The Perfection (2018)

I… uh… you know, I don’t have an intro for this. Just read on and I’ll explain what this is.

Director: Richard Shepard

Starring: Allison Williams, Logan Browning

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This one starts off with a girl named Charlotte, whose mother has died and so she can finally go back to playing the cello like she always wanted. She meets her teacher’s new protege, Lizzie, who has been in the New York Times, so that’s cool. Then through a rapid-fire series of scenes of them playing the cello, they drink together and then have sex and are in a relationship enough to go to China together!

Well, you can say a lot of things about musicians. Apparently they move fucking fast. Charlotte says this is the first time she’s ever had sex, since she spent so much time with her dying mother for years. Well, so far so good. I’m sure this will just be a movie about a romance. How sweet.

In China, the two almost immediately have problems when Lizzie starts getting sick. It quickly begins to escalate when they’re on a bus in the middle of nowhere and Lizzie begins to vomit up worms. She wonders if she has that virus that had been reported in China (… you know, I’m not going there for this), and, no, my friend, what you have is apparently much fucking worse. Vomiting up worms – this is some Exorcist shit.

So, OK. It’s a body-horror flick. Cool.

Then the bus driver kicks them off and they just have to wander around in the middle of the mountains with Lizzie dying. She sees bugs exploding out of her arm and Charlotte then immediately produces a giant meat cleaver out of nowhere and goes “you know what you have to do!” Uh, anyone who carries around a fucking meat cleaver and just pulls it out at the ready is nobody I want to be around.

But then the movie ‘rewinds’ itself in a very weird and stupid manner to SHOW US WHAT REALLY HAPPENED! Apparently, Charlotte actually got some hallucinogenics and slipped them to Lizzie, suggesting subtly that bugs were in her skin. Then she also stole a meat cleaver from a restaurant just for the right time to use. This is some psycho shit, man. The character from Single White Female is going “wow, that’s fucked.” Why’d she have to go all the way to China to do this? How did she know the bus driver would just abandon them? I have so many questions. If they had taken her to a hospital, none of it would’ve worked and the whole plan would’ve been shot. I guess it’s just dumb.

So, OK… now I guess it’s a weird revenge/sociopath type of story! Cool! Are you done trying on different genres of films like it’s a department clothing store? I mean, Jesus Christ, this has more personalities than the homeless guy down the street from me.

Then we flash forward a few weeks to back in America, as Lizzie shows up at the music school like a lost orphan with one hand. The teacher, Anton, immediately shows no regard for her well-being at all and basically kicks her out for losing her hand. What a class act! “You suffered a traumatic injury, now GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT!” This is the kind of guy who grades child cancer patients’ drawings as ‘mediocre at best.’ What a douche!

So instead, she goes and fights Charlotte at her house in the suburbs – wait, so Charlotte’s whole big plan went like:

1. Go trick girl into sleeping with you.
2. Go to China and drug her and make her cut off her own hand!
3. Go home and live in a suburban home and do nothing.

What a plan! She sure is keeping busy these days. I guess it’s good to have a full calendar. That’s the spice of life.

Then Lizzie kidnaps Charlotte and takes her back to the music mansion where Anton the weirdo music teacher just invites them both back in. It’s revealed through some weird flashbacks that, actually, this music school is a weird rape cult where the teacher makes you have sex with him if you mess up the music! What a twist! We also learn that Charlotte was apparently institutionalized before, likely because of the rape cult stuff, and had electroshock therapy.

What a tasteful plot. I’m glad this movie is really shining a light on the plight of sexual assault victims by showing us a bunch of sensational gaudy bullshit twists. Actually it's trash and uses heavy subjects as fodder to be shocking and garish, making it really very immature.

Like this shit is crazy – Anton and his goons, with Lizzie on their side, have Charlotte shackled to a chair and threaten to rape a little girl if she doesn’t do well. What the fuck am I even watching? Who wrote this down and said ‘yeah, makes sense’?

Eventually, we get the OTHER big twist – that Charlotte and Lizzie had actually teamed up to beat Anton, tricking him into thinking HE had the upper hand!

Christ, this movie is full of twists. It’s like three different movies; a romance, a body horror film and then a rape revenge film. I’m not opposed to the genre switching, but the way the movie keeps on throwing twists in and then retconning everything before it makes this a very frustrating viewing. It's not clever if all you're doing is going "oh, yeah, that thing you thought happened? That didn't happen. I'm smart because my mom said so!" Just tell the fucking story!

