Reviews

Every minute of this film is carefully thought out: dialogue, camera movements, lighting, music. And the acting was absolutely top-notch. A definite recommend, IMHO.

This easily could have been a snooze-fest, as the entire film hangs of a pretty familiar central event that then un-spools in directions that no protagonist could have predicted. But for all that, it none-the-less feels like no other film I have seen recently.

For mood, I might compare it to "Sunchoke." However, the locale here is very different: semi-rural, not urban. And, frankly, SDT's depiction of teen life in small town New York is so true to form that the film really does occupy a unique niche in that regard. Each of these particular teen characters is so well drawn-out that it's almost like they were always there. I was very impressed.

I absolutely loved Jackson's "Bad Taste" and "Dead Alive" (aka "Brain Dead"). "The Frighteners" on the other hand indulged Jackson's impulse for overly long running times, while sanding off everything that made his prior films great: the manic energy and bizarre, dark humor.

I suspect the reason for this is the involvement of Robert Zemeckis at the top. It feels more like something he would have put out in the mid-1980s (or maybe Reitman or Spielberg) than anything Jackson had made up to that point. As film, it is technically flawless, but also strangely lifeless - a series of vignettes held together with a bare premise (dead socio-path back to wreak revenge). I didn't hate it, but I won't ever revisit it again.

Not really my cup of tea, but not nearly as bad as some reviews suggest. Yes, the lighting (or lack thereof) is an issue, but gaffers tend to inflate the budgets of zero-budget productions, so . .

Anyway, Garcia appears to have aimed for the Roth/Zombie market and this one is pretty decent if that is your thing (though I would add that most of the gore is suggested here rather than depicted). The acting is decent. And while most aspects of the plot are hardly original, the subordinate plot-line involving the homecoming is a bit different than anything I can remember seeing (though it is wrapped-up a bit too conveniently).

Finally, Garcia appears to have tried, somewhat unevenly, to include some art-house style camera work here and there. For example, there are a few vignettes toward the end that, while straining credulity as a story, do work as atmosphere. Oh, and the ending is a bit of a throw-back to a different era. I actually liked that aspect of the film.

Wow. This is one that slipped below my radar, but once I sat down to view it I was very impressed.

It's a strange one. The acting (by relative unknowns, at that), writing and direction are uniformly excellent. Yet despite the professed debt to 1962s "Carnival of Souls," the film's tone, pacing and dialogue reminded me a lot of 1970s American cinema ("Black Christmas," "Messiah of Evil," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" "Carrie").

Much of the tone and mood is the result of the excellent cinematography of Russell Carpenter ("Titanic," "Avatar"). Carpenter simply (and wisely) avoids the point-and-shoot angles and Americanized giallo lighting schemes that were unavoidable in horror cinema from roughly 1980-1990. As a result, the film feels much less dated in many respects than its peers from the first half of the 1980s.

At any rate, there is indeed a slow burn quality to the film. But I strongly disagree with the assessment that it ends with a whimper. I thought the last twenty were quite tense and the ending a real banger (if not mostly foreseeable).

P. S. Eberhardt dots the film with a number of clever homages and references to his horror predecessors and influences. There is a sort of Eastern egg feeling to noting them throughout the film.

I watched "Manos: the Hands of Fate" (1966) not too long ago. It is often characterized as one of the worst films ever made. Technically, that is probably true.

By contrast, "Better Watch Out" comes garbed as a technically astute film that, nonetheless, manages to be so tasteless, so tone-deaf and so eager to milk its single plot point from tip-to-toe, that it's only saving grace is the fact that it clocks in under 90 minutes.

I truly despised this film. It seems to want to be something like "Black Christmas (1974)." But Bob Clark was a fine director and Roy Moore an equally fine writer. Here, once the "twist" is introduced, we are simply asked to endure an endless parade of fairly predicable and, in many cases, tasteless, gags and scenarios until the bitter end.

Levi Miller will want to leave this execrable piece of work off his resume. And Olivia DeJonge better have a word with her agents.

Yes, the camera work is a mess (think: out of focus shots, or lingering shots for no particular reason). Yes, there is much standing around doing nothing in place of dialogue. And what dialogue there is in MTHOF is often insipid. And, no, Mr. Warren cannot act. Oh, and the voice substitution for the young girl almost beggars belief.

That said, if you think of this as an amateur play, it kinda works. There is a story. The movie is mercifully short. And the actors are at least handsome/pretty and/or memorable.

