Naked Lunch

 Naked Lunch

Director – David Cronenberg

1991 – Canda-UK-Japan 

Writers - William S. Burrough (novel) & David Cronenberg

Stars – Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm

Cronenberg’s surreal comedy mash-up of William Burrough’s life and work, led by Peter Weller’s sublime deadpan Burroughs impression and bug-typewriters. If the plot and conspiracy are barely cohesive, that’s all part of the druggy paranoia that propels the plot into barely acknowledged trauma.

Although there are plenty of names, skits and autobiographical notes to please Burroughs’ fans, ‘Naked Lunch’ is very much Cronenbergian. It’s trashy and lucid, gross and intelligent in equal amounts in a way that Cronenberg has made his own. It starts with a Saul Bass-style opening credits with Howard Shore and Ornette Coleman's jazzy, retro score, at once ominous and dizzy with Coleman's solos. From the start, the tone is slick and edgy. The set design is colourful and resonant of an imaginary golden age of a decadent scene and cluttered writer's rooms.

But beneath the increasingly crazed WTF surface moments, and wayward plot concerning “double-agents” and sedition, there are numerous baubles concerning creativity and muses. Not least of all an early conversation about writing between Burroughs and characters representing Karouac and Ginsberg, which grips from the first. It’s a heady mixture in which cognitive dissonance and denial are pulled out as Burrough’s true muse, not just sex and drugs and an oppressively permissive North African town. It is repression of his homosexuality and guilt for the William Tell accident that killed his wife. When another character tells Bill “There are no accidents,” Cronenberg proves himself alert to Burrough’s philosophy. He is attuned to Burrough’s plunging into further absurdities, creativity, addiction, disgust and bugged out fetishes in his attempt to spiral away from he is and has done.

Cronenberg seems the right director for Burroughs when he presents the creativity tool of typewriters as sexually active provocateurs, filling the artist with conspiracies. Who would have thought antique typewriters could be so repulsive? And although it’s not subtle, there is something complete in the film’s use of metaphor, in the typewriter-bugs symbolising sexual self-loathing churning out intimate creations, or in the pieces of a broken typewriter becoming a junky’s kit. And then here are the unforgettable mugwumps – Chris Wallis’ creations are unsettling and clunky in the way only practical effects can achieve. 

But perhaps it is Cronenberg’s affinity for Burrough’s jet black humour that makes this more than an acolyte’s fawning. It isn’t that. Burroughs and Cronenberg are certainly suitable fits when it comes to expressing the trauma of the human condition with surrealism. Elsewhere, Tom Waits’ collaboration with Burroughs would bring out and prove, somewhat impressively, the latter’s oddball romanticism. And it’s the obvious playfulness and intelligence of the script that evidently enticed such a solid cast: Davis and Holm are deliciously straight; Julian Sands is delightfully camp; Scheider gleefully makes a crazed entrance to chomp scenery and cigar; Joseph Scoren is elegantly soft and charming; and here’s plenty of fine lines to go around. 

But if Cronenberg’s awareness of the absurdist humour means it never takes it totally seriously – it’s the comedy of the outrageous, which is in the blood of horror - by the end he finds the core of trauma that humanises such a notoriously chilly subject.

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One moment in: 'Fire in the Sky'

Fire in the Sky

Director – Robert Lieberman

Writers – Travis Walton (book "The Walton Experience"), Tracy Tormé (screenplay)

Stars – D.B. Sweeney, Robert Patrick, Craig Sheffer

 

If ever a film was defined by one scene, ‘Fire in the sky’ is it. Otherwise, it is very much feels like your decent but standard "True Story" movie. It has the feel of the made-for-TV Seventies and Eighties films and television I was familiar with growing up – look, there’s even James Garner! He doesn’t do anything, apparently having wandered over from an easy-going crime drama series where he investigates dodgy goings-on. There’s also Robert Patrick as a somewhat assholish friend, and Henry Thomas for five minutes, but we don’t get his story.

 

A group of loggers, coming back from work one night, see the sky aglow which leads to a UFO sighting and abduction of Travis Walton. This is his “True Story”.  There’s some flair in the play with lighting on a country road over the credits and the prowling take from one character to the next as the voiceover introduces them, and in the abduction scene, but otherwise it’s pretty stolid direction from Lierman and screenplay from Tracy Tormé. There’s macho posturing and belligerence and small-town mindedness as the story drags out the dilemma that everyone thinks they killed their missing friend. Which seems routine to my thinking, although it is played as an outrage … and I guess no one else saw the sky light up? I mean, it was impressive and surely able to be seen from some distance.

