Us (2019)

Us (2019)

Cast

• Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson
• Winston Duke as Gabriel "Gabe" Wilson
• Evan Alex as Jason Wilson
• Shahadi Wright Joseph as Zora Wilson
• Elisabeth Moss as Mrs. Tyler
• Tim Heidecker as Mr. Tyler
• Kara Hayward as Nancy

Director

• Jordan Peele

Screenplay

• Jordan Peele

Director of Photography

• Mike Gioulakis

Production Design

• Ruth de Jong

Editor

• Nicholas Monsour

Original Music Composer

• Michael Abels

Horror, Thriller

120 minutes

“Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.” - Jeremiah 11:11

In Rodney Ascher’s  documentary “Room 237,” four theorists attempt to explain the hidden messages in Stanley Kubrick’s movie “The Shining.” The ideas about what the movie is about range from the possible to the downright bizarre. One theory fixates on the possibility that “The Shining” was Kubrick’s way of confessing he faked the landing on the moon footage, and another obsesses over the details of the hedge maze. The other two see evidence that the 1980 film indirectly references either the genocide of Native Americans or the Holocaust.

Like “The Shining,” there are a number of different ways to interpret Jordan Peele’s excellent new horror movie, “Us.” Every image seems to be a clue for what’s about to happen or a stand-in for something outside the main story of a family in danger. Peele’s film, which he directed, wrote and produced, will likely reward audiences on multiple viewings, each visit revealing a new secret, showing you something you missed before in a new light.

“Us” begins back in 1986 with a young girl and her parents wandering through the Santa Cruz boardwalk at night. She separates from them to walk out on the empty beach, watching a foreboding flock of thunderclouds roll in. Her eyes find an attraction just off the main pier, and she walks into what looks like an abandoned hall of mirrors, discovering something deeply terrifying—her doppelgänger. The movie shifts to the present day, with Janelle Monae on the radio as the Wilson family is heading towards their vacation home. The little girl has now grown up to be a woman, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), nervous about returning to that spot on the Santa Cruz beach. Her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), thinks her reaction is overblown, but he tries to make her feel at ease so they can take their kids Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) to the beach and meet up with old friends, the Tylers (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker) and their twin daughters. After one small scare and a few strange coincidences on the beach, the family returns home for a quiet night in, only to have their peace broken by a most unlikely set of trespassers lined up across their driveway: doppelgängers of their family.

Part of the appeal of “Us” is how you interpret what all of this information and images mean. No doubt the movie will give audiences plenty to mull over long after the credits. In the film, the Jeremiah 11:11 Bible verse appears twice before pivotal moments, and there are plenty of other Biblical references to dig into, including an analogy to heaven and hell. Perhaps Jason’s “Jaws” shirt is a reference to the rocket sweater the little boy wears in “The Shining” or it could be a warning about the film’s oceanside dangers. In the ‘80s scene, when young Adelaide walks into the mysterious attraction, the sign welcoming her is that of a Native American in a headdress above the name “Shaman Vision Quest.” When the family returns to the beach, the sign has been replaced with a more PC-friendly sign bearing a wizard advertising it as “Merlin’s Enchanted Forest,” a bandaid solution to hiding the racist exterior and the horror inside its halls.  

As he did with “Get Out,” Peele pays significant tribute to the films that have influenced him in “Us.” Though this time, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus, as I spoke with others who saw the movie, we focused on different titles that stood out to us. For me, “The Shining” looked to be the film that received the most nods in “Us,” including an overhead shot of the Wilson family driving through hilly forests to their vacation home, much like the Torrance family does on the way to the Overlook Hotel. There’s also a reference to “The Shining” twins, a few architectural and cinematography similarities and in one shot, Nyong’o charges the camera with a weapon much like Jack Nicholson menacingly drags along an ax in a chase. However, “Us” is not just a love letter to one horror movie. Peele also pays tribute to Brian De Palma with a split diopter shot that places both Adelaide and her doppelgänger in equal focus for the first time in the movie. There’s also a tip of the hat to Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” in terms of dueling balletic styles and a gorgeously choreographed fight scene that looks like a combative pas de deux.

This delightfully deranged home invasion-family horror film works because Peele not only knows how to tell his story, he assembled an incredible cast to play two roles. The Wilsons are a picture of an all-American family: a family of four that looks to be middle class, with college-educated (Gabe is wearing a Howard University sweater) parents doting on their two children. Their doppelgängers may look like them and be tied to them in some way, but their lives are inverses of each other, and their existence has been one of limits and misery. It’s one of the most poignant analogies of class in America to come out in a studio film in recent memory. For the actors, it’s a chance to play two extremes, one of intense normality and the other of wretched evil. In “Us,” Duke shows off his comedic strengths as the dorky father who often embarrasses his kids, and his doppelgänger is a frighting wall of violence with little to say other than grunts and fighting his adversary. If Nyong’o doesn’t get some professional recognition for her performances here, I will be very disappointed. As Adelaide, she’s fearful, trying to keep some traumatic memories at bay but putting on a brave face for her family. To play her character’s opposite, Nyong’o adopts a graceful, confident movement for her doppelgänger, sliding into the family’s home with scissors at the ready. The doppelgänger looks wide-eyed and maliciously curious as if she’s looking for new ways terrorize this family. She whispers in a raspy but sinister voice that would make many people jump and run away.

A suspenseful story and marvelous cast need a great crew to make the film a home run, and “Us” is not short on talent. “It Follows” cinematographer Mike Gioulakis creates unsettling images in mundane spaces, like how a strange family standing at a driveway isn’t necessarily scary, but when it’s eerily dark out, they’re backlit so that their faces go unseen and the four bodies are standing at a higher elevation from our heroes, it looks like evil is swooping in from above. Kym Barrett’s costume designs not only supply the doppelgängers’ nefarious looking red jumpsuits but also the normal, comfy clothes the Wilsons and Tylers wear on vacation. Michael Abels, who also composed the score for “Get Out,” and the ominous notes from the sound design team lay the groundwork for nerve-wracking sequences.

Jordan Peele isn’t the next Kubrick, M. Night Shyamalan, Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg. He’s his own director, with a vision that melds comedy, horror and social commentary. And he has a visual style that’s luminous, playful and delightfully unnerving. Peele uses an alternate cinematic language to Kubrick, seems more comfortable at teasing his story’s twists throughout the narrative unlike Shyamalan, uses suspense differently than Hitchcock, and possesses the comedic timing Spielberg never had. “Us” is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition and the American experience.

