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Powered-Up GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE Romps onto Feature-Packed 4K Blu-ray
The images in the article are illustrative only and not intended to demonstrate the picture of 4K or Blu-ray home video releases.
Ten years deep into Legendary’s kaiju-packed “Monsterverse” consisting of several films and an AppleTV series, the films have arrived at an interesting and fun place. The last film introduced the discovery of a “Hollow Earth”, inspired by Jules Verne and sharing characteristics with the novel Godzilla at Earth’s End. Kong and Godzilla share a sort of truce and tend to stay out of each others’ way, with Kong having returned to his ancestral home at the earth’s core, and Godzilla staying close to the surface, mostly in his preferred oceanic habitat – when he’s not settling in for a nap in the Roman Colosseum.
Legendary Entertainment / Warner Bros The films in this universe have varied in their stye and level of seriousness, and GxK definitely falls on the lighter and sillier side of the scale: a great monster-battling romp set largely at the center of the earth.
Over the course of the films many human characters have weaved in and out of the narrative as needed, rightly secondary to the big guys. GxK features a smaller human cast than most of the other films, bringing back only a handful of returning characters: Teenager Jia (Keylee Hottle), the last of the Iwi people from Skull Island who shares a special bond with Kong, scientist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) who is Jia’s adoptive mother, and brilliant podcaster/conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes (Bryan Tyree Henry). Dan Stevens also joins the cast as another scientist who works alongside Ilene, a cheery biologist whose career path has veered into “kaiju veterinarian”. When a series of mysterious signals are found to originate from Hollow Earth, the team heads down to find their source.
Meanwhile, a lonely Kong continues to search the Hollow Earth – a domain far larger and wilder than what we’ve seen previously – for his ancestral race. He eventually does find a remnant of Great Apes, including a precocious youngster whom he takes under his wing, but it’s not a happy reunion: their situation is dire, enslaved and lorded over by a cruel ruler dubbed “Skar King” – a formidable opponent who commands a Shimo, a dragon-like kaiju with devastating ice breath.
Legendary Entertainment / Warner Bros Yep, we’re gonna need a team-up.
GxK doesn’t take itself too seriously and is clearly setting out to just have a blast. Godzilla powers up and gets a new fluorescent look, and after being hurt in battle, Kong is fitted with a prosthetic metal arm designed to sell action figures.
Kong’s team-up with Godzilla is obviously a fun dynamic, but maybe even better is his run-in with Suko, the precocious “mini Kong” who starts out trying to kill the big guy before becoming his companion – hinting at an adoptive a setup that may be intended to hold up a mirror to the relationship between Jia and Ilene.
Legendary Entertainment / Warner Bros Additionally, the film has settled on some of its more interesting and fun human characters for its earthbound exposition, which I appreciate. And if anyone wonders why we need a human element, one answer is to sell the scale. It doesn’t matter that Kong and Godzilla are gigantic if there’s no point of reference – especially in the giant-sized Hollow Earth.
If you prefer more serious entertainment, the unabashedly silly GxK may feel a little empty, but I’m all in on this absurdly fun ride.
The Package
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrives on 4K UHD with a Movies Anywhere digital code. This release is a little different from the previous norms, which I believe is the direction that Warner is trying to go in: there is no standard Blu-ray disc, but on the plus side the extras are included on the 4K disc instead of separated. Additional extras are also included with the AppleTV/iTunes version of the film.
This is precisely the sort of film that HD and especially 4K UHD are designed for in my opinion – big, loud, and packed with gigantic creatures and special effects.
Special Features and Extras
GxK on home video feels like a great throwback to DVD heyday with a ton of features a ton of extras highlighting different aspects of the film’s development, characters, story elements, designs, and key scenes. Taken as a whole the various featurettes add up to roughly a feature length documentary on the film’s craft.
- GxK: Day of Reckoning (5:59)
- GxK: Journey into the Unknown (9:39) – iTunes extra
- Evolution of the Titans: Godzilla Evolved (5:34)
- Evolution of the Titans: From Lonely God to King (5:45)
- Into the Hollow Earth: Suko: The Rise of Mini-Kong (5:44) – iTunes extra
- Into the Hollow Earth: Skar King: The Anti-Kong (5:53) – iTunes extra
- Into the Hollow Earth: Visualizing Hollow Earth (5:47)
- Into the Hollow Earth: Monsters of Hollow Earth (5:40)
- The Battles Royale: A Titanic Fight Among the Pyramids (5:31)
- The Battles Royale: The Zero Gravity Battle (5:04)
- The Battles Royale: The Titans Trash Rio (5:23)
- The Intrepid Director: Adam Wingard: Big Kid (3:45)
- The Intrepid Director: Adam Wingard: Set Tour (3:46)
- The Imagination Department (3:48)
- The Monarch Island Base: Portal to Another World (5:34)
- The Evolution of Jia: From Orphan to Warrior (5:59)
- Bernie’s World: Behind the Triple Locked Door (3:30)
- Feature Commentary by Director Adam Wingard, Visual Effects Supervisor Alessandro Ongaro, Production Designer Tom Hammock and Editor Josh Schaeffer
– A/V Out
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INSIDE OUT 2 is Pixar’s Rewarding Return to Form
Inside Out’s self-reflective sequel improves upon the first film in intimate, exhilarating new ways
Stills courtesy of Disney & Pixar. At its debut in 2015, Pixar’s original Inside Out was heralded as a hilarious, heartfelt new tool to teach their child audience heady concepts of emotional literacy. By personifying their feelings, kids could give new voices to their inner lives–while still having a great time at the movies. Nearly a decade later, those original kids have long become teenagers and young adults–and their emotional complexity has likely compounded in frantic, overwhelming ways.
