Catch-Up Review: The New Mutants (No Spoilers)

After about 700 delays and release date changes, The New Mutants, a superhero/horror genre mashup that closes the book on Fox's X-Men universe, was finally released earlier this year on August 28.  Unfortunately, many theaters across the United States were still closed at that point, and many people, including me, weren't able to see it when it came out.  Thankfully, theaters by me opened up recently, so I finally got a chance to see it last weekend.  It's about a bunch of teenagers whose mutant powers have just emerged, and they're trapped in a hospital where they're ostensibly being taught how to control their powers (but you know there's something nefarious going on).

I'm a huge fan of both superheroes and horror, so I was really looking forward to this one.  The superhero genre needs to do new things and go in unexplored directions if it's going to avoid audience fatigue, and what better way to do that than to blend it with the best genre out there?  That sounds like a recipe for success, but unfortunately, this film did not live up to its promise.  The best way I can describe it is to compare it to a baseball team that can't get its pitching and hitting to work together.  When the team pitches well, it hits poorly, and when it hits well, it pitches poorly.  That's pretty much what this movie felt like.

For most of its runtime, the story was pretty generic.  The hospital ends up not being as benevolent as it seems, and it's run by an evil corporation that does evil corporation things.  The film hits the plot beats you expect it to hit, and it's decent enough that it would've been passable if the other elements of the movie had been good.  The problem is that those other elements didn't keep up their end of the bargain.  The characters were bland and one-dimensional, and the scares were generic and halfhearted, so the decent-enough storyline ended up being just another thing not to like about this film.

Then, when the characters and the scary stuff finally became good, the story got bad.  It's tough to talk about what exactly is wrong with it without spoiling it, so let me just say this.  In some ways, it reminded me of the end of Justice League.  One of my biggest problems with that movie is the way the Justice League defeats the villain, Steppenwolf.  They're fighting him with everything they have, and all of a sudden Superman shows up and wipes the floor with Steppenwolf, making all the other heroes pretty much irrelevant.

The final battle in The New Mutants is similar to that in a certain sense, but it's even worse.  It's not simply a matter of who actually defeats the bad guy (although that's definitely part of the problem); even more so, I have an issue with the way they do it.  It's just really anticlimactic, and it's not the way a superhero fight should end.  I know that's vague, but it's tough to explain it without getting into spoilers.  If you see the movie, you'll know what I mean.

So at the end of the day, unless you absolutely need to see The New Mutants, I would suggest giving it a pass.  It's not terrible, but it's not particularly good either.  It has some elements that work and a few cool moments, but those elements never come together at the same time to make an enjoyable movie.  It's sad to see one of the pioneering franchises of the modern superhero genre go out like this, but such is life.  You win some and you lose some, and this is definitely a loss.

Halloween Movie Recommendation: Trick 'r Treat

When most people think of a good Halloween horror movie, the first one that comes to mind is usually the original Halloween.  It's one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and it's hands down the most famous movie ever made about the spookiest night of the year.

But I would suggest that there's another movie that's just as essential for your Halloween viewing: Trick 'r Treat.  This film is popular in the hardcore horror fan community, but outside of that circle, it's virtually unknown.  It's a 2007 movie that for some inexplicable reason never got a theatrical release, so it went straight to video with a million other forgettable movies.  However, this one caught on with genre fans, and in horror circles, it's rightly considered essential viewing for our favorite holiday.

It's an anthology film, but it's different from most other movies in that style.  It doesn't just tell discrete, unconnected stories.  Rather, it moves back and forth from story to story, much like a regular movie with multiple subplots does, so it feels much more cohesive than your typical anthology film.  On top of that, the stories are very interconnected as well.  They all take place in a single town one year on Halloween night, and there are several narrative threads that run through more than one story in the movie.

