Category: Review

A Fantastic Woman (2017)

fantastic

★★★★

After a romantic night out, a woman’s boyfriend collapses in their apartment. Worried, she rushes him to hospital. Within an hour, she’s told he has died. Unable to process the information, she runs, and is dragged back to the hospital by security. They’re not only suspicious of the circumstances surrounding the man’s death, but also who the woman was to him, and what she might be hiding, because the woman doesn’t look exactly like other women, and when they look at her ID card, it has a man’s name on it.

It’s with a slow and steady hand that Chilean director Sebastián Lelio guides us into the world of Marina Vidal. A transgender woman, Marina lives in a time when LGBTQ+ rights have never been more talked about but, as we quickly discover, that doesn’t mean the fight’s over. In her first lead role, transgender actress Daniela Vega affords Marina a quiet dignity that belies her daily struggle as she’s ritually humiliated by bigots and businesswomen alike.

The tragedy of her tale is expertly handled by both Vega and Lelio, who never overplay their hand, and frequently look for the hope hidden in the horror. Flashes of surrealism leaven the mood, including a glittering dancefloor segment and a telling moment in which Marina struggles to walk down the street as she battles a gale that keeps pushing her back. These surreal flourishes aside, A Fantastic Woman forgoes a traditional narrative (its McGuffin leads nowhere; there’s no grand victory for Marina) which might flummox some viewers, but as a portrait of a woman fighting bigotry and prejudice with quiet self-belief, it’s gripping stuff.

by Josh Winning

My Friend Dahmer (2017)

dahmer

★★★

“I like to pick up roadkill but I’m trying to quit,” says teenager Jeff (Ross Lynch) early on in My Friend Dahmer. It’s a knowingly dark line in a film that frequently flirts with the extreme darkness of its subject matter without ever indulging in shock and gore. Because, yes, this is Jeffrey Dahmer we’re talking about, the infamous serial killer who murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991 before he was jailed in the Columbia Correctional Institute, and then beaten to death by his cellmate.

This isn’t Making A Murderer: Teen Edition, though. ‘Becoming Dahmer’ would have been a more apt title, as none of the Wisconsin native’s unsettling crimes are portrayed here. Instead, director Marc Meyers adapts John ‘Derf’ Backderf’s same-named graphic novel. As one of Dahmer’s high-school friends, Backderf was there for Dahmer’s formative years, and they’re played out here in slow-burn detail as Dahmer struggles with his fractured home life, with school, and with his own burgeoning homosexuality.

The disturbing moments are often beautifully underplayed, from Dahmer leading a happy dog into the woods, to the teen’s casual questioning of a black classmate’s skin colour. Meyers forgoes slasher movie cliche to perfectly capture an understated ’70s mood, and his star – former Disney kid Lynch – is equally mesmerising; his often expressionless, dead-eyed but hugely physical performance is a revelation.

Why did Dahmer become obsessed with dead things? Would it have turned out differently if his parents (played with grotesque glee by Anne Heche and Dallas Roberts) hadn’t abandoned him? Meyers refrains from offering easy answers, perhaps because there aren’t any, instead watching Dahmer as he careens towards the inevitable. The result is quiet and lingering, blowing apart the Hollywood notion of what constitutes a psychopath to reveal the troubling, unsettling reality.

This review originally published in Crack magazine.

by Josh Winning

120 BPM (2017)

120

★★★★

In 1992, Robin Campillo joined a militant group of activists called Act Up Paris. Dedicated to battling government apathy towards the AIDS epidemic, Act Up Paris did everything it could to grab headlines and make its cause visible, no matter what the cost, in an era when the supposedly ‘gay disease’ wasn’t taken seriously.

The group’s spitfire spirit crackles through Campillo’s third feature film, 120 BPM, which is partially inspired by the French director’s time with Act Up, and sheds new light on gay militance in a time when LGBTQ+ people are enjoying more freedom than ever. The film’s plot follows a number of the group’s members, cleaving particularly closely to HIV-positive extrovert Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), and his growing closeness to new member Nathan (Arnaud Valois). Among the many other activists, all of whom get their moment, there’s a mother and her 16-year-old son Marco (Theophile Ray), who’s a haemophiliac and contracted the AIDS virus from an infected blood transfusion.

At two and a half hours long, Campillo’s film could have used a little judicious editing, but the freewheeling style and realistic delves into the group’s rowdy lecture-hall meetings are hugely seductive. As its title suggests, 120 BPM pulses with passion and anger on numerous levels. At times, it feels like an exorcism for Campillo, who lived this, and has lived with it for over 30 years. There’s hope, though, too. The sparse musical segments are euphoric, while the sense of community is warm and invigorating. For those who have watched How To Survive A Plague, 120 BPM offers a nourishing and rousing insight into gay activism outside of the US, and won’t be forgotten in a hurry.

