WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING (June 2021)

WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING

(June 2021)

“Most things come to an end, don’t they?”

A family of four retreat to their spacious bathroom to shelter from what seems to be, at best, a passing thunderstorm, at worst, a tornado.

Tension within the enclosed space quickly takes root though, from both interpersonal dynamics, and the gradual, creeping realization that there are far worse things than a tornado…

“Mom, I think something might be wrong. Like, with the storm, something bad might be happening.”

Sean King O’Grady’s directorial feature debut, We Need to Do Something, is a nastily effective piece of apocalypse cinema in micro, as we witness the slights and stresses that tear a family asunder, even as some perhaps darker disintegration takes place outside their enforced shelter.

Max Booth III’s screenplay--based on his novella of the same name--builds the familial strife steadily but surely, punctuating the simmering conflict with a number of WTF moments that push the narrative into disturbingly surreal territory. (Not to mention that unsettling ‘80’s hit needle drop, one of those movie moments guaranteed to forever alter the way you consider a musical track.)

The film also proves to have a darkly comic streak, bolstered in no small part by Pat Healy, whose Robert is one of the most inept, contemptible cinematic fathers to stain the screen in recent memory.

So if single, enclosed settings aren’t a trigger for you (in our current, shared Global Moment), then We Need to Do Something comes with a hearty ¡Qué horror! recommendation.

“I’m a good boy!”

(We Need to Do Something OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

30 MONEDAS / KATLA

And now, for those of you who may want a viewing commitment more substantial than just a 2 hour-or-so movie (and don’t consider the reading of subtitles an annoyance), this pair of foreign-language TV horror shows get a couple of hearty ¡Qué horror! recommendations.

30 MONEDAS

(30 COINS)

Season 1

(November 2020)

“Do you know the best way to conceal a lie? Inventing a much bigger one.”

“That’s true. It’s par for the course in politics.”

Álex de la Iglesia serves up some pulpy religious horror with 30 Monedas, which, as indicated by its title, has the very coins which were the price of Jesus’ betrayal as the series’ centerpiece.

“We all have something we can’t manage to forget, don’t we, Father? With the Internet, there are no secrets anymore.”

“That really is an invention of the Devil.”

And while the practical make-up/creature effects are much appreciated by yours truly (the huge CGI set piece, not so much), thankfully it isn’t all po-faced horror here.

Fleeting moments of comic lightness stem organically from characters and their interactions with each other so the proceedings don’t inadvertently suffocate us with constant terror-induced anxiety.

“There is a much deeper horror. We live in the midst of a hurricane of lies and deceit. There are no truths, only a furious instinct of destruction and madness, provoked by your God.  I don’t know for what reason. Maybe it’s just for the pleasure of making you suffer.”

And then, for a change of pace…

Strip away the Biblical MacGuffins and the cause-and-effect plot mechanics, swap in a grey ash-laden mood and bleakly creepy atmosphere and a tighter focus on character and emotion, and we have…

KATLA Season 1

(June 2021)

“If you ask me, nothing here seems normal anymore. I know that you scientists don’t believe things unless it can be measured with your fancy equipment, but I can tell you that something is happening that science can unfortunately not explain.”

The eponymous Katla has been in a state of volcanic unrest for a year now, and the small Icelandic community of Vik is all but a ghost town, with most of its inhabitants evacuated, and the remaining few simply “trying to survive.”

But, as if that weren’t already bad enough, some undeniably weird sh!t belatedly hits the fan…

This one revels in its central mystery, one of dread and anticipation, as we (and the forcibly dwindled population of Vik) bear witness to the impossible and inexplicable return of individuals who really shouldn’t be among us, at least, not in the manner in which they’ve returned.

And with that sentence, it should come as no surprise that there are echoes of Les Revenants in Katla, as everyday lives are impacted by the reintroduction of… well… not the dead, exactly, as in Les Revenants*, but certainly, of individuals whose very presence flies in the face of everything we know about existence.

