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The Killer (2023)
Did I miss something?
The Killer is a strangely bland and pointless revenge movie about a nameless hitman who botches a job, is targeted for assassination by his employer, and who then sets about killing everyone involved. By the time we get to the hitman's last target, watching the mildly interesting details of the hitman's methodology has worn thin, to the point that I didn't quite understand how he manages to gain entry to an apartment building using some kind of electronic key cloning device, and frankly I didn't care.
An entire movie concerned with such straightforward scenes of procedural details can be engaging enough, as is Fincher's 2007 movie Zodiac. The difference between The Killer and Zodiac is that Zodiac derives a certain tension from its truth-based story, its sprawling cast of characters, and its mundane but strangely intriguing ambiguities. You just can't make that stuff up.
The Killer on the other hand, carries neither the weight of truth nor the visceral impact of an exciting fantasy. A notable exception is a lengthy and brutal scene of hand-to-hand combat mid-movie, but it's too little, too late. This is a snoozefest, and the only reason I sat through it is that I kept expecting --up to the very last scene-- some big twist or additional layer of meaning to be introduced. Unless I missed something, The Killer completely lacks any such depth.
Scanners (1981)
Not Cronenberg's best, but worth a look
I suppose this might have been mind blowing (ha!) back in the day, but let's be frank, it looks hopelessly cheap by today's standards. It doesn't help that generic suburban Canadian towns circa 1980 are not exactly the most exotic locations in which to set your techno sci-fi horror thriller. It also doesn't help that star Stephen Lack gives quite possibly the most awkward performance I've ever seen outside of an Ed Wood movie. (Couldn't the guy who plays the reclusive artist Pierce have been the lead? It would have been far more interesting.)
Nonetheless, Scanners can't be dismissed. There's a certain psychological depth to it, even if most of this is barely hinted at, like the scene where our heroes escape capture by forcing some guards to relive painful childhood memories. Near-future dystopian paranoia, shocking body mutilation, and a pervasive sense of despair come together for a satisfying downer of a film that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. This distinctive mixture of Cronenbergian themes is better developed in the director's later film Videodrome (1983), and even better still in The Fly (1986), but Scanners is worth a look.
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Particularly frustrating Cronenberg
Like other quintessential movies from the auteur, Crimes of the Future makes me feel not so much like I'm watching a movie as I am peering into Cronenberg's unconscious. Boy oh boy, is there some weird stuff in there. Unfortunately, unlike the equally opaque yet far more compelling Videodrome (1983), Crimes of the Future doesn't feel particularly meaningful on any level, even on the most visceral level of, well, Cronenbergian body horror.
For one thing, Crimes of the Future is almost completely devoid of tension or suspense. Much of this seems to be a consequence of setting the film in a dystopian future that feels strangely empty and only partially realized. Where is everybody? Is the human race under threat? What is the nature of this threat? What is the role that the characters play to combat or exacerbate this threat? Presumably these are the important issues with which the characters in Crimes of the Future grapple, but somehow nothing in the film feels all that important.
There's a promising start and a few interesting visual ideas, but almost everything that happens in Crimes of the Future is a series of lackadaisical conversations that appear to occur in different parts of the same small, dusty studio backlot. The predominant tone is not of impending doom and existential terror, but something more like vaguely silly uneasiness. Even discussions that are apparently of great importance and that seem to have something to do with the future of humanity convey a distinct lack of gravitas. While a few explanations come in the form of clunky expository dialog, by the time the big climax comes around, we not only don't understand its significance (I had to read the plot summary on Wikipedia to glean some insight), we don't really care.
And oh yes, the gore. There's plenty of it, but without any compelling ideas or atmosphere to go along with it, it feels thoroughly gratuitous. It's laughable more than anything else. If "surgery is the new sex" as one character puts it, Crimes of the Future utterly fails at convincing us that anything of the sort could be plausible, either now or in a dystopian future. For Cronenberg completists only.
