NOSFERATU

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A
Editing: B
Production Design: A

Given that Nosferatu was directed by Robert Eggers, nothing in it surprised me. Had it been directed by someone else, some of it may have. Coming from Eggers, the closest thing to a surprise is how straightforward it is in narrative structure—no gonzo isolationist craziness or bizarre cutaways to Bjork in this movie. Still, Nosferatu indicates an odd sort of consistency to Eggers’s work, with great performances spread unevenly among the cast; stunning cinematography and production design; and writing that is competent but never great.

It must be noted, though, that Nosferatu really steps it up in the production design department. The Production Designer is Craig Lathrop, who worked on all of Eggers’s other films—and then, a bunch of others no one has ever heard of. Here, he designs a world of dark gothic horror that goes to great lengths to realize Eggers’s bent vision.

Mind you, this is a remake of a German expressionist silent film classic from 102 years ago: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. I have seen it one time, 19 years ago, at which time I declared Max Schreck’s depiction of Count Orlok to be “alternately grotesque and comical.” I did not even think to re-watch it prior to seeing this version, which I think was the right choice, as it would just invite inevitable but unnecessary comparisons.

This time around—this century—we get career villain Bill Skarsgård’s depiction of Count Orlok. One does wonder whether even this will come across as “alternately grotesque and comical” after another hundred years. Surely audiences in 1922 found Count Orlok to be simply grotesque, and that is absolutely the case with Skarsgård’s Orlock today. He’s beyond disgusting, covered in oozing bumps and sores, and a test of one’s patience to boot: he is the one character in the film speaking exclusively Dacian (with English subtitles), an extinct language from Southeastern Europe. That wouldn’t be so bad on its own, except that every single line is belabored, Skarsgård delivering each word in a slow, guttural and exaggerated accent. Get to the point, you ghoul! I’ll give him credit for incredibly well-kept, long pointy fingernails, though; someone get me the number for his manicurist.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this version of Nosferatu for roughly the first half of it. This film is stunningly produced and shot throughout, but the front half is very focused on an ambitious newlywed, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, who spends pretty much the whole movie either nervous or terrified), being sent to a faraway land in 19th-century Germany to secure a real estate deal. I know many people who would get bored by this movie very quickly. I can’t say I ever got bored, but I did find myself wondering where it was going.

My favorite thing about this Nosferatu is on a meta level: I absolutely love that they released this gothic horror film on Christmas Day. As it happens, it’s actually set at Christmastime, the production design details very specific to the region and era, as are all the others. In one scene, we see a Christmas Tree, decades before the invention of Christmas lights, actual candles propped on its branches. All I could think about was how often houses caught on fire from Christmas Tree candles, but the characters had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Thomas’s young wife is the most key figure in the story, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) having been taken in her youth—depicted in a brief but terrifying opening sequence before the title card—and now being both possessed from afar and pursued by Nosferatu after he’s been summoned from his grave. Eggers unfolds this story with a fair number of horror movie jump scares and tricks uncommon in his other work, but makes up for this deceptive conventionality by offering some of the most horrifying and grotesque sights you’ll see this year. You won’t see a lot of it in the comparatively plodding first half, but trust me, they are coming. Whether that means it’s a worthy payoff depends on what you’re looking or in a movie like this. I mean, if you came to Nosferatu—or even a Robert Eggers film—expecting anything resembling wholesomeness, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Nosferatu has a curious history, though most of it is tied to the first film, which was the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula ever made. Stoker’s widow, Florence Balcombe, was angry about an unauthorized film based on the classic novel, sued, and won. The negatives and all prints of the film were ordered to be given over to her to be destroyed, but as we all know, the film survives, with restorations for home video beginning in 1981 and the most recent, for DVD and Blu-Ray, having been in 2006.

Eggers’s 2024 Nosferatu is a fascinating specimen in its own right for sure, but certainly not something that will be still discussed in the context of cinema history a hundred years from now—and the 1922 version absolutely will be. Just because the original has greater import to history and the more interesting backstory, however, does not mean it’s the better watch today. It creates a certain distance between itself and its audience—another hallmark of Eggers films—and is thus perfect for intellectuals with an affinity for horror. Trash, this is not, but is there also any real depth to it? I could not find any, beyond the layers that exist in its undeniable technical achievements.

Nosferatu is a breathtaking vision, both in terms of its visual design and its impressively sustained tension between fear and desire. If nothing else, this is a movie that delivers on everything it promises.

Nosferatu clearly remembers AT&T’s slogan from the eighties.

Overall: B+

THE SUBSTANCE

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

There is a lot going on in The Substance, both metaphorically and metatextually. It takes a wild, uniquely gory look at self-destructiveness (a pretty literal take on that, actually), self-loathing, obsessions with fame and celebrity and youth.

