Category: Thriller

BACKROOMS

By Marc S. Sanders

I just learned that a twenty-year-old kid named Kane Parsons was approached by studio A24 to turn his online experimental videos of quiet, empty stillness into a cinematic feature of bottomless madness.  The movie is Backrooms, the sleeper hit of 2026, and it is reminiscent of the unexpected impact The Blair Witch Project had back in 1999 when young filmmakers were inventive enough to rely on hand held cameras to obscure what an audience will see while also being convincing enough to ensure everyone was aware of an abnormal and haunting situation.  Backrooms works, but not as well as Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, both of which offered intriguing exposition for the thinkers. 

A dated video tape from June, 1990 introduces an opening sequence that is entirely disorienting within an empty and seemingly endless office space blanketed in yellow wallpaper with the ear-worming hums of fluorescent ceiling lights.  Our guide is a terrified young man with a handheld video camera who is hopelessly lost within this labyrinthine maze of no escape.  There are odd placements of props, signage and furniture. Doors lead from one room to another, but there does not seem to be a final destination in sight.

I accurately predicted the “Juke Joint” of Sinners would eventually make it to Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.  Well, it’s likely we will soon be invited to roam the terrifying office maze of Backrooms. 

Chiwetel Ejiofor is Clark, the owner/manager of Captain Clark’s Ottoman Empire.  He’s also the infamous pirate mascot who promises “No Credit. No Hassles,” at this furniture store that sells a large inventory of stools, sofas, beds and lazy boy furniture.  The kind of crap you’d find in waiting rooms or model homes.  The stuff looks cheaply crafted and easily affordable, but also easily unwanted.  He also lives in the store following a bitter divorce caused by a violent temper and a drinking problem teetering on excess.  

Clark regularly visits Mary (Renate Reinsve, Oscar nominee for Sentimental Value), a therapist and the author of a collection of cassette tapes to help people compartmentalize their personal problems.  These self-help tapes can be yours if you call the 800 number on your screen now. Operators are standing by!! Mary is dealing with her own personal trauma, having lost a daughter in a construction accident.

Effective horror will usually leave you a little shattered while you reflect on what you just witnessed.  Essentially, horror is dark fantasy with a handful of hanging threads that depend on you tying them together long after you have left the theater.  As our main characters uncover a portal in the downstairs showroom of Clark’s furniture store, Backrooms depends upon how your mind regularly struggles with memories and personal pains. The residual imagery of what used to be right in front of you might appear a little distorted and even a little more the next time you recollect. Do I sound vague? Well, isn’t that what you expect from a horror movie?

Initially, Clark literally walks through a wall into what feels like another dimension – this labyrinth of lemon colored office space.  Nonsensical piles of furniture are discovered. Some objects are partially absorbed into the floors, walls and ceilings.  There’s even a STOP sign standing upright?!?!?!?  It’s funny that Clark mentions earlier how he wanted to be an architect and yet this strange dimensional world makes little sense from a geometric perspective.  Walls move uphill.  There are tiny doors.  Tunnels are discovered.  Sloping floors into darkness spark curiosity.  There are also narrow hallways.  A swimming pool? A musical cardboard cutout? To mess with our auditory system, random noises or nonsensical music chimes in at times. Dirty laundry is found with a repugnant smell. Amidst that pile of clothes might even be a familiar t-shirt.

Why?

A lot of what is seen is never explained and that’s okay.  This film is comprised partly of shaky, crackling handheld camera material, and standard shooting to aid with exposition and character development. I had recollections of story beats from the TV show Lost and films like The Shining, The Cell and of course The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.  Even a moment from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory came to mind.  (“Oh, you can’t go back.  You have to go forward to go back.”) 

I have never played Minecraft. What little I know makes me consider if this young director, now the youngest to ever have a film earn over $100 million at the box office, branched his storytelling ideas off of what he might have constructed in Minecraft, or some similar kind of software.

I went into Backrooms knowing nothing about the film.  I had not seen a trailer, commercial or read anything about it.  I knew only to expect some disturbing suspense.  The film starts out that way, and while I was as curious as Clark and Mary to cover more ground within this devoid maze, I started to become too relaxed with the picture.  I guess because there was not enough to uncover.  As plain as Kane Parsons’ bright environment of nothingness intends to be, I think it quickly exhausts itself of invention. 

The last third of the film starts to offer more than a series of blank walls.  Tangible evidence of what strings are being pulled present themselves. Unfortunately, Backrooms bottoms out into a tired “monster pursuing the victim” narrative.  I’ve seen too much of that, and while I won’t spoil the creature of this feature, the imagery looks like something yanked a show airing on the Cartoon Network at three in the morning.

Kane Parsons’ best work presents itself when he’s demonstrating the possibilities for why this discovered dimension offers obscurities.  His film begins to shred apart though when he needs to tell his story and table the showmanship.  

Backrooms will be a much better and more effective movie when I reluctantly walk through it at Halloween Horror Nights.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

By Marc S. Sanders

Martin Scorsese declared that Gene Tierney is one of the most underrated actresses of all time.  It’s likely her femme fatale performance in Leave Her To Heaven supports that argument.  Miguel mistakenly left his Criterion copy at my house and on a whim, I popped it into the machine.  With no knowledge of what the film was about, I gradually found myself stunned as the story initially unfolds as a meet-cute encounter between a charming novelist and a stunning, pleasant woman who get caught up in a whirlwind romance that turns questionably eerie.

