Film Notes 2022 part 2: Borderline genre & mash-ups

Film Notes 2022 part 2: Borderline genre & mash-ups

Or rather, films that used genre flavouring for other concerns.

There were two pandemic horrors of note.  Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas’ ‘Ego’ took a thoroughly locked-up approach. 19-year-old Paloma is suck in Madrid lockdown and still getting over her breakdown. However, she seems a typical brattish young woman until she seems to be victim of identity theft by a doppelgänger.

Unless we don’t get the point, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is a constant motif, but it’s soon apparent that beneath Paloma’s bullish exterior, there is a troubled soul. María Pedraza’s remarkable performance only gets more involving and devastating as Paloma feels that her identity, her reality is being threatened. By herself. And no one will believe her. A supernatural peril or a portrait of increasing mental instability, the film carefully maintains ambiguity – ‘Repulsion’ is an obvious comparison, but there are moments when it verges on ‘Insidious’ style scares – and it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that, as Paloma gets into more of a state, you suddenly realise that you are likely just as unnerved for no good reason – which is exactly her plight and distress.

Not only a horror incorporating the digital world but also a bona fide lockdown drama using the horror genre to empathise with the mental health crisis running alongside as a direct result of the pandemic years. Some may begrudge that there is no big showdown, but the film ends with something more insidious and heart-breaking. And the final symbolism implies this is just one of many.

And then there was Andy Mitton’s ‘The Harbinger’, an exceptional downer and unnerver. Horror being the perfect genre for expressing the personal and global anxiety and terror of the pandemic. ‘The Harbinger’ starts with standard ghost/demon spooking, but as it goes on its use of dreams and despondence gets increasingly sophisticated so that it becomes apparent that the film is after deeper existential horror.

Rooted in crucially warm and believable performances, the failing reality and psychological threats are layered on to capture the dread and fear of the early pandemic years, especially the psychological toll. It proves itself something truly haunting and captures that sense of being at a loss and losing all the time which defined that period.

Then there was Arsalan Amiri’s ‘Zalava’, which I saw as part of the virtual  Glasgow Film Festival programme. If I was watching this at FrightFest or Grimmfest, I would have been more sure of where this was going. However, this Iranian drama dresses up in a horror clothing to speak of the dangers of superstitious and blind belief, and one can extrapolate to religious faith, in a way that feels bold in is lack of ambiguity. It's not shy about it's targets

1978: Massound is a gendarmerie sergeant sent to a village in Kurdistan to investigate complaints of being under siege by demonic possessions. But Massoud does not believe in such things, which puts him at odds with the townsfolk, especially when an exorcist gets involved. Soon, the general hysteria infuses every shadow, breeze, creak and empty pickle jar with supernatural potential, not tot mention the cute black cat cameo. The pickle jar is the central macguffin. And the audience will play into that too because, as this a film, anything is possible. The atmosphere is thick with portent and the location is fascinating, and we will not get so deep into the characters, although we don’t necessarily need to. The abstract nature of a person is part of the point.

Ryan Lattanzio calls it “slight”, perhaps with expectations of a more conventional horror. It felt to me more akin to the work of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (see 'Big Bad Wolves'). When a film is the dangers of mob delusion, about the battle between the irrational and rational, I wouldn’t call it slight. Being about man’s hysteria and inclination for lynching, it’s more of a genuine horror than just the spookily inclined drama than I perhaps initially assumed.

Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Bones and All’ was a genre-blender that allowed you to lean on whichever side you preferred: horror, road movie, young adult angst, romance, adventure, indie downbeat ramblings, etc. Of course, publicly it tried to underplay the first, but all its cannibal moments were genuinely gruelling and genre satisfying. 

Jean Luc Herbulot ‘Saloum’ was equally a genre mash-up, this time of lowlife crime, disenfranchised cult communities and then demons. African mercenaries extract a drug lord from Guinea-Bissau and hide out in Saloum, impersonating good guys – a storyline that takes up a majority of film, featuring flashbacks, a clean and bright veneer and gruff, macho striking performances. They’re compatriots and blood brothers, but there’s still distrust and suspicion. Then revelations ensue and increasingly the film shows itself to be a heady mash-up of genres that nevertheless doesn’t lose any hold on its forward-momentum, careening right through.

Bright and quite unique in tone, with picturesque vistas, flashbacks, tough guy plotting, mercilessness and gunplay, folklore and regional history effortlessly segueing into demons that look like gatherings of swarms. Another example of cultural specifics and genre blending giving traditional horror new angles.

Although ostensibly a biopic based on Marilyn Monroe – although the makers would shrug at this – Andrew Dominic’s ‘Blonde’ was troubling. Monroe through a disturbed/disturbed lens that often felt like a Lynchian Hollywood nightmare. Much to commend, not least its black-and-white aesthetic, but also to doubts it intensions as it leered a little hard into exploitation. 