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat is looking at all this through a decidedly feminist lens. I’m honestly surprised it doesn’t seem to be getting review-bombed by users at places like MetaCritic or IMDb, and my working theory is that Fargeat is offering so much legit body horror that the incels are too giddy to notice. This movie is entirely set in Hollywood, begins and ends with a shot of a (fictional) star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One brief shot of it actually getting snowed on seems a little odd, yet still emblematic of how stylized and heightened everything is. Nobody talks like a normal person. The do, however, say things we’ve heard said in earnest a million times, like “Pretty girls should always smile!” It just gets a delivery with a kind of exaggerated effusiveness that only underscores how ridiculous it is.

Dennis Quaid is the third lead in The Substance, and he’s the one who utters that line, as a slimeball TV producer—multiple times. He is perfectly cast, and as performer, he knows the assignment.

Best of all is Demi Moore, in a lead part more significant and high-profile than anything she’s done in well over ten years, arguably even twenty years. She plays a bit of a has-been as Elizabeth Sparkle, who won an Oscar once upon a time but long ago pivoted to many years of leading an exercise show on television—shades of 80s-era Jane Fonda there. When she learns that the producer is looking for a much younger woman to replace her, Elizabeth finds herself facing an offer: turn into two selves, one young and beautiful, the other her current version. They must switch back and forth every seven days. It gets complicated.

And this is where the metatextual elements begin, very early on: it’s Elizabeth Sparkle’s 50th birthday, but Demi Moore is 61. With that knowledge, she looks amazing—even factoring in how much work she must have had done. Which begs the question: if you can tell you’re faking a youthful appearance, then what’s the point? Ironically. this may be the lease vain performance Demi Moore has ever given. Dare I say: yes, brave. Within minutes after The Substance starts, we see countless extreme close-ups. This includes close-ups of Dennis Quaid, including a scene of him eating shrimp in a restaurant that is just as disgusting as anything else in this very, very gross movie. But there are also many close-ups on Demi Moore’s face, as Elizabeth becomes self-critical to the point of insanity, but we are seeing Moore’s actual face, her actual pores, her actual blemishes. It’s an incredible commitment to the art.

Mind you, Moore gets much uglier later in the film—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Substance is a film that nearly transcends its obvious imperfections simply by being uniquely compelling. It’s less concerned with saying anything new than it is with illustrating extremities, particularly of women and the pressures to be young, beautiful, and entertaining, by themselves as much as others. The finesse with which Coralie Fargeat draws these illustrations is perhaps a larger question. The Substance is 140 minutes long, its length perhaps being a part of its statements on excess, except it could have been even more effective had it clocked in just under two hours.

There’s also the fact that everything The Substance does, the 1992 horror comedy Death Becomes Her did better. Trust me on this: if you have never seen that film, find it, and watch it. The way it skewers celebrity and youth culture is both evergreen and unparalleled. It even starred “aging” actors Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn (who were 43 and 47 at the time, respectively). Fargeat basically took that film and crossed with with notorious the notorious gross-out horror movie The Fly (1986). There’s even a close-up of a fly drowned in a wine glass, making one wonder if that is a deliberate reference.

In the last 20 minutes or so, Fargeat really puts the pedal to the metal, amping up the gore to such a degree that it comes across like the climax of Carrie as directed by Quentin Tarantino. The allegorical elements of The Substance kind of blend together after a while, making the narrative lose focus. Until then, we get standout cinematography by Benjamin Kracun (Promising Young Woman), and a script with such straightforward simplicity on the surface that it’s easy to forget how layered it really is. This is the very thing that gives this film a surprisingly broad appeal. At least, theoretically: it made only $3.2 million last weekend, on a budget of $17.5 million. It’s also competing against a lot of more straightforward horror movies, without the tiered depth.

If you’re looking for something that will gross you out, though, then look no further than The Substance. Margaret Qualley, as Sue, the “younger, better version” of Elizabeth, basically giving birth to herself out a slit in Demi Moore’s back is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll also find plenty of vomit, pus, and deformed breasts and sometimes fall off of bodies. I’m a little bit lost as to why Marget and Sue, who are impressed upon that “You are one,” evidently don’t have memories of what their other selves are doing in the alternate weeks they have agency. But Elizabeth can’t let go of the dream of youth, while Sue has zero concept of the wisdom of age, and as a result they both make wildly stupid decisions, which only make things worse for themselves. Or herself.

Margaret Qualley is well cast as Sue, if not given quite as meaty material to tear into. Ironically, she seems cast more for her beauty than anything else. Indeed. there are many pointed, gratuitous shots of young, supple bodies, and I kept thinking about what the audition process must have been like for this movie itself. It’s participating in the very grotesquerie it’s critiquing. How effective that makes it as a living work of art is up to you.

Young or old, pick your poison.

Overall: B+

LONGLEGS

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+

We all know Nicolas Cage is in his “I just like to work” era. For some reason, anyone who works with him is also in their “Let Nicolas Cage do whatever he wants” era. It’s that second part that I don’t get—this idea that getting the man is enough. Even a man with massive talent needs creative restraints. Otherwise, you might get a supposedly demonic serial killer with an unnaturally white face singing “Happy Birthday” in a high pitched voice.