This review originally published in Crack magazine.

by Josh Winning

Videodrome (1983)

videodrome

★★★★

David Cronenberg’s seminal 1983 body horror Videodrome begins with a shot of a TV screen and ends with its main character re-enacting what he’s just seen played out on another screen. In-between, there are scenes of extreme brutality, physiological weirdness, philosophical debate, and sexual ambiguity, but Cronenberg repeatedly returns to the relationship between the screen and the viewer, assembling a caustic appraisal of society’s growing reliance on technology, and the uneasy way it infects and affects our everyday behaviour. Though the film is now over 30 years old (and, for the most part, looks it), its relevance only grows with the passing of time.

Max Renn (James Woods) is president of local TV station CIVIC-TV and on the hunt for something groundbreaking to offer his viewers. “It’s soft. Something too… soft about it,” he opines of content brought to him by his staff. “I’m lookin’ for something that’ll break through, you know?” That something turns out to be Videodrome. Plotless, shot in Malaysia, and depicting seemingly real scenes of sexual torture, the show borders on snuff, but Max wants it. Meanwhile, he defends his philosophy on a talk show where he meets radio host Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry of Blondie fame), explaining that he provides a safe outlet for society’s darker fantasies.

As Max and Nicki strike up a relationship, their sadomasochistic encounters signal a queasy journey into a circus of body horror. Released just two years after Cronenberg made Scanners (with its exploding heads and sinister psychics), and eight years after Rabid (with its phallic mutations), Videodrome is a distillation of everything the Canadian director represents. At the time, Videodrome was by far Cronenberg’s most sophisticated offering, and saw the writer-director expertly navigating themes of voyeurism and violence through a prism of intelligent horror.

With the help of special effects expert Rick Baker, Cronenberg draws us into a terrifying nightmare where technology and flesh combine. After discovering Videodrome is broadcasting out of Pittsburgh, Max attempts to track down its creators, then encounters the mysterious Bianca (Sonja Smits), who’s continuing the work of her father, Professor Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley), a pop culture analyst who dreamed of a world where TV replaces reality. And when Max returns home, he suffers horrific hallucinations in which a gaping slit like a VCR opens in his torso. Bianca tells him that watching Videodrome causes viewers to develop brain tumours in which reality and fiction become horrifically distorted.

“We’re entering savage new times,” remarks one character in Videodrome’s mindfuck third act, and he’s not wrong. There are pulsating, groaning betamax tapes, guns welded to hands, and fleshy arm-grenades, all lovingly crafted by Baker’s team of effects mavericks; schlocky but they stand the test of time. Under it all, though, runs a sinister undercurrent that tackles ideas about violence against women, our culpability as viewers, the power of the voyeur, and even the question of what defines reality. It makes for an uncomfortable watch, and Cronenberg’s film is at times unbelievably quiet and restrained, which could test some viewers’ concentration spans.

If Videodrome sets out to do anything, though, it’s to test its audience. It wants to provoke and question; it demands we confront ourselves and ask why we keep watching. In the early ’80s, most viewers weren’t ready for something so self-aware (Videodrome bombed on release, making just $2.1m on its $5.9m budget), but modern, media-savvy audiences will appreciate its febrile subtext. Now, we really do rely on technology to survive, and most of us have our phones welded to our hands in much the same way Max’s gun becomes welded to his. In that respect, Videodrome is shockingly prescient, predicting how we have become physically and psychologically bonded with technology.

While Woods and Harry are fantastic, they inevitably play second fiddle to the impressive prosthetics and hotbed of ideas. Woods plays Max as wide-eyed and naïve even as he chases dark dreams. He’s almost a noir detective, navigating our nightmares and shuddering at what he finds. It’s also through Max that Cronenberg continuously challenges us to distinguish the real from the artificial. His film refuses to do so, shooting the ‘real world’ and Max’s hallucinations in the same way so that it’s impossible to tell them apart. That’s sort of the point. Nowadays, we’re unable to distinguish between a piece of plastic and the real world, existing in social media bubbles, emotionally attached to our inboxes and news feeds.

Ahead of Pixar’s WALL-E (with its tech-reliant space humans) and even the more recent Nightcrawler (with its carnage-obsessed TV execs), Videodrome offers a chilling glimpse into a possible future – and it’s a future that seems more and more possible with every passing year. At 87 minutes, Videodrome is a short, sharp jab to the solar plexus. Cronenberg has called making the film “cathartic”, but watching it is another matter. A bracing, unnerving watch, Videodrome is packed full of stark, intelligent ideas. It wriggles under the skin and stays there for days.