Over the years, I have seen plenty of big budget movies that I hated far more than this excursion.

On one level, "New Religion" comes dressed as the familiar onryo- the departed female child haunting the living (though in this film it is a haunting that is more obviously psychological than supernatural). On another level, this feels much more like a contemporary Panos Cosmatos or Brandon Cronenberg film, particularly in its very offbeat script, lighting choices (particularly the red filter), ambient noise and use of silence during framing shots. The film is a slow-burn, but it is thought-inducing (if that is your cup of brew). It is also strangely pessimistic.

At the heart of the movie is the wonderfully understated acting of Kaho Seto as "Miyabi," the mother whose moment of absence leads to a tragedy that compounds over time until it becomes horrific. As a sort of purgatory (one can only surmise), Miyabi divorces, becomes a call girl, attaches herself to a rather boy-ish club D. J. boyfriend and then finds herself enmeshed in a strange relationship with a client ("Oka," a photographer who lives in a dark room and requires a digital projection of his voice). The client only wants to photographs parts of Miyabi's body one session at a time (spine, legs, ears, etc.). It is a remarkably non-sexual (but also, rather creepy) arrangement. (In that respect, this film's male protagonist-photographer actually does find a cousin in Kurosawa's "Creepy.")

Yet it is the photographer, not Miyabi's boyish boyfriend, who engages her tragedy: Oka tells her at one point that he has kept her daughter alive; that the daughter is still in Miyabi's apartment; that the daughter dreams of her mother. Miyabi knows otherwise; and yet she comes to embrace the premise, leaving her boyfriend and her handler befuddled in the process. At another time, the photographer tells her that he has given her the "dream" of her daughter, but that he wants "her history" in return; that he is like a "moth" and that moths are "envious" of those with a history.

So what are we to make of all of this? Is the photographer a predator drawn to those with tragedies? Or is the point less literal and more general: that we are dealing here with an allegory of grief: That humans seek to piece together various moments of loss and tragedy for a resolution, "meaning" or whole that will nonetheless escape us? Or is it that each little act of selfishness, whether intended or not, adds up to a horrific whole? Or perhaps that our ability to lose ourselves in a fiction leaves us unable to say where we end and others begin (the photographer has quite a bit to say about the dreamer-confronting-the-dreamed in one of his monologues)?

But the film avoids such singular answers. And at the end we are presented with both a type of forgiveness for Miyabi and further horror for her, which seem to defy any notion of resolution. Indeed, if there is an additional backstory here, it is mass violence (the movie does not dwell on this, but rather gives us glimmers of the outside, larger world). And if there is an additional metaphor at work here, it is the idea of metamorphosis; that the photographer "changes" those with whom he comes in contact, and that the change is inevitably catastrophic. Oka promised Miyabi a restoration of her loved one, but uses Miyabi for a hateful end. In contrast, the boyfriend relates to her his belief that Miyabi is singular and cannot be "replaced." He relates to her his desire to spend his life with her, but also concedes his inability to make that happen. He loves "everything," and wants to restore the "fun" of when they first met. In sum, he is no savior.

I can't say that I figured this one out, but it was fun trying. (Bonus points for the Def Leppard "Photograph" references in this film!)

The Story: Parents ("Rebecca" and "Guillermo") desperate to save the life of their youngest daughter ("Luna") take Luna and her older sister ("Nala") to the countryside to visit the maternal grandmother ("Josefa") at her crumbling manorial estate. As the parental search for the cure requires more travel, they drop off Luna and Nala with Josefa while they continue their journey alone.

We quickly learn that the imperious and demanding Josefa has little patience for the outbursts of Nala. And Josefa's dismissive attitude toward her pre-teen granddaughter, while also dotting endlessly on Luna, bring Josefa and Nala to loggerheads at several points in the film. (Let's just say an iPhone pays a heavy price at a key moment in the film.) With Josefa at her neck, Nala quickly turns to the hired-help, "Pedro" and "Abigail," for assistance. With mixed results.

What follows is a rather well-done, but also rather conventional, story that feels closer to a Guillermo del Toro offering than Ezban's surprisingly off-beat and wonderfully surreal "The Incident" and "The Similars." The sets and lighting in "Evil Eye" are top notch, bathed in filtered light and the olive, hunter green, slate gray and yellowed color schemes that have become so familiar in the horror genre for the last twenty years or so. Yet at the heart of "Evil Eye" is a familiar folktale or parable: That a request for supernatural intervention in the present will require even greater sacrifices down the road. It was simply Nala's fate to be caught up in a transaction that was undertaken years ago, but now requires the debt to be repaid.

