Just because October is over, doesn’t mean I’ve stopped watching and reviewing horror movies. This particular one I originally planned as part of my October Challenge, but I swapped it out for “Five Nights At Freddy’s” at the last minute. So this is somewhat late review of “Smile” from 2022.
Newcomer Parker Finn writes and directs the movie and it stars Kevin Bacon’s daughter Sosie Bacon in her horror movie debut. Bacon is not a complete stranger to horror however, having appeared in the “Scream” TV series for four episodes. The main support is from Jessie T. Usher and Kyle Gallner. Smile had a tremendously successful marketing campaign which mostly involved the stars standing around at public events with insane grins. It went on to gross $217m worldwide, which for a movie costing only $17m to make (and probably more than that in P&A) represents a huge profit. But is it any good?
I’m Not Crazy!
Sosie Bacon plays “Rose Cotter” an overworked but driven therapist at a psychiatric ward. Rose is largely driven in this career by the impact of witnessing her mother’s suicide when she was young. Having been too afraid of her mentally ill mother to assist her, she blames herself for her death. One day she asked to speak to a new patient called Laura (Played by Caitlin Stasey). Laura is thought to be suffering extreme trauma After witnessing her college professors suicide. She claims she isn’t insane and is instead being tormented by some kind of monstrous entity. The thing would appear to her in the form of various people, all of whom would be grinning. After freaking out in the interview, Laura takes on this same manic grin and cuts her own throat.
Rose is shaken by the incident and soon she starts seeing this entity herself. After realizing there is more to this then just trauma Rose begins to investigate. Looking into both her patient and the professor she finds a long chain of suicides. Convinced now that this curse is real she desperately tries to find a way out of it. Her friends and family however don’t believe her, largely because they wonder if she has inherited her mother’s mental illness. Her ex boyfriend however, police detective “Joel” (Gallner) attempts to help her dig into this mystery. They discover there was a break to the chain of suicides and Rose wonders if this may give her a way out. But will it be that simple?
Behind The Smile.
So first thing to talk about here is the crazy grin. This isn’t the first film to make use of the unsettling nature of an exaggerated grin. The first use was likely “The Man Who Laughs” from 1928, famously the inspiration for The Joker. It’s also worth noting a famous “Creepypasta” known as “The smiling Man” also features this and may well be the inspiration for the film. Not too many years before this Blumhouse released the movie “Truth or Dare” (2018), which also heavily pushed the gimmick. That movie was a much more generic horror than this, but it used the smile in much the same way. In both it is a way to tell the viewer and the victim of the presence of the movies antagonist. It’s also not really explained as anything other than just a thing that happens. Both antagonists seem to enjoy toying with their victims, but outside of that there is no real reason for it. It is a gimmick. Despite naming the film after the smile and very successfully focusing the marketing on it, It still feels like a gimmick
The strength of the movie though is in the atmosphere it builds. It’s notable that there are actually only two deaths on screen. Several are mentioned, but only two are actually shown. The vast majority of the horror is the evil entity creeping out Rose and these scares are done very well. Outside of this the movie relies a lot on the the creative cinematography (Interesting, though not always effective) and the discordant noise based music to maintain the atmosphere and it does it well. It’s become a trend with a lot of modern films (Mostly, but not exclusively horror) to have noise based soundtracks. Lots of ambiance, bangs, scrapes and a few discordant notes. I’m not especially fond of this trend, but it works effectively here. Without the creepiness the soundtrack brings to the table, the movie probably wouldn’t work.
Suicide Girls.
The movies is very competently put together, especially consider this is a directorial debut. We have an interesting protagonist. Rose is flawed and damaged, but is aware of both. She knows most of this stems from her guilt over her mother’s death. That trauma plays a key role. It’s hinted that all the Smile entities victims have this kind of past trauma. When she isn’t being abused by the entity, we get to see Rose’s regular life and watch her gradually failing mental state. It’s worth noting the “Birthday present” scene (No spoilers) either demonstrates that the entity can impact the world outside their victim, that it can control her already or possibly that Rose actually did it herself. It poses an interesting question for sure.
Laura the first victim, launches the film and sets the audience up for what to expect. Caitlin Stasey, mostly known for her roles in Australian soap operas, plays the role. As the first victim, the first person controlled by the Smile entity, the first person to provide exposition and the form the entity takes for a lot of the film, everything hinges on her performance. Fortunately she puts in a cracker. You really feel her terror and once she is taken over by the entity it is definitely creepy. I was less impressed with Jessie T. Usher, who just didn’t seem that genuine as a character, but despite being Rose’s fiance had only a small role.
Conclusion.
In conclusion while the smile thing is a bit of a gimmick and not particularly original, the movie itself is pretty good. It is straightforward but well put together. It provides a great creepy atmosphere, gives us a new interesting take on an evil entity (We’re never given a clue as to what it is, so I’m sticking with “Entity”) and gives us an interesting and flawed protagonist who we get to see deteriorate to breaking point. Perhaps the movie could be accused of being a little “One note”, but that persistence to the theme is key to what builds the atmosphere. I do think there could have been more done with it, but Overall I’m impressed and look forward to seeing what Parker Finn does next. This is a 7/10
October has rolled around once more and that means it is time for the Horror Review challenge. For the third year running (Fourth including my pre-blog Facebook/Minds reviews), I’ll be reviewing a horror or horror adjacent movie every day for 31 days. First up is A24’s Porno gone wrong story “X” featuring two modern Scream Queens in Mia Goth (In a double role) and Jenna Ortega. But did the movie live up to they hype? Let’s have a look.
King of Average.
First thing to note here is that this is a Ti West movie. If you’ve been following my blog you will know I was not impressed at all with his “The Innkeepers” (2011). I am yet to watch “House of the Devil” (2009) or the prequel to “this “X”, “Pearl” (2022) both of which are fairly well regarded, so I’m not viewing this with especially high expectations. However, West certainly has a lot of experience in the genre having worked on many Horror based TV shows over the years. If I was to compare him to another director it would probably be Mick Garris. Competent, experienced, but not especially outstanding.
The premise is a fairly standard Horror affair. A small group of young people heading to a remote location, having lots of sex and getting picked off one by one. In this instance we’re in a 1970’s setting and they are in the location to shoot a porno. It’s a pretty similar set up to “Wrestlemaniac/El Mascarado Massacre” (2006), which isn’t a great sign since that was an awful movie. The key differences are this movie actually does show a lot of the porno side and instead of a crazed Rey Misterio Snr. killing everyone it’s two old farmers. Neither of these are really improvements!
It’s All About Mia
The movie relies a lot on trying to creep you out because the old people are old. That’s probably something that only really works on the younger audience, for me it just seemed a bit sad. Other than that there is a whole lot of sex and then about half an hour of standard slasher stuff. Mia Goth does stand out as the only characters with any real depth though the film essentially revolves around her so not surprise.
Jenna Ortega is totally wasted and the rest of the victims are generic and forgettable. The Villains meanwhile are not terribly believable, given their age and their motivation is a little off given they agreed to rent out their farmhouse to this group and then seem angry they are there. Admittedly they didn’t know they’d be shooting porn, but it still seems like their motivation is really: This is a horror film, we need to kill people.
Double Act
The only point of interest in the movie really comes from the focus on Mia Goth. The actress plays both the “Final Girl” and the primary psycho, two roles that are meant to parallel one another The only problem is the movie didn’t really need to have the same actress play that role to achieve that and doing so largely robbed the theme of it’s subtilty, while ensuring the only thing of value was Mia Goth. I can’t fault Goth’s performance though, it’s just the concept is a little on the nose.
Overall this is another clanger from West and I’m starting to wonder if his Modus Operandi is simply to make generic horror with obvious, “On the nose” themes. I will probably give “Pearl” a run next year or “House of the Devil” and see if West can finally convince me he has something to offer in the genre. If he does it’s certainly not with “X”. This is a 4/10 for me.
Today I’m reviewing Damien Chazelle’s all star black comedy epic drama. This behemoth of a movie clocks in at three hours and nine minutes in length and boy does it feel it! The movie has a lot of talent on screen with three leads in Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and Diego Calva. Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy, a brash ambitious young up and coming star of the silent screen. Pitt plays “Jack Conrad” an established star that is somewhat jaded and often having marital issues. Calva plays the true lead, “Manny Torres” a Mexican immigrant and studio assistant, who eventually works his way up to executive.
Naked Ambition.
Babylon is an ambitious look at the transition in Hollywood from silent movies to talkies, but in practice it is really just a collection of loosely connected scenes. The movie begins with Manny transporting an elephant to a debauched, drug-fuelled private festival for the rich and famous within the industry. This opening scene is long and provides much of the footage from the trailers. It’s not entirely clear if this is a celebration of the debauchery of classic Hollywood, a condemnation of it or just an excuse to film things that look good in the trailer. My guess is a bit of all three. The scene sets up Manny’s first meeting with Nellie and sets the tone for the movie.
From here we follow the characters through a series of scenes depicting movie productions, drunken, drug addled parties and occasionally the events in between. Manny becomes close with both Nellie, whom he has fallen for and Jack, so the story is really Manny’s. This contrasts the hard working backbone of classic Hollywood with the debauchery and mental instability of the stars that struggled not to believe their own hype. The concept there is solid enough, but the film is less solid in it’s execution.
Brad and Margot.
Margot Robbie does not provide the best performances of her career as the walking disaster Nellie (Who mostly drives the plot on by being randomly outrageous and self destructive). She is however in the movies best scene. One that comes on a fraught movie set during an early “Talkie” where tension over the quality of the sound recording drives everyone on set to their breaking point, with one character not even surviving. The scene is about fifteen minutes and is pretty deep into the movie.
Pitt however is almost totally wasted as disillusioned actor Jack Conrad. He has a few good scenes early on but ultimately you could remove him from the entire movie without impacting the overall narrative. This is especially true considering the other two main characters have a romantic relationship and so Jack’s scenes feel very much like a third wheel.
Make it Epic!
The big problem here is that dark comedies don’t really mesh well with ambitious epic story telling. On a scene by scene basis this is somewhat reminiscent of a Cohen Brothers movie, but their longest film is just over two hours and for good reason. This movie doesn’t even have it’s opening credits until the 40 minute mark. It largely just plods along and the events feel disconnected. Many of the scenes themselves are actually very good and the majority feature ambitious, flamboyant set pieces, which makes the movie appear more of a showcase of the directors talent than a coherent narrative.