Cage isn’t even onscreen all that much in Longlegs. I can’t find a number with an official source, but in a film that’s 101 minutes long, I would guess we see him about twenty of them. To his credit—I guess—he’s certainly memorable in them. I’m just not convinced he’s the right kind of memorable. In a moody horror piece written and directed by Osgood Perkins (Gretel & Hansel), Cage isn’t so much scary as he is ridiculous.

Longlegs feels like a mashup of The Silence of the Lambs and Hereditary, two films that are far superior to this one, which doesn’t take its themes or its genre anywhere new—unless you want to count Nicola Cage playing a killer for the first time. It starts off promising enough, in a seventies winter flashback using an aspect ratio with curved corners reminiscent of printed photos from the time. There are cool transitions between then and the “present” which is the 1990s, where those curved corners slowly expand into a modern, standard cinema aspect ratio across the screen. This includes some nice sound mixing, as with the sound of a little girl’s steps in a few inches of snow.

These clever transitions would mean more if the story amounted to anything more. The protagonist is a very autism-coded FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), hyper-focused on her work and indifferent to social cues. We see her on the phone with her mother a few times, asking how she is in a way that fails to convince us she actually cares. Eventually we see her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt), whose behavior is even odder than Lee’s.

I had been a little nervous going into this movie, expecting it to terrify me. Instead, I found myself wondering when it was going to get scary. Perkins has a skill for establishing and settling tone, but here it’s “relatively eerie” at worst, and then Nicolas Cage appears onscreen and you’re left thinking: what? The acting is generally competent, with Cage’s overacting bringing down the averages. The rest of them generally speak in deadpan tones, in a way you might expect from a movie that clearly aspires to be like others that are far better.

I might also have liked Longlegs better without the supernatural element at all, let alone one that brings in life-sized young girl dolls. Whatever happened to good old fashioned psychopaths? Evil people are scary in their own right. That evil is undermined by the presence of demon eyes in shadows. In other words, I really wasn’t feeling it with this movie, which starts off promising and then devolves into derivative nonsense. Longlegs is far from terrible, but at least terrible is potentially more entertaining than average. The many people who have declared this movie great have left me mystified.

Ironically, I did nod off during this dark lullaby.

Overall: C+

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C
Specal Effects: B
Production Design: B+

Michael Keaton was 36 years old when he appeared in the 1988 film Beetlejuice—only Tim Burton’s second feature film as a director, it’s easy to forget. He’s 73 now. And this is one of the many elements of the sequel out this weekend, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, where there’s a bit of a dichotomy: in the “Beetlejuice” makeup, Keaton looks roughly the same as he did 36 years ago. But, there was a famously unique energy to his character in 1988 that is frankly lacking now. Beetlejuice just doesn’t have the pep that he used to. He’s still a wild nut, but there’s an undercurrent of tired old man in there.

This can be extrapolated to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a film overall, and by extension, to its director, Tim Burton. This is a man who spent the better part of two decades making dark classics for the modern age, from Edward Scissorhands to Batman to Sleepy Hollow to Sweeney Todd. Ever since then, his career has been one long paean to mediocrity.

Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice any different? The answer is: yes and no. This is only the second time Burton has directed a sequel, and the last time was 32 years ago (and there’s an argument that Batman Returns was one of the best sequels ever made). Beetlejuice is a one-of-a-kind film that has been beloved by multiple generations, an execution of dark weirdness that could never have worked without all the pieces fitting just the right way. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has thus cultivated a kind of anticipation that a Burton film hasn’t managed in years.

I hesitate to say that it lives up to such expectations. As expected, there’s a lot going on in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and still, somehow, it drags much of the time, particularly in its first half. This movie is all of 114 minutes long, and it feels longer. Too many scenes linger on things that neither wow nor delight. And if we count Beetlejuice himself as an antagonist, then he is one of three, which is arguably two two many: the others are Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a local boy who befriends Astrid (Jenna Ortega), the teenage daughter of widowed Lydia (Winona Ryder) and is predictably not what he seems at first; and Delores (Monica Bellucci), the soul-sucking—literally—ex-wife of Beetlejuice who is resurrected and hell-bent on reuniting with him. And in both cases, we get very good performers saddled with parts that wind up being of little consequence in the end. Bellucci in particular, here channeling Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas as a dismembered corpse stapled back together, has an electric screen presence, and not enough to do to move the story forward.

This is one of the common problems with these “lega-sequels.” The first film had a straightforward, simple plot around which all the creative chaos could revolve. The second has to tie itself in convoluted narrative knots just to get mostly the same cast of characters back together.

In this case, Lydia’s dad has died. This was a character played by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones in the first film, who does not appear in this one. And yet his character, Charles, has a surprisingly large presence in this film. In one sequence, he appears in claymation. It’s actually pretty funny how they handle it.

And that’s the thing with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: there are many things in it that are hilarious, or super fun. It’s the many other parts that are neither that are the problem, and render the film disappointingly even. This is a movie with some very high highs, and some very dull lulls. It averages out to a movie that is just okay, which is a step down from earlier Burton films that were just wall-to-wall delights. In the end, this is a movie that is just riding on the coattails of its cinematic forebear from three and a half decades ago.