But yeah – Charlotte and Lizzie team up and kill Anton, eventually severing all his limbs and making him watch them play the cello together. Just imagine clicking on this part as a random point in the movie after seeing the beginning with the two girls kissing and sleeping together. I know that’s not a hard hitting critique, but man is it funny to imagine.

Also, Charlotte apparently did all the stuff about cutting off Lizzie’s hand to save her from the brainwashing of the rape cult thing. I wonder if she EVER just tried talking to Lizzie calmly about it before pulling off that whole scheme. That would be my big problem if I was in Lizzie’s shoes. “Uh, you couldn’t have just talked to me about the brainwashing and the rape cult over our morning coffee? There was no point where you could’ve brought it up civilly? You had to jump straight to CUTTING OFF MY FUCKING HAND???”

But then, that’s our Charlotte – always such a cheeky rascal!

I just wonder why Charlotte had to do everything the way she did. Couldn't she just have killed Anton immediately at the beginning? That would have probably been easier. Or better yet, find some way to expose him or something. So much could've been avoided, including loss of limbs and PTSD-related trauma. But I guess it was more fun to do the whole hand-cutting-off, rape-revenge elaborate plot!

This movie is terribly bad, but I just find it more fascinating than anything. What brain mash thought this crazy shit up? I want to study it under a microscope and find out what secrets lie within. Maybe it could cure cancer.

Image copyright of its original owner; I don't own it.

The Year 2018 In Movies

Well, I deliberated how to do it this year, as every movie I was going to list as one of the worst of the year ended up being reviewed here already - so what was the point in just listing them all again? Instead, I decided to go ahead and list a bunch of my favorite ones in no order, because who really needs any more formality than that? There were a lot of cool movies last year.

I eschewed any superhero ones and tried to steer clear of the Oscar ones, because my blog really is like the dark side of any mainstream movie coverage most of the time. I think fans of stuff that is a little more off the beaten path will find a lot to enjoy here. Dig in. Consume some art. Have fun.

Sorry to Bother You

A fucking radical punch to the face. This was so vibrant, exciting and progressive. Director Boots Riley has such a fresh, unique style, and the story is a sardonic, dark and twisted and yet funny spin on how thoroughly fucked the working class is. I’ve never really seen anything like it, and fast dialogue and witty performances only buoy the whole thing. This is the kind of thing that will inspire you to go enact some change in real life. It’s a protest movie and I love the shit out of it.

The Favourite

Acerbic, cold and cutting; The Favourite is a dynamite film that tackles the question of power, of who holds it over who and what it means. Really, the film seems to think it’s more of an arbitrary thing, a farce we perpetuate ourselves, making ourselves miserable in the service of ‘power,’ whatever the hell that really means. Emma Watson is inimitable and the directing is quick and punchy, making this a movie I couldn’t turn away from.

Widows

A dense heavy-weight of a crime action flick. With killer script-writing by Gillian Flynn, this takes a somewhat stock premise and turns it into this labyrinthine, hard-hitting odyssey. The characters face real world issues and themes like sexism, racism, police brutality and income inequality are brushed over with Flynn’s masterful touch. Plus the action is awesome and director Steve McQueen knows how to make this one captivating as hell.

Hereditary

One of the best new horror movies. This is such a gut-punch, and so harrowing in every way. Every shot seems crafted to hurt you. The story blends a traditional ghost tale with real familial breaking-down and disintegration, turning grief into a weapon, used in a way I haven’t really seen before – it’s a more complex film than it initially lets on. Alex Wolff and Toni Collette are undeniable here, no matter how high their therapy bills might’ve been since this finished filming.

Annihilation

This one was a real trip, a visual feast for the senses as four women go into a bizarre parallel universe and things just ramp up in strangeness the closer they get to this mysterious lighthouse. Director Alex Garland’s previous film Ex Machina was more of a literary thing, with more social commentary – this is the exact opposite, a sci fi by way of fantastical adventure. It’s too tinged with darkness to be escapist, but the magnetic, transfixing visuals and sense of a journey are addictive here.

Isle of Dogs

This one was just fun. Wes Anderson has been an inconsistent director for me, but this, with its snappy visual humor and enjoyable characters – played by a really impressive cast – hit the spot. Its social commentary is a bit simple but it gets the job done. I watched and loved this for the sheer stylistic goofiness and ingenuity. It was an addictive little thing.

Eighth Grade

Bo Burnham’s film director debut is a personal, raw little tale, very human, and I found it a great watch. It’s funny in a subtle way, and a little bit tender, a little bit sad. Lead actor Elsie Day is a real fine and imbues this with a sense of honesty that you don’t get out of bigger-budget films all the time.