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Cold Pursuit (2019)

Cold Pursuit (2019)

Cast

• Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman
• Laura Dern as Grace Coxman
• Emmy Rossum as Kim Dash
• Tom Bateman as Trevor 'Viking' Calcote
• Micheal Richardson as Kyle Coxman
• Michael Eklund as Speedo
• Bradley Stryker as Limbo

Director

• Hans Petter Moland

Writer (based on the movie 'Kraftidioten' wtitten by)

• Kim Fupz Aakeson

Writer

• Frank Baldwin

Cinematographer

• Philip Øgaard

Editor

• Nicolaj Monberg

Composer

• George Fenton

Action, Drama, Thriller

Rated R

118 minutes

"Cold Pursuit" is the 2019 version of a recently minted tradition, the late winter Liam Neeson revenge flick. It's one of the strangest, least predictable movies he's made in years, which isn't the same thing as saying it's consistently good. Based on the Norwegian movie "In Order of Disappearance," and directed by the same filmmaker, Hans Petter Moland, it's a fragmented, meandering tale in which Neeson's character, a Kehoe, Colorado snowplow driver named Nels Coxman, gets a taste of vengeance and becomes a glutton. At times it plays less like a self-contained movie than a couple of episodes of a TV series that don't quite add up the way you wanted them to. It's a shame that it isn't better. At its best, it plays like a wry critique of this unexpectedly lucrative period of Neeson's career, and a borderline-spoof of the genre as a whole.

"Cold Pursuit" kicks off with Nels accepting an award as Kehoe Citizen of the Year, then jumps ahead to the murder of his only son Kyle (Michael Richardson, Neeson's real-life son with the late Natasha Richardson), an airport baggage handler kidnapped and killed by members of a local drug cartel over a mishandled cocaine shipment. The killers made Kyle's death look like a heroin overdose even though the young man didn't do drugs, a touch that adds insult to injury. Nels swiftly dispatches the men directly responsible for his boy's murder, wraps their corpses in chicken wire, and dumps them off a waterfall so that they'll settle on the bottom of the Colorado River and be stripped clean by fish, an evidence-disposal technique that he later says that he learned by reading crime fiction. Unsatisfied by the deaths that he metes out early on, Nels resolves to work his way up the underworld's ladder until he slays the boss of bosses, Trevor "Viking" Calcote (Tom Bateman).  

Complications ensue, and not necessarily the ones you'd expect from having watched other Liam Neeson revenge movies. Moland and his American screenwriter, Frank Baldwin, play around with Western movie motifs, photographing the snow-packed mountains, valleys and roads like panoramas in a John Ford cavalry picture, and envisioning a Cowboys-and-Indians-type rivalry between the white-run drug cartel that's responsible for Kyle's murder and a Southern Ute Indian gang that mistakenly gets blamed for Nels' retaliatory spree. There's also commentary on how outlaws lust after cliched signifiers of respectability. This is conveyed mostly through Viking, a divorced yuppie clotheshorse and preening psychopath who treats his own young son, Ryan (Nicholas Holmes), like a pet, or some kind of experiment in conditioning, micromanaging his diet and recommending "Lord of the Flies" as a self-help manual.

Like its source, this American remake is comparatively light on graphic violence (the beatings tend to be uglier than the shootings), and it has the confidence to handle quite a bit of that business offscreen, staging significant killings behind drawn curtains, or in the cut between one scene from the next. It also detours from the main story to spend quality time with Viking's drug gang, his henchmen (including Domenick Lombardozzi as the aforementioned fantasy football sentimentalist, who refers to Mozart as "Moe-zart"); Nels' ex-criminal brother Brock "Wingman" Coxman (William Forsyth), who got his nickname from "Top Gun"; a couple of Kehoe cops (Emily Rossum and John Doman) trying to make sense of the mayhem, and assorted mates and exes. Laura Dern has a few scenes as Nels' grieving wife Grace, who leaves Nels almost instantly, perhaps sensing that her presence would be wasted in a movie filled with sad, violent, self-involved men. 

"Cold Pursuit" is at least four-fifths a dark comedy, filled with eccentric, often introverted and sad American archetypes. Most would be mesmerizing and/or hilarious if they had been fully fleshed out as characters, and if the film surrounding them were more elegantly structured and paced. The project suffers from a certain flatness in the characterizations, as well as from an inability to introduce new faces, or arrange meetings between established characters, right when the plot needs them, as opposed to much later, when the audience is ready for the story to end and tends to view such moments as narrative speed bumps. But even at its most navel-gazing and disorganized, "Cold Pursuit" still showcases elements you haven't seen before, like the tight-lipped hero asking how many words he's required to speak at an awards dinner, the henchman who keeps losing at fantasy football because he's too loyal to his favorite childhood teams and players, and the Ute crime boss who's saddened by the appropriation of his people's clothes and jewelry by white designers, more so when he turns over a label and sees the words "Made in China."

The film might have been doomed to historical footnote status regardless, because it opened mere days after its star made one of the weirdest, most clueless unforced errors in the history of movie promotion. In an interview, Neeson tried to connect this film, and the futility of revenge in general, to an anecdote drawn from his twenties, when he responded to a white female friend's rape by a black assailant by wandering town around with a crowbar, hoping to get in a fight with another "black bastard" and kill him. Although Neeson didn't kill anyone back then, or even fight them, he flunked the present-day personal disclosure-as-advertising test by failing to realize that the racism part of his story—which he did not apologize for, or even note and explain—was as disturbing as the revenge part, which he condemned on the spot.

Ironically, it's precisely this kind of person who might've ended up as a supporting player in "Cold Pursuit," had the filmmakers been able to justify clearing space in an already-crowded ensemble. Throughout, revenge is treated not just as a disturbing and self-negating activity but sad and bleakly comical as well. The movie starts with a printed quote from Oscar Wilde ("Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go") that sounds like a condemnation of people you haven't met yet. Several of the main characters are obsessed with vengeance. Even more are casually, even murderously racist. It's clear not only that revenge can never satisfy them but that they are incapable of seeing their own flaws, and that their tribal myopia and obsessions with honor and vengeance are ways of distracting themselves from the bone-deep knowledge that they failed the same people whose bodies, or memories, they're hell-bent on defending.