So what makes Trick 'r Treat such a great Halloween film?  Like I said, all the stories take place on Halloween, but there's a lot more to it than just that.  This isn't one of those movies that just uses Halloween as a setting but then pretty much forgets about it later on.  No, the holiday permeates every story in the film.  They're all about different ways that people celebrate this night, and the victims in the various stories are pretty much all people who've broken some Halloween tradition.  For example, there's a kid who smashes jack-o'-lanterns and a woman who takes down her decorations before the night is over, and both of them get punished very severely for their misdeeds.  In this way, the movie celebrates the "rules" and traditions of the holiday, so if you're a big fan of Halloween (as almost all big horror fans are), you're sure to appreciate the hell out of Trick 'r Treat.

All that being said, great concepts alone don't make great movies, and the filmmakers behind this one didn't forget that.  This movie is also executed really well.  For one, even though the stories are all relatively short (as are all anthology stories), they're a lot more complicated than you normally expect from this style.  Many of them take unexpected twists and turns, so you never really know what's coming next (and if you think you do, you're often wrong).  On top of all that, the movie is just super fun.  It has some cool and intriguing monsters, and that's really what Halloween is all about.  It's about having fun with horror and just enjoying the genre, and this movie gives you a chance to do exactly that.

So this Halloween, don't limit your horror movie viewing to films that share the same name as the holiday.  Michael Myers is great, but there's more to Halloween horror than just his movies.  If you're a horror fan but you you've never seen Trick 'r Treat, then do yourself a favor and check it out.  It's well deserving of its place in the Halloween horror fall of fame, so it more than merits a spot on your holiday watchlist.

The Haunting of Bly Manor Review (No Spoilers)

The Haunting of Bly Manor is Netflix's follow-up to their 2018 hit show The Haunting of Hill House, but it's not a sequel.  It's an entirely new story based on the works of horror writer Henry James, especially his famous novella The Turn of the Screw.  It's about an American woman who goes to work as a live-in caretaker for two orphaned children in England, and soon after she arrives, spooky stuff begins to happen.

I think The Haunting of Hill House is one of the greatest horror stories I've ever seen in any format, and Bly Manor is done by pretty much the same creative team, so I was super excited for it.  Granted, I wasn't expecting it to be quite as good (lightning in a bottle is hard to catch twice!), but I still had very high hopes.  Unfortunately, though, I found it pretty disappointing.  On the whole, it's a mixed bag that stars out with a ton of potential and then squanders it as the show goes on.

The first few episodes were really good, and they set up some intriguing supernatural mysteries that I was excited to dive into.  I also really liked the characters, I thought the acting was very good, and Bly Manor itself was really cool.  Those last three elements remained pretty constant throughout the nine-episode run, and they were the only thing that made it worth watching (other than the fact that I'm such a big fan of Hill House that I had to see this one through to the end).  But everything else just went downhill after about episode three.

The deeper the show got into the main ghosts and what exactly they were trying to do, the more bored I became.  At one point, their interactions with the characters even reminded me of Sinister 2.  If you've never seen that movie, don't go looking for it.  It's not good, and one of the worst things about it is that it lets you see way too much of what the ghosts are actually doing.  When it comes to showing evil spirits onscreen, less is usually more, but the filmmakers behind Sinister 2 apparently never got that memo.  And that's how I felt about parts of The Haunting of Bly Manor.  They showed you way too much of the ghosts and their attempts to influence the people in the manor (especially the kids), and it just ruined the mystique of the story.

On top of that, there were also a few supernatural mysteries they set up that literally went nowhere.  One of them ended up not even being supernatural, and the other one just dropped out of the story at a certain point.  They never explained it, and looking back on it, it doesn't make any sense in the context of the show's mythology.  It seems like they just put it in there to add some spooky moments, but they forgot to make it work as part of the overall narrative.

Speaking of the overall narrative, that was another problem I had with the show.  One of the things that made Hill House so great is that it had a clear narrative direction.  Sure, it had various narrative threads and subplots, but they all pointed in the same direction and eventually melded into one overarching story.  Bly Manor, on the other hand, isn't nearly as tight.  The different subplots and narrative threads go in several different directions, and it often feels like you're watching more than one show.  Even when they come together at the end, it still feels like multiple stories artificially grafted together rather than a single, cohesive narrative.

