Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

EXHUMA (2024)

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Korean film has a real knack for horror, offering seriously creepy stories populated by terrific characters you care about. The latest I caught was EXHUMA (2024), about a shaman and a geomancer who team up to relieve a family of a curse, only to discover something far more evil buried beneath the earth. I really enjoyed this one.

In this story, Korean shaman Hwa-rim and her protege are hired by a rich businessman to identify the cause of a strange illness affecting both him and his newborn son, which turns out to be a haunting by a vengeful ancestor. In Korea, they team up with a geomancer (specialist in cosmic energy flowing between people and their environments) and his own partner. Together, they must exhume the grave of an ancestor located in a horrible grave site in an area where the very ground appears to be diseased.

That’s when things of course go very wrong, as they contend not only with the vengeful ancestor but a far larger evil.

This movie is great horror, really folklore or religious horror, deeply steeped in realistically portrayed shamanism, geomancy, and Korean and Japanese mythology. The characters are very likeable, even though we don’t get to know them very well, and the shaman is unfortunately a bit underdeveloped; it’s in the spiritualist procedural aspects where this film really shines. Their cosmic battle against evil forces is compelling and different, with its nearest equivalent on this side of the Pacific maybe being THE EXORCIST. Plenty of twists kept me engaged, though some viewers may find it jarring how the story appears to wrap up halfway through the film, only for the real adversary to reveal itself. In its dark tone evoking dread, the movie reminded me a lot of THE WAILING, which had a similar tone. (That movie also had a very dark ending, distinguishing another great thing about Korean horror cinema, which is you really need to check your expectations at the door.) The ending to EXHUMA surprised me in a great way, and I loved how it came in for a landing.

Overall, I loved EXHUMA and look forward to what Korea comes up with next in horror.

THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

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From its ominous, reverberating house-music score to its crazy logic to it going from partial Cronenberg to full Cronenberg, THE SUBSTANCE (2024) is an an over-the-top ride into obsession with glamor and the price this imposes. Starring Demi Moore giving it her all and then some, with Margaret Qualley killing it as her counterpart, this movie was a lot of fun to watch and a breath of fresh air for moviegoers looking for something new and different in a theater experience.

In this story, Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is an aging actress currently hosting an aerobics workout show. The head of the network (Dennis Quaid laying it on thick as a smarmy and piggish Hollywood type) wants someone younger and more attractive to take over the show, and fires her on her fiftieth birthday. This sends Elisabeth into a downward spiral of feeling old, irrelevant, and washed up, but there is hope: A young medical intern tells her about The Substance, a black-market drug that allows you to create a younger version of herself. It works, but of course there’s a rule, which is both women must remember they are the same person and live in balance, and of course if the rule is broken there is a cost.

Thematically, the message is obvious: Hollywood and the glamor industry create an idealized image of beauty with pressure to achieve it at any cost to remain alive and relevant. Otherwise, the film explores the antagonism between those whose youth is fading and the young who want to make their own mark on the world. The way this is told is part sci-fi, part urban fantasy, and part horror, with a heavy lean on the horror, particularly the body horror type. The story is powered by its over-the-top, overstimulating visuals and snappy pace, making Elisabeth for me someone I sympathized with but had a hard time empathizing with, which I guess is the point, as she’s a walking caution sign and blind to the cost of what she’s doing. By the end, as I said, the body horror enters the grotesque and gross-out realm of the Cronenberg with a last act that dragged a little for me but it utterly gonzo, wrapping with a nice horrifying final image. The film has a punchy, angry, raw, unsettling, and unapologetic feel.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with THE SUBSTANCE and would happily recommend it. Whether you wind up liking it or not, I think you’ll find it a pretty wild ride.

FURIOSA (2024)

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In FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024), we get a prequel to the FURY ROAD film that I’d be very surprised if anyone actually demanded but honestly stands out for me as the best in the franchise since THE ROAD WARRIOR. I liked this movie a lot, far better than FURY ROAD, with the biggest downer being that aside from a glimpse or two, Mad Max isn’t in it.