On the upside, it has some reliably solid performers. Catherine O’Hara’s Delia Deetz is the one character who makes the most sense after all this time, clinging to a desperate idea of evolving with the times with her pretentious art. Jenna Ortega is perhaps the best thing in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, proving she can elevate any material she works with. On the other hand, Willem Dafoe seems miscast as a former actor turned ghost detective, hamming it up in ways that often fall a little flat. And Winona Ryder’s Lydia, now deeply emotionally frail, seems incongruous with the bold but emotionally insecure teenager from the first film, or at least the self-assured version of her by the end of it. (It’s a fair counterpoint that spending a lifetime seeing ghosts could do a number on a person.) In the end, even the cast has better and worse, averaging out to—well, average.

If there’s anything that definitively does not disappoint about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it’s the production design. It’s a relief that this film doesn’t try to “update” the look of the first one so much as augment it; there are bits of CGI here and there, but always well integrated into a plethora of practical effects. Beetlejuice’s office staff of shrunken-head workers, like so many other things in this movie, have antics that sometimes land and sometimes fall a little flat.

In retrospect, sadly, I have to say that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is about as good as I could have possibly expected. I so hoped it would exceed my expectations, but these days Tim Burton is nothing if not consistent. This is a guy with some real creativity left in him, but whose dark mojo peaked a long, long time ago. This is a movie that satisfies insomuch as we’ll take what we can get.

There’s great fun to be had if you’re willing to wait around for it.

Overall: B-

ALIEN: ROMULUS

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Alien: Romulus plays a lot like it’s just “The Alien Franchise’s Greatest Hits.” Whether that’s a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion, but I mean it very much as a compliment.

There’s a fine line between homage and artistic theft, and this film often straddles that line. There’s a lot of fan service going on here, and if you’re familiar with the previous Alien films, you will find yourself watching, as if on a visual scavenger hunt, for the references and visual nods to virtually all of them. I, for one, had mostly a great time with this.

The score, by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049), almost immediately features recognizable musical references to the Jerry Goldsmith score from Ridley Scott’s classic original 1979 Alien. (Side note: it’s a bit of a stunner to realize this franchise is now 45 years old.) The story takes place either on or just above a colonized planet very reminiscent of that featured in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, complete with elevator shafts and high wind levels—only in this case, it has an established, bustling society rather than a decimated group of fledgling colonizers. Even the films widely considered “lesser” in the franchise get nods, including a pretty obvious recreation of the most famous shot from David Fincher’s 1992 sequel Alien3, in which the alien hovers harrowingly close to Sigourney Weaver’s face. And this film’s already controversial final act is a basic recreation of the infamous final sequence from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 1997 sequel Alien Resurrection, only with the concept inverted. Not even the prequel films are excluded, as we get introduced to a creature with a passing resemblance to (but clearly not narratively connected to) the humanoid aliens from Ridley Scott’s 2012 semi-prequel Prometheus.

I have not seen the two prequels anywhere near as many times I have seen the so-called “Quadrilogy” of original films in the franchise; as far as I can recall, I have still seen Ridley Scott’s 2017 follow-up to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, the one time. Which is to say, for all I know, Alien: Romulus also has some kind of direct nod to Covenant as well, and I just don’t remember it well enough to recognize it. The same could be said of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2004 crossover Alien vs. Predator (which I did see but very much wish I hadn’t) or Colin and Greg Strause’s 2007 follow-up Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (the one feature film featuring “xenomorphs” that I never bothered to watch, by all accounts wisely), although these are quite rightly not considered officially part of the Alien anthology, and I rather hope that, rather than there being references that I did not recognize, Romulus director and co-writer Fede Alvarez and writers Rode Savages and Dan O’Bannon simply did not bother with them.

The story beats of Alien: Romulus pretty faithfully mirror those of the 1979 Alien, right down to the team of working class miners getting picked off one by one until one of the women emerges as the unlikely hero. This gives the story a certain quality of predictability, but Romulus still has plenty about it that makes it stand apart. Perhaps most significantly, the principal cast is all quite young—all adults, but somewhat barely: Cailee Spaeney (Civil War), for instance, is all of 26 years old, and her character, Rain, could easily be read as several years younger. None of the previous films in the franchise featured a principal cast exclusively of characters so young, and the characters here get introduced to us behaving with a kind of dipshittery authentic to their age.

Of course, we simply cannot have an Alien movie without a “synthetic” (“I prefer the term artificial person,” we are told), here a character named Andy, played by David Jonsson in easily the film’s best performance. Andy is a nearly obsolete model, a lifetime companion to Rain who was long ago orphaned by the dangers of the mining work her parents did. Jonsson has a uniquely nuanced understanding of a robot programmed to convey the subtle emotions of someone with a childlike devotion to a functional sibling, yet a relentless drive towards his “directive.” Depending in what disc gets inserted into a port in his neck, his directive is either to serve what’s best for Rain, or what’s best for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, causing subtle shifts in allegiances depending on where we are in the story—and, thankfully, Romulus never goes down the clichéd route of a robot taking on implausibly human motivations counter to programming.