 

And then, ninety minutes in, it goes apeshit.

 

I grew up when alien abduction was all the rage. I was already frightened of alien attacks from reading the comic origin of Peter Quill, ‘Star Lord’: the moment where the aliens blast away his parents was one of my primal frights. It’s why I have a soft spot for 'Slumber Party Alien Abduction'  in ‘V/H/S/2’ (although I hate its shaky-cam). And I have no doubt that if I had been a kid seeing this moment in ‘Fire in the Sky’, it would have traumatised me and become and instant favourite.

 

I first encountered this scene cropped and made into a mini-vid on Instagram. But watching it again, in context, it had lost none of its power. It is totally at odds with the rest of the drama, like an acoustic folk track suddenly turning into New Wave Synth. It works as a short film within itself, and it sticks out so much because it’s not as if the film on either side bolsters unease. This scene survives autonomously. It is the flashback to Travis Watson’s experience inside the spaceship when he wakes up, abducted. He can apparently breathe the atmosphere and finds himself drifting through the low gravity of the UFO, and then subjected to alien medical procedure.

 

This moment is the stuff of pure nightmare and taps directly into the horror imaginings of human beings as to what an alien abduction would be like. It captures the fears and helplessness and works on such a primal level that it taps directly into the place that delights horror fans. These fears are mostly based upon incapacitation, suffocation, and penetration oral and ocular: rape fears, which fits the legend that UFO abductions feature anal probing, although the film doesn’t go there. Or not that we see. In fact, it cuts out just when it’s hitting peaks, which means you’re left wanting more, an to see what would follow. But the film isn’t so interested in expanding; in fact, this scene differs from Walton’s own account, meaning it isn’t much on the “True Story” stuff either. There was a hypnotic regression afterwards, for example.

 

And so, in the film, when Walton returns, he is traumatised for a while, but there are apparently no physical after-effects. No long-term PTSD for Walton, it seems. And the trauma he does have is got over enough for a reconciliation between Walton and his pal – and it has to be said that the incident seems to have more a long-term effect on Mike, who now lives pretty estranged from society. But it’s all resolved with a meagre joke, a punchline the kind that ‘Police Squad’ mocked, that trivialises the incident.

 

But that one sequence still remains as unforgettable and a treat for connoisseurs of fright scenes.

One moment in: 'Tron' and 'Speed Racer' races

There are several games in the word of ‘Tron’, but it’s the lightcycle race that’s the most memorable. It’s not meant t be futuristic, so any datedness in its look is irrelevant: it’s here that the editing and pacing really hits its mark in the wat that the rest of the film doesn’t have such a grip on. Of course, there’s the question that a crash of pixels allows a hole in the game grid for Flynn to escape, which doesn’t truly make sense: surely crashing opponents into walls is the point of the game, a built-in move rather than a flaw? But for a moment, in the 80s, it felt we were really getting a p.o.v. ride inside a game.

There's some of that in the Wachowskis' 'Speed Racer' too. The race in the ‘Speed Racer’ is a natural descendant of the ‘Tron’ lightcycle race, although where ‘Tron’ is tense in its limitations and the threat of straight lines, ‘Speed Racer’ is instead chaotic and colourful and overpacked in a way that reflects how gaming design has progressed. Of course, it’s not meant to be set in a virtual world, and it is perhaps more comic book than game, but its influences and context are obvious.

Tron - and its legacy

TRON

Director – Steven Lisberger

1982 – USA

Screenplay – Steven Lisberger & Charles S. Haas & Bonnie MacBird (story)

Stars – Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner

 

TRON: LEGACY

Director – Joseph Kosinski

2020, USA

Screenplay - Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowit

[This is a rewrite and expansion of my original post on ‘Tron’ from 2010, now deleted.]

