"Presence" - Review

A family move into a house. But something is awry.

Yeah, I'm not sucking Soderbergh's Steven on this one.
A real misfire. It has an interesting central gimmick of being told from the perspective of the ghost haunting the house, but instantly ruins it with rapid-fire cuts to black which are jarring and take one out of the affair completely. It leans more towards a family drama, with Lucy Liu (I like her) playing mother to a prick son (Eddy Maday) and a daughter (Callina Liang) attempting to get over the death of a friend from a drug overdose; only the way it's written is poor enough that for 40 minutes of its 90 minute runtime I was under the impression that the dead girl was her sister. Oh, and I didn't know that a character had been breaking the law until looking this movie up afterwards (there is a phone call where the father asks theoreticals to a lawyer friend of his, but I assumed that it was he who had done something wrong - only that's my fault because the fucking film implied that it was him. Yet it doesn't matter, for nothing hints at it or leads us to know what it is, because it also never comes back and we don't know what either of these characters are or do for a living). Chris Sullivan makes an impact as the genuinely devoted father telling his prick son to stop being a prick; but the drama is obtuse and underdeveloped: the trick the makers are aiming for seems to be one of having the story be told in the periphery, and witnessed by the ghost, rather than a conventional tale. But the stuff which is present here is anemic, underdeveloped and would have been better served by a more traditional execution, ironically: the characters dancing around it would be fine, letting us read between the lines and have an uncomfortable kitchen sink drama/horror in the vein of "45 Years" or "Hereditary".
So the horror angle will have to compensate, but instead lacks any atmosphere (hampered immensely by the aforementioned errant scissors of the editing room) or build up, and is as weak as the family drama.
When the script starts bringing in time travelling ghosts, I immediately clocked out, and thus its villain (a budget Lucas Till) in the form of a serial killer love interest with the charm of a half-eaten wolf scrotum (making his initial courtship of the daughter as compelling as my fucking blog) fell flatter than a birthday at Jeffrey Epstein's house. It's intriguing premise deserves a far superior movie, and Chris Sullivan's performance deserves an IMMENSELY better film.

"Wolf Man" - Review

Blake (Christopher Abbott) finally receives news that his father has officially been declared dead. So he takes his wife (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) to his old home in the woods, hoping to get away from it all and get his head together. But something attacks Blake in the woods and he begins to change. What could possibly be happening to him?

I like Leigh Whannell as a director: "Upgrade" is a phenomenally made low budget B-movie body horror nightmare, "The Invisible Man" did an excellent job updating its premise and having things to say (as well as using its low budget), the "Insidious" movies are bonkers good fun and remain of a relatively high consistency throughout (which is rare, particularly in horror series) and I enjoy "Death Sentence" for all of its unpleasantness, and "Cooties" is good fun. I was curious about this one, as he's not really had any duds thus far (the closest is maybe writing "Death Sentence", which is a rather ugly movie I remember enjoying, though a lot of people seem to slate "Dead Silence" and I am one of its few defenders even if Whannell doesn't), and "The Wolf Man" is a pretty difficult one to screw up, especially with the obvious readings you could add to it to make it a companion piece to "The Invisible Man" - rage and how it is a beast which changes men. Add to that Garner and Abbott and you have a slam dunk of a bottle movie!
Only, it's a dud.
It's infuriating to say that. The movie is called "The Wolf Man" so we know what he's going to turn into and what is happening, okay, fine, so you lean into the camp or the body horror. It does neither there, spending an inordinately long time in the cabin with a slow transformation. Okay, fine, it's about illness and how it transforms us and makes us monsters in the eyes of those we love. Again, no: the body horror angle is weak and underplayed (especially after stuff like "The Substance" in recent memory), so we have to hope it's going for a "confined in a tight space with the one you love as he turns violent" angle, but this too never reaches the tension it needs. The closest it comes is an attack atop a green house, but it's weak stuff, particularly if you compare it to stuff like "Crawl", "Hush", "Don't Breathe" and even the Soska Sisters' remake of "Rabid" (better body horror too in that case) in recent years alone. There is a token effort early on to hint at Blake maybe perhaps having rage issues, which could be the other metaphor they're going for, but again it's dropped and moved to the side in favour of their milquetoast locked room bottle movie. Thus we get a werewolf movie which takes too long to transform into a werewolf, loses the camp, fun and blood factor when it does, and isn't substantive and meaty enough or (crucially) tense and scary enough to sustain what is there, despite strong performances. I appreciated the "Ginger Snaps" reference with the daughter though, and that Benedict Hardie (the assassin from "Upgrade" and the job interviewer from "The Invisible Man") having another cameo in this as Whannell's mascot.
Honestly, if you wanted a great Abbott locked room horror film about change and violence, watch "Piercing".

"A Real Pain" - Review

Uptight, buttoned down David (Jesse Eisenberg) and his free-wheeling, impulsive cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) embark on an historical tour of Poland in honour of their recently deceased grandmother.

A sharply observed look at the classic "buddy cop" trip with an excruciating performance from Culkin as the temperamental Benji, revelling in social awkwardness, and a relatively low key character drama. The thoughts on grief and tragedy are personal and touching, and meet neatly in the middle between the viewpoints of the two characters, feeling nuanced. There's an excellent addition with Kurt Egyiawan's storyline, creative and touching, and it's always nice to see Jennifer Grey and Will Sharpe pulling great supporting duties.