In the nine years since Inside Out, it’s been an equally emotional journey for Pixar as a studio. They’ve reached new creative peaks with Turning Red, Onward, Coco, and Luca, retaining their signature universality through exploring the diverse experiences of their artistic team. At the same time, though, less-than-satisfying explorations of returning IP like Lightyear, Incredibles II, and Finding Dory and didactic retreads of basic tales like Elemental have made it seem like Pixar–possibly at the behest of a larger corporate mandate–have coasted on their reputation rather than build upon their reputations as animation trailblazers. As such, I went into Inside Out 2 with as much anticipation as reservation.
Set a few short years after her inner reconciliation between emotions Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), young Riley (Kensington Tallman) has jumped headlong into teenager-dom. The onset of puberty, though, has chaotically introduced a new crew of feelings vying for dominance over Riley’s emotional headspace. There’s Anxiety (Maya Hawke), driven like Joy to do what’s best for Riley at all costs, along with wide-eyed Envy (Ayo Edibiri), hoodie-cloaked Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and endlessly done Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Before too long, the new emotions cast out our old crew into the vast reaches of Riley’s mind; as the emotions fight to re-establish Riley’s sense of self, her inner turmoil finds unexpected ways of lashing out in the world beyond her.
Before I get deeper into Inside Out 2, it’s time for some confessions regarding the series’ first installment. While I loved what Inside Out accomplished as far as giving kids more tactile approaches at grasping their emotions, the film at large wasn’t really for me. As much as Inside Out ventured into new psychological territory for Pixar, these concepts felt more like evocative window dressing on Pixar’s tried-and-true tropes, like odd-couple pairings and ill-fated supporting characters (don’t come at me, Bing Bong hive). It also felt like Inside Out took its concept a bit too literally–spending so much time exploring the inner mind of Riley while taking too much of a reserved approach at how this twelve-year-old’s emotional conflicts manifested outwards. While Joy and Sadness were our leads, it was strange to see the person they inhabited relegated to less than a supporting role.
I’m overjoyed to say that Inside Out 2 doesn’t just effectively address these criticisms of the original film, it beautifully and confidently builds upon the rich world created to cinematically deconstruct these complex emotions. Key new concepts are introduced, namely the “belief system” that forges core ideological concepts from core memories, crystallizing into an all-powerful “sense of self.” Turning the latter into an ever-elusive MacGuffin (and boy, is it ever), director Kelsey Mann and writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein rivetingly dramatize how these warring emotions consequently translate our experiences into stronger yet wholly malleable concepts than Inside Out’s original concept of “core memories.”
Most importantly, the hilariously valid decisions made by Riley’s conflicting feelings directly translate into Riley’s outward actions, all of which spur on further joy or danger for the world inside her. Where the first film got lost in exploring Riley’s interiority at the cost of the character herself, Inside Out 2 reveals just how consequential some snap impulses can be–and how difficult it can be to wrangle those feelings under control at any age. As a result, Riley’s inner and outer world (and, crucially, Riley herself) achieve a remarkable complexity without sacrificing any of the franchise’s ability to relate to a younger audience as much as it does to its older original one.
Having such a solid original foundation also allows for its actors greater room to give life to both established characters as well as ingenious new ones. Poehler and Smith in particular are wonderful as the film’s returning players, with Smith’s Sadness tentatively exploring a newfound assertiveness while Poehler’s Joy truly faces the limitations of her once central position as Riley’s primary emotion. Each of the new emotions makes an indelible impact on viewers–Edibiri’s unrestrained wonder and Exarchopoulos’ perfect deadpan notably slay with each appearance. Brief appearances by the legendary June Squibb are also wonderful treats, as are fun callbacks to some of my favorite Inside Out moments. One standout sequence featuring a video-game crush of Riley’s is a gut-buster that should feel all too familiar to audience members with similar first loves, mined for all the loving cringe it’s worth.
The film’s standouts, however, are Hawke as Anxiety and Tallman as Riley herself. With a Troll doll-like appearance and endlessly frenzied mania, Anxiety risks being a one-note character. However, Hawke finds a delicate nuance and drive to Anxiety, deeply believing in their altruistic motivations while cluing audiences into the inner doubt that personifies them. Tallman crucially depicts just how much these feelings take a fitting emotional toll on her, while also making those emotions and actions her own as she lashes out at old and new friends vying for her attention. While so much is taking place inside Riley like any conflicted teenager, it’s the first time this character feels like she has ownership over these feelings, for better or worse. This Riley has a richly developed arc that hits staples of teenage angst without feeling too generic or derivative–it recognizes the validity of these earth-shaking first conflicts, and addresses them with the keen respect and emotional intelligence that was heaped upon the series’ first film.
Inside Out 2 is a hell of a return to form for Pixar, building upon the foundations of its previous installment with insightful and creative world-building, richly developed characters, and no shortage of wonder and self-reflection.
Inside Out 2 hits theaters on June 14th courtesy of Disney.
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Criterion Box Set Review: Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène
Senegalese titles Emitaï, Xala, and Ceddo receive the Criterion treatment
Still from Emitaï, courtesy of Criterion Collection. Criterion Collection celebrates the rebellious art of Ousmane Sembène with the recent release of a box set of three of his works: Emitaï (1971), Xala (1975) and Ceddo (1977). All three, while similar thematically, differ in tone and genre. Like his earlier film Mandabi, they are filmed in the filmmaker’s country of Senegal. Themes of colonialism and resistance are front and center, while the time periods range from pre-colonization in Ceddo to the modern setting of Xala.
Emitaï is a god’s name, called upon by tribal elders as their young men are kidnapped and conscripted to serve with the French colonial forces in WWII. Adding to the pressure on the village depicted in Sembène’s 1971 film, the French demand tons of rice from the villagers. The male elders talk amongst themselves about how to deal with the French. The women of the village hide their rice and are held hostage by the colonial authorities in the village square, waiting until someone confesses the hiding place.
