"Ready or Not: Here I Come"

Moments after surviving a bloodsport with her now very dead in-laws The Le Domas Family, blood-drenched bride Grace (Samara Weaving) awakens cuffed to a bed with her emergency contact, estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) pissed at her ridiculous story of demonic cults. Before they can bury the hatchet, however, both are kidnapped for a "double or nothing" game for a seat at the table which rules the world from the shadows. Now hunted across a golf course by the wealthiest families on Earth, the siblings must bury the hatchet... into the blue-blooded necks around them...

(Source: Film Yap substack)
This was a fucking excellent time.
There was never really a need for a sequel to the rip-roaring bloodbath of "Ready Or Not" and its tale of how the rich really are demonic, vile losers; but as far as unecessary sequels go this is the most fun I've had in years. The makers (the seemingly always great collective "Radio Silence", behind the first film and the absolutely magnificent "Abigail") double down on the humour and throwbacks to the original (corpse pit, explosions of blood, and primal screaming from the always-excellent Samara Weaving. Watch her in "Mayhem" and "Guns Akimbo"), with the added twist of a fun buddy-cop framing with the ever-excellent Kathryn Newton. By the way: having both her and Kevin Durand (here playing a coke fiend knife-maniac called "Bill Wilkinson", perfection) alongside Weaving means that the lovable folks at Radio Silence are starting to form their own stable of fun fiends, and I am all for it. I just want Dan Stevens in it...
The movie was fun, extremely enjoyable stuff: we get a blind fistfight in a wedding hall to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" ( a highlight of the movie, great stuff which had me howling with laughter), suitably ludicrous bloody gibs, swords and rocket launchers, Nestor Carbonell bumbling around with a sniper rifle, Sarah Michelle Gellar dressed like a member of the landed gentry as she cavorts with an excellent Shawn Hatosy and a handgun on a quadbike, and Elijah Wood weaselling his way through it all. It's great fun, and the stakes keep getting slipperier and slipperier as Wood's unnamed Lawyer rattles off more by-laws, clauses and demonic caveats the families must abide if they are not to explode into ludicrous gibs.
The makers could not have predicted the arrival of the Epstein Files, however.
So this film is a perfectly timed, snarling indictment of the vampiric upper classes: pathetic bickering losers who were born into privilege, revel in sadistic depravity, and would kill entire bloodlines for a grasp as more power, but couldn't be trusted to guide piss up a wall. It's immensely satisfying watching them squirm and die, and there is no more apt visual for the time we live in now than the wealthy scrabbling within a pit of the rotting corpses of their sacrifices for a token of power, whilst the very world they have created burns and dies around them...
It's fantastic fun. Great time.
Oh yeah, David Cronenberg is in this! Hell yes!

"I Know What You Did Last Summer" - Review

Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) returns to her home town of Southport for the engagement party of her best friend Danica (Madelyn Cline) and her loud fiancee Teddy (Tyriq Weathers), surrounded by opulence and success. Reconnecting with the pair, as well as blandly inoffensive Milo (Jonah Huer-King) and fresh-from-rehab Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), the reunion of the old friends is off to a rip-roaring start. But upon causing a car wreck due to the tomfuckery of their absolute worst friend, the friends cover it up at the behest of Danica, with the aid of Teddy's wealthy father (Billy Campbell. Nice), and attempt to move on. But a year later, the excellent Danica receives a note stating "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and a movie ensues...