The author is Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde).  He meets the voluptuous Ellen (Tierny) sitting cross from him on a passenger train car.  She just happens to be reading his latest best seller, and she takes to him at first sight because he looks strikingly familiar to her deceased father.  It’s also convenient to know they have the same destination at a retreat ranch in New Mexico.  Ellen’s mother, Margaret (Mary Philips), and her adopted sister (or maybe not?), Ruth (Jeanne Crain) are also staying there.  The ladies are actually going to spread father’s ashes high up on a mountain top nearby.

Richard is captivated with Ellen but respects her boundaries when he learns that she’s engaged to marry Russell Quinton (Vincent Price), an imposing man who is running for district attorney in Boston, Massachusetts.  That changes very quickly upon Russell’s surprise visit one night, where Ellen announces in front of everyone, including Richard, that she is now engaged to the writer.  Richard may be caught off guard, but he’s thrilled to spend his future with this alluring woman.  

Everything seems idyllic.  Ellen caters to his every whim without even be asked. She cooks and cleans for him and insists on not hiring a housekeeper to do such chores.

Richard is also quite fond of Ruth and Margaret, and he’s certain that Ellen will take kindly to his younger brother Danny (Darryl Hickman).  Danny resides at physical therapy home in Georgia.  He’s unable to walk but hoping to soon.  That doesn’t hinder his enthusiasm for his new sister in law and more time with his brother.

Everything seems perfect, and yet there are expressions and random observations about Ellen that leave all but Danny and Richard with trepidation.  Ruth and Margaret are kind people, but they seem to have reservations about Ellen’s intentions.  Who should Richard be cautious of though?  

Leave Her To Heaven relies upon a diabolical personality hiding in plain sight.  It begins with a lawyer telling some folks the story of Richard’s time with Ellen.  Richard arrives at a lakeside dock in Maine, and then he is on his way by canoe to visit a woman at a getaway cottage on the other side of the lake.  He’s been through some kind of ordeal.  It’s not clear what woman he’s going to see and why, nor what he’s recently endured.  The lawyer’s story has much to spell out.

Growing up in the 1980s and 90s, this film noir feels like it carries influence towards more modern classics like Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and even the recent sleeper hit of 2025, The Housemaid with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (which I highly recommend). Especially effective is how trustworthy John M Stahl’s scenes of exposition seem.  At any point his film, adapted from the novel by Ben Ames Williams, could have steered in the direction of glowing optimism and promising possibilities.  Having not known where the story was going to take me enhanced my experience with the picture.  Gene Tierney’s lovely and later disturbing composition kept me alert and when later moments occur that leave no doubt of what her goals are, the suspense held on to a haunting pinnacle.  

The third act relies heavily on Vincent Price’s contributions, and he is a superb antagonist.  He’s far from the eerie B-fest persona that made him famous, but he is largely intimidating.  Still, his material is written to be extremely contrived as the screenplay resorts to lopsided courtroom drama.  Leave Her To Heaven is fully aware it’s not following legitimate protocol in a standard trial.  The courtroom setting operates more like a conduit to tie up loose ends and ensure all the pertinent characters get on the same page.  With Vincent Price driving the narrative, the thrills remain upheld.

The Technicolor on the Criterion edition deserves praise. For a film noir from 1945, this restoration looks entirely modern and and with the exception of the courtroom scenes, never feels outdated. When you’ve run out of Alfred Hitchcock material to bite your nails on, Leave Her To Heaven is a very good and solid alternative.  

Best advice, be careful when you fall in love at first sight.

STAY IN THE CAR

By Marc S. Sanders

Calvin Ghaznavi directs a seven-and-a-half-minute short film called, Stay In The Car, that’s long on tension while limited on dialogue.  

Not much needs to be said to understand that a fifteen-year-old girl named Salem (Lara Hunter) is alert, yet terrified, while being left to her own abandon in the front seat of an El Camino.  It’s the middle of the night and her strung out mother (Ashley Alva) is on a mission with a stranger (Timothy V Murphy) sitting in the passenger side.  The title of this of this picture tells us what Salem is instructed to do.  The conflict is if Salem will oblige.  

Amanda Ross was inspired to write this haunting anecdote based on a real life experience.  Lara Hunter is her real life daughter reenacting the scenario.  Hunter’s expressions of fear and confusion are striking.  We only know so much as what she sees.  Perhaps Salem will become a witness brought in for questioning about this night where her mother and this stranger visited a hotel and returned with a bloody wrench.  At another stop, one less person returns to the car.  That’s all Salem knows.  That’s all we know.  

Ghazvani is very focused on primarily providing close ups.  We don’t know how the adults know one another or what they are striving for.  We don’t get to see the back seat of the car, or where it’s traveling to next.  All we know is that Salem likely relies on teenage fun like wearing colorful wristbands. The hula dancing ornament on the dashboard doesn’t belong in this scenario either. It was there from another time; maybe Salem and mom picked it up at novelty store during a happier time. It’s convincing that Salem does not belong in a tense filled situation like this.  Salem’s normality has suddenly turned nightmarish.

Stay In The Car does not so much explain a story as it offers a perspective where a child is submerged in a circumstance of darkness, wet roads, violent aftermaths, distant sirens and overwhelming uncertainty. Ghaznavi and Ross should expand on the seeds of what they’ve created.  There’s potential for a thrilling and thought-provoking story at play.  What happened before Salem (or Amanda) stayed in the car?  What happened afterwards?  With less than eight minutes to see for myself, I’m dying to know more.