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Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Cast

• Rosa Salazar as Alita
• Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido
• Ed Skrein as Zapan
• Mahershala Ali as Vector
• Jennifer Connelly as Chiren
• Keean Johnson as Hugo
• Michelle Rodriguez as Gelda
• Lana Condor as Koyomi
• Jackie Earle Haley as Grewishka
• Eiza González as Nyssiana
• Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Tanji
• Marko Zaror as Ajakutty
• Casper Van Dien as Amok

Director

• Robert Rodriguez

Screenplay

• James Cameron
• Laeta Kalogridis

Comic Book

• Yukito Kishiro

Cinematography

• Bill Pope

Editor

• Ian Silverstein
• Stephen E. Rivkin

Music

• Junkie XL

Action, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller

Rated PG-13

122 minutes

With his 1992 debut of “El Mariachi,” Robert Rodriguez announced himself a director with an eye for action. He prefers to keep his camera movement light and energetic, his edits quick and focused. His movies tend to carry an unmistakable playfulness, like in the all-out barroom brawl between humans and vampires in “From Dusk till Dawn” and the bizarre yet stylish “Spy Kids” franchise in which two siblings face off against some truly surreal-looking enemies.  

Rodriguez brings this fun-loving, action-fueled touch to the big-screen adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s popular manga, Battle Angel Alita, salvaging a project that had languished in development hell since the early aughts. James Cameron, who co-produced the refashioned “Alita: Battle Angel” and co-wrote the screenplay with Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis, originally picked up the project around 15 years ago before eventually handing the reins over to Rodriguez. The script is still somewhat unwieldy, chock full of explanations about how robotic bodies work and the history of the decaying setting known as Iron City. Yet, underneath multiple levels of plot and world-building, there’s a weirdo heart keeping the action moving along.

As far as movies about girl robots go, “Alita” isn’t so bad. The movie’s star is a promising Rosa Salazar as the namesake hero, a mysterious yet powerful teen girl bot with oversized anime-style eyes and a good and very powerful heart that could power a city. Alita is the last of her kind, a superior enemy who was somehow were defeated by the humans. After she was found in a scrap heap, Alita is brought back to life with the help of a fatherly doctor, Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz), a paternal relationship that gives “Alita” some of its more stranger moments. More straightforward is the relationship Alita has with a secret nemesis, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), Dr. Ido’s former wife, and Vector (Mahershala Ali), a smooth-talking kingpin who promises almost anyone who will listen to him a ticket to Zalem, the city hovering in the sky holding society’s upper class over the heads of the poor below.

Even with so many different creative demands on the story, Rodriguez makes the movie his own. Many of his movies feature Latino actors, like Danny Trejo in the “Machete” movies and Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara in “Spy Kids,” and the trend continues with “Alita” as the Peruvian American Salazar gets the chance to lead a big-budget movie. He includes Spanish and English signs in Iron City, and some of the extras can be heard speaking Spanish in the background. It’s still rare to hear or see Spanish spoken in sci-fi movies about multilingual futures unless the films are from Latin America.

“Alita” draws inspiration from various sci-fi sources, like the physical divide between the rich and the poor in “Metropolis,” the mysterious femme being with incredible powers of “The Fifth Element," and the multilingual, neon-lit grimy future world of “Blade Runner,” to name a few. Iron City is a place similar to what we’ve seen in other movies, but it’s outfitted with enough differences to tell it apart, like making the society corrupt enough for serial killers and robbing cyborgs of their mechanical parts and giving the place its own gladiatorial-like roller derby that gives Iron City hopefuls their only shot at getting into Zalem. Somehow all of these storylines are interconnected, which adds to the clunkiness of the script but it never allows it to get boring. Some kind of action sequence is always just a few minutes away.

Although Alita is built with some feminist empowerment in mind, some of the messaging malfunctions against old world patriarchy. The odd paternalistic doctor is just the start. Because she looks like a teen girl, of course, she develops a heterosexual crush on a human teen boy, Hugo (Keean Johnson). Never mind that she’s actually 300 some years older and very much a cyborg. The two share some cute moments, but others, like when Hugo introduces her to chocolate or when Alita offers Hugo her one-of-a-kind ancient technology heart so he can go up to Zalem, feel so old school. Was this all because she’s an impulsive teen girl? In another scene, after a devastating battle with a big bad cyborg, Alita must trade out the delicate, girlish body the doctor had built for his daughter (not weird – at all!) for a warrior-grade bod that adheres to her, um, vision of herself. That vision includes a corset-sized tiny waist and an athletic set of breasts that defy gravity. It’s been 300 years after the fall and we’re still holding onto Barbie-size proportions.

Thankfully, Salazar smoothes over many of these cumbersome details with her earnest motion-captured performance. She physically leans into the awkwardness of walking around as a teen girl bot, unsure of her new body and discovering its potential and limits. She explores her new surroundings with literal wide-eyed wonder. When she upgrades her body, she stands tall and confident, having sped through puberty in the span of a surgery. Her character’s chutzpah is the reason why it vaguely makes sense to jump from a “hunter killer,” a bounty hunter in futuristic terms, to a Motorball prospect when she’s working her way to becoming a warrior.

With so much background and story to cover, maybe “Alita” would have benefitted from a “less is more” approach. But considering its estimated budget of $200 million, “Alita: Battle Angel” is an awe-inspiring jump for the man who first burst onto the film scene with a movie that cost around $7,000. The visual bonanza cooked up by Rodriguez, cinematographer Bill Pope and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein is enough to power through any narrative bumps with quickly paced action and bleak, yet colorful, imagery.

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Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

Cast

• Jessica Rothe as Theresa "Tree" Gelbman
• Israel Broussard as Carter Davis
• Phi Vu as Ryan Phan
• Suraj Sharma as Samar Ghosh
• Sarah Yarkin as Dre Morgan
• Rachel Matthews as Danielle Bouseman
• Ruby Modine as Lori Spengler

Director

• Christopher Landon

Writer (characters)

• Scott Lobdell

Writer

• Christopher Landon

Cinematographer

• Toby Oliver

Editor

• Ben Baudhuin

Composer

• Bear McCreary

Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for violence, language, sexual material and thematic elements.