It’s difficult to gauge how successfully Alien: Romulus might play to someone coming to this franchise for the first time with this movie. It’s certainly true that the experience is enhanced by a broad knowledge of nearly all the films that came before it. Even the obvious references land with somewhat varied success, and an iconic line from the 1986 Aliens gets uttered in a way that doesn’t work as well as the smattering recognition of appreciative chuckles through the audience might suggest. There is even an appearance of an actual character from an earlier film, which I won’t spoil except to say that it’s a digital recreation of an actor who has since passed on, and the one instance in the film of obviously subpar visual effects. (The rest of the movie looks great.)

The bottom line is that Alien: Romulus is a consistently and undeniably entertaining action-horror thriller, its most critical successes being its propulsive pacing due to skilled editing, and several sequences with exeptional cinematography. This feels like a lived-in world, fleshed out in new ways in spite of its admittedly unavoidable familiarity. If anything, it could be argued that it has a bit too much going on, but given the nesting layers of threats—not all of them from the xenomorphs—posed to these characters, it all clicks together surprisingly well. The most important thing I can tell you about this movie is that I had a blast, and it’s not often that can be said of the seventh film in a franchise.

Remember me? Remember this? It warms the heart to reminisce!

Overall: B+

MAXXXINE

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B

There was a time when actresses famous or their roles in horror films were called “Scream Queens,” and that is indeed what the title character in MaXXXine aspires to be—even though no one ever uses the phrase in the film. As it happens, Mia Goth has carved out a similar niche for herself, although it exists a few steps to the side of “Scream Queen.” I’m not sure what similar title we could give her—Feature Eater? Picture Witcher? Wackadoodle Chicken Noodle? We can worship it.

One thing that’s for certain is that Mia Goth has a vibe. And it’s one of a woman barely feigning stability. Such is the case as Maxine Mix, a porn star attempting to break into Hollywood in 1985 with the backdrop of the Night Stalker serial killer. People close to Maxine keep dying, and it’s made clear early on that the homicide detectives investigating suspect someone besides the serial killer, just trying to make the murders look like the work of the Night Stalker.

This is all fertile ground for a fun homage to eighties slasher flicks, replete with a banger soundtrack of mid-eighties pop hits. (Frustratingly, movies like this never assemble the featured pop tracks into soundtrack albums anymore; search for the title on your music streamer of choice and all you’ll get is the motion picture score. Boring!) And, for a little while, MaXXXine really is fun, with a protagonist who is delightfully damaged and demented.

We’re made to expect that Maxine can handle herself even in the face of danger. In arguably the most memorable scene in the film, she turns the tables on a would-be attacker in a dark alley, forces him to strip naked at gunpoint, and forces him to suck on the barrel of the gun before she does something kind of hilariously grotesque to him. And there was something I really liked about this scene, the way it flips the script on so many of those old slasher movies with helpless women victims: here, it’s the man who is degraded onscreen, the woman with the agency. It has the exact same exploitative vibe, just with the gender roles reversed.

But, strangely, I’d have to say that’s where MaXXXine peaks, although there’s another pretty great scene involving a man trapped in a car getting compacted. MaXXXine has nearly all the elements you’re looking for in a movie of this sort—except that it presents itself as something with more depth than what it’s imitating, and in the end, it actually doesn’t.

As time goes on, and we get hints of Maxine’s secret past, our protagonist proves to be more helpless than you might expect—resourceful for sure, but she gets out of multiple scrapes only with the assistance of others, mostly men. And when her secret past is revealed and becomes an integral part of a climactic sequence around the Hollywood sign, it’s all fairly disappointing. I wanted more out of this movie, which starts out with an inventive spirit and then just gets lazy with it.

On the upside, MaXXXine still has a compellingly retro-moody tone, and more importantly, very good performances, particularly by Goth, and by Elizabeth Debicki as a ruthlessly ambitious film director. Several other actors are a bit wasted, though: Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan as the two relatively dull detectives; Kevin Bacon as a dirtbag private investigator; Giancarlo Esposito as a shady agent. I just wish the script were better. For all its retro neon-mood recreations, this film still feels very much a product of its time, when homage runs rampant without anything new to say.

I don’t know if she’ll blow you away but she might cock your gun.

Overall: B-

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

A Quiet Place: Day One is a serviceable science fiction thriller, which suffers by standing in the shadow of John Krasinski’s original and great A Quiet Place (2018), and its sequel that was nearly as good, A Quiet Place Part II (2021). The sequel has its own incredibly exciting opening sequence set during “Day One,” and it has more finesse than all of A Quiet Place: Day One, except that it’s just fun to return to this world, now in the setting of New York City.