Mariama Diallo’s ‘Master’ did not quite gel for me. It hits many of the right beats in build-up but doesn't quite resolve it's mash-up and conflation of underlying racism and the supernatural. And all the subplots end in defeatism without any real insight other than "it's everywhere", or "it's America" to what feels like little purpose or catharsis.

More successful with its verge-of-horror drama was Nikyatu Jusu’s ‘Nanny’, in which a nanny’s guilt at being an absentee parent seemingly allows the presence of something supernatural to exert its influence. Just a little. Or maybe she’s just losing it under the strain, ever so slightly. Leaning psychological rather than supernatural, Anna Diop’s performance is captivating in its pride in the face of exploitation and taking on the domestic troubles of her privileged Manhattan employers. Rina Yang’s cinematography is appropriately décor magazine crisp, and the sound design maintains the consistent unease. As a horror-inflected film about work-life, it’s chock full of themes such as privilege, exploitation, maintaining pride and that guilt, etc. Impressively proving again that there is nowhere the genre cannot go to use its tools to shine on the everyday horrors of existence, whether existential or not.

Then there were genre odd couple dramas with genre contexts, like ‘Something in the Dirt’ and ‘Next Exit’.

‘Something in the Dirt’ was another wonderfully heady offering from the Moorhead & Benson duo. What starts seemingly as a couple of guys find incredible phenomena in their LA apartment, which thy then intend to document/exploit, unfolds into full-scale conspiracy theorising and increasing sadness. Filmed by the duo and producer during lockdown, again it’s the stacking up of ideas that engross (morse code in fruit!), but their evocation of male relationships are always excellent. As an vocation of thinking you have something wold-shattering that you can't quite reach so head into conspiracies and delusion, it stands as a striking analogy. 

From the first flush of friendship to the moment where the more you know of someone, the more you can hit your target when you criticise, they excel at providing deep characterisation so that even their arguing during mid-phenomena doesn’t strain credibility.

Mali Elfman’s ‘Next Exit’ presented a world where the existence of ghosts has some scientific proof, a mismatched couple head across the country with the intention of giving up their lives to further study.

Despite the supernatural/sci-fi backdrop (and a fine creepy opening), this is mostly a road trip of two central brilliant performances of an odd couple going through existential crisis. If it perhaps becomes a romcom for horror fans, the characters and performances convince hard, with a lot of humour and pathos on the way.

Even a more minor film like Jacob Gentry’s ‘Night Sky’ offered another well-acted odd couple. It reminded me of the likeable VHS sci-fi thrillers of the Eighties. Like ‘Next Exit’, another slow-burn road movie with good central performances this one is like 'Starman' crossed with 'No Country for Old Men'; although Alan Jones namechecks road movies from the '70s. With the thriller element in play, the narrative keeps moving until the canyon and bright lights finale, and up until then its proven decent if not quite profound entertainment. Includes a decidedly nasty, pontificating hitman and Brea Grant effortlessly doing "innocent".

If magic surrealism/oddness was what you were after rather than genre mash-ups, then there was Quentin Duprieux’s ‘Incredible But True’. Accessible Duprieux comes in a satire of magic realism that doesn’t feel the need to go further than a limited time portal in your house and an iDick to illustrate human absurdity. In this case, how people will go to extraordinary lengths and delusions to keep up gender constructs of youth and desirability. Light, easy and surreal, this is not quite the divisive film I anticipated as it's fun with a little cruelty to spice things up.

More oddness: Nikias Chryssos’ ‘A Pure Place’ pretty soon reveals itself as a cult narrative, but there’s a lot of offbeat edges that leave it a slippery beast, such as Jodorowsky, a nod to magic realism, a hint of ‘The City of Lost Children’. On a Grecian island, a delusional man has created his own narcissistic religion and class system with homeless orphans working below and white-wearing upper class above. They earn money by making soap, which fits Furst’s fascistic obsession with cleanliness. Furst’s mixture of unforgiving fascist classism mixed with Hygenia as its God makes for a credible belief system (and no telling how ugly it would all be if race was a factor), topped with Romanesque pomp and theatre.

Beautiful imagery, courtesy of the Greek island and heightened set design, and layered with themes of exploitation, delusion, class, abuse, etc.; but it leans towards fairy-tale rather than horror in its tone. Indeed, there’s a permanent doubt of just how much this is set in the real world, being somewhere between Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s ‘Evolution’ and Ariel Kleiman’s ‘Partisan’; and even the poverty magic realism of ‘Tigers are not Afraid’. The acting highlights are Sam Louwyck’s performance as Furst, his natural dancer’s tendencies giving the character an innate elegance and charm, and young Claude Henrick’s feisty turn as Paul.

Intriguing, entertaining, sunny, slightly ethereal and slightly disturbing, the tone is one where lacunas barely matter. Certainly, in discussion, Chryssos talks of its grounding in real cases of cults, but the tone is not one that relies on veracity. A curio which maintains its oddness to the very end, where escape is a strip joint.

