New Movie Review: Saint Maud

If you follow new horror releases beyond the big mainstream hits, you've almost certainly heard of Saint Maud.  It's the newest movie from A24, the company behind films like The Witch and Hereditary.  It was supposed to come out last year, but when the pandemic hit, its release became an absolute mess.  At first, it just got pushed back a few months, then it was removed from the release schedule entirely for a while, and it finally had a limited theatrical debut back on January 29 of this year.

And when I say limited, that's probably a bit of an understatement.  I live in one of the biggest movie markets in America, and this movie wasn't playing at a single theater near me.  The closest I saw on Fandango was one theater about an hour away, so I doubt many people got to see it on the big screen.  Instead, the vast majority of us had to wait until February 12, when it came out on VOD exclusively through the premium channel Epix.  It's a really obnoxious release strategy, but if you get a free trial subscription to Epix and then cancel it before they start charging you, you can actually watch this movie for free.  So it's not all bad.

But enough about the saga of Saint Maud's release.  Let's get to the actual movie.  It's a psychological horror film about a nurse named Maud who recently converted to Catholicism, and she's assigned to care for a dying cancer patient at the person's house.  Her newfound faith compels her to try to save this patient's soul, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

Just like every other A24 horror movie, Saint Maud is very atmospheric and very slow.  You need to be a very patient viewer to enjoy this one, so if you're looking for scares every few minutes, this is not the film for you.  In fact, for most of its runtime, it plays more like a drama than a horror movie, so this movie is definitely not for everyone.

However, if you're the kind of horror fan who would enjoy something like this, then you'll be richly rewarded.  For one, all of the technical aspects of the film are spot on, from the acting to the cinematography to the directing.  I especially enjoyed Morfyyd Clark's performance as Maud.  When the movie begins, she plays the role with a perfect combination of strong confidence and fearful timidity, so you totally buy her as a recent convert who completely believes in her faith but who is still very much haunted by the fact that it makes her different from everyone around her.  Then, as Maud's mental state deteriorates throughout the film, Clark also portrays every step along that path just as skillfully.

Secondly, the story is quite interesting too.  I don't want to give away any of the movie's secrets, so I'm going to be vague here.  There's more to this film than just the official plot synopsis (which I summarized above), and once it begins to deviate from that, it becomes really intriguing.  Maud isn't just a psycho religious fanatic who does bad things in the name of her religion.  She struggles with her faith, and seeing that struggle and the way it ties in with her overall mental and emotional condition is really fascinating.

In a similar vein, I also really like the unique way this movie portrays Maud's Catholicism. A lot of horror movies feature psycho religious fanatics, and they give the impression that their villains are supposed to accurately represent their religions (even if that's not actually their intention).  Take the 1976 classic Carrie, for example.  Any Christian worth their salt will tell you that Carrie's mother doesn't represent authentic Christianity, but it sometimes feels like the movie itself doesn't understand that.  However, Saint Maud is different.  The way I see it, Maud's psycho fanaticism is supposed to be a deviation from authentic Catholicism.  I think the whole point of it is that Maud practices some sort of bastardization of the Catholic faith rather than the real thing, and that makes for a much more interesting story than just a straightforward "religion is bad" kind of morality tale.

Thirdly and finally, we have the horror.  This movie doesn't have any real scares until the very end, but it has some creepy stuff to hold you over as you wait for the "good stuff."  In particular, Maud's extreme religious experiences and practices are quite unsettling, and the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of them stick with you well after the credits roll.  Then, when the big finale comes and you finally get some legit scares, they hit hard.  I obviously don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that the last few scenes of this movie are well worth the wait.

So if you're looking for something new to watch this month, then look no further.  This is the best movie of the year so far.  Granted, that's not saying much in February, but I think it still counts for something.  I really liked this movie, and if you're the kind of horror fan who would enjoy an extremely slow, character-driven story with a creepy undertone and a hard-hitting ending, then you need to watch Saint Maud right now.

New VOD Movie Review: The Reckoning

The Reckoning is a new movie from director Neil Marshall, the guy behind behind Dog Soldiers and The Descent, two of the best horror movies of the 2000s. It premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival last August, and it was released to the general public on February 5 on VOD.  It's about a woman named Grace who's unfairly accused of witchcraft in 17th century England, and she suffers incredible torture at the hands of a witchfinder who hopes to wrest a confession from her.  It got mainly negative reviews out of Fantasia, but I was still looking forward to it.  I'm always interested in new projects from good horror directors, so I wanted to see this one for myself.