We get opening title cards telling us what decibel the average noise level of New York City is, and that it’s equivalent to “a constant scream.” This is never spelled out explicitly. but the subtle implication is that this makes New York the primary target area of these predatory alien creatures that prey on anybody that makes noise.

I was relatively entertained by this movie, but I do have a lot of nitpick questions—at least one of which actually extends back to the opening scenes of the 2018 original film. In that movie, we see abandoned stacks of what look like the New York Post, with ironically screaming headlines that read, IT’S SOUND! At what silent printing press were these newspapers printed, I wonder?

In Day One, the discovery of how the alien creatures hunt happens astonishingly quickly. It’s set on the first day, right? No, wait—spoiler alert!—it does go through at least Day Two. The primary character we follow here is Samira, a terminally ill woman played by Lupita Nyong'o. She’s been granted a field trip into the city from her hospice clinic, and this is when the alien meteorites start crashing to the ground, and then mayhem ensues when the creators attack. Samira is blown against a glass wall by the force of an explosion and knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, apparently by magic, every human alive already understands that the way to protect themselves is to be quiet. Helicopters flying overhead shout through megaphones that “the attackers” can’t go into the water. All of this was apparently ascertained in a matter of hours, during which everyone alive would just be in a state of panic.

I have a lot of questions about these alien creatures, which apparently have no idea how much they owe their very existence to the Alien franchise. The predatory animal behaviors and reproductive practices of the “xenomorphs” in that franchise are made clear early on, though, and they make sense. The creatures in A Quiet Place hunt based on sound, that much is clear—but, to what end? We see them slash through people and snatch them, but we never see them eat people. Are people food to these things, or what? What bought them to Earth to begin with, anyway? How did they travel through space? Who designed the spacecraft, if all these guys know how to do is attack humans?

Day One is the first of these films not to be directed by John Krasinski, although he does get a story credit on the script. This film is otherwise written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, whose previous feature film was Pig, an unusually great acting showcase for late-career Nicolas Cage. The script here gives us an unprecedented glimpse into the alien creatures’ natural behaviors, a scene in which they pull open what look like eggs of some sort. But instead of hatching, the creatures open these pods and feast on their contents. We are given no context for this at all, no sense of what is actually happening there or why.

By the way, Samira has a cat, which she takes around with her everywhere, on a leash. The cat’s name is Frodo, and apparently Frodo is one of those rare cats, quite conveniently, who never meows. He runs off during chaos more than once, but he never gets lost. He’s less a cat than a convenient plot device. He captivates a random dude named Eric (Joseph Quinn) who winds up being the second lead of the film.

It doesn’t sound like I enjoyed this movie very much, does it? This is one of those movies I’m not sorry to have seen, that engages me just as much as it means to, but at which I cannot help but ask a great many nitpicky questions. It’s amusing to think of Samira, whose terminal illness changes the stakes of her fate as compared to everyone else around her, on a quest through New York City for one last meal of Patsy’s Pizza. Samira, Eric and Frodo walk deeper into the abandoned city while the other people still alive are making their way toward boats evacuating the city.

Among these people is Henri, the character played by Djimon Hounsou who was also featured in A Quiet Place Part II, the one clear strand of connective tissue between this and the previous two films. He even talks a bit about the boat evacuation in Part II, though a lot of what plays out in Day One doesn’t quite match the descriptions provided by characters in the other, definitively better movies.

A Quiet Place: Day One features a lot more action sequences than the other films, which relied much more on suspense—but, Day One also ratchets up the tension effectively in its own way. I did find myself wondering why we should care about these particular characters as opposed to anyone else barely escaping the city with their life. I suppose the terminal illness is a relatively clever conceit, in how it drastically changes the character’s motivations.

Ultimately, though, I’d have to say that A Quiet Place: Day One is really only for the franchise diehards. I never saw the first two films in theaters because I was afraid to; I literally saw them both for the first time only last month—and then was incredibly impressed by both of them. If you’ve never seen the others and you start with this one, it would just be a compelling but standard alien invasion action thriller, albeit with very good performances. If you have seen the other films, you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about how much better they both were.

The star making performances in this film are by Nico and Schnitzel, who play Frodo the cat.

IN A VIOLENT NATURE

Directing: B
Acting: B-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

Here is a title that believes in truth in advertising: unlike the bemusing Evil Does Not Exist, which is not a horror movie, In a Violent Nature very much is. This is a title you can take literally, on multiple levels: it’s about a reanimated man with a “violent nature” (to say the least), and it’s a movie in which a ton of entertainingly grotesque violence happens exclusively in nature. To be more specific, the forest near Sault St. Marie, Ontario, which is about 300 miles northwest of Toronto, across the St. Marys River from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Sault St. Marie also happens to be where writer and director Chris Nash is from, and In a Violent Nature has a very “do it yourself” vibe to it. Whether that’s an asset or a liability depends on your point of view. On the one hand, this is arguably the prettiest cinematography ever seen in a slasher film—this was a big reason I even went to see it, as I normally don’t go see horror movies. I heard on a podcast that it was “like Friday the 13th shot by Terrence Malick”—an influence Nash openly admits to—and suddenly I thought: in that case, I’m interested!