This is a good example of a movie scaling up without reason, with a story that would have worked better more focused and personal. There is possibly a good, far shorter movie in here, but instead of that we got a movie that is self indulgent, pretentious and tiring to watch. I can’t help but wonder as well if this is meant to be a criticism of past Hollywood excess or a celebration of it. I mean you only have to look on social media to see modern actors are on the whole no more stable than their 1920’s counterparts. I can’t help but feel the movie missed an opportunity to make a genuine statement on all that.
The Final Word.
Ultimately the movie is a let down. Some scenes may be 7/10’s but as a whole the best I can give this film is 5/10. Unless you have a new sofa you really want to wear an ass grove into, I’d give it a skip.
Tonight’s movie is technically this is classed as a horror comedy, but it’s really a nihilistic dark comedy with an emphasis on the nihilism. Directed by Mark Mylod (Whose only previous feature was 2011’s Romcom “What’s Your Number?”) and is written by first time feature writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy. The movie stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy with notable support from Nicholas Hoult and John Leguizamo. This movie has had a pretty positive reception but audiences are torn between people saying it’s the best movie of last year (It’s not) and those were more sort of “Meh” about it. So where did it land for me? Let’s have a look.
Starters
The setting for the film is a trip to a special exclusive restaurant based on a remote private island. Naturally such a remote location never bodes well in a movie for those foolish enough to go there and this is no exception and naturally as the extravagant multi-course meal goes on it becomes increasingly clear there is another agenda to this meal. It is hard to get further into the story and to a lot of my criticisms without hitting spoilers, so I am going to save that until the end. For now all you need to know is that the guests have all been invited specifically, with the exception of Anya Taylor-Joy’s character “Margot”, who is a last minute replacement.
Since Margot was never intended to be there not only does this provide an element of the plot (As the spanner in the works) but also provides an outsiders view into the events and the crazy world the rest of the characters seem to inhabit. Anya Taylor-Joy provides as solid a performance as I’ve come to expect from her, but it is Ralph Fiennes as the broken, vengeful “Chef Slowik” that steals the show here. Hoult gives a pretty solid performance as the obsessive fanboy “Tyler” but doesn’t have much asked of him and Leguizamo is just sort of there and I can’t help but feel wasted.
Main Course
The movie certainly has it’s charms both in concept and in the performance of Fiennes, but it is also very slow, plodding and predictable. The most notable aspect is an overwhelming sense of inevitability and going through the motions. Slowik is motivated by the fact that he feels the focus on pretentious highbrow cooking has robbed him of all the enjoyment he used to have for his art and he blames his high class clientele for leading him to this point, so he he plans a pretentious and ironic recipe for revenge on those he feels are most to blame.
The revenge plays out through a series of twisted courses with his victims ranging from rich investors, to restaurant critics, to an obsessive fanboy (Hoult), to an actor that just happened to be in a movie he didn’t like when he needed cheering up (Leguizamo). None of the courses though, outside the final one are actually directly about inflicting violence on the customers, because as I said, this isn’t actually a horror. Most of these events play out completely without surprise and in at least one instance the obviousness of the event is frustrating to watch, though I can’t help but wonder if that is somewhat of the point since the Nihilism and Fatalism seem to be strong themes here.
– – – SPOILER TERRITORY – – –
Obviously a key part of the plot revolves around Margot. As soon as she arrives on the island it causes a disturbance in Chef Slowik’s plans and eventually he confronts her so he can determine if she belongs with the dinners or the staff. The decision though isn’t about if she will live or die as Slowik’s plan includes all their deaths regardless of which side of the counter the are on. So to save herself she needs to find some way of convince him she shouldn’t be on either side. This is eventually done when she is randomly given the freedom to travel about the island and decides to have a look at his private residence. There she notices early photos of the Chef working as a short order cook, flipping burgers and apparently very happy doing it.
It’s worth noting that at this point she is still trying to save everyone so doesn’t just take the opportunity to escape, instead calls for help from a coast guard who all too predictably turns out to be working for Slowik (That was a real low point for the movie for me). However, after that plays out she makes one final gamble complaining about the quality of the food and demanding a cheeseburger, which Slowik provides and then allows her to take the rest of it she couldn’t finish “To go”, basically letting her escape. Partially because this probably reminded him of a time he was happy but also because of her compelling rant which showed she really understood. The rant is interesting here, because it is a rant that could equally well be applied to the film itself.
– – Deserts (Still Spoilers) – –
The cheeseburger rant is about how the focus on being clever with the cooking and appealing to an elite few that are more interested in being pandered to then actually enjoying the food has drained all the joy out of the experience for both the clientele and the cooks. This can be seen in the film itself with how easily everyone but Margot become resigned to their fate. When the final moment comes they all seem largely dispassionate about the whole thing, like it is almost ceremonial. On one hand this shows the movie is dedicated to it’s own themes, but on the other hand I couldn’t help but wonder if they had considered the same argument could be put towards movies too and that the main issue with this movie is it is totally lacking in the “Cheeseburger factor” itself.
That’s the thing, because the movie is designed to seem clever, but it plods through the story joylessly throughout. Despite being labelled as a horror comedy there are no real moments that indulge for horror fans or really that are likely to make anyone laugh, except perhaps that kind of fake laugh people make when they want to show approval of something clever but that they don’t actually find funny. There also aren’t really any individual scenes that actually stand out. It only really works as a package deal, all together, much like the menu chef Slowik has prepared in the film itself.
Conclusion and Coffee
The key here is the film is the movie version of just those kind of “work of art” menus. It’s not an emotional experience, instead It is one that needs you to stand back and appreciate the whole thing as one piece. It’s hard to get past the fact the moral of the story is apparently that art like that is not really a good thing without a bit of joy thrown in too. So the question is, do the film makers really believe in their own conclusion or do they only consider that an issue for cooking only and not entertainment? As a result this movie leaves me somewhat torn. What I do know is that I am not likely to come back to it.
The movie did keep me interested and was definitely well made, but that’s about it. Had I seen it last year it may have made my top ten, but it wouldn’t have been near the top 5. Conceptually interesting and helped significantly by a great performance from Ralph Fiennes, but at the same time it is a melancholy experience with no real fun to it whose end is more like a toilet flush after a satisfactory bowel movement than a crescendo in an emotional orchestral score. A joyless, yet strangely compelling cerebral offering distinctly lacking “Cheeseburger” this movie is a 6/10.
This has been another year of huge box office bombs, but another year where the success stories show that it’s not just as simple as “Post Covid” resistance to returning to the theatres. Overall ticket sales are way down and while the past two years were lower due to lockdowns this year really doesn’t have that excuse. It’s been a year where even horror has seen numbers decline, animation has been all over the place with two big hits and two utter disasters and dramas have on the whole simply failed to find an audience with viewers likely waiting to see them on streaming. It’s also been a poor year comparatively for superhero movies with only one really living up to expectations.
This isn’t every film that was released in cinemas this year, far from it but it is all the ones I decided to keep track of. I’m not gong to cover movies that went straight to streaming here at all. The the numbers I’ve listed are my estimations on profit, not the total box office. This is a harder number to lock down and there will no doubt be some debate. My model takes into account the studio gets a higher cut of the opening week and less later and takes into account the minimum cost of P&A instead of still applying the 50% of production cost rule on lower budget films.
Anyway, I’ve split this up into sections based on how successful the movie was. From the biggest disasters to the greatest successes. Let’s dig in.
The Bombs
These are the movies that will cost the studio big time (Losing $50m or more) and will derail a number of careers. They may lead to a number of studios rethinking their strategies, though whether they learn the right lessons or not is another question entirely.
So let’s start with “Death on the Nile“, the second in the Poirot series directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also staring as the Belgian master detective. This is a classic case of over estimating the demand for such a movie and spending too much ($90m) on the budget. This is a movie that has been done better for cheaper several times before now. No surprise it ended at a loss. I expect this will end Branagh’s series or perhaps lead to a direct to streaming approach in the future.
For Warner Brothers, the bomb I think everyone could have predicted was “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore“. Subject to a boycott from people that are angry with J.K. Rowling for saying only women can get pregnant and a far larger one from Johnny Depp’s army of fans that refused to watch the film after Warner dropped him from the role of Grindelwald, only for him to win his court case and come out looking like the abused and not the abuser. As much as people may like to argue morality on both these topics the truth is Depp is VERY popular and that was the biggest issue here. However, it doesn’t help the previous film wasn’t that well received. This lost the studio around $62m, however the IP is far from dead, so much so they are already looking into ways to reboot the main, more popular series.
The next biggest bomb of the year is sadly also my pick for best movie of the year. “The Northman“. Over time I hope it will join such classics as “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” in being bombs on release but becoming timeless classics and long term earners after. At this stage it is hard to say what the impact on Eggers career will be but losing around $85m can do a lot of damage to a career. It’s worth noting this was easily his most expensive film and if he goes back to making things a bit cheaper I have no doubt he can win studios around again. Mostly his movies have more of a highbrow audience anyway and he won’t have lost any of that. What he has failed to do though is really connect with the larger popcorn crowd. It’s a shame and a sign that we won’t be seeing the likes of Northman again any time soon, but at least we got it once!
The next clanger is another one literally everyone saw coming. “The 355“. After failures of movies like Terminator Dark Fate, Charlies Angels and Birds of Prey it should have been pretty clear that action movies that are not just female lead but lack strong male characters (A male character there just to be the comedy relief isn’t a strong male character), absolutely do not resonate with fans of action movies. It’s odd when you consider this would never happen the other way around (As male lead action films go out of there way to provide multiple strong female characters these days). This is a recipe to lose money. Charlies Angels and Harley Quinn didn’t even have big budgets and still bombed so the 355’s $75m budget was pretty much box office suicide.
The movie ended up losing about $100m, more money than it cost to actually make the film, meaning had they taken the “Batgirl” route, turned it into a tax write off and buried it in the desert with all those copies of E.T. The Video Game, it would have turned out far better for the studio! This is a good one to point to when someone says they don’t understand the logic in writing off Batgirl. Of course we don’t know if Batgirl would have performed this badly and female lead action movies can do well providing they don’t neglect the male characters along the way, but it does explain why it can be better to write movies off sometimes.
Joining the 355 in losing about $100m and being better off for the studio as a tax write off is the all star period murder mystery “Amsterdam“. Costing $80m to produce Fox/Disney (It was probably greenlit under Fox) must have been hoping the cast would be enough to get bums in seats but apparently not. It’s worth noting none of these stars have been immune to underperforming movies in the past, not even the very talented former Batman, Christian Bale.