And when I finally saw it, I totally understood why it got such bad reviews.  While I think Marshall did a great job directing it, the story is just really weak.  He elevated it as much as he could and made it watchable, but on the whole, it's not a good movie.

When it starts, you see Grace living happily with her husband, but then he dies tragically when a plague sweeps the land.  She struggles to make ends meet for her and her baby, and one day, her landlord tries to take advantage of her situation and coerce her into having sex.  She refuses, so in return he accuses her of being a witch.

This part of the film is actually really good.  Grace is a compelling character, her story is interesting, and Marshall saturates the whole thing with a creepy atmosphere that keeps your eyes glued to the screen.  In particular, there are a few times when Grace has some supernatural visions or hallucinations, and those scenes are really cool.  The visuals are all spot on, so as I was watching it, I began to get my hopes up that I would actually end up liking this movie.

But then after Grace gets arrested and the witchfinder begins to torture her, the film takes a very steep nosedive in quality.  It still has some cool visuals and a great atmosphere, but the story just doesn't hold up.  Her trial takes place over a few days, and every day is basically the same thing.  She's tortured, the witchfinder tries to get her to confess, and she has a weird hallucination or dream about the devil and/or her dead husband.  Then they do it all over again the next day, and after a while, it feels like a boring, messed up version of Groundhog Day.  I completely lost interest in it, so I even had trouble enjoying the few things this part of the movie does well.

Finally, after a few days of this narrative monotony, the story changes gears one last time, and something a bit more interesting happens.  I don't want to spoil it in case you still want to see it, so I won't mention any specifics here.  Suffice it to say, the third act is better than the second, but that's not saying much.  While it maintains the good visuals and atmosphere, it's too little too late.  It's not nearly good enough to redeem the movie, so by the time the credits rolled, I was just really happy to be able to write this review and move on with my life.

All that being said, I do have to admit that I'm glad I watched The Reckoning, and not just because I can say that I saw it for myself and made my own judgment about it (although that's definitely a huge part of it).  Like I said, Neil Marshall elevated this bland story as much as he could, and I did genuinely enjoy the visuals and the atmosphere.  But I still can't recommend this film.  It's not a complete waste of your time, but the bad far outweighs the good here, so unless you just need to see this one for yourself, I'd recommend giving it a pass and waiting for something better.

New VOD Movie Review: The Night

The Night is an Iranian and American coproduction (most of the dialogue is in Farsi) that premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in January of 2020, and it was released on VOD on January 29 of this year.  Just about all the descriptions I've seen of this movie call it a psychological thriller, but there's way more to it than just that.  It definitely has a heavy psychological bent, but it's also a supernatural story.  Overall, I think the best way to describe this film is to call it a supernatural psychological thriller, something you don't see all that often.

It follows an Iranian couple with a young baby, and it starts out innocently enough at a dinner party.  Everybody seems to be having a good time, and after the party ends, the family drives home like they would any other night.  But this isn't any other night.  For some reason, their GPS bugs out on them, and after a few hours of driving around, they give up and decide to spend the night at a hotel.  Immediately after they arrive, they begin to experience some strange phenomena, and when you see it, you're not entirely sure what to make of it.  At first, most of what happens seems weird but still explicable by natural means, but then the movie starts leaning more heavily into tropes that are very typical of supernatural horror.  For example, the characters begin to hear strange noises, and they see some creepy kids running around the hotel.

Soon enough, the supernatural element becomes impossible to deny, and you realize that you're watching an intriguing mix between a stereotypical supernatural horror movie and a psychological thriller.  Like I said before, it's a combination you don't see too much, but it works really well here.  The film blends both subgenres pretty seamlessly, making for an eerily effective mystery that keeps you guessing the whole way through.

And that's the biggest strength of The Night.  In fact, it's just about the film's only strength.  The plot is almost non-existent (it's literally just about this family in the hotel), and the characters are just barely fleshed out enough to support the story, but it totally works.  The scares and the mystery are so good that you don't really notice the movie's shortcomings.

