Friday, November 27, 2020

New(ish) Netflix Movie Review: Cadaver

Cadaver is a Norwegian movie that came out on Netflix on October 22 as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup.  There was so much new stuff coming out on various streaming platforms around Halloween that it took me a month to finally watch this one, and I'm glad I did.  It has its flaws, but on the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

It's set in a post-apocalyptic world where food is really scarce, and it follows a family that gets tickets to a mysterious dinner show that ends up being way more than they bargained for.  The family wonders how these people have enough food to feed an entire audience, and soon after the play starts, they realize that something isn't right with the event.

I don't want to say much more about the plot because for about half its runtime, the movie is all about the mystery of what exactly is going on.  Once you realize that something is wrong, the situation snowballs and gets weirder and weirder with just about every scene.  This mystery is super intriguing, and it kept my eyes glued to the screen waiting to find out what was coming next.

On top of that, Cadaver is also a very atmospheric film.  It doesn't just show you the mystery unfolding onscreen.  It makes you feel the mystery as well.  You feel all the confusion and disorientation that the main characters are experiencing, and that makes the plot all the more compelling.  It pulls you into the story and makes you feel like you're right there with the characters.

Then, at about the halfway mark, the movie starts giving you some answers.  It slowly pulls back the curtain and lets you in on its secrets, and the explanation is just as sinister as you expect it to be. There's some really nasty stuff going on at this show, and the main characters find themselves forced into in the fight of the lives.

That being said, the second half of the film is a noticeable step down from the great first half.  While I did enjoy the explanation of the strange goings-on at this show, I also thought it wasn't quite as satisfying as the mystery itself.  The first half built it up so much that I was expecting something a bit more interesting than what I ended up getting.  Don't get me wrong, the second half of the film is still good; it just doesn't quite live up to the great setup in the first half.

Aside from the slightly disappointing payoff, the only other real flaw in this movie lies with the characters.  They exist solely to serve the mystery of the strange dinner show, but there's not much to them beyond that.  While they're not terribly bland, they're not particularly interesting either.  They do their job well enough, but they don't really add anything to the movie on their own.

In the grand scheme of things, though, those aren't egregious flaws.  They didn't ruin the movie for me, so I still walked away pretty happy after the credits rolled.  It's admittedly not a must-see film, but it's pretty good.  And it's especially appreciated during this pandemic-induced dearth of new theatrical releases.  While there are a few good movies playing in theaters right now (like Come Play and Freaky), the immediate future is pretty bleak.  Thankfully, we have nice little streaming movies like Cadaver to fill that void, so if you're itching to see some new horror, I'd recommend giving this one a shot.  It's definitely worth a watch.

Friday, November 20, 2020

New Theatrical Movie Review: Freaky

Freaky came out on November 13, and it might very well be the last new movie I see in theaters this year.  If it is, then my movie-going year went out with a bang.  It's a horror-comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton, and it was directed by Christopher Landon, the same guy who did the Happy Death Day movies (which makes perfect sense because Happy Death Day is a horror take on Groundhog Day, and this one is a horror take on Freaky Friday).

Vince Vaughn plays a serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher who tries to kill Kathryn Newton's character, a high school senior named Millie, but he instead causes them to switch bodies.  The next morning, Millie wakes up in the Butcher's body and he wakes up in hers, and it's just as hilarious as you would expect.

Vaughn is hands down the best thing about this movie.  He does a phenomenal job playing a teenage girl stuck in the body of a middle-aged man, and he's gut-bustingly funny.  He changes everything from the tone of his voice to the way he moves, and it's spot-on.  There are even times when he has to fawn over the guy Millie has a crush on, and those are some of the most amazingly awkward scenes in the entire movie.  Simply put, on the comedy side, Freaky works spectacularly.

On the horror side, the film isn't quite as good, but it still works pretty well.  It's a slasher, and it leans into that subgenre more heavily than you might expect.  This is a gory film, and it has several hardcore kills that are going to really please slasher fans.  Admittedly, this isn't my preferred kind of horror, but even I appreciated how well the movie emulated the classic slashers of the 80s and 90s.  Granted, it's not nonstop gore all the time, but when the Blissfield Butcher kills people, he's brutal.

And not just when he's in his original body.  After the switch, he continues his murderous ways, and Kathryn Newton does a really good job playing him.  She's mastered the sinister look and attitude of a serial killer hiding in someone else's body, so she really makes you believe that she's the Blissfield Butcher.

On a similar note, Freaky is also a love letter to the slasher genre.  It makes some really great use of the slasher tropes we all know and love, and it has some cool callbacks to classic slasher movies like Halloween and Scream.  Even some of the weapons the killer uses are very reminiscent of the most famous killers the genre has to offer.

All that being said, the movie isn't perfect.  For example, as funny as it is, it also has several jokes that fall flat.  Luckily, there's almost always a really funny joke soon afterwards that makes up for it, but I did notice a number of bad ones.  More than that, though, I'd say that the worst part of this movie is probably the family drama between Millie, her mother, and her sister.  Millie's father passed away a year before the events of the film, and her family is still reeling from the loss.  The movie tries to make something of this, but it ends up feeling generic and halfhearted.  It's not bad enough to really take away from the film, but it doesn't add anything to it either.  It's kind of just there as a narrative thread that you notice without caring much about either way.