It’s not often you see a slasher flick that is also a mood piece. I find myself wondering how audiences respond if they don’t know to expect this going in. I have a tendency to prefer being surprised by movies, but I was glad to have been armed with this knowledge beforehand: that nearly the entire film is told from the point of view of the monster killer; that there are long, unbroken shots from right behind him walking through the forest; that there is no film score in the film whatsoever. Instead, the soundtrack consists of the ambient noises, rustling of branches or sounds of animals and insects, in the forest. The couple of times you do hear music, it’s only because there happens to be a radio playing.

As such, it would be fun to watch someone else respond to this movie if they went in completely cold—not that it’s possible for you to do that now that you’re reading this review (sorry!). They might take some time to even register the genre of this film, as the first kill happens after several scenes of this giant man in torn clothing walking through the forest.

This is all fertile ground onto which to plant a premise. Nash directs it competently, clearly knowing what he wants. I’d love to have seen this movie directed by him, but written by someone else. The monster killer we follow through the forest comes upon a secluded house where we hear a father and grown son arguing; later he finds a cabin and camp fire where the requisite group of young men and women we know intuitively will mostly become victims. None of the dialogue between these characters ever quite flows naturally, like real people talking. There’s always something slightly off about it, and not in a way that feels deliberate.

Furthermore, we actually do get an explanation of sorts, for why this killer has re-emerged from his grave, as well as his connection to a “massacre” that occurred in the area ten years before. This is all pretty standard stuff for a movie so clearly inspired by Friday the 13th, but even within that context the contrivance gets stretched a little thin.

What this means, ultimately, is that In a Violent Nature falters in both its script and performances, but has a premise and overall execution that goes a long way toward making up for it. The kills themselves get increasingly creative—and, to me, funny. Admittedly I was the only person overtly laughing at this stuff, but then, I also had a great time watching last year’s Cocaine Bear, which qualified as a comedy only insofar as it had ridiculous violence in it. That and In a Violent Nature share a couple strands of the same DNA, although this movie leans much more toward a uniquely ambient tension. When the kills do occur, though, it’s all old-school practical effects; by all appearances, there’s not a single shot using CGI.

I’d have loved for any of the characters in this film to have even remotely dimensional personalities, but to be fair to Chris Nash, the nature of their expendability is very much the point. He’s taking a clear love of eighties and nineties slasher movies and giving it multiple twists. As to which of those twists really work, your mileage may vary. There’s an extended scene at the end, with a conversation between two women in a truck, that skirts of the edges of philosophical, but it feels slightly incongruous to the rest of the film and the philosophy doesn’t quite crystalize.

You could say that about In a Violent Nature overall: its philosophy never achieves clarity, but its premise is an undeniably compelling exercise.

On the upside, none of the people murdered are anyone you’re going to miss.

Overall: B

I SAW THE TV GLOW

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Maybe I Saw the TV Glow just isn’t for me. Who am I to say it’s bad?

I don’t even want to say it’s bad, really. I just . . . really don’t get it. I’ve never seen a movie so chill and so wackadoodle. How does one accomplish that? This film was written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, and Schoenbrun being both trans and nonbinary is, it seems, deeply relevant. I have a personal history myself of fitting not quite into such neatly defined categories, but on the periphery of their realm—if nothing else I would be called “gender nonconforming.” And still, I could find no way into I Saw the TV Glow, no direct point of connection. Perhaps it’s a generational thing. Schoenbrun is a Millennial, and I am a Gen-X girly-man.

I have read that the nineties TV show that the two main characters in I Saw the TV Glow watch and obsess over, called The Pink Opaque, is a loose parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Presumably it is also relevant to my perspective that I never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and what few clips I have seen seem too dated and corny, something too far past its time to get into. When Owen grows up and revisits The Pink Opaque, he finds it surprisingly dated and corny. There could be something there.

It’s not difficult to find glowing reviews of I Saw the TV Glow with headlines like “‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is a profound vision of the trans experience”—written, ironically, by a cisgender man. Sometimes it feels like people who fancy themselves “allies” fall over themselves to praise odd—one might say, opaque—art like this. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here. I very much get the sames that I Saw the TV Glow is just as profound as they say it is, and for some reason it just flew over my head. I still can’t help but wonder: do the critics understand what Schoenbrun is doing here as well as they think they do?

It was about half an hour in when I literally acknowledged to myself: This movie is losing me. I spent a legitimate amount of its run time legitimately baffled as to what was going on—mixed with a legitimate insecurity, visions of smart people I know watching it and then saying, “How could you not get it?” Forgive me, but I prefer films, even ones this laden with metaphor and allegory, to be a little more straightforward.