K-POP DEMON HUNTERS (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang
CAST: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Ayn Hyo-seop, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh [plus a resounding 99% on the new “Popcornmeter”, but who’s counting…]

PLOT: A world-renowned K-Pop girl group balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as demon hunters.


For those living under a rock, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the movie that accomplished what no other movie has ever done: have four of its original songs in Billboard’s Top 10 rankings simultaneously.  (Even Saturday Night Fever had only three.)  Three hundred twenty-five million views on Netflix within 91 days.  The first Netflix film to open at #1 at the box office.  Recent winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film.  Clearly, this is a movie with its finger on the pulse of the enormous global K-pop mania, and despite my general apathy towards K-pop in general (I can’t name one song by BTS, let alone a member – but I do know one of them was in Ready Player One), I figured it was time to give this phenomenon a day in court.

While it has not turned me into a K-pop “deokhu” – I had to look that up – K-Pop Demon Hunters was still great fun.  There were some questions that remained unanswered when the credits rolled, but I’m betting those will be addressed in the inevitable sequel.

The plot sounds preposterous because, well, it kind of is.  Rumi, Mira, and Zoey are members of a wildly successful K-pop girl group called Huntr/x…when they’re not busy hunting and killing the demons that constantly prowl the city’s population looking for souls to capture for their dark master, Gwi-ma, an amorphous soul-devouring demon voiced by Lee Byung-hun, star of No Other Choice and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which I actually liked, but moving on.

The story, interrupted only occasionally, but effectively, by musical numbers, involves a shield – I’m just going to call it a “demon shield” – that blankets the city, protecting its inhabitants from the nefarious demons as long as the girls of Huntr/x can use their voices to strengthen/power it.  If some demon butt-kicking is needed, they have that covered, too, showing off some cool-ass weapons and moves that would make certain radioactive reptiles green, or green-ER, with envy.  Jinu, an enterprising and musically-oriented demon in the underworld, comes up with a plan to defeat Huntr/x indirectly…through their fans.  And how do you sway fans of a kick-ass K-pop girl group?  Why, with an even more kick-ass K-pop BOY group, obviously.

But really, this is all just a clothesline from which to hang some truly creative visual stylings that owe their existence to the success of the recent Spider-Verse animated films.  Demon Hunters builds on that already-unique style by bringing in some even more unique Korean aeni (the Korean version of “anime”) flourishes.  The girls’ faces reflect intense emotions by turning into almost literal emojis.  When angry, their faces turn into something out of Dragon Ball Z.  When sad, their eyes turn huge and watery, the ultimate puppy-dog eyes.  When they see a hunky guy, their eyes first turn into cartoon hearts, then into, ahem, ears of corn when they behold the hunk’s washboard abs.  (The corn later turns into popcorn.)

Out of context (such as it is), this must all sound absurdly infantile, but, after a few minutes of culture shock, I found myself caving in to the absurdity.  And there is a deeper message to be found here, concerning concepts of self-worth vs. self-deprecation, and how self-doubt only wins when you cut yourself off from people who love you.  (I’m simplifying; the movie does a much better job of fleshing it out.)  While it’s not really a movie made for my generation, I nevertheless had a lot of fun with it.

And…yes, dammit, the songs are really catchy.  Even the “Soda Pop” one.

That’s right.  I said it.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: John Sturges
CAST: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Fresh

PLOT: Shortly after the end of World War II, a one-armed stranger arrives in a tiny desert town whose residents, for no apparent reason, behave in a hostile way towards him.


A stranger arrives by train at a small desert town.  The conductor tells him it’s the first time the train has stopped there in four years.  The stranger carries a briefcase in his one good arm.  The residents are apprehensive about him, hostile towards him, and do everything short of pointing a gun at him to force him back wherever he came from.  Who is he?  Why is he here?  And why does everyone get nervous when he asks how to get to a place called Adobe Flat?

This sounds like the setup for one of Clint Eastwood’s “Man-with-No-Name” spaghetti westerns, and if those films weren’t at least subtly influenced by this one, I’d be extremely surprised.  John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock is a mystery-thriller as lean and mean as you can possibly get.  With a running time of a scant eighty-one minutes, this is one of the best examples of a film that wastes no time on side-plots or unnecessary filler.  Get in, get out, nobody gets hurt.  Well…in this case, that’s not entirely true…

The story takes place in October, 1945.  Spencer Tracy plays John J. Macreedy, a military veteran – he lost the use of his left arm in Italy – even though he looks a bit old to have been a combat soldier.  But I’m willing to believe he was an officer of some kind.  The locals, including Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) and his heavies, Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin), wheedle and needle him non-stop, trying to get a rise out of him.  At first, I wrote this off to the Hollywood convention of the backwater burg whose citizens simply don’t like strangers for no reason at all.  As the movie plays out, the reason for their behavior becomes clear…a depressingly relevant reason still today.

Because the movie is so short, and because the plot turns so decisively on the revelation of what Macreedy is doing in Black Rock, I can’t divulge any more plot details.  But I admire the movie’s methodology.  Enemies become allies, and vice versa.  Some of the dialogue is reminiscent of Mamet.  Some examples:

  • “I’m half-horse, half-alligator – you mess with me and I’ll kick a lung outta ya!”
  • “She must have strained every muscle in her head to get so stupid.”
  • “You’re not only wrong.  You’re wrong at the top of your voice.”