But those are relatively minor quibbles, so on the whole, I would give Freaky a big thumbs up.  It works well on both the comedy and horror fronts, so it gives you pretty much everything you want from it.  It's a really fun time at the theater, so if you're itching for a night out or you just want to see something new on the big screen, I'd definitely recommend checking this one out.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Classic Movie Recommendation: The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad is a 1987 horror comedy that's basically The Goonies with monsters.  It's about a group of kids who love monsters so much that they have their own monster club, and one day they have to defend their town from real-life monsters who want to take over the world.

This movie is a love letter to the classic Universal Studios monster movies of the 30's, 40's, and 50's.  It features Dracula, Frankenstein (the monster, not the doctor), a werewolf, a mummy, and a gill-man (the monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon), and it treats these horror icons with the love and respect they deserve.

The filmmakers didn't have the rights to Universal's creature designs, so they had to come up with their own looks for the monsters, and they did it almost flawlessly.  They found a way to make the monsters look different enough to avoid a lawsuit but still similar enough to pull at fans' nostalgic heartstrings.

Similarly, while some of these monsters have meatier roles than others, they all get their moments to shine.  For example, there's a funny scene where the mummy hides in a kid's closet, and when the monsters mount their final attack, the gill-man has a cool scene where he gets to show just how dangerous he really is.

Of all these classic characters, though, the heart of this film is undoubtedly Frankenstein.  He gets a great character arc with an emotional climax that's almost as powerful as the end of Bride of Frankenstein, and actor Tom Noonan gives arguably the best performance in this role since Boris Karloff.  If you're at all a fan of this monster, you will absolutely love this incarnation of him.

But Frankenstein isn't the only standout of this movie.  Dracula also shines, due mainly to actor Duncan Regehr's great performance.  He plays the count with the suave class of Bela Lugosi and the cruel bloodthirstiness of Christopher Lee, so every time you see him onscreen, he's exactly what you expect Dracula to be.

After the monsters, the other strengths of this film are hands down the characters and the dialogue.  Child actors are notoriously hit-or-miss, but these do a really good job.  They play their roles quite believably, and they have great chemistry together.  Several of them even add some real emotional depth to their characters, so by the time all hell breaks loose in the third act, you're really invested in the story because you genuinely care about whether they make it out alive.

This film also gives us some of the best one-liners in horror movie history.  While most comedies lose their laugh-out-loud factor after you've seen them a few times, there are a few moments in this film that always make me laugh no matter how many times I see it.  These jokes call back to previous events in the movie, so they have an added punch that goes beyond mere cleverness.  They piggyback on your love of the characters, so because the characters are great, the jokes are that much better.

All in all, The Monster Squad is just a super fun monster team-up movie.  It's basically The Avengers for monster fans, and it has the great characters, great one-liners, and great emotional beats to go along with that description.  If you're a fan of these classic monsters, you should definitely check this one out.  You will not be disappointed.

Friday, November 6, 2020

New Theatrical Movie Review: Come Play (No Spoilers)

Last week, I wrote about The New Mutants, the first movie I've seen in theaters since the pandemic started, and this week, I want to talk about the first brand new release (The New Mutants was already two months old when I finally saw it) I've been able to see.  Come Play is a supernatural horror film that came out on October 30, and it's about a non-verbal autistic boy who encounters a monster from another dimension that comes into our world through technology like cell phones and iPads.  He says he just wants to be the kid's friend, and he's willing to kill anybody who gets in his way.

This movie was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Jacob Chase, and while this debut has its flaws, I'm excited to see what Chase follows it up with.  The film starts with an intense scene that builds up dread and suspense just about perfectly, and throughout the rest of its runtime, Chase proves that the opener wasn't just a fluke.  In particular, he does a great job of using various tech devices in really creative ways to create some very spooky scenes.  This guy knows how to do scares and tension, so he has a bright future ahead of him.

Along similar lines, the monster was pretty cool too.  The creature design was good, and it's actually a fairly fleshed out character.  Unlike most movie monsters, he's not simply an evil being that does evil things.  I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just say this: Jacob Chase manages to turn this creepy monster into a genuinely sympathetic character that's more interesting than most villains in any genre, let alone horror.  This adds a narrative layer that you don't normally get in horror movies, and it's really cool seeing a monster done in this unconventional way.

As good as the horror elements are, though, the best thing about this movie is by far the main character.  I work with autistic kids, and let me tell you: Come Play does a fantastic job of portraying autism.  It captures some of the telltale signs of the condition in a realistic and believable way, and child actor Azhy Robertson does a fantastic job of bringing that all to life.  If I didn't know any better, I would've thought that he really was autistic.

What's more, Robertson also does a fantastic job of portraying his character's emotions without talking.  Since the kid is non-verbal, Robertson has to convey what he's feeling through facial expressions and body language, and he does it brilliantly.  Simply put, this might be the best performance I've seen by a child actor since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.  It's just that good.

All that being said, Come Play isn't perfect.  The main flaw is that the human drama isn't nearly as strong as the other elements.  In particular, it has an undercurrent of familial dysfunction, but that didn't really add anything to the movie.  It felt generic and halfhearted, almost like it was just an excuse to show off all the good things the film does.  It didn't exactly detract from the movie, but it definitely didn't help either.

That's a fairly big flaw, and it keeps this movie from being as good as it could've been.  If the story were up to par with the scares, this film would've been great.  As it is, it's merely good, but that's good enough.  Even if we weren't experiencing a dearth of new theatrical releases, a good new movie is always a treat, and it's all the more welcome at a time like this.  All in all, I was very happy with Come Play, so if you want to go back to the movies and see something creepy, I'd definitely recommend checking this one out.