"Nosferatu" - Review

The year is 1838, and in the quaint German town of Wisborg, a young banker by the name of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), recently married and needing to provide well for his odd wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), accepts a job to deliver papers to a reclusive count by the name of "Orlok" (Bill Skarsgard), who seeks a home in Wisborg. But all is not as it seems: the people in the shadow of Orlok's castle seem scared and strange, others enthralled by him, Ellen has got nightmares up and down her walls, and under the care of both her physician Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson, naturally) and family friends the Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin) all seems awry...

From the description of "Robert Eggers remakes Nosferatu" you get exactly what that implies: a big, grand, Gothic enterprise with a focus on the folksy-occult horror, some gore, some disgusting sound design and a use of the period details to enhance the experience and make you go "oooh, man I wish we got more period horror". There are good moments and homages to the original, clearly a love letter of sorts (for the record: I adore the 1922 F.W Murnau "Nosferatu" and still find it a chilling, striking visual affair with some nightmarish imagery and a haunting atmosphere, it holds up remarkably well) to the film (two characters are named after Murnau, the famous long shadow shot is replicated as a grip over the city itself), without feeling like either part is backing down. Willem Dafoe appears in the final act, and absolutely steals the show and relishes the material, and I did not know I wanted buddy cop adventures with him and Ralph Ineson until I got them. It's well constructed and features strong performances across the board, and a strong throughline about hunger and lust, and the perversion of it, all about the looming and creeping encroachment of his evil, like a shroud upon the city, with a couple of neat little notes on the buttoned up roles for women in society at the time. The stuff with Dafoe is excellent, cannot stress it enough, and one of my little goblin-boys Nicholas Hoult gets put through the fucking wringer.
But that's just it.
It's "Nosferatu" done by Robert Eggers.
I could be watching Murnau's original (still weird to say...). It's all nicely made, but I wasn't particularly gripped or spooked.
I don't know, I felt cold on it.

"Sonic the Hedgehog 3" - Review

Living happily in Green Hills, Sonic the Hedgehog (Ben Schwarz) has found a family in local human doofus Tom (James Marsden), his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter), fellow Earth exile and flying-fox inventor Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) and warrior echidna Knuckles (Idris Elba). He rushes into action however, when the government of Earth call him out to an incident in Tokyo involving the escape of dangerous alien "Shadow" (Keanu Reeves), and matters are further complicated with the news that mad genius Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) may be involved as well...

I've not watched the first 2 films and I'm not a fan of "Sonic the Herzog" games (I played the first one and simply didn't enjoy it as a platformer. Though I have had much fun watching "Game Grumps" play "Sonic Adventure"), so this film was essentially a test to see if it stands on its own merits. It had mixed results.
It's engaging enough and I never really found myself bored: it has this pinball, rapid fire energy to it which I imagine is fitting for a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and just about manages to avoid the sugar-rush annoyance of these kind of movies. There are a lot of plates being spun, a lot of characters requiring arcs and lines, and the juggling of both previous characters and new villains to introduce. What lands lands well - Shadow the Hedgehog in particular has a weirdly dark backstory here which I appreciated, and they didn't really chicken out on it either. Shadow the Hedgehog also gets the funniest joke of the movie (about a Mexican telenovella of all things) and weirdly is played rather earnestly by Keanu Reeves. It's not the intensity of something like Robert Patrick in "Peacemaker", but it's played straight and helps balance the tone. In between the wacky antics of Sonic the Hedgehog (an equally earnest, having-the-time-of-his-life Ben Schwarz, who just seems delighted to be able to play Sonic) we don't get too many pop cultural jokes, and we have fairly well sketched arc about not letting trauma define us, not allowing grief to control us (on that note: WATCH "DOCTOR SLEEP!"). The scramble for screen time means certain things get pushed aside (Tails the Fox has maybe 8 lines? I forgot James Marsden and Tika Sumpter were in this until they came back for the final act. And an old guy turns up for one scene, gives some exposition, then dies and we are supposed to find it sad: I assume he is a character from the previous movie) but what is here feels like it is made with love and affection for the source material without wallowing in it. Also the makers appear to be massive nerds: I've been re-reading "Akira" recently and there are multiple shots ripped straight from that manga, not just the bike slide (I appreciated the glass tank and the shots of the tower); oh and there are multiple straight up "Dragon Ball Z" references and riffs. Brandon Trost (cinematographer of "The FP", "American Pickle", "Ghost Rider 2", "Crank 2" and multiple Seth Rogen comedies) plays with colours quite nicely, putting more effort than one normally sees with the brightly, flatly lit fare we get from kids' movies (which seem to be by-word for "low effort"); and the soundtrack is full of things like a cover of "99 Red Balloons" and "Firestarter".
I like it. It's nicely done.
Oddly there is a touching arc about Robotnik (who is among the best and consistently funny parts of the film) and his assistant, tying nicely into the found-family aspect, much like Shadow's angle. It just about works.
I imagine Sonic the Hedgehog fans will enjoy this, and it will appeal to children too without being too insufferable for adults. I'm not sure how much more it can cram in and juggle henceforth, but I didn't hate it. Kudos.