Mandy

Director Panos Cosmatos might not come out with movies very often, but it’s worth the wait if we get stuff that’s this awesome. Mandy is just a sledgehammer of a movie that takes its time to build character and then just starts tearing everything the fuck apart. Nic Cage gives the performance of his career and Cosmatos’ dedication to sheer blazing psychedelic weirdness in his destructive action makes this a vortex you won’t know how to or want to escape.

Hellfest

Super fun, vibrant horror flick that impressed me way more than I thought it would. Might not be anything terribly substantial but this was a serious blast of adrenaline and the best slasher I’ve seen in years. The setting is cool and macabre and there’s an actual sense of suspense and danger for these characters – you don’t want them to die. It’s 80s B-level schlock given the A-level film treatment and made with care.

Hold the Dark

Director Jeremy Saulnier has been building up his cred for years with movies like Blue Ruin and Green Room, both these raw, gritty action flicks with no pretense. Hold the Dark is his best yet. This is just a force of nature, and the perilous setting and inescapable action make it a legitimate experience. It’s primal and even kind of beautiful in a weird way. His dedication to making movies with no Hollywood bullshit at all is commendable.

Thoroughbreds

A sick puppy of a film, centering around a demented relationship between two adolescent girls and the fucked up things they do. I found this to be a wicked little romp, and those into fucked up entertainment will enjoy this.

Calibre

A killer, tightly-wound corker of a horror flick about two guys who get more than they bargained for going hunting in a small town. It never lets up and the story is the focus here. The tension is palpable and the whole thing will leave you with a churning sick feel in your gut. You know by now if you’re the type who’ll enjoy this one.

Death of Stalin

Like The Favourite, this is a movie that examines and then pisses on the idea of power in politics. It’s a dry-witted film and just skewers the ridiculousness of the whole idea of these ‘Leader’ types of authoritarian governments. I found it a unique film, worth seeing for sure, especially if you’re a history buff.

Leave No Trace

Director Debra Granik put out a great movie called Winter’s Bone years ago and is now back with another sparse, intimate drama set out in nature. This one’s about a father and daughter out in the wilds living off the land – and yet contrasting with the whims of modern society encroaching upon them. It has something to say about that, on how it’s become so hard just to live on the land that has always been here. And maybe a little bit about mental illness. I found it affecting.


...And I'll throw in a few disappointments for the hell of it:

Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
The first movie was one of my favorites of the last few years – dark, gritty, morally ambiguous and made with an exquisite and artful eye by Denis Villenueve. This one feels more like a generic action movie, and not even a particularly good one. Without the same level of intrigue in the story and with the two leads acting like stock garden variety anti-heroes out of a syndicated network TV show, this comes off stunted and dull. The streak of mild racism in this one doesn’t help, either.

Deadpool 2
I didn’t like the first one that much, and this is more of the same. Some funny moments, sure – but that’s just what the movie is supposed to do, not a reason for praise. Overall this was full of two or three lame jokes for every decent one and yet again the story was fairly standard and dull. I’m not sure why these sorts of movies think you have to do a cliché storyline in order to make fun of cliché in film. And it’s not as edgy or interesting as it wants you to think.

And props to The Happytown Murders for being the first movie I can think of to rival Shyamalan's The Visit for worst movie of the decade! A truly horrendous spectacle of crap!

Let's now wash ourselves clean of last year's movies and instead go forth like babes anew, ready for a whole new year of entertainment.

Holmes & Watson (2018)

Holmes & Watson is the kind of movie you make when you don't give a shit anymore, really. This is a woefully insane movie that had Tony and I just wondering what kind of gambling debts Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly had to settle that led them to do this shit. It's getting press as one of the worst movies of the year and had a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes at first – now it's gotten to the clandestined, unparalleled highs of 8%. Hallelujah!

But what exactly is it that makes it so godawful? Well, strap in, kids!

Director: Etan Cohen

Starring: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Ralph Fiennes

IMDb

Co-written with Tony.

This thing starts off with a young Sherlock Holmes as a child going to a British boarding school, where all the kids are mean to him and force him to kiss the backside of a donkey by blindfolding him – hey, you little jackasses, what do you think this is, Bird Box? And they made fun of him because he did the thing THEY TRICKED HIM to do. What imagination! What candor! You really showed him by executing a planned trick and him falling for it! The height of comedy!