This review originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

The X-Files – Examining The ‘Essential Episodes’

xfies

Over a decade after The X-Files closed the door on its cabinet of weirdness in 2002, creator Chris Carter revealed there are 10 episodes X-Files groupies and newbies needed to watch before they dove back into the adventures of Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). Pretty handy, considering the entire nine-year run amounts to a whopping 202 episodes. We decided to check those 10 episodes out ourselves and see how well they hold up all these years later…

Pilot
★★★★
“The following story is inspired by actual documented accounts,” we’re told at the start of the very first X-Files, and boy does Chris Carter make us believe it. In just 48 minutes, he introduces a great number of the key elements that will define The X-Files for much of its nine year run. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson share great chemistry from the off as FBI agents Mulder and Scully, the latter a scientist and sceptic, the former a believer. With a plot that feels part Twin Peaks, part something else, this is a fun, mysterious and creepy introduction to the world of alien abduction. It’s dated really well, too. Though it looks its age, the storytelling and performances remain hugely compelling, and it’s not hard to see why this grew into a phenomenon. (Season 1, Episode 1)

Deep Throat
★★★★
Pretty much picking up where the first episode left off, this second X-File ramps up the conspiracy angle as Mulder meets ‘Deep Throat’ (Jerry Hardin), a shady informant whose motives remain unclear. Meanwhile, he and Scully investigate the case of a test pilot whose erratic behaviour has his wife concerned. Of course, that leads them into a case involving alien abduction, culminating in Mulder (sans Scully, naturally) encountering a strange, triangular aircraft. Is it a spaceship? Though not as strong as the pilot, Deep Throat builds on its predecessor and boasts an infectious paranoid atmosphere. Hardin is fantastic as the enigmatic informant, and there’s even an appearance by a young (and shaggy-haired) Seth Green as a UFO-obsessed teenager. (Season 1, Episode 2)

Beyond The Sea
★★★★★
An unbelievably dark delve into the aftershocks of grief, this episode from writers Glen Morgan and James Wong puts Scully front and centre as she reels in the wake of her father’s sudden death. Determining to keep working, she attempts to debunk a supposed psychic, death row inmate Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), only to find herself believing he really can communicate with the dead. It’s easy to draw comparisons with Silence Of The Lambs as Scully finds herself both drawn to and repulsed by Boggs, who has answers she needs, and with Mulder out of action for much of the episode, the episode takes full advantage of . It’s a testament to Anderson’s skill as an actress that she’s not eclipsed by the fantastically creepy Dourif. By episode’s end, Scully emerges wiser – critically – more complicatedly human than ever. (Season 1, Episode 13)

The Erlenmeyer Flask
★★★★
It’s finale time, and The X Files’ first season draws neatly to a close, ending with a scene that mirrors the final sting from the pilot as Cancer Man places a pickled alien in a box in the Indiana Jones-esque file room at the Pentagon. He’s not the only one making a return, with Deep Throat back and crazier than ever, finally offering up some answers – and they’re juicy as prime steak. Scully discovers ET DNA (you can actually freeze frame her mind being blown) and Mulder attempts to chase down a doctor whose DNA has been spliced the ET’s. The stakes have never been higher, and this is a thrilling end to the first season. The conspiracy deepens (just who are these lackeys working for Cancer Man?), the techno-babble is on top form (we learned something about the structure of DNA, woo) and with the FBI threatening to close the X Files, it’s cliffhangers ahoy. This is how you do a season finale. (Season 1, Episode 24)

The Host
★★★
With the X Files closed at the end of the first season, this episode deals with the fallout of that while also delivering as an entertaining monster of the week. Mulder goes on the case of a “giant bloodsucking worm” that’s making its way through the sewers of New Jersey, calling on Scully to lend her scientific eye to proceedings (perform an autopsy, receiving mysterious tip-offs). It’s no coincidence that Mulder’s told he has “a friend at the FBI” within minutes of Skinner assigning him a case that looks suspiciously like an X File, and while this episode’s monster plot is relatively routine (albeit with some great prosthetics), the clever handling of the conspiracy keeps things interesting. Meanwhile, there’s genuine affection in Mulder and Scully’s handful of scenes – it’s Duchovny and Anderson’s chemistry that gives the show its lifeblood. (Season 2, Episode 2)

Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
★★★★
A relatively talky episode, this third season highlight is buoyed by a fantastic performance by Peter Boyle as Clyde, a psychic with the ability to predict how people will die. He’s brought in to help with a murder case being investigated by Mulder and Scully, and many of the episode’s best scenes involve Clyde and Mulder discussing fate, determinism and the nature of free will – the head-spinny dialogue is a Christopher Nolan wet dream. There’s also a brilliant bit of effects work in which we watch Clyde’s body decomposing, surrounded by flowers, and some fun horror visuals – including a corpse’s face replacing that of a doll’s. While an episode like this probably felt groundbreaking back in 1995, now it’s simply a performance-driven curio that has interesting/intelligent things to say. (Season 3, Episode 4)

Memento Mori
★★★★
Four of The X-Files’ biggest writers (Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz) combine to script this busy episode, which deals with the repercussions of Scully discovering she has cancer. While she ends up hospitalised, it’s up to Mulder to attempt to figure out a way to save her, which leads him down dark new avenues, encountering clones, more people floating in glass boxes, and that deadly assassin who reduces people to green goop. Oh, and he’s given a hand by the Lone Gunmen, always a welcome addition to any X-File. In the eye of the storm, Anderson gives a series-best performance, though her narration (she’s writing a letter to Mulder) adds little insight into her suffering. Meanwhile, it’s great to see Cancer Man back, with Skinner striking up a surprising deal that could save a certain redhead. In all, this is a zippy episode that furthers the conspiracy while deepening Mulder and Scully’s emotional connection. He even kisses her on the forehead. Gulp. (Season 4, Episode 14)

