Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

ANYTHING FOR JACKSON (2020)

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In ANYTHING FOR JACKSON (2020), an elderly couple strikes a supernatural bargain to enact a plan to resurrect their dead grandson using a pregnant woman as a vessel. This was a terrific, solid horror movie. No reaching for the stars, but it solidly stomps the earth it covers. I liked this one a lot.

The film opens with a man and woman playing their separate roles in their morning routine as an old married couple. Henry Walsh (Julian Richings) is a successful doctor who dotes on his wife Audrey (Sheila McCarthy), who provides the couple’s visible moral strength. They needed it to survive their horrible grief. And they’ll need it for the awful things they want to do.

True to its title, this is about a couple’s love for each other and their family. A portrait of grief and the will to do whatever it takes–anything, even if it costs them life, money, and soul–to bring back an innocent child they love more than themselves. You don’t exactly root for them, as they’re essentially the villains, but they’re sympathetic. Just as enjoyable, they act like a nice old married couple–which they are and makes a jarring juxtaposition against the villainy–but it’s not overplayed. Tonally, the movie has just the right pitch, and its pacing, creepy scares, and escalating weirdness are very well done.

Not much else to say about this one. It was damn good, and I highly recommend it for horror buffs looking for something a little different and deeper than the usual.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021)

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In LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021), Eloise, a fashion design student who idolizes the Sixties rents a room able to transport her in spirit back to Sixties London, where she encounters Sandie, a dazzling aspiring singer. What appears to be a glamorous rise to stardom warps into something far darker, challenging Eloise’s very sanity. With stylish direction by Edgar Wright and terrific performances by Anna Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Diana Riggs, and Thomasin McKenzie, the film starts off amazing but goes from great to grating in its last act. Let me explain.

The film starts off with a lot of promise. After being accepted to London’s school of fashion design, Eloise moves from the country to the big city, where city life and the childish antics of other students pushes her to rent a room of her own. The room is special, however; somehow, she is transported to Sixties London, where she inhabits and follows Sandie, an aspiring singer who makes a grand entrance at an upscale club. These experiences bolster Eloise’s self confidence and inspire her designs, but things get very dark, telling a story of a young woman who is used and abused and possibly worse. Haunted by ghosts of the past, Eloise wonders if she is losing her mind until she discovers the truth.

The film starts off hitting all the right notes, and once Eloise is transported back to the Sixties, it veritably roars with fun. The glamor of London in the Austin Powers era, the terrific soundtrack, the performances by Anna Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith. Unfortunately, the fun doesn’t last long, and very quickly Sandie’s story plunges from a great height into very bad times. When the ghosts of the past go the other way to haunt Eloise’s every waking moment, the story goes from refreshing to rote, and both the haunting and the hostile antics of Eloise’s annoying classmates are laid on so thick as to become grating. It all comes together at a nice twist at the end, though with many questions left unanswered and possibly some misdirected sympathy.

Generally, audiences seemed to love this interesting film; me not so much. Overall, I’d say I loved the first half, while in the second half, I was watching the clock as much as the screen. By the end, I wondered something I haven’t before, which is: Maybe this should not have been a horror film? I know there is an important point being made here, which is the Sixties weren’t as glamorous as one might believe, but I’d say most people have already internalized that human nature wasn’t any different 50 years ago. If Wright had carried the wild spirit of the first half of the film into the second, I think he would have carried through to be a real winner for this viewer.

Anyway, again, audiences seem to love this interesting movie, and you might too, so you might check it out.

BIGBUG (2022)

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In French sci-fi comedy BIGBUG (2022), a group of suburbanites are locked in their house for their own protection by their household robots while the Yonyx, the latest generation of AI androids, has become self aware and is staging a revolt outside. It’s garish, silly, absurd, and taken for what it offers on its face, it’s fun.

It’s 2045, and the Yonyx, a new generation of creepy androids who have become self-aware and appear to enjoy sadism against humans, are taking over. In a suburban home, the domestic robots lock a group of people inside to protect them. While the group squabbles among themselves and scheme to get out, the domestic robots conspire to get the humans to trust them so they can go on protecting them.

The film has been largely panned by critics and audiences. Critics saw it as tired satire. I didn’t see it that way at all, personally; I didn’t go into it expecting there to be a serious point. I looked at it as a typical French absurdist comedy, and the characters, from the humans to the androids, are likeable and interact within the the genre’s over-the-top conventions. French comedy normally isn’t my thing, but the solid characters, rapid pace, beautiful and garish design, and overall weirdness kept me engaged.

In the end, I didn’t find it as affecting as other absurdist comedies like BRAZIL, but I liked it and found it a worthwhile diversion.

THE HOUSE (2022)

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In THE HOUSE, four directors come together to produce three beautiful stop-motion animation stories that are delightfully weird. While I hoped a central theme would tie these disparate stories together, I nonetheless found them enjoyable and affecting.

The film is told in three chapters; past, present, and future; and set in different worlds. What they have in common is they are all set in the same house. In Chapter One, a poor family in the 1800s is invited to live in a luxurious home built by a mysterious architect at no cost, at least not a cost that involves money. In Chapter Two, set in a world of anthropomorphic rats, a developer struggles to restore an old mansion so he can flip it, only to find himself saddled with unwelcome guests. And in Chapter Three, set in a world of anthropomorphic cats, a landlady dreams of restoring her house to its former glory in an apocalyptic, flooded landscape that appears destined to have the last say.