Indeed, it is one of Abigail's rural legends involving witchcraft that convince Nala at an early point in the movie that grandma really is a bruja. After enduring Josefa's dismissive and (frankly) cruel behavior, Nala attempts to leave the property with Luna several times, to no avail. Nala is convinced that grandma is literally draining the life out of Luna for her own "restorative" benefit. And as time passes, the old woman does indeed disappear into a mass of bandages that make her look less like an old woman than Claude Rains or a plastic surgery graduate. Nonetheless, it is this transformation, increasingly hidden from the viewer, that is the key to the last part of the film.

I can't say I was "let down" by "Evil Eye." It is a very good movie with a few neat twists, including the ending that I suspect many viewers will see coming before it arrives. But I do think Ezban, confronted with a much larger budget, was playing it very safe here. Despite the narrative frame at the beginning and end of the film, the narrative here is linear in a way that his other offerings to date have not been. And it is that loss of "quirkiness" that I perhaps miss the most. If Ezban was a sort of cinematic Jorge Luis Borges up to "Evil Eye," here he really is much more of a del Toro. That's not bad. It's just not what differentiated his work from the rest of the pack.

"Huesera" begins with "Valeria" dropping off flowers at the base of the Virgen Monumental de Ocuilan and ends right after she participates in a restorative, native rite. In between, we find out that Valeria is a former punk-rocker with a love of bass guitars, power tools and a certain "Octavia." What is she in the present?

That is the central question is this rather well-done entry. The Valeria of the present is a woman who has (uneasily) embraced a conventional marriage to "Raul," an ad exec with wealthy parents. She lives in an upscale apartment, and she is pregnant with their first child. Yet as time passes, she appears to be the victim of increasingly violent hallucinatory episodes that lead her family and husband to grow both concerned for and irritated with her. "Pull it together," is the implied mantra; "a child is a blessing."

While the obvious comparison is to "Rosemary's Baby," the film - to its credit- veers more in the direction of such psychological thriller/horror films as Altman's "Images." And despite a fairly large cast, this movie really is about a single woman's POV - Valeria (played here by Natalia Solián) - and it is her world -- her frustrations, her fears, her sense of ambiguity, rejection and pain -- that are front and center for the duration of the film. Her attempts to negotiate the expectations of others -- often cruelly rejected by those others -- lead her to an increased debilitation that almost result in absolute tragedy. It is her (similarly outcast) aunt who helps her on her way to a restoration of self.

The film is a definite slow burn. But if you enjoy a more overtly psychological exploration of a woman-at-the-margins, torn between seemingly opposing social contexts, this might work for you.

The premise is pretty standard: Couple leaves behind old life to embrace new life in a new home, only to find out new home has its own old and troubled past. "Tom" is the rational-minded teacher of science who dismisses much of what happens; "Claire" is the intuitive pianist who embraces much of what happens.

That said, the writing is well above what we find in the the standard haunted house flick. The same can be said for the acting in this micro-budget film, which is uniformly excellent (and I would give a special nod to both Joi Hoffsommer and William Kephart, who comes across rather convincingly as an extra-cranky Ron Howard type).

In the end, the film is rather non-committal about whether what we are seeing is natural or super-natural, as the "point" seems to be the dysfunction the home introduces into the marriage of Tom and Claire and how they deal with that dysfunction. To that end, House of Thaddeus almost appears to be a clever critique of how monstrous acts can be commodified, sold to and adopted by a very specific sector of the public, some of whom (like Claire) almost seem to embrace the horrors as giving some meaning to lives that are otherwise in need of some meaning or purpose.

It's a slow burn, but if you enjoy a more character-driven film, this might work for you.

Oh, and the soundtrack that includes both familiar pieces (Debussy's Claire de Lune) and original music by John Toenjes is quite tasteful and used to good effect.

This is not a psychological thriller, though it certainly dresses like one. Rather, "FIrst Born" is entry no. 1,712 in the "young white couple move to beautifully furnished old home to escape (fill in blank)" genre.