 

100 minutes

How much fun was 2017’s “Happy Death Day,” a gloriously self-aware blend of a teen slasher flick and “Groundhog Day,” with genuine jump-scares and a sharp sense of humor? In director Christopher Landon’s playful genre entry (written by Scott Lobdell) which wasn’t ashamed of its hybrid identity, our feisty heroine Tree Gelbman (“La La Land”'s Jessica Rothe) lived through the day of her murder in the hands of a masked killer again and again until she grew as a human being and a vengeful strategic thinker. And Tree wasn’t just another female survivor—in any other horror flick, this delightfully despicable, unapologetically debauched sorority queen wouldn’t have lasted past the first act. But she’s gotten so far that she received a sequel from the same team. Unfortunately, “Happy Death Day 2U” doesn’t deserve her or her tireless efforts through time to outwit a murderous loser behind a creepy baby mask.

More a geeky '80s-style high school film than horror, “Happy Death Day 2U” puzzlingly gives up on all the strengths that made its predecessor an appealing watch. Throughout this meandering mess, my mind wandered off to anything between “Weird Science” and “Back to the Future Part II—the latter is even frequently name-checked—except, “Happy Death Day 2U” is neither entertaining nor knowingly overindulgent. In reality, its convolutions feel miscalculated in the hands of creators that mistake complicated developments with amusement. And those missteps kick in pretty promptly in the sequel, right from the first occurrence of the very first murder. The early moments of the film admittedly feel like a bummer when we realize we're getting more of the same bloody cycles, but this time focusing on Ryan (Phi Vu); a side character from the first film, playing the roommate of Tree’s boyfriend Carter (Israel Broussard).

Not that Ryan isn’t endearing to follow on his own, but honestly, who’d want a “Happy Death Day” sequel that pushes Rothe, its chief asset, to the side? It’s almost as if the film realizes this gaffe while feeling its way through a cluttered story that corrects and revises itself at once. In due course, Ryan’s involvement in the plot becomes clear: turns out, he and his brainy friends at Bayfield University had invented a machine that created the time loops and sent Tree off to a one-way survival adventure. Surely, history would repeat itself, but in an alternate reality. (Those “Back to the Future Part II” and “space-time continuum” references do come in handy.) Stuck in a different dimension where her mother is still alive, she isn’t in the midst of an affair with a married professor and her fellow meanie Danielle (Rachel Matthews) is dating Carter, Tree tries to resurrect the familial and romantic order in her own universe while repeatedly escaping a mad killer through semi-comical methods.

If you can fend off the recurring bores of “Happy Death Day 2U,” Landon and Lobdell have some chuckles reserved up their sleeves. A sleekly edited montage of Tree’s increasingly creative suicides (why get murdered when you can just kill yourself?) arrives just in time to alleviate the dullness, while an intriguing array of side characters—portraying nerds and villainous teachers—keeps things mildly bearable. The sequel doesn’t drop the ball on some of the previous film’s key roles either—in that, both the adulterous Dr. Gregory Butler and secretly malicious roomie Lori (Ruby Modine) receive character makeovers. Still, the uninventive “Happy Death Day 2U” can neither sustain nor recreate the charms of the first film by recycling its ideas. In a way, Landon’s sequel gets stuck in its own alternate dimension—after starting off as something much closer to “Scream” in spirit, it devolves into a lazy “Scary Movie." 

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Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

Cast

• Jake Gyllenhaal as Morf Vandewalt
• Rene Russo as Rhodora Haze
• Toni Collette as Gretchen
• Zawe Ashton as Josephina
• Tom Sturridge as Jon Dondon
• Natalia Dyer as Coco
• Billy Magnussen as Bryson
• John Malkovich as Piers
• Daveed Diggs as Damrish

Director

• Dan Gilroy

Screenplay

• Dan Gilroy

Director of Photography

• Robert Elswit

Editor

• John Gilroy

Original Music Composer

• Marco Beltrami

Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Rated R

112 minutes

 

 

Art is dangerous and those who profit from it are risking their lives in Dan Gilroy’s bloody art-world satire “Velvet Buzzsaw.” Gilroy targets all the players who feed the machine of high-priced art—the pretentious artists, the gallery owners, the agents, the clients, and especially the critics—making the case that the more we commodify art that comes from passionate, even dark places, the more we risk suffering as a consequence. And he does so in what could be called a satire-horror hybrid, playfully poking his art world players for the first half and then unleashing actual violence on them in the second. It’s a wildly inconsistent film, sometimes disappointingly clunky and as superficial as the world it’s mocking, but it’s also an ambitious piece of work with unforgettable imagery and an ace ensemble. You know how a painting can look totally different depending on the angle from which you're viewing it? The same thing is going to happen with “Velvet Buzzsaw,” and I think that’s exactly how Dan Gilroy wants it.

Jake Gyllenhaal is in gloriously showy mode as art critic Morf Vandewalt, a writer who can literally make or break an artist’s career with his buzz-generating reviews. He is a kingmaker in a circle of art profiteers that includes agent Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) and her assistant Josephina (Zawe Ashton). Almost like a slasher movie director giving us snippets of character for the eventual victims arriving to the remote cabin in the woods, Gilroy populates an ensemble with quirky characters like installment technician Bryson (Billy Magnussen), gallery manager Gretchen (Toni Collette), grown-repetitive artist Piers (John Malkovich), hot-young-agent Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge), hot-young-artist Damrish (Daveed Diggs), and new assistant Coco (Natalia Dyer). It’s a crowded cast of beautiful people about to have their superficial lives destroyed.

It starts when Josephina comes home to find her upstairs neighbor deceased in the hallway. She peeks into his apartment and finds dozens of gorgeous paintings—and the design of the art is truly fantastic. They’re haunting pieces of work and the movie could have collapsed if they were not. Much of “Velvet Buzzsaw” rises or falls on whether or not the art Josephina finds would believably incite the buying frenzy and fandom that it does, so it’s essential that we believably buy that she’s captivated by the art. She learns that her neighbor was a troubled artist, and he was trying to destroy his life's work when he died. She probably should have taken that as an omen. Instead, Josephina unleashes the art into the world, and all of the aforementioned characters (except maybe Coco) want a piece of the inevitable profit. And then people start dying.

“Velvet Buzzsaw” is a unique horror film visually in that it doesn’t employ the typical dark color pattern or low lighting typical in the genre. It is a bright, vividly colored slice of gore, a pop art riff on “Final Destination” with bright red flames, blood, and paint. The design of the film always kept me engaged, impressed by the visual choices from the paintings to the production design to the costumes to the kill scenes. Almost all of the deaths in “Velvet Buzzsaw” involve characters being absorbed by their art, almost as if Gilroy is saying you can’t be an outsider to true art for very long without getting sucked into it. It was shot by the great Robert Elswit (robbed of an Oscar nod for his work on Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler”) and his work elevates the piece overall. There are striking enough visuals throughout “Velvet Buzzsaw,” and a nice streak of black humor threaded through the entire piece, to keep viewers engaged at least superficially.