Mark Jenkins’ ‘Bait’ was a sensation in its DIY formation. His follow-up ‘Enys Men’ is similarly constructed with a clockwork Bolex camera and an even more audacious post-production sound design comprised of often sharp diegetic sound and blaring drone. (If there is any evidence is needed more that lazy jump-scares are simply results of volume, see if you jump and innocuous Cornish landscapes because the music here blasts out.) The feel is of a 70s folk horror with bold colours, some print flares and speckling, and this is intrinsic to the success of its feel. What seems to be the tale of a volunteer on an unpopulated Cornish island taking the temperature of some flowers and dropping a stone down a mine shaft gradually evolves into something inscrutable, fascinating and disquieting. Past and present seems to increasingly overlap and, for me, her world became a lost continent of ghosts. If it hits your buttons, it’s a superior horror-inflected ambient mood piece. Mike Muncer (Evolution of Horror) calls it ‘Penda’s Fen’ meets ‘the Lighthouse”, and that’s a fair description. 

But it was Andrew Legge’s ‘LOLA’ that really wowed me. Hugely impressive and inventive alternative history filmed with a Bolex camera and vivid imagination, blended with reimaged historical footage. A  highlight is the music by Neil Hannon, reinventing popular songs for this alternative reality. It's all thoroughly convincing. The scope the film is able to achieve is wide, with the skill to hand to make it work while formally playing with the medium. Quietly stunning, provocative and a highlight.

Pig

Pig

Director - Michael Sarnoski

Writers - Vanessa Block & Michael Sarnoski

Stars – Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin

 

Anyone coming for shouty madcap Cage will be sorely disappointed, because here he is totally in service to the prose of the film as a whole, not just punctuation. It’s a quiet, towering Sasquatch of a performance. Going in knowing very little – they steal his pig; he wants it back – I probably thought it would go the ‘John Wick’, ‘Nobody’ route, and indeed it is filmed with those beats in place, albeit in a very sombre register. But it’s not that either, for it has different goals. For a start, it’s almost so washed out that it’s austere, and it is slow, committedly serious and deliberate and ends on a great, bare bones cover of Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’. It’s a mood piece.

 

(And I feel the need to put a reminder that you should stop reading now if you haven’t seen the film.)

 

Those action-revenge beats are in place: there’s illegal fights, a wealthy nemesis, and Rob spends most of the film with a bloody beard (which nevertheless doesn’t stop him from getting to a prestige restaurant; and he must smell a treat too). And indeed, it’s as if John Wick’s superpowers were a photographic memory and legendary culinary skills instead of super-assassin past. Cage is Rob, a committed hermit with the required irascibility, earning cash as a truffle hunter and selling to Alex Wolff. But these are characters to be coloured-in, and the character study that emerges is one of a talented man scarred irreparably by grief and a fatalism and over-sensitivity; an over-sensitivity, we might guess, compounded and made unbearable by that photographic memory. Rob’s intelligence and empathy becomes increasingly evident and is never clearer than when he is confronting/talking to the restaurant chef (a sublime scene between David Knell and Cage at the peak of their control).

 

It’s a film concerned with subtle shifts, and although Alex Wolff as Amir is often shoved aside as a used and abused observer, and although we don’t get to see it, one could imagine these events have changed him more than anyone. His is a fine performance of natural empathy trying to get out from under the veneer of bolshy business hotshot.

 

Where you might think it is leading to an explosive showdown of some kind… but the showdown is the making of a meal rather than a shootout. The methodology is repeatedly to set up an to undercut expectations. Again, the film follows the beats of a vengeance thriller, even to leaving him a hermit with his tapes which a shallow action film would see as a poignant character beat, but the residual feeling here is different: there’s no satisfaction of “he’s had his vengeance and now everything is back in its rightful place”. ‘Pig’ is after something else: a story of what we care about and the husks it makes of us when that’s taken away.

The 'Pusher' trilogy

Nicolas Winding Refn

Writers: Nicolas Wining Refn & Jens Dahl

1996, Denmark

In the tradition of notable debuts, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first film is a gritty, guerrilla- style crime drama about a loathsome, selfish small-time crook getting himself into deeper and deeper trouble, alienating himself from everyone in a spiral of self-destruction.

In an overabundance of streetwise gritty and downbeat crime thrillers, Refn's debut distinguishes itself with a compelling central performance from Kim Bodnia, a pumping soundtrack, and a hand-held camera that doesn't stray from the shoulder of a scumbag drug pusher on a self-destructive week.  And this marks out the whole ‘Pusher’ series: enthralling central performances, a guerrilla-style hand-held camera that is always pushing the incident and narrative, and a pulsating score by underground artists and Peter Peter. It makes for a riveting and kinetic aesthetic, transcending the familiarities of the story. Apparently made by Refn without any experience and a lot of moxie, certainly there’s a raw and visceral feel.