The movie is admittedly very well-made, by which I mean good actors, a nice set and great lighting and filming techniques. But it is also stocked to the ceiling with familiar horror movie tropes: the discarded Victorian-era doll, rodents, the career-at-all costs husband and the "is she crazy" new mom.

Most notably, for all of its 1:37 running time, "First Born" has next to no story. "Laura" and "Steve" move to a ginormous home outside of NYC to have a kid and escape . . . Well, whatever. Yet from the moment they move in, new problems arise. Laura starts seeing and hearing things that may or may not be there (often, in the video baby monitor), leading us to the usual question of whether this is real or simply a manifestation of something in her head. There are oblique references to a "Jenny" that used to live in the manor. The mysterious, heavily-accented baby sitter "Ms. Kasperian" enters and exits the film under a cloud of suspicion. And the local authorities, as always, are decidedly unhelpful. What do any of these characters have to do with the story? Got me. They lend ambience, I guess.

In short, "First Born" is a series of horror movie vignettes that are loosely organized around some type of curse . . . Or something. Toward the end of FB, Laura does buy a book on witchcraft. She learns that dolls and mice are associated with curses. Sounds good. Glad that was cleared up. Oh, and the baby continues to go missing. A lot.

We can all see where we will end up, though it takes some time to get there. However, once we do get there, the ending is rather abrupt. This is not to say that "First Born" is bad. It is not. But it is also not a film I would recommend, unless you are on a two hour flight with no dog-earned inflight magazines to read.

The ending may frustrate. But this really is a well-made film, if you are willing to invest the time in a slow-burn Aussie mystery. The cinematography and spare use of dialogue and music are simply excellent for such a low-budget offering. The same can be said for the small cast of actors, who I thought were exceptional.

The basic premise is that "Kevin," a resident of what I presume is Melbourne, is trying to sell his family home out in the Blackwood (rural) area of S. Australia. He receives a short, mysterious call from someone who wants to see the property. We find out only toward the end who exactly the caller was and what he really wanted to see (or at least look for).

Kevin takes his car out to Blackwood, but experiences a (fortuitous) breakdown en route. After having the car repaired by a very garrulous, Americanized Englishman ("Pete" complains about the size of Australia, the spiders, etc.), Kevin reaches his home but is too late to meet his would-be buyer. But we also find out that the town is looking for a missing person. Is the would-be buyer the missing person? The rest of the movie follows Kevin as he attempts to locate his mysterious buyer, while also dealing with a variety of locals (the sheriff ("Lynch"), a surly bearded neighbor ("Jim"), a waitress in Kyneton and one of the local young men ("Jesse").

In terms of cinematography, Max Walter switches between Bresson-style empty frames, short depth of field bokeh shots and some more familiar "shaky cam" style film work. The soundtrack alternates between low-key electronic music by "the Usuals" and prodigious use of silence. In many cases, then, the camera and sound work are NOT plot driven, but more concerned with fleshing out an atmosphere in which the mystery unfolds.

And what of that mystery? As we follow the story line toward the end, the film does not always tie the threads together for us. In fact, much of dialogue (spare though it is) features the characters talking past each other, hinting at their own hidden darkness. This is particularly true during the last 15 minutes or so of the film, which does spell out what happened in the woods near Kevin's home. However, it is not clear how this "discovery" is treated subsequently. The sheriff seems to regard matters as "case closed"- a tribute to a small community pulling together. But Kevin does some additional investigating that foreshadows some potential vigilante justice that will take place off-screen.

For this viewer, the key to the "mood" other reviewers have noted is the discomfort that exists throughout the film. Kevin is a cypher, (as are the people he meets). We do not know exactly who he is or what he does for a living. (He drives an older model car and uses water for radiator fluid, so we can assume he is not wealthy or well-connected.) We also don't know why he would travel such a long way based upon such a strange and abrupt phone call. Kevin also appears to be a "loner," uncomfortable around other people. Yet he is forward enough to engage with them as he seeks to find his mysterious buyer. The same might be said of the other characters, who drift in and out of the picture, leaving their own partial clues of why they are who the are - and THEY are always memorable no matter how long their screen time. Each character we meet seems outwardly "normal," but also hiding something much darker.

If you can enjoy a quirky, slow-burn mystery movie with horror elements, you might want to give this a shot. I really enjoyed it, and think it is one of those films that might profit from a second viewing to make a bit more sense of its off-kilter dynamics.

Is the pacing off here-and-there? Yup. Do the connections between narrative threads become clear? Not always. Is the acting AAA? With the exception of Paul Fahrenkopf, the answer is no.

