Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

BARBARIAN (2022)

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In BARBARIAN (2022), a woman shows up at an Airbnb only to discover it has been double booked by a man, only she doesn’t know the house contains a horrifying secret. Overall, I found this well written and engaging, even if its impression wasn’t very lasting.

The first act is excellent, tense with paranoia and vague threat, and very well written. The situation and dialogue all feel real even as the house and neighborhood appear threatening. The story changes gears several times and introduces new elements, which makes this movie one to plunge into while knowing as little as possible about it.

As a horror movie, it’s definitely different, while playing on the familiar. The solid cast including Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long makes a big difference in pulling off its ambitions. There’s plenty here that’s interesting and engaging, only with its innovative structure, BARBARIAN seemed to promise to come together in a surprising way but instead served up a fairly conventional finish.

So overall, I liked BARBARIAN a lot and enjoyed the ride even if I didn’t find the destination as having the impact I’d hoped for.

BIGFOOT: THE LOST COAST TAPES (2012)

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In BIGFOOT: THE LOST COAST TAPES (2012), a TV show crew travels to California’s “lost coast” region to debunk a hunter’s claims to have the body of a Bigfoot creature, only to become hunted themselves. This found footage movie follows all the conventions of the form and doesn’t add much that’s new, but it’s well done, and I thought it was fun.

The film begins with a journalist planning his excursion to a remote forested region of California. A Bigfoot hunter claims to have the body of one of the creatures and is willing to share it for payment. The journalist and his crew travel there, meeting the eccentric hunter and finding the whole camp and its defenses amusing. Soon, they end up discovering signs that Bigfoot is real, there are many of them in the area, and any humans in the area are under real threat. Soon, the camp is under siege.

It’s all typical stuff, a movie churned out in what was a veritable flood of found footage and Bigfoot movies at the time it came out. It follows the found footage playbook pretty well, with an obsessed protagonist, reluctant crew, Captain Ahab type we just know the monster would love to gets its paws on, the final confession and comeuppance for the protagonist, and plenty of spooky things happening that build up to the brutal finale. And there’s a twist about who the real monster might be.

The result isn’t particularly scary and the conflicts over what to do are often overwrought, but overall, it’s a very competent film. It does exactly what it promises, it doesn’t try or pretend to be anything else, and I thought it was fun. If you like found footage, this one ain’t bad, and I think you might have fun with it too.

VESPER (2022)

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In VESPER, civilization has collapsed due to environmental catastrophe, resulting in humans struggling to survive in a world filled with parasitic and poisonous flora. Despite the plotting being stretched to the breaking point, it’s a remarkable film for its fantastic world building and strong characters. I liked this one quite a bit.

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of an apocalypse caused by a radical ecological transformation resulting in humans no longer being at the top of the food chain. In VESPER, humanity resorted to using genetically engineered organisms in an attempt to save itself from climate disaster. Unfortunately, the organisms ran amok and displaced most of the flora while consuming all of the animals and most of the humans. In this depopulated world overrun with monstrous plants and insects, most of the survivors eke out a living in small communities, while a lucky privileged few live in advanced communities called Citadels, where they started genetically engineered themselves to live forever. Each year, the Citadels sell seeds to the people outside, which enables them to grow enough food to survive, but the seeds expire at the end of the growing season, keeping them dependent and selling their blood that is used for life extension.

It’s an utterly ruthless world where everything uses or outright consumes everything else, a status quo that seems impossible to change. That doesn’t stop 13-year-old Vesper from imagining something better. Though a child, she forages for food, pulls together power to keep a machine running that in turn keeps her father alive, craves the love of her missing mother, and does her own genetic engineering projects. When a mysterious stranger arrives, she believes she can get a better life. But the place the stranger came from and the local chief will fight her.

The trailer suggested the story would be about a journey, but that’s only a small part of it. Most of VESPER deals with the girl fighting to keep her hope alive, in particular against the local chief, who makes a fantastic villain. He doesn’t want things to change, as in the status quo, he is in control of the world as he understands it. He is what she will become if she surrenders hope that things can change for the better, which makes him such a great antagonist. He’s monstrous, but he came by it honestly, informed by a rational worldview.

The last act kind of breaks down in how far it made sense to me, but the ending is pretty clear in its intentions, and by then, I’d gotten so hooked on this fascinating, exotic, and harsh world that I was good with it. Overall, I liked this one a ton. It’s imaginative, affecting, and for its budget, it created an extraordinary world that felt both bizarre and real, lived in by characters who are the product of it and must make their way within its rules.

SKINAMARINK (2022)

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In SKINAMARINK, a young boy and girl wake up in the middle of the night to discover their father is missing and the house is changing. Written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball, the film relies on a highly distinct style to achieve its atmosphere of dread. I appreciated the concept and ambition far more than the overall result.

The year, we’re told, is 1995, and four-year-old Kevin fell down the stairs and hurt his head. His older sister Kaylee tells Dad that he was sleepwalking. The kids wake up again later to discover Dad is missing, and the windows and doors are disappearing. Something is in the house, and it is changing everything.