Of course, the central feature of this underworld genre is the conflict of gangster posturing with morality. But Frank (Bodnia) is wanting from the outset, and there’s a big clue in that he retreats to the immature crudity of his friend Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen). Frank’s credentials as a scumbag only become more apparent as he reacts with bad management to his ever-worsening situation, mostly by mistreating the woman he is using to hide out with. Actually, it’s the women that are key to the moral dilemmas throughout the series. But it’s not a representation of a criminal world that grants any style or psychopathic charm or flair that are so often used by the genre to mitigate the scumbags. Milo (Zlatko Buric) the drug-lord is the only one offering that “gangster flash”, but he’s decidedly bargain rate, just as shabby as he is as dangerous. This is not a community that even entertains ethics or loyalty, just the fleeting highs and business of drug pushing.

The natural lighting, the grittiness and no-budget core only serve to enhance the charmlessness of this milieu. It’s certainly a world away from the arty compositions and neons of Refn’s later work. Frank’s tale is a worn one, and maybe that itself has a point, but the bravado of the telling makes for a punch of a debut.

 

PUSHER II: With Blood on My Hands

 Writer & director: Nicolas Winding Refn

2004, Denmark-UK

A sequel with a more questioning stance of its criminal underworld: This time we concentrate on Tonny, a fearless Mads Mikkelsen, who certainly is a surprise against his more austere later roles. Here he is crude, not so smart, immature. Tonny is a scumbag but we understand why when he's immersed in such a scumbag social circle. The reappearance of drug lord Milo hints at the smallness of this world, but this sequel spreads wider.

The underworld here is synonymous with broken families, propagating more brokenness down the generations (a wedding becomes just an excuse for a strip show). Tonny, despite his head tattoo, doesn't get any respect. Everyone insults him, and he’s suppressing a lot. He's clueless but, just out of jail, also curiously willing to please, which makes him easy to sway either way and therefore more sympathetic. But why do good when good isn't rewarded? Whereas his pal Frank found there was nothing inside himself but more selfishness and trouble, Tonny’s tale is a portrait of a man with limited resources finding something deeper within himself certainly strikes a surprising chord.

Highlights include an early extended scene with Tonny with two prostitutes and clueless men changing a nappy.

PUSHER III: I Am the Angel Death

Writer & director: Nicolas Winding Refn

2005, Denmark

In which we now follow Milo, the crime lord that has played a key part in the previous films. The ‘Pusher’ trilogy ends on a kind of farce for crime lords: all Milo wants is to throw a successful 25^th party for his spoiled, bratty daughter – but he gives his crew food poisoning! a drug deal goes wrong! he has to go to the local takeaway for party food! he has to get to AA meetings! There’s nothing quite so questioning here, and the dissonance between Milo underworld status and his intention to be a generous and gregarious patriarch barely seems to cause him reflection. But the  precariousness of his status is naked here, always under threat from others as well his own cooking abilities. It all takes place over a day so there is no fallout from what we see, although by the end of it the family and the business come together seamlessly and the whole sordid mess carries on.

Again, a hypnotic central performance (from Zlatco Buric), but more vulnerable and less flamboyant than his previous appearances and a kinetic handheld camera, boosted by great music, makes this always compelling, even if treading well-worn territory. And the series ends on its most gruesome set piece that comes across as just another pratfall Milo has to deal with.

 

*

As a trilogy, ‘Pusher’ soon overcomes the familiarities of its genre – and that’s part of what we came for, anyhow – to become dynamic character studies, each film bringing a different shade. There’s not even so much of the macho posturing that streaks the gangster genre – we won’t count Tonny’s immature boasting of sexual prowess – but rather people just going about their sordid lives, posturing and making stupid pronouncements, filling the roles they think they’re playing. Sometimes, they just fall for their own repeated failures of character, sometimes they manage to break away from themselves to something new without really knowing what that means, and sometimes they just grow old into it, with no real desire to transcend. Together, the ‘Pusher’ films creates a credible and raw microcosm of a degenerate corner of Copenhagen, solid character studies of unlikable protagonists that are seemingly doomed from the outset.

Grimmfest Day 5: 'Death Ranch', 'Urubú', 'Fried Barry', 'Ten Minutes to Midnight', 'Revenge Ride'

 

DEATH RANCH

• Director and screenwriter - Charlie Steeds

·        2020, USA

 A blaxploitation homage where the homaging provides a pass for some retrograde exploitation as well as some modern ultraviolence. In passing, there are so many homages now that I wonder where nostalgic cinema will be given twenty years time? Homages to homages?

On the run and holed up in a disused barn, three black characters find themselves under siege by a small army of KKK animals. Charlie Steeds’ film is a crude, righteous and ultraviolent unapologetic revenge fantasy, with funky music and a subtext about bettering yourself. Of course, it’s all informed by a very contemporary anger and awareness: in the Q&A Black Lives Matter came up in the first question, and Grimmfest’s Miriam Draeger brought up the word “integrity” in regards to ‘Death Ranch’: that wouldn’t  be the first word I’d associate with it (it’s an unapologetic revenge fantasy, after all) but it’s sure nice to have worthy zombies at the end of the retribution.