Although I never actually saw ‘Tron’ when it first came out, I was still mesmerised by its look. I was in possession of one of those tie-in movie novelisations, inevitably adapted by Alan Dean Foster, which was bisected by a few glossy pages of stills from the movie. It was from those stills that I discovered ‘Tron’s distinct look, the luminous blue and red lines mostly. Of course, when I finally saw ‘Tron’ for the first time as an adult, I was instantaneously disappointed in the somewhat lukewarm script and a story that had seemed so much more threatening in the captions beneath those book stills which implied dark corporate intrigue and gaming adventure. The actual film is a far frothier affair, which is not a bad thing in itself, but. 

Gather around, kids, and I’ll tell you of how games looked very much like this. Lines and blocks and empty space. For example, this is the ‘Star Wars’ game I spent many hours playing in the arcade at a holiday camp when I was a kid. 

 

Or this was what I was playing on my home Atari, along with ‘Asteroids’, ‘Combat’, (I got quite good a 'Tank Battle') and ‘Pacman’ etc.

 So when ‘Tron’ appeared, it very much seemed of the moment, of the zeitgeist, so it didn’t have to concern itself with futurism and predictions, and it hasn’t dated in that sense. When I recently bought this on blu-ray, the shop guy said, “This is my childhood right here,” (I was also buying ‘Dr Who: Shada’ on a whim), and we talked about it a little. I had often wondered if its look will still be as awe-inspiring to a younger generation used to the most amazing graphics and CGI. This guy was perhaps in his late twenties and said that, although being younger, it “Blew my mind!” In fact, what I love about the look and why I think it still impresses now, is that it looks like an old silent movie that has been neon-ised. A kid colouring in a black-and-white comic with felt tips. A retro-futuristic look. It’s almost cyberpunk. It’s this that keeps me coming back. 

Atari had barely made the promise of things to come when Disney’s ‘Tron’ created a world where the players become their virtual doppelgangers. With games becoming more and more realistic (perhaps to a fault with examples like ‘Red Dead Redemption II’), avatars and virtual identities in modern gameplay and social media now allow us all that. Perhaps without the cool glow-in-the-dark costumes and Frisbee hats, but also without the risk of being wiped out by a megalomaniac, demon-faced computer system. 

Critic John Brosnan probably misses the point in his taking ‘Tron’ to task for being illogical and unscientific:

“True, video games are controlled by computer chips, but that is no reason to suggest that the internal workings of a computer would be visually analogous to those of a video game.” [John Brosnan, 'Primal Screen: A History of Science Fiction Film', Orbit, pg's 350-351]

Brosnan goes on to berate the conceit that transforms players into their cyber-counterparts: a laser that allows the computer to store molecules and reassemble them into their original form. I doubt that any sci-fi kid worth his salt would truly buy this as likely in a second. The fantasy tropes are instantaneously recognised by any budding genre fan: lone warrior drawn into an alternative reality/dreamworld to defeat a seemingly omnipotent overlord; the quest; “magical” weapons and steeds; an odyssey across an incredible otherworld - all these are the fantasy tropes that pulp science-fiction long ago adopted. The promotional at looks like a Frank Frazetta warrior-ad-is-woman pose, but with more neon. Any kid knows, deep down, this is magic-science, that it is a just techno-babbling means of allowing the real kick that ‘Tron’ promises: the promise that, tomorrow!, we will be able to BE those characters in those fantastically virtual beautiful worlds of heroism, action, violence and adventure. Were the creators of ‘Tron’ really ignorant of the science or simply patronising the young audience, Brosnan asks? Well, that audience knew exactly how ‘Tron’ logic worked: it is the same Olympian magic that allows the Gods to animate giant steel statues, to transfer Chosen Ones from one world to the next, and, say, for ‘E.T.’ to breathe Earth oxygen without trouble.  For the thrill of hard, plausible science, you would have to look elsewhere.

But: bad dialogue, heavily tilted to exposition; rudimentary narrative. Every time I watch it, come the finale, it’s used up all my allowances and only disappointment remains. ‘Tron’ suffers from that weakness that typically undermines many a special effects extravaganzas: fascinating and original big sci-fi contexts and designs undermined by the flimsiest of storylines that draw from tired tropes and stock characters. Yet the look remains sumptuous, timeless, and fascinating. And not forgetting that, apart from the visual aesthetic, ‘Tron’’s greatest achievement is the possession of an all-time great action and sci-fi sequence with the legendary light-cycle race. I'm definitely seeing a through line to 'Speed Racer'. If ever a film subsisted on one scene, this qualifies.