Margot Robbie especially has been plagued with a string of bombs and if her upcoming Barbie movie doesn’t draw, she could find herself relegated to TV movies and horror films. Fortunately for her, that movie will probably do well, but then Fox no doubt thought the same about Amsterdam. Maybe murder mysteries are just not in vogue these days, but losing more than your production budget is a sign of there being more wrong than failing to find the popcorn crowd.
So what was the biggest disasters of the year? Well that’s a double whammy and both are animated Disney movies. It’s interesting to note the studio that made it’s name on it’s animation now appears to be being destroyed by it. The two films in question are the ill advised Toy Story spin off “Lightyear” and the more recent movie “Strange World“, crashing Disney’s bank balance by $162m and $161m respectively . Between them they cost the studio over $300m, effectively wiping out everything they gained from their most successful movie of the year, “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness”.
I think we need to jump right in and address the elephant in the room here. Both these animated kids features are incredibly woke. It is pretty clear that many parents don’t really want to take their children to see something they see as woke propaganda and it’s worth remembering that perception is everything. It would be one thing to have those elements in the story but when the marketing heavily focuses on it and executives at Disney are outright admitting their agendas it can’t really be denied or covered up. Even Lightyear, jumping on the back of the hugely successful Toy Story franchise failed to really utilise that link since they recast Buzz Lightyear and went out of their way to tell us it wasn’t directly related.
The Flops
The Flops are the movies that lost money, but were within a debatable range where heads probably won’t roll over it and the studio will likely shrug and move on. These movies likely won’t get sequels though and it certainly suggest mistakes were made. Narrowly making it into this category is “The Woman King“, losing a mere $13m. Likely enough that half the internet will call it a huge success and the other half a huge disaster. The truth is it’s more sort of “Meh”. As a historical film a sequel was probably never on the cards anyway.
A film that unsurprisingly failed to resonate with it’s franchise fan base is “Clerks 3“. Since Kevin Smith went from criticising Hollywood and being the voice of the fans to a full 180 and started criticising the fans and being the voice of Hollywood it’s not a shock that most of his audience for his own projects had totally dried up. At this stage he needs to either totally reform his public perception or reinvent himself creatively and find a new audience. He certainly didn’t do himself any favours with his lies and bait and switch approach to the Masters of the Universe series and with a second season of that due next year his movie career could well be over after that. Clerks 3 lost around $19m and that is on a low budget so those loses will have quite a sting to them.
In the category of “Why?” is the remake of Stephen King’s “Firestarter” that simply failed to heat up audiences with a loss of around $20m. That’s low enough it’ll probably make up the difference later and it probably won’t stop them doing more Stephen King remakes. However, I doubt we’ll see a sequel to this one. Honestly the first movie wasn’t that great anyway but one thing it does have in common with this is that the Soundtrack was better than the film. The original was of course provided by Tangerine Dream, while the remake was done by John Carpenter. Perhaps as a nod to the fact that Carpenter was originally going to direct the first film and if he had perhaps we really would have had a classic.
The biggest Horror film failure this year though, at least financially goes to the movie “Men” losing somewhere between $20m and $50m. It’s hard to be precise as there is no official listing for budget with a good $10m variation in estimates and it’s impossible to know the precise P&A value. Not a huge surprise, given the movie comes across as confusing and potentially woke. I’m not sure it is the latter but I think confusing is more than fair.
Landing as both the least successful superhero movie of the year and arguably it’s best is The Rock’s “Black Adam“, losing around $32m (Though it’s still in a few theatres so may squeeze that down a little). Dwayne Johnson can take some solace of the fact that his movie was well liked by those that did bother to go see it, but clearly a spin off from Shazam isn’t quite the career vehicle Dwayne may have thought it was. The final scene of the movie teases a stand off with Henry Cavill’s Superman and sadly that will be the final appearance of either in those roles. Both have gracefully taken their final bows via Instagram posts with very respectful comments to their fan bases and without burning bridges with the studios.
Michael Bay will no doubt be very disappointed his pretty decent action movie “Ambulance” flopped to the tune of losing around $34m. While it wasn’t going to bother my top ten list this year, it was a fun popcorn flick and pretty decent for a Michael Bay movie. However, I think the film’s name failed to sell the action and the truth is Bay isn’t the draw he used to be. I dare say we haven’t seen the last of Bay though. His next movie sees a return to robot movies, but this time not transforming ones.
The Also Ran’s
Some movies only just scrapped into the black and while it won’t make or break any career, it leaves some potential to become cult classics or at least earn a substantial amount on streaming and Blu-ray sales. First up is “Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent“. In theory it lost about $40m in theatres, however this was a movie simultaneously released directly to streaming (A rarity for this year), so it can’t really be judged like most releases. The movie has been well received so I think it will likely make up for that shortfall.
“Morbius” narrowly made it into the black with a profit likely around $1m. Possibly the ill advised re-release may have turned that slight gain into a loss but I’d say overall the movie will be very much in the “Meh” category. Which really defines the movie too. Not bad, not good, not a success, not a failure, it’s the most just there Superhero movie ever made. Apparently “Morbin’ Time” means an abundance of mediocrity. Not much ahead of that is the DC Animated movie “League of Super Pets“. The movie actually looks quite fun but the DC brand was at an all time low so it was only able to generate around $2m in profit.
Not quite over the line into the black but losing so little it is within the margin of error are the movies “Don’t Worry Darling” falling short by about $4m and “Downton Abbey: A New Era” throwing away around $7m. The latter could possibly be written off by having a more mature audience that are likely still wary of covid, but it also may just be that the Downton effect is starting to wear off as we get further away from the peak of the series. Another movie losing by a small margin in “The Menu“, which has garnered positive reactions from both critics and the audience but looks set to fall short by maybe as much as $9m
Below Expectations
These are movies that are comfortably in the black but represent a far lower level of success than would be expected for the genre, franchise or stars involved. Sometimes these movies can actually earn over $100m in profit and still be a disappointment to the studio. It’s all about the context.
“Nope” did reasonably in theatres earning around $25m in profit, but was notably weaker than past Jordan Peele outings. It seems the honeymoon period may be over for the controversial comedian turned director or else he’s just suffering for the mixed reaction to his previous film “Us”. Speaking of Horror, “Halloween Ends” made a solid $36m in profit. However this represents a substantial drop off from the second film in this trilogy and a huge drop from the first (Which did insane numbers), I think Blumhouse may feel a little short changed. The movie was badly received too, so I don’t think they’ll be rushing out to replace Michael Myers with a new killer any time soon. Expect a 5-10 year hiatus and a reboot.
“Thor: Love and Thunder“. Despite earning a $142m in profit, made less than half the profit that Doctor Strange 2 managed and performed far below what Disney must be expecting from it’s MCU movies. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” managed to outperform that with around $175m in profit (and did especially well in the US), but still far short of where the bar had been set this year. It seems that right now Marvel’s movies are reliant on their proximity to a Spider-Man movie to get anything close to the audiences they garnered in phase 2 and 3. Phase 4 is absolutely a failure by comparison and if they don’t start turning it around the MCU is in real trouble.
“The Batman“, earned a profit of about $234m. On the surface you’d think the studio would be happy with that substantial gain, but this is one of the true A-List superheroes and right now the number two most popular superhero in the world (After Spider-Man). He should be easily doing double that and Warner/DC knows this well. Things are being shaken up over DC these days with James Gunn taking full control of the DC movies and no doubt will be wondering if this version of Batman is worth a continuation or if it is best to leave it as a one off.
Also disappointing financially was Sandra Bullock’s “The Lost City“. Actually a good, fun adventure comedy that showed Sandra still has it, Channing Tatum can actually be good in comedy and Brad Pitt is cameo gold. The movie was comfortably in the black but only making $18.5m in profit for a film with a $74m budget is probably uncomfortably close for the studio. However, the film has been positively received and I have no doubt will do well on streaming. It wouldn’t surprise me if some time next year they announced a sequel. After enjoying this, I’d certainly check out a sequel if there was one.
Meeting Expectations
On occasion a movie achieves exactly what the studio expected, no more, no less. These movies will be treated as a win by the studio, likely will lead to sequels but probably won’t impact other movies at the studio by contrast. The “Scream” reboot for example drew in about $40m in profit. That may actually be a little below what they were hoping for but given they instantly green lit a sequel it’s safe to say the studio were content with that profit margin.
The sequel (and sixth Scream movie) lands next year, but given the reaction from fans was very mixed for this I suspect the sequel will end up disappointing financially by comparison. We will see. At the other end of the scale though is “Violent Night“, only making around $10m at most but likely wasn’t expected to do much more than that. The positive reaction however may lead to a more financially beneficial sequel. I’m not sure it needs one however, the movie was a classic but how many Christmas movies (Aside from Die Hard) had worthwhile sequels?
The action films “Uncharted” and “Bullet Train” managed to find enough of an audience to make substantial games ($85m and $35m respectively). Uncharted of course is based on a video game while Bullet Train was original. Perhaps this shows you just how much the video game market can impact sales these days. Bullet Train was undoubtable the better film, but while it didn’t make as much as uncharted in the theatre I have no doubt it will make more money in the long run through Blu Ray sales and streaming. It definitely has more rewatchability. Still the studio will be happy with what it made up front. Uncharted is almost certain to get a sequel, but I don’t think one was ever on the table for Bullet Train.
“Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness” was both Marvel’s first movie of the year and it’s most successful. The film managed about $350m in profit, but it definitely wasn’t due to the quality. The lure of cameos, the knock on effect of following the hugely successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and the possibilities of the multiverse, all likely helped. Ultimately the movie only achieved an average box office for an MCU movie with a major star and a key story arc. It’s not great for phase three but after the lacklustre output of most MCU movies last year this was probably as good as they could expect.
The Dreamworks animated comedy “The Bad Guys” probably hit just about where the studio expected netting a healthy a profit of around $40m. Animation has been frankly all over the place this year, but it is good to see a fun original story giving a solid performance. It probably has a sequel on the table but they may want to see how the streaming numbers go first.
“Jurassic World Dominion” meanwhile landed itself a huge profit of about $350m, for the third of a trilogy for a major franchise and with the return of characters from the original film this is probably about what they were hoping for. It may even be under their expectations.
Last on this list is “Elvis“. With Tom Hanks as the movie’s true lead Colonel Tom Parker, this extravagant biopic cost $85m to make and as such was expected to turn at least $50m in profit. The end result was around $70m so job done. I’ve not seen this yet, but most that aren’t too hung up on historical accuracy seem to have enjoyed it.
Success Stories
Every year there are a handful of movies that far exceed all reasonable expectations of the studio. These movies not only get hurriedly tagged for sequels (Where appropriate), but also tend to lead to studios revaluating their priorities going forward. These films may be low budget dramas or indie movies hitting far above average for those genres, horror films landing like superhero movies or big budget action movies hitting the coveted $1b mark or beyond. The actual numbers vary wildly but within their own play pen of budget/genre people will be taking notes.