Although the film makes them cannibals too, there isn’t really any need for elaboration – i.e. a prolonged prerequisite torture scene as justification – because the redeemability is inbuilt to the KKK. When director-writer Charlie Steed chose the defining line calling the KKK “dumb cunts” as justification for all the silliness, etc, it’s obvious that he knew exactly what he was doing. When Steed spoke of how hard this was to get greenlit, and how the Q&A panel discussed how rare it is, comparatively, to have the KKK as an obvious villain, it’s obvious we shouldn’t take this for granted.

 There are other pluses too, such as the vulnerability in Dieandre Teagle’s performance (he takes punishment that no one could get up and kick ass from, but he doesn’t forget to wince, limp and look tired from his injuries) and Faith Monique written as more than just as sexy love interest (she’s a caring sister).

 

Urubú

• Director - Alejandro Ibáñez
• Screenwriters - Carlos Bianchi, Alejandra Heredia, Alejandro Ibáñez
• 2019, Spain

 So I went into this completely blind, thinking it might be a creature-feature in an exotic location. The set-up is long, with a photographer going into the Amazon to hunt a picture of a rarely seen, mysterious bird. The music swells with majesty over the aerial shot of the river and forest: Arturo Díez Boscovich’s score is deliberately old-school to create a ‘70s feel. And then, of course, things get odd and dangerous. As we got deeper in, I was thinking of ‘Vinyan’. And then, of course, it became obvious what this was. And if I didn’t recognise it, a character says the name outright, which was a moment of unintentional humour.

 

Of course, had I read Grimmfest’s blurb, I would have been forewarned: “Writer-Director Alejandro Ibáñez Nauta, is the son of Narciso  Ibáñez Serrador, and describes this as a “tribute” to his father's work. A ferocious, visceral reimagining of Serrador's most famous – and notorious – film, WHO COULD KILL A CHILD?” So if anyone can get away with having that line spoken out loud, it is surely him.

The central pull is going to be the exceptional location work, out in the jungle under undeniably taxing conditions. Ibáñez spoke of how they had to improvise according the weather and conditions. The central agenda of ‘Who Can Kill a Child?’ is that children are so abominably treated historically that the whole adult world is guilty by association, and that’s why the youngsters turn vengeful. ‘Urubú’ follows that line of thinking, and nothing has truly changed: there are still plenty of appalling and heart-breaking statistics to be had.

It’s beautifully constructed and intriguing enough, although one could argue that the jungle setting mitigates some of the sinister familiarity of the children. But this is posed as just the start of a larger picture and the jungle provides a different kind of mystery and panic, as well as alluding to those Italian Seventies exploitation pictures, etc. (And it is notably better than Makinov’s ‘Come Out and Play’ (2012).)

And I’m going for the piranha death, even if it is offscreen.

 

FRIED BARRY

·        Director & Screenwriter - Ryan Kruger

·        2020, South Africa

Scumbag Barry is abducted and replaced by what seems to be an exploratory alien who is dropped into a multitude of crazy and/or sleazy South African scenarios. Or maybe it’s the alien’s holiday? We never know.

 Filmed without a script, ‘Fried Barry’ has elements of ‘Under the Skin’, ‘E.T.’, ‘Starman’, and ‘Being There’. I say ‘Being There’ because Barry is a blank slate that people and the scenarios impose their expectations upon. It’s crazed, kinetic, unpredictable, darkly funny and just skating around on the possibilities with no agenda other than to be thoroughly entertaining. Which it is. The abduction and experimentation/cloning sequence is trippy and a highlight. Gary Green – who has experience as an extra – has such a distinctive face and his expressions are treats in themselves: he won Best Actor at Fantaspoa International Fantastic Film Festival. It’s beautifully filmed: Gareth Place won Best Cinematography at RapidLion Film Festival. It’s crazed, impressive, unpredictable and dynamic right the way through. And an obvious instantaneous cult hit.

10 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

• Director – Erik Bloomquist
• Screenwriters – Erik Bloomquist, Carson Bloomquist

Another character study using genre to address the personal. ’10 Minutes to Midnight’ uses vampirism to interrogate one woman’s confrontation with aging and potential obsolescence. Genre staunch Caroline Williams is Amy, a veteran rock DJ facing her last night on the job, being replaced with someone younger and turning up already with puncture wounds on her neck. The film relies on symbolism, surrealism, 80s veneer and folding in on itself to convey Amy’s difficulty with dealing with this phase of her life, as played out as a transformation into a vampire. Williams is great and the genre-bending and mind-games wavering in effectiveness.

REVENGE RIDE

• Director - Melanie Aitkenhead
• Screenwriter - Timothy Durham

An old school biker girl revenge flick with fine performances and capturing of a sub-culture. The girl bikers are all survivors of abuse and are triggered when another girl is the victim of being drugged and gang-raped by frat boys. The school covers up and the women feel betrayed: it feels relevant, post-#MeToo. It’s one of those revenge flicks that wants to dwell equally on the consequences: Trigga (the marvellous Pollyanna McIntosh) can’t let go of her trauma, has never been properly treated for it, giving further layers of tragedy. The film makes sure it is evident that in all of this, it’s always the innocents that ultimately pay the cost. There are no real winners.