However, for a student-style, low-budget film, "Ghosting" is quite good. The basic premise is that a young college student with a troubled home life becomes enmeshed in a mystery when he picks up a part of a bracelet belonging to another classmate. Contact with that bracelet allows him/the other student to see things in photographs that others cannot see.

What follows is a sort of X-Files episode where both natural and supernatural explanations are uncovered over the course of the students' investigation of what they are seeing and why it might matter. While the ending does not quite tie things together, it does just enough to work. And, frankly, given the budget, there were some really good choices for camera/lighting use.

The bottom line is that there is a definite plot here and the film does just enough to keep us guessing until the final act. If you are expecting big budget lighting, writing and actors, then look elsewhere. But for what this is, it is quite good. (I have found that the Baltimore/mid-Atlantic offerings are often both languid and quirky in a way that appeals to me. This definitely was the case here.)

Was not crazy about the casting of Allison Williams as the lead. But at least I understand the logic: She is guaranteed to never upstage a robot.

But more to the point is the dead hand of James Wan on this film. His co-writing, co-producing credits means the film has to follow the Wan Formula of straight-man/woman leads, quirky side characters and loads of horror cliches. (Megan really does evolve into a tribute to "Chucky" - 80s-style one-liners and all.) Wan is the Hallmark Channel of Horror.

As a result, a fine director (Johnstone) with a really interesting idea - the problematic and evolving bond between children and the array of digital devices that surround their world - becomes a familiar "possessed object" movie with an eye-roller of an ending.

The ingredients are very familiar. So, to know the premise is to know the plot: Married couple on the outs travel through rural America, experience an automobile breakdown and locate the colorful folks in the back-country for assistance. What ensues is the usual "survive the night" style narrative with a few minor modifications.

That said, Luke Wilson (who apparently was a total PITA to work with) provides a very good performance. (If he was dialing it in, it certainly does not show.) And Kate Beckinsale was a great compliment to him the whole way through. In short, whatever their horrible chemistry off-set; on-set, it worked (after all, "David" and "Amy" are a couple in the midst of a divorce).

On top of that, the set design, lighting and pace of events are really quite good. And while there are some plot holes, this film had just enough energy and pluck to keep me interested. (The producers wisely trimmed it to 1:25.)

Premise: Not-so-successful writer seeking inspiration for his next book travels to a La Tolqa, a fictional Eastern-bloc country set on what appears to be the Black Sea. He quickly is sucked into socializing with a group of Western tourists who have discovered a quirk in the host country's legal system: Any crime you commit in the host country can be "redeemed" with a large payment to the local officials and a type of ceremony where a doppelgänger of the criminal is created and then executed in place of the "real" self.

In short, the heart of the horror is a sort of reverse-Dorian Gray where morally repugnant acts are carved-off as a separate entity and then destroyed, leaving the perpetrator to indulge in further acts of depravity.

So, what is left of the "real" self in such an arrangement? (If you have seen "Possessor," the thematic preoccupation is very similar.)

The two central characters are Skarsgard's "James" and Goth's "Gabi." From the beginning, James proves himself to be an empty vessel who is more than willing to be towed out to sea by the beguiling (and increasingly cruel) siren Gabi. Despite the presence of his wife at the resort, James abandons any loyalties he might have to her or her own concerns with what is going on. And, in contrast to newcomer-James, Gabi's social circle appears to have existed in this bizarre world of excess and violent privilege for, well, forever. Yet, they seem to effortlessly enter and exit that world at will (back to L. A., of course!).

But what of James? What he becomes and where he ends up in the closing segments are far from clear. (Emptier than what he already was? A shell of a shell?).

"Infinity Pool" is a confident but cold movie. It reminds me quite a bit of the cult-group/occult horror movies that were made circa 1969-1974. The film uses quite a bit of arthouse-style flash imagery (the hues are different, but I was reminded of Norm Li's work in Panos Cosmatos' films). And despite the events taking place on a linear narrative, they are nonetheless sometimes difficult to follow due to Cronenberg's cinematic choices. In short, I can understand the polarizing reviews. I myself have mixed feelings. The film is very well done, the acting top-notch, and Cronenberg certainly attempts much more than the average horror flick director. But the "point" of the film is not always clear . . . And I felt like soaking in Dawn after viewing it. Recommended, with an asterisk.