This work is full of symbolic imagery, from the masks of the gods to the camera’s slow panning past all the rice tools dropped by the village men who have been taken away. The white glare of statues praising colonizers contrast against the earthy, more vibrant tones of the village and the blood of animal sacrifice to the gods. The village women are inspiring in their silent protest under the hot sun, especially as they sing in mourning after the authorities instruct them not to. Emitaï is a powerful depiction of quiet rebellion and an indictment of France as a colonizing power.
Tabara Ndiaye in Ceddo, courtesy of Criterion Collection. Ceddo also centers around a village in turmoil, although centuries earlier. King Demba Wâr (Makhourédia Guèye, Mandabi) is under the influence of an imam thirsty for power, while white men trade for slaves or attempt to convert villagers to Catholicism. One of the villagers resistant to any conversion chooses to kidnap the king’s daughter, Dior Yacine (Tabara Ndiaye).
Through some clunky pacing, Ceddo involves angry conversations between men about the state of things, while the women are mostly silent. There is a lot of talking with minimal action. The most inventive sequence of the film is a flash-forward scene, placing characters in a 1970s-era Catholic mass in Dakar. In this unexpected moment, the filmmaker exhibits the continued influence of religion and the future impact of the colonization to come. As one of the characters notes, “All this oppression for the sake of religion.”
Miriam Niang in Xala, courtesy of Criterion Collection. Based on Sembène’s own novel, the director sets Xala in independent, post-colonial Senegal. The comedy is a satire on the corruption and hypocrisy of the new African government officials. Elder businessman and Chamber of Commerce member El Hadji (Thierno Leye) marries a much younger third wife despite the protests of his adult children and other wives. In his desperation to, um, perform for his new bride, he descends into debt.
There are pacing issues here, but for this viewer, Xala is the most compelling work of the set (Emitaï is a close second). As El Hadji asserts that having a third wife is a traditional practice, his language of choice is that of the colonists. In a display of language as protest, his outspoken daughter Rama (Miriam Niang) — as a representative of the hope and voice of the new generation — makes a point to respond in Wolof to her father’s French.
Again, Sembène uses striking imagery from the start; when the new Senegalese government takes effect, the men remove statues and other French symbols from their chambers. This promising act is only for show. We soon see how little the new politicians truly care for their constituents, be they working class or further underrepresented communities. With a bitter wit and lively musical cues, the filmmaker gives voice to the powerless in this sharp cinematic rebuke of corrupt officials.
The Criterion Blu-Ray box set includes:
- 4K digital restorations of all three films, with updated English subtitle translations
- an incisive essay from film scholar Yasmina Price on Sembène’s re-visioning of history in these films, providing further historical and political context
- 1981 documentary, The Making of Ceddo
- a 2024 discussion between the founder and executive director of the African Film Festival, Mahen Bonetti, and writer Amy Sall on the legacy of Sembène and his lasting impact on African cinema
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Grave Mistakes: EXHUMA is a Chilling Korean Ghost Story
Now available on VOD from Well Go USA, Exhuma is a uniquely South Korean film that combines elements of folklore, shamanism, Christianity, and cultural superstitions into a weird, twisting, chilling ghost story.
Choi Min-Sik (the eponymous Oldboy) stars as a Kim Sang-Deok, a “geomancer”, or terrain expert, who – along with his partner Young Geun (Yoo Hae-jin, easily my favorite Korean character actor), a prestigious undertaker – plies his craft to assess and sell burial plots with respect to myriad variables of traditional superstitions and feng shui: pleasant surroundings, dry and clean soil, facing the right direction, preferably with a nice scenic view. The pair are also sometimes called upon when an angry ancestor is punishing their descendents from beyond the grave – performing exhumations and inspections to determine the cause of granny’s unrest.
The pair are pulled in by another team, young shamans Hwarim (Kim Go-eun) and Bong Gil (Lee Do-hyun), who need help with a particularly lucrative but difficult job. Their client is a very wealthy family believed to be haunted by their ancestor for reasons unknown. From the start, Sang-deok feels like things are a little off with the particulars around this case, but reluctantly agrees to help.
This setup may sound like a bunch of con artists relieving rich idiots of their money, and certainly there’s an element of opportunism in the nature of their work – but these characters believe quite firmly and religiously in the spiritual and supernatural aspects of their craft. (The film might actually even be more interesting if they were skeptics or impostors, but that’s not the story being told here – these are genuine believers).
Things go from bad to worse when the grave site turns out to be far more sinister than Sang-deok could have anticipated: a dreary wood, sour earth, and a tombstone bearing no name. It’s an ominous and portentous place, and by all indicators grandpa is deeply disturbed in his unrestful slumber.
Conceptually all this may sound pretty foreign but the film does a great job of setting up the rules and lore, and the film maintains an understandable internal logic even if it weren’t based on real world beliefs (which it is). Curious about this, I asked my mother, who is Korean, about these customs and superstitions, and she affirmed that they’re quite commonly held, or at least commonly known.
The film swings wildly into an unexpected direction that I’ll just leave unexpounded, but all this setup is leading to a terrifying encounter with a vengeful spirit far more powerful, evil, intimidating, than any of our protagonists could ever have expected.
Fans of The Wailing will definitely latch onto this tale and its portrayal of some of the weirder and darker aspects of Korean (and Japanese) lore. It’s effective in being consistently scary, both in terms of general foreboding and creeping dread, as well as the chilling supernatural encounters and key reveals including a couple of intense moments of “holy shit, what the fuck was that” which, again, I’m going to just leave alone. But this is definitely a creepy, smart, and worthwhile horror film with some cool and unique cultural elements that haven’t been widely explored in cinema.
– A/V Out
Exhuma is now available on VOD and arrives on Shudder this Friday, June 14. The film is currently being prepped for home video release in October.