Over the last few years Horror has become an easy genre to make money with and even though several of the films didn’t live up to expectations (Both in quality or receipts) almost all of them made bank. One movie though made a real killing beyond expectations and that is “Smile“. Beaming wide at a huge profit of around $110m and possibly propelled by the ingenious marketing campaign of having the movies stars standing around staring blankly at sporting events with creepy smiles on their faces. The movie also had a great trailer and solid word of mouth.
On were also a couple of lower budget non-horrors that bucked the trend this year. First up the movie “Dog“. Obviously movies about dogs always draw in a bit more than similar ones just about people. We love our doggies, I get it. But I still think the studio were probably surprised a drama with a $15m budget pulled in a solid $20m in profit. Some possibly would label this as even more successful (If they didn’t take into account the minimum cost of P&A), but either way it’s still a big win. I haven’t seen the movie but I hear it is a good one.
The other movie bucking the trend for low budget, non horror success was “Everything Everywhere All At Once“, if you’ve seen my top ten you know I highly rate this film and it was my number 3 movie for most of the year (Only dropping down to 5 this December). The movie managed to draw in a respectable $27m in profit which for a movie that cost only $25m in production is a definite win. It’s also been a rare movie that wins over both the woke and the anti-woke since it gives both parties things they want. Given the message of the movie is about bringing people together and getting over our differences it is almost poetic it has that universal appeal.
There’s been a couple of big success stories on the animation side this year too (Causing further embarrass those huge bombs mentioned earlier), both however are sequels to established franchises. First you had “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” hitting about $140m in profit and then you had “Minions: The Rise of Gru” hitting a staggering $310m in pure profit despite (I hear) not even being that good. Minions it seems is a licence to print money. Sonic meanwhile has built up a good reputation between it’s two movies of both quality and success and showed that sometimes you can make everyone happy.
Easily the big winner of the year though is “Top Gun: Maverick” bringing in a staggering $750m of profit with a global box office exceeding the $1b mark. This has been a clear lesson to the movie industry that respecting the IP, respecting the fans and respecting physical stunts/effects can be a recipe for huge earnings. Whether the industry will actually learn that lesson or not remains to be seen. It is a stubborn beast and it may just end up making more movies about planes instead. Given Paramount has had a lot of financial issues and failings over the previous years I’m sure they at least will take note.
End of Part 2
That’s it for the year in review. I hope the recap of this years winners and losers was interesting. One final note, I haven’t covered “Avatar: The Way of the Water” here, partially because it’s still in full swing at theatres and partially because while my figures would suggest it’s $1b+ box office already has it in profit, Cameron himself is suggesting it needs to make closer to $2b to break even! So I don’t know where to place that one. Anyway, that is it for 2022, I will be posting a look at the movies to coming up in 2023 in the next few days to see if there is anything worth getting excited over. In the meantime, Happy New year!
The year is almost at an end so it’s time for my 2022 wrap up and that means a box office breakdown, a look at where the industry has been going in the last year and of course, my top ten movies of the year. Several of these I don’t have full reviews of so it also gives me an opportunity to cover some great films I just didn’t have time to review.
Before I dig in, I just want to point out since I spend more time watching and reviewing older movies I haven’t seen every film released this year that may qualify for best or worst. Notably in regards to best, I haven’t seen “Smile” yet and may even save that for next years October Horror Challenge, nor have I seen likely Oscar winner “The Whale” or the recent remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, all sound like they could be on this list.
Anyway, lets get started:
Best Movies Of The Year (That I’ve Seen).
First of all the honourable mentions. The Foo Fighters horror movie “Studio 666” was surprisingly fun and entertaining. There was definitely a bit of a John Carpenter influence going on and with John having a cameo I have to wonder if perhaps he gave a few tips. The band as well showed they are perfectly capable of acting at the level of a horror film. That may not be the most demanding genre for actors but yet many in these films still fail. If you like comedy horror it’s definitely one to check out.
“Black Phone” also narrowly missed the cut. The style serial killer movie with a supernatural twist and two children as the protagonists could easily be mistaken for a Stephen King story but it was a Scott Derrickson original and given this was the project he moved on to after abandoning Doctor Strange 2, he’s come out of it dodging a bullet and smelling like roses. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next. Hint to Warner/DC he would be an excellent pick to direct a Hellblazer/John Constantine movie or a Swamp Thing movie for that matter. Hire him!
The last honourable mention is Marvel’s “Werewolf by Night“. It’s ironic it’s the pair of throw away specials from Marvel that ended up their only worthwhile output this year (The other being the solidly good “Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special”), but sometimes you need a studio to take their interfering eye off of the creative process to get things done right (Which is basically how “The Joker” (2019) happened too). I actually rated Werewolf by Night slightly higher than three on this list, but since it’s under an hour it’s debatable if it counts as a movie, hence it’s just an honourable mention.
10. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Surprising me once again with it’s quality is the little blue Sega mascot. This time following on from the original with the obvious steps of introducing Knuckles and Tails. I had my doubts Sonic could work, especially after the initially terrible CGI but the studio proved they care what fans think by fixing that error and producing a movie that was both fun and full of the kind of fan service that fits into and enhances the story instead of getting in it’s way (Like most fan service these days). Jim Carey was also a surprise absolutely nailing his role as the villainous Doctor Robotnik.
Going in to the sequel I had my doubts again that adding in characters like Knuckles and Tails would be a step too far, but again I was wrong. Idris Elba did a fantastic job as Knuckles and Tails who I expected to be incredibly annoying was actually quite endearing. This was a fun family movie that also massages that nostalgia muscle in a very pleasant way. The third film it seems moves the story past my time with Sonic (Strictly Megadrive days for me), so remains to be seen if it still holds any appeal for me, but it’s a thumbs up for the first two for sure. This was a 6.5/10. If you are new to my blog, a six or above is good (Fives are average and 4 or below are bad). I like to have more room at the top.
9. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Nick Cage popped up on my best lists last year twice, once for “Pig” and again from the cult classic “Willy’s Wonderland”. Nick is an actor I’ve really learned to appreciate in recent years and I’m not surprised a comedy action film where Nick plays a parody of himself managed to creep into the top ten. Cage and his co-star Pedro Pascal were obviously both having a blast with this movie and the fact that Nick has no problem lampooning himself just raised what would have still been a fun action movie onto a new level. I don’t have a whole lot more to say about this one, it’s just fun. 6.5/10
8. Hatching (a.k.a. Pahanhautoja)
Another surprise entry for this year and the only horror to make the list. To be fair, I haven’t seen “Smile”, “X”, “Pearl” or “Terrifier 2”, all of which will probably end up on next years Horrorthon (Not that I don’t watch horror outside of October but it’s always good to save a few up). Not sure any of those would challenge the top ten but I won’t know until I see them.
Hatching was from this years October Challenge and was slipped in as both a new release and a foreign language movie (Finnish in this case) and it really surprised me by having a whole lot more depth than I was expecting. That said, the best body horrors tends to be built around some kind of metaphor so what this showed was director Hanna Bergholm and writer Ilja Rautsi clearly understand the genre. Check out my full review HERE. This was a high 6.5/10
7. Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe
A Beavis and Butt-Head movie made the top ten list for the year? The fact that this movie wasn’t as good as their previous outing back in their prime and still made number seven on this list probably says a lot about the declining quality of the movie industry. However, that’s not to say the film doesn’t deserve some accolades. Reviving an edgy animated comedy franchise from the 1990’s when edgy animated comedy was all the rage in 2022 when political correctness has made a lot of that kind of comedy “Problematic” may seem like a bad idea, but in truth it was exactly what 2022 needed. The scene where Beavis and Butt-Head learn about White Privilege (and go on a rampage thinking it will be consequence free) is simply gold.
But it’s not just that, Mike Judge has managed to bring back his characters in a way that both updates them to the modern day while also keeping them true to how they were in the classic series (And in the “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America” movie). He even managed to squeeze in some mild character development (Not that these are characters that should ever evolve that much). The movie largely seems to have existed to allow the series to continue in the modern day with the pair still teenagers. So even though the story existed to get them from A to B via space antics and time travel, Judge managed to work that into a tale that was both entertaining and somewhat paralleled their earlier movie. 7/10
6. Bullet Train
David Leitch’s Bullet Train is a movie I expected to be quite fun, but was still surprised at how well it turned out. It’s presented in a Guy Ritchie style which is a bit of a cheap way to make something seem cool and if the movie doesn’t deliver would lose it further points for cliché, but fortunately this story actually fit that style perfectly. It’s not quite a Guy Ritchie style story though, in that regard it’s probably more Tarintino. The combination makes for a somewhat comic book style (Meaning you could argue this years best comic book movie wasn’t a comic book movie) and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find this was based off a graphic novel or something, but no the work is original screenplay by Zak Olkewicz.
It certainly helps having Brad Pitt in the lead role. One of the few true movie stars the industry has left and his presence does raise the movies quality a bar or two. But despite that his character isn’t actually the most interesting, probably because this is the kind of film that is built around having a colourful zany group of misfit characters thrown together to fight and interact. Aaron Taylor-Johnson as “Tangerine” largely steals the show, but who doesn’t also love a Hiroyuki Sanada appearance? Throw in a Sandra Bullock cameo and you have a fun action classic that will probably stand the test of time. 7/10
5. Everything Everywhere All At Once
Over recent years Michelle Yeoh has been lumbered with doing a lot of garbage and while it’s good to see her continued popularity it has felt like a waste of her talents. Of course Michelle is mostly famous for her martial arts, but she is actually quite capable as an actress in general and as she ages to a point where the fighting becomes less believable it is good for her to establish her acting credentials in quality work. This is perhaps the perfect vehicle for her. Of course she still does some fighting, but that’s not the main focus of the story
Everything Everywhere is a movie full of surprises. You think it is going to go in one direction and it goes in another. You start to feel it’s turned into an action movie and it morphs into an outright comedy and then into something a lot more emotional eventually focusing in on a story about relationships, about family and about love. It is a movie that ends up with excitement and emotion and leaving you laughing your ass off. It also firmly embarrassed Marvel by easily being the best multiverse based movie of the year and doing it on a shoe string budget. This is definitely cult classic. 7.5/10
4. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
This has been a year full of surprises and perhaps none more so than this movie. Landing completely out of the blue for me, with very little fanfare is this absolute masterpiece of stop motion animation and story telling from the great Guillermo Del Toro. Arriving in the same year as the critically panned and poorly received Disney live action Pinocchio, this is a completely fresh take on Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of the living puppet. Shifting the time period to World War 2 to set it in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy gives the movie some “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) vibes. Clearly dealing with the horrors of war and oppressive dictatorships is something Del Toro is passionate about and it actually works well for this story.