The basic premise is pretty decent: The witness to suffering, mental illness, trauma becomes a "carrier" of that suffering, illness, trauma. But rather than fully committing to an exploration of this theme, "Smile" ends up using it as a simple plot device for an investigative horror story. In the process, the writer-director often injects into the events some rather insensitive (and cliched) depictions of mental illness, and loved-ones' reactions to illness, that do little to help the narrative and do quite a bit to discredit it.

Sosie Bacon plays the increasingly troubled Dr. Rose Cotter who, as a clinical psychologist, is a witness to a suicide. She carries nearly 100% of the resulting screen time in a suitable, if not entirely credible, manner. Most of the movie is about Rose's attempts to piece together the "chain" of trauma in which each victim/perpetrator to suicide becomes a "link" for more acts of violence, And as a protagonist-investigator, Bacon is fine.

However, Rose is also a victim; and it is in that capacity that she is surprisingly unsympathetic. Part of that is a script problem - specifically, an inability by the director to decide if we are witnessing a manifestation of childhood trauma experienced by Rose or an "actual" possession. But it is also a reflection of the somewhat flat and cold delivery of the actress. Bacon was an odd choice for this role.

The other characters hardly fare better: Kyle Gallner's "Joel" and Kal Penn's (brief) role as Dr. Desai are the only convincing characters. The other important characters (the fiance, Rose's sister, Rose's therapist) are so hastily introduced, sketched and released that it was hard to determine what role, exactly, each was there to play other than providing exaggerated, and somewhat mean-spirited, reactions to Rose' predicament.

By the time we reach the last twenty or so minutes, it is clear that the writer/director has abandoned any commitment to "Smile" as a Hitchcockian study of psychological breakdown. By that point, the turn is toward a straight-forward horror story. As a result, the ending to the movie was more than a little unsatisfying in view of the two hour viewing commitment.

George Romero was paid to film a short PSA to combat ageism called "The Amusement Park" back in 1972-73. It was released circa 1975, and then lost until 2019.

Anyway, this struck me as being somewhat in the same semi-humorous/semi-serious/semi-surrealistic vein, only here ageism has been replaced by mid-life crisis. Comparison might also be made to the 1962 classic, "Carnival of Souls," though it is by no means the equal of that film.

While I agree with others that the 90 minute running time wears the premise a bit thin, I mostly remained intrigued throughout. There is not much of a plot line to follow. But there is a sort of "dream logic" to the events that you either accept or refuse. I accepted and mostly enjoyed the result. The B/W film-work, injection of some odd but workable humor, and presence of an established lead (Roy Abramsohn) make it a decent watch. Recommended.

No spoilers: My short version is that, basically, HH is a carefully crafted slow-burn that (unfortunately) ends with a surprise crash into a very familiar trope. Rather than the denouement one might expect, we get a convenient ending point.

HH is a sparse movie, in that it features only a few key characters and three rural locations. On the character end, Camille Sullivan anchors this horror-mystery right up to the final moments. She is fantastic as the worn but determined "Anne," and for most of the film the material she is given to work with is up to the task. The film is ostensibly about a hunt for a wolf that threatens the family. But along the way we are confronted with a host of questions (mostly from the characters themselves, though at least one important question is framed by the camera itself: we get quick glimpses of a very important plot clue in the woods). The same can be said of the other actors who make good use of the sparse dialogue to help create a real mood of tension and fear.

But the ending! Yikes. The short version is that it reminded me a lot of a Laugier film. The longer version is that this is really odd, given the subtlety of HH up to that point. Up to the end, it plays more like a mystery-thriller than a horror feature. (Director) Linden's playbook looks a lot like, say, (Director) David Bruckner's playbook: strong, multifacted story surrounded by careful camera work and a real building of tension. The ending, I will simply say, was both abrupt and a real departure from what came before. If it need be said, it most certainly qualifies as "horror" (but "cartoonish" too perhaps).

9 for most of the way; 4 for the ending; 6 overall.

The intellectualism is rickety. The journey, long. The saving grace for this film is Matt Dillon, who manages to at least make it interesting.

Frankly, THTJB me quite a bit of Aronofsky's "Mother!," though my suspicion is that von Trier was going more for something like Ingmar Bergman-meets-"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." Like Mother, THTJB does not really seem to have much of a point other than showcasing the "artist's" attitude toward his art and his critics.