The Empty Man (2020)
Overlong mishmash of a story, but atmosphere to burn
Fantastic atmosphere, sound design, and visuals married to an overlong mishmash of a story that hints at some interesting ideas, yet ultimately doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Would love to see more of this director's work in the future; just don't let him write the script like he did for The Empty Man.
L'inconnu du lac (2013)
Desire is our undoing
Let's get this out of the way: 'Stranger by the Lake' is startlingly --and depending on one's sensibilities, perhaps even shockingly-- explicit in its depiction of men having sex, and at one point I began to wonder whether the movie had crossed some kind of line into the realm of pure exploitation and gratuitousness. Yes folks, you will want to keep the kids well away from this one, no matter how open minded you are.
'Stranger' is set entirely at a gay hookup spot, which comprises a (very uncomfortable looking) rocky beach and an adjacent wooded area near a lake, presumably somewhere in France. The plot consists almost entirely of the interactions among several of the men who frequent the lake, focusing on the protagonist Franck, who clandestinely observes the titular stranger committing a murder. The rub is that this stranger just so happens to be the object of Franck's unrequited lust. Tension mounts as the police start snooping around, the killer seeks to cover his tracks, and a battle rages between Franck's morality and his libido.
Those are the nuts and bolts, but what is 'Stranger' really about? My take is that at its heart, the movie is about desire, and how desire is our undoing. Only one ancillary character in the film transcends the need for personal gratification and attains some measure of inner peace, as short lived as that turns out to be. What hope is there for Franck unless he can do the same? None, and the last shot of the movie strongly suggests that his chances of success are slim.
Whether Franck ends up saving himself or not, the movie's unusual milieu (including the wanton sexuality) can be seen as an ingenious metaphor for nothing less than the human condition itself: we are temporary visitors here, most of us doomed to wander the shores and woods of life, sometimes alone and sometimes encountering others, slaves to our desires, in the vain hope that we can find fulfillment in their satisfaction. But of course, this can never work in any permanent way.
That perhaps makes 'Stranger' sound more bleak that it actually is. There is no small amount of friendship, humor, and genuine kindness in this makeshift community of men as they while away the summer. But the overall tone of 'Stranger' is undeniably haunting and almost surreal. Each day by the lake feels strangely similar to the previous one. We've heard all these stories before, it's only the names that are different. The same petty ecstasies and agonies play out again and again, against the backdrop of the trees sighing gently in the wind. How ironic that these natural surroundings embody a certain simplicity and tranquility that we humans find so elusive.
Noroi (2005)
Found footage done right, Japanese style
Released at the tail end of the J-Horror boom, Noroi is not quite a masterpiece like Ringu (1998), Kairo (2001), and Ju-On (2002). Nonetheless, it is a rare example, and almost certainly the best example, of a found footage movie from the heyday of Japanese horror in the late 90's through mid 00's.
Noroi is a remarkably intricate mockumentary about a journalist's investigation of a series of strange occurrences linked to a folk demon called Kagutaba. In fact, it may be a little too intricate for its own good, and the stream of eccentric characters and disparate video clips threatens to overwhelm us viewers. But critically, Noroi manages to carefully build the creepiness factor and unleash some truly hair-raising scares when the time is right. These scares are mostly of the "supernatural events that are only visible when reviewing video camera footage" variety, and although that is one of the more ridiculous clichés in modern horror, it is extremely effective in the right hands, as it is in Lake Mungo (2008) and here in Noroi.
My only real criticism is that about 50% of the plot is explained in a few perfunctory sentences of narration right at the end, inserted as if the filmmakers had finished the movie and then realized that almost nothing was satisfactorily resolved or explained. I don't necessarily mind baffling movies (Kairo for example is almost completely incomprehensible if you haven't seen the inferior American remake), but as Noroi is based entirely on the investigation of a mystery, I feel like it kind of dropped the ball a little bit right at the end, even with the shoehorned narration.
Found footage seems to be a particularly personal thing when it comes to being terrified; millions (including me) consider The Blair Witch Project (1999) the most frightening movie of all time, while millions of other people think Blair Witch is some kind of joke, and Paranormal Activity (2007) is where the real scares are. Whether Noroi will scare the crap out of you or not is hard to predict, but there is little doubt that this is good stuff. Worth any horror fan's time.