Pinocchio himself has a look much closer to the Gris Grimly’s illustrations of the book than the more human like version in Disney’s classic animation and that not only makes it feel more realistic (As much as a movie about a living puppet can be) it helps to contrast Pinocchio from the stop motion “Humans” in the story who are all of course actually puppets too. Del Toro actually reduced the magical elements to the story, removing other talking animals and marionettes (Though both are sort of covered by by Spazzatura, the mistreated Monkey that is able to talk through the marionettes he operates), but this actually adds to the wonder of the story as it makes the fantastically elements that remain seem all that more special.
This movie is a visual treat and an emotional journey and really shows that even while Disney try and squeeze every drop of life out of their own version of the story, there are still takes on the classic tale that are both beautiful and worthwhile. Absolutely a 7.5/10.
3. Top Gun: Maverick
Perhaps the most important release of the year Tom Cruise proved three things with Maverick. First of all he proved he can still be a huge box office draw in an action movie. Secondly he showed that it is possible to revisit a movie from the 80’s, bring it in to the modern day and do it in a way that is both massively popular and resonates with the original in such a way that no one feels it is disrespected. Last but not least, in fact probably most significantly it showed that physical special effects and genuine stunts are far more impressive to a modern audience than even the most extravagant and expensive CGI. Perhaps it’s time for studios to re-evaluate
As a bonus Tom Cruise coming out before the film (pre-recorded that is and not in all releases) to personally thank the fans for turning up shows a level of audience respect that has been so absent from most major productions people reacted to it like an abused animal finally getting some affection. We live in very strange times when many productions are promoted with toxic campaigns of greeting any and all criticism with insults and accusation, even to the point where at least two of the years major productions (Scream and She-Hulk) actually had attacks on their own audience built into the plot itself. So coming out with such a positive message has won Cruise a number of fans for life.
The film itself is a continuation of Mavericks character development from the first film, using the death of “Goose” as the jumping off point to tie it all together. While doing that story it also introduces a number of new younger pilots and allows them their own character development. Then it provides an action sequence somewhat reminiscent of the Star Wars trench run but provides just enough mission to allow everyone’s story arc to have meaning. Nothing is overdone here except for arguably Maverick’s romance angle, but personally I had no issue with that and Jennifer Connelly had great chemistry with Cruise. Anyway check out my full review HERE. This was a very strong 7.5/10.
2. Violent Night
Jumping in at the very last minute ahead of Maverick is the years most surprising film of all “Violent Night”. I don’t think anyone expected this movie to be as good as it was. Director Tommy Wirkola is mostly known for low budget horror films such as the “Dead Snow” movies (The one with the zombie Nazi’s) and mid budget action films like “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013). While he’s clearly playing with home field advantage here, it’s not like any of his films have been anything beyond moderately good. But I think with this he’s finally made the film he will ultimately be known for. It probably helps that the script for the film was penned by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, the team also behind the Sonic movies (So managed to write two of the years best movies).
The story is effectively Die Hard but instead of John McClane you have Santa Claus. But not just any Santa, this one used to be a Viking and when he takes it upon himself to save a young girl that is on his good list and her family from violent thieves he begins to remember his old ways and use them finally for good. David Harbour is fantastic in this role and I am now of the opinion he was born to play Santa. John Leguizamo also does a fantastic job of playing the movies main villain “Scrooge” (All the villains have Christmas related code names). The pacing is superb and almost every scene stands out with the highlights probably being when Santa fully unleashes his Viking fury and the scene almost immediately after where Trudy (The young girl in question) performs a far more violent take on Home Alone.
The great thing about this movie is it lands as a comedy, it lands as violent action and it lands just as well as the other two as a Christmas movie and I think that is the bit that really surprised me. Pair this up with the first “Bad Santa” movie and the classic Bill Murray comedy “Scrooged” and you have the ultimate evening of Christmas comedies. But if you aren’t into that, you can pair it up with Die Hard and Lethal Weapon instead. This is going to be a long time Christmas favourite and earns itself a coveted 8/10 from me.
1. The Northman
And here we are, my number one movie of the year and if not a surprising one for anyone that knows me. I love the Viking Age and I love Norse Mythology. Most of the shows and movies that get put out with those themes are frankly garbage. The TV series “The Last Kingdom” is the sole exception for TV shows (The “Vikings” shows having pitifully bad historical accuracy both in costumes and events). As far as movies goes there have been a few decent ones (The last one of note being “Valhalla Rising” from 2009). When I heard Robert Eggers was making a Viking story based on an Icelandic Saga and staring Alexander Skarsgård I was cautiously optimistic.
Eggers is somewhat obsessed with historical accuracy and has a unique approach to the supernatural where he invokes the perspective of the believers to leave the audience unsure if what they are actually seeing is real or not. Both these were going to be well suited to this story. The Saga in question is the Legend of Amleth, the story that was also the inspiration for Hamlet. Eggers with the assistance of Icelandic poet and musician Sjón constructed a story that truly evokes the spirit of those Sagas. It is tragic, grim and beautiful and portrays those times with equal amounts of horror and awe. The characters are bold, brave, brutal and fatalistic and ultimately the story feels like it is exactly the kind of movie the writers of those ancient Sagas would write themselves.
But it’s not just the storytelling that makes this my movie of the year. The sets are pure perfection down to the finest detail, the soundtrack is primal and inspiring and the performances on screen are almost all absolutely top notch. Along with Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman puts in a career best performance, Claes Bang nails the role of Amleth’s nemesis and step-father, Anya Taylor-Joy continues to prove why her career seems to have rocket boots and Willem DaFoe continues to be the scene stealer he has been his entire career (But with a bit more recognition for it these days). This movie has earned an 8.5/10 from me, a score I’ve not given since “Joker” in 2019. For my full review click HERE.
Worst Movies of the Year (That I’ve Seen)
This is very superhero heavy this year. I’m going to throw “The Batman” out there as a dishonourable mention. There was a lot of good in that movie but an equal amount of bad. Ultimately the film was a disappointment, but could have been worse. I didn’t feel anything was broken, though I doubt they’ll return to that word with Gunn now in charge at DC.
There’s also a number of apparently terrible movies I totally avoided seeing this year, that includes “Amsterdam“, “The 355“, “They/Them” and Walt Disney’s live action “Pinocchio” (It must be really embarrassing to have that come out the same year as Del Toro’s masterpiece). I suspect all of those would have found their way onto the list had I seen them. Generally I don’t go out of my way to watch bad movies, at least not unless they are obvious B-Movies and I figure they may be fun regardless of if they are objectively good or bad (For example something like “Christmas, Bloody Christmas“, which narrowly missed being on this list despite effectively being a bad Terminator rip off).
I suspect had I seen all the theatrically released movies this year only my top five would have still been on the list, but perhaps higher up.
10 – Crimes of the Future
A disappointing entry in David Cronenberg’s more hit than miss career. It is a film that tries to be highbrow with dense layers of subtext but fails to actually do anything entertaining with it. It comes off as a pretentious mess. Cronenberg’s films are always somewhat dense, but most manage to be fun too and this did not. It’s worth noting he had been messing around this idea for a while, so perhaps he gave up trying to find the right angle and just made it with what he had. Who knows. I don’t have much else to say here, but I have done a full review, which you can find HERE. I gave this a 4.5/10.
9. – Prey
A heavily clichéd movie full of modern tropes (Such as having a guy warning the hero of impending danger only to instantly die to that danger), that spends too much time trying to pointlessly reference the original movie while failing to maintain consistency with it. The movie peaks long before the end with the climax requiring the great hunter alien to be a complete and total idiot.
The movie is not without highlights, such as the first appearance of the Predator (fighting the Grizzly) and it is significantly better than the previous entry (A movie that would have easily made the bottom 3 worst even this year), but it is a long way from a true recovery for the franchise. Unlike that previous entry though this didn’t damage the franchise as a whole and can be casually ignored moving forward without issue. It is however, still a bad movie. 4.5/10
8. Morbius
Morbius is a movie that fails mostly because of what isn’t in it rather than what is. There are some flaws and dumb elements it’s true, but then there was in the Venom films too and they were still enjoyable. Morbius however lacks the positives that were in those films that make you want to overlook those flaws and has some glaring omissions in plot points that weren’t very well developed, relationships that weren’t properly explored and characters that were either scaled right down or cut completely from the main movie.
The movie feels like a skeleton of a much better movie, that had all the meat stripped away from the bone in the edit for some reason. My guess is it involves the last minute new deal Sony struck with Marvel. It’s very likely Vulture was going to feature more heavily in the story (Instead of a post credit cameo) and Agent Stroud would also be more heavily involved and actually be seen using his cyborg arm (This btw, is likely how he got to the roof of the building so fast, but they literally cut his superpowers from the film). Anyway, full review is HERE. This is another 4.5/5
7. Troll
This was especially disappointing for me as I was actually quite looking forward to it, but it turned into one of the most generic monster movies I’ve ever seen. Another film full of cliché’s, in this case the incredibly tired “Scientist of an obscure field that is brought in as a specialist consultant, everyone immediately doubts and ridicules and then turns out to be right”. It’s full of horrendous plot holes and contrivances the whole way through.
They even threw in a moment directly out of “The Suicide Squad” where the abused and undervalued subordinate punches out the bloodthirsty boss person at a key moment to allow the heroes to do that thing the military doesn’t want them to do. That trope likely goes back a lot further, but The Suicide Squad actually did it well, where as Troll just sort of does it because it can. The Troll does look reasonably good but that was the only positive I got from this. This is a 4/10
6. Scream (2022)
This overhyped disappointment hit the screens with the kind of arrogance that usually hails a self indulgent pretentious pile of garbage. Even before it aired it lost points for going with the name “Scream” like it was on par or somehow better than the original. But then it actually made references to doing just that so they can mock fans they knew would make that legitimate complaint. Bad start but then they killed off a key character just for the sake of it and chose the one male character in the mix because in 2022 it’s not enough for a franchise to be female lead it now also can’t have any men around at all because then it wouldn’t be empowering.
