A Film Studies graduate with a very healthy obsession with all things Kubrick, here I am surfing an internet awash with opinions to add mine to the ocean.
The bold debut, We (Wij), from Dutch director Rene Eller uses various unreliable narrators and a fractured chronology to create an intricate and arresting new spin on coming-of-age tropes. The ostensible setup is a typical teen movie: A group of friends find a shack in the woods and use it as a base for their…
Former marine and single mother Sam (Rebecca Rogers) is on maternity leave. Her baby needs medication, so she leaves the kid home alone and runs to the pharmacy. Sam is abducted. She wakes up in a locked-down warehouse. A mysterious voice informs her that her child will be killed unless she “plays the game.” It’s…
The Fare starts as your standard “Groundhog Day” fare (pun entirely intended). Every time cab driver Harris (Gino Anthony Pesi, “42”) hits his lever, he is thrust into another 20-minute time loop. Every time, he picks up Penny (Brinna Kelly, “The Midnight Man”), drives awhile, and then she vanishes and it begins again. What in…
Feeling all horrored-out after your Halloween movie marathon? Don’t hang up your crucifix yet — The Shed is a bite of gory fun to keep the party bleeding. An arresting opening sequence sees a man named Bane (Frank Whaley, “Hustlers”) desperately running from a vampire. Spoiler alert: He’s caught, he’s bitten, and he stumbles —…
Rob Grant’s Harpoon is another entry in the perennial argumentative-people-stranded-on-a-boat sub-genre, and it’s a cut above the average. It is, however, a stranger to subtlety, and juvenile at times, but it’s never boring and consistently bold in its narrative choices. Take the opening scene for example. Richard (Christopher Gray, “The Mist” TV series) storms over…
Remember the opening of John Carpenter’s “The Fog”? A salty old man tells a spooky story beside a campfire, perfectly setting the folkloric tone, and then Carpenter introduces his sinisterly serene seaside town like it’s a sleeping, snoring creature . . . Well, do not expect such magical mood-building with Mary, a damp fishnet of…
Haunt was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writers on “A Quiet Place”; and while this is similarly high concept, it couldn’t be more different in tone. It aims for brisk, bloody and blackly comedic, and on those terms it delivers. The conflict in “A Quiet Place” was as much psychological as…