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How IN A VIOLENT NATURE Reshapes Slasher Point-of-View
“Slasher-cam” has been a part of the slasher subgenre since its inception, even before the genre’s various tropes were codified in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Go all the way back to Michael Powell’s brilliant proto-slasher Peeping Tom and you’ll see elements of it, thanks to the presence of a literal camera in the killer’s hands. In the 1970s, Black Christmas and Halloween entrenched the device as part of the formula; by the time Friday the 13th rolled around in 1980, it was an inescapable piece of the slasher genre.
Writer/Director Chris Nash knows this, just as he knows many other elements of the slasher that he poured into his haunting film In A Violent Nature. But as with so many other elements of this film, the slasher-cam doesn’t play by the typical rules of the genre. Instead, it becomes a powerful perspective tool that shapes the film’s themes, lingering questions, and deepest scares to tremendous effect.
So, now that the film’s out in the world, let’s talk about why.
SPOILERS AHEAD for In A Violent Nature!
Billed as a slasher “from the killer’s point of view,” In A Violent Nature makes good on that promise almost immediately when Johnny (Ry Barrett) rises from his grave in the middle of a forest and begins his business of killing. We hear the youths who disturb his lonely improvised grave by taking a locket left hanging over his burial place, but we never see them. Instead, the first human shape we are confronted with is Johnny, rotting and scarred, as he pulls himself from the dirt and sets out to reclaim that locket–which we later learn is the only thing keeping his restless soul rooted to the ground.
Johnny wakes to get his locket back because it reminds him of his mother and the gentler life he once led. Of course, he doesn’t see the locket go missing: he just knows that it’s gone, and that he must search for it.
Through Nash’s steady, patient camera, we follow Johnny as he begins his search, but while the film does unfold from “the killer’s point of view,” the traditional “slasher-cam” is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Nash hovers not in Johnny’s eyes, but around his massive body as he shambles through the forest. The camera tracks behind him like a steadfast follower, occasionally drifting to the side or even overhead to give the viewer a note of added suspense, as well as giving us a wider view of what’s going through Johnny’s head at any given moment.
A more traditional “slasher-cam” viewpoint accomplishes one of two things. In the case of something like Peeping Tom, it’s a chance to present a voyeuristic view of the violence, implicating the audience as we look through the same camera lens as the killer. When it comes to something like Black Christmas or Friday the 13th, it helps preserve the whodunit aspects of the story, building suspense as we walk with the killer through dark corners. In a Violent Nature isn’t necessarily out to accomplish either goal, but there are reasons for Nash’s camera choices.
It’s no accident that the word “nature” is right there in the title of this film; it’s there to indicate a probing of Johnny as an entity, yes, but also because Nash is intent on immersing us in the Canadian forest where the story takes place. This forest, dense, green, and full of life, is more than just a backdrop: it’s a character, a living thing containing multitudes both horrific and beautiful. As we follow Johnny through the trees, we can’t help but feel that he’s a part of that. The forest is his, and he is the forest’s, something further cemented by our brief glimpses into his tragic backstory. It’s why he stops early in the film to ponder the corpse of a fox who died in a hunter’s trap, and why he subsequently punishes that same hunter even after he realizes the man doesn’t have his locket. The camera choices allow us not just to see the forest through Johnny’s eyes, but to see Johnny within the forest.
This view, in which the camera follows Johnny but never inhabits him, also allows us a rarity in slasher films, something we usually only get in glimpses: a chance to watch Johnny think. He’s a killing machine, yes, but he’s also a killing machine who has to place himself in the right place at the right time, has to select weapons improvisationally or deliberately, and has to observe his victims in their natural habitat (more nature metaphors) before he can prey on them. Because we are watching him nearly the entire time, we get to see Johnny decide to go down beneath the water of a lake to drown one girl, then follow the other to the edge of a cliff. We get to see him choose to drag the Park Ranger into that shed and then test out the log splitter to see if it will work. We get to watch as he slowly stalks around buildings, knowing all the while what he’s about to do, waiting for that inevitable slaughter. It’s a mesmeric, almost meditative way to make a slasher film.
But even that’s not the end of Nash’s point-of-view playfulness in this film. Because we get so used to following Johnny around, moving with him from kill to kill, our eyes are trained to notice when the camera actually moves away from this method. Our bodies are trained to clench with anxiety as we look for Johnny and ponder his next move, because we’re so used to seeing him, following him, knowing him. It starts with small things, like when the camera flips around to show us one of Johnny’s victims as she hovers right at the edge of a cliff, making decisions that inform the last moments of her life. Then it gets more pronounced, as when Johnny leaves the Park Ranger paralyzed while he rummages around for an appropriate killing device. And finally, it culminates in Kris (Andrea Pavlovic) driving away from the site of the murders, having left Johnny’s precious locket behind. Even as a kindly woman (Lauren-Marie Taylor) works to get her to safety, Kris keeps looking back at the woods, because that’s exactly what we would do. When the woman stops her truck to apply first aid to Kris’s injuries, the steady blur of trees in a car window becomes a slow, probing look at the forest. In one breathtaking final sequence of shots, Nash lingers over the forest one more time, an extension of Kris’s eyes as she scans the trees for signs of violence and encroaching death. The woods are calm again, order seemingly restored, but these are the same woods that gave us Johnny. They’re part of him and he’s part of them. How safe can they really be?
That’s the power of a judiciously used slasher-cam, reshaped and repurposed to fit one very specific film’s very specific needs. It’s what makes In a Violent Nature not just a gripping slasher film, but a tremendous exercise in using the standard implements in the horror toolbox in a new, terrifying way.
