YELLOWJACKETS Season 1 (November 2021)

YELLOWJACKETS Season 1

(November 2021)

“Something's coming.”

Now here’s a recipe:

 
Take a couple of chunks of Lost; the first, a plane crash; the second, a narrative timeline sliced into two, where we toggle back and forth between the crash and the mysteries and horrors of its direct aftermath, and 25 years later, where we see the survivors still dealing with all their shared, secret trauma.
Oh, and maybe grab some handsful of possibly supernatural craziness from Lost as well, and sprinkle that all over.
 
Then take a chunk of Lord of the Flies, and gender-reverse it, as we witness the trials and terrors of a girls’ high school soccer team who spend over a year and a half(!) out there in the wilderness doing shuddery, unimaginable things in order to survive.
 
Take a number of stand-out established actresses (Tawny Cypress, Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci) and cast them as the adult survivors, then take a number of young and very capable up-and-comers--among them Jasmin Savoy Brown (The Leftovers and the current Scream) and Liv Hewson (Santa Clarita Diet)--to fill out the teen roles, some of which are of course, the younger versions of the aforementioned established actresses.
 
Then take a whole bunch of suh-weet needle drops and sprinkle those around too, and what you get, is Yellowjackets.
 
“Of course that’s how it ends. That’s all we are the whole time. It doesn’t matter; we’re just shells with nothing inside.”
 
The feeling has gone, only you and I
It means nothing to me
This means nothing to me
Oh, Vienna
--“Vienna”
     Ultravox
 
So yeah, on the way to Nationals, the Wiskayok Yellowjackets’ plane crashes in the depths of the Canadian wilderness, the inciting incident of this compelling and compulsive series, which, thanks to that dual timeline, is both a brutal and twisted coming-of-age tale, and an examination of women creeping up on middle age whose lives’ trajectories were forever altered all those years ago, out in those deep, dark woods.
 
And, just to assure you, lest you start to think this is all doom and gloom, let the records show that Yellowjackets has a sense of humor.
Sometimes dark and bleak and black, other times absurd yet somehow still emotionally resonant.
So yes, there are laughs, in betwixt the secrets and the mysteries, the blackmail and the blood and the… ummm… disturbing diet these girls may have had to resort to in order to survive.
And, speaking of surviving, that’s one of the key mysteries that drives the narrative: who exactly survived long enough to get rescued, and what exactly did they have to do to make it out of there.
 
“We won’t be hungry much longer.”
 
And if you bore me,
You lose your soul to me…
--“Gepetto”
     Belly
 
And did I mention the needle drops?
Aside from the ones that get quoted here, you can also savor tracks by Liz Phair, Kim Wilde, The Prodigy, Portishead, and Dinosaur Jr.
Yum!
 
And that theme song!
“No Return” indeed!
Brought to us by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker (who also score the show), and wedded to that disturbo found footage credits sequence!
Chef’s kiss!
 
“I know what I saw. I don’t know what it meant… but I know I saw something. Something was out there with us.”
 
I think it’s strange you never knew…
--“Fade into You”
    Mazzy Star
 
So if all that smells enticing, then hey, you’re cordially invited to this scrumptious mystery box feast, with the Pilot episode directed by Karyn Kusama, and the season finale by Eduardo Sánchez, both names that have graced the ¡Qué Horror! Archives.
Kusama gave us The Invitation, while Sánchez was at the helm of ¡Qué horror! 2010 title Seventh Moon, 2012’s Lovely Molly, and the pre-online ¡Qué horror! Altered.
 
And don’t worry, ‘cause the show’s been renewed for a second season, so we’re at least assured of still more hijinx beyond the kookoo bananas craziness of this wondrously glorious first season.
Goooooo, Yellowjackets!
 
“What? There’s no book club?!”
 
Oh help me Jesus,
get through the storm.
I had to lose her –
to do her harm.
I heard her holler.
I heard her moan.
My lovely daughter –
I took her home.
--“Down by the Water”
     PJ Harvey
 
Parting Shot:
Yellowjackets has just received two nominations at this year’s Writers’ Guild Awards, for Drama Series and New Series.
Competition is stiff in both categories, so we’ll just have to see how things turn out on March 20, when the winners are announced.
 
Yellowjackets also gobbled up two nominations at this year’s Critics Choice Awards, one for Best Drama Series, and the second for Best Drama Actress (Lynskey).
Competition is likewise stiff over there, so we shall see on March 14 how the Critics Choice Association vote…
 
For what it’s worth, once more: Goooooooo, Yellowjackets!
 