Post-Modern Prometheus
★★★★★
Frankenstein meets The Elephant Man in surely the oddest and most audaciously entertaining X-Files episode ever made. Setting out to smash the series mould to smithereens, Chris Carter writes and directs a black-and-white ode to Hammer horror in which Mulder and Scully find themselves in “Hicksville” when a woman wakes up pregnant after blacking out for three days. It’s not long before they’re bouncing between weirdo locals and yet more pregnant women as a monster stalks the town, but who is the monster and what does he really want? Boldly trying something new, Post-Modern Prometheus begins with a woman being attacked while Cher plays on the soundtrack and ends with Mulder and Scully slow-dancing to ‘Walking In Memphis’. It’s weird, lovingly crafted and, possibly, the moment the show jumped the shark. Because, really, what could they really do next? (Season 5, Episode 5)

Bad Blood
★★★
What could they do next? Well, keep the comedy coming thick and fast, as with this vampire-themed instalment, which is told mostly in flashback as Mulder and Scully attempt to remember exactly what happened led to them staking a pizza guy wearing fake fangs. Scully goes gooey-eyed over Luke Wilson’s lawman (then gets hungry for pizza for performing an autopsy), while Mulder’s attacked by the glowy-eyed pizza guy. Funny sights include Scully enjoying a vibrating bed and Mulder singing the Shaft theme tune, but despite this episode being scripted by Vince Gilligan, it’s oddly flat, dealing in goofiness instead of the show’s trademark grittiness. (Season 5, Episode 12)

Milagro
★★★★
Less obviously self-referential than Post-Modern Prometheus and Bad Blood, but still effectively taking an inward look at the merit of paranormal stories like those told in the X-Files, Milagro delves into the power of storytelling, exploring how passion often dictates our judgement. This being the X-Files, we also get ripped-out hearts aplenty as John Hawkes’ lonely writer works on a novel that bears a striking resemblance to real events. We’re not in puppet master territory, though, Milagro revelling in atmosphere and ambiguity while laying bear Scully’s secret passions. The episode’s notable for neatly switching her and Mulder’s traditional roles as skeptic and believer, and while this isn’t the showiest X-File, it’s a fine example of its measured, thoughtful approach to storytelling. (Season 6, Episode 18)

This article originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

Agent Carter – Season 1

agent-carter

★★★★★

There’s been a lot of chatter over the past few years about Marvel’s inability to release a female-led superhero movie. Despite having a roster of comic-book superheroines prime for a trip to the big screen, the studio won’t unleash its first female-led movie until Captain Marvel debuts in 2018. Thank heavens, then, for Agent Peggy Carter. She may not possess super-powers or a snazzy super-suit, and she may not be in cinemas, but with her sharply written and hugely entertaining TV series, she proves what we’ve always known – Marvel women are more than a match for their male counterparts.

Created by showrunners Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Agent Carter is set in 1946, three years after Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) disappeared in the Arctic. Attempting to get on with her life, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) works at the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) in New York City, a pseudo-detective agency where she’s frequently undermined or just plain ignored by her male colleagues. When madcap inventor Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) is accused of selling deadly weapons on the black market, he becomes a “fugitive from justice” and asks Carter for help clearing his name. Pretty soon, she’s drawn into a plot involving terrifying technological gizmos, undercover assassins and Russian mind manipulators.

What’s most impressive about Agent Carter’s eight-episode first run is how confidently it hits the ground running. Its opening moments set the tone as Carter kicks ass and cleans house, all to the foot-tapping neo-jazz of Caro Emerald, and the show’s mission statement is clear: we’re here to have fun, take names and revel in the period detail. Much of that early confidence is down to Atwell, more than comfortable in the role, with this being the fourth time she’s played Carter (after appearances in her own Marvel One-Shot short, she also turned up in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Captain America: The Winter Soldier before reprising Carter in Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Ant-Man).

“I’m capable of handling whatever these adolescents throw at me,” she says in episode one, and we’re never in any doubt of that. Sharing sparky banter with the other agents, who treat her like a secretary, she’s a woman constantly coming up against the brick wall of patriarchy. That she handles it so pragmatically is part of Carter’s charm, and she’s genuinely likeable – a grounded heroine who doesn’t need super-powers or (gasp!) a man to rescue her. Her friendship with waitress Angie (Lyndsy Fonseca) adds an interesting wrinkle, too – this may be a show about a woman’s fight against patriarchy, but it’s also about one woman empowering other women.

There’s one quite conspicuous man whose presence is felt throughout, though. That Agent Carter opens with a replay of the climax of Captain America: The First Avenger is fitting; the ghost of Steve Rogers haunts this first season. Carter never refers to him as “Captain America”, and her grief over the man behind the shield threads every episode with sadness. Carter is struggling to accept Rogers is gone, and her emotional response to uncovering a vial of his blood is hugely moving. It’s these moments of affecting fragility that gift the series vital humanity as it crashes through noir-ish conspiracies and action set-ups.