And then we have the horror elements.  Much like the show as a whole, I had mixed feelings about them.  On the one hand, there wasn't nearly as much actual horror in it as I was expecting.  In fact, at times it didn't even feel like a horror show.  Sometimes it felt more like a drama that kind of just happened to have a few ghosts.  And even when the show did have spooky scenes, they often felt disconnected from the rest of the narrative.  It seemed like many of these moments were just shoehorned in because the show wouldn't have had enough scares otherwise.

On the other hand, when the scary stuff happened, it was generally pretty good.  Even when the horror elements felt a bit detached from the rest of the story, they usually worked quite well in their own right.  The show did atmospheric suspense scenes really well, and several of the ghosts looked pretty terrifying.

At the end of the day, I would say you can skip this one if it wasn't on your most-anticipated list, but if you were such a fan of The Haunting of Hill House that you just need to watch its follow-up, then I'd say The Haunting of Bly Manor is worth checking out, even if it's just to satisfy your curiosity.  It gets enough right that it's not entirely a waste of your time, but it also gets enough wrong that I can't recommend it unless you were really excited to see it.

New Movie Review: The Binding (No Spoilers)

The Binding is an Italian film that was released on October 2 on Netflix as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup.  It's about an engaged couple, Francesco and Emma, who travel to Francesco's childhood home with Emma's daughter Sofia.  Francesco is excited to introduce them to his mother for the first time, but the trip takes a turn for the worse when they realize that Sofia has become the target of a nasty curse.

Netflix original movies don't have a great reputation, but they've been starting to turn that around these past few months.  On the horror front alone, they came out with a Korean zombie movie called #Alive in September, and on the same day The Binding came out, they also released another movie called Vampires vs. The Bronx.  I really enjoyed both of them, and after watching The Binding, I'd say it belongs firmly on that same list.  This is another good original horror film from Netflix, so we genre fans just might have to start giving them a bit more respect.

The best thing about this movie is the way it manages to draw you into the story and keep you interested the whole way through.  When the main characters arrive at the house, some creepy things start to happen, but you don't quite know what exactly is going on.  Sometimes you think Francesco's family are the ones hexing the girl, and other times you think they're actually the good guys, but you can't be sure either way.  To take just one example, there's a scene where Francesco's whole family visits for dinner, and before they eat they say a prayer that sounds slightly off while still managing to be just Christian enough that you don't really have any concrete grounds to accuse them of anything.

The film keeps its secrets from you until it wants you to know them, and once you do figure out who's good and who's bad, it throws even more twists and turns at you.  The curse that's afflicting Sofia has an interesting backstory, and the movie keeps your eyes glued to the screen as you slowly learn what exactly it's doing and why it's targeting her.

The other main strength of the movie is its creepy moments.  The first half of the film is more about atmosphere than outright scares, and Director Domenico Emanuele de Feudis does a good job of letting you see enough of the creepy stuff to keep you interested without showing too much too soon.  Then, in the second half, when he clues you in to what's actually going on, you finally get a good look at the thing/person (I'm being intentionally vague so I don't spoil it) that's causing all the trouble, and it looks pretty cool.  It's nothing mind-blowing or extravagant, but what you do see is done well enough.

My only real issue with this movie is that the characters aren't super interesting.  They're not bad by any means; they're just nothing special.  They exist only to serve the supernatural intrigue, so they don't add anything of their own to the film.  The movie would've been really good if it had better characters, but as it is, it's just regular good.

So if you're looking for some good new horror to watch this Halloween season, I would recommend The Binding.  It's not going to become an all-time classic of the genre, but it's way better than what we've come to expect from Netflix original movies.  You'd do well to give this one a watch, and it's especially worthwhile given the fact that we have no major horror movies coming out in theaters for the foreseeable future.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: It Follows

It Follows is an indie horror movie that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 and received a theatrical release in March of the following year.  It follows (no pun intended) a teenage girl named Jay who has sex with an older boy named Hugh, and he passes on a mysterious curse that a previous sexual partner once passed on to him.