In this film, we get the backstory for Furiosa, one of Immortan Joe’s Praetorians, who played a significant role in FURY ROAD. As a child, she lives in the “Green Place,” but it’s been discovered by raiders, and when she tries to interfere with them leaving to tell others this sanctuary’s location, she winds up captured by the Horde led by the warlord Dementus (played balls to the wall by Chris Hemsworth) and growing up in the wasteland. From there, she becomes increasingly mixed up in the political machinations between three players–Dementus, who captures the sole working oil refinery, Immortan Joe, who controls the Citadel with its food and water supply, and the Bullet Farm, which manufactures ammunition. All she wants to do is escape back to the Green Place, but the wasteland has other plans for her, setting her on a path not of escape but revenge.

Anya Taylor-Joy does a great job in the role that was previously well-played by Charlize Theron in FURY ROAD, embodying the role with a fierce sense of determination and making the action scenes look believable instead of staged. In my view, Hemsworth steals the show as Dementus, though, who is a great character, a product of the wasteland, a man who wishes things could be different and better but knows this can never be–that he in fact must help make it worse. Part charlatan and part emperor with no clothes, he is a pure agent of chaos, undermining and attacking his rivals because it’s all he knows how to do, and he appears to thrive on things falling apart, as if determined to make the world as horrible as his internal landscape.

Anyway, the characters are good, the politics simple and fun, the action scenes the usual riveting ROAD WARRIOR fare. There are a few moments that particularly stretch suspension of disbelief, such as Furiosa freeing herself from a tough situation and getting her robot arm, but whatever, it’s a Mad Max movie. Overall, I found FURIOSA a great addition to the Mad Max world and again one of the best in the franchise, though, I’d love to see something this fun with Mad Max back as the main.

ARMOR Diorama

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Hardcore military history buff and U.S. military veteran Andy Watts, a fan of my ARMOR series, recently honored the series by creating a model diorama of Bull, the battered Sherman tank, battling German Panthers in the town of Birk.

It’s a beautiful piece of work:

Here’s a closeup of Bull, the battered but formidable Sherman tank:

Andy also created an online role-playing game based on the crew of a Sherman tank, with some of its adventures inspired by ARMOR:

You can check out their adventures HERE.

Seriously, I can’t tell you how cool it is to see this series provide inspiration and fuel for so much creativity and fun.

Here’s the section in ARMOR that describes the battle at the crossroads in Birk:

As Bull approached Birk, the fog still clung to the earth. Finally, the town’s outskirts emerged in dark, misty shapes.

“Creepy,” Tank Sergeant Charles Emerson Wade muttered at his periscope.

He’d clapped at the news he might end up stuck in the field so long he’d miss whatever action B Company was rolling into, but now he missed being surrounded by a massive amount of friendly firepower.

The town looked eerie, deserted, haunted.

“I’m not getting through to the platoon or company,” Russo said. Bull’s radio had a limited range.

“Maybe they rolled through already,” Payne said.

“Or they got lost,” Wade said. “I’m surprised we found it.”

“Nice and slow, Payne,” the commander ordered.

“Roger that,” came the earnest reply.

Bull crept into the small town, which showed signs of bomb damage and occupation by the 120th Infantry Regiment. Fog and smoke shrouded the buildings, some of which smoldered. Scattered by an artillery strike, gear littered the road, a jeep stood outside a cobbler’s shop.

No bodies, no people. Eerie, indeed.

Gunfire erupted again in the southeast, joining the never-ending distant chorus of the Wehrmacht counterattack up and down the line. Wade let go the breath he’d been holding. They were behind the front line. Still…

“I have a bad feeling,” he said.

“Don’t even say it,” Swanson warned. Wade knew the loader believed he was somehow responsible when his dire predictions came true.

“Quit it,” Woolworth said over the interphone, his voice edged with panic. “If you guys start losing it, I’m really going to lose it.”

“Thought you knew better and was chomping at the bit,” the loader gloated.

“Here’s a story,” Wade said. “Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo at Troy. When he visited, he traded a kiss for the gift of prophecy. When she saw him helping to destroy Troy, she spit in his face. He retaliated by cursing her so that she could see the future, but nobody would believe anything she said. After the Greeks abandoned the siege, she warned the Trojans the wooden horse the Greeks left behind was filled with enemy warriors waiting to sneak out and open the gates, but they didn’t believe her, and Troy was destroyed.”