In fact, for all the explosions and whirlwind fights, it’s Carter’s relationships with the other agents of the SSR that carry the most impact. Over the course of the season, she butts heads with swaggering Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray), shares a bond with crippled war vet Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) and is constantly infuriated by SSR chief Roger Dooley (Shea Whigham). All are alternately her foes and her friends, and there’s a constant undercurrent of tension in their scenes, especially as all three men are determined to bring Howard Stark to justice – which would also mean exposing Carter as a double agent.

Speaking of, Dominic Cooper is brilliant as the playboy inventor. Though his appearances as Stark are kept to a minimum, he’s a bright addition to any episode (even if his American accent occasionally comes off like Nathan Lane after a few G&Ts) and the perfect foil for Carter, his womanising ways never failing to rub her up the wrong way. On the flip side, his butler Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy) becomes Carter’s partner and confidante, and the pair’s burgeoning friendship forms much of the show’s emotional backbone. Showrunners Markus and McFeely wisely keep Carter free from romantic entanglement, instead exploring the men in her life as anything but love interests. Some are her equals, some her inferiors and superiors, but all tease out different aspects of Carter’s personality, affording us a varied insight into the woman Steve Rogers fell for.

Not that the action isn’t thrilling. Like this year’s Man From UNCLE reboot, Agent Carter has great fun with retro tech. Between a self-typing typewriter and boxes full of Stark’s weird inventions, there are cool gadgets aplenty, and many of the episodes revolve around what craziness each new gizmo will unleash. Atwell’s game for the action, too, taking demanding fight scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Bourne film in her stride. She’s clearly having great fun in the role, dressing up in silly disguises (blonde wig, lab coat) and delivering pithy one-liners with a delicate touch. Whether trading quips with Stark or reminiscing about Rogers, she’s just fantastic.

It’s rare for a TV series to deliver such exceptional entertainment in its first season, but Agent Carter makes it looks easy. Unlike sister series Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., which wobbled during its early episodes before finding its feet at the close of its first year, Agent Carter starts off strong and only gets better as the season’s arc unfolds. Meticulously planned, it tells a proper, self-contained story, impressively sure of its world and characters. It’s as close to a person first season as it’s possible to get.

And with season two of Agent Carter relocating to Los Angeles, it’s clear showrunners Markus and McFeely are keen to keep Atwell busy with new and interesting challenges. That’s been a hallmark of the show throughout its impressive first season. Its breakneck pace keeps the kicks coming, but some fantastic twists also ensure it’s almost impossible to predict where the complex plot will go next – as with one shock character demise. And though it’ll be sad to lose gorgeous ’40s New York as a backdrop next season, it feels right that Agent Carter will go on to explore new territory. She’s earned her wings, now let’s see her fly.

This review originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

Krampus (2015)

krampus

★★★

It’s impossible to talk about Christmas horror movies without referencing Gremlins, and Krampus knows that. Boasting a similar ‘family fight festive critters’ premise to Joe Dante’s 1984 classic, it’s got a similarly dark sense of humour, not least when its menagerie of creatures are finally unveiled after a shadowy build-up. While director Michael Dougherty (who previously made decent 2007 Halloween anthology Trick ‘R Treat) is clearly enamoured with Gremlins and seems to want to recapture that film’s mischievous sense of fun, Krampus ends up being a very different beast, for better and worse.

We meet xx-year-old Billy (xx xx) in the days leading up to Christmas. Billy’s at a difficult age when he’s starting to question Santa’s existence, and his parents’ inability to give him a firm answer either way only contributes to his morose spirit. When his extended family arrive to stay for the holidays, things worsen, particularly when Billy’s bully cousins (xx and xx) get their hands on his heartfelt letter to Santa, which contains personal (and not particularly complimentary) observations about pretty much every family member.

Despite Dougherty’s form in horror territory, Krampus is most confident in these opening moments, which introduce our central family in all their warring glory. Great aunt xx (xx xx) is a mouthy alcoholic, while Billy’s aunt and uncle (xx and xx) rub his mother xx (Toni Collette) and father xx (Adam Scott) up the wrong way by merely existing. Only Billy’s German grandmother, Omi (xx xx), keeps to herself, but her silence comes heavy with the suggestion she’s hiding something from her family. Recalling the manic domestic scenes of Home Alone and any number of other John Hughes movies, Krampus’ opening 30 minutes are assured and funny, expertly making us care for the family despite and because of its obvious disfunction.

When Billy’s letter is read out at the dinner table, though, Billy’s so upset he tears it up and throws it out the window. The next morning, the entire street has lost power and a fearsome blizzard has transformed the neighbourhood into a frozen wasteland. Stranded in the house, the family continue to irritate one another, until one family member goes missing, prompting an unsuccessful search and, eventually, the revelation that Billy’s actions have inadvertently summoned Krampus, an anti-Santa straight out of German folklore who preys on anybody who’s given up on Christmas.