There’s a kind of poetry there that I usually only find in films-noir.  I don’t think Bad Day at Black Rock qualifies as noir, but I guess someone forgot to tell the screenwriter.  I have no problem with that.

I also admired the plot revelation concerning Macreedy’s business in Black Rock.  I’m no film historian, but I’m willing to bet there weren’t very many movies in the years immediately following World War II that dealt specifically with this issue.  The fact that this one was made by a top-tier director with such a powerhouse leading man surrounded by a talented ensemble, in CinemaScope…I’d love to do some more research to learn the general public’s reaction to the picture and its message.  I know it’s critically acclaimed now, but I just wonder…

Bad Day at Black Rock is best experienced in a vacuum.  If you’ve read this far, don’t read anything else about it before seeing it.  Let the story come to you organically with no pre-conceived notions.  This is a great film.

DIABOLIQUE (France, 1955)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Henri-Georges Clouzot
CAST: Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 95% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The wife and mistress of a loathsome school principal plan to murder him with what they believe is the perfect alibi.

[NOTE: If you have not yet seen Diabolique, READ NO FURTHER.  I will try not to give spoilers, but discussion of the story may give unwanted hints or clues.  Beware.]


Am I giving Diabolique, Clouzot’s classic of French suspense, a perfect rating because it fooled me?  No.  Is it because of the acting?  Not quite, although Véra Clouzot is an obvious standout.  In my mind, the lion’s share of the credit for my perfect rating goes to the impeccable screenplay and the masterful direction from H.G. Clouzot, director of other French classics like Wages of Fear (1953) and Le corbeau (1943).  The story is so good that Hitchcock famously regretted not grabbing the movie rights from the novel on which the movie is based, so he made sure he purchased the rights to the author’s next novel almost immediately.  [Fun fact: the movie of THAT book yielded Hitchcock’s legendary Vertigo (1958).]

The story of Diabolique will come as no great surprise to any modern moviegoer.  As soon as key facts about the major players were revealed, my mind immediately went to Ira Levin’s Deathtrap (1982), which was CLEARLY inspired by Diabolique, as were many others.  What makes Diabolique such a standout is that it was first.  Before Psycho, before Peeping Tom (both 1960), before Don’t Look Now (1973), Diabolique wowed and shocked audiences in equal measure.

Diabolique’s method is deceptively simple.  With admirably economic storytelling, Clouzot presents us with the three main players: the headstrong mistress, Nicole (Simone Signoret); the timid, sickly wife, Christina (Véra Clouzot, the director’s real-life spouse); and the detestable man they both share, Michel (Paul Meurisse).  The three of them run a boys’ boarding school, with Michel as the headmaster.  Michel is immediately set up as despicable.  The first time we see Nicole, she is sporting a black eye behind some shades, already seeming to plot with Christina.  A little later, Michel forces Christina to choke down some rotten fish served for their meal (he got a bargain at the market for day-old fish…eeyuck).  When she loudly wishes she were dead, Michel evokes Ebenezer Scrooge: “Hurry up, then.  We’ll arrange a nice funeral and be well rid of you.  The school won’t notice, and I’ll feel much better.”  Charming.

So, when the two women hatch a plot to get rid of Michel, we’re on board, because who WOULDN’T want to get rid of this jackass?  But in classic fashion, nothing goes down the way it’s supposed to.  First, there’s a problem with noisy plumbing (I’m being purposefully vague here).  Then there’s the broken handle on the large trunk.  Then there’s the pesky body that simply won’t behave the way a dead body should.  Then there’s the empty hotel room, and the Prince-of-Wales suit, and the schoolchild who claims he saw the headmaster at a time and place where he ABSOLUTELY should not have been…and so on.

Despite the fact that I kind of called what was happening and why, I still thoroughly enjoyed Diabolique, the same way that I enjoy watching some of my favorite films over and over again.  Here’s a plot that we’ve all seen repeatedly, but it’s done so well that you just have to sit back and admire its audacity.  Nothing is overdone, no one strains for any kind of effect, the characters are who they are, simple without being simplistic, if that means anything.  They’re intelligent people, not placeholders, so when they can’t figure out what’s going on, we believe it.

I loved the fact there was no musical score except for the opening and end credits.  That was amazingly effective, especially in scenes toward the end that relied heavily on the kind of shots and editing that reminded me of movies like M and Nosferatu.  And I haven’t seen water used so atmospherically since Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale (2002).

Depending on how you define “twist”, it could be argued that Diabolique was the first movie to contain a full-on twist ending, one that redefines everything you saw previously and compels you to go back and watch the movie again to pick up on clues you missed the first time around.  (A case might be made for Mildred Pierce [1945] being first, but that film’s ending is not quite as insane as Diabolique’s.)  For that reason alone, and because it accomplishes it so well, this movie is worth seeking out.  Just don’t let anyone spoil it for you.

THE MUMMY (2017)

By Marc S. Sanders

The Universal logo comes up with that familiar music across the blue globe. Then it goes in reverse and turns black and gold to introduce a new franchise known as the Dark Universe.  This is the first installment.  The problem is of all the famed monsters in the studio’s library, they probably shouldn’t have started with The Mummy.  Brendan Fraser’s attachment to this mythical Egyptian horror is still widely accepted, and Tom Cruise is no Brendan Fraser.