“What if the truth is just that we’re all f*cked in the head from what happened to us?”
 
(Yellowjackets key art courtesy of amazon.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

The Preliminaries

So it's October 1 once again, and ‘round these parts, that means 3 things.

1) The window for ¡Qué horror! 2019 candidacy has officially closed;

2) The window for ¡Qué horror! 2020 candidacy has officially opened, and will stay open till September 30, 2020; and

3) The ¡Qué horror! 2019 main rundown will start today and continue over the next few days.

Before we get to that though, a “Sniff. R.I.P.” must go out to two Netflix shows that were brutally cancelled in the past few months… (Why you gotta be that way, Netflix?)

Santa Clarita Diet and

The OA

I ask again: Why you gotta be that way, Netflix?

Sigh.

Okay.

One more thing before the main rundown kicks off.

STARFISH

(September 2018)

“Wanna know the saddest thing about everybody being gone? Everybody being dead, I mean.

“The lost stories.

“People are gonna die anyways but… their stories don’t have to.”

There’s a shot early on in Starfish: a key on the palm of a hand, joined by a tear, and then a drop of blood.

It’s a striking image in a singular film about love, guilt, and the Apocalypse.

Written, directed and scored by A.T. White, Starfish (his feature debut*) sees Aubrey Parker (Virginia Gardner**) struggle with loss and grief, as well as what could be the end of the world.

With a narrative that transforms a private, personal apocalypse (the death of a loved one) into a public, global apocalypse, and back again, Starfish is a film that, while featuring horror elements, ultimately doesn’t play like a horror film, thus its mention here, outside of the main ¡Qué horror! rundown.

And while it may not have enough “horror” for some, it should nonetheless be lauded for sprinkling the Apocalypse with a bunch of interesting needle drops***.

If one must endure the end of the world, then it may as well be an Apocalypse with excellent taste in music…

“I’m alone at last with every other me…”

--The Notwist, “Gloomy Planets”

* Among the short films White has directed in the past: Spider-Man: Eclipse.

** Gardner should be familiar to comic book geeks from Hulu’s Runaways, and to horror geeks from ¡Qué horror! 2019 Candidate Halloween.

*** WHY?, The Notwist, and Grandaddy--whose “Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake” underscores the “raiding the empty grocery for supplies” scene oh-so-painfully familiar to aficionados of apocalypse cinema--are some of the acts that accompany this particular end of the world…

And there we have it.

Preliminaries all done.

Main rundown about to start in 3.

2.

1.

(Santa Clarita Diet & The OA OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Starfish OS’ courtesy of screenanarchy.com & impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

The Wrap-Up

And there we are, this year’s 10(+1) titles.

I can only hope that the next 12 months will result in enough Candidates to give us back our usual 13 slots.

In the meantime, those titles that I watched in the past 12 months that didn’t quite cross completely over into “horror” territory, but nevertheless deserve your attention.

THOROUGHBREDS

(January 2017)

“First it was borderline personality, then severe depression, now she thinks I'm antisocial with schizoid tendencies. She's basically just flipping to random pages of the DSM and throwing medications at me.

“But at the end of the day, I have a perfectly healthy brain. It just doesn't contain feelings. And that doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. It just means I have to work a little harder than everybody else to be good.”

Think of this black comedy as the brainier, more class-conscious cousin to Tragedy Girls.

It’s a laudable debut by writer/director Cory Finley, who’s got quite the cast here: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Anton Yelchin (R.I.P.).

MOTHER!

(September 2017)

“I’ll just… get started on the apocalypse.”

Aronofsky examines the deep, fundamental differences between men and women… by going totally nuts on domesticity!

(And that’s just one of the things this film is about!)

!

MINDHUNTER

(October 2017)

“If what we’re doing doesn’t get under your skin, you’re either more screwed up than I thought, or you’re kidding yourself.”

Diving deep into the toxicity of insanity and violence, Mindhunter is an excellent companion piece to Fincher’s masterpiece, Zodiac.

SANTA CLARITA DIET Season 2

(March 2018)

So.

Many.

Good.

Quotes!

But let’s go with this one: “If you f*ckers try to leave me somewhere I will track you down and give you so much sh!t it will make the time you didn’t take me to see One Direction feel like a walk in the godd*mn park.”