I've asked that if one must remake movies, they remake bad ones and try to get them right: once again a finger on the monkey's paw curls...
The original "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is one of the more famous efforts where 90s horror films are concerned, and has aged about as well as milk on a radiator: it's tacky and lame and has the suspense of a deflated trapeze artist holding a wet kipper, only remembered for its cast and possibly a chase sequence involving Sarah Michelle Gellar. Nobody likes or remembers its two sequels.
Yet do not let that dissuade the makers of this film! They shall milk nostalgia wherever it may lie: the introductions of Freddie Prinze Jr and Jennifer Love-Hewitt are most egregious, sweeping dynamic camera shots to soaring scores, but then give them little to do until a limp wristed attempt at the end which comes out of nowhere and really seems to do disservice to the characters. A chase sequence happens in an old warehouse of floats (you know movie, I should be watching "Thanksgiving", you're right!) including the one from the aforementioned chase sequence, and Sarah Michelle Gellar appears in a dream sequence to speak not to the main character of the film, but a different character who shares Gellar's role as "best part of the film" (though I get ahead of myself), whilst the new cast even visit the graves of previous victims. A particularly unctuous, odious "true crime" podcaster (it's a tortology, I know) even sports a t-shirt with Gellar's face and proclaims "I love your work!" to the killer - it's almost a pretty good satire there! But again, I could just watch the blood-curdling "Halloween" movie... None of this fawning, worshipful nostalgia comes from a place of love, and none of it matters because the script is dreadful.
It's actually refreshing to have a movie where you can pinpoint its flaws to a single issue. Don't get me wrong, this is not a "Five Nights at Freddy's" situation wherein I belive that the entire written word was a mistake and that I want to question if Scott Cawthon has ever interacted with a person; but until that movie's sequel comes out I don't believe I'll see a worse written one this year: lines about "beta males" and "keys to my crypto wallet" help me to pinpoint the exact year this was written, and often when the dialogue is not exposition it is clunkier than The Tin Man doing a pole dance
If you watch enough bad movies or slashers in general like me (first of all I'm sorry, there is hope for you) then you can sort of dissect how they work as you're watching them, which is already a bad sign that the film is dull and not engaing me: and here it was a case of me immediately calling who the killer was the moment they were introduced. (Hint: it's an early character who is given a backstory but otherwise gets nothing to do, and who is present but of screen for all of the big chase moments and kills. I'l admit it was better done than the school sequence in "Thanksgiving", so touche there movie). The dialogue is particularly heinous, save some genuinely funny lines from Danica about new age healing and wellness, and even established names and reliable hands like Billy Campbell and Freddie Prinze Jr are stuck with some true clunkers. Or even structural issues stand out:
We're introduced to Chase Sui Wonders (I like her, and she does what she can in this, but Simon Rex and Mikey Madison could not save this dialogue) in what I thought was going to be a throwback to "Scream" with a fakeout as to who our lead character was going to be, only we're stuck with Garth Marenghi dialogue and clunky lines of exposition after she talks to a mirror for a bit about her dead mum (which never comes back, neither does her dad) and heads off to Danica's house. Provisionally, Ava is the main character of the film.
But Danica instigates the plot, investigates much of it, is the one to receive the note, and gets the chase sequence and dream sequence with Sarah Michelle Gellar. Danica also receives an arc in the form of her improvements as a human being and her developing relationship with the shitbag Teddy, which actually becomes quite sweet over the course of the film. Danica is also the most entertaining to watch and follow by a country mile, and is elevated beyond the 2-dimensional shitbag she would have been in earlier movies (I like the little bit where she's fleeing a killer and stops immediately to take off her heels to run better, it's oddly clever and such a simple touch) with her developed arc and actually really endearing, funny dialogue. Chase Sui Wonders (who again, is great when she's in stuff, even thankless roles like this) gets some bisexual representation early on (I think?) which feels more like tease and titillation than any sort of relationship or character, and gets to chat with Jennifer Love-Hewitt.
It does not help that by far and away Madelyn Cline is so unironically good in the role of the New Age, "empath", materialistic rich kid queen bee Danica that she carries the movie and kind of saves it with her performance? She's actually infuriatingly good in this.
I don't want to shit on the director (Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) who has some great sweeping shots and to be fair never makes the film boring, she paces it well and has a few interesting ideas in the melting pot.
Plus (maybe incredibly importantly for this) a couple of the kills are good, and there's only CGI blood at the Sarah Michelle Gellar sequence, but it's not worth your time as a slasher movie. Watch it for Madelyn Cline (genuinely one of my favourite performances of the year) but maybe stick with "Clown in a Cornfield" or "Final Destination: Bloodlines" and "Heart Eyes" from this year alone.
Fuck Cline is amazing in this, it makes me angry.

"Southland Tales" Review - From the Vaults

 I finally watched "Southland Tales", Richard Kelly's follow up to Donnie Darko.

It stars Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean William Scott, Sean William Scott, Justin Timberlake and Wallace Shawn, and has earned something of a reputation as a terrible, obtuse movie which proved that Kelly was a one trick pony who extended his reach.

I can confirm that, with zeppelins, Dwayne Johnson having amnesia, Wallace Shawn in a science zeppelin, poet-terrorists, Miranda Richardson heading the NSA whilst dressed as Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games, a sequence where Justin Timberlake dances to the entirety of "All These Things I have Done" by the Killers accompanied by 50's chorus girls and tripping more than Hunter S Thompson and Dr Gonzo at a birthday party, and Christopher Lambert driving an ice cream murder van, it is not a comedy.

It's a pretentious, visually interesting, piece of shit which tries to be "deep" and "poetic" but feels like an arts student incorporating his political thesis into "Brazil", and screaming "fight the power" every five minutes, in between beat poetry and sips of Starbucks.

I also recommend that everybody watch it.

We should make "No Context Southland Tales" a thing

Not for any "message" or perceived "depth" from Kelly, but because of a line.

A single line, in this two and a half hour movie makes the whole experience worth it, by transcending its own awfulness and lack of irony, into something beautiful.

I am not saying what the line is, because even the fact that I am saying that there is a single good line (outside of Sean William Scott's dead serious delivery of "We take the ATM with us to Mexico") lessens its bizarre impact. Needless to say, it immediately changed my opinion of the film, and I now rate it 10/10.

Johnson knew what he was in, and when he saw that line, he took it and ran with it, scoring the ultimate victory over cinema.