In response, young Holmes immediately, like as he’s standing there humiliated, becomes super smart, cold and detached – he even makes his tears recede back into his body, which is something I imagine alt-right assholes wish they could do to mask their own insecurities. Then he gets every other kid expelled from school for various things he immediately deduces they've done – I wonder what their parents think about this. BUT AT LEAST SHERLOCK GOT HIS EDUCATION, THE LITTLE NARC.

No, seriously; every teacher just teaches him alone for the rest of his time there, I guess. No other students were admitted? Nobody found this weird? OK then, movie.

Then we fast forward to years later as Sherlock Holmes and Watson are world-class detectives, ready to solve any case. Well, actually they’re complete idiots and weirdos, only Holmes occasionally has a burst of deduction to solve whatever hamfisted case they come across. I guess all that specialized education for Holmes didn’t bother to teach him even the most basic things about how to interact in the real world. They get drawn into some kind of mystery involving someone threatening to kill the queen, I guess, although personally I’d trust any random homeless man on the street a thousand times before I hired these obvious deviant maniacs. I’d be afraid of these guys murdering me in my sleep. They’re fucking bonkers.

I mean, a lot of the rest of the movie doesn’t even make enough sense to critique in my usual way - the plot is a lot of nonsense that’s silly on purpose, and the main issue is that it’s weird instead of funny like 99% of the time. These gags are so strange that you’d swear they were working off some ancient parchment full of things an alien civilization found funny hundreds of millennia ago - they’re certainly not funny now. There’s a lot of shots of characters eating raw onions for some reason? A lot of random vomiting? A scene where two characters exchange a romantic glance while performing an autopsy?

It’s just head-scratching. It’s gibberish. Even when the comedy isn’t outwardly terrible like in the first scene of him as a kid, it’s so confusing and bizarre that you don’t laugh anyway.

Then there are the scenes that take up the majority of the film where they just extend lame gags for long enough that they could call this a full length movie rather than a serial killer’s demo reel for SNL. There’s one segment where they break a bee hive conspicuously in Holmes’ apartment and spend several minutes messing around with that - there’s no reason why they have it there except for this gag and the plot doesn’t advance at all, so it’s pretty much a hollow thing and wastes all of our time. If you could fast forward past an entire comedy segment and your movie doesn’t lose much, maybe it sucks… well, maybe it’d be fine if it were legitimately funny, but we know that ship sailed when we saw the first scene.

The second one they do involves the queen coming over, you know, like she does. They end up knocking her unconscious, and then there’s a long sequence of them trying to hide her body, using an obviously fake voice that nobody catches onto, and finally almost chopping her body to pieces with a hacksaw! Wow! I wonder what repercussions there will be for that and what comedic reactions we’ll get! Oh, nothing at all and this was a non-sequitur? OK then.

Seriously - without some of these scenes this would probably be basically a short film. The padding is so much that you could heal a guy with horrific back pain by just lying them down on this movie’s rolls of fat. It’s like a cloud. No substance at all.

There’s really zero point in going into all the other random shit that happens… just to gloss over it, they meet two women from America who fall in love with them, because this is that kind of movie. Also there’s some really dumb dialogue about how America is so noble and has a democracy and a fair justice system. So, you know, if you were thinking this movie was gonna be the second coming of Sartre, you’re wrong about that.

I guess at the end of the movie, Holmes figures out the killer must be someone close to him who can predict what he’s going to do, and so with no real reason he suspects Watson, having him arrested and almost hanged. It turns out, through an overly-long, dragging sequence, that we figure out he’s really just upset because Watson was going to leave him and be with the American woman - so, great reason to do all this! What a stand-up guy! This movie doesn’t have the complexity to tackle stuff like this, and it’s somehow glossed over and done lazily even though they spend time on it.

Anyway, that’s Holmes and Watson. It’s a baffling piece of cinema. Some parts are so weird they border on avant garde, and then you just get other things that are fairly normal, dumb-ass comedy without much in the way of any humor. By the end of the movie it seriously slows down and becomes a more generic picture and this is where it pretty much lost me. Most of the things that happen are inconsequential, and so the movie as a whole tends to feel like a waste of time.

It’s not good, but for those curious like we were due to the awful reviews… well, don’t bother. It sucks. That’s pretty much all there is to it.

Image copyright of its original owners; we don't own it.

Halloween (1978, 2018)

I remember being about 14 years old in 2005 and discovering horror movies. It was just this bizarre, misfit freak show treasure trove of a genre and lit my imagination on fire. I'd never been introduced to any of them before, my parents weren't huge fans. It was my own thing, brand new, and there seemed to be an infinite well of weird, eerie, macabre shit I was finding brand new. For me, it fit like a glove.