This reinvention begins much like the 1999 film by telling of a Pharoh’s daughter who believed she was the sole heir to the kingdom.  Yet, betrayal happens and the beautiful princess is mummified into eternity, buried deep under the desert and laid with vengeance on her mind.  Elsewhere, another tomb is discovered under the streets of London. Could there be a connection? A dagger with a red stone might have the answers.

Jump to present day and Tom Cruise is back with another character who can run very fast.  He is Nick Morton and with his partner he clumsily runs and jumps over rooftops in the Egyptian desert while closely evading military air strikes from above.  Why the military is dropping bombs is apparently irrelevant.  Tom Cruise just needs something to run away from.

A massive crater opens up and the pair along an expert archeologist named Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) come upon a tomb.   Nick mistakenly frees the Egyptian princess buried within and they transport her, still contained in her coffin, back to London aboard a cargo plane.  Only now Nick is seeing visions of what once was and becoming familiarized with an ancient language with which he had no prior knowledge.  Nick has been chosen.

When you place Tom Cruise on board a military cargo plane, what do you think happens? It doesn’t have to be called Mission: Impossible to be a seemingly impossible mission. The crashing airplane sequence is impressive, not the best, but I’ve seen this stuff already. I’ve seen this stuff already with Tom Cruise. I do not need to see it again. 

The Mummy cannot decide what it wants to be.  It has some good ideas but just when I think I’m watching another Brendan Fraser swashbuckler with a monster, Tom Cruise must pound it over my head that this is a stunt filled trajectory.  

Russell Crowe is a mysterious character offering voiceover narration during a prologue. He later reveals his identity to Nick.  I will not spoil who he turns out to be.  Let’s just say it is likely you heard of this guy.  It’s hard to believe that Nick has not, and Mr. Cruise does not play dumb very well. This man has an interesting laboratory that contains relics and possessions that belonged to other well-known cinematic monsters.  Frankly, this picture should have exclusively belonged to Crowe’s character who comes off very dynamic and fresh while setting up a whole – forgive the pun – universe for a long line of films to come.  

Alas, Tom Cruise sets the stage.  He’s okay in the role, but between his temptation to be Ethan Hunt while adopting a Robert Downey Jr sarcasm and the imperfect Brendan Fraser/Indiana Jones hero, it all gets muddied. I just didn’t like this guy.  Cruise delivers what each chapter of the script demands of him and none of it is consistent. Near the end of the film during the final battle, Cruise offers up a one liner that comes nowhere near as close to what Downey, Fraser or even Arnold Schwarzenegger could have accomplished.

The only clarity I find in the visual effects is that they look rushed for final print towards a summer blockbuster release.  The Mummy Princess (Sofia Boutella) unleashes her monster minions to pursue Nick and Jenny while they are escaping in a clumsy looking ambulance.  As the creatures attack the top and both sides of the vehicle they are shaken off, thrown into trees, or run over.  They all look like monster vomit accompanied by loud hissing to startle your hearing.  

This iteration of The Mummy is partly assembled by the guys who made the Transformers movies where the robots look like metallic throw up mush.  Guys like Robert Orci and Alexander Kurtzman, the director, are poor artisans at the sci-fi/adventure/horror genre.  They know how to helm movies like this about as well as I do.  I don’t know shit, but I do know the visuals here are pure junk while being an enormous step back from the Fraser films of twenty-five years ago.  

The Mummy ends like the Marvel movies with the hanging threads of what we should expect.  I’m game!  Only, don’t do it like this.  Anything but this, please.  

Sadly, as quick as the Dark Universe got started it all got canceled.  This film was poorly received and did not generate the box office bonanza the studio was counting on.  I recall a fascinating publicity photo that assembled Cruise, Crowe, Boutella, along with Javier Bardem, and Johnny Depp. All were publicized to occupy upcoming installments of this new franchise.  The potential was so strong to see the likes of The Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, Dracula and Jeckyl/Hyde sharing the screen together.  This could have been the antithesis to The Avengers and Justice League with gags of gore to delight audiences.

I swear when I saw that Dark Universe logo at the beginning, I was ready to love this movie.  I really was.  Unfortunately, The Mummy works hard to be a Tom Cruise actioner with his preserved thirty something looks adhered to an assortment of unfinished and indecipherable special effects.  Its script from David Koepp (Jurassic Park) is exhaustingly incoherent.  

The Mummy was a long-term investment by a million-dollar corporation.  It’s too bad the wealth went into junk bonds though. I urge Universal to try again. There is something to be made here, and it cannot get worse than this.

GET OUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Consider this for a second.  You’re an African American thirty year old who has recently begun a promising relationship with an affectionate, loving Caucasian woman.  As she attempts to ease your apprehension about meeting her parents for the first time she tells you her dad would have voted for Obama if he could have run for a third term.  When you arrive at their upstate home, one of the first things dad tells you is that if he could, he would have voted for Obama for a third time.  Exactly why is that so important to say?  From her?  And later from him?  Why is it necessary for an audience to hear the statement twice within a span of less than fifteen minutes? While it should sound assuring, it feels anything but trusting.  That’s how smart Jordan Peele’s debut horror/thriller is.  He has a way of delivering two different perspectives with one simple statement.

In Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya is Chris.  His girlfriend is Rose played by Allison Williams.  These actors are a perfect pair on screen but that’s about all I want to share with you considering their relationship.  