To its credit, Katla doesn’t overly prolong the “Why?” of its mystery.

By its final, eighth episode, it’s made clear why this is all happening. Mileage may vary, however, as to whether any particular audience member will accept the explanations, given how everything shakes out in the end.

At the very least, answers are offered, while leaving matters open for any potential follow-up season.

“Nature regularly reminds us how small we are. How everything we’ve got depends on it.”

* Though there are apparently some of those.

And hey! Lookit! There’s a creepy kid here, too!

(30 Monedas key art courtesy of impawards.com; Katla key art courtesy of twitter.com.)

THE DARK AND THE WICKED (April 2020)

THE DARK AND THE WICKED

(April 2020)

“She would sit... right beside him, just whispering. But she wasn’t talking to him. Not like she used to. It was like… there was someone else. Someone here.”

Bryan Bertino is back ‘round these parts with the upsetting, emotionally wrenching dirge that is The Dark and the Wicked.

The rural horror film sees the Straker siblings return to their family farm in Thurber, Texas, where their mother lives with their bedridden (and rapidly deteriorating) father.

Louise (Marin Ireland; The Umbrella Academy Season 2) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) intend to stay for a few days, to help, perhaps to lend emotional support, in what looks, in all likelihood, to be their final farewell to their father.

But it’s clear their mother (Preacher’s Gran’Ma, Julie Oliver-Touchstone) doesn’t want them there. She says as much.

With Bertino at the helm, you can be damned certain there’s a good reason for that…

“What does it matter whether you believe? You think the wolf cares if you believe he’s a wolf? Hmmm? Not if he finds you alone in the woods.”

Anyone who’s seen Bertino’s The Strangers* knows his complete, stranglehold control over onscreen tension, and that masterly deathgrip is plainly evident here as well, so much so that painfully ordinary domestic fixtures (a light switch, a telephone) become objects of dread and revulsion.

But that’s really only just the entrée.

‘Cause the main course is the full-on assault by wicked and unholy powers on the bonds of family and love.

Decide for yourself if this is a meal you want to partake of…

“Devil, devil, devil.”

* Landing on the ¡Qué horror! 2008 list, there’s a review of The Strangers here.

Meanwhile, Bertino’s third directorial effort, The Monster, crashed onto the 2017 rundown.

And, for completion’s sake (and because if you haven’t seen it, you most definitely should), Osgood Perkins’ The Blackcoat’s Daughter (on which Bertino was a producer), likewise made a spot for itself on the 2016 rundown.

(The Dark and the Wicked OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE BEACH HOUSE (September 2019)

THE BEACH HOUSE

(September 2019)

 “I was thinking… maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to come to the beach…”

Truer words, as they say, were never spoken…

Jeffrey A. Brown’s feature debut, The Beach House, sees two couples sharing the titular abode during the off season, the four of them apparently the only humans on that stretch of private seaside real estate.

But that initial mood of isolation and low key oppressiveness soon gives way to shuddery body horror when things go horribly (and inevitably) sideways, as they are wont to do in horror movies.

And while this one definitely gets the ¡Qué horror! seal of approval, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that, given our current Global Moment, a horror movie about exposure and infection and catastrophe and apocalypse might not be the right cup of proverbial tea for those of you who don’t subscribe to the idea of horror cinema as aversion therapy.

So, think long and deep before visiting this particular vacation spot…

“All other planets are too harsh for life as we know it. We are the exception. We’re delicate.”

(The Beach House OS courtesy of impawards.com)

 

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

The (Premature) Wrap-Up

So.

We really don't need a recap here of what's been going on in TFNY 2020.

We’re all living in the same waking nightmare, after all.

Deep diving into that here seems repetitive and pointless, given that it’s everywhere you look.

This is what I’d like to say here:

I’ve always made it a point at the Iguana to give my ¡Qué horror! recommendations without making any overt references to what’s going on in my personal life.