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HANDLING THE UNDEAD is a Messy and Mesmerizing Portrait of Grief
Thea Hvistendahl beautifully captures the complicated catharsis of resurrection in her adaptation of the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Stills courtesy of NEON. Based on the novel by Let the Right One In’s John Ajvide Lindqvist, Handling the Undead follows three families as they reckon with the sudden resurrection of recently departed, still decomposing loved ones. Anna (Renate Reinsve) returns home after a shift to find that her estranged father (Bjorn Sundquist) has returned home with the blinking corpse of her young son Elias. Tora (Bente Børsum) discovers her partner Elisabet (Olga Damani) has returned home from her funeral service. David (Anders Danielsen Lie) and his stepchildren are overjoyed when their partner and mother Eva (Bahar Pars) wakes up from her hospital bed after a seemingly fatal car accident. Their resurrected family members aren’t raging demons, nor are they identical to their former selves; rather, they embody the phrase “living dead,” reanimated flesh devoid of emotion or personality.
Early on, a teenager blares a gnarly, Resident Evil-style video game–an approach to Zombies pointedly not taken by Thea Hvistendahl’s film. They’re neither antagonistic nor angelic–instead, the devastation caused by Undead’s corpses is far more psychological, keeping its cast at a tantalizing, silent remove from their revived family and friends. With nothing of their former internal life expressed beyond their stoic, pale eyes, these undead are more totems to the grief these people struggle to move beyond. By emphasizing how little these dead do throughout her film’s somber, shambling runtime, Thea Hvistendahl taps into the benign psychological violence that grief inflicts–notably, how our inability to move on from our losses risks rendering us as undead as these returning creatures.
It’s an understated yet visceral approach befitting the source material, whose author lent such pathos to vampires in Let the Right One In. Transposing Undead’s original Swedish novel to the unbearably hot summers of Oslo, Norway, Hvistendahl provides enigmatic snapshots of the stunning scope of this mass resurrection. Mass electrical and radio blackouts and bird murmurations hint at an environmental cause of the dead’s return, while tableaux of cemeteries riddled with excavators and hearses making deliveries to hospitals reveal the sprawl of the epidemic. However, Hvistendahl and co-writer Lindqvist never tip their hand beyond the immediate emotional crises of their three families, fostering an uncomfortable intimacy with languid, economic pacing. In these enigmatic moments, the audience is left scrounging for meaning or understanding out of fundamentally unknowable, elemental forces, and where the film’s emotional core hits the deepest.
Spare with dialogue, the ensemble of Undead spins gold out of these fleeting snapshots of everyday life–whether it’s preparing meals for crowds of people we never see, a motorcycle ride that provides a brief distraction from unbearable family tension, or a living room dance with an undead partner. That latter moment, set to Nina Simone’s unforgettable cover of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” is nestled amidst other riveting sequences of our three families also going through the motions with their revived relatives. The ensemble, despite their muted stage direction, clearly tries to reach out to restore the connections they once had; doing so, however, painfully underlines just how final these corpses’ initial deaths were, despite coming back. From a magnetic Reinsve to her Worst Person in the World co-star Lie, baring a rainbow of grief, the cast of Handling the Undead more than meets the challenges of delivering a wide spectrum of responses to grief in a universally effective way. The prosthetics and makeup work here is also superb–preserving just as much ambiguous humanity in those playing living corpses as much as they’re visibly “checked out” from humanity. Coupled with the patchwork pacing of the film, however, some moments don’t quite get as much time to narratively breathe. Keeping the characters at such an emotional remove from one another does occasionally cause such distance to fester between the film and its audience.
Late in the film, further similarities also develop between these Zombies and their Romero progenitors. It’s a drawback to what was already a compelling, unique angle to grief, as the sudden outbursts of violence feel like a literalization of the psychological warfare going on in the film, yet also at odds with the methodical pacing Hvistendahl and Lindqvist have so carefully constructed. At the same time, though, one can’t help but feel a kind of karmic consequence illustrated here in response to these characters’ inability to move on from their loss–finding themselves literally eaten alive by their grief rather than accepting and overcoming it.
What’s so thrilling and engaging about Handling the Undead is just how much it doesn’t seem to be on its surface. As its title implies, it’s a film whose mute, unwavering specters mine our uncomfortable responses from their presence alone. It’s up to us to understand what those messy emotions say about us, and to divine if we can live with them as well.
Handling the Undead is now in theaters courtesy of NEON.
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Tribeca 2024: #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD is a Pulpy Party Film with a Bodycount!
#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD is the latest by Marcus Dunstan, who not only wrote/directed the excellent Collector duology, but wrote the Feast trilogy and a bunch of the Saw films. Here with a script by John Baldecchi, Jessica Sarah Flaum and Josh Sims, Dunstan is tackling a film premise that is fast becoming a genre unto itself in indie horror, the social media slasher. This genre takes the slasher template, but with a millennial twist. Instead of caring who makes it out alive, we are all happily watching as vapid wannabe social media influencers and hangers on are taken out one by one. While these films tend to be fun, yet forgettable, #AMFAD really raises the bar with not only an impressive ensemble, but some truly gnarly practical effects.
In a meta take on the current obsession with true crime and dark nostalgia. The film takes place two decades after Karmapalooza, a fictitious music festival that was tragically marked by the deaths of seven college students. They were horrifically murdered thematically to the seven deadly sins (Seven reference?), and this spawned a podcast, a netflix true crime series and a feature film about the S.D.S.K. (Seven Deadly Sins) Killer. In a morose cash grab the notorious fest is back to cash in on that notoriety and #AMFAD follows 7 friends who book an airbnb in the woods on their way to the fest. The game begins as they are greeted in their cabin by 7 deadly sins shot glasses and a note from the S.D.S.K. Killer; could be a joke, or something much more sinister. We, the audience, are then paired off with the final girl-esque Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn), the newcomer to the group of long time friends who harbor a terrible secret.