I rented them every chance I got; classics like The Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street as well as random shit I'd find at Blockbuster, some of it crap and occasionally maybe something cool like Frailty. It was all blending together and I was absorbing knowledge and appreciation for 'em at a rapid pace. It was an exciting time. I remember it fondly. I'd watch them several at a time, just let the day bleed away.

Director: John Carpenter

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance

IMDb

One of the biggest discoveries around that time was the original John Carpenter Halloween film. It just blew me away for the starkness and simplicity of it. Just a guy stalking a neighborhood at night with a knife. It's not anything really more than that, and it's the scariest movie I know by my count. There's just no bullshit to it, no posturing or goofy stuff like later movies imitating it. It was just dead serious and presented unpretentiously. I liked that, even if I didn't know how to articulate it when I was a kid.

New things stand out to me every time, as they would with anything good you re-watch. This year it really struck me how creepy the voyeuristic aspects of it were, all those silent scenes of him just out of sight or just the corner of him, just breathing his weird-ass breathing under the mask, watching a girl walk around her house. How fucked is that? There's something to a fear that the person being watched doesn't even register. And it's all very mundane. This shit happens every day in some form or fashion.

But it all still holds up. It's a classic formula now, the slow build-up and then the explosion of Satanic horror and violence by the end. But it's better here than some others, mostly due to the characters. It's surprisingly enjoyable to listen to Laurie and her friends bantering. Certainly not at all just a bunch of airheaded plot-filler before the killing starts.

They're real people and the conversations are enjoyable, setting up a desire not to want these kids to die. Later on, slashers would become dime-a-dozen, made for a laugh and by people without the same attention to detail or writing quality. Amazing, the difference in quality when all you do is actively care about how your movie comes out... they barely had a budget back then, but the quality and passion shone through.

Of course it ends with the infamous cliffhanger – just Michael falling off that balcony and then when they look again, he's gone. Fucking chilling. Then all those shots of the house empty and dark with his creepy breathing over-top. Again, chilling. You'd think a huge man in a mechanic outfit and a dirty white mask, probably bleeding all over the place, wouldn't have been difficult to find, but the sequels sure made it seem like everyone on Earth just had a blind spot for the dude.

Director: David Gordon Green

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer

IMDb

**MINOR SPOILERS HERE**

Flash forward 40 years and people still like the original. That's got to be a good feeling. That people enjoy your work 40 years after the fact – it's something to aspire to. And there was even a new sequel made, disregarding all the other lame ones since the first one. They even got rid of the dumb twist that Michael was actually Laurie's sister, which was a terrible plot device that removed much of the fear from the story. Overall, it's like an annoying person was wiped away from existence and replaced with a good replicate alien, like the twist in the movie The World's End.

Now we have David Gordon Green, of weird eclectic little movies like Prince Avalanche and Joe, directing, and Jamie Lee Curtis apparently remembering the original frenzy fondly enough to re-join. Weirdly, it's titled just 'Halloween,' exactly like the first one and the 2007 remake. I guess they wanted it to be like a shell game of sorts - guess which one you're gonna get!

Now Curtis's old and grizzled but still badass – hell, if anything, her improved acting chops after a decades-long career has only made the character more compelling than she was initially. The script's a lot of pulp type stuff. Michael escapes again after a bus crash transporting him to a new prison. These prison buses really fucking suck. Laurie Strode should write her congressman and get him to do something about it. Maybe that can be the next Halloween sequel – Laurie Strode versus the endless groaning bureaucracy of government insanity.

Curtis's Laurie Strode has spent the past 40 years building a fortress-like house in the woods, complete with a barbed wire fence and Home Alone-style traps. It's not really all that realistic, but then again, I guess a movie about a senior citizen wearing a Shatner mask slaying people with a knife was never going to be some kind of true-life documentary. And seriously – Michael is fucking old in this movie. Picturing him stopping between kills to change an adult diaper or take heart meds is a good way to take the edge off if you're really creeped out by the story.

There are the two journalists – or rather, podcasters, as one of them hilariously lets slip in a very 2018 way – who are hunting down a story about Michael. I'm not sure what their aim is, as they seem to know everything already. Whenever they talk to people it just seems to be reaffirming that, yes, Michael is bad and Laurie is traumatized. There's no real point to having them here except as a ham-fisted contrivance to get Michael's mask back to him after he murders them. And yes, he kills them in a gas station, which is good because anyone who is annoying is someone we should always want murdered graphically... man, slasher movies fuck us up.