Safe (1995)
Intriguing and beautiful, but ultimately as hollow as the life it depicts.
Safe is about Carol, a woman struggling with her hollow existence as a wealthy suburban housewife. Although the movie, which was made in 1995, is set in 1987, there doesn't appear to be any significance to this. The central concern of the film is Carol's mysterious, possibly psychosomatic illness, which serves as a wonderfully ambiguous metaphor for her emotional and intellectual malaise; nobody, including Carol, can quite put her finger on what's wrong. She just knows that something isn't right.
While "best film of the decade" is a fairly ludicrous pronouncement (does anyone really think Safe is better than, for example, Schindler's List?), the film is indeed a hauntingly beautiful portrait of spiritual bankruptcy in contemporary America. Despite this, I found that Safe was, perhaps intentionally, itself hollow at the core. It simply didn't have anything interesting to say about such a big, important topic. One could argue that it is not the job of the film to supply answers or even an easily-digestible plot, but the almost complete lack of narrative drive, dramatic tension, and penetrating insight ultimately left me cold, and quite honestly, bored stiff. By contrast, American Beauty (1999), a roughly contemporaneous film with a roughly similar subject, also has nothing to say, but at least does so in an entertaining, over-the-top style.
The latter half of the film depicts Carol's experiences at a New Age retreat called Wrenwood, where she attempts to find the solutions to her problems. Unlike many viewers, I did not interpret Wrenwood as a cure that is worse than the disease. In fact, almost everything said by the guru Peter and his underlings is, as far as I can tell, consistent with widely-accepted, scientifically-validated ideas, such as Mindfulness. The exception is some of the more questionable statements about and practices surrounding "chemicals" and the immune system, but nothing remotely equivalent to "psychological fascism," which is how one high profile review of Safe termed it.
At any rate, the movie does seem to imply that life at Wrenwood for Carol is as empty as life in the suburbs, and her condition does not appear to improve. Particularly painful to watch, due in no small part to Julianne Moore's flawless performance, is a birthday scene at Wrenwood that serves as a climax of sorts. In that scene, Carol struggles to articulate the beliefs of the cabal, with the words as hollow as those in discussions with her vapid friends back in suburbia. The final shot in Safe, reminiscent of the final shot in The Graduate (1967), is a masterpiece of ambiguity, perhaps implying there is hope for Carol if she can find it within herself, but then again, maybe not.
I can't help but notice the similarities of Carol's journey to that of the protagonist in Hermann Hesse's classic novel Siddhartha. The protagonist in the book feels empty, tries various means to fill the void, including materialism and organized religion, and eventually finds peace through the hard-won development of a very personal perspective on himself, his life, and his place in the universe. By analogy, the plot in Safe would be like the novel's plot if it followed the protagonist through his life until it simply stopped in the middle of another failed attempt at finding meaning. It's certainly a journey, and perhaps a realistic one. However, it would be deeply unsatisfying, and would make me question the value in even reading the book in the first place. That's how Safe felt to me. Perhaps there is great value is simply calling attention to the issues, depicting the toll it takes on a woman, and doing so with compassion, honesty, and artistic skill. On that level, Safe certainly succeeds.
Haze (2005)
Claustrophobic nightmare on film.
A man wakes up in an endless black maze, with only a few inches of head room, forced to crawl around fruitlessly, all with no idea where he is or how he got there. The only respite from this is the torment he receives from various booby traps and his brief glimpses into chambers in which torture, dismemberment, and various unspeakable acts are committed upon other hapless victims by unseen agents. Yes folks, the word "grim" doesn't really even begin to describe this one.
Tsukamoto brings us a punishing, claustrophobic nightmare on film that defies explanation, including the obvious one that the characters are dead and in hell. While the "person wakes up in room with no idea who he is or how he got there" device is well worn, it remains so effective simply because it can be a metaphor for almost anything. Rarely is it used as well as it is here, despite the absence of easy interpretations.