While the initial first act of #AMFAD feels much like the many social media slashers before it, we get your standard character archetypes, that we honestly can’t wait to see perish. It differs in the quality of performances each character slowly deals out and how they manage to make you somehow care about them. Surprisingly you begin to witness some real performances coalesce on screen as they start getting knocked off one by one, and we discover not everyone is who or what they claim to be. While that first act felt a bit too derivative, I soon discovered this to be a meta discussion on the S.D.S.K. Killer and serial killers as a whole. The second and third act however, offer up some rather devious twists and turns. Also given the consequences these films offer based on romantic entanglements, the film’s LGBTQ+ themes compound the tension and the possibilities, because everyone is a suspect.
The film’s clear standout in the lead is Jade Pettyjohn as Sara, who plays the bright eyed outsider with a very densely layered and rather performance. But thankfully she’s not the only one, the whole ensemble here gives the material their all, which was something I had yet to see from this fledgling genre. An unexpected surprise as a low key fan, was Jojo Siwa, who plays a minor, but rather pivotal role as a girl who was once a member of the friend group. To be honest, I originally thought she was another actor that looked a lot like the reality star, because the performance here seemed a bit more grounded and less exaggerated than her social media personae, but in a fun twist on the film’s premise one of the most down to earth characters was played by an actual social media influencer.
#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD is one of those films that might fall on deaf ears during its festival run and it’s recently announce theatrical run, where it will be hitting theatrical and ON Demand August 2nd, but I am pretty sure you’re going to hear about in a year or two when the folks on Horror Tiktok, or whatever will be the platform of choice in a few years vet it as a future cult classic it deserves to be. It’s definitely a film that grows on you as you begin to understand its more derivative elements that are there to comment on these types of films and to simply lull you into a false sense of complacency, that is, before it bares its teeth and the game really starts. #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD was a progressive update on the slasher formula that shows there still some life in it yet. It’s a hell of a gory good time from start to finish and a film that will hopefully have a sequel or two to come, here’s hoping.
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THE WATCHERS is a Half-Baked Debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan
A clunky adaptation of the novel by A.M. Shine fleetingly shows potential for its director
There’s so much of The Watchers that feels laden with promise: a smart concept, polished and textured production values, a beguiling lead performance from Dakota Fanning, and a directorial flourish from Ishana Night Shyamalan that aligns perfectly with the horror-mystery vibe of the tale. For all these riches, however, The Watchers stumbles where it matters most: the script.
After a derivative prologue fails to set the level of suspense needed to sustain the film, we meet Mina (Fanning), a troubled woman, burdened by the guilt of her past, who finds escape in random encounters while assuming a different identity. By day, she works in a pet store, a position that one day tasks her with transporting a parrot to a neighboring county in Ireland. En route, a freak electrical fault causes her car to break down in a secluded forest. Stumbling through the wilderness, Mina finds mysterious markers and unusual burrows in the ground. As night creeps in, she comes across Madeline (Olwen Fouéré, with another reliable turn in genre fare), a woman who urgently beckons Mina towards an ominous concrete structure. Once inside, and the door is firmly bolted, Mina meets the other residents–Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), and Ciara (Barbarian‘s breakout star Georgina Campbell)–and learns that this structure is “the coop.” Both sanctuary and cage, it offers a one-way window for creatures that stalk the night to gaze upon this trio which has now become a quartet. Madeline informs Mina of the rules she must abide by now that she has come to this place, all centered around their nightly sequestering to this structure where they must live and perform for the titular watchers to ensure their continued survival. Months of entrapment have stamped out most of the resistance within the coop, but Mina’s arrival stirs up both danger and a new determination to escape.
For any film, you want to judge the filmmaker on their own merits, especially with a debut feature. With a surname like Shyamalan, it’s hard to resist doing so and, frankly, the marketing strategy of The Watchers wholly invites this comparison. Like her father, serving here as producer on the film, Ishana certainly has a grasp of the visual medium of storytelling; she uses sights, shadows, and sounds to build a level of intrigue, wonder, and suspense. This is aided by cinematography from Eli Arenson that flits from verdant to moody, so perfectly drawing from the Irish setting and use of its mythology; a moonlit reveal of the monster’s silhouettes is a particular standout. But for Ishana Night Shyamalan, this is not just her debut feature as a director; The Watchers also showcases her writer’s credit, alongside original author A.M. Shine. Their screenplay is not just where the film stumbles, but where common critiques of her father also can be brought to bear.
Aside from a few visual flourishes, The Watchers fails to build any real sense of tension or mystery. This partly comes from a plot that feels both derivative and predictable, including the inevitable (and drawn out) final ‘twist.’ While the film is visually rather elegant, its construction and pacing are anything but. The film lurches from one scene to another, occasionally delivering hurried exposition dumps. The mythology and meaning of the film are clunkily leveraged and badly integrated. There is some poorly developed messaging within the film, including commentaries on colonialism, a ham-fisted nod to reality TV (and hate-watching), and yes, even an exploration of trauma; these elements, however, all feel so perfunctory that one wouldn’t be blamed for missing them. Most egregiously are narrative moments and character beats that make sense only in service of lurching toward the next plot point. When The Watchers isn’t achingly dull, it all feels remarkably stupid, and not in a good, entertaining way. Being unfamiliar with the original novel, I’m uncertain whether these flaws are true to the original text or a result of a poor translation to the big screen. Either way, they should have been addressed to better suit the medium at hand.
The Watchers looks to nestle into the realm of Irish folk horror, yet sadly comes across as more befitting a young adult audience when it truly needs more of a grown-up bite. A beguiling look and direction do not make up for problematic pacing, rote storytelling, and clunky writing. It’s a half-baked affair, to be sure–yet while a second viewing is very unlikely, I’d be curious to watch what this young Shyamalan does next.
The Watchers hits theaters on June 7th courtesy of Warners Brothers.