There's also Laurie's family, including a daughter who's kinda stuck up and her weird husband, and a granddaughter who seems cool. I think my favorite line comes from the daughter as she's arguing with Laurie about security – she says something like “the world's a nice, happy, peaceful place and we don't need your negativity!” Really? The world's nice, happy and peaceful? Man, I wish I lived in Laurie's daughter's strange Stepford Wives alternate reality. Clearly Laurie must have fucked something up...

It starts off slow, though it picks up speed later. I wasn't interested in the two journalists. They were seemingly just there to provide exposition and little else, and it would've behooved the film to at least try to make them a little bit endearing, at least so we wouldn't be ambivalent when they died.

But Gordon Green's got a killer sense of style and the film looks cool all the time, very epic and spooky. John Carpenter's new soundtrack is wonderfully macabre, hitting like a goddamn anvil, adding loads of suspense. Michael is still fairly imposing, which I was surprised by after so long and so many inferior movies.

There's a good amount of suspense and releasing of tension, though the film can't quite match the slow-burn eerie tension of the 1978 original. But it makes up for that in sheer gleeful brutality. It's a quick-paced thrill ride once it picks up, and Michael is perhaps even more brutal than he ever was. There's one scene where he drops a bunch of human teeth he just pulled out of someone's head on the floor to taunt a victim – it's an unusual level of personality for a guy who's usually content just to lumber along like a zombie, and not a good kind of personality. My take was that he's just that pissed off from being locked up for 40 years.

The finale is careening, fiery action-packed stuff – a survival of the fittest, tooth and nail battle of horror movie filth. Some of the time, the film beautifully and hilariously inverts the original. There's one shot where Laurie, having jumped off a balcony to escape Michael, disappears the same way he did in the first one when he's looking down for her. In another scene, she attacks him with a knife from behind the way he did to her 40 years ago. It's a bit cheesy, but come on, you're telling me that isn't fun?

The ending's basically perfect for what this script was. Quick and violent. I hope they don't make another one. Just know when to fucking end something for once.

Images copyright of their original owners; I don't own them.

Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary got a lot of press early on as one of the scariest, most intense films in a long time, and it's actually all true. This debut film from director Ari Aster is seriously something else, a brutal, hypnotic concoction of terror and grief.

Director: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff

IMDb

This isn't the spoiler part of this review, so I'll just say the way Aster put these scenes together, attaching such weight to every glimpse into the macabre, every bizarre gross-out scene, makes this a very different experience from others of its kind. The things he chooses to linger on are horrific and impactful, and the scares that come out of nowhere truly feel surprising. Even when it's doing things you expect from a horror movie, they just feel fresh and new again, done with this caliber of directing. There are some horrifying images here, some scenes that just hit you where you live. But I couldn't look away.

This was billed as a horror movie that's also a family drama, and there's a fair bit of that. The acting is very good. Toni Collette delivers an incredible performance, throwing everything she has into it, and Alex Wolff as the son, Peter, is just great. Even the father character, played by Gabriel Byrne, manages to be engaging despite being given comparably less to work with. There aren't very many other characters in this, as in many horror movies, and so it's hyper-focused on this family as they deal with the grief of losing first their grandmother and then the little sister, Charlie, in a gruesome accident. You've seen stories about dysfunctional families before, with secret resentments coming out, and so on, and this movie does what you expect, with perhaps more bile and fury than usual for a horror film's dramatic parts.

The quality of the acting, and the way the movie just keeps throwing stuff at you, gives this the weight of the world. It's in the way the movie shows you the darkness and then just holds your head down in it. Most horror movies like this would usually have treated the darkness like a quick gimmick or a joke, just quickly flashing something scary and then cutting away, often playing with expectations by showing that the eerie jump scare was just, like, a cat moving too fast. But Hereditary dwells in darkness and stays there. It's in the magnitude of it.

In the end, the story becomes a more conventional horror tale despite the claims in early reviews that this was something truly different. But it does add a lot of texture and nuance to the film and makes it more of a relatable, human experience. Horror is best when you care about the characters, and the levels of grief here make the movie a more whole experience than just another empty jump-scare fest. When traumatic things happen to Peter, the cries of Alex Wolff, the fear on his face, make it real and make it stick with you. A lot of horror films can't achieve this so well.

