"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Kyle Gallner’

Red Eye (20th anniversary revisit)

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025

August 19, 2005

RED EYE is a simple thing: a tight and well-made PG-13 thriller, nothing deep, but entertaining to just about anybody. And it happens to be the only movie like that directed by the late great Wes Craven, and he made it post-SCREAM trilogy using all those chops gained from shooting Woodsboro scrapes and chases. But it’s really in more of a suspense vein than a horror one, and it starts out feeling like a DIE HARD type movie, with quick shots depicting some so-far indecipherable sinister plot (the stealing of a wallet, the preparation and delivery of a mysterious crate), and establishing a set of characters in the bustle of the airport while a bunch of flights are delayed.

SUMMER 2005Lisa (Rachel McAdams, also the primary victim in WEDDING CRASHERS) was in Dallas for her grandma’s funeral, she’s headed home for Miami and already receiving calls from work. But she’s a self-declared “people pleaser, 24-7” so she doesn’t mind helping flustered hotel employee Cynthia (newcomer Jayma Mays, later in the SMURFS and PAUL BLART franchises) placate irate regulars the Taylors (Robert Pine and Teresa Press-Marx). (read the rest of this shit…)

Strange Darling

Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

STRANGE DARLING is a lower budget horror-adjacent thriller currently playing in theaters. It’s one of those movies that premiered at Fantastic Fest, it had a cryptic trailer and some buzz, so I checked it out without knowing much, and that went well for me.

It starts off kind of winkingly pretentious. The first thing you see after the production logos is a card saying “FILMED ENTIRELY ON 35MM FILM.” I laughed out loud. It seems that others have written off the entire movie for that boast/marketing hook/disclaimer/joke/whatever. Pardon my French, but you’re being a bunch of fuckin silly billies. Did you ever see the opening title of UNBREAKABLE? Of course you did, and maybe you joked about it later but it wasn’t the one thing you had to say in any discussion of the movie UNBREAKABLE. Back then you knew how to let things like that go.

Next is a riff on the narration from THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, leading into the type of knock out opening credits sequence that warms my heart (with an “in” between the actors and the title, even). Then it says “STRANGE DARLING – A Thriller In 6 Chapters.”

I really like this type of storytelling, laying out at the beginning what the approach is gonna be. Oh, okay. Six chapters. Got it. Thanks for the heads up. (read the rest of this shit…)

Jennifer’s Body (revisited)

Thursday, February 22nd, 2024

Seeing LISA FRANKENSTEIN pushed me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for years – rewatch JENNIFER’S BODY (2009). Uncharacteristically, I came right home from the theater and put it on. It made a good double feature.

In a way it doesn’t seem like that long ago, but in other ways it seems like ancient history. It was Diablo Cody’s second movie, coming two years after JUNO, which won her the best original screenplay Oscar. Director Karyn Kusama was on her third movie, trying to make a comeback after AEON FLUX (2005), her one studio project after the indie smash GIRLFIGHT (2000). Since then she’s done THE INVITATION (2015) and DESTROYER (2018) and lots of acclaimed television. (read the rest of this shit…)