SHE WILL (August 2021)

   

SHE WILL

(August 2021)

“We must all keep terribly, terribly calm.”

Imperiously curt and dismissive, Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige) is an aging actress who’s recovering from a major medical procedure. Accompanied by her private nurse, Desi (Kota Eberhardt), Veronica is spending some time away from the glaring tabloid scene, at a retreat located in an area in Scotland where “about 3,000” women were once tried for witchcraft (these unfortunates referred to as “the burnt”).

It’s a place where the soil has a “very high proportion of human ashes”, the wind “sounds like whispers”, and it occasionally rains soot, which the locals call “witch feathers”…

“Desi, if you think you’re gonna survive this sh!tstorm called life by doing what’s ‘advisable’, you are seriously mistaken. You have to be all teeth. Claws. Trust me. The bastards will stop at nothing to grind you down.”

As it turns out, Veronica once worked on a film called Navajo Frontier, and was said to have had “a special bond” with the film’s director Eric Hathbourne (Malcolm McDowell).

Please note that she was just 13 years old at the time.

“Imagine that. To be able to love without ghosts in your bed. Look in the mirror. Feel hopeful. Clean the bastards out of you.”

Both Veronica and Desi are haunted, each in their own measure, and the dark territories they find themselves in have much to say about what these women should do with their personal ghosts.

Now, I’ve been a fan of Krige going all the way back to John Irvin’s adaptation of Peter Straub’s* Ghost Story, and she does not disappoint here.

Meanwhile, Eberhardt is a revelation as Desi. It’s a quiet and fiercely intelligent performance that serves to complement Krige’s more cutting and acerbic Veronica.

“Foucault wrote of the male gaze, that the act of seeing is neither transparent nor neutral, but an imposition of power.”

“Millennia of patriarchy dictate how we see.”

Directed by Charlotte Colbert (an impressive feature debut), from a script written by Kitty Percy and Colbert, and with Dario Argento as one of its executive producers, She Will is a potent concoction that signals Colbert as a name to watch for.

Please note the score by Clint Mansell, and the cinematographer/editor(s) combo of Jamie Ramsay and Peter Strickland’s frequent editor, Matyas Fekete**, tag-teaming with Yorgos Lanthimos’ frequent editor, Yorgos Mavropsaridis***.

There is also the presence of Rupert Everett as Arturo Tirador! (I honestly did not recognize Everett and had no idea he was in the film till the end credits roll.)

Oh, and props for the end credits song choice, a Nouvelle Vague cover of a song from 1984…

“Just need the famine, the pestilence. We’ll have our very own apocalypse.”

She Will is a darkly evocative portrait of female rage, the kind that simmers just beneath the surface, silent, as if muffled and restrained by a scold’s bridle, often emerging in sublimated form, simply waiting for something to trigger the catastrophic eruption, and the smothering rain of witch feathers in the aftermath…

“It will torture you.”

* RIP. (Just one of many heart-breaking losses on the creative front we suffered last year.)

** Apparently, the only Strickland feature film Fekete did not edit was Berberian Sound Studio.

*** Mavropsaridis was the editor on Kynodontas, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Dennis Iliadis’ +1.

Parting Shot:

If this kind of narrative speaks to you, then might I humbly suggest an interesting double bill with Elle Callahan’s Witch Hunt.

(She Will OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

FLUX GOURMET (February 2022)

   

FLUX GOURMET

(February 2022)

“Cooking and performing is always a hazard.”

Peter Strickland is in the shops, going through the aisles and tossing performers he’s worked with in the past into his shopping trolley--Gwendoline Christie and Richard Bremmer and Leo Bill from In Fabric, Fatma Mohamed from all of his feature films and the “Cobbler’s Lot” segment from The Field Guide to Evil--then adding Ariane Labed, Asa Butterfield, and Makis Papadimitriou to the lot.

He then breezes through the checkout and rushes home so he can whip up yet another luscious Technicolor dish for us with Flux Gourmet, perhaps the oddest effort of his that I’ve seen yet.

Christie plays Jan Stevens, Director of the Sonic Catering Institute, which sponsors “culinary collectives” (otherwise known as Sonic Caterers) on a monthly residency basis, to actively “…encourage the artistic pursuit of alimentary and culinary salvation.”

Described by one of the film’s characters as “feckless faux provocateurs”, Sonic Caterers are basically performance artists working to find the “sonic and performative potential” of foodstuffs.

Or something like that…

Like I said, it’s the oddest film I’ve seen from Strickland yet…

“To taste their shock is to be controlled by it.”