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Celluloid Dreams’ Unearth a Lost Feminist Giallo with Their 4K UHD Release of THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS
Ironically the night before I got a copy of Celluloid Dreams’ The Case Of The Bloody Iris, I was having a conversation with a female friend, who was just getting into Giallos. She lamented about how, while she was loving what she had seen of the subgenre so far, but she was sometimes taken aback by their baked in misogyny and male gaze, which were hallmarks of these films. Little did I know, the following day I would get a copy of the first release by a new boutique label, that would not only be one of the most feminist takes on the sub-genre I’ve seen but a new personal favorite.
The Case Of The Bloody Iris was a film that not only played with a narrative of how women are viewed and treated, but also has the deep subtext to back these questions up. The hidden gem was released in 1972 during the sub-genres golden era, while they were only two films deep in Argento’s animal trilogy. Iris was directed by Antony Ascot aka Giuliano Carnimeo who was responsible for both Ratman and Exterminators of the Year 3000, with a script by Ernesto Gastaldi responsible for Torso, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, All the Colors of the Dark and even rewrites on Once Upon a Time in America.
NOTE: ALL SCREENS TAKEN FROM THE BLU-RAY ON THE SET. MAY HAVE COMPRESSION FROM WEB. The film stars the Italian raven haired bombshell Edwige Fenech and George Hilton in their third cinematic outing and starts off like most of these films do with the death of a prostitute by a mysterious gloved and black trench coated killer. The woman of the night is killed in the elevator of a posh highrise on her way to the 20th floor, which is filled with a group of well to do eccentrics and where most of our story will take place. The film then segue into a photo studio which is definitely a trope of Italian genre, but that’s where the film starts saying the quiet part out loud, as the queer coded photographer laments to his handsome architect (George Hilton) friend about how all you need to sell anything is, to put a woman or breasts on an ad.
We are then introduced to two lovely models Jennifer Langsbury (Edwige Fenech) and Marilyn Ricci who just so happen to be looking for a new place to live. The pair end up living in the highrise from the opening, which also just so happens to have been designed by George Hilton’s character, who gets the pair a room. As the bodies begin to pile up in the highrise, we get sex cults, stalkers, stripper fighters and of course bumbling detectives who can’t seem to catch the killer. This rather traditional Giallo story is infused with a progressive slant thanks to its rather fearless female cast, LGBTQ+ elements and the film’s thought provoking script. Not only do we have Edwige Fenech’s very competent Jennifer in the lead to thank for this, but all of the women on screen here have their own agency and motivation in the dark narrative.
NOTE: ALL SCREENS TAKEN FROM THE BLU-RAY ON THE SET. MAY HAVE COMPRESSION FROM WEB. The scenes of women in peril here are mostly drained of all the salaciousness and luridness you’d normally expect given the Giallo’s knife penetration metaphor. The women are allowed to wield power on screen and while they are objectified and literally called objects, the film actually uses that with our pair of models to illustrate the commodification of their sexuality, which is echoed by the prostitute in the beginning, and our models. Just to hammer this point even further, the film is littered with moments like: after Jennifer’s ex husband says that she is his property, because they were married, they literally cut to a man giving another man a receipt. That feminist messaging is paired with an openly gay woman, who shockingly is not simply as a plot device to justify a skinamax lesbian pantomime scene, but further doubles the odds against the two women who can’t trust anyone.
This messaging is not just through dialog, but other subtextual cues, when we meet Jennifer she is topless and working as a model clad only in body paint, as she progresses through the film, she slowly appropriates the attire of the men around her, sporting a cunning jacket and tie, there literally could be a essay just on her wardrobe or lack there of in this film. Jennifer is never completely helpless and even when the dashing architect (George Hilton) begins courting her, the power dynamic of the relationship still has her having her own screen time. Another standout is Carla Brait who plays a stripper of sorts. She plays a dense metaphorical game in the club she works at, where she challenges men to “prove their manhood” and pin her in 3 minutes, for a chance to sleep with her. Only we get to witness her make short work of her opponents and completely emasculate them.
NOTE: ALL SCREENS TAKEN FROM THE BLU-RAY ON THE SET. MAY HAVE COMPRESSION FROM WEB. The cinematography in Iris is lush and probably some of the best I’ve seen in a film not by Dario Argento. There’s a steady hand at work and every shot is just immaculately framed with some great use of color, light and shadow. There’s also quite a few scenes in a pitch black room, or at real night, which is the true test of any cameraman, and Michele Pensato really composes some truly breathtaking frames, which are captured flawlessly in a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative. That new scan is paired on this release with the original audio in both English and Italian presented in the original mono. The presentation retains that vibrant 70s color palette with an unbridled clarity, and while the image is restored, it still retains its grain and its organic feel. This image is immaculate and that only brings home how gorgeous the cinematography here is.
Bonus Features:
• Reversible cover, featuring the original Italian and English title of the movie
• (NEW) Commentary Track by film critic Guido Henkel
• (NEW) “Drops of Giallo” Interview Featurette with Ernesto Gastaldo and Giuliano Carnimeo
• “Flowers of Blood” Interview Featurette with George Hilton
• “Marylin” Interview Featurette with Paola Quattrini
• (NEW) Outtake Reel
• Image Gallery
• English Trailer in 4K resolution
• Italian Trailer in 4K resolutionSpecifications:
New 2023 4K ultra-high definition Master sourced from 4K scan of the original negative!