This curse involves a supernatural entity that walks towards Jay at a slow, Michael Myers-like pace, and if it ever catches her, it will kill her.  She can run away from it, but wherever she goes, it will keep following her and eventually catch up to her.  The only way she can escape it is to have sex with someone else and pass the curse on to them, but if it kills that person, it will go back to chasing her.

One of the most unique things about this film is that it never reveals the creature's true form.  The monster is visible only to those who've been cursed by it (even if they've passed it on to others), and every time we see it, it looks different.  Sometimes it takes the form of people Jay knows, and other times it looks like random strangers, which makes for a very paranoid viewing experience.  Since the creature can look like anybody and since almost nobody can see it, you're never quite sure where the thing is until it's too close for comfort.  It makes you constantly scan the screen for anybody walking in a slow, straight line towards Jay, so even when the characters are just sitting around talking in a seemingly safe environment, you feel an incessant anxiety that eats away at you throughout the entire movie.

Then, when you realize the monster is finally onscreen, it becomes scary in a different but equally effective way.  Sometimes, Jay doesn't even realize the thing is there, but since we do, the tension mounts higher and higher with every slow step it takes.  Other times, Jay does recognize it, and even though she can easily run away from it (since it walks so slowly), the film still manages to unnerve you.  Just knowing that this monster is slowly walking towards her and that there's nothing she can do about it is really distressing.  Plus, when it takes a seemingly harmless form, like that of an old person, the juxtaposition of a harmless exterior with a really dangerous reality hiding beneath it is really unsettling.

The other main strength of this movie is its meaning.  On the surface, it seems like it's just a metaphor for STD's, but it actually goes deeper than that.  Throughout the film, one of Jay's friends is reading a book on an e-reader, and every so often she'll read snippets of it out loud to her friends.  By the end of the movie, you realize that all of these excerpts are about the inevitability of death, and that's the key to understanding the film's meaning.

The monster symbolizes death, which comes for us all, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.  No matter how far we run, it will keep coming for us, and it will eventually catch us regardless of where we may be.  Even if we pass on the curse of death by having children (just like people pass on this movie's curse by having sex), we're still on its hit list, so we're not off the hook.

That may sound like a depressing meaning, and in a sense it is, but like I said in my recommendation of Re-Animator, good art deals with profound truths of the human condition even if they're unpleasant truths.  That being said, this movie does deal with that truth in an uplifting way.  I don't want to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that by the end of the movie, the characters left on the monster's agenda give a great example of how to face the inevitability of death.  They show us that we can't let our mortality dominate our thoughts and cripple our wills.  We have to bravely face our inescapable destiny and just live.  It's all we can do, so we should do it as best we can.

It's a shame that more people haven't seen It Follows, as I think it's one of the best horror films of this millennium.  It has a wildly original plot, it has an underlying sense of paranoia that doesn't go away until the credits roll, and it also gives us some real substance to think about.  This movie comes with my highest recommendation, so if you're looking for something new to watch, you should give this one a shot.

New Movie Review: Antebellum (No Spoilers)

Antebellum is a new horror movie about a black author named Veronica Henley who somehow gets mixed up in time and must escape a plantation in the Antebellum South.  It was originally supposed to come out back in April of this year, but it was postponed due to the pandemic.  It was rescheduled for August, but then it got pushed back a second time, and it finally came out through VOD on September 18.

While I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this one, I was looking forward to it because it seemed to have an interesting premise and it's the first film intended for theatrical release (at least originally) that I've been able to see since theaters across the nation shut down around six months ago.  Unfortunately, I was really, really disappointed with it.  This movie is just plain bad.

For starters, for most of the film's runtime, I had no idea what it was about.  Sure, I knew the basic description I gave in my intro paragraph, but the movie doesn't clue you in to anything more than that until over an hour in.  It begins in the past, and for the entire time you're there, nothing that happens moves the plot forward.  It's all just a cinematic lecture about how bad slavery was, and it gets old really quickly.

Then, when you finally jump to the present, it gets a bit better, but it's still very light on actual plot.  You get to know the character of Veronica a bit, but you're still not sure where the narrative is headed.  Only when the two timelines begin to merge do you finally understand what the movie is actually about, but once that happens, the movie somehow gets even worse.

