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Posts Tagged ‘Nia DaCosta’

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Wednesday, January 21st, 2026

I liked 28 DAYS LATER when it came out in 2003 and I liked 28 WEEKS LATER when it came out in 2007, but I still have never revisited them. So I’m honestly very surprised how invested I am in this followup trilogy that started last year with Danny Boyle’s 28 YEARS LATER and now continues with Nia DaCosta’s 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE.

It was such a surprising choice: Boyle and writer Alex Garland finally made their long anticipated third film, but also prepared a script for the director of LITTLE WOODS and CANDYMAN 2021 to shoot back-to-back with it. Boyle’s movie set up the new characters, and now DaCosta continues their story, but other than a few homages during zombie attacks she doesn’t mimic Boyle’s style at all. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, WIDOWS, THE RHYTHM SECTION), editor Jake Roberts (HELL OR HIGH WATER, MEN) and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (JOKER, TÁR) all go in very different directions from the distinct ones Boyle’s team chose, giving us a calmer and more traditional (not shot on iPhones) but still very effective look at this world of a zombie infection pandemic and its survivors. (read the rest of this shit…)

Candyman (2021)

Thursday, September 2nd, 2021

CANDYMAN (2021) is the first sequel in 22 years to CANDYMAN (1992), my pick for the best horror movie of the ‘90s. Though I don’t think this one’s nearly as good as Bernard Rose’s original, it’s much more worthy of the mantle than the previous sequels, Bill Condon’s New Orleans-set CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH (1995) and (it goes without saying) Turi Meyer’s horrendous DTV CANDYMAN 3: DAY OF THE DEAD (1999). It’s nice that various trends have aligned to allow revisiting the subject decades later, minus any mercenary needs to strike while the iron is hot, and with the now-gentrified Chicago neighborhood where the first film took place providing a new angle from which to explore its still-relevant race and class themes. That seems to be the main point of interest for director Nia DaCosta (who did the excellent 2018 drama-with-some-crime LITTLE WOODS) and her producer/co-writers Jordan Peele (GET OUT, US) and Win Rosenfeld (executive producer of BLACKkKLANSMAN).

When the movie starts, the Universal logo comes on, so that globe spins around, and the letters come out, and then you realize they’re backwards. For half a second I thought something was wrong with the projection, but of course it’s referencing the importance of mirrors in the CANDYMAN films (where the titular restless spirit is summoned by chanting his name, like Bloody Mary). A couple of production company logos proceed to play backwards as well, so by the time the film proper started I had to look around until I spotted some numbers on a building and could finally be sure the movie was playing properly. Beginning the movie already off balance. Nice touch. (read the rest of this shit…)

Little Woods

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

LITTLE WOODS is the debut of writer/director Nia DaCosta, who followed it with the upcoming CANDYMAN (2020), sequel to CANDYMAN (1992). I’m not sure how much they’ll have in common, because this one’s not horror, and it takes place in a rural area, but it’s very good, and raises my expectations for the other one even higher.

Tessa Thompson (CREED) is great as Ollie (short for Oleander), who lives in her late mother’s busted up house in North Dakota and is almost done with her probation. While mom was sick she would go into Canada to get medicine for her, but she also had a whole pill-selling enterprise going, and she got caught at the border.

Now she does stuff like go out to construction sites and sell coffee and sandwiches out of the back of her pickup. People still ask her for Oxy and she explains she doesn’t do that anymore. Everybody still likes her. The local opiate pusher Bill (Luke Kirby, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION) thinks that makes her a good saleswoman and tries to get her to work for him. (read the rest of this shit…)