what, so they’re just using a term that has been bastardized into meaninglessness and hoping nobody notices that they don’t actually have any information.
This could qualify as a remake, but a very loose one, using part of the premise and spirit of the original, but otherwise being totally different. Or it could be a sequel if you figure that the biological weapon called “Tenafly Viper” is a militarized version of the deadly spoiled wine from the first one. At any rate, it’s a movie called STREET TRASH that has a few similarities to the previous film, including the only important one: a bunch of people melt horribly, and a variety of beautifully colored liquids pour out of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Last Straw
Thursday, January 30th, 2025
If you’re in a movie and you live in a small town then you bet your ass you’re a waitress at an old timey diner. In the case of LAST STRAW (2023), the dinerest movie I’ve seen since LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, it’s called the Fat Bottom Bistro, and it’s one of those cool looking ones with metal walls inside and out, like an Airstream trailer. According to IMDb it was filmed at two diners in New York, and I believe the exterior is one in Germantown that has been closed for a while and likely maintained specifically to rent to productions like this. I bet the old fashioned jukebox with disco lights really works. You always gotta get a shot of those records inside.
This one (which I found on Shudder) centers on Nancy (Jessica Belkin, American Horror Story), a young woman trying to decide what to do with herself after graduating high school, other than drinking hard at parties and working at the diner owned by her dad (Jeremy Sisto, CLUELESS). She just found out she’s pregnant, father to be determined, or not, because it’s nobody in her life. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her car breaks down on the way to work, so she has to walk until her co-worker Bobby (Joji Otani-Hansen), a nice guy who clearly has a crush on her, can pick her up on his bicycle. When she finally arrives her dad tells her someone’s sick and she has to work the late shift alone with Jake (Taylor Kowalski, MAXXXINE), who she hates. (read the rest of this shit…)
Dracula Untold
Monday, January 27th, 2025
If DRACULA UNTOLD isn’t forgotten, then it’s kind of notorious. From what I remembered it was the start of the Dark Universe, the planned shared universe of action-oriented Universal Monster reboots. The public scoffed at that whole idea, then everybody (besides me) hated THE MUMMY and the whole thing got scrapped and became a punchline.
But it wasn’t originally intended to be part of that anyway. The script had been around for a while. I remember reading about it years earlier when it was gonna be an Alex Proyas movie called DRACULA: YEAR ZERO. Sam Worthington was to star. It wasn’t about starting anything, it was about prequelizing Dracula as a thrilling 21st century fantasy adventure character – to give the iconic cape-wearer a heroic backstory, or at least good intentions and motives. Basically it asks what if before he was the Count we all know, he was what I call a Fantasy Sword Dude: the pretty cool, unevenly charismatic hero of a digital era studio b-movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wolf Man (2025)
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025
WOLF MAN is an event not just because it’s a new wolf man but because it’s the fourth movie directed by Leigh Whannell, the last two being UPGRADE and THE INVISIBLE MAN. As with the latter, he’s working with Blumhouse to do a mid-budget modern take on one of the classic monsters (this time co-writing with his wife Corbett Tuck).
His version takes place in a mountainous part of Oregon where very few people live. In 1995, a hiker disappears there, and the locals claim to have spotted him suffering from some kind of disease. (I like that this turns him into a local legend like the Wild Man of the Navidad or the North Pond hermit.)
Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN) is a serious hunter, possibly survivalist, definitely very intense, living off the grid in a little cabin in the woods. He brings his son Blake (Zac Chandler) hunting and is always yelling at him to pay attention to his lessons about how dangerous the world is and shit. They get separated chasing a deer and Blake gets a glimpse of… well, you know. They end up hiding in a deer blind listening to an unseen beast tearing up their deer. That night Blake hears his dad talking to someone on the CB about what he saw. He told his kid it was a bear, but he knows it was something else. Or maybe he’s crazy. That would be fair to assume. (read the rest of this shit…)
Apartment 7A
Friday, January 17th, 2025
I checked around, and unless somebody’s lying to me it seems nobody asked for there to be a straight-to-Paramount+ prequel to ROSEMARY’S BABY. But it’s okay – nobody asked for a prequel to THE OMEN, they did one anyway, and it was quite good. Sometimes there is still decency in the world, and sometimes in religious-themed horror late-prequels as well.