A lot of this would play almost like a fan-fiction pandering to horror fans, if it wasn't so well done. There were so many years when we got nothing but dime-a-dozen flicks, and it's why I made this blog in the first place, to lampoon those terrible films. To get something like this just has every single good thing about the genre, turned up to 11, from eerie supernatural whispers in the beginning to outright screaming Satanic horror and hellfire at its climax, feels like a reward for sitting through all of that dreck. From its drama you also get a bunch of really good scares, just over-served to you for two goddamned hours. It's too much, it's excessive, but man is it glorious. I couldn't get enough.

Okay. So I think that's enough with the non-spoiler part. I actually wanted to talk about some other stuff. SPOILERS from here on out!

What eventually unfolds is a kind of Rosemary's Baby-esque conspiracy involving cult members and a demon king, who Peter is revealed to be at the end, the entire movie basically being the build-up to his initiation and change into this hellish entity from mythology. It's been done before, though not always with this level of ominous atmosphere. But it had the intended effect, and was executed with proper intrigue and coiling suspense and confusion.

I think it's important that we're getting new stories like Rosemary's Baby. That film was of undeniable quality. But in this new era of #MeToo, I think a lot of people are really being hit with the full force of how little we actually need pieces of shit like Roman Polanski in the popular lexicon. Enjoying works by people like him now feels guilty and odd, and even if that isn't the case for you, there are so many other, new quality artists out there you could be partaking in instead. Hereditary offers a well-done take on the Rosemary's Baby formula, with similar quality of suspense and drama, a family being torn apart by grief carrying the same kind of weight as Rosemary's motherly anguish over her unborn child.

Another one is Karyn Kusama's “Her Only Living Son,” a short film, and part of the XX anthology that came out last year. That one was even closer to Rosemary's Baby, with a story about a mother losing control of her son as he wants to live with his “father,” who ends up being Satan.

Both of these are seriously good entries into the horror genre, and they serve as ways to almost "repurpose" the good things about Rosemary's Baby. It is a primarily symbolic thing. It would've been interesting if they hadn't done it this way, and instead gone all the way with a non-supernatural kind of story, relying solely on the decay of a family as a way to bolster horror. But it went with a traditional story and did that better than anybody has in decades. I'm not sure if anyone would really try something so conceptual like a whole horror movie just being a family drama. I hope someone does, but I haven't seen that kind of thing yet as of right now.

But it's great that we're getting some new blood infused into horror, which for so long has been a kind of archaic old boys' club where the classics are lionized and everything newer is looked at with the “not as good” skepticism, even though for years now we've been getting plenty of amazing entries that are easily as good as many classics. Some people will always have that kind of "nothing can ever top the classics" mentality. But for everyone else, Hereditary is the most recent new film that absolutely fucking nails what it wants to do.

I walked out of the theater at 2:30 a.m. Saturday feeling like I'd just gone through a legit ordeal. I felt like there were dark, bizarre things in the world and like I had just come out of some parallel dimension. Those are whimsical and fantastical feelings, but if a piece of art isn't affecting you in some similar way, what really is the point?

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Truth or Dare (2018)

Well, I can't even say they've reached the bottom of the barrel for horror movies yet with a stupid plot about the game Truth or Dare. Because the moment I say that, we'll get a totally serious movie based on Hungry Hungry Hippos or Pogs, and then that will be the new bar for the barrel's bottom. But what I can tell you is that this movie is seriously rotten from the inside out.

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Starring: Lucy Hale, Violett Beane

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Truth or Dare, if you haven't seen the absolutely bonkers trailers that have been out for months, is about a bunch of kids who go to Mexico and contract a deadly spiritual curse that forces them to play the game Truth or Dare forever until they all die. Personally I would've rather had an STD.

It starts out with a bunch of models for a fancy skin cream solution – oh, I'm sorry, did I say that? I meant our main characters. Seriously, they look like they just came out of a fucking factory line for a commercial, only to be stuffed back in the box after it's over. Was there something wrong with having them look like they had ever been out of a locked laboratory room, or do physical imperfections scare Blumhouse Pictures more than anything?

They're all going to Mexico for Spring Break, and the biggest hurdle they had was convincing their Habitat for Humanity-loving friend Olivia to go, as she wanted to go build houses and other boring, stupid shit. What a dork! So they cancelled her trip to do that and instead now force her to go to Mexico. I guess they promise to help her out later, but eh, I wouldn't trust these people further than I could throw them.