O, Season 3, where art thou?

SLICE

(September 2018)

“… once some people get an idea in their head, they just can’t shake it. Frankly, I still believe cats can speak English. They just choose not to.

“Heh. Clever sons’a b!tches.”

Delivered (har!) to us by writer/director AustinVesely, Slice posits a world where ghosts and humans co-exist (if by “co-exist” we mean, relocating all the ghosts to “fifteen city blocks of abandoned homes and businesses”--thereafter known as Ghost Town--all in the name of “beautification”).

Plus, werewolves, witches, and demons, too!

Vesely also gets plus points for unexpectedly sneaking in David Lynch; guaranteed to get my attention!

And so it goes.

Another October, another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

Let’s all have a Happy Halloween, yeah?

And if you’re in the mood for some Halloween viewing, feel free to check out this year’s batch.

(Thoroughbreds, Mother!, Santa Clarita Diet Season 2, Slice OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Mindhunter OS courtesy of avoir-alire.com.)

SANTA CLARITA DIET
(January 2017)

"... On the other hand, maybe nothin’s impossible. Who would have ever thought an octopus and a kitten could fall in love?
"It’s on YouTube. You gotta see it. It’ll give you hope.”

There’s a select group of actors who, because of a Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show) that they helped shepherd into reality, have got a lifetime Pass from me; they can choose to come out in whatever kind of film or series they want, and I will have no right to look at them askance or criticize them, because I’m eternally grateful for that Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show).

Nicolas Cage immediately comes to mind. Because he produced E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, I can forgive him for a lot, even (gulp) The Wicker Man remake.

There’s also Drew Barrymore, who now has two lifetime Passes from me: the first, for Donnie Darko (executive producer), and the second, for Santa Clarita Diet (again, executive producer). And she backed both up with her star power by appearing in the cast.

Thanx, Gertie!

“No. Don’t do anything, okay? Just relax.

“I’m dead. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Barrymore and co-star (and co-executive producer) Timothy Olyphant are husband and wife realtors, Sheila and Joel Hammond, doing their best to cope with Sheila’s new titular diet, which is (gasp!) human flesh.

Seriously, I haven’t had this much fun with anything zombie since Shaun of the Dead.

Which is why I’m talking about it here, outside of the ¡Qué horror! rundown, since this isn’t really a horror show, so much as it is a comedy with some horror elements.

“Maybe we should just keep driving. Go home, get some clothes, and just never come back.”

“Well, that’s crazy! We can’t just run away. Where would we go?! Oh, we have so much equity in our house!”

“Ah! I didn’t think about the equity! I’m a monster.”

The beauty of the show though is, as much as it’s about the hijinx that result from Sheila’s zombiefication, it’s just as much about the way a family deals with seismic upheavals, about finding family wherever you can, and embracing the reality that, even if something’s changed, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.

And not only do we have Barrymore as the newly confident and energetic Sheila, and Olyphant as the weed-smoking, occasionally manic Joel, but there’s an excellent supporting cast here too, starting with Liv Hewson (as their headstrong daughter Abby) and Skyler Gisondo (as lovable creeper next door, Eric), and stretching out to the two cops who live on either side of the Hammonds (uh-oh), Richard T. Jones and Ricardo Chavira (who also happens to be the jerkface stepfather to the aforementioned lovable creeper Eric).

Oh! And a 2-episode appearance by Grace Zabriskie! So awesome, ‘cause we all know there is No Such Thing As Too Much Grace Zabriskie!

And for another dose of awesome, Portia de Rossi shows up at the tail end of the season (in a role that was apparently written specifically for her).

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.”

“Just saying ‘Hello.’”

“I know your ‘Hello’s, honey, and that one was pouring me a glass of wine.”

If you’ve frequented the Iguana in the past, you’ll know that we’re pretty big here on atypical titles of bone-tired genres, and most everything zombie these days is so SO tired. So I wasn’t going to pass up the chance of trumpeting Santa Clarita Diet just because it wasn’t full-on horror. (Here’s hoping Netflix renews it for a second season.)

I dubbed I Am a Hero “the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.”

I was wrong.

Santa Clarita Diet is the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.

Boom.

“I really don’t think I bit him.”

“But what if you did? And what if that makes him turn, and then he bites someone, and they bite someone and pretty soon, we’re like the biggest a$$holes ever!”

(Santa Clarita Diet OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & impawards.com.)