Based on the novella by Laird Barron, THEY REMAIN (2018) is a creepy psychodrama about a pair of researchers investigating phenomenon at the site of a cult massacre on behalf of a mysterious corporation. That’s one hell of a setup, and while the film achieves a high level of creep and tension, its overall slow pacing and last act’s splintering, unreliable narration may achieve the film a deep appreciation but maybe not love. The payoff is satisfying, but perhaps not enough.

More about the plot: Keith (William Jackson Harper) and Jessica (Rebecca Henderson) are field researchers for a corporation seeking new resources to exploit. While the goals of the project are unclear, apparently the team investigates strange phenomenon looking for resources that can be controlled. In this case, the remote wooded area is almost devoid of animals, makes insects behave strangely, and also affects people, including previous researchers and the members of a local cult, which went from drugs and sex to thrill killing.

They don’t seem to like each other much. Keith is distrustful of people and roams the woods setting up cameras. Jessica is an obsessive nerd and handles the lab work. Soon after they arrive, the equipment begins behaving strangely and odd knocks and whispers occur at night, along with bizarre nightmares of the land’s previous inhabitants. After Jessica finds a giant horn of some massive beast, things get really wonky, suggesting that even when dead, the beast is still affecting the land around it. Keith and Jessica begin to spiral into madness.

Overall, there’s much to like here. Harper and Henderson are solid actors who give their characters a lot of life and interest. The idea of the bone of some Lovecraftian creature affecting its area is a compelling mystery, and the history of the cult is pretty cool. The big strokes work. More challenging is the rubber-meets-the-road elements such as pacing and sometimes frustrating lack of coherence as reliable narration disintegrates toward the final act.

I came away with a deep appreciation of the ideas and general execution, though I didn’t fall in love with it. Recommended if you like slow-burn horror with a somewhat sci-fi bent.

The trailer for THE PERFECTION (2019) got under my skin, so after I dutifully finished GAME OF THRONES, I checked it out. What starts out as a sensual thriller escalates into betrayal, body horror, and revenge. Despite some really great elements, ultimately I tossed my hands at the film’s mixed signals and contrived plot maneuvers and gave it a meh shrug.

THE PERFECTION opens in Minneapolis, where Charlotte (the intense Allison Williams) watches her mother die. The product of an elite private school, Charlotte had a promising career as a cellist ahead of her, but had to leave to take care of her mother, while Lizzie (Logan Browning), another student, is at the top of the game, enjoying everything the moneyed world of classical music has to offer. When Charlotte reaches out to Anton, her teacher, she is invited to Shanghai to help judge a competition alongside Lizzie. The two women admit their admiration for each other, which turns into a powerful impromptu duet on stage and an erotic connection.

So far, the film was almost perfect, glossy and sleek, lush and superbly paced, rolling out almost like a great piece of classical music itself. The eroticism between the two characters was super charged and convincing. Watching it, I was thinking, this is what SUSPIRIA could have used more of.

The film then changes gears and turns into a biological thriller, only to spend its last act as a body horror-driven revenge thriller.

Any of these were cool, but they’re jammed together through such heavy contrivances that the whole just crushed my suspension of disbelief and fell flat. It’s too bad, as that killer first act could have gone in some fascinating directions.

AURORA (2018) is a Philippine horror drama thriller film about an innkeeper (Leana) and her sister (Rita) living near the rock-locked wreck of a giant passenger/cargo ship called THE AURORA. When the families of the victims pay her to recover bodies for burial, she sets out at first to make money and later to give them rest, while the ghosts of the dead blindly search for home.

I had mixed feelings about this film. The premise of a haunted shipwreck is fantastic, and the ghosts are done really well. The story is filtered through Filipino culture, particularly ideas about how to treat the dead. There’s a definite creepy vibe to the whole thing.

Unfortunately, the film didn’t seem to be confident about what it wanted to be. Leana started out motivated by money but then becomes motivated solely by recovering the dead, with little explanation. She has little agency as the lead. Early on, Rita seems comfortable with the ghosts and treats them as guests, until later she is scared of them. The director seemed to be working really hard for a horror effect while forcing the methods to get there. The writer also jury-rigged a singular ghost story as being instrumental in the shipwreck for a big reveal that sadly falls a bit flat, and moralized about greed by having the ship being overloaded with passengers, resulting in many bodies not being recovered. The heavy-handed musical score doesn’t help.

Still, I liked it and had fun with it. The Filipino setting was great, the ghosts were creepy, it was very moody, and for a long time I could just enjoy the initial premise of a haunted shipwreck. If they’d had the confidence to keep along a character arc for Leana as somebody who is doing it for the money only to learn the hard way it is about giving the dead rest, gotten rid of the one ghost’s role in the shipwreck, and avoided the overloaded ship, they could have had an amazing film, as there were many elements that really worked.

Overall, I give it a B.

I greatly enjoyed Tim Lebbon’s apocalyptic horror novel THE SILENCE, and Netflix’s 2019 film adaptation is fairly faithful and well executed. It was an enjoyable movie, despite some flaws.

First, let’s dispense with THE QUIET PLACE. From what I’ve read, the script for that movie was in the works before Lebbon’s novel came out, so neither may be a direct knockoff of the other. Both have strengths and flaws and neither in my view is that much better than the other. What made THE QUIET PLACE more effective was the much stronger use of silence to build tension (I was holding my breath during parts), while THE SILENCE is more effective in showing how the creatures spread and end up dominating the world’s ecosystem. THE QUIET PLACE hit me in the gut, while THE SILENCE hit me in the head. Similarly, I didn’t find it any better or worse than BIRD BOX, also fun but flawed.

In THE SILENCE, deep cave exploration opens up a ecosystem allowing a swarm of batlike creatures to escape. These creatures multiply quickly in balance with their food supply, and suddenly, they’re at the top of a seemingly bottomless food chain. I love that kind of apocalypse, where a new creature is introduced that isn’t evil but simply wants to eat and sees humans as food, displacing humanity in the food chain. Their weakness is they evolved in darkness and cannot see, so they navigate (and hunt) entirely by sound waves. As they rapidly spread, a family (fathered by the great Stanley Tucci) decides to flee to somewhere remote. The story focuses on their journey and subsequent survival where they end up. Spicing things up is the daughter (Kiernan Shipka, the poor man’s Emma Watson) is deaf, and the whole family communicates by sign language, which gives them an advantage in this dangerous new world.

The film handles all this competently, and if you like apocalyptic fare, there’s plenty of fun here, though there isn’t much going on with the characters. The daughter has the potential of transforming from shy young woman with a disability to a leader, but that doesn’t play out. The father has the potential of transforming from a timid, civilized, middle-aged man into a tribal leader who will do anything for his tribe (like the dad in THE QUIET PLACE), but no character arc is apparent. As a result, all the struggle is with the creatures, though we don’t see the characters really suffer for it or be affected by it much internally once they reach a sanctuary. As for external struggle, there isn’t that much until they find sanctuary. The film then runs into the same issue as the otherwise fantastic book–the monsters play themselves out as a threat, and a human threat is introduced, which in turn plays itself out before coming to an abrupt end. The result is a film that is titillating but somewhat emotionally flat.

Overall, I liked THE SILENCE and give is a B as a movie and B+ as an apocalyptic movie.