Shot at Ball’s childhood house in Edmonton, Alberta, the movie makes style choices that immediately set it apart from pretty much any other movie I’ve seen. The camera footage is grainy, usually only people’s feet are in frame, there are long shots of ceilings and inanimate objects, and sometimes the audio, often garbled and unintelligible, is subtitled and sometimes it isn’t. There is a narrative, but it’s sparse, with tiny bits of plot appearing like islands in a sea of mood and tension. Though the film clearly isn’t found footage, it has that voyeuristic, maybe-it’s-real feel to it. The overall effect is like being in a childhood nightmare.

At my house, I had a rule with my kids, which was when it came to new foods, you don’t have to eat it but you have to try it. I would recommend you do the same with SKINAMARINK, as I believe it’s the kind of thing you love or don’t but have to agree is remarkable for its ambition and style. Overall, it simply didn’t work for me. It was too hard for me to figure out what was going on without making me care enough to invest, the long sequences between morsels of plot tapped out my patience, and most critically, as a result, I sympathized with the children but didn’t empathize. In the end, I watched the film with my head but not my gut and heart. SKINAMARINK is a feeling more than anything else, and I didn’t have it.

But again, try it, you might like it. It’s certainly unique, and I can imagine if it does grab you, it’ll be quite an experience.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (2022)

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Part horror movie and part war movie, the first German adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s best-selling novel, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, is a devastating portrait of warfare in the Great War, in the process making a definitive antiwar statement.

The movie begins with an incredible sequence showing how the war has become a meat grinder, endlessly cycling young men through it. Back home, Paul, a student, hears the strident call to defend the fatherland from annihilation and eagerly signs up along with his friends. Soon, their romantic ideals about the war are shattered as they are forced to fight in muddy, rat-infested trenches and endless seesawing battles that employed new horrific weapons including tanks, howitzers, flamethrowers, and machine guns. As the war winds down, so does Paul’s circle, and we see him going from fighting to win to merely survive and then finally because there is nothing else, a hollowed-out man who lost faith he is ever going home.

The battle sequences are just incredible in this, more horror than war film. You can feel the hopeless resignation even before the whistles blow to charge, and then when things get going, it’s one horror after another until men are slashing each other hand to hand with trenching tools, showing a war in which industrialization stripped away the last vestiges of humanity in it, while also making it incredibly intimate–men killing each other looking into their eyes, feeling horror and remorse while they do it. This a war movie where the gore isn’t horrifying, it’s the meaning invested in it. How pointless it all was.

As an anti-war statement, it’s all here. The old goading the young into battle with romantic notions, the young losing their innocence in horror. The hubris of commanders who fail to see the soldiers as men but instead chess pieces exchanged for a final bit of national honor. The national humiliation at the end that some historians believe seeded the next war. The breakdown of hope and humanity to a level where the soldiers don’t feel like they will ever get home or will know how to go on living with themselves even if they do.

Overall, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a distinct, powerful, and utterly savage movie providing a fresh reminder that war is hell.

THE NIGHT HOUSE (2020)

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In THE NIGHT HOUSE, a grieving woman suspects something is haunting her, maybe her dead husband, maybe something very sinister. Overall, I liked the execution a lot, though I enjoyed it more for its intriguing possibilities than where the story ended up going.

Beth is grieving the loss of her husband Owen. She appears to be in control, though hollowed out by coping. At night, strange occurrences begin to add up around the lakeside home he built for them. A suggestion of another house, another life. As she explores it, she begins to wonder what exactly is haunting her and what it wants.

Overall, there’s a skillful slow-burn execution to the story; the pacing is slow but doesn’t drag, at least it didn’t for me. The acting is solid, notably Rebecca Hall (whom I liked in THE LOOP) who is well cast as Beth, with a shout-out for Sarah Goldberg (who plays Sally in BARRY). Goldberg’s role is small and one note, essentially the friend who offers a sounding board and somebody for the lonely protagonist to talk to, but she gives the otherwise flat character as much life as she can breathe into it.

As the story builds, the horror element is well done, startling and occasionally eerie but not particularly overtly scary, as this is more psychological horror. Another factor here is Beth is rarely terrified, and this has an excellent explanation for why she reacts the way she does and doesn’t flee the house screaming: Grief has sucked almost every bit of emotion out of her, and she is completely out of f**ks to give. She doesn’t care about anything except answers about her husband. The “other house” stands more as metaphor as meaning anything else, and the monster is okay for me and probably good for many, particularly in some really well-done artistic effects to make it both something and nothing. While it’s all solid in this film, I just couldn’t help but wish the story of the other house ended up more complex the way it’s suggested in the trailer, leaving me a bit hungry.

So overall, THE NIGHT HOUSE is a solid horror film, recommended for those okay with a slower burn and seeking something that is deeper and that isn’t the usual fare.