“Enough, Wade,” Russo said. “Don’t feed the bear.”

“Actually, I like the Greek stories,” Swanson said. “They make you think.”

Wade warmed to the praise. “I’m glad you like them.”

“My curse is each day I wake up, and I have to listen to you. I’m like Prometheus, and you’re like the big vulture who comes to make his gut hurt.”

“Eagle,” he corrected.

“How about everybody button their lip?” Russo said. “Payne, drive on. The fog is starting to let up. I can see the crossroads.”

The assembly area. No Company B.

“Where the hell is everybody?”

“We should find a safe place to wait,” Wade suggested.

“Yeah, that’s not a bad—” Russo turned in the cupola. “Hang on. Somebody’s yelling at us. I can’t make out what he’s saying.”

Wade glared through his scope, his nerves jumping. “Eyes forward, Tony!”

In tank combat, punch, armor thickness, mobility, reload time, and turret speed were all critical, but one thing was most important of all: Whoever fired first usually won. Which required sharp eyes at all times.

“I hear something too,” Woolworth said. “Is that an engine?”

The men quieted. Wade paled.

“Panzer,” he breathed.

Wade’s hands instinctively twitched near the L-shaped handle used to traverse the turret and small wheel used to elevate the main gun.

Russo gripped his pork chop microphone. “Swanson, load with shot. Payne, turn left at the—”

A flash lit up the mist beyond the crossroads, accompanied by the boom of a gun. A green blob whirled toward Wade’s scope. The shell skipped across Bull’s steel chest and ricocheted off the turret with an ear-piercing whistle.

Wade flinched at the impact and took in a ragged breath. The hull trembled in the aftermath, vibrations he could feel in his teeth. The impact spot glowed red. The temperature in the turret grew hot.

Blood was dripping down the outside of his scope.

“Who’s hit?” he said.

The lieutenant’s voice appeared on the radio. “—at Birk in two minutes.”

“Reverse, reverse!” Russo was screaming. “Give it all he’s got!”

“Reversing!” Payne yelled back as he buttoned up. “The kid’s hit! He’s hit!”

“Wade, tank, shot, eight hundred, fire!”

“You’re up!” Swanson said.

Wade focused his scope’s vertical center on the dark shape emerging from the mist. He stomped the foot pedal, trusting the gyroscope to stabilize the gun at this range. “On the way!”

Bull bellowed with fury, spitting fire and smoke as it retreated. The shot zipped and smashed against panzer steel in a splash of sparks. Wade punched the button for the coaxial machine gun, which sent a stream of bullets and tracers downrange to pelt the enemy tank. Useless against the Panther’s armor, it nonetheless forced the German commander to button up.

“Up!” Swanson called out.

“Stop with the AP! I need smoke! Give me smoke!”

“—I hear firing in the town—”

Wade’s blood froze as the panzer revealed itself. One of the big and fearsome cats, it was a Panzer V, the vaunted Panther. While it had weaker side armor than the Tiger, it was lighter, faster, and had better gun penetration.

The tank weighed forty-five tons. Its 7.5-centimeter gun could punch through an American M4’s armor like warm butter.

“Bravo 1-2 to Bravo 1-6,” Russo ranted into the radio. “We’re engaged at the Birk crossroads and request—”

The Panther fired.

The shell slipped under Bull’s bow and exploded, sending dirt and cobblestones blasting along the tank’s belly. The bow bucked, groaning high into the air before crashing back down. Wade whiplashed against his scope, smashing his nose against the glass. Stars flared in his vision.

The engine roared but didn’t stall. Bull lurched, and Payne straightened it out and floored the accelerator to keep pulling back. With buildings on both sides, they had nowhere else to go. They’d driven straight into a kill box.

Abandon tank, Wade thought. The stars were gone, but his vision remained blurred with hot tears. A crushing headache bloomed in his skull. Blood poured down his face from his stinging nose. Feeling light-headed, he spat and tongued a chipped tooth, his second since he’d shipped out to war. Rolling clouds of dust filled his periscope. Bail out!

The Panther stopped, readying itself to fire again as the dust dissipated into a brown veil.