The problems start when one starts digging below the surface. It feels like “Velvet Buzzsaw” needed another pass on every level. The script feels clunky at times, uncertain of its targets and willing to go off on tangents that the movie really doesn’t need—there’s a scene between Piers and Dondon that does nothing for the film other than to show John Malkovich can drop a free throw. And I kept hoping for it to coalesce into a statement about art that was deeper than “take it seriously.” There are also some weird, choppy edits, and tonal jumps. It’s an ambitious movie, so a difficult one to manage in terms of structure, but this flick lurches and stops sometimes right when you want it to be building up momentum. It sometimes even approaches “failed experiment” status, but a strong acting choice or design element just brings it back from that precipice a few times. One just wishes it never got so close.

As someone who sees hundreds of movies a year, and covers hundreds of hours of television, I value originality, and “Velvet Buzzsaw” is certainly unlike anything else you’re going to see this year on Netflix or any other streaming service. And so maybe I’m more forgiving of it than people who aren’t subjected to so much predictable mundanity would be. Or maybe, after watching the cautionary tale Morf the cynical critic, I’m just scared something will happen to me if I’m too mean.

 

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Arctic (2019)

Arctic (2019)

Cast

• Mads Mikkelsen as Overgård
• Maria Thelma Smáradóttir as Young Woman

Director

• Joe Penna

Screenplay

• Ryan Morrison
• Joe Penna

Cinematography

• Tómas Örn Tómasson

Editor

• Ryan Morrison

Drama, Thriller

Rated PG-13

97 minutes

 

 

For movies meant to put a character through a gauntlet of death and hopelessness, survival stories are abundant with dramatic potential: here’s someone just like you, he's stranded in the middle of nowhere, now let’s watch him try not to die. It’s almost more exciting to think of the writers figuring out such a precise situation than the unfortunate characters themselves. But the best ones (like Robert Redford’s yachting adventure gone wrong “All is Lost”) have a poetry to their physical tales of hope, and the worst play out like a survivor’s manual of what to do and not do, or an endurance test. “Arctic,” directed by newcomer Joe Penna, is stuck somewhere in the middle of those qualifications, its drama largely subsisting on the on-screen muscle of Mads Mikkelsen. 

Things start off relatively manageable for Mikkelsen’s Overgård, all things considered. Yes, his plane has crashed in the middle of an Arctic nowhere, but he has a pulley system into a water hole that’s gotten him a few fishes he can save for later meals, and a radio system that he cranks with hopes of catching a signal. He is alone, but he knows how to read a map, and has a watch alarm that keeps him regimented. He seems confident and weirdly prepared for this crisis, two key creative choices from Penna and Ryan Morrison’s script that take away the vital nervousness of watching him figure this all out. 

So when a helicopter attempts early on to rescue him but crashes, it comes off as bittersweet, and less of a traumatizing lost chance at surviving. Pros: he gets a sled, some Ramen, and some other gear out of the crash. Cons: Overgård now has to care for the one person who survived the crash, a woman in a coma. He silently vows to take care of her, in a few warming passages for a movie that makes you very aware of the temperature of your toes. But then “Arctic” finally gets to its major event: he’s going to drag her on the sled and trudge with limited supplies through the deadly conditions, his goal a seasonal station that the map tells him is a few days’ journey away. 

But even with its bouts of good and very bad luck, once “Arctic” endeavors on its suicide mission it feels alarmingly straight-forward. The film’s testing of Overgård’s strength goes from polarizing contrivance to heavy-handed metaphor for his inner resilience. Can one drag a body on a sled for numerous days, sometimes on a steep incline, with hardly any food in one’s stomach and frost bite? How much does a desperate will to live lead to adrenaline? Those are the kinds of questions that distracts from the pain and spirit “Arctic” was clearly inspired by, distancing the viewer from its visceral nature as it beats on Overgård’s body this side of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant.” It doesn’t help that the movie wears out its most impactful visual note, a lonely white canvas that sometimes can only colored by two bodies and a sled to show any semblance of life. 

As the flagging eyes and brawny fighter of this endeavor, Mikkelsen is a vivid casting pick. But it’s a shame his role doesn’t feel more spiritual, as this crises takes place in a land that even God’s silence seems to have forgotten, and as “Arctic” does have moments in which it flexes cheesy irony on his life-and-death decisions. The movie is instead most concerned with the empty spectacle of watching his body overcome nature’s cruelest obstacles, hollowing him out in its most hope-deficient moments. And though Overgård spends a lot of time alone with his thoughts, “Arctic” lacks what makes for the best movies of its ilk: it does not inspire much imagination concerning what our hero might do first if he does get back home. 

 

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Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

Cast

• James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb / The Horde / The Beast / Patricia / Dennis / Hedwig / Barry / Jade / Orwell / Heinrich / Norma
• Bruce Willis as David Dunn / The Overseer
• Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price / Mr. Glass
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke
• Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple
• Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn
• Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price
• Luke Kirby as Pierce

Director

• M. Night Shyamalan

Producer

• Jason Blum

Editor

• Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
• Renaldo Kell

Director of Photography

• Mike Gioulakis

Writer

• M. Night Shyamalan

Original Music Composer

• West Dylan Thordson

Drama, Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller

Rated PG-13

129 minutes

More “Split 2” than “Unbreakable 2,” M. Night Shyamalan has finally produced his first direct sequel, the mash-up that is “Glass,” bringing together characters from two of his biggest hits. As the end of “Split” hinted, that film took place in the same universe as Shyamalan’s 2000 film “Unbreakable,” still his best work to date. The promise of the coda to “Split” is fulfilled in “Glass,” bringing together Shyamalan’s vision of the Freudian brain in the uncontrolled id of DID-afflicted Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy), the regulating force of the super-ego in David Dunn (Bruce Willis), and the moderator between the hero and the villain in the ego that is Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Once again, Shyamalan is playing with comic book tropes, adding his twists to monologuing heroes and villains who are remarkably self-aware of their own genre arcs. There’s a truly ambitious film buried in “Glass,” and I do mean buried. The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work. Say what you will about “Unbreakable” and even “Split,” they had a propulsive energy that’s lacking here, at least partially because any sense of relatability is gone. “Glass” is a misfire, and it’s the kind of depressing misfire that hurts even more given what it could have been.