It hits all the obvious beats, but it’s well played and looks good.

 

Grimmfest Day 4: 'I Am Ren', 'Rent-a-Pal', 'Monstrous', 'Triggered, 'It Cuts Deep'

I AM REN – Jestem REN (AKA PANACEA)

·        Director & Screenwriter - Piotr Ryczko

·      2020, Poland

After some mysterious domestic incident, Renata must come to terms that she is a faulty android. But the truth is a far harder thing to establish when her memory has such gaps.

Using the language of sci-fi, Ryczko’s film addresses domestic abuse, gaslighting, mental illness, the tragedy of not trusting yourself. It’s heady, uses genre to lead the audience to sympathy and maintains much of its mystery to the end; the uncertainty of the character defines the pervasive ambiguity to its conclusion. It’s a very personal work, derived from Ryczko’s own experiences, and once the genre feints are understood, it’s a smart and sympathetic film that conveys a most tragic topic without judgement. Although rendered with dourness, it is always compelling rather than depressing. The depth of its sadness and deftness is only revealed upon reflection. This one lingers.

RENT-A-PAL

• Director & screenwriter - Jon Stevenson

·        2020, USA

Recently I saw a twitter thread where someone was commenting a criticism of a horror film (I forget which) saying that they didn’t approve of horror exploiting mental illness. Now of course they could have been trolling, but there probably isn’t any other genre as centred on mental illness as horror, albeit mostly exploitative and wrongheaded. But then there are examples such as ‘Rent-A-Pal’ offering convincing character pieces that come from sympathetic and intelligent intent. This expands on how ‘I am Ren’ used genre to illustrate psychological breakdowns with empathy.

David is the 24-hour carer for his dementia afflicted mother, living in her basement with crippling loneliness. This is the age of VHS, and not having much luck with the VHS dating agency he is trying, he picks up a “Rent-a-Pale” tape. At first, he is sceptical, but its set script and phony friendliness starts to be just what he needs.

Brandon Landis Folkins and Kathleen Brady give raw, brave performances; Amy Routeledge brings all the warmth and Will Wheaton is so sinister and slimy as a kind of Fred Rogers for misogynists. It’s an exemplary cast. The script is alert to the manipulations of abusers, to the isolation of carers and to the mental health issues caused by loneliness – in the Q&A, director/writer Stevenson spoke of his personal experiences with dementia in his family.

There is a ‘Videodrome’ vibe to the promotion with David’s face near the screen, and certainly there’s a merging of screen-fiction and reality as things slip out of hand. How real is the threat or is it increasingly all in David’s head? A little overlong, possibly, but there is no doubt that by the end we are fully immersed in David’s limited world and tragedy. It’s relatability is both scary and compassionate.

The one-two punch of ‘I Am Ren’ and ‘Rent-A-Pal’ certainly offered strong examples of how genre can emotively tackle deeply difficult personal and sociological subjects with intelligence, entertainment and sympathy all thoroughly balanced. They don’t offer cheap thrills, but they are excellent character studies.

MONSTROUS

• Director - Bruce Wemple
• Screenwriter - Anna Shields
• 2020, USA

Ostensibly a Bigfoot creature-feature which starts with some great monster silhouettes, but in truth is a mash-up of sub-genres. This might disappoint some. Following up on her friend’s disappearance in sasquatch country, Sylvia goes to Whitehall, NY, with a woman who might hold some answers. It’s not the mashing-up that disappoints so much, but it does get less intriguing once its cards are revealed. Like most sasquatch films, it forgets to display its monster enough*; (it’s mostly silhouettes but hey, it looks decent in the close-up flash we get). No, it’s the why-didn’t-you-tie-the-psycho-up-when-you-could? And follow-up jump-out-coz-not-really-dead duds that really undermine the credibility. 

·        *‘Willow Creek’ gets a pass because it’s my favourite creature-feature with unseen creature, and ‘Exists’ is a less interesting film than ‘Monstrous’ but I love the monster reveal. I guess I prefer the unapologetic monter-suit Dagon from ‘HP Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones’: I can fill in the credibility blanks myself.

 

TRIGGERED

• Director - Alastair Orr
• Screenwriter - David D. Jones

A bunch of typically annoying young Americans out in the woods find themselves strapped with bombs and must (a) confront their high school misdeeds and themselves, and (b) kill each other in a ‘Battle Royale’ to survive detonation. You could get past the high-concept contrivance of the set-up for fun, but if you invest yourself probably depends upon your tolerance of bratty young Americans emoting over past sins and becoming killers. It’s the kind of film where getting axed really doesn’t slow anyone down so much, especially psychos.