In Mexico, you get some dumb shots of them partying and stuff. You know, the best part of any horror movie; the meaningless shots of hot people having fun. Truly essential. Olivia meets this guy Carter, who entices her to get all her friends to follow him to a creepy abandoned church in the middle of the fucking night for vague reasons. Honestly, my biggest question is how this girl made it to college if she was dumb enough to do this, because literally no sane person would meet some dude sitting alone at a bar, get an invite to come to some desolate broken-down-ass church at 2 a.m., and then think 'sounds like a fun vacation!' Even the most low-standards, base-level people would start to shy away from you if you suggested leaving the fucking bar.

But nope, they play Truth or Dare sitting in this filthy fucking hovel, like a bunch of idiots with no imagination. It's about what you'd expect, some lap dances and make-out scenes and other nonsense. But then Carter surprises them by saying he wanted to lure them all there to trap them in the supernatural curse and FORCE them to play! What a weirdo. Gee, it sure is bizarre that this stuff happens when you follow creepy strangers in the middle of the night.

I guess the rule is that if they DON'T do their truth or dare, they die. So it's kind of like It Follows, except it's terrible. When possessed by the game, the characters' faces turn into demonic, cartoonish Joker-ish grins, which is never explained and has no function outside of looking kinda spooky if you're under 15. I guess that's a weak nitpick. But I dunno, it's weird and doesn't make sense and the movie sucks overall, anyway.

So then they all go home and everything seems to be getting back to normal. Only then, they start seeing creepy things like 'Truth or Dare' etched into desks, fliers and even Olivia's car! She finally chooses truth, and ends up blurting out in the library that Markie, her best friend, has been cheating on her boyfriend. Wow, what a great scare – bullshit teeny-bopper drama! That's scarier than anything.

So from here on out, you get a bunch of just plain goofy scenes. The most annoying guy in the group gets dared to take his dick out at a bar. When he doesn't, the game kills him by making him fall off a pool table and break his neck! An equivalent punishment, at last!

Another guy, a gay dude, picks 'truth' and is forced to come out to his strict conservative father. Apparently it goes pretty well and things are alright. Wow. What a nuanced and surprisingly level-headed plot choice for a movie like this. I sure hope it doesn't get ruined later.

A few more of them die – this one guy, who seemed to be doing an Anthony Jeselnik impression, lies to his grad school interview about selling pills, so he then has to stab his eye out I guess.

And the great bitter rivalry between former best friends Olivia and Markie continues – oh the humanity! Markie gets dared to break Olivia's hand, I suppose. She does it when Olivia makes a crack about her dad, who committed suicide recently. This plotline, by the way, is just dropped randomly in our laps, like a piece of dried up dog shit.

Eventually they try and figure out what's going on. I can't imagine why; they've all been having such fun playing! They track down this girl who was dared to light a woman on fire earlier in the movie. I guess she was now dared to murder Olivia. I love the variety in the dares. Some people are dared to show their dick, while others are dared to murder people! Totally makes sense!

If you can believe it, the last 30 minutes actually try to get serious on you and start foisting a bunch of ludicrously over-dramatic plots. Like remember that plot about the gay kid coming out to his father? Well, it turns out the game dares that kid to steal his father's police gun and make him beg on his knees! And then the other cop comes and shoots the kid, thinking the dad is in trouble! Wow. With the current climate of police in this country, I'm glad this movie is bringing a sensible take on the issue.

Then we find out that Olivia actually had seen Markie's father right before he killed himself! And he tried to have sex with her and probably actually raped her! And she then told him he'd be better off if he died!

Movie, you know, it's not good to pretend you're something else than what you are. You're trying to shoehorn in these ultra-serious tragic plots, when really you're the kind of movie people watch when drunk off their asses at 2 a.m. while eating Cheetos. You're background noise. You're really not a serious film.

The climax is an over-long, ridiculous sequence involving a Mexican curse that “summoned” the game in the form of a demon. They find this out by going to visit a stereotypical old Mexican ex-nun now living secluded in the desert, a stereotype so cliche and redundant it almost feels new again. But instead it's just kinda racist hack-work. Then they learn they have to cut out that guy Carter's tongue from the beginning of the movie to stop the demon. This is so ridiculous that even the characters openly admit they have no clue how it's going to work.

I guess they try to, but the game, being a little bitch, cheats and makes them accidentally kill Carter instead. Then Olivia and Markie are forced to keep playing, so they broadcast a Youtube and make the entire world play, thus enacting Armageddon basically. I always knew the end times would come as a result of hot coeds and Youtube videos.

Truth or Dare is a garbage fire of a movie, and I DARE all of you to buy the DVDs and burn them in a mass grave. Am I doing it right?

Image copyright of its original owners, we don't own it.