“Unbreakable” and “Split” have protagonists thrust into life-changing situations. The former told the story of David Dunn, the only survivor of a horrible train crash, who learned that he was more than human. The latter tells two stories—that of a girl, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, who returns here and is given woefully little to do), forced to discover her own strengths, and that of a mentally ill patient who may be more than your average person diagnosed with DID. 

As “Glass” opens, we know David Dunn, now known in Philadelphia as the mysterious protector called the Overseer and working with his son (Spencer Treat Clark), is a superhero. And we know Kevin Crumb has a personality called The Beast that can climb walls and take shotgun blasts. And yet so much of “Glass” is devoted to trying to convince David and Kevin that they are not super in any way. In the pursuit of another twist ending, Shyamalan takes a narrative step back, covering so much of the same ground that the two previous films did instead of carving a new path. He’s so obsessed with ending on a gotcha note that he delays any sort of narrative interest until then, basically forcing his audience to tread water until that point. Think long and hard about what you know at the end of “Glass” as opposed to what you knew at the beginning and you’ll realize how hollow this whole venture has been.

Most of “Glass” takes place at Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. In what could be called the prologue, David/Overseer tracks Kevin/Horde down after the villainous man with multiple personalities kidnaps four young women, holding them in an abandoned factory. The two men fight, and one immediately gets the sense that something is not quite right. This showdown between two of the most memorable characters in Shyamalan’s history lacks the punch or creative fight choreography fans should expect. The pair head out a window and into the arms of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), the confident doctor who shuttles them off to the same psych ward that’s been housing Mr. Glass for almost two decades. Glass is kept in a deeply vegetative state in a room in the same wing as David and Kevin. Dr. Staple tries to convince all three that they are not really super in any way. David’s strength isn’t that abnormal and Kevin’s powers as The Beast could be explained away.

In the midsection of “Glass,” Shyamalan hits every beat more than once, almost joylessly. Paulson gives the same speech multiple times, and a bit with a bright light that can change which personality of Kevin’s dominates goes on forever ... and then happens again. Shyamalan is determined to cycle through the back stories of these characters, even employing footage from “Unbreakable” and “Split” in flashbacks as if he doesn’t realize that 95% of viewers have seen them. He seems so intent on the reveals of his final fifteen minutes that he forgets to take opportunities to make the nearly two hours before that interesting. Why is Raven Hill such a dull bore to look at? Why is Shyamalan determined to make another film about whether or not superheroes are superheroes instead of just building on the foundation he’s created? Imagine “The Avengers” retelling all the origin stories and then questioning whether or not The Hulk is really a superhero or just an angry dude. 

There are glimpses of the crazy, ambitious movie that “Glass” could have been, and that’s what saves it from complete "Happening"-level disaster. Once again, McAvoy is giving it his all, even if he’s not getting as much back in return as he did last time (and is balanced by another half-hearted Willis performance in which I swear you can practically see him fall asleep). And there are just enough out-there ideas in “Glass” that it’s impossible to completely dismiss even if they don't come together. It’s that fine line between ambitiously clunky in a way that engages the viewer and just sloppy. I honestly kept trying to engage with “Glass” as a fan of Shyamalan’s early films, comic books, and movies that try to mash-up familiar genres in a way that makes a new one. I ultimately resigned myself to the fact that it’s not my fault that it’s broken.

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Escape Room (2019)

Escape Room (2019)

Cast

• Taylor Russell as Zoey
• Deborah Ann Woll as Amanda
• Tyler Labine as Mike
• Logan Miller as Ben
• Jay Ellis as Jason
• Adam Robitel as Gabe
• Nik Dodani as Danny
• Jessica Sutton as Allison

Director

• Adam Robitel

Writer (story by)

• Bragi Schut

Writer

• Bragi Schut
• Maria Melnik

Cinematographer

• Marc Spicer

Editor

• Steve Mirkovich

Composer

• John Carey
• Brian Tyler

Action, Horror, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for terror/perilous action, violence, some suggestive material and language.

100 minutes

 

 

“Escape Room,” a new PG-13-rated horror film, is a sometimes diverting, but overly familiar series of set pieces in search of a good melodrama. There’s not much of a plot: six disposable protagonists try to solve a series of inter-connected puzzles, and death is the penalty for failure.

There’s also not much reason to care if these protagonists live or die, a demerit that slightly (but notably) distinguishes “Escape Room” from what appears to be its creators’ biggest influence: the go-for-broke “Saw” movie franchise, a series of “torture porn” flicks that weirdly improved as its creators grew more desperate to keep diehard fans (and only diehard fans) interested. The “Saw” movies are probably best remembered for their instantly dated gore. But, speaking for myself: I love their over-the-top soap opera plotting, especially in later sequels like “Saw VI” and “Saw: The Final Chapter” (the latter of which is not, as horror fans know, the last “Saw” sequel). 

“Escape Room” has a handful of enjoyably bonkers moments, most of which involve nonsensical death traps. But “Escape Room” is also anemic compared to the “Saw” movies, as you might imagine based on the film’s comparatively weak PG-13 rating. That wouldn’t be a problem if there were other major differences between “Escape Room” and the “Saw” sequels. Sadly, “Escape Room” is only longer and more impersonal than what came before it. 

“Escape Room” also feels pretty schematic since very few plots twists serve to develop the film’s cipher-like characters. Six thrill-seekers pile into the waiting room of a non-descript Chicago office building. A woman’s voice tells them to wait to be seen. They follow her instructions and exchange introductory pleasantries. But then the suite’s door handle breaks, their disembodied host’s voice disappears (surprise: she was a recording!), and a powerful convection oven-style heater turns on. The film’s deadly games begin.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t watch movies like “Escape Room” and “Saw” for their characters or performances. Still, that might be something you do while watching “Escape Room” given how threadbare the rest of the film is. Unfortunately, Nik Dodani and Jason Ellis—who respectively play clueless puzzle nerd Danny and hothead know-it-all Jason—are often loud and annoying. And Tyler Labine, in the role of the likeably clueless trucker Mike, barely does anything. Heck, even the characteristically charming Deborah Ann Woll—as the tough, capable war vet Amanda—is barely able to steal a single scene (you’ll know it when you see it).