In particular, this film really shines because the supernatural force in the hotel isn't just trying to scare its victims.  More than anything else, it's messing with their heads, and that sets the movie apart from the rest of the supernatural horror pack.  This thing is trying to disorient the couple and strike at their deepest emotional vulnerabilities, so the film eschews elaborate, in-your-face scares and flashy monsters that come out and smack you over the head with how terrifying they are.

Instead, the creepy scenes in this one are much more subtle.  They're more about unsettling you and inducing a pervasive feeling of dread than they are about creating individual scare moments (although the film definitely has those too).  Each time something spooky happens, it helps to build the overall atmosphere of terror and confusion, and it all adds up to a mysterious and unnerving whole that's much more satisfying than a bunch of loosely connected jump scares.

All that being said, the movie does have one big flaw.  The last twenty minutes or so get really weird, and I thought it went a bit too far in that direction.  It almost feels like you're watching a completely different movie, so it starts to become disconnected from what came before.

That's pretty much the movie's only real weakness, so it's not enough to derail the entire thing.  On the whole, The Night is still a very effective and creepy supernatural thriller that keeps you guessing from start to finish.  It messes with both its characters' and its viewers' heads, creating an intriguing mashup that combines the best elements of the psychological and supernatural subgenres.  I'm very happy to report that this is the first good horror movie of 2021, so if you've been itching to finally see something new that won't leave you disappointed when the credits roll, I highly recommend checking this one out.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: Terrified

In the last few years, I've been getting into foreign horror a lot.  I still love my American movies, but films from other countries often give us new and exciting experiences that we don't normally get from Hollywood or from independent American filmmakers.  They frequently don't follow the same rules and tropes that most domestic movies are beholden to, and their different cultural settings sometimes make for unique storytelling opportunities.

One of the best examples of this is Terrified, an Argentine movie from 2017.  It's about a string of weird, interconnected supernatural phenomena that take place in a seemingly normal, suburban town in Buenos Aires.  The first half of the movie details some of these strange events, and in the second half, a group of paranormal investigators set up shop in some of the houses and try to make sense of it all.

That may sound a bit generic, but I promise you, this movie is anything but.  To begin, the monsters look like they come straight out of your nightmares, and director Demián Rugna knows how to milk them for all the terror they're worth.  He saturates the scary scenes with a great atmosphere, and when he builds up the tension right before a big reveal or a scare, he does it at just about the perfect pace.  From a pure horror perspective, this is one of the best movies I've seen in recent years.

On top of that, the film also keeps you on your toes by never telling you just what its monsters are.  The best you get is a vague, nonspecific theory from one of the paranormal investigators, but it doesn't really explain much of anything.  Because of that, you can't pigeonhole this movie into a single subgenre of horror.  One moment, it can seem like a ghost or demon movie, and then in the very next scene it can seem more like a zombie film.

And it doesn't just do that once.  Your understanding of these creatures changes a few times, and when it does, it sometimes feels like you've switched to a completely different movie.  This unpredictability makes the plot really interesting and keeps you invested in the story. You can't help but want to know more about what's going on, so your eyes stay glued to the screen.

What's more, the fact that you never know what's coming next also keeps you on the edge of your seat just about the entire time.  The next scare can come from anywhere and in any way, so you can never settle down and get comfortable with the movie.  In particular, once the paranormal researchers come onto the scene and begin their investigation in earnest, all bets are off.  You have no idea what they're going to encounter, so every time it looks like something even remotely scary might happen, the tension immediately ratchets up to ten.  Just about anything could be lurking around every corner and in every dark hole, so you just have no idea what's going to come at you from one moment to the next.  It's a wild ride, and once it starts, it doesn't let up until the credits roll.

So if you're looking for something different from your typical genre fare, I would definitely recommend checking out Terrified.  Not only is it really creepy, but it's also a prime example of why foreign horror is so great.  It tells a new and unique story that you don't normally get from American studios or filmmakers, and it cuts straight across subgenre lines, giving you a unique viewing experience that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else.  

Classic Movie Recommendation: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1988 horror comedy that's just as ridiculous as its name suggests.  It's about a group of aliens that come to earth to kidnap and eat people, and yes, these aliens are clowns.  Not only do they have the look, but their spaceship is also a big circus tent, and they encase people in cotton candy before taking them back there.