2-disc combo containing a Blu-ray Disc and 4K UHD version of the movie
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Run Time: 94 minutes
Subtitles: Newly translated English, English SDH
Audio Specs: Italian – DTS HD Mono, English – DTS HD Mono
The set came with not only the film on both Blu-ray and 4K UHD, but new interviews with key cast and an informative commentary that dug up some rather impressive facts about the filming and the film’s rather fascinating production.The special edition came with a mouse pad of the poster art and TRUE TO SIZE lobby card reproductions that just made this package that much more surprising, for a first release. It’s been a while since I dug a Giallo this much, but The Case Of The Bloody Iris is special because it’s so different, it’s as dense as it is gorgeous to behold. The film’s script and rather impressive rogues gallery manages to really dig into the genre while also dealing out a satisfying killer reveal who only reinforces the thematic subtext carried throughout the film, in a way few of these films manage to do. I can’t recommend this enough for either the content or the presentation and this is a great first release for Celluloid Dreams.
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Tribeca 2024: #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD – A Chat with Star Jade Pettyjohn and Director Marcus Dunstan
Jade Pettyjohn as “Sarah” in the horror/thriller, #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD, a Cineverse release. Photo courtesy of Cineverse. #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead the latest by Marcus Dunstan (Saw, Feast, The Collector), premieres this Saturday at Tribeca and will be released In Select Theaters and On Demand on August 2. Dunstan not only wrote/directed the excellent Collector duology, but wrote the Feast trilogy and a bunch of the Saw films. Here with a script by John Baldecchi, Jessica Sarah Flaum and Josh Sims, Dunstan is tackling a film premise that is fast becoming a genre unto itself in indie horror, the social media slasher.
In a meta take on the current obsession with true crime and dark nostalgia. The film takes place two decades after Karmapalooza, a fictitious music festival that was tragically marked by the deaths of seven college students that spawned a podcast, a netflix true crime series and a feature film. In a morose cash grab the notorious fest is back to cash in on that notoriety and #AMFAD follows 7 friends who book an airbnb cabin in the woods on their way to the fest.
We, the audience, are then paired off with the final girl-esque Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn), the newcomer to the group of long time friends who harbor a terrible secret. Jade is probably best known as Summer in the School of Rock TV Series and will no doubt be someone to watch after this film.
I really dug #AMFAD (Review soon!) and got to chat with both Marcus and Jade about not only this film, and costar JoJo Siwa who has a surprising role to play here, but also got some great news about The Collector 3, spoiler alert, it might be FINALLY happening. Enjoy!
First off congrats on the film, Marcus you’re a pretty prolific writer/director with some of my favorite franchises under your belt. Normally you write your own films, so what drew you to this script and its take on the toxicity of social media?
Marcus Dunstan: Well, I had never been able to take the helm of a murder mystery, and I love that. We were ghost writers on the reboot of My Bloody Valentine, and I loved the architecture of it, because what I found is if it was a straight, “we know who the evil person is and we’re watching bodies pile up” okay? Those movies, you can cut ’em down to about 80 minutes and you get it.
But the murder mysteries had character development, it had suspicion, it had the closeup of, is that the same boot as the killer? It had the characters, and layers. And often I found them to be just more engaging and more realistic to watch. That’s what was really fun. So that was the inspiration to get into that.
And in terms of social media, it’s kinda like the mantra of this that I was keeping in my head is, well, this is modern voyeurism. Voyeurism used to be on the shoulders of the person standing far away. And with social media, we’ve invited the voyeur in.
Jade, I love Sara’s journey in the film as an actor that has to be a great script to get, what kind of prep did you do for the role, physically or emotionally and where do you find the tools to play a character like that?
Jade Pettyjohn: So my prep for this particular project was a little bit different than my normal sort of prep when it comes to a project. Sarah is a really interesting character. She’s very nuanced, and I think within the first two acts of the film, you really explore how she is this outsider in a group of friends and she’s trying to find her footing in this world. And she acts as sort of the fly on the wall, as all of these extreme things are happening and she’s just sort of trying to discover her place in that.
I think that is a very sort of quiet rooted moment that Sarah gets to have. And then when everything hits the fan and the chaos ensues in the third act. How Sarah breaks and how what she turns into and evolves into under very heightened intense circumstances, was very physical.
JoJo Siwa as “Colette Campbell” in the horror/thriller, #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD, a Cineverse release. Photo courtesy of Cineverse. So I have to ask both of you about JoJo Siwa. I am honestly a low key fan. How did she come to the project? I know Jade, you’ve worked with her before and I honestly have to say, I didn’t know she was in the film when I first saw it and I was really surprised at how great she is here.
Marcus Dunstan: I want to give a shout out to Jessica Schwartz and I believe she started the ball rolling to even approach the team representing JoJo. From that, I would just have to fast forward to the result of all those efforts. I am not privy to how it happened, but I’ll tell you who showed up for us as an outgoing, soulful, caring, dedicated, wonderful collaborative entity that just said, push me. I’m here to win and let’s go.
Thank goodness, because we could have done what was just on the pages with that character, but because it was her, because of Jade, because of everyone really just giving beyond the norm, there’s so much more there.
Jade Pettyjohn: I think what she did really was the haunting heart and through-line of the story, and she is so dedicated. I mean, there’s really something to say about someone who comes in and, and does this performance and she’s never done a project like this before or a role like this before. There was a lot that was required of her to be able to do something like that and she didn’t complain once.
Marcus – Any Sequel Plans for #AMFAD, I know that post credits scene definitely got me?
And speaking of sequels…
I also have to ask any update on The Collector 3 I am a huge fan of that series?
Marcus Dunstan: Bless your heart for asking.
When it comes to the universe of All My Friends are Dead, we’re gonna satiate the appetite, if the appetite’s there, and we’re ready to launch.
When it comes to The Collector there’s a Gordian knot of things to untie, and I wanna say, the last hurdle was just jumped. So what I’m hoping to do, if I’m so fortunate, Josh Stewart (the star of the Collector series), and I are intending to hang out and watch this movie together in New York this Saturday. I want nothing more than to just send out a thumbs up at some point and be like, guess what? Miracles can happen twice in one night, but we’ll see <laughs>.
Sometimes the legalese of stuff moves a little bit slower than the optimism <laughs>