As horror premises go, it’s a doozy, and Dougherty goes to great pains to squeeze every drop of tension out of it. Initially, the tension-cranking is effective, particularly during one scene from the trailer in which Billy’s sister xx (xx xx) hides under a car only to be confronted by a creepy jack-in-the-box. After its assured opening, though, Krampus hesitates, and its second act becomes a tiresome exercise in over-long tension-building (even if it is punctuated with a brilliant bit of chimney barminess that finally gets the snowball of terror rolling).

It’s a good hour before Krampus’ alternately giggling, slavering, shambling monsters are finally revealed. The horned Krampus itself is genuinely horrifying, accomplished using puppetry and prosthetics (with a dash of CGI), while its army of scampering menaces are both ridiculous and terrifying. They’re also, for the most part, lovingly created using old-school prosthetics, which adds the kind of grounded weirdness to the film surely last seen in the Child’s Play series. When these bizarre anomalies break out, the scenes of carnage are impressively handled, providing just enough gore, levity and goo to sate horror appetites.

Part of the problem, though, is that Krampus gets confused over who its lead character is. After sticking closely to Billy and establishing his conflict, the narrative constantly switches between different family members until we’re left in something of a muddle. Meanwhile, Krampus ends up being more freaky than truly scary, and it’s most surprising just how bleak Dougherty’s film quickly becomes. The director has talked about Krampus as a horror movie in the Amblin mould, citing films like Gremlins and The Goonies as tonal touchstones, but despite Great Aunt xx delivering sardonic quips between sips from her hip flash, Krampus isn’t afraid of striding headfirst into pure horror terrain, and when that happens, the chuckles all but disappear completely.

When you throw in a beautiful but unnecessary animated segment, characters doing frustratingly silly things (would you send /your/ daughter out into a blizzard alone?), and an ending that tries too hard to be clever instead of settling for genuine emotion, Krampus winds up being a mixed bag of toys. There’s no shortage of chill-inducing weirdness (see the snowmen), but Dougherty seems so intent on creating something unpredictable and unsettling that he forgets what made the film’s first 30 minutes so strong – the bond between its dysfunctional family.

With Gremlins 3 looking more likely than ever, Krampus provides an entertaining diversion as we await Gizmo and co’s return. Dougherty comes so close to greatness that it’s upsetting when he comes up short. Still, between Krampus’ monster set-pieces, domestic banter, and a spirited turn by young xx (Billy), there’s much to love here. A few years from now, Krampus will have earned its place as a festive cult classic, which is just where it belongs.

This review originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

Scream: The TV Series – Season 1

screameries

★★★

“You can’t do a slasher movie as a TV series,” states pop culture geek Noah (John Karna) in the first episode of MTV’s gory, glossy Scream, and you can’t fault his reasoning. “Slasher movies burn bright and fast,” he continues. “TV shows need to stretch things out.” It’s difficult not to agree with him, especially on the evidence of Scream’s first season, an uneven mix of self-aware teens, grisly deaths and occasionally inventive mystery. Though this new incarnation of the ’90s slasher series pays due respect to movie creators Kevin Williamson and the late, great Wes Craven, it struggles to capture the same mischievous sense of fun.

Not that it doesn’t have a bloody good crack at it. Creators Jill Blotevogel, Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie have 10 episodes to go crazy with the Scream formula, and what they deliver is essentially a cross between Scream and Pretty Little Liars, a show they’re savvy enough to name check in one of their meta tirades. Dworkin and Beattie both previously worked as writers on super-soap Revenge, and there are echoes of that show in Scream, too, to both its benefit and its detriment.

If the first rule of reboots is not messing with the original, MTV’s Scream at least sticks true to that. Relocating away from Woodsboro, the setting of the movies, is a smart move, disconnecting the show from its roots and allowing it to establish its own mythology. We find ourselves instead in the small town of Lakewood, where hot chick Nina (Bella Thorne) is butchered at home after being harassed over the phone. News of her death casts a pall over the town, and there are whispers that Brandon James – a troubled teen who went on a murderous spree two decades previously – has returned once more.

Enter a group of high school friends whose lives are turned upside down by the murder. There’s Brooke (Charlson Young), the cold-hearted bitch who’s having an affair with a teacher, jocks Will (Conno Weil) and Jake (Tom Maden), mysterious new kid Kieran (Amadeus Serafini), plus the aforementioned geek Noah. Oh, and then there’s Emma (Willa Fitzgerald), our very own Final Girl, whose loyalties are torn between her popular, impeccably groomed clique, and old friend Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus), who’s just been subjected to an online prank that spectacularly booted her out of the closet.