And that’s because, as far as I’m concerned, we’re here to celebrate horror, and these films and TV shows that get the ¡Qué horror! seal of approval? They’re meant to exist outside of time, to be appreciated today, and years from now, regardless of what’s going on with me.

But, as brutally proven by TFNY 2020, this has been a year of many, many firsts, precious few of them, if any, good.

For the first time, my Watchlist queue has backed up not because I haven’t had the time to sit down and watch something (we have, after all, in TFNY 2020, an overabundance of time, all COVID-melty and oddly exhausting though it may be), but rather because, for the most part, the all-too-real horror happening all around us has been enough for me, thank you very much.

I didn’t need some fictional horror story to narratively induce fear and worry and anxiety because we were all already marinating in that particular stew of dread…

And as October began to loom (October? October?!) and the number of Candidates hadn’t even hit two digits, much less 13, I realized I had little choice but to write this post.

So.

If you’re still in the mood for some ¡Qué horror!-approved horror this fast-approaching Halloween, then please, feel free to consider the 7 Candidates thus far as Finalists this year. (Plus, an additional two-ish; see below.)

In the meantime, I should also say that, at this point, I can’t tell when my current attitude towards horror will shift, or revert back to its usual Lifelong Horrorhead levels.

It will, of course, depend greatly on how TFNY 2020 continues to unfold.

I’d like to think that, every once in a while, I’ll try and make a dent in my Watchlist queue, which continues to lengthen, given my recent neglect of it…

I just don’t know if I’ll be doing the whole ¡Qué horror! Candidate posts thing (as I said, COVID time is oddly exhausting)…

For the time being, I think I’d like to use the Iguana to highlight what’s been keeping me sane these days, and that’s the comics side of my life.

That side has never really been “easy” (and the logistics end of self-publishing comics in TFNY 2020 has become exponentially more difficult), but there’s something to be said about spending time in the headspace of characters who are meant to be inspirational, about writing and telling stories that hopefully move and uplift…

So I’ll continue to make ‘Verse comics announcements here whenever there’s any news (and yes, there should be a ‘Verse post coming up soon-ish), that, I’m certain of.

In the meantime though, to close out this (Premature) ¡Qué horror! 2020 Wrap-Up, two more titles you can safely consider ¡Qué horror! 2020 Finalists…

one of which, I viewed quite a while back…

THE HUNT

(March 2020)

“What is this Avatar sh!t?!”

Director Craig Zobel (who helmed three episodes of The Leftovers, including the pivotal “International Assassin”) reunites with Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof to gift us with absurdist levels of gory, over-the-top violence in The Hunt.

Despite the premature “controversy” in the wake of the trailer’s initial release, this title insists on equal opportunity ribbing, as shots are taken at both sides of the American sociopolitical divide, with a notable cast that includes Hilary Swank, Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Amy Madigan, Ethan Suplee--as “(Shut the F*** Up) Gary”--and an uncredited Justin Hartley.

“This seems a little obvious, like, like maybe they wanted us to find it.”

“Depends on whether they’re smart pretendin’ to be idiots, or idiots pretendin’ to be smart.”

and the other, one I viewed a lot more recently…

ANTEBELLUM

(September 2020)

“Accept what you are. You are nothin’!”

If you’ve seen the trailer for Antebellum, then I’m spoiling nothing here by saying this:

Whatever the plot mechanics may be as to how the narrative bridges the Civil War and present day scenarios, the film is clearly about race.

And even if you see the trick coming, that doesn’t make Antebellum any less harrowing, opening as it does with a particularly difficult 13-minute section.

As she proved in the second season of Homecoming, Janelle Monáe is a potent lead, but I’d also like to point to both Gabourey Sidibe and Jena Malone, for bringing interesting textures to their supporting roles.

Antebellum is the feature debut of co-writers/-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, and it’s a provocative first shot.