Chris is meeting Allison’s family at their home for their weekend.  It’s a beautiful, quaint estate off the beaten path from any intrusive neighbors.  Burrowed within the woods, this is a place to escape the stresses of city life.  Just like with any horror film though, the characters do not know they are operating inside a horror film.  The audience always does, and the best filmmakers find those frequent moments to get their viewers to squirm in their seat, tuck their knees under their chin, clench the butt cheeks maybe and say, “Don’t do that!,” “Don’t go in there,!” or maybe they’ll urge you to “GET OUT!!!!”

Nevertheless, the storyteller finds it important to bring up Barack Obama on more than one occasion???? 

Before they even get out of the car, the landscaper, a black gentleman, seems curious to Chris.  Friendly handshakes and welcoming hugs on the porch segue into the furnished home and there’s the maid, a black woman, who is as intriguing as the first black person to be seen.  Wouldn’t you know it but over lunch, you learn that tomorrow there’s the annual party gathering of friends.  Oh my gosh, was that this weekend?  

Jordan Peele doesn’t turn on the creepy music you may expect.  He relies on his visuals and while you are being as observant as Chris, you just might be alarmed and less sensible than he is.  That credit goes to Kaluuya, giving a reserved, contained performance.  This guy does not look like a hero in the least because he has instincts but seems to never look for a fight or a debate or the need to set an example.  An unexpected stop on the drive over demonstrates where Chris stands in a topsy turvy world of political divides in the twenty first century.  He just wants to make life easy.  So, he also will not make waves when that groundskeeper runs directly at him in the middle of the night.  This is just too freaky, but Chris tells us to just get through the weekend.

Rose’s brother seems like a weirdo from a Judd Apatow comedy, but he’s not being a clown.  Dad (Bradley Whitford) is a successful surgeon always ready with a relaxing tone and an open hug.  Mom (Catherine Keener) has done well as a psychiatrist performing hypnosis on her patients.  Yet, a late-night encounter with her leaves Chris feeling uneasy. Visually, it’s disturbing when he reflects on what he thinks he experienced with her.  However, he tries to give the family the benefit of the doubt especially when he shares his concerns with Rose.  Allison Williams is quite good with being convincingly dismissive.  I trust her, and I like her too. 

Then there’s the party the next day.  All the guests, primarily white, arrive exactly at the same time in a convoy of tinted black sedans and SUVs.  Chris doesn’t hide himself despite feeling awkward, and he doesn’t initiate the odd conversations with these middle age WASPs, but he politely keeps engaged with them.  Ironically, the strangest conversation he experiences is when he approaches a fellow black guest who is oddly dressed inconsistently compared to everyone else while his demeanor looks like he’s in a trance.

For comedic effect, Jordan Peele incorporates a best friend for Chris to confide in with opportune cell phone calls.  Lil Rey Howery is Rod and I can say, unequivocally, he is the best endorsement for the TSA. I do not recall seeing Howery in other films of late, but this actor deserves a long career for making a big splash in Peele’s busy picture.  Get Out would never be as inventive if Howery’s role is edited out.  Rod is the only other guy who, from a distance, can tell something is not right, here.

Get Out closes on an airtight ending.  Explanations for everything that is questionable is provided.  Yet, on both occasions that I’ve watched the movie, I think about it long after it’s over.  It takes some of the best elements you might uncover from The Twilight Zone, plus what you might have seen in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and builds new ideas off of those circumstances.  

It is especially fun to read the IMDb trivia about the film to uncover a wealth of appropriate symbolism that does not jump directly at you.   You’ll appreciate how clever Jordan Peele is as a writer.  Froot Loops without milk in a bowl says much about a character.  Another character is engorged with the antler of a taxidermic deer head.  One character scrapes cotton stuffing out of an armchair.  Jordan Peele approaches his scary fiction with an educated eye.  

This movie is inventive.  Its horror does not seem redundant and thankfully the monsters are not vampires and zombies all over again.  There are new tactics at play.  There are fresh approaches to victimize the heroes, and there are creative ways to surprise the audience.  

Get Out is amazing the first time you watch the film.  On a second viewing, Jordan Peele’s story works like a class experiment in social standards while it still has fun by keeping you in triggering suspense.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES

By Marc S. Sanders

Fantasy of the supernatural or science fiction work best when the writer can teach the reader or the viewer how its foreign worlds work and how the characters who occupy the environments function and live.  Anne Rice had her own interpretation about how creatures of the afterlife live by night.  Her vampires possessed theatricalities.  Some were charming and sophisticated, and relished how they lived immortally while satisfying a hunger for the blood of living humans.  Some struggled with the discomfort that comes from being a remorseful bloodsucker.  The first of Anne Rice’s series of vampire novels, Interview With The Vampire, runs a very wide gamut of perceptions.  By the end of the film adaptation, directed by Neil Jordan, I’ve earned quite an education.  (Frankly, Rice’s novel was tediously slow moving and bored me to tears.)

In present day San Francisco, a young man (Christian Slater) sets up his tape deck to record a conversation with a soft spoken pale faced man in a dark suit with a neat ponytail in place.  This mysterious person is Louis, played by Brad Pitt.  His story begins two hundred years earlier, in New Orleans, back to the day when he was incepted into an immortal life as a vampire. His agent of delivery is the devil-may- care and mischievous Lestat, one of Tom Cruise’s most surprising and unusual portrayals.  He gives a brilliant performance that’s as far a cry from his lawyer roles or his Maverick and Ethan Hunt heroes as possible.  