I've never been great at speculating about the "true" meaning of a film like this, but I will say that it seems to involve the aftermath of an altercation of some kind in which the man and a woman in his life both receive stab wounds to the abdomen. We don't learn much more than that, but the last 5 to 10 minutes completely open the possibilities, and surprisingly, provide something resembling an upbeat conclusion. Well, sort of. Intriguingly, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" is not quite the sign posted here.
Speaking of the afterlife, if that's what this is, this particular vision of damnation is astonishingly similar to the one that has haunted me as long as I can remember. Being forced to crawl around in a dark, extremely tight space for all eternity is apparently the very personal conception of hell that I in fact share with many others, or at least with Tsukamoto. If you're one of us, then consider this a warning or, if you like, an invitation to watch. Suffice it to say, this is not for all tastes or moods. But if you want something that makes Cube seem like a cheerful, feel-good film, this might just be the one for you.
We Are Still Here (2015)
Been there, done that. A forgettable haunted house flick.
We Are Still Here seems to be getting a pass from critics, which surprises me. Maybe it's because it doesn't involve zombies or found footage, and that alone makes it an intriguing rarity as far as horror films in 2015 go. But aside from that, We Are Still Here is a completely pedestrian haunted house flick not worth your time.
Family moves into new house. Basement is dark and scary. Things go bump in the night. Townspeople are weird and creepy. A psychic is brought in. A seance is attempted. Some people die violently. Sound familiar? That's because We Are Still Here is exactly the same haunted house movie you've seen a million times. In fact, it's so hackneyed that at first I thought it was going to be some kind of subversive, self-aware comment on horror films, a la Cabin in the Woods (2012), or at least a beautifully-executed homage to the genre like House of the Devil (2009).
No such luck. There's absolutely nothing new or interesting about We Are Still Here. It appears to be set in the 1970's, which is odd because this fact is just barely discernible from some of the cars and a few of the wardrobe choices, and because this particular historical setting adds nothing whatsoever to the effectiveness of the story. The plot, acting, dialog, effects, and cinematography are all completely forgettable, and about the best thing I can say about it is that there are a few tepid scares here and there.
Don't waste your time with this one, at least not until you've seen some of the truly great horror that's been coming out recently, like The Babadook (2014) and It Follows (2014).
The Borderlands (2013)
It's worth it for the ending, but not much else
Let's get this out of the way: yes, this is YET ANOTHER entry in the found footage horror canon, which appears to spring from an utterly inexhaustible supply of scripts and aspiring filmmakers willing to film them. So how does it measure up? Well, it adds virtually nothing to the extremely tired Blair Witch formula, all the way down to the surly townsfolk and the disembodied cries for help coming from the darkness. This might all have been kind of creepy if we hadn't seen this stuff approximately one million times since the summer of 1999, when the horror world was turned on end by the most successful zero budget film of all time.
But let's try to pretend that The Blair Witch Project was never made and consider The Borderlands on its own terms. The story here is quite simple. Three guys working for the Catholic Church travel to a remote village somewhere in the UK to investigate claims of miracles by the local priest. This is the video they shot. The end. These guys don't have much of a back story, although they all seem to be experiencing crises of faith to varying degrees. It is unfortunate that the movie doesn't explore those issues more deeply, as it might have added quite a bit more resonance to the events as they unfold. Nonetheless, two of these guys --the crusty miracle-investigating veteran and the irreverent young techie-- have some fun, goofy chemistry, and all are engaging enough to spend 87 minutes with.
At any rate, I would have to say that The Borderlands is forgettable and not worth your time, with one exception: the ending. It looks like the reviews here at IMDb are split on this point, but I found the ending to be virtually perfect. Of course I won't spoil it, and I know building it up like this will probably lead to disappointment if you choose to see it, but I hope not. Although the story is only mildly interesting throughout, the cleverness of the script's overall arc becomes apparent in these final moments, which I found horrifying yet thoroughly satisfying, and I mean that in the best possible way.
So do I recommend The Borderlands (apparently AKA Final Prayer)? Yes, it's worth it for the ending, but not much else.