None of this would be so bad if the two least interesting performers and characters didn’t overshadow everyone else. Logan Miller—as the twitchy (but young!) alcoholic Ben—is maybe one of the least convincing Byronic teenage protagonists in a recent horror film. And Taylor Russell’s withdrawn college student Zoey is exclusively defined by her exasperating savant-like behavior. You probably already know what’s going to happen to Ben and Zoey, but that also wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of “Escape Room” wasn’t so uninspired. 

To be fair: the death trap set pieces are united by dumb-fun themes, like Tim Burton Room or Dirty Hospital Ward. But that’s about it. The oven-heated waiting room features dull clues, like an (apparently) unread copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and a barely full water-cooler, too. And an upside-down billiards room is only noteworthy because of its annoyingly malfunctioning jukebox (it plays only one song, loudly and frequently!) and rapidly collapsing ceiling, I mean floor. 

Sure, it's less fun than the "Saw" movies, but why doesn’t “Escape Room” work on its own terms? The characters all have dark secrets that ostensibly give meaning to their Sisyphean struggles. But their secrets aren’t dark enough, nor are their Rube-Goldbergian trials wild enough to be memorable. (The second-to-last puzzle room, which looks like a condemned hospital ward, is especially tedious). “Escape Room” may be a welcome oasis at the start of January’s seemingly vast pre-Oscars wasteland. But if you miss “Escape Room” while it’s in theatres, you can probably miss it altogether.

 

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Widows (2018) - Film Review

Widows (2018)

Cast

Viola Davisas Veronica Rawlins
Michelle Rodriguezas Linda Perelli
Elizabeth Debickias Alice Gunner
Cynthia Erivoas Belle
Colin Farrellas Jack Mulligan
Brian Tyree Henryas Jamal Manning
Daniel Kaluuyaas Jatemme Manning
Jacki Weaveras Agnieska
Carrie Coonas Amanda
Robert Duvallas Tom Mulligan
Liam Neesonas Harry Rawlings
Manuel Garcia-Rulfoas Carlos Perelli
Jon Bernthalas Florek Gunner
Garret Dillahuntas Bash O'Reilly
Lukas Haasas David
Matt Walshas Ken

Director

Steve McQueen

Writer (based on "Widows" by)

Lynda La Plante

Writer

Gillian Flynn
Steve McQueen

Cinematographer

Sean Bobbitt

Editor

Joe Walker

Composer

Hans Zimmer

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual content/nudity.
128 minutes

 

 

Most heist movies are built on a sheen of cool genius, masterminded by a gang of antiheroes who are typically seeking a kind of justified vengeance. “Widows” is not like most heist movies. The emotional currents that power Steve McQueen’s brilliant genre exercise are different—it’s societal inequity, exhaustion at corruption, and outright anger at a bullshit system that steals from the poor to give to the rich. McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

McQueen opens his film with an immediate boost of adrenaline, dropping us into the latest “job” by criminal Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) and his crew (Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Coburn Goss) as it goes very, very wrong. McQueen and his incredible editor (Joe Walker, who deserves the Oscar for his work here) bounce us back and forth between the fateful job and quick scenes of introductions to the Rawlings’ crew and their spouses. So we meet Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), a fragile, abused woman whose mother (Jacki Weaver) barely treats her better than her awful husband; Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), a mother of two who is just opening her own store; and Amanda (Carrie Coon), who has a 4-month-old child. Before the opening sequence is over, all three will be widows, as will be Harry’s wife Veronica (Viola Davis).

Not long after Harry’s death, Veronica is visited by a local criminal named Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who informs her that Harry’s final job was to steal $2 million from him and his campaign for 18th ward alderman. With the help of his sociopathic brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya), the Mannings tell Veronica that she has to repay the money just as Harry’s widow happens to find her dead husband’s notebook with all the details on past and future jobs. There’s a lot of information on the next job he had planned, one that looks to net $5 million. Veronica gets the other widows together and they agree to do Harry’s next job. They can repay Manning and have some left over to start new lives.

If only anything were that easy in Chicago. I haven’t even mentioned Manning’s competition for 18th ward alderman, Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), part of a long line of Windy City politicians, including his racist father Tom (Robert Duvall). Jack is one of those silver spoon politicians who almost feels like he’s owed the office just by virtue of his last name, never mind the fact that he’s facing a corruption scandal that involves grifting from a project that expanded the Chicago Green Line. Jack is the kind of politician who starts a program to put minority women to work by giving them businesses…from which he then takes a cut. Everything comes at a cost in “Widows.” Everything, to a certain extent, is a transaction. The job that opens “Widows” and then Veronica’s decision to use the notebook instead of just selling it pull back the curtain on a corrupt, broken system, one that feels distinctly Chicagoan while also commenting on inequity around the world. McQueen and his team use the city brilliantly, especially in a stunning single take in which we see Mulligan go from a campaign event in his ward to his home, the camera staying outside the car to show us the rapidly changing neighborhood along the commute.

Gillian Flynn’s script for “Widows” brings together many disparate personalities under one umbrella but the differences never feel forced. Only when you sit back and think about it, do you consider that it is likely not by accident that Alice, Linda, and Veronica are Polish, Latinx, and Black, respectively, never mind their incredibly different economic differences—Veronica lives on the Gold Coast while Alice has to become an escort to make ends meet. In part, “Widows” seems to be saying that corruption is a great equalizer, especially among women betrayed by powerful men. When Tom Mulligan says, “The only thing that matters is that we survive,” it’s a line meant to capture how tightly he’s trying to hold on to a white political legacy, but it’s something any number of characters in “Widows” could say. There are a number of great lines like that but McQueen and Flynn are careful to never allow their film to sink into a political diatribe. The dialogue crackles without ever calling attention to itself or sounding overly precious or preaching.

Part of the reason “Widows” stays above the line where it would feel like mere sermon is that it contains the best ensemble of 2018. Viola Davis can do more with a longing, grieving look out a window than most actresses can do with a monologue. Watch the beat where she’s looking out at Lake Michigan and we see her in reflection, an image of her dead husband coming up behind her. It’s almost as if her grief manifested him. And when Veronica’s drive turns from sadness to anger, Davis makes every beat count. There’s not a single wasted decision on her part. It might be her best performance.