Flux Gourmet follows the residency of the collective led by Elle di Elle (Mohamed), and the tension engendered from the conflicts between Elle and, well, everybody. (Weeks into their residency and Elle still hasn’t decided on the band’s name.)

Not to mention the “escalating threat” from The Mangrove Snacks, another collective that was denied residency…

There’s also a (possibly life-threatening) gastrointestinal illness and some scatological hijinx somewhere in there as well…

“I do wonder sometimes if you’re perpetuating an archetype of epicurean toxicity with all this culinary hysteria. I don’t want to give the public the impression we’re espousing any kind of dysfunctional alimentary ideology.”

Absurdly humorous with some oddly touching moments sprinkled throughout, Flux Gourmet doesn’t really have the horror-tinged streaks found in Berberian Sound Studio and In Fabric, but it is, nonetheless, clearly a Strickland piece, with his aesthetic fixations and preoccupations plain to see.

So if all that sounds like something that might agree with your cinematic palette (and stomach), then by all means, dig in…

“When I see joy and abandon, my mind always reverts to this: why can one stomach be so free and another can’t?”

(Flux Gourmet OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

GLORIOUS (July 2022)

  

GLORIOUS

(July 2022)

“Piss stinking inebriated. All by my lonesome at this rest stop here in… wherever the hell this rest stop is.”

The “piss stinking inebriated” Wes (Ryan Kwanten, also one of the executive producers*) is actually in the comfort room of the Route 37 Rest Area.

And he isn’t alone. Not at all.

Though he will eventually come to wish he was (even if he is being kept company by J.K. Simmons… or Simmons’ voice, at any rate)…

“Will it hurt?”

“Very much.”

Based on a story by Todd Rigney (which can be found in his flash fiction collection Taste Level Zero), Glorious is directed with a steady and blackly humorous hand by Rebekah McKendry, from a screenplay credited to Joshua Hull and her husband, David Ian McKendry.

Save for a few brief exceptions, the film is an odd sort of horror two-hander, in that Kwanten is basically bouncing off Simmons’ voice, but hey, it’s J.K. Simmons, so wotta voice!

“I’m sorry, but you’re not going to able to leave until we’re done here.”

Glorious is an exquisitely grotesque paradox, an unsettling vision of cosmic horror, told from within the cramped confines of a filthy, rest stop comfort room…

So if that sounds like the sort of title that floats your horror boat, then check it out!

“F*ck it. Let’s do this.”

* Along with horror stalwart Barbara Crampton.

(Glorious key art courtesy of impawards.com.)

IN FABRIC (September 2018)

   

IN FABRIC

(September 2018)

“A purchase on a horizon, a panoply of temptation. Can a curious soul desist?”

“I’m just looking, thank you.”

“The hesitation in your voice soon to be an echo in the recesses of the spheres of retail.”

I don’t know about you, but if a salesperson walked up to me with that spiel, I would not hang about to hear more…

Particularly if I’ve already seen the creepiest TV advert ever* for the shop’s latest sale…

“You who wear me will know me.”

Peter Strickland’s In Fabric kicks off with Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a lonely mother just trying to find love and intimacy who happens to visit Dentley & Soper’s, leaving the premises with the singular “Ambassadorial Function Dress”--a chiffon and silk and satin number in, get this, artery red--in stock.

A dress that happens to be, gulp, haunted.

“The very purpose of this seasonal retail occasion is to expunge. Returning what has already left the Ladies’ Fashion Boutique of Dentley & Soper’s Trusted Department Store goes against the nature of things.”

A haunted (or in some cases, cursed) fashion item featuring in a horror film is nothing new, of course.

Some that come quickly to mind: Kim Yong-gyun’s Bunhongshin (The Red Shoes), Won Shin-yeon’s Gabal (The Wig, AKA Scary Hair), the more recent Bad Hair (from Justin Simien, which features a “possessed weave”), and Elza Kephart’s Slaxx (killer jeans, natch).**

And while some of those titles lean more into the comedic side of their horror-comedy combo, there’s still something undeniably unnerving about having something that you’re wearing--that, by its very nature, is something that rests snugly against your body--have a malevolent mind of its own, even if there are some laughs mixed in with all of the chills.

Trust Peter Strickland to toss his hat into this particular horror movie ring…

“But your dismissal of such a prestigious consumerist festivity leaves me bereft.”

If you’ve seen Berberian Sound Studio (and if you haven’t, please, please, please do yourself a favor and seek it out), you’ll know what I mean when I say that Strickland is the kind of director whose work is definitely experiential. Like David Lynch, the way he combines visuals with sound and music is alchemical in nature, disturbingly bewitching.