Lestat is eager to guide Louis into the benefits of vampire life.  Louis, having already been depressed following the loss of his wife and daughter during childbirth, cannot grow comfortable with Lestat’s insatiable appetite to feast on aristocratic figures or plantation slave servants.  This is not a match made in heaven and their chemistry as a couple is tested. Louis would rather miserably feast on chickens and rats, while Lestat grows frustrated by unsuccessfully swaying his partner to taste the sweet nectar of blood dripping from the wrist of a lovely young lass.  Lestat turns towards a grander extreme to maintain his embrace of the morose Louis.

Through deception, the men welcome an eleven-year-old “daughter” into their underworld.  Her name is Claudia, played Kirsten Dunst in her introductory role.  I still believe this is her best performance, worthy of an Oscar.  The life of a vampire is delightful to the child, the same as Lestat perceives it.  However, as the decades move on, with changes in fashions and industry quickly developing, so does Claudia’s understanding.  Her body never matures, destined to always remain within the shell of a preteen child, and thus she commiserates with Louis.

It appears like I’ve summarized Anne Rice’s entire story, but I have not even come close.  Interview With The Vampire is to gothic horror the same way The Godfather is to mafia gangster life.  Both communities victimize people of an innocent world, but their members are expected to follow codes of decorum and respect.  The conflict lies in living as a bloodsucking vampire or a criminal gangster.  When a peer interferes or does not cooperate, then the individuals of these respected worlds become violent unto each other.    The viewer/reader observe how their patterns of behavior all play out and how one action or policy generates one response after another.  These films are high ranked authorities on their subject matters.

Louis explains to his interviewer how Bram Stoker’s celebration of vampires is dreamed up escapist fiction, though coffins and the avoidance of sunlight are absolute necessities to carry on.  Just like any person, vampires want to live happily, but life gets in the way and that can be frustrating on any number of different levels.  

Neil Jordan’s film is a marvelous exploration into the mindset of being a vampire.  Tom Cruise perfectly exudes Lestat as a vampire ready to joyously live with sin while he savors and lives a life of eroticism and material wealth.  A child like Claudia sees the attraction of being spoiled and spoiling herself, and she cannot get enough consumption of blood. Eventually though, her mentality outgrows what becomes redundantly mundane.  Louis is relatable like many people.  He is unhappy living the life he was born into.  Lestat grows aggravated with his family’s resistance to partake of what he relishes.  There is an extensive range of emotions on display with Interview With A Vampire. To be a vampire can be a privilege or a curse. It all depends on who you interview.

The look of this film is astonishing.  I know it was shot within New Orleans, Paris and San Francisco locations.  However, I can easily recognize some sound stage locales, and I have no complaints.  The art designs from Dante Ferretti are thoughtfully crafted with lantern lit, rain-soaked cobblestone streets of the seventeenth century to mucky, moonlit swamps.  Horse drawn carriages transporting abundances of coffins serve a purpose of humor and narrative as character misdeeds are routinely committed by Louis, Claudia and especially the trickster Lestat.  The furnishings of the aristocracy are embracing too.  It’s a remarkably convincing step back in time.  

The periodic costume wear by Sandy Powell completes the settings with colorful, silk garments, white ruffled shirt sleeves and buckled shoes for both the men and women as well as for Kirsten Dunst and some cherub cheeked children who come into play.  Everything looks so rich. The whole picture feels like stepping into one of those late-night ghost walking tours I’ve taken in small southern towns like Savannah and St Augustine.  Every scene, even when the film jumps to late twentieth century, is immersive.  

Anne Rice’s screenplay adaptation tells so much within two hours.  She allows time for the characters to sail to Europe seeking out others like them.  The second half of the film teaches us more about what it means to uphold oneself as a vampire.  

Neil Jordan sometimes delivers his film like a how-to documentary because you are consistently learning new details, not so much about plot but about a people you are not as familiar with. Often, the film segues into theatrical play as you might expect from Phantom Of The Opera.  It’s no wonder since eventually Anne Rice puts us in touch with the cabal known as Theatres des Vampires. Stephen Rea and Antonio Banderas get to take center stage within a literal theater where the facade of behaving like a vampire can be executed beyond the suspicions of a – ahem- live audience.  

Rice and Jordan get playful while also performing with horrific familiarity.  The bites on the neck are known to many of us for drinking blood.  Did you also realize that a vampire can drink from a crystal wine glass? There’s an elegance to how the actors’ characters consume the blood of humans.  Cruise and Pitt begin by going in for a passionate kiss, either on the neck or the weightless wrist of a victim.  Lestat is more aggressive. Louis caresses his meals on the rare occasion he dines. Claudia gives a puppy love bite. Cruise especially finds new and titillating ways to dine with each new feast.  Both actors are deliciously homoerotic, but on different parental planes with their child. Their love/hate relationship operates like Shakespearean stage work. That’s why I really take to Neil Jordan and Dante Ferretti’s choice of soundstages.  

I’ve become so bored with zombies and vampires.  How many iterations must be churned out of the same kind of monster.  This year’s horror hit, Sinners, was superb until it stopped being eye opening with surprise.  It eventually became the same old thing and offered nothing new to show me in its final blood-shedding act.  

Interview With The Vampire is one of the best vampire films though.  The film never ceases to speak directly to its audience.  The settings describe how life is lived.  The characters grapple with both internal and external struggles.  