The truth is the franchise went off the rails years ago when it stopped being meta commentary on the horror genre and instead became directly self referential, through it’s fake “Stab” movie franchise which represents the Scream franchise. The original movie was about all of horror, but all the movies since have basically been just about the original Scream. worst of all though they basically made the villain “Toxic Fandom”. In other words, their own audience. This is a movie that spends an equal amount of time kissing it’s own ass and simultaneously calling it’s fanbase jerks. That is never going to get a good score from me and honestly I feel a 4/10 is generous. I dread to see what the idiots behind this do with the Escape From New York reboot.
5. The Munsters (2022)
The one movie on this list that wasn’t a disappointment, because I expected it to be rubbish going in. But as someone that watched a lot of Munsters reruns as a kid, I really wanted to give it a chance. I respect that Rob Zombie was trying to recreate the feel of the original film and I have heard he wanted to do it in black and white, but was declined by the studio. he also had a budget that could barely pay for a shoestring.
But even then the fact is the end result is bad and the main reason for that is because of creative choices. Specifically because Zombie chose to make the story a prequel effectively about Herman and Lilly hooking up and moving to the USA. That could potentially have worked with a strong story behind it, but Rob didn’t provide one. Not a strong story. Not even a story. The characters just sort of mill around with very little happening until random events cause them to move. Shame, but not a surprise. Full Review is HERE. I gave it 4/10 originally, I feel that may have been generous.
4. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
The front runner of this years set of entries into the abysmal MCU Phase Snore is the disaster that is Black Panther 2. Holding itself up over the other two MCU entries on this list entirely on the strength of it’s Chadwick Boseman tributes. Moving as they were it couldn’t disguise the fact that without Chadwick as Black Panther I really don’t see any characters worth rooting for in this franchise now. Shuri is not believable and the film goes out of it’s way to push gender and racial politics instead of storytelling and having fun. The fact that they changed Namors origin because they didn’t see the value in an entirely fantasy race shows how little the makers of MCU films these days value imagination.
Then you have one of the worst characters ever introduced into the comics (A character that has the mentality of a classic comic villain but is for some reason considered a hero) randomly pushed into the centre of the story in a way that never really made an sense. The movie is so full of plot holes you have to shut your brain completely off to enjoy it making it exactly what Martin Scorsese accused Marvel movies of being – A fairground ride. But for me this was so goofy a movie it’s not even a very good ride. It’s like a ride that breaks down half way through and you get stuck on the tracks for 30 minutes sweating in the hot sun. 3.5/10
3. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
This is perhaps the most flawed Marvel movie ever released. The reason it’s not lower on the list however is as a spectacle it does have some good moments and three scenes in particular actually had the distinct mark of Sam Raimi about them. Specifically Zombie Strange, Wanda attacking people from reflections and the music fight. The trouble is as soon as you insert even those scenes into the whole you see what a horrendously flawed mess and total character assassination of pretty much everyone involved it truly is.
Doctor Strange doesn’t even have a real character arc. Instead the plot is basically that everyone thinks he’s an a**hole and he isn’t. That’s not much more of a character arc than Batman’s “I am vengeance… maybe I’m not just Vengeance” (The Batman didn’t make the worst or best list as the flaws and positives neutralised each other). It should go without saying that the character arc of your main character should be the most important thing in a movie named after that character.
Instead this was primarily Wanda’s movie, secondarily America Chavez’ and Stephen is just sort of there. Add to that the horrible cameo of great characters that are all basically made to look like chumps in their very first MCU big screen appearance and you have a film that I absolutely hate, despite three scenes I legit enjoyed. This is a 3.5/10, one point for each good scene and half a point for the rest of the movie.
2. Thor: Love and Thunder
When discussing Thor: Rangnarok with my friends they were surprised I was uneasy about the film. As I explained to them, while I did absolutely enjoy the film I was very concerned with the direction the franchise was going and that if it goes much further in that direction we’d be reaching “Batman and Robin” levels of goofiness. The movie was followed on with Infinity War which had Thor be a definite badass, but then that was followed by Fat Thor in End Game and I became concerned again. Now it’s pretty clear I was proven right. A lot of people are now referring to this movie as the “Batman and Robin” of the franchise and rightly so.
The trouble is not only did they turn Thor into a complete joke, the joke wasn’t even funny. How many times do we have to do the screaming goats joke? How many times are we expected to laugh at gratuitous sexualisation of male characters while we are also being accused of being sexist for wanting to see attractive women? Why does Marvel want to see all it’s male heroes humiliated these days? It’s no wonder Hemsworth has been hinting he is done with the franchise. There was nothing positive at all to this movie, it’s just trash. 3/10
1. Halloween Ends
I think we can basically guarantee now that any time someone comes to the Halloween franchise and wants to wipe most (sometimes all) the previous movies from canon with the arogent view their vision is clearly going to be superior than what came before, that they will in fact end their run with a new worst film of the entire franchise history. This is the third time in a row this has happened now. First the Loomis/Jamie Lloyd arc was wiped out so that we can see Laurie Strode murdered in an insane asylum and have Busta Rhymes be the man to take down The Shape. Then Rob Zombie comes up with his “Darker/Grittier” reboot and ends with one of the most nonsensical barely watchable Halloween movies ever made.
But now we get a new champion of Garbage. We get a third movie in a disjointed trilogy (That really has no excuse to be so disjointed given it’s all the same writer/director and done over a short period). A movie that introduces a new character out of the blue that the trilogy suddenly revolves around. A Halloween movie that character assassinates the Bogeyman himself and reduces him to a cameo. We have a strode family where the granddaughter seems attracted to psychopaths despite her mother being killed by one and a Laurie that casually moves on from that murder after spending four decades obsessing over the same killer after a 5 minute home invasion and the murder of some friends. Indeed she seems to be acting a bit like a psychopath herself… yet this trilogy retconned her being Michaels sister.
This is a 3/10 and that is probably generous. You can find my full rant filled review HERE.
End of Part One
It’s AI generated, don’t read anything into it.
It’s worth noting that all but two of the bottom ten this year were franchise movies while six of my top ten were original and of the movies that were franchise films, Pinocchio is debatable as it’s just a retelling of the source material and has no links to any other Pinocchio story. Maverick meanwhile only became a franchise with this, it’s second movie and Beavis and Butt-head is a 90’s franchise that has been totally dormant since it’s brief one off revival season in 2011.
The important thing is, while they may not be original they are definitely fresh. Sonic 2 is the only movie in that list that could be argued to be a cynical cash in and it’s at number ten. Meanwhile the two original movies in the ten worst are 7th and 10th placed. There is a clear divide and it to me it shows that these big franchise movies are becoming lazier and lazier cash in’s relying more and more on their bloated CGI budget and spending less and less time finding stories that actually resonate with the viewers.
In Part two I will look at this years box office and we’ll see how well the box office receipts compare to the quality on offer. These things rarely match up and Hollywood only learn if they don’t make money. So we can see if there is really hope for movies moving forward. See you there.
Tonight’s movie is technically as a “TV Special” instead of a movie, but as a stand alone story of 52 minutes length and some of the movies it pays homage to are only around one hour too I feel this counts. “Werewolf By Night” is technically part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though the story has no direct links or mention of other aspects of the MCU so it is for all intents and purposes a separate world (At least for now). The story is based around two Marvel characters that date back to the early 1970’s, the title character (Often just referred to as “The Werewolf” in the comics) is joined by “Man-Thing” a character similar to DC’s “Swamp Thing” but who debuted two months earlier. The story is directed by Michael Giacchino and written by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron. It starts Gael García Bernal and Laura Donnelly.
October Review Challenge – Day 27
The story starts (In black and white) with the introduction of an ancient society of monster hunters. The groups leader, Ulysses Bloodstone (Another character taken directly from the 70’s comics) has died recently and so they need to crown a new leader of this society. For this purpose they have designed a special monster hunt where the winner is not only crowned the leader but also gains possession of the powerful artifact the “Bloodstone” (Whose red glow is the only colour on screen for most of the film).
The participants are those hunters with the highest kill ratio, including Jack Russell (Bernal) and Bloodstone’s estranged daughter Elsa (Donnelly). The hunters are only allowed to use the weapons hidden around the estate and may combat each other as well as the creature. Spoilers ahead (Though I don’t feel these are big ones).
Werewolf Amongst Us
Unbeknownst to the rest of the hunters and the events hostess (Bloodstone’s widow Verussa), Russell is not there to hunt the monster and has no interest in the Bloodstone, he is actually a friend of the monster and there to free him. He ends up teaming up with Elsa who is very different to the other hunters herself. The rest of the group are vicious and bloodthirsty, as eager to fight and kill each other as they are to hunt the monster.
But when Elsa and Russell cross paths they clearly have no interest in fighting and as a result end up working together, especially when Russell comes clean to Elsa that he isn’t after the Stone, only the Monster, whom he calls “Ted”. As the Hunt concludes, Verussa turns on Elsa and Russell and this sets up a final confrontation where we finally get to see the Werewolf the story is named for. No spoilers for what happens here, but you can probably guess as a Marvel film who is going to come out on top.
Wait… Marvel did something good again?
One of the reasons I wanted to review this is because Marvel has been incredibly disappointing for me over the last few year. The good story they’ve attempted to tell since “End Game” was “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. As a result I didn’t rush in to watch this, but when I did it was a huge relief. This was very well made. Here we see versions of classic Marvel characters actually done justice too. So while I’m focused on horror this month I really wanted to highlight Marvel doing something actually good!
There is a little bit of modern day subversion thrown in and Jack and Ted have some changes to their comic book personality but the changes work so that’s not really a problem. Elsa being a post 2000 character I’m less familiar with as I have read few Marvel comics post 2000 (and the ones I read I didn’t like that much), but the character on screen is good and seems like a good combination of ass kicking and actually being likeable.
A love letter to Universal
The most impressive part of this story by far though is the visuals. The intent here is to make people think of the classic Universal Monster movies of the 1930’s (and to a lesser extent the 1940’s) and to achieve this the most obvious creative decision is the use of black and white. However, this isn’t a grainy film black and white, it is a very clean modern black and white, with a spot of red thrown in through the bloodstone. A touch that was not needed, but looked damn good visually so I still approve.
The design of many of the visuals, such as the use of the ancient mansion and of the shadow play do a great job of reminding you of the Universal movies without being overly limited by that nostalgia. They have a lot more space to play with but they make sure to drop in a more Claustrophobic feel every now and then. Really outside artificially reducing the the quality of the picture and the effects there is not much else they could do to make it feel authentic. This takes the best aspects of the modern and mixes it with the best aspects of that classic style.
The Wolf Man and The Giant Sized Man-Thing!