“—Negative contact, Bravo 1-2. Repeat message, over.”

Then an unlikely hero saved Wade’s life.

Another Panther appeared in the intersection ahead, trying to cross, blocking the first Panther’s shot for several critical seconds. Enough time to put some distance between Bull and its enemies.

Enough time to shoot.

“Request support!” Russo howled into the radio.

Wade took a deep breath. “STOP THE TANK.”

He lay the gun’s sight on the crossing Panther’s weak side armor, painted in a jagged camouflage pattern. The black-uniformed German commander gazed back at him, his mouth open wide in a shouted order, no doubt telling his driver to pour on speed.

Too late, kamerad, Wade thought. “On the way!”

The 76 recoiled with a roar. The armor-piercing shell flashed into the Panther’s flank, punched though the armor, and detonated inside. A jet of blue fire flared from the hole. The commander heaved himself out of the cupola, his right knee a smoking stump, and rolled onto the ground. He’d made a mistake, and in war, that was all it took to lose everything.

The smoking hulk now blocked the intersection. Visible in glimpses, the surviving Panther continued its approach.

“We’re coming, Bull,” Alexander said over the radio. “Hang tight.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Swanson said. All they had to do now was drop smoke and wait for the cavalry.

“Wait!” Wade turned to Russo. “If he tries to get around the panzer we knocked out, he’ll be in killing range.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He might think we have a 75.”

Only now Wade became aware of the machine gun and rifle fire crackling across the town. Hidden in the buildings, American infantry had surrounded Bull the whole time. Artillery fire had forced them to cover, where they’d been waiting for the counterattack. Whoever had yelled at Russo was probably warning them not to advance any farther, along with a few choice expletives.

Russo gaped at Wade’s bloody face, his own sporting a shiny bruise already blooming under his left eye.

“Engage on contact,” the lieutenant told his tank commanders.

Russo set his jaw. “All right.”

“We got WP loaded now,” Swanson said.

“Keep it. We’ll smoke him then fire every AP shell we’ve got at him.” The commander grinned, an ugly sight thanks to the massive bruise. “Who’s with me?”

“Shit,” Swanson said.

Wade leaned into his scope. Still buttoned up, the Panther crept around its fallen comrade, its turret turning to keep its gun’s long barrel aimed toward the street where Bull waited. Fearing machine gun fire at close range, Russo closed his own hatch. Booms sounded to the north.

“—That’s Second Platoon. They’re in action. Drive on—”

The Panther emerged into the open.

“On the way!”

The white phosphor round struck the corner of the building beside the panzer, ricocheted, and struck its turret, where it flared and burst with brilliant white smoke, blinding the panzer crew.

“Left a hair,” Russo said. “You’re on!”

“Up!”

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

Bull launched its AP shell at the same time the Panther fired. The building on Bull’s left exploded across the street and crumpled. An avalanche of bricks, lumber, furniture and dust crashed against the tank’s flank.

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

The 76 reared back on its haunches, spitting out another smoking shell casing. Swanson rammed the next into the breech. “Up!”

“On the way!”

Then another and another until Wade lost count. At last, a flash of light burst inside the smokescreen, which slowly darkened with oily black smoke.

“Check fire,” Russo said. “Payne, reverse. Get us rolling if you can.”

“Roger.”

“How’s the kid?”

A long pause. “He’s dead.”

“You sure?”

“The round took his head clean off, Chief.”

Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. The dumb little eager beaver had wanted to experience combat and had gotten his wish. Wade massaged his temples as his headache began to pound.

Bull shuddered and shoved through the wreckage, shedding bricks and dust as it rolled in reverse down the street.

Russo sighed. “Everybody, give me a damage report.”

Another crewman lost, another battle survived. For Wade, it had been the most terrifying fight since Mortain. Looking at it another way, it was simply another day’s work. For now, they were heading to the rear. Tomorrow, they’d drive right back into the war and might have to do it all over again.

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

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In KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024), people confuse love and control in varying extremes, ironically sacrificing themselves in whole or part to complete themselves. It’s powerfully provocative, though as with other films by Yorgos Yanthimos (THE LOBSTER, POOR THINGS, etc.), emotional distance permeates the whole, whether intentional or not, that always denies me real empathy for the characters. Overall, I liked it a lot, for its bold originality and outright rejection of catering to expectations if for nothing else.