This was an age where Disney made a few odd choices: ‘The Black Hole’ (1979) is another film that I can’t help being drawn back to for the look, and then finding myself let down by the experience (and another film I discovered by the book tie-in and the glossy pictures therein; and I  liked the cutesy robots). But it’s no mystery that ‘Tron’ was developed when the gaming age was hotting up: after all, what about all those tie-in ‘Tron’ games? The look and reality-jumping promises offered in ‘Tron’ has far exceeded its malnourished screenplay. It certainly has its place as a pioneering effects work and its aesthetic still has currency (a TRON Lightcycle Power Run at Shanghai Disneyland Resort, for example) even though, as a story, it carries no suspense or tension, but it is Gee-whiz! 

So it is the Eighties real world scenes that are going to be the most dated. Flynn’s introduction is a dated and unintentionally funny moment when he rolls into the arcade, fastest player in town, and then proceeds to kick ass on a game that runs at the speed of a tractor. If the internal world of ‘Tron’ graphics still manages to seem somewhat ageless then this opening arcade sequence reminds us of how far the gaming and virtual world actual have come. But, again, it doesn’t matter because this is not meant to be futuristic.

‘Tron’s targets and commentary are also elementary. An illusion that mainstream entertainment regularly puts up is that the Company Head – David Warner as Dillinger – is villainous, as if a huge corporation like Disney is throwing a little red meat to public discontent whilst being that very thing they’re calling villainous. A condescending, “Yeah, they’re all corrupt at the top, just like you think!” whilst any self-awareness is just a selling point, allowing the audience to think its targets are just. And further playing into this, we have the hotshot game developer, Flynn (Jeff Bridges), as the genius rebel whose artistry has been stolen by the corporation. It’s some corporate villainy in the real world and a demonic ruler in the virtual and a fan fighting against The System. But it all feels superficial. 

The world inside the games is your regular dystopia with the Master Control Programme as a megalomaniac with designs on real world control. MCP’s ambitions to take over the world and run it better than the humans align the ranks of megalomaniac computers such as those from ‘The Forbin Project’ and ‘Demon Seed’ and many others. The idea that computers (and robots, etc.) will achieve independent sentience is another science-fiction fetish that in truth speaks more of human narcissism and tendency to anthropomorphising the truly inhuman. In this virtual world, David Warner is the henchman, looking quite uncomfortable in his costume (but he doesn’t suffer the same virtual costume humiliation as Barnard Hughes). Back in the real world, even Dillinger balks at the MCP’s plans to go nuclear: Dillinger just wants to exploit. It philosophically vacuous. For all its hints, there’s no substantial political or pseudo-religious existential queries here, not like ‘The Matrix’ series for example, for everything but the design feels half-baked. There’s just goodies and baddies and a hostile takeover bid where the creation wants to dominate the creator. 

Yet the similarities of appearance between the real and virtual world do give ‘Tron’ faint allegorical pretensions: everything from inside the computer to the genuine cityscapes, and even the gliding point-of-view searching camera in the arcade, all share the same computer-game aesthetic. The world, ‘Tron’ says with its overall look, is one big computer chip or grid, and we are but players and programmes, etc. It does at least give the sense that we are dwarfed not only by technology but also be the products of our imaginations, and entertainments. 

If ‘Tron’s odd Eighties tone has dated more than its look, there at least is Jeff Bridges to give it some gruff personality and David Warner to give it some class. And perhaps the biggest question is why Tron himself is such a secondary character who barely registers. It’s Flynn’s story. 

It’s an odd choice and one only amplified in ‘Tron: Legacy’. In this sequel, Tron himself is almost an afterthought that appears in the last act, in a helmet, never seen, just a faceless antagonist. So incidental is the eponymous character that it’s like they filmed the scene and suddenly realised what the film was called and quickly did some dubbing and pick-ups to shoehorn him in. “Tron… what have they done to you?” And as he looks like any faceless antagonist, it’s unclear how Flynn recognises him. You certainly don’t remember the films for Tron the character.

One feature that stands out if that there’s a de-aged Jeff Bridges, a virtual Jeff Bridges in the real world of ‘Tron: Legacy’, that makes it look like a game cut-scene. Somehow this seems apt, but it only confuses the logic more (so he looks like an avatar, but we’re not supposed to notice…). As his aggrieved son, Garrett Hedlund is bland, but it's only Michel Sheen that seems be having scenery-chewing fun, his performance entertainingly all over the place.