For example: The use of "Verge" as Jack's (mostly) off-screen interlocutor is (one assumes) a thinly veiled reference to Virgil, the eponymous guide for Dante's "Inferno." And the dialogue between Jack and Verge does often approach something like philosophy or psychoanalysis. So, is the seemingly high-minded idea at work here that Verge is to be the voice of "reason" to modern minds (like Jack or the viewing audience)? Maybe not, as toward the end of the movie Verge is relegated to a one-dimensional role that does not really represent moral or psychological clarity at all. Rather, the character ends up functioning as a sort of generic foil for Jack's mostly ludicrous conceptions of his "art" (and make no mistake: the house that jack built is a symbol that becomes both literal and over-the-top in its offensiveness).

I cannot say I disliked the film. But again, that was due mostly to Dillon's always-on-the-money brand of acting. He saved the day.

Unfortunately, the last twenty minutes jump the proverbial shark as far as this viewer is concerned (the homage to "Texas CSM" is both obvious and a bit too long. It also becomes a much "darker" film both literally and figuratively: what worked up to that point was a movie that reveled in its "camp" or "B-movie" status).

However, up to that point, I was pretty shocked at how good this was: well-defined characters that you could actually care about (yes, Rollins, but also some of the lesser-knowns, like Alonso, Battle, Braun); decent, if predictable, story line, and some real decent cinematography.

Recommended, if you are not overly sensitive to gratuitous gore.

Basically, an "Annihilation" style eco-horror story with a "Heart of Darkness" narrative attached.

In the midst of a pandemic, Dr. Martin Lowery sets out in the wilderness to locate his missing colleague Dr. Olivia Wendle. Wendle is working on research involving communications with plant life. (Be forewarned: the last half of the movie involves a lot of jarring, 70's style analog frequencies and strobe effects).

Martin is joined by park ranger Alma. What they experience is a series of horrific (and eventually, transcendent) experiences as they cross paths with loner, "Zach," before eventually locating the equally isolated and mentally unstable Olivia. Oh, and we discover that the forest is itself a character, as the spirit of the forest, "Parnag Fegg," quite literally doses the characters with psychedelic spores from time to time.

Some viewers have complained about the film's incoherence. Point taken. Stylistically, ITE at times feels a lot like a Panos Cosmatos movie, with a rather surrealistic approach to story-lines and imagery. (This is definitely a mixed-genre movie, as elements of art-house fare co-exist alongside some traditional slasher film elements. And cinematographer Nick Gillespie employs a lot of the same lighting techniques used by Benjamin Loeb). That said, there is a story-line or progression here, even if it is not always successfully disentangled for the viewer.

My only real complaint is in the casting: I loved the multi-racial casting, given the subject-matter. But in the end Zach and Olivia, who are in many ways secondary characters, are far more sharply drawn and, frankly, interesting, than Alma and Martin.

This is not a great movie. But if you enjoyed the last half of "Kill List" or the work of Alex Garland or P. Cosmatos, this might be your flick.

A lifeless remake that is fueled entirely by special effects and set pieces. It's not that the original was a 10. But Castle at least gave us well-defined and likeable characters and a backstory that, while corny, at least drove the plot.

Here, by contrast, we have a blur of characters, none of which is particularly likeable or memorable, set loose in a maze. They basically shunt about for the length of the film. The backstory involving the lawyer that was part of the original is gone. As a result, there is little driving the plot.

During its heyday, the slasher genre ran almost entirely on a never-ending supply of white men with deeply-rooted psychological issues; including humiliation at the hands of high school peers that required redress years later. Here, we have a black woman as the protagonist, creating a world where she can enact her revenge for harms suffered years before in high school.

What a great concept. But the problem comes in part from her backstory, as well as the tendency to fall back upon the old slasher convention of the omni-present killer who manages to always be at the right place at the right time. The backstory, despite some early hints of nuance, ends up using a garden-variety public humiliation to dance around what is (IMHO) the heart of this film: the invisibility, ostracism and frustration of being a person of color in a semi-rural town in Ohio. More disappointingly, once the events are set in motion, the film has a tendency to reduce the multi-dimensional talents of Octavia Spencer's "Sue Ann" to the usual remorseless machine-like killings, a la Jason or Michael. That's a shame, because the ingredients were in place for a truly different type of film.

"Get Out" remains the gold standard for horror movies with a racial theme. This one could well have been that good with a little more work on the writing. Recommended.