I'm not going to pretend that this film is a shining example of the fine art of cinema.  It's not.  It's just an hour and a half of dumb fun, so if the premise of this movie doesn't appeal to you, then you're almost certainly not going to like it.  But if it sounds like something you'd enjoy, then you need to watch it.  It's one of the greatest horror comedies of all time, and it's absolutely hilarious.  For example, it has great lines of dialogue like this one:

"It was a space ship. And there was these things, these killer clowns, and they shot popcorn at us! We barely got away!"

On top of that, the clowns themselves are pretty cool too.  The filmmakers managed to create a look for them that fits the movie's tone just about perfectly.  They appear deformed or mutated, so they're obviously inhuman bad guys, but they don't look downright evil like Pennywise or Art the Clown.  Instead, they have a humorously warped look that lets you know they're monsters, but in a funny way.

Just seeing these clowns walk around town looking for victims is a hoot, but the real treat is seeing what they do to the people they come across.  They use various circus stereotypes to charm their victims and get them to put their guard down, and then the clowns either kill them or capture them.  To take just a few examples, one of the clowns lures in an unknowing victim with a puppet show, and another one does something similar by making shadow puppets with his hands.

But the clowns aren't the only thing this movie gets right.  Great monsters are obviously a must, but if the characters were bad, then this film would've faded into obscurity like a million other horror comedies with similarly ridiculous premises.  Thankfully, though, this movie succeeds on that front as well.

For instance, there's a curmudgeonly old cop named Deputy Mooney who doesn't believe any of this is real.  He's absolutely convinced that the entire town is just playing an elaborate prank on him, and the movie plays his extreme skepticism as a running joke that gets funnier and funnier as the evidence for the clowns begins to pile up.  And then we have the Terenzi brothers, a pair of buffoons who drive an ice cream truck, and their shenanigans fit right in with the tone of the film.

Finally, we have the main characters, a high school couple named Mike and Debbie and a young cop named Dave.  They're the heart and soul of this story (at least inasmuch as a movie like this even has a heart and soul), so they're much more serious than the other characters.  They ground the film with some real emotional tension, so you find yourself actually caring what happens to them.

When we put this all together, we get a genuinely great horror comedy that's stood the test of time.  This movie combines likeable characters with hilarious monsters, so when the credits roll, you feel completely satisfied.  It has everything you could want out of a movie named Killer Klowns from Outer Space, so if you're a fan of horror comedies with hysterically ridiculous premises, you do not want to miss out on this one.

Classic Movie Recommendation: The Changeling

Despite what its name might suggest, The Changeling isn't actually about a changeling (a monster that kidnaps people and then pretends to be them), at least not literally.  It's a haunted house movie from 1980, and it's about a musician who moves to a new city after losing his wife and daughter in a car accident.  As you can probably guess, weird stuff starts to happen in his new house, and he eventually realizes that he's living with a ghost.

This is one of those classic movies that hardcore horror buffs usually know about, but for some reason it tends to fly under the radar for most casual fans.  It's an absolutely fantastic film, so it deserves to be seen by a lot more people.  This isn't just a fun eighties cheese fest like The Monster Squad or a guilty pleasure that many hardcore genre fans share.  No, this is a legitimately good movie.  In fact, Martin Scorsese named it as one of his eleven scariest movies of all-time, so you know it's a quality film.

So what makes it so good?  Why would one of the most celebrated directors of all time commend it so highly?  Well, there are a few reasons.  For one, the plot is really interesting.  I know that the description I gave in the intro paragraph makes it sound super generic, but there's actually a lot more to it than that.  This isn't a typical haunted house movie where the ghost is just a huge jerk.  No, he has a really compelling backstory, so there's an actual reason for the haunting.

I obviously don't want to spoil anything, so I'll simply say that it leads to an intriguing mystery about just what happened to him, and the main character has to figure it out step by step, almost like Rachel in The Ring.  This mystery is where the name The Changeling comes from, and when you see it, you'll totally get it.