It’s one shortcoming is that Anne Rice, Neil Jordan and cast/crew did not follow up with the author’s subsequent tales.  The subtitle, The Vampire Chronicles, seemed to promise an extension of this universe. I know of other Anne Rice film adaptations that chose not to continue on from what was done here, and the execution was terribly poor and disappointing.  There’s a biographical intelligence to Neil Jordan’s film that many films of all genres lack.

Anne Rice’s first film adaptation set the standard on vampire culture, and I have trouble thinking of anything since its release that closely matches it.  

Interview With The Vampire is the only one with a blood curdling bite.

DOCTOR SLEEP

By Marc S. Sanders

I never yearned for a sequel to The Shining.  Yet, color me surprised at how well I took to Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s return to psychic Danny Torrance and the haunting baggage he carries as a middle-aged adult in Doctor Sleep.  This is a time jump sequel that is nearly forty years in the future.

The film version of this story had a tricky challenge.  King notoriously despised Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic adaptation of The Shining. Several important details were not consistent between his book and the movie.  So, what was Flanagan to do?  Well, he got his blessing from the author to move ahead as a sequel to Kubrick’s interpretation because he also ensured that he would not veer too far away from how the novel was edited.  The director reasoned with King that more people are familiar with Kubrick’s product than what’s in King’s pages. Mike Flanagan found the right balance to please not only Stephen King, but also the respective fans of the novels and Kubrick’s unforgettable film.

Danny is played by Ewan McGregor.  He’s often reflecting on his childhood following his survival from his stay at the haunted Overlook Hotel in the snowy mountains of Colorado, where his delirious and murderous father terrorized him and his mother Wendy with an axe.  Now Danny is making efforts to recover from alcoholism as he takes a job as a hospice orderly in a small New Hampshire town.  It keeps him isolated while the ugly hauntings that he shines on stay contained in his mental lockboxes.  He also uses his gift to allow patients to peacefully carry over to the other side.   Danny becomes known as Doctor Sleep.

Elsewhere in the country there is a traveling cabal of people who devour the energies off of young children with similar shining abilities like Danny.  This small cult is known as The True Knot and their leader is the charming Rosie The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson).  The presence of one very special child is Abra (Kyliegh Curran).  Flanagan gets very creative in showing how Rosie, Abra and Danny locate and communicate with one another from faraway points.  Rosie’s technique is reminiscent of an amusing sequence in The Big Lebowski, though as you might expect the mood is altogether different in Doctor Sleep.  

Doctor Sleep is a longer picture than it needed to be.  The exposition goes on for quite a while where three separate stories are proceeding, and it becomes cumbersome to see how the dots are connected.  Yet, the movie eventually finds its way as things become more simplified.  Flanagan works some action scenes and neat visuals into the picture, but he does not neglect Stephen King’s penchant for nauseating and grotesque horror either.  Normally, I feign at seeing victimized children in deadly peril for the sake of escapist entertainment.  Here, it is repulsive on more than one occasion, but the moments serve the story and enhance the motives of the villains.  

The payoff of the film is the third act where this adaptation relies on much of Kubrick’s treatment of The Shining.  As the book was entirely different with its ending, Flanagan had to take a chance with some creative liberties.  Amazingly, his efforts score very well.  I’m not the biggest fan of Stanley Kubrick’s film (read my review on this site), but I had to cheer as more developments gradually unfolded.  There’s much to explore through the eyes of Ewan McGregor as Danny.

Mike Flanagan’s craftsmanship with a cast of supporting actors, including Henry Thomas (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) assuming Jack Nicholson’s role, are quite uncanny and lend to the argument to not depend on AI or “de-aging” visuals to recapture what once was.  Carl Lumbly effectively takes over for Scatman Caruthers and Alexandra Essoe does a very good pick up from Shelley Duvall’s performance as Wendy – a little flighty, melancholy and zany. The little ticks and inflections in these newly cast actors are mimicked quite well without going over the top.

Set pieces etched into anyone’s subconscious who has seen The Shining are impressively recreated by Flanagan’s team, from stained walls, big curtains and chandeliers to that very familiar orange, brown/black sectional pattern on the carpet of The Overlook.  At one point in film, Danny goes for a job interview and the office he sits in is an exact recreation of when his father Jack met with the managers of the hotel at the beginning of Kubrick’s film.  This kind of attempt at consistency has to be saluted.  It’s really amazing.  Mike Flanagan shows his painstaking efforts at recapturing Kubrick’s designs. I do not look at these efforts by Flanagan as commemorations so much as I see an omnipotence that observes Danny like it did to his father Jack before him. Danny might have survived, but the demons of his past and the sins of his father remain. He can never escape where he came from even if he relocates to New Hampshire, or wherever he goes.

Doctor Sleep offers the disturbing imagery you’d expect from Stephen King.  I’ve never been the author’s biggest fan.  Still, I really appreciate the creativity he lent to his sequel nearly a half century later.  It makes sense to have waited this long for the writer to pick up where he left off with some of his most well-known characters and locations.  

This dark fantasy works for its collection of heroes and their villains.

NOTE: I viewed the Blu Ray Director’s Cut which Miguel informed me is the better way to watch the film. I agree. There are more nods to Stanley Kubrick’s original film, and the outline of the picture performs in chapter sections like you might expect in Stephen King’s novel. Mike Flanagan never lost sight of either storyteller’s accomplishments. Doctor Sleep is an undervalued achievement in film. A very worthy sequel.