‘Tron: legacy’ improves not on the original’s flaws and, again, it’s the light-cycle set-piece the proves the most memorable and underserved by a mostly rudimentary and generic execution. A lot of the action and posing seems designed for the trailer. With Daft Punk DJing a club fight scene, it’s music video influences couldn’t be clearer.  The trajectory stops for a lot of backstory and world-building, which, like the original, becomes a little baffling but in this sequel tries for an earnest core with its daddy-issues that only provide performative emotional substance. Lassiter, who produced this sequel, sees it this way: 

'Clu, Flynn’s cyber-son, is basically saying, “I did everything I could for you, and yet you loved that real world kid more than me. You don’t even really know him.”'

He certainly finds depth in there that, mostly, is just a distraction and takes up valuable action time. It just isn’t as interesting as the possibilities and existential queries raised by existence in a cyberworld might promise.

‘Tron: Legacy’ does look pretty, but it doesn’t do more than tick boxes otherwise. And as every big-budget fantasy film can look this amazing, it doesn’t even have ground-breaking novelty in its favour. It tries for too much story to be Big and Brainless fun, and its potential big idea of AI coming through to the real world ends up just the passenger on a “cool!” bike ride. 

So perhaps I am saying the virtual bike ride is ‘Tron’s true legacy. 

And, too, that big door is just nonsensical, impractical and stupid.

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2021 Film review - Home screen

And…

 

Some of the films below might actually be more 2020, but I was only aware of them last year, so indulge me as I am sure there is some overlap, especially with the NetFlix/Prime titles. They’re kinda current anyhow.

 

What really struck me about Thomas Vinterberg’s excellent ‘Another Round’ is how it reserved judgement and showed alcohol being an enabler of confidence. This, just as much as apparently essential for a good time, was shown to be intrinsic to its addictive qualities. A group of teacher friends decide to become alcoholics by using the pretence of an experiment about alcohol consumption. This criticism of Danish drinking culture was like a needle slowly being pushed in. That it ended on a note of exuberance seemed to have left some thinking it was a feel-good conclusion, but that surely neglects all the subtleties planted throughout. After all, drinking is associated with good times and I didn’t find anything conclusive come the deceptive jubilation of the ending.

 

Emma Seligman’s ‘Shiva Baby’ had a crackling script and really tapped into that most stressful context: the official social gathering. Conflicts of the demands of tradition and generation rule: young people playing parts to get through the scrutiny of the older generation. A touch of farce underpins it all, as does the comedy of embarrassment, but its humour is wry and sly, its cultural observation empathetic. Best and contrarian of all, it’s scored like a horror film by Ariel Marx, playing up the anxieties of these occasions.

 

Jane Campion’s ‘The Power of the Dog’ was a slow burner, pretty to look at and full of set pieces that showed bullying without resorting to typical displays of violence. How it destroys confidence and starts resentment festering. Full of mind-games, innuendo, repression, and things left unspoken. Perhaps Johhny Greenwood’s often discordant score should have been a clue to the film’s insidiousness and long game. Armond White’s conclusion of the film and Jane Campion’s of homophobia is surely wrongheaded in that it neglects character agency and that their behaviour is borne from the environmental misogyny and repression. It also features two excellent performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee. 

 

J Blakeson’s ‘I Care a Lot’ was a bone fide provocation with the sheer amorality and immorality of its characters. But therein was a critic/condemnation not only of the system the capitalist characters exploit, but of how happy audiences are with the conmen struts in cinema. And Rosamund Pike plays her villainess with shallow charm and relish that asks, really, why would you root for her machinations? It was also to include the complicity and enablement in its target range.

 

Kitty Green’s excellent ‘The Assistant’ was another film with slow-burn and insidious designs. It told of just another workday of the assistant to a powerful executive, but was really a portrayal of the daily enablement and complicity in bullying, exploitation and abuse – and being overworked was the least of it. It was the muffled scream to ‘Promising Young Woman’s yell, although its commitment to its just-another-day agenda surely bored some. But that’s the point: its all-pervasive and the normalising of maltreatment.