 

IT CUTS DEEP

• Director and screenwriter - Nicholas Payne Santos
• 2020, USA

Obviously coming from a fun place, ‘It Cuts Deep’ has a couple of very likeable leads in Charles Gould and Quinn Jackson, with nice funny performances and banter emerging very quickly. He can’t quite commit and she wants marriage. And then there’s a mysterious murder in the background and an old friend appears and sexual jealousy disrupts everything. Despite Grimmfest’s blurb signalling it’s unpredictability, I had it pegged long before the revelations because, really, there’s only a few places it can go (and I am not trying to claim cleverness here: I am typically useless at second-guessing and predicting). After all, it’s really a three-hander. So notwithstanding likeable potential and the short running time, ultimately it felt more miss than hit.

Notes on comics, animated features and 'Joker'

‘Joker’

Todd Phillips, 2019, USA-Canada

Written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver

I was just at the right age when the Eighties’ comics revolution happened. I mean, I already loved Alan Moore’s ‘Swamp Thing’ – I was already a horror fan, after all – but I was deeply into Batman too. Then there was Moore’s ‘Watchmen’ and ‘The Killing Joke’ and Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight’ and Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ … all that legendary stuff. I was just the right age for all that to be poignant and formative. The very first comic I ever bought myself was on a camping trip with my Dad (was this 1981?) and it was a copy of ‘The Justice League’ where The Starfish Conqueror took over a city: this edition ended on the cliff-hanger of a lot of city people with starfish over their faces, the Starfish Conqueror possessing them, and I was introduced to the idea of an apocalypse. I mean, I had been reading ‘Star Wars’ comics ever since the film came out and that and the support stories had apocalypse in abundance, but there was something about this ‘Justice League’ edition that struck a chord. Even if I had every ‘Star Wars’ comic ever released (and how much money that collection would that fetch now if I still had them?), it was from this edition of ‘JLA’ that I seemed to buy every comic on the shelf. I am a lifelong comics fan.

Despite what the adults may have thought, comics have long been

the introduction to The Big Themes for kids. And anyone keeping up with the litany of contemporary animated films knows that they have been growing up in full view and yet never noticed in the mainstream even as animation is bigger and more diverse than ever – and then ‘Spider-man: into the Spider-verse’ made people sit up and notice. But Batman has been long trading in seriousness. It may be the kind of earnestness that Lego Batman parodies, but it’s why I have always found the character reliably entertaining. Batman is a “super-hero” (yes yes, I know he doesn’t have super powers, but he’s still thought of in that way; plus he had bottomless wealth and he’s a superfighter and thinker, a real Übermensch) – it’s true that he always seemed to have a hotline to cool: ‘Beware the Batman’ animated series had a theme by The Dum Dum Girls, for instance.

Although Batman draws heavily from noir and crime fiction, he is also close to the horror genre. Surely more than others (discounting the supernaturally derived heroes) his gallery of villains hue closest to horror. There was even an Andy Warhol Batman/Dracula film apparently. But whilst he was out fighting horror monsters, I would also hazard that ‘Batman’ fiction is many reader’s introduction to mental illness as a dramatic device: split personalities, obsessives, narcissists, serial killers, etc. And so: Joker is a horrific psychopath.

In ‘Batman: Hush’, Joker has one of the best moments, heckling as

Batman and Clayface fight. But there’s never the sense that Joker is genuinely comedic: that’s not the point. ‘Hush’ continues the high standard of Batman animations that have been quietly turning out quality work since ‘Sub-Zero’ and ‘Mask of the Phantasm’. ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse’ was dazzling, but there had been a lot of solid and interesting superhero animation output beneath the radar for a long time, but suddenly people took notice. It was no surprise to anyone that had been following the ‘LEGO’ and ‘Teen Titans GO!’ cartoons that they were so well written, meta and entertaining. And of course almost all screen superheroes owes a debt to the seminal ‘Batman: the animated series’: I used to video Saturday morning kids’ TV whilst I was working just to catch this. It was a perfect balance of cartoon – the style harking back to the 1940s’ Fleischer Studio ‘Superman’ cartoons – and more mature allusions: the dialogue was as sharp as the mood was shadowy; here was Batman fighting with hints of martial arts and I felt it the first time his fighting skills rendered convincingly on screen.

If Tim Burton kept an agreeable amount of the camp surrounding Batman, it was the Chris Nolan films that really went into the Bruce Wayne drop-dead serious perspective. If you preferred the camp of Batman – and perhaps never could get beyond Adam West – then there was always the agreeable ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ cartoon; but even these were knowing and not condescending with the final Bat-Mite episode berating those critics that only wanted their Batman relentlessly serious. The ‘Batman’ animated films were happily continuing the dark hues from the comics even as ‘LEGO Batman: Family Matters’ made a mockery of the idea that Bruce Wayne was a loner. Entries such as ‘Bad Blood’ and ‘Hush’ carried on with the unhinged edges, with the latter this time giving The Riddler a little Joker madness and a make-over.