APARTMENT 7A is directed by Natalie Erika James (RELIC), screen story by Skylar James, screenplay by Natalie Erika James & Christian White and Skylar James, and it’s technically a Platinum Dunes production because they tried to do a remake in 2008 but honorably bowed out when they couldn’t come up with a good concept. Eventually this new batch came up with the idea of telling the story of Terry Gionoffrio (Julia Garner, SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR), the young neighbor Rosemary talked to in the laundry room. You may remember that Terry later experienced a major, uh… event, portending bad things for Rosemary (and gaining her a new necklace). (read the rest of this shit…)
Speak No Evil (2024 remake)
Tuesday, January 14th, 2025
The original 2022 Danish film SPEAK NO EVIL is such a merciless wringer of discomfort that late in the movie I still wasn’t sure if it would end up being a horror movie, and it didn’t matter. In fact, it’s almost a relief when things get dangerous because at least it ends the relentless social torture.
It’s about a couple with a young kid who meet another couple with a young kid while on vacation, they have some laughs together and later, back at home, one couple gets a letter from the other inviting them to come visit. They know it’s kinda crazy because they barely know them, but they decide to be spontaneous for once. (read the rest of this shit…)
Death Machine
Tuesday, January 7th, 2025
If Stephen Norrington had only ever been a special effects guy he still would’ve made a mark. He worked under Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Jim Henson. He did the Grand High Witch makeup in THE WITCHES, and designed creatures for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He played the Gump in RETURN TO OZ. He helped make the aliens in ALIENS and ALIEN 3, the robot in HARDWARE, the creature in SPLIT SECOND. I only know about him, though, because he later directed four movies, one of which was motherfuckin BLADE.
But the first one was DEATH MACHINE (1994), a low budget killer robot movie I watched once about a quarter of a century ago when I found out it was by the guy who did BLADE. I think I thought it was okay, but I retained no details in my memory, so now I have returned to it via the fancy-ass special edition blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I watched the director’s cut (which is 106 minutes, as opposed to the 100 minute U.S. version or 122 minute foreign version), which may or may not have been why it went over a little better this time. I don’t think it’s a great movie, but it’s an interesting one with a cool robot puppet, a cyberpunk world and a hell of a look for a ‘90s b-movie that went straight to video. Cinematographer John de Borman is the guy who did THE PASSION OF DARKLY NOON and THE FULL MONTY, but from the look of it I’d have assumed he was a music video guy, somebody that would’ve worked with the Scott Brothers or Russell Mulcahy or even David Fincher.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Nosferatu (2024)
Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
102 years after F.W. Murnau’s illegal copyright violation classic, here’s writer/director Robert Eggers following up THE WITCH, THE LIGHTHOUSE and THE NORTHMAN with THE NOSFERATU.
Nosferatu? Yesferatu. Absolutelyferatu.
In many ways NOSFERATU is pure Eggers: the meticulous attention to old timey visual, linguistic, and folkloric detail; the dreary natural lighting like you were sent hurtling to the past and forced to deal with a lack of electricity; the emphasis on mood, atmosphere and performance over modern horror tropes. The biggest way it’s different comes from being an adaptation (of an adaptation): while he maintains his trademark of presenting deeply researched superstitions of the past as reality, he has to do it with the more conventional horror set up that only the protagonists believe in the supernatural, and the others around them don’t buy it until it’s too late. (read the rest of this shit…)
Christmas horror triple feature: Carnage For Christmas (2024) / A Creature Was Stirring (2023) / The Apology (2022)
Monday, December 23rd, 2024
Like all modern horror movies, CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – a 2024 indie that came to Shudder on the 15th – is about a true crime podcaster who experienced trauma. But it does not feel like it’s trying to be “about trauma,” and the true crime aspect works because the protagonist, Lola Darling (Jeremy Moineau) is treated as a straight up detective character like Nancy Drew, Jessica Fletcher or somebody there’d be a BBC mystery series about. She’s very self-possessed, observant and knowledgeable, has an interest in the morbid, sneaks around crime scenes with a flash light, brings her own latex gloves.
She’s nervous about returning to the small town she left when she was 16. Yes, it’s the site of the aforementioned trauma (discovering the skeletal remains of someone murdered by a killer called “The Toymaker”), but also she hasn’t been back since she transitioned into a woman. I like that this overlaps a horror trope with a common coming out experience, but again, other than many of the characters/actors being trans I don’t think this is primarily “about” trans issues, but maybe it’s just over my head like I SAW THE TV GLOW was. The credits do label it as “A Transgender Holiday Film by Alice Maio Mackay.” (read the rest of this shit…)
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