 

Michael Sarnoski’s ‘Pig’ also contained an admonishment of the soul-destroying nature of work. The best scene, for me, was when Nicolas Cage quietly but thoroughly reminded a former employee of the dreams and ambition he had once had, the kind ground out of you. Mostly, it came as a great character piece and subversion of the typical revenge pic.

 

Xiaoshuai Wang’s ‘So Long, My Son’ was also a slow burn, focusing on the effects of China’s “One Child” policy and the lifelong effect of a loss of a child. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the realisation that over its three-hour runtime it had thoroughly sunk its claws into me, and that it achieved such an emotional effect on me that I found myself aggressively wishing for a happy ending. Which never happens (I go with the flow to see what’s to be said). It has a naturally cluttered look, increasingly affecting performances, a little tricky with its temporal play, but ultimately a very moving and reflective film.

 

Adam Mackay’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ was perhaps too cartoony as a satire to be properly upsetting or chilling, and it was preaching to the choir, but it still contained enough to upset snowflake Right-wingers. And anyway, accusing a political portrayal as “too cartoony” seems redundant in an era still suffering from Trumpism. Ultimately, it posits that current American MSM perniciousness and shallowness will be an extinction event. It would make an interesting double-bill with ‘The Pizzagate Masacare’.

 

In fact, although it came over as just another action flick, Ric Roman Waugh’s ‘Greenland’ probably proved a more upsetting end-of-the-world drama. Certainly, the separation of parents from kids was easily more emotionally worrying – it is the scene where they’re trying to get on the plane that stayed with me most. It proved surprisingly enjoyable and well-executed for your typical family-in-peril apocalypse.

____________

And now to dramas through a horror lens:

 

Of which Rose Glass’ ‘Saint Maud’ was a favourite. Another drama of female mental instability with great performances by Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle. Dull English coastal towns played up for their dilapidated charm, with eeriness and tension on display. We know Maud’s trajectory will not be a good one, what with religious delusion taking hold in an attempt to control trauma, but how long it will take is another matter. And leading to an unforgettable and harrowing finale.

 

The underground favourite was Jonathan Cuartas’ ‘My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To’. One of those films that puts vampire rules in downbeat, grubby neo-realist context. This time, the focus is on family dynamics and as the older siblings of a young, naive blood drinker turn serial killers to feed him. It’s emphasis is more on the gloom of sadness and loneliness than horror flourishes. With the title song providing all the lush emotional release the characters don't have, its dour tone, smart execution, editing, the excellent performances and enough twists make for a compelling domestic horror.

 

Pascual Sisto’s ‘John and the Hole’ was also interested in the horror of family dynamic, but in a way reminiscent of Yorgos Lanthimos. That meant that the family insisting on returning to normal was the open-ended chill. Unsettling drama (one of the key questions is how "horror" this will get) that is ultimately about the performance of family dynamics as 13-year-old John - a compelling and near-inscrutable creepy-sweet performance by Charlie Shotwell - tries to play out one of his offbeat questions: what would it be like if the family weren't around? Perhaps too ambiguous for its own good in the end, but fascinating and always intriguing. Horror is other people, when their oddness gets out of hand.

 

And back to the distressed and mental health of women:

 

Of course, there was ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘Lucky’ but the other favourite was Prano Bailey-Bond’s ‘Censor’. The premise was catnip for genre fans: a censor cracks up in the Eighties’ video nasty period. The certain British Eighties grubbiness is well represented and then homages to the genre take control. Hey: in the woods! It was a vivid example of horror homage: combining the genre's close affinity to trauma and nightmare logic and aligning the 80s "Video Nasty" censorship with delusion, denial and repression. Ratio changes, a touch of giallo and Niamh Algar's flinty central performance make this both smart and playful.

 

Falling short of hitting the mark in the same area were ‘Knocking’ and ‘The Strings’. And they both began with gorgeous beach shots: ‘Knocking’ was as gorgeously summery as ‘The Strings’ was gorgeously bleak.

 

Frida Kempff’s ‘Knocking’ had the promising premise of a woman recovering from a breakdown besieged by knocking in the apartment block where she is placed. Now, knocking is just frightening (I learnt this from Robert Wise’s ‘The Haunting’ when at a tender age), but the knocking here is distressing rather than frightening. Cecelia Milocco's committed, nuanced performance holds it all together, its exploration of a woman's fragile state being constantly under siege by real or imagined urgencies and the horror of being disbelieved rang true enough. Yet, despite its shorter run-time, it leaves its audience as much running in circles as the distressed protagonist, doesn't quite follow up on some points and - being so focused on her dilemma - the answer almost comes as an after-thought; or at least at her expense. Too much build-up and too little pay-off?