The movie is made up of three stories, each with different roles played by the same stellar cast that includes Willem Defoe, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and other great actors. Each story takes on the theme of love and the need to be loved, taken to extremes of debasement. I advise knowing as little as possible before you watch, so I’ll just give a quick plot description for my favorite of the three, which is about a woman who left her family to join a sex cult and is now searching for an unknown spiritual leader who can raise the dead. Each premise is killer stuff.

The things people do to each other and allow being done or do to themselves for connection is provocative and often depraved, both sad and absurdly funny at the same time. When I write horror fiction, I’m often drawn to exploring themes inverting good into evil by showing it in its extreme. Yanthimos does this really well in this film; again, it is boldly original. At the same time, his movies often strike me as overly artsy and cold, and while my brain often ends up extremely tickled, my heart doesn’t get very invested. A part of this is the dialogue, which is deliberately stilted, full of niceties and polite phrasing. This appears intended to contrast the forms of kindness to the dark potential of its content, but I had a hard time empathizing with anyone–a tall order, I know, when a character wants to do something horrible to please a horrible person who is controlling them, but that’s what good stories do, they put you right in their shoes. The film itself comes across as tightly controlled, making me think it might have been interesting to see it less so, more like its off-the-hook trailer.

Anyway, I liked KINDS OF KINDNESS a lot for its originality, ideas, and edgy psychological horror, and I’d heartily recommend to you if you value any of those things in a film and want to see something you haven’t seen many times before. While I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Yanthimos’s work, I guess I am enough of one to be certain to catch his next movie. His work is absolutely fearless.

ABIGAIL (2024)

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Part heist movie, part vampire horror, ABIGAIL (2024) is a movie about a team of criminals recruited to kidnap a young girl for ransom, only to find out they kidnapped the last kid they should be messing with. It was overall pretty fun, though the filmmakers, as if they didn’t trust themselves or the audience, lean on the tropes so hard the whole thing feels a little tedious. Let me explain.

The movie starts with a team of criminals who don’t know each other and have been recruited by a mysterious figure to kidnap a rich man’s daughter for ransom and keep her in an old mansion until they receive further instructions. We don’t know their true names and little about their backgrounds, and they follow the heist movie tropes of being overly tough and constantly bickering and getting on each other’s nerves. The main protagonist is “Joey,” a military veteran and former drug addict trying to do right so she can get her son back. Melissa Barrera puts her heart into trying to make the audience care about Joey, though it’s all fairly generic; where she shines is when she interacts with the team’s other would-be leader, “Frank” (Dan Stevens), a self-serving ex-cop, alternately as an enemy and an ally. When they play off each other, it’s a lot of fun.

Once the twist is revealed (which is given in the trailer as it’s always the main hook, and it’s a great hook) things start to get rolling, but there’s a problem: The vampire is so powerful that the movie should be over in five minutes, despite her liking to play with her food. As a result, the screen time is padded with tropes used over and over, like the monster wasting time howling at instead of simply killing them, our heroes attacking the vampire one by one, yelling a loud war cry when they attack to let the vampire know they’re right behind her, the villain dancing and being gleeful as a way of expressing evil, and the villain throwing the hero across the room repeatedly instead of simply killing them.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with a good trope. They’re staples of storytelling, and Hollywood relies on them. Tropes become tropes because audiences like them, and then over time audiences expect them, and woe to storytellers who flaunt expectations a bit too much. The problem I had with ABIGAIL is these tropes were all packed in and used over and over to the point of being tedious. In the last act, a few more twists are thrown in that don’t accomplish must other than to make it all feel even longer.

All that bitchiness aside–I am a jaded horror viewer, after all–ABIGAIL overall is pretty fun and doesn’t demand anything really of its viewers other than they chill out, sit back, and have a good time. There’s a lot of action, a little campiness, a cool location in the dilapidated mansion, plenty of gore, some twists, and a plucky heroine, elevating it from the usual horror B movie while planting it firmly among the pack. It’s a great movie for those times you really need a simple chicken soup horror film to watch. So be sure to check it out for yourself.