Just like that artery red dress.

And while there is a ribbon of drily absurd humor that flows through its runtime, In Fabric also drapes us with an unsettling, inescapable tone, almost like that artery red dress settling down all around us, brushing up relentlessly against our bare, viewer’s skin…

The inner, hidden workings of the retail world have never been quite this surreal and creepy on film***…

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a dress.”

* Courtesy of Julian House, who also worked on Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.

** For the record, I’ve seen all of these, except for Slaxx.

*** The closest I think we’ve come to something like this is Kim Sung-ho’s Geoul Sokeuro (Into the Mirror), in which bizarre goings-on mar the intended re-opening of the shopping mall, Dreampia. Though to be frank, that film doesn’t even come close to the unsettling strangeness of Strickland’s vision of Dentley & Soper’s…

Comics, though, are another matter entirely…

Eerie retail hijinx may be found in Christopher Cantwell and I.N.J. Culbard’s Everything, from Dark Horse comics, edited by the one and only Mother of Vertigo, Karen Berger…

Parting Shot: If you find yourself enamored with Strickland’s aesthetic, then I implore you to also check out his definitely not horror piece, The Duke of Burgundy, as well as his contribution to The Field Guide to Evil, “Cobblers’ Lot,” loosely based on the Hungarian folktale, “The Princess’s Curse”.

(In Fabric quad and OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

ANTLERS (October 2021)

  

ANTLERS

(October 2021)

“Yeah, he said he was, uhh, hiking up near Greymouth, when a stench led him to a man half buried in the woods. I guess the other half was found in the mine, near a meth lab. Was probably a, a bear or a cougar, something.”

“Jesus.”

“From what he just told me, I don’t think Jesus was anywhere to be found.”

Guilt-ridden Julia Meadows (Keri Russell) finds herself back in her hometown of Cispus Falls, Oregon, still trying to “resolve” her lifetime of “issues” (which reveal themselves gradually during the first act, proving her own terms blatant understatements).

It’s a place she admits she barely recognizes anymore, an economically depressed mining town, in the midst of a so-called “war on American energy.”

But, given that this is a horror movie co-produced by no less than Guillermo del Toro*, it should come as no surprise that there are even darker (and bloodier) things afoot.

“Daddy said God is dead.”

Director Scott Cooper (working from a screenplay credited to C. Henry Chaisson, Nick Antosca, and Cooper, based on Antosca’s short story, “The Quiet Boy”) gives us a horror film that isn’t just about literal, supernatural monsters, but also the kinds of monsters that lurk behind the unassuming masks of men.

While the “Creature”** is, naturally, the main attraction, Antlers is also about generational trauma, and the tragic and grotesque scars left behind by abuse.

It’s about “the lost, the frail, and the depraved”.

“I just have to feed him, and he’ll love me.”

There’s also an interesting supporting cast here, with the likes of Jesse Plemons (as Julia’s brother, Paul, who also happens to be Cispus Falls’ Sheriff), Amy Madigan, Graham Greene, and Rory Cochrane.

Sadly, three of the above mentioned are relegated to either Exposition Delivery, or those sad, thankless horror movie roles that ultimately underutilize the actor.

You can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Still, Antlers is most definitely worth a look.

I came to it because of the lure of Antosca***, del Toro, and Felicity herself, and was, in the end, happy I did.

Check it out, if you’re so inclined, and maybe you’ll be glad you did, too…

Will you, I pray, demand that demidevil

Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

--Othello

   Act V - Scene II

* David S. Goyer is another co-producer.

** For my fellow comic book nerds out there, the one and only Guy Davis is credited for Lead Creature Design, as well as a bunch of drawings that appear onscreen.

Davis is also the main Creature Design dude for del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and has worked with him on a whole bunch of past productions…

In del Toro's own words: “Guy Davis, to me, is one of the best monster designers alive right now.”

*** And, speaking of, those, ahem, antlers on the one sheet should remind you of another thing Antosca worked on, that should in turn, tip you off as to the nature of Antlers’ Creature…

(That other thing is also to be found in the Iguana Archives.)

Parting Shot 1:

The short story “The Quiet Boy” can be read online here.

My personal recommendation is, if you haven’t already read the story but are curious to see the original source material, then check it out after you’ve seen Antlers.

Parting Shot 2:

In Antlers’ end credits roll, Christian Bale is one of the names under “Special Thanks”.

Cooper has worked with Bale on three films to date, the latest, the Netflix adaptation of Louis Bayard’s The Pale Blue Eye.