 

Ryan Glover’s ‘The Strings’ made knocking scary, but ultimately didn’t seem so interested in its horror feints. Certainly our protagonist didn’t seem to be so bothered, just inconvenienced by them maybe. Instead, there were plenty of nice scenes of her making music, which anyone making DIY tunes will relate to. There is a great soundtrack and presence by Teagan Johnston (the kind where any shonky acting doesn’t matter) but when the spooky stuff happens - and it takes a loooong time to kick off - it mostly comes to nothing as Catherine barely engages with the supernatural side of the narrative: there's a tendency to cut away from heightened moments to the everyday stuff with the impression that nothing really has any resonance. It has desolate prettiness and great DIY music moments but ultimately doesn't let the supernatural say anything about the character drama.

 

For male madness, there was Amber Sealey’s ‘No Man of God’, a drama based around FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier’s interviews with Ted Bundy. As Hagmaier, Elijah Woods initially seemed cast a little against type but provided a career best. As Bundy, Luke Kirby gave a convincing portrayal of a man whose charm has been much wrongly aggrandised. It was a solid drama that always kept the victims as foremost in consideration, with most of the drama coming from Bundy not coming clean. Not much glorification or exploitation here.

 

 

To fantastical horror:

                                                                                       

Alejandro Fadel’s ‘Murder Me, Monster’ was the first film I saw in 2020 (although it was 2019, I think?) and proved quite unforgettable. It’s slow burn and slightly offbeat approach to its tale of a possible monster fixed to the symmetry of nature was not presented in a usual fashion. It was more like ‘Once Upon a Time in Antonia’ than even your typical smouldering moody horror (e.g. ‘Sator’). Wilfully cryptic, but there was a monster and, boy, what a monster!

 

Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Possessor’ was a total shocker and immediate favourite. As clinical as his father’s early work, but slick and confident, disturbing and highlighted with vivid violence and practical effects in a way that felt distinctly his own. Technology, terrible violence, big business conspiracy, identity crises, psychopathy, faltering identity and reality, slightly abstract and thoroughly visceral… Chilling and thrilling.

 

And surely few would argue that Jordan Graham’ ‘Sator’ was an impressive piece of work, handmade almost totally by himself over seven years. Here was a film that thoroughly exploited the “banging is scary” that I mentioned earlier. But there were moments where it reminded me as much of Tarkovsky as the cabin-in-the-woods genre. Built from his grandmother’s genuine belief in a supernatural entity watching over them, the mood and the frighteners are consummately executed, the mystery maintained and resulted in a superior horror mood piece.

Another small-scale winning horror was Damian McCarthy’s ‘Caveat’, which was full of eerie images and creepiness, unsettling and somewhere between Gothic and contemporary, supernatural and psychological horror. Definitely left an impression from the moment I started smiling at the genre delights of an amnesic protagonist and “didn’t I say it’s on an island?” and “didn’t I mention you’ll be chained up?” It’s darkly amusing when a protagonist doesn’t know he’s in a horror film.

 

But if you were looking for bonkers, trashy genre, then you couldn’t go too far wrong with Richard Shepard’s ‘The Perfection’, which started out in one place and then twisted and turned until it was unrecognisable as the same film by the end. It’s a film where you just go along for the ride and you soon stop saying “Wha…?” Not as artful as, say, ‘The Handmaiden’, but fun nonetheless.

 

Bryan Bertino’s ‘The Dark and the Wicked’ was slick enough, but a little lax in its internal logic. Similarly, Kimo Stanmboel’s ‘The Queen of Black Magic’ seemed to lack a magic ingredient that made the most of its setting and premise. And I also enjoyed Anthon Scott Burn’s ‘Come True’ less than others. It had atmosphere but it’s not often that ending won’t come as a source of frustration for me. These were films very much stronger when building up.