It’s a big cast, and we haven’t even got round to the adults (including Tracy Middendorf as Emma’s mother). While the teens are the ones we’re supposed to care about, it’s here Scream takes a tumble. Sure, they’re all savvy and quick-witted, but they’re hard to like. A lot of the time, the high-schoolers are so wrapped up in their own dramas (bribing scams, absent parents, sexual identity crises) that they don’t even seem to notice their friends are being butchered with alarming frequency. Brooke in particular comes off cold as a popsicle, while the jocks are completely interchangeable. (There’s an outbreak of smell-the-fart acting in places, too.)

Even Fitzgerald’s Emma makes for a wobbly heroine. Early episodes see her striking the right balance between girl-next-door charm and steely resilience, but as the bodies pile up, the angst sets in. Emma spends at least two episodes spontaneously bursting into tears for a segment of the story that, in a slasher flick, would be over in two minutes. It’s an off-putting diversion that contributes to the season’s midpoint sag, with more and more characters introduced until the show is unbelievably bloated. At times, it feels like Dawson’s Creek with a body count, rather than the knowing, knife-sharp series you’d expect from something branded Scream.

The mystery suffers, too, for being ratcheted out over 10 hours. It wavers between genuinely clever and bafflingly complex, and by the time the denouement arrives, it’s possible you won’t care anymore. (And even then, the unmasked psycho’s gurning ruins any suspense.) Still, there are definite high points, some of which eclipse even the Scream films for sheer audacity. Episode four boasts an engaging, Scooby-Doo-style exploration of a decrepit hospital that is both creepy and exciting, amping up the horror imagery, while a later episode features a death so jaw-droppingly brutal it makes Drew Barrymore’s bisection seem tame.

There are neat nods back to the source material, too. Hellish dream sequences in episode eight are a great throwback to Craven’s Nightmare On Elm Street films, and there are some neat flashbacks that capture an impressively old-school slasher vibe. For everything it gets right, though, Scream gets something wrong. Yes, the visuals are great, but where are all the parents? Halfway through the season, a number of teens are dead, and yet our main cast are allowed to run around at all hours without chaperones.

With its pop culture jokes (Taylor Swift, Walking Dead, Girl, Interrupted), occasionally effective scare scenes, and eerie killer (Mike Vaughn is excellent as the phone voice, though the new mask isn’t a patch on the original), this is Scream, but not as you know it. “I can promise you one thing; it’s gonna be gut-wrenching,” teases the killer at one point, and he’s right. If you grew up watching Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette attempting to unmask Ghostface, there’s a certain amount of nostalgia to be enjoyed watching this new iteration. And for all its faults, MTV’s Scream successfully updates the formula, at times innovatively splicing new tech with traditional slasher fare.

The question of whether a slasher movie can work on the small screen remains only half-answered by the time Scream’s finale rolls around, though, because while it pulls off some magnificent feats, it’s also bogged down in too much teen melodrama and characters doing stupid things to fully recommend. With a second season already greenlit, and certain threads left dangling in the first season finale, it’s difficult to see just where the show has left to go.

This review originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

Clueless (1996)

clueless

★★★★

If you were a teenager in the ’90s, there’s a pretty big possibility you still use lines from Clueless in your everyday life. Between “As if!” and “You’re a virgin who can’t drive”, the trend-setting 1995 teen flick was like the best earworm ever, wriggling its way into the lives and minds of young adults everywhere. Better yet, with its timely exploration of a new breed of cosmopolitan teen, it guaranteed that even non-American viewers felt like they’d lived through (or at the very least survived) US high school.

That was 20 years ago. It’s almost impossible to believe that two decades have passed since Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) catwalked onto our screens, dolled up to the nines and blissfully unaware of just how ridiculous she seemed. Despite her surface-level absurdity (she uses a computer to select her outfits and frets about her designer frock when held at gunpoint), she quickly became the Hollywood prototype for attractive young women with hidden depths – see also 2001’s even perkier bombshell, Elle Woods, in Legally Blonde.

Off screen, Silverstone became the go-to girl whenever a ’90s director was looking to cast the role of a smart-mouthed, self-aware youngster in their movie. Described by her Clueless director, Amy Heckerling, as having “that Marilyn Monroe thing”, Silverstone blitzed the 1996 MTV Movie Awards and, aged just 19, she signed an $8-10m multiple movie deal with Columbia TriStar. Meanwhile, her production company, First Kiss Productions, was given a first-look option on the studio’s projects. The decade was hers for the taking.

Perhaps more impressively, Clueless represents a huge leap in the evolution of the teen flick. Seizing on the yuppie dramas of the 1980s (headlined by stars like Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox), it dared to do something different to the films of John Hughes, the Brat Pack and their imitators. Though a dash of Hughes’ kids v adults formula is evident in Cher’s battle through teendom (not least in her somewhat misguided attempt to help her lawyer father), director-writer Amy Heckerling’s priorities lay elsewhere.

Heckerling made a significant contribution to the ’80s teen flick scene with the gritty Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), proving she had an impressive grasp on how youngsters think and – vitally – what they think is cool. Though Clueless is a very different film to Ridgemont, it retains that self-awareness. Inspired by Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, it transfers the plight of its unlucky-in-love protagonist (renamed Cher) to present day Beverly Hills. As Cher and her friends navigate high school, love and the challenges of transforming a “tragically unhip” girl (Brittany Murphy) into the next hot thing, they drop quotable one-liners like nobody’s business.