She’s matched by a ridiculously talented supporting cast, all on her level. Debicki was great earlier this year in “The Tale,” but this is her breakthrough role, one that nearly allows her to steal the film. Watch Alice’s body language as she goes from a frightened victim to an empowered woman. She never overplays the transformation, but it's impossible to miss. It’s really the rare kind of film for which there are hard to pick standouts. Henry has a couple of brilliant scenes, although many seem to think Kaluuya steals a few from him (I'm not sure I agree. They're both great.). Rodriguez makes one wish she did drama more often. Cynthia Erivo should be a star any minute now. Even small roles like those occupied by Garret Dillahunt and Coon feel “right.” There’s not a wasted or poorly-considered role or performance.

Finally there are the technical elements of “Widows.” It’s not the kind of flashy exercise of something like “Baby Driver,” but the editing here by two-time Oscar nominee Joe Walker (nominated for “12 Years a Slave” and “Arrival”) is just as good. A film with this many characters and themes and plot points requires a master editor to keep it moving, and Walker finds the perfect rhythm. Hans Zimmer’s score is his most subtle in a long time, especially the way that McQueen uses it, holding back on score almost entirely for the first 30-45 minutes, allowing it to bubble up as the heist gets closer, enhancing the tension of the overall experience.

The tapestry that is “Widows” is so deep that it’s easy to miss some of its smaller patterns. There’s a scene in which Jatemme is following Veronica, listening to a report on the radio about Albert Woodfox, a man who spent 43 years in solitary confinement at Angola. There’s a line from Woodfox in the report that McQueen makes sure we hear: “Nothing you do is gonna change your situation.” “Widows” is about both the truth of that and a few people who decide to fight it.   

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Welcome to Mercy (2018) - Film Review

Welcome to Mercy (2018)

Cast

Lily Newmark as August
Eileen Davies as Mother Superior
Kristen Ruhlin as Madaline
Toms Liepājnieks as Young Father Joseph
Ieva Seglina as Alyona

Director

Tommy Bertelsen

Writer

Kristen Ruhlin

Cinematographer

Igor Kropotov

Editor

Jordan Maltby

Thriller

Rated NR

 

 

There's a terrific new horror film about guilt, shame, and witches, and its name is "Suspi--" wait, sorry, it's called "Welcome to Mercy," a brooding, atmospheric movie set in a Latvian convent that follows an atheist who becomes possessed by an ancient evil. That may sound like the logline for a tacky throwback to the unabashedly salacious nunsploitation gems of the 1970s, like "Behind Convent Walls" and "School of the Holy Beast." But the best thing about "Welcome to Mercy" is that its creators don't go for cheap thrills ... not many, anyway. Director Tommy Bertelsen and screenwriter Kristen Ruhlin take time to consider what drew disbelieving single mother Madaline (Ruhlin) back to her Latvian home, just to see her long-ill father Frank (Andrey Yahimovich). One answer seems immediately  apparent: to confront her standoffish, estranged mother Alyona (Ieva Seglina). But Bertelsen and Ruhlin are patient enough to make their film's more high concept ideas—surprise: Madaline gets possessed by demons!—subordinate to Madaline's attempts at reconciling abandonment issues that she hopes she won't pass on to her own daughter, Willow (Sophia Massa).

You can tell that there's something different about "Welcome to Mercy" from the way its terrific ensemble cast delivers their oft-pulpy dialogue. These performances are the heart and soul of a film whose ideas could have easily devolved into genre cliches and pseudo-empathetic pandering. "Welcome to Mercy" is, after all, a film where demonic possession is presented as an expression of Madaline's long-unexamined feelings of helplessness. Her secular trauma is given a high-concept horror twist, but with good reason: a world of old world religious/superstitious fear is the one this character was pre-emptively kicked out of, and that she consequently fears.

How can you blame her? Look at the way that Seglina and Juris Strenga, the actor playing the skeletal Father Joseph, play their parts. Their accents and appearances are (necessarily) off-putting: at times, she sounds like Frau Blücher from "Young Frankenstein" while he looks like the evil priest from "Poltergeist II." Still, there's enough humanity in both Seglina and Strenga's performances to make you wonder if Madaline knows what she's talking about when she dismisses both Joseph and Alyona's ritualistic faith as mere superstition. Listen to Strenga—as his character refers to the still-living Frank—add a syrupy pause worthy of Bela Lugosi to the sentence "He was ... a good friend." Or listen to Seglina deliver a master class in inflection as she--as Alyona rejects Madaline's claim that Yelina "abandoned [her]"—delivers a line that, from a lesser actor, would come out on the wrong side of Meryl-Streep-y camp: "I did not! A-ban-don YOU! I wanted to give you a BET-TER life.” 

That sort of pitch-perfect heightened tone is, admittedly, the sort of thing you have to see to believe. Still, the creators of "Welcome to Mercy" deserve praise for giving their story enough weight to make some timeworn horror conventions (Look out, stigmata!) seem new again. As a screenwriter, Ruhlin brings sensitivity to her characters in a way that none of the other authors of this season's big horror films did (sorry, fans of this year's "Halloween" sequel!). As a writer, Ruhlin gives Madaline enough time and humanity to worry: maybe she's unconsciously hurting her own daughter because she doesn't understand why or how much her mother hurt her. That lingering should help many jaded horror fans to suspend their disbelief, which is essential since Madaline (the audience's surrogate) must willingly submit to the prodding concern of the sisters of Mercy, a secluded convent whose nuns supposedly have the "spiritual disciplines" needed to help Madaline become unpossessed.

Madaline's dilemma sounds incredible, but it's supposed to, from Seglina and Strenga's Boris & Natasha-style accents to the superstitious, rural trappings of Frank and Yalina's home (so much garlic and hay!). This is how a skeptical urbanite sees the world she was (in her eyes) forced out of as a child. It's small, and a little backwards, so it's also easy to pigeonhole. 

Realistically, the most exciting thing about "Welcome to Mercy" isn't its exceptionally creepy scare scenes—ever wonder what the world looks like according to a victim of possession?—but rather its creators' thoughtful consideration, not only of how it feels to be abandoned, but also what it feels like to understand why you were seemingly left behind. "Welcome to Mercy" is, in that sense, a rare horror movie whose creators seriously represent both sides of a dilemma, and is therefore more mature than it seems at first glance. Bertelsen and Ruhlin understand why people fear religion, but also why we look to it as a balm for secular guilt and shame. In horror movies, Love is usually the world's one-size-fits-all cure. In "Welcome to Mercy," it's a more complex sentiment: forgiveness.

 

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