One of the best examples here is in the design of The Werewolf. It’s worth noting he’s had several different looks in the comic, so creative changes are par for the course. Here they’ve basically taken a design that is similar to both 1935’s “Werewolf of London” and 1941’s “The Wolfman” but then taken to the pinnacle of what you can achieve with CGI. It creates perhaps the best looking werewolf I’ve seen on screen for a long time. The transformation is done beautifully too with
Contrasting to that Man-Thing (a.k.a. Ted, the hunted monster) is kept largely to his comic book look and while he is black and white, he obviously would never fit with a Universal movie of the 1930’s. They could have tried to make him look like a guy in a suit or something but it would have ruined it so they didn’t, they just made him look like the comic and it worked superbly.
Music To My Ears.
Outside of the look (Which is always going to be the main thing with this special/movie), I have to compliment the use of music. It’s worth noting Michael Giacchino is actually better known as a composer. This is his directorial debut and so naturally he did the music. But this allowed him to work the music precisely against the images on screen. This is another sensible change from how things were actually done for the peak period of the Universal Horrors from 1930-1936.
In those years speech on film was new and while silent movies had accompanying music (and occasionally original scores, such as for Nosferatu), the early talkies tended to have minimal non-diegetic music (that is, music that doesn’t have an on screen source) and the music that was there tended to be stock music, usually classical and in the case of Universal horror often mixed very low. So the use of music here is less about nostalgia and more about enhancing the visuals and it works well. This is a case of creating things how people remember it instead of how it was. No complaints here.
Assessment
Though the story doesn’t really tax any of the actors they all perform their jobs well enough. There is no particular stand out but no let downs either. The story is engaging and fun but also very straight forward. We go in knowing who the Werewolf is (Even if it wasn’t on the poster you’d guess in seconds) and we know inevitably he’ll wolf out, so there is no real complexity there.
Along that many of the side characters lack a bit for the short screen time. Honestly though with only 50 minutes of time they tell the story they needed to, they don’t break anything in doing it, they introduce three interesting characters and the have a good mixture of fun and engagement along the way.
It does what it needs to and nothing more. Clearly Giacchino was given free reign to do what he wanted (where as with the MCU usually the directors have little control) and it paid off big. I don’t know if this will prod the MCU into a more interesting direction through it’s success, but I do hope we get to see more of these characters in the future.
On the other hand it may end up as Marvel’s “Joker” an outlier reminding us of what is possible, but what may not ever be the studios preferred path. Perhaps more of note for the future though is Giacchino, a man that clearly has as much of an eye for visuals as he has an ear for music. If Universal had any sense to them they’d pouch him and get him to work with the actual Universal Monsters.
Conclusion
Overall, with such a short amount of time this achieves a lot. It’s not perfect, but what it lacks is mostly what could have been added instead of mistakes with what is there. I think this is well deserving of the second 7/10 from me this October. Time is running out for anything to overtake so as it stands so far this “Special” is my number 2 horror (or horror adjacent) movie this year around.
Tonight’s feature is the recently released film “Barbarian”, written and direct by Zach Cregger and staring Georgina Campbell with support from Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long. This has built itself up quite the degree of hype recently and done alright for itself at the box office (That is to say, it’s made back substantially more than it’s $4.5m production budget). Does it deserve that hype? That’s what we are here to find out. As this is a new release I will tread carefully with the spoilers. They will be mild, but I’m not going to directly reveal the nature of the threat in the movie or tell you how it ends. I am going to go further than the trailer however (Which includes no footage from after the 40m mark, though it’s not actually hiding much of note with that). Anyway let’s dig in.
October Review Challenge – Day 26.
The film begins when our heroine Tess (Campbell) is heading to her AirBnB, she finds the place already occupied due to an apparent mix up. At first she doesn’t trust the other renter, Keith (Skarsgård) but eventually she realises he is okay and actually a decent guy. He agrees she can stay and take the bed while he takes the sofa and after a fairly restless night she wakes to find he had to head off. She goes to her job interview (the reason for the stay) and on returning Keith still isn’t back. Left in the house alone she becomes curious and looks around but ends up locked in the basement when the door closes behind her. While trying to find a way out she discovers a secret passage with a hidden room with a bed, a camera, a bucket and a bloody hand print on the wall.
Tess panics but hears Keith trying to get in (Tess has the front door key), she attracts his attention at the small window to the basement and he frees here. She tells him about the room and so he investigates. When he doesn’t come back Tess looks for him and realises there is another secret door behind the first. This is where we reach serious spoiler territory, so I’m going to skip a bit. Things happen in the basement, but around the 40 minute mark, after exhausting all the trailer footage we pretty much reset.
Enter The Douchebag.
We begin again, this time following “AJ” (Justin Long), a sitcom actor and apparently a bit of a douche. He’s facing financial ruin after a co-star made allegations of rape against him and as such having to sell a lot of properties he owns to pay for his legal defence. Once such property is the Airbnb that Tess and Keith were at. He decides to visit the property to assess it’s value. When he arrives he discovers the pairs belongings and suspects them to be squatters as there is no record of the place being rented recently.
While investigating the house naturally he too finds the basement (It’s clear he’s never visited the property), though instead of responding in shock to the first room he just starts measuring it up considering it an asset in the sale. On discovering the second door he too ends up in trouble. At which point we get another total change of scene and flashback to the 80’s for a sort of explanation to what is happening (and what happens next). That’s as far as I’ll cover the story, since this is fresh out and clearly the film makers wanted most of this to be a surprise
The Good, The Bad And The Unnecisary.
So the first thing to say about this is I really liked the first 40 minutes. I was thinking “This is going to be a 7/10 film at the minimum” for a lot of it. We had a 20 minute intro to the characters, then some creepy stuff happens and we are at the crunch moment of any horror film where the world gets turned upside down at that 40 minute mark. But then… then we start from the beginning again but with a less likeable character. We get about 20 minutes of this douche just going about his life before he starts investigating the basement and we’re back to where I thought we were nearly half an hour earlier.
Then once that segment is over we get our origin story which frankly was totally unnecessary. I’m sure they felt it was visually good to do it, but the character that introduces barely factors in to the story, what it tells you about the rest of the story could have been discovered by other means and the whole section is just a time waster. It’s especially a time waster when another character shows up in the main story that is a classic exposition dump character. This character basically informs the audience exactly what it is all about, making the whole flashback totally redundant.
More Padding Than A Padded Cell.
On a personal note, I really hate exposition dump characters, especially when their time in the film is so short that you know they were literally written in for that one purpose and especially when most of the info wasn’t actually necessary for the film. Along with the double start, the double explanation (Flashback and Mr. Exposition) I can’t help but feel that Cregger simply couldn’t decide which path to follow and so just did both. Either that or he realised he only had about an hour of material and desperately needed to pad it out.
The thing is you could edit this film down to around an hour. Take the first 40 minutes and the final 20 and you wouldn’t actually miss anything. At that point you have a pretty good hour long story, though it has to be said the final act is not great either. Not only do we have an exposition dump character we also have cops so incompetent that it breaks suspension of disbelief. The AJ character is also too far over the top at one point throwing his own gun away because he’s that much of an incompetent tool.
Conclusion
What is in the basement is actually well done and creepy. The actors do a good job and sound design and music add to the tension but it’s not enough to make up for the time wasting pace crash in the second act and the generic cheese of the third. If I was to rate each section we’d have 7/10 for act 1, 4/10 for act 2 and 5.5/10 for the conclusion. That averages at 5.5 but a film isn’t just three acts separately (Anthologies aside) and as a whole there remains some additional gaping plot holes that were never addressed. So with that in mind I’m marking this down as a 5/10. Disappointing.
The movie of the night is David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”. Naturally being Cronenberg it’s a weird body horror movie. This is based on a story Cronenberg was working on 20 years earlier, but never got around to making. The movie also shares a name with another Cronenberg film from 1970 having no direct relation to it (Though I suppose they could be considered part of an anthology series, just an odd one with a 52year gap between entries). Since this was Cronenberg’s second feature length movie maybe it’s intended as a return to his roots or maybe he just liked the title. Anyway the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux with support including Kirsten Stuart.
October Review Challenge – Day 20
The film opens with a young child eating a plastic bin and then being murdered by his mother. Yes, it’s that weird. None of this gets an explanation until later in the movie, instead the scene switches to our protagonist Saul Tenser and his partner Caprice who are a world-renowned performance artist couple. Saul has a condition that causes him to rapidly grow new organs in his body, organs whose function is unclear. Instead of letting them grow he makes their removal part of his performance art but the changes are also causing him to have issues sleeping and eating.
At this point it is important to know a few things about this world. This is set some undefined period of time in the future. Humanity has started to develop strange mutations, which has lead to most people no longer having a sense of pain and being immune to disease and infection. This has lead to surgery going from a dangerous, uncomfortable procedure requiring aesthetic to something you can basically perform on yourself. Indeed it’s become a sexual kink and this is where the performance aspect comes in.
Preserving Humanity.
It also triggered a reaction from the worlds governments (or at least this undefined countries government) to protect the status of humanity and as such it seems it is a crime to deliberately modify your own biology and all new organs must be catalogued and tattooed. Into this we find an underground faction that consider it a mistake to turn against evolution to preserve a fixed idea of what it is to be human.
Saul and Caprice come into it when the father of the child from the start of the film asks them to use the modified autopsy machine which they use for their performance to do an actual autopsy on his son as part of their performance. The father wants to expose how his son was born with these modified organs to prove the future of humanity is embracing the change. The performance and it’s aftermath form the conclusion of the film, so I’ll leave that there.
But What Does It All Mean?
Unsurprisingly the movie is weird, gross and yet sexual since this is Cronenberg’s MO. There seems to be quite dense subtext here and the movie asks questions about what is art, what is beauty and what does it mean to be human? Alongside that there is hints at an environmentalist message, an examination of how far a jaded species will go to find their next high and a look at how we influence the next generation even outside passing on our genes (Manifested by the child inheriting the body modifications of the parent).
The trouble I feel though is none of these questions are that distinct and the answer not that clear. Indeed I’m not totally sure some of them are even meant to be questions. I do feel accepting inevitable change, including at a biological level is key part of this story as this feeds to the movies conclusion, which is based on a revelation that the viewer will have figured out already. I don’t however think it was meant to be a twist though and rather just to show the protagonist finally embracing inevitable change.
Conclusion.
My biggest issue with the movie is it just isn’t very entertaining. There is nothing really to the movie other than the dense layers of subtext. By Cronenberg standards the body horror is mild, the characters are uninteresting the plot sort of goes nowhere. This is all art and message with no entertainment and I’ve never been a fan of movies like that. As a Cronenberg film this is a long way down in the ranking and pales when placed next to a masterpiece like Videodrome. As a movie in general I don’t think many people will find anything here worth turning up for. That said, it’s not a terrible movie so I think a 4.5/10 is a fair verdict.