I don't want to spoil it in case you decide to see it, so I'll be vague.  Suffice it to say that you learn almost immediately how the two timelines get tangled, and the explanation for it is entirely underwhelming.  It fails on both the literal, narrative level and the metaphorical, thematic level.  As a narrative twist, it's downright bland.  It's way less interesting than the mystery it explains, much like how pulling back the curtain on a magic trick takes away the intrigue that makes you care about it in the first place.

And on the thematic level, it's a metaphor for racism that somehow manages to say both too much and too little at the same time.  At its best, it tells us that modern American racism has roots in slavery, but that's not news to anyone.  Everyone knows this, so it doesn't add anything to our national conversation about race relations or enrich anybody's understanding of the subject.  And at its worst, this narrative choice seems to equate modern racism with slavery, which is going way too far.  Yes, racism is definitely still a problem in our country today, but we've made significant progress nonetheless.  To imply that we haven't is just factually incorrect.

All of that being said, though, this movie does have a few bright spots.  The acting is pretty good (especially lead actress Janelle Monae); the transitions between the two timelines are really cool; and there are even a few times where they make you think you've switched timelines but you really haven't, and those shots are very well-done.

However, those bright spots are few and far between, so on the whole, I have to recommend that you give this movie a pass.  It fails to have anything new, interesting, or important to say about racism and race relations in America today, and it conveys its dull message with an equally dull narrative.  Simply put, there's just not much about this movie that makes it worth watching.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: The Taking of Deborah Logan

The Taking of Deborah Logan is a found footage possession movie from 2014 about a documentary film crew that spends some time with an Alzheimer's patient named Deborah Logan and her daughter Sarah.  Their purpose is to make a film about Deborah's disease, but they soon learn that she's afflicted by something much worse than just a neurological disorder.

Much like Relic from earlier this year, this film does a great job of depicting Alzheimer's and integrating it seamlessly with the supernatural.  Not only does it portray the disease accurately (my grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and much of what Deborah does in this movie reminds me of my family's experiences), but it also blurs the line between Alzheimer's and possession.  Up until the third act, you're never quite sure if Deborah's strange behavior is due to her illness or to supernatural forces, and that makes for an intriguing twist on the possession subgenre.

Along similar lines, the movie also eschews the traditional demon possession storyline that we've seen a million times since The Exorcist, instead giving you an original mythology and background to Deborah's affliction.  She's not just possessed by a demon who enjoys being a jerk for its own sake.  No, there's a specific reason why this supernatural force is targeting her, and the movie does a great job of slowly unraveling that mystery as the film goes on.

All of this works so well largely because of actress Jill Larson's performance as Deborah.  She does a fantastic job of portraying both an Alzheimer patient and a possession victim, sometimes simultaneously.  Up until the movie goes full-on supernatural, you can never quite tell if she's trying to act possessed or just ill.  In particular, she really excels at being calm but having a look of pure evil on her face.  Even without saying a word or moving a muscle, there are times when she just looks wrong, and that's as creepy as anything else in the film.

And speaking of creepy things, the scares in this movie are really well done too.  Director Adam Robitel takes full advantage of both the blurred line between Alzheimer's and possession and Jill Larson's ability to play both afflictions perfectly.  He knows when to be subtle and when to be more in your face; he knows when to have things jump out from the shadows and when to sit back and just let the creepy atmosphere work on its own.  Simply put, this guy knows how to make a horror movie, and it shows.

The only real issue I had with the film is that in a couple of scenes set in dark rooms, you can't help but wonder why the characters don't just turn the lights on.  That's admittedly a bit of a nitpick, and it by no means ruins the movie, but it's noticeable enough that it does take you out of those scenes a tiny bit.

Despite that one flaw, though, this is still a really good movie.  It has good acting, good scares, and most importantly, an intriguing twist on your basic possession storyline.  It's refreshing to see such an original film in such an overdone subgenre, so if you're a fan of supernatural horror in general or possession films in particular, you should definitely check out The Taking of Deborah Logan.  You do not want to miss this one.