On top of that, the acting is pretty good too.  In particular, the main character is played by George C. Scott, a former Oscar winner, and he does not disappoint.  He makes you believe that he's a lonely widower trying to start a new life after losing his family, and once the plot really gets going, his performance hooks you and reels you in.  He would've elevated the movie even if the story were mediocre, but the combination of an intriguing plot with his great performance keeps your eyes glued to the screen in a way that few other horror movies can.

And finally, we have the scares.  This movie is forty years old, so it's probably not going to give you nightmares, but it's still pretty effective.  Unlike way too many haunted house movies these days, it doesn't rely on jump scares or creepy ghosts to get the job done.  Instead, it's all about atmosphere, suspense, and the fact that what you don't see is often scarier than what you do, so it manages to convey a sense of terror and dread in a way that hasn't lost nearly as much of its potency as its age might suggest.

All in all, if you're a horror fan and you haven't seen The Changeling, then do yourself a favor and go watch it.  Now.  There's a reason why Martin Scorsese recommends this movie.  It's that good.  It features a great lead performance from George C. Scott, it has an intriguing plot that'll make you want to stick around and find out what happens next, and it has timeless scares that still work four decades later.  There's so much to like about this movie, so it comes with my highest recommendation.  You won't be disappointed.

New VOD Movie Review: Shadow in the Cloud

Shadow in the Cloud is an action-horror movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and it was released to the general public on January 1, 2021 via VOD.  It takes place during World War 2, and it stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Maude Garrett, a woman who hops on a military plane at the last minute with orders to protect a top-secret package.  The crew is suspicious of both her and the package, so they force her to stay in a small, one-person compartment on the underside of the plane where she can only communicate with them through an intercom system.  Soon afterwards, she sees a gremlin crawling on one of the wings, and as you can probably guess, the creature makes things very difficult for everybody on board.

This movie is about 80 minutes long, and for the first hour or so, I was really liking it.  Since Maude is in a small compartment by herself, this first part is essentially a one-woman show, and Chloe Grace Moretz absolutely nails it.  She's the best part of the movie overall, and in this first hour, she carries it almost entirely by herself.  I say almost entirely because the crewmen did their part too.  Even though they're just voices on an intercom, they feel like real people.  None of them are particularly unique or memorable on their own, but they somehow come together to form a whole that's much better than just the sum of its parts.  What's more, the mystery of the package is pretty intriguing as well.  The movie really makes you want to know what's in there, and it had my mind racing with all the cool things I thought it could've been.

And then we have the gremlin.  The film introduces it at a good pace, initially giving you little glimpses of the monster and then letting you see it more and more as time goes on, and once you see it in all its glory, it's way different from the cute little creatures you remember from the 80s.  This is a grotesque, rat-like monster that looks like it can and will rip your face off the first chance it gets, and I really liked it.

But then the movie changes.  At about the one hour mark, it tells you what's in the package, and I found that revelation really underwhelming.  I obviously don't want to spoil it, so I'll simply say this: it feels like a lame attempt to give Maude some more emotional depth, and it just takes time away from the elements of the movie that actually work.  What's more, the film also becomes a lot more action-heavy at this point, and surprisingly, that just makes it worse.  The little bits and pieces of action we get during the first hour are really good, but in these last twenty minutes or so, the quality drops dramatically.

The biggest problem with the action in the third act is that most of it centers around a group of Japanese fighter planes that come out of nowhere, and the gremlin is pretty much relegated to a side role.  The creature just makes it more difficult for the characters to fend off these random attackers, so it feels like the filmmakers simply shoehorned it into a story that originally had no horror at all.  The first hour does a really good job of setting this monster up as the main threat, and it's a huge bummer to see the movie switch gears and completely botch the payoff.

All in all, I actually liked the majority of this movie.  Like I said, the first hour is really good, so the part I didn't like was only twenty minutes.  The problem is that it was the last twenty minutes, which is arguably the most important part.  Movies need to stick the landing, and if they don't, then they leave you with a bad taste in your mouth that can sometimes outweigh all the good they did up until then.  And that was the case with this movie.  I wish that the first hour could've outweighed the third act, but it didn't.  For me, those last twenty minutes just ruined all the good they did in the previous sixty, so I have to say that I wouldn't recommend Shadow in the Cloud.  Instead, you should just catch up on some 2020 films that you might've missed (like maybe a few of these) to pass the time before the first good movie of this new year comes out.