The adaptation of ‘The Killing Joke’ came in for a lot of backlash for having Joker rape Barbara Gordon. However, in terms of the character it made sense: he will do anything to upset, provoke, troll and drive people mad. That was his whole agenda: to finally give Batman one bad day that would drive the Dark Knight over the edge. In the comics, Joker had long lost the ‘60s campness that went towards neutering his insanity. Mark Hamill had done definitive voicework for Joker in the seminal ‘Batman: the animated series’ and here he toned down some of his hysterics to maybe create one of the most convincingly credible evocations of the character. In their final conversation, Joker even seems to drop the pretence of mania for a more-or-less serious but brief consideration of his nosediving relationship with Batman. And note he kinda fluffs that punchline. In both ‘The Killing Joke’ and ‘Joker’, Joker is called out for a self-serving nihilistic philosophy and being whiny. 

And as for Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker’… wouldn’t the character find it hilarious that his origin story has been seen as a powderkeg in the zeitgeist? Wouldn’t he just. The ultimate troll upsetting the establishment: exactly as it should be. Despite Phillips reported daft comments on contemporary comedy, with his ‘The Hangover’ films backing up his argument (and Marc Maron’s retort to this is correct https://heroichollywood.com/joker-marc-maron-todd-phillips/), the film is remarkably astute, the detail coherent, and hence the wealth of analysis it has provoked. I am going to be pro-‘Joker’.

It’s consistent and convincing enough that I have seen social media threads discussing the symbolism of black characters in the film: the care staff and the woman down the hall. It’s a film where discussions of its workings evolve into long discussions of its detail. On Kermode and Mayo’s BBC film podcast, the most enthusiastic, lucid and effected viewers that write in seem to be those that work in mental health care. It arguably contains enough artistic merit, social awareness, empathy, ambiguity and notable aesthetic to make it cinema beyond the confines of its ostensible and much maligned genre. And where it lucks subtlety, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s soundtrack keep things grounded and shaded.

Of course, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is exceptional, somewhere between the all-elbows physicality of his performance in ‘The Master’ and the more seething threat he evokes in ‘You Were Never Really Here’. It’s in the quiet hint of a Joker-style reaction when he is given a gun in the locker-room that hints at the unreliable narrator. It’s in the moment when, after his apparent first kill, he goes to the bathroom and seems to be working out his response through interpretive dance. Later, this escalates to a glam showstopper on a long staircase. Never once does Phoenix’s hold on the character wavers as he descends further into delusion psychopathy.

And surely by the end, for a variety of reasons, we learn to distrust everything from his perspective. One minute his mother seems bedridden; the next he is dancing with her, for example. Was he really given that gun? And then: was he really jumped by kids (doesn’t his boss say it’s the second time)? Are we just witnessing not only his delusion, but his persecution complex that he uses to validate his violence?

It seems one of the critical narratives being given is that Arthur Fleck is an incel, but I see little evidence of Arthur Fleck’s misogyny in the film. He thinks he can’t get a girlfriend, but we don’t see him try and although he is creepy, it doesn’t seem that he’s a true danger to the woman down the hall. Not that he isn’t, but we don’t see him cross that line, so the incel narrative seems imposed on the storyline to fit the narrative of mass-shooters that we know give incel grievances as motivation. In this sense, it’s a film that tells an incendiary truth and captures some of the zeitgeist where a viewer can impose their own agenda. But it’s not even subtext that it bears criticism of health care resources being cut so much that people like Arthur Fleck are left unattended and free to go off the rails – and this is the core.

Martin Scorsese may have berated superhero films as “not cinema”, but ‘Joker’ is fair example of what a Scorsese comic book film might be: after all, it owes so much to ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘King of Comedy’. Look: there’s even Robert De Niro. Arthur Fleck sees urban life as a homage to Seventies cinema. Or maybe, focusing on its broad social criticism of cutting health care, it’s something like a comic book film by Mike Leigh. And Francis Ford Coppola joined in the superhero megafilm bashing. All esteemed directors that are not above using broad strokes and caricatures (isn’t there an argument that Scorsese doesn’t exactly depict a positive vision of Italian-Americans?) and if comic book films aren’t these iconic directors’ thing, the genre is still wading in humanism (superheroes promote doing good and empathy and existential angst, for example).

Batman vs Joker is that old tale of Light vs Dark, etc, and ‘Joker’ gives the latter some attention to colour-in an origin with some credibility. It does some justice to a foremost fictional troll hellbent on psychopathy. It’s always been this way: comics were blamed for all kinds of delinquency, then superhero publications for being childish, etc.; comics have somewhat more credibility now but a certainly cultural inability to take them seriously had moved on to the films – at least for some. It’s certainly more mature than the revenge porn of ‘Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood’, or titles that aim to subvert the genre like ‘Kick-Ass’ or ‘Brightburn’. Kick-back and deconstruction of the genre has always been a thing: take Moore’s ‘Watchmen’, and then you have shows like ‘The Umbrella Academy’ and ‘The Boys’. But smaller genre titles have been doing this for a while: ‘Super’ and ‘Defendor’ for example, and best of all ‘Chronicle’.

‘Joker’ is a natural progression of themes that have always been inherent in the character and the genre, if you were a fan and paying attention. Comics have always been mixing seriousness and clown colours.