Voiced by terrific British artists, the characters fairly reek of charm, as does the stop-motion animation style. The stories, however, are fairly dark except for the last. Overall, they’re immersive and just plain fun to watch. The cat story, in particular, was cute as hell.

Thematically, THE HOUSE struggles. The film features a device, the house itself, but otherwise lacks a foundation tying it together. As for the stories themselves, I’m not even sure what they were individually trying to say, apart from maybe the third. A stronger theme might have elevated THE HOUSE into something grander, but as it is, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a charming and enjoyable watch.

THE LAST DUEL (2021)

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Directed by Ridley Scott, THE LAST DUEL (2021) allows two Medieval nobles to tell the story of why they fought in France’s last sanctioned duel, while also including the perspective of the woman whose honor and life they contested. The result is a highly engaging, subtly provocative, and complex period drama. I liked this one a lot.

The film is instantly intriguing, as it is based on a nonfiction book of the same title, which interpreted the woman as the true victim in a story that had throughout history always been considered really about the men involved. In the story, two squires, longtime friends, find their fortunes take different directions after the Battle of Limoges. De Carrouges (Matt Damon), a gruff, simple, and somewhat brutish soldier, marries Marguerite (Jodie Comer). Part of his dowry is given not to him but already belongs to his friend Le Gris (Adam Driver), who has worked his way into the favor of their decadent lord Count Pierre d’Alencon (Ben Affleck being wonderfully smarmy). Le Gris falls for Marguerite, which leads to an encounter that will lead her to accuse him of a crime and De Carrouges challenging him to a duel. As the truth cannot be known, the issue will be decided by combat, with God surely granting the victor favor.

In THE LAST DUEL, we get this story essentially told three times, with the same events told as each of the three players sees it. By the end, we get the truth. This creates a sense of repetitiveness in a long film, but I didn’t mind it. I enjoyed seeing the characters morph based on their own perception and how others see them. Suffice to say how these men see themselves, particularly in relation to Marguerite, is not who they really are.

The story of the men is historical and as a result is a bit convoluted, though I didn’t mind that either. Their friendship breaking over jealousy and resentment has real reasons going back years, and we see these roots exposed. Marguerite’s story, however, is relatively simple. She married without having a choice, and she is expected to obey her husband and produce an heir. When her husband is away at the wars, she runs her estate, flourishing as for a time she gets to enjoy real choices. We learn that her accusation and the resulting duel have very real consequences for her.

Thematically, the story has a fairly obvious Me Too flavor. Some critics apparently wanted that to be more out front, but I like how the film trusted me to get it. I enjoyed seeing a contemporary issue explored in a historical sense, highly contextualized. Marguerite and the two men are obviously the product of their times, and the system they are a part of is how the world worked at the time, heavily influenced by money and property and the power it delivered. By the end, it’s obvious Marguerite wants to be seen as a person and not property.

The only other thing I’ll add is the world building is excellent, offering a medieval world that is bigger than the characters and looks lived in, and the duel itself delivers terrific action, a desperate and savage fight for honor to the death.

Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit as a gritty and engaging period drama.

ALL OF US ARE DEAD

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Korea’s latest awesome contribution to apocalyptic horror is ALL OF US ARE DEAD (Netflix), a series about a group of high school students struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse that starts at their school. I went into it warily, expecting it to be YA but not in a good way, and was pleasantly surprised. Wowed, in fact, with me thinking this just might be the best TV series I’ve ever seen with zombies that wasn’t a comedy.

In a high school in a small city in Korea, a student accidentally becomes infected with a virus designed to increase aggression. (What this virus is and why it’s there is explained as the story develops.) The outbreak snowballs across the school and the city at large, resulting in the Army being called in to quarantine it all while managing tens of thousands of refugees. Stuck at ground zero is a few small groups of students, most of them likeable and kids we can root for, some of them hateable villains. What follows is a nonstop, horrific struggle to survive and hopefully escape.

As far as zombies go, they’re the usual rabid runners a la TRAIN TO BUSAN, and the virus is evolving, promising some surprises. When they first start to spread across the school and city, the action is incredible, and the zombies are genuinely scary. The zombies aren’t as important, however, as the human characters are, how they respond to the crisis, how they pull together or fall apart, who survives and who dies. The show is brutal; not everybody is going to make it, though some who die do so with what has to be some of the most badass sacrifices I’ve seen on television.

One of the things I liked most about the show was its attention to realism. A lot of dialogue, character change, and screen time is devoted to the kids trying to figure out what to do next based on available options and then doing it, with every step they take dogged by horrific obstacles and sometimes shadowed by the dynamics of their high school relationships, which they slowly shed as they realize how unimportant all that stuff was in the face of the current threat. Over time, they realistically fuse into a tribe. There is a little philosophy, like why live after you’ve lost everything, but mostly tough ethics, such as what to do if your best friend is hurt and therefore might turn into a zombie and threaten everybody. Most of the action is devoted to surviving the next few hours with courage and homegrown ingenuity, which culminates in a series of incredible set pieces.

Oddly, this strength is also fodder for a criticism of the show, which is its twelve episodes could have been easily shortened to maybe ten by cutting some of its repetitiousness. But no matter, overall, I loved ALL OF US ARE DEAD pretty much from start to finish. If you enjoy good stories with zombie mayhem and apocalypse, you’ll probably love it.