At least it didn’t annoy me. I wanted to understand it, and was frustrated that I couldn’t. I am very fond of the lead actor, Justice Smith, a gifted actor with talents squandered in the likes of Jurassic World Dominion (2022) or The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024). His performance here is fantastic, genuinely moving, the work of someone who clearly understands the material better than I did. (Side note: interesting that the leads should be cast with cisgender actors—but clearly it gets a pass if the writer-director is trans.) His Owen is deeply repressed, shy, nervous, and forges a tentative connection with a fellow student two years older than him in high school, over the aforementioned The Pink Opaque.

The older student, Maddy, is an out lesbian with abusive parents (indicated only by a passing reference to her stepfather breaking her nose), played just as compellingly by Brigette Lundy-Paine. Owen’s own sexuality is left much less clear, but he does get a quite memorable passage of dialogue when in conversation with Maddy on the otherwise empty high school bleachers: “When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all of my insides, and I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.”

Later, when Owen asks his parents if he can watch The Pink Opaque even though it airs at 10:30, past his bedtime, this is the one line his father utters in the entire movie: “Isn’t that show for girls?”

Later in I Saw the TV Glow, when lines are overtly blurred between reality and existence inside The Pink Opaque, which stars two girls, one Black and one White (Owen has a Black mother and a White father; Maddy is White), we briefly see Owen trying on a dress, one similar to the one worn by the star of the show. Should I even be using he/him pronouns for Owen? I’m choosing not to worry about it, especially given almost none of the meaning in this film is made explicit.

I kind of wish I could have gone to see this film with one of the trans people in my life. Might they relate to it deeply, in a way I could never fully imagine? Or, maybe it is just a wild swing and a miss. I hate to be this ambivalent in one of my own reviews, but I guess you can’t always get what you want, like a complex trans allegory that makes sense at first glance.

To be fair, I kept feeling there was some quality thing in there, something I just could not put my finger on. The acting is excellent, and there is some deeply indelible, dreamlike imagery. But then, I Saw the TV Glow ended in a way I found so bemusing and bonkers, I’m tempted to call Jane Schoenbrun the trans-nonbinary Ari Aster. Perhaps they would be flattered by that. For my part, I guess I’ll just accept that I didn’t get it and move on.

A nervous attempt at guarded connection, like me and this movie.

Overall: B-

ABIGAIL

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

The marketers of Abigail are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do they lure us all in with what the film appears to be about in its first half and let audiences get a wild surprise with the massive—and undeniably entertaining—turn it takes, or do they completely spoil the twist in all of the marketing? Well, if you’ve seen the trailer to this film, you know they chose the latter. Going with the former actually worked with some films once upon a time: think The Crying Game (its deeply problematic content being beside the point I am making here) or The Sixth Sense. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world anymore.

But, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you are reading this and have never heard of this film, never seen any trailers for it. Do yourself a favor and just go to this movie, sight unseen. Or, make a note of it for when it becomes available on a streamer. I genuinely envy anyone who manages that experience. I enjoyed this film, but almost certainly would have enjoyed it a great deal more had the twist been the schlocky surprise it was meant to be.

If I don’t want to spoil it here, however, what else can I say about this movie? Well, here’s perhaps the most pertinent point: it was co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the duo who previously gave us Ready or Not (2019) and Scream VI (2023). If you have seen those films, that should give you a pretty good sense of what Abigail is like—you may not want to have the twist spoiled, but you probably want to know the genre, which is horror with a healthy sprinkling of comedy. And, there’s a lot of blood, of nearly cartoonish proportions. So if you’re looking for a tear jerker drama or a romantic comedy, this movie probably isn’t for you.

Here’s the biggest drawback of Abigail. What we’re led to believe the film is about in its first half, during which a team of specialized criminals abduct a rich man’s ballerina daughter (a genuinely fantastic Alisha Weir, as the title character) for ransom, just isn’t especially compelling. In order to keep the twist secret, marketers would have to lead us to believe this is all the movie is about—along with, perhaps, the part where the criminals all find themselves trapped inside the house they’ve taken Abigail to. I suppose trailers could have said something like, “It’s not the job they thought it was” and throw in a few clips of gushing blood without showing exactly what’s causing it. These people should have hired me to be on their marketing team.

All I can say is: I will be keeping a lookout for the streaming release of Abigail, with the intent of showing it to my husband, sight unseen. That will be fun. And if by some miracle you don’t already know what this movie is about, just take my word for it: the turn is worth waiting for. The characters, while fairly stock, are genuinely fun as performed by Melissa Barrera as a former army medic and recovering addict; Dan Stevens as a former detective; Freaky’s Kathryn Newton as a hacker; William Catlett as a marine sniper; Kevin Durand as the “muscle”; and the late Angus Cloud as the sociopathic driver. The movie would be nothing, of course, without the delightful performance of Alisha Weir as Abigail, but I’d rather you just watch the movie to find out why.

Suffice it to say that Abigail is excessive in all the right ways, never takes itself too seriously (although an arguably unnecessary subplot regarding the former medic and her estranged young son comes close), and offers all the cartoonish violence you could ask for. Classic cinema this is not, but it delivered on everything I wanted it to be and that I came for.

Just wait until you see what she’s looking at.

Overall: B