With its zeitgeisty soundtrack, OTT fashion and knowing sense of humour, Clueless became the sleeper hit of 1995, transforming its modest $12m budget into a US box office haul of $56m. It was a critical darling, too, and rightfully so. Heckerling’s zingers-packed script packs satire in by the closet-load, but there’s heart, too – Cher’s matchmaking marks her out as surprisingly selfless, while her burgeoning romance with step-brother Josh (Paul Rudd) is just the right side of sweet. And Heckerling never idolises her affluent young protagonists, instead portraying them as borderline alien, revelling in passed-on wealth and possessing bubblegum priorities. If the ’80s belonged to the yuppies, the ’90s belonged to their kids. Times, they were a-changing, and Clueless effortlessly tapped into that evolution.

It helped that the early ’90s were a wasteland for movie teenagers, with only Boyz N The Hood (1991), Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Death (1991) and Dazed & Confused (1993) offering movie-going teens something to spend their money on. We have Clueless to thank for the youth boom that followed. There was 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), which took the Clueless route by reinterpreting The Taming Of The Shrew, while Cruel Intentions (1999) went edgy, adapting Dangerous Liaisons for teens. The steamy result saw Sarah Michelle Gellar shattering her good-girl Buffy image (purring: “You can put it anywhere”) and Ryan Phillippe establishing himself as hunk du jour. We can probably even thank Clueless for The Craft (1996), with its far darker visions of American teendom, and the ensuing slasher movie revival.

Clueless became a phenomenon unto itself, but it became a blessing and a curse for everybody involved. Silverstone made a few disastrous movie choices (erotic thriller The Babysitter, crime caper Excess Baggage), and donning the cape as Batgirl in 1997’s Batman & Robin single-handedly derailed her burgeoning career. In must have been a bit of a sore that, by that point, many of her Clueless co-stars were enjoying moderate success on the Clueless TV series, which she turned down to focus on her movie career.

Unlike, say, Jennifer Lawrence, whose smart movie choices have helped her avoid pigeon-holing, Silverstone has become forever synonymous with Clueless – so much so that her most successful endeavour post-1995 was short-lived 2003 series Miss Match, in which her divorce attorney was basically Cher grown up. Co-star Brittany Murphy enjoyed success in a series of romcoms before her tragic death in 2009, but perhaps the biggest star to emerge from Clueless was actually Paul Rudd. He bumbled around a couple of romcoms in the mid-to-late ’90s before finding a home as a lovable man-child in Judd Apatow’s comedy barn. And, of course, he’s shaken his image up once more by joining Marvel, transforming into scarily credible hero Ant-Man, replete with six pack and designer stubble.

Its outrageous fashion and outmoded tech should date Clueless horrendously, but there’s charm in its pre-internet naivety. If Clueless were made today, you can bet Cher would have a Twitter following in the millions and her own reality TV crew dutifully following her every move. In retrospect, there’s something almost twee about her mid-’90s one-woman crusades. In 2012, Heckerling and Silverstone reunited for horror comedy Vamps, about a couple of socialite vampires (un)living in New York City, but they failed to re-capture the same lightning in the bottle that made Clueless such a huge hit, which is perhaps sign enough that it’s something special.

This review originally ran at Frame Rated.

by Josh Winning

I, Tonya

I, Tonya

★★★★

“There’s no such thing as truth,” drawls Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) at the start of this wickedly funny pseudo-biopic. Dressed in double denim, boot on knee, wire-brush hair at least partially tamed, she’s sitting in a nondescript kitchen telling her side of the story that turned her into an international hate figure in the early 1990s. Hers isn’t the only version in Craig Gillespie’s film, though, which also draws from the wildly contradictory statements of Harding’s mother (Allison Janney) and ex-husband (Sebastian Stan). “Everyone has their own truth,” says Harding.

What we do know: Tonya Harding is a two-time Olympian and a Skate America Champion whose career imploded in 1993 when she was implicated in an attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. After pleading guilty to hindering the investigation, Harding was banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association. Here, I, Tonya charts Harding’s rise and fall in Coen-esque fashion, shooting scenes of domestic abuse, reprehensible parenthood and killer competitiveness through a blackly humorous lens.

For Robbie, it’s a dream role. Her performance is every bit as vanity free as her Harley Quinn turn in Suicide Squad, and she’s a revelation, finding humour and humanity in a woman whom the media both vilified and cartoonised. Near seamless CGI gives the impression that Robbie did all the pirouetting herself (she didn’t), while the tongue-in-cheek tone recalls the likes of Casino and Goodfellas (only instead of gangsters we have ice skaters and manchild hackers). “I never did this,” Harding says to camera while reloading a rifle. Either way, her story (or stories) makes for thrillingly acid-tongued entertainment.

This review was originally published in Crack magazine.

by Josh Winning