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for the duo…

“This doesn’t end here. We’re nowhere… and everywhere…”

and for the -ish… something I also viewed quite a while back, and it qualified as an -ish since it’s a single episode of a TV series…

Osgood Perkins’ blackly comic, entertainingly biting indictment of human consumerism, “You Might Also Like,” his contribution to the second season of Peele-era The Twilight Zone.

This Perkins-described “bacon-wrapped hotdog” of an episode may not look it at first glance, but the connection the writer/director makes between the particular emotion that so consumes Gretchen Mol’s Janet, and consumerism itself… well, that’s horror right there…

“The Egg will make everything okay again. And this time it will be okay forever.”

So.

There we are.

I truly hope you’re all keeping safe (and sane) out there.

And have a Happy(?) and safe-slash-responsible Halloween, however you choose to celebrate it.

(The Hunt OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Antebellum OS courtesy of screenanarchy.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #7

AMULET

(January 2020)

“You think I know nothing of the world, you are wrong.
“The very worst trouble, secrets. The deepest pains of existence find their way into these walls.

“This is not a sanctuary.

“This is a crucible.”

In Romola Garai’s feature debut, Amulet, Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) is a broken soul haunted by his past. But an apparently chance encounter with Imelda Staunton’s Sister Claire brings him an opportunity to start anew.

But you should all know the drill by now.

This is a title that’s getting a ¡Qué horror! Candidate’s slot, so things will not be coming up roses for Tomaz anytime soon…

Lesson learned.

Do not trust Imelda Staunton!

“Evil must be contained…”

Amulet moves at a considered pace, so much so that it may lull you into thinking you know where the narrative’s headed. But when the true kookoo bananas horror stuff kicks in, the story becomes infused with an unholy urgency that sends it charging relentlessly towards a surreal climax of terrible beauty.

There are very welcome echoes of some of Clive Barker’s early Books of Blood work in Garai’s screenplay, but to say which would be telling.

Suffice it to say that Amulet is a brutal and nasty piece of work… with teeth…

“Ate well, didn’t you?

“Well, now it’s time to pay for your meal…”

(Amulet OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #6

COLOR OUT OF SPACE

(September 2019)

“... and then there was this ‘Boom!’ like, like, like a sonic boom, and a big flash, like a pink light…
“Or actually, I don’t even know what color it was, it wasn’t like any color I’d ever seen before, and then everything just blew up, or fell from the sky…”

The Gardners are working through a trying family situation when things get really effed up after a meteorite crash lands on their isolated alpaca farm in Richard Stanley’s outstanding Color Out of Space.

Being a huge fan of Stanley’s lo-fi SF classic Hardware, I was understandably both anxious and hopeful when news broke of his intent to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” so I’m frankly relieved that the film came out spectacularly, and that I loved it as much as I do.

Stanley and co-writer Scarlett Amaris refract familial dynamics through the kaleidoscope of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, shining that unearthly-colored light into the cracks and crevices of the fault lines that run through any family (no matter how apparently well-adjusted), to uncover the wriggling mutations that breed in the darkness of neglect, misunderstanding, and generational trauma.

Produced by SpectreVision (Go, Frodo!), this is a hallucinatory, unsettling, and mind-blowing first taste of what Stanley hopes will, heh, evolve into a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations.

So, yes, hopefully more where this came from!

“Drink? I’m having one.”

Parting Shot 1:

Not only do we have a cast that includes Joely Richardson, Tommy Chong, Nicolas Cage, and a menagerie of animal actors with awesome names like Rowan, Lucifer, Xibanga, Bruno, and Ulisses, we also get a significant appearance of the so-called “Simon Necronomicon,” which my brothers and I actually had a copy of (the Avon paperback, if memory serves me correctly) way back when…

Parting Shot 2:

There’s also more Lovecraft to be had this year, with HBO’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, scheduled for an August release.

Co-produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country more directly engages with the writer’s more problematic views on race.

Parting Shot 3:

Stanley’s adaptation makes a fine double feature with Alex Garland’s Annihilation…

Just saying…

(Color Out of Space OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #5

VIVARIUM

(May 2019)

“Who did that to the poor baby birds?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a cuckoo?”