The simple genre pleasures of Corinna Faith’s ‘The Power’ were less disappointing, surely because I went in with lower expectations. A great location in the old hospital distinguishing it and a somewhat clunky feminist subtext (well, not so much sub) notwithstanding. Peter Thorwarth’s ‘Blood Red Sky’ was enjoyable enough but also felt like it should be that much better, hampered by angst and unnecessary flashbacks that got in the way of its vampires-on-a-plane premise.

 

But then there were thorough losers for me. Jason Howden’s ‘Guns Akimbo’ never left its look-at-me! adolescence into something self-aware and genuinely smart, which was a shame because I enjoyed Howden’s ‘Deathgasm’. Not nearly as egregious but also not-so-good was also Joe Carnahan’s ‘Boss level’, even if it had time-loops and video game action.

 

There was the Nicolas Cage twofer Sion Sono’s ‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ and Kevin Lewis’ ‘Willy’s Wonderland’. ‘Ghostland’ was often just busy doing nothing and angsting when it should have been moving. ‘Wonderland’ wasn’t as much fun as it thought it was and seemed happy to coast on It’s Fucking Nicolas Cage! For his part, Cage’s happy embracing of the absurd was totally appropriate for these films, and it’s remarkable that he could go from this to ‘Pig’ without missing a beat. The difference being Cage the fanboy pop-phenomenon and Cage the actor.

 

Josh Ruben’s ‘Werewolves Within’, however, won me over. Its comedic tone initially didn’t click with me, being very much characters screeching at each other as if insisting on their funniness. But when it ultimately turned to be a tirade against the eponymous selfishness, I was fully on board. It’s a bit scrappy, but it has enough whodunnit?! playfulness, wit and self-awareness, and good intention that it does a good job of charming past its weaknesses. Not bad for a video game adaptation.

 

And another film that proved itself just by getting on with being happy with what it is, and also better than its title promised, was Michael Matthews’ 'Love and Monsters’. A likeable sad-sack lead in Dylan O’Brien, a romcom-horror premise – he sets out across the monster infested distance in search of a girl he fancies – and enough sense to let the monster element mitigate any romcom triteness, it was a charmer.

 

And in other otherworldly dilemmas, there was ‘Chaos Walking’, whose gimmick of thoughts bursting out loud constantly – for the men, at least – should have but didn’t sink it for me. Rather, it was a decent Western-style sci-fi of the Young Adult variety. Decent in that it was easy to watch, looked good and you can’t go far wrong With Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley and Mads Mikkelson. But despite the Heard Male Thoughts gimmick, although thwarting possible romantic interludes, the prodding at themes of machismo doesn’t do so more than superficially (I haven’t read the source book, Patrick Ness’ ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ but one provocative subplot seems to be that all the women were murdered because the men couldn’t bear their thoughts being overheard all the time).

 

Far more curious and impressive was Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl similarly Western-inclined ‘Prospect’ (this one was 2018). It turned that favoured low-budget location of a forest into an alien planet just by having bits floating in the atmosphere. This was not a film of big effects but was pretty and focused on the dilemma of a teenaged girl fending for herself when marooned in a world peppered by mercenary prospectors. Immersive and interested in story and atmosphere rather than dazzle.

 

Chino Moya’s ‘Undergods’ was also heavy on atmosphere, but this time we were in a futuristic-ish European Dystopia, the kind so washed out and beak that you’ll be inclined to remember it in black or white. It was a bundle of connecting stories about how shit life can be, but also intriguing tales of family and exploitation that had hints of fables about them. There was a sense that this was only a glimpse of this world, that this was the outskirts, and the fact that there was a desire to see more surely meant it hit many of its targets.

 

But when it came to fantasy, it was David Lowery’s ‘The Green Knight’ that proved a most wonderous interpretation of the genre, inhabiting a touch of everything. Introverted, yes, with a measured pace and agreeably down-to-earth with a sense there were real feelings and anxieties to these archetypes. Yet quite happy to do bigger flourishes with wandering battleground aftermaths and giants. Monsters. Talking animals. Pretty fantasia. Gothic shadows. Mystery. Thoroughly beguiling.

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Some Favourite Moments

 

Mads Mikelson dancing in ‘Another Round’

The opening pre-credits sequence of ‘The Empty Man’

The opening of ‘The Beta Test’

The restaurant scene in ‘Pig’

The horror score in ‘Shiva Baby’

The shock of ‘Possessor’

The emotional impact of ‘So Long, My Son’

Giants walking in ‘The Green Knight