This AI generated poster was meant to mock the film but it actually looks pretty good.
Tonight I subjected myself to the recently released “Halloween Ends”…. It was not good. For the record I did not like the first of this “requal” trilogy, I hated the second and so I was never expecting to like this one. Also the word has been it’s not good. Some people even calling it the “Rise of Skywalker” of the series. Which is interesting when you think about it, Rise of Skywalker was a desperate course correction caused by going into a trilogy with no firm plan and giving the second movie to someone different to the first who then went about doing his own thing and ignoring continuity. Then a lead actor died, the director left and JJ Abrams took a pay cheque just to get something out. This movie however is part of a trilogy all entirely by one man: David Gordon Green. All three films were announced at once with the idea that it was all supposedly to a master plan.
The Ballad of Correy the Loser
Halloween Review Challenge – Day 16
The film sees the return of Jamie Lee Curtis and Andi Matichak (As her granddaughter “Allison”), but the real star is Rohan Campbell as new character “Correy”. It was directed and co-written (presumably in crayon) by David Gordon Green. I’m not going to worry about spoilers here because frankly this film doesn’t deserve to remain unspoiled. That said I’m also not going to dig too much into the plot because it’s not worth it either and I suspect this will be close to 2000 words even without that.
The story follows Correy. A guy that a few years ago was involved in an accident where a kid died and who since then has been vilified by the community. On top of this a group of local knuckleheads regularly bully him and beat him up. Despite this he has been developing a relationship with Allison. After they throw him off a bridge and leave him for dead he stumbles into a cave where he finds Michael Myers… for some reason. Why Michael has been in low battery mode in a cave I don’t know. He takes the entire film to shake it off enough to do… anything and even then is a shadow of his former self. Not a great last stand for The Shape.
Protagonist and Antagonist, though not sure which is which.
Bait, Meet Switch / Why is Everything a Mantle Now?
Anyway after the meeting Correy seems to take a part of Michaels evil and goes on a killing spree. That’s right, this is almost a Friday the 13th Part V job, but Michael does get a couple of kills in on the way to the finale. Where as almost the entire point of Michael is he doesn’t have a personal vendetta, he just kills, Correy is specifically seeking out all his enemies to take down and killing them in very personal ways. Instead of the dark curiosity of Michael, there is a very personal hatred and determination to kill in ironic fashions (A bit like Jason Voorheese does sometimes).
Naturally being virtually superhuman now herself for no reason Laurie Strode senses the evil in him and gets in between him and her daughter. This leads to a big confrontation and after 63 year old Laurie deals with Corrie, Michael shows up and… get’s his ass handed to him and thrown into a scrap crusher. Because this has to have a big final, totally ended for sure this time, no escape, it’s really the end, finished, concluded, done, ending…. until the next movie (Which they even admitted was inevitable, though I suppose they may feel they can do Halloween with a new character, they are of course wrong).
I’m done with screencaps, have some storyboard… I mean AI art.
Not A Halloween Film.
First up, this is not a Halloween film. Most of the plot follows this new character, introduced in this movie and it is really his story. The film seems to want to do some kind of torch passing and that may be the dumbest idea they’ve ever had in one of these movies. At this stage Michael Myers is Halloween, you can’t replace Michael. The Halloween films tried to move away from him with the third movie and people rejected it. But that was a genuine attempt at a different kind of horror. Replacing him with another person that does the same job but isn’t Michael will go down like a lead balloon. About as well as replacing Skynet with another AI that does the exact same thing as Skynet (Why do they repeat the worst ideas).
The funny thing is Friday the 13th learned they can’t replace Jason way back when they tried it for part five. Now if you suggest to them replacing Jason the rights owners would probably laugh in your face and the thing is Jason wasn’t even the original killer and wasn’t supernatural until the sixth movie. When they raised him from the dead they realised the franchise would always be about Jason. Michael was created to be a supernatural killer. There was never any reason to retire Michael. He is the bogeyman. Why is it the people making Halloween films have forgotten this?
When a film is so bad you create child drawing AI art instead of find screenshots.
Just Pick One And Stick With It!
The movie seems incapable of deciding if Michael is supernatural or a mere human. If he is a supernatural monster it is frankly impossible to believe a 63 year old Jamie Lee Curtis can get the better of him in a fight. If he’s a human though, given he was older than Laurie Strode, sure I can buy it. But then it never made any sense for him to be human. This was one of my two big problems with the first of this trilogy (the other I’ll get on to later). Rob Zombies first movie actually did a good job of a human version of Michael, at least in the screener version, where he died in the end. That was something you can do in a reboot, because you want a fresh take. You shouldn’t do it in a movie that pretends to be a sequel.
But here’s the thing, by the time the second movie of this trilogy has concluded they determine Michael isn’t just human. It took Laurie Strode two whole movies to reach the conclusion Sam Loomis did 30 seconds into Halloween II. He’s something else, not human and you can’t just stop him with a physical struggle. But then in the third film he seems tired and worn out and loses a melee fight to a 63 year old woman. It is horrendously inconsistent. But then everything in this trilogy is inconsistent.
I
Halloween 4. Jamie Lloyd following in her uncles footsteps in 34 years earlier. Jamie was retconned from existence.
Retconning Just To Repeat.
If there always been a plan to do a trilogy it would make sense to actually have them flow into each other. Halloween Kills at least follow on the same night as the first movie though they feel thematically unrelated with a bunch of new characters introduced in the second. It felt more like Halloween 2 did in relation to the original, that is: unplanned. Halloween Ends though feels like a random sequel where some rogue director has tried to do something new, in this case giving Michael a protegee. Not a good idea, but in a random sequel it wouldn’t be surprising. This however is meant to be the end of a trilogy and even though everyone has admitted the series will still continue one day, the “final” end of Michael Myers. Weird to waste most of the film on a new character.
It occurs to me though, if Halloween Kills is a bad version of Halloween 2, then this is a bad version of Halloween 4 and H20 merged into one. Only instead of Michaels niece being driven by mysterious forces to follow in Michaels footsteps at the end of the movie, some random kid that is bullied and vilified gets randomly taken under Michaels wing because he feels the hate or something like that because Michael is apparently a Sith Lord now. In Halloween 4 what happened with Jamie mirrored what happened with Michael and it had a purpose through their shared bloodline. In this movie though, the character couldn’t be more different to Michael and it seems to miss the point of Michael that they want to give the guy a reason to be evil. Meanwhile the H20 element comes in the form of once again repeating Laurie Strodes vengeance and trying to be the “final”, “definitive” ending for Michael.
John Carpenter kicking the grooves between games of Fallout 76.
The Shortest Section – What Did I like?
The music was good. John Carpenter not only picked up a pay cheque to say the film is good, but also came back to do the soundtrack again. The sad thing is I won’t even buy this soundtrack as I don’t want to be reminded of the movie. To be fair to John he maybe isn’t shilling and does legitimately like these movies, his taste is questionable these days, I mean he called “Fallout 76” a great game…. I dunno. He’s still my favourite director so I won’t bad mouth him any more than that. Sorry John.
Much like the previous films I also like some of the kills, though this time around none of them were Michaels and they were all much more personal so it feels a bit of a cheat, but from a stand alone perspective they were fine. Had this not been a Halloween film perhaps I would praise it.
Sam Loomis, Michael Myers actual nemesis.
Understand Your Own Franchise People!
Honestly I’m tired of people taking over franchises that don’t understand the franchise. This whole thing has been an exercise in hubris. Coming out and retconning Halloween 2 and H20 and continuing the retcon of Halloween 4-6 is a bold movie that says “What we are doing is better than what came before”. But then they went out and basically just made worse versions of those films. Their first movie tried to impersonate the original Halloween, while throwing in the ending of the freshly retconned Halloween 2. Then the second film duplicated the “same night” killing spree of Halloween 2, with the conclusion basically being Laurie coming to the same realisation Loomis did at the start of that movie. Then we have the final part where they merge Halloween 4 and H20 into one horrible mess.
What is the point except as a cash in? There was no creative reason to do all this, it was not for the fans and it muddies up the continuity and makes it even more ridiculous next time Michael returns. This was entirely done as a cash in and as a vanity project for Gordon Green, who must be recognised now as an absolute hack of a director. Like Rian Johnson before him and many others, he wanted to make his own film, not a franchise film he just used the franchise as a shortcut to do it. There was no respect there just a few token Easter eggs and references, which is the usual shallow way these directors pretend to care about the franchise.
Even Michael is confused by all this.
Chose Your Own Misadventure.
The Halloween franchise is a total mess now. Three branching continuities and each new one worse than the last. Halloween 4 is a better Halloween than H20, but H20 is better than Halloween Kills. Halloween 2 is far better than the frustrating named Halloween (2018). Then you get to the clangers and while it’s a tough call I’m going to have to say Resurrection is better than Halloween Ends. Halloween 5 is better than both. At least Resurrection was focused on Myers.
Ultimately the best run of Halloween films, if you are going all the way is the original one. 1-6 and yet the rights holders have gone back and rebooted twice and green lit a Rob Zombie remake (and sequel). It feels like such a waste and only something that damages the franchise long term and that more than anything is I think the greatest loss here. Hopefully Hollywood will get over this “Requel” concept and stop doing it.
Well, being a ghost never stopped him before….
Final Thoughts and Rating
It’s okay to drop a clanger in a horror series. At least it is as long as you don’t do anything that stops you making another sequel and do actively try and undo other films in the franchise while doing it. Horror franchises like Halloween need to accept they will keep going. Retconning and doing “definitive final no escape, he’s definitely dead this time” endings is frankly stupid. Everyone knows Michael will be back at some point. It comes to something when the ending of “Jason X”, the Friday the 13th film with Jason is space is more intelligent than the ending of your Halloween series that you retconned two continuities for (For those that haven’t seen Jason X, the final solution is to launch Jason into space where he crashes down on an alien planet… at a lake).
My great hope for Halloween now is that at some point they do a sequel back in the original continuity. That would do a good job of putting this disaster behind us, expose the foolishness of the supposedly definitive ending and get away from all these crazy timelines. Furthermore I hope they embrace the supernatural aspect of the character. That was what made him different to the other slashers, especially Jason (prior to him being bought back to life in part 6). Anyone can make a random slasher movie, but there is only one bogeyman. Sadly he wasn’t present in this film. This is a stinker. Stand alone, not within the Halloween franchise maybe it is worth a 5/10 but as a franchise film and the end of a trilogy it is a total disaster. 3/10.
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