“Why?”

“Because it needed a nest.”

“Why doesn’t it just make its own nest?”

“Because that’s nature. That’s just the way things are.”
“I don’t like the way things are. They’re terrible.”

“Well… it’s only horrible sometimes."

This conversation takes place very early on in Lorcan Finnegan’s sophomore feature, Vivarium.

And as the unsettling opening sequence shows us, it was indeed a ruthless cuckoo--only being true to its nature--that “… did that to the poor baby birds”…

That disturbing opening and the subsequent conversation sets up the film’s scenario, in which Gemma Pierce and her boyfriend Tom (Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg) are drawn by the “strange and persuasive motherf*cker,” Martin (Jonathan Aris) to visit Yonder, a new housing development “just the right distance” away…

And, well… this will not turn out to be their dream home…

You’re home right now.

Quality family homes.

Forever.

--Yonder’s Welcome Sign

Yonder, with its identical model homes and patently fake skies is suburbia as “ideal” (yet terribly bland), inescapable Hell.

It’s the horrifying picture of being trapped in the maddening routine of existence, with only the slimmest of hopes as a possible reprieve from the domestic tyranny of the mortgage, the drip feed, and the hamster wheel.

While you could look at Vivarium as a feature-length Twilight Zone episode that plays far better than any of the ten Season 1 episodes from the recent CBS All Access revival, you could also consider it as a science fiction-tinged expansion of some of Eraserhead’s thematic preoccupations, taking those particular concerns to their disquieting, inevitable conclusions.

“What a lovely sky we have. It is lovely to live under a lovely sky and a lovely house with lovely houses all around us.”

Parting Shot: The writer’s credit for Vivarium goes to Garret Shanley, from a story by Shanley and Finnegan.

The pair also collaborated on Finnegan’s debut feature, Without Name.

That film though, did not grab me in quite the same way Vivarium did…

I am now definitely looking forward to whatever these two get up to next…

(Vivarium OS’ courtesy of screenanarchy.com & impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #4

THE INVISIBLE MAN

(February 2020)

“He controlled how I looked and…  what I wore and what I ate. And… then it was controlling when I left the house and… what I said. And eventually… what I thought.”

Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) finally breaks free of controlling and abusive Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a “world leader in the field of optics” (a news article refers to him as an “optics groundbreaker”), leading to his apparent suicide.

Which is, of course, not where this story ends…

“He was always going to find you no matter what he had to do. He needs you because you don’t need him. No one’s ever left him before.”

Like writer/director Leigh Whannell’s ¡Qué horror! 2019 Candidate, Upgrade, The Invisible Man isn’t straight-forward horror. It’s peppered with strands of action, as well as another genre that would be telling if I revealed here. (Given the source material however, it should be fairly obvious.)

Suffice it to say, though, that, as with his performance on Upgrade, Whannell proves equal to the challenging task of juggling the varied tones and influences to produce a title that manages to successfully mine the tension of empty space, cannily making us wary of what, to the casual observer, would be the bland and painfully ordinary domestic geometries of a corridor, or a doorway, or a chair.

We don’t need to see the monster here for it to scare us, the beast ultimately becoming all the more frightening for being unseen.

“This is what he does. He makes me feel like I’m the crazy one. This is… this is what he does.

“And he’s doing it again.”

The Invisible Man is a terrifying metaphor for the institutionalized travails women suffer at the hands of men (whether “narcissist sociopaths” or just plain, ordinary chauvinists).

It’s all here: the blind eyes and the deaf ears, turned away from the apparently “hysterical” and “unstable”; the sense that no one believes anything that’s said, that no one’s even willing to listen, much less listen with an open mind.

By cutting down to the core idea--men are capable of the most horrendous things when unseen by others--Whannell gives H. G. Wells’ more-than-120 year old novel a smart, and much-needed 21^st century Me Too, heh, upgrade.

(The Invisible Man OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)