Looking forward to that one…

(Antlers OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

NOCEBO (October 2022)

    

NOCEBO

(October 2022)

“Something is hidden inside of you, Christine. Something you hide from yourself. It is invisible to you, and you must see it. It makes you sick. I will draw it out of you and show it to you.”

A children’s fashion line called Tykie comes to a screeching halt after a distressing phone call, and the disturbing “encounter” that accompanies it (one of the creepiest dog scenes I’ve ever seen; at one point in the film’s runtime, that dog is described as “a hideous thing”).

In the aftermath, fashion designer Christine (Eva Green) suffers through a debilitating months-long ordeal, broken only upon the sudden arrival of Diana (Chai Fonacier), who hails from a “very special place” in the southern area of the Philippines, and who claims to have been hired by Christine, though she has no memory of it at all.

“It’s very pretty.”

“It is?”

“We will make it pretty.”

Meanwhile, the other members of the household, daughter Roberta (Billie Gadsdon) and husband Felix (Mark Strong), need to acclimate to this stranger suddenly living under the same roof. One is initially rude, the other, increasingly suspicious, while Christine becomes more trusting and dependent on Diana.

“This is just different medicine, Christine.”

That’s the basic set-up of Lorcan Finnegan’s latest, Nocebo.

If you’ve been paying attention, Finnegan landed ‘round these parts previously for Vivarium, and this film, like Vivarium, ends up being a potent title with a very singular, unsettling vision, proof positive that Finnegan continues to be a name to look out for.

Nocebo is also of particular interest to me since it’s an Irish-Philippine co-production, significant portions of which were shot on location in the Philippines.

Also noteworthy are Fonacier’s commendable performance, and the film’s score, courtesy of Jose Antonio C. Buencamino. This seems to be Buencamino’s first feature film credit, and it’s an impressive one.

“This is so much better than a cure.”

There’s also a particular scene in Nocebo--during Diana’s recounting of her past--that should be a treat for any lovers of Philippine folklore out there.

The term Diana uses may not be the one that might be expected, given what unfolds onscreen, but it’s a nonetheless familiar image to a folklore lover, and that scene’s imagery goes off like gangbusters.

Ultimately though, while the horror in Nocebo is shudderingly effective, it’s the tragic underpinning of the narrative* (scripted by familiar Finnegan collaborator Garret Shanley) that serves as the iron-hard core of this film.

It’s been a long, long, looooong while since I’ve seen a Filipino horror movie that’s this effective.

And sure, it’s a co-production, but still…

So, hopefully, that’s piqued your interest enough to seek this one out…

“You must allow me in, Christine. I will prepare you to face it. You will know it when you see it. You will understand what must happen. And you will be free.”

* An incident based on an actual tragedy in recent Philippine history. To say any more at this juncture would be to spoil a key plot point.

There is a prominent statement though, during the end credits roll that will acknowledge and shine a spotlight on that tragedy.

(Nocebo OS’ and quad courtesy of imdb.com, twitter.com, and themoviewaffler.com.)

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (May 2022)

  

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

(May 2022)

BODY IS REALITY

 

The senior Cronenberg is back ‘round these parts with Crimes of the Future.

No, not his second, hour-long feature from 1970, but an all-new film that feels like a thematic extension to some of his previous works like Videodrome and eXistenZ. (Little wonder, that, since the screenplay was originally written over two decades ago.)

“‘Human’ is the operative word. Human evolution is the concern. That it's going wrong. That it's... uncontrolled, it's... insurrectional. It might lead us to a bad place.”

We find ourselves in an indeterminate point in the near-future, when the human body has begun to spontaneously grow new organs of equally indeterminate function (so-called “neo-organs”), and thus, bear witness to the violent (and virulent) collision of biological evolution, art, society, politics, pollution, and revolution.

“The creation of inner beauty cannot be an accident.”

With a haunting sonic backdrop by frequent collaborator Howard Shore, the senior Cronenberg once again drops us into an unsettling, disorienting reality, a world where the most mundane of activities like sleeping or eating become disturbing visions of the human body juxtaposed with pieces of shuddery, nightmare furniture.

“An organism needs organization. Otherwise, it's just designer cancer.”

So, yes, if it sounds like old school Cronenberg is back, then you heard right.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Eastern Promises, and as he himself has asserted, he sees no difference whatsoever between that kind of film and this new Crimes.

In his personal assessment, there is no such thing as “body horror.”

But what there is, is that very Cronenberg obsession with carnal transfiguration, the (r)evolution of the human body, and the impact that has on the world outside of all that shuddering skin and mutating meat.

“Long live the New Flesh,” indeed.

“We understand human bodies are changing. I know this quite well.”

(Crimes of the Future key art courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)