On Blu-ray/DVD: IN DARKNESS (2018) and FLOWER (2018)

IN DARKNESS
(US/UK - 2018)

IN DARKNESS might be of interest to GAME OF THRONES superfans, as it stars three series alumni--Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, and James Cosmo--and is co-written by Dormer with her fiance, veteran British TV director Anthony Byrne (RIPPER STREET, PEAKY BLINDERS). It begins as an intriguing throwback to "blind woman in peril" standard-bearer WAIT UNTIL DARK, but Dormer and Byrne's script starts trying too hard by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Dormer is Sofia McKendrick, a London-based pianist who's been blind since she was five. Self-reliant and a bit of a quiet loner, Sofia's world is turned upside down when she hears some loud thuds above, followed by upstairs neighbor Veronique (Emily Ratajkowski) taking a dive out of her window to her death. Only with the resulting media attention does Sofia learn that Veronique is the estranged daughter of Zoran Radic (Jan Bijvoet as Rade Serbedzija), a powerful Serbian businessman and reputed Bosnian War criminal with a shady charity foundation and ties to (of course) the Russian mob. Radic has a sibling henchmen duo--Marc (Skrein) and Alex (Joely Richardson)--tasked not only with killing Veronique but also with getting an incriminating USB stick out of her apartment. The cops rule Veronique's death a suicide, but Marc was in the building and in her apartment with her and came face to face with Sofia while she was getting on an elevator. Believing Sofia to be a witness, he attempts to befriend her with the intent of killing her, but backs off when he realizes she's blind and couldn't have seen him. That's not good enough for Alex or for Radic, who wants all loose ends tied up and needs whatever vital info is on the USB, with all parties are unaware that Veronique secretly stashed it with Sofia before her death.

The basic set-up of IN DARKNESS might've made for an old-fashioned nailbiter, but then it decides to get "tricky." It's fairly early in the film when it's revealed that Sofia is the only survivor of a Bosnian family brutally slaughtered by Radic 25 years earlier. We also learn that she's spent her entire life plotting to kill Radic and she intentionally sought out Veronique and got an apartment in the same building in the hopes that it would get her closer to her target, all under the watchful eye of caring and now-terminally ill adoptive father figure Niall (Cosmo). But that's just the beginning of IN DARKNESS' wildly improbable twists and turns. It gets more contrived with each passing scene, with some details left frustratingly vague--the film never does establish exactly what Marc and Alex do for Radic, nor does it adequately explore their strange relationship, where it's at least hinted that Alex is jealous when she finds out her brother has slept with Veronique. That's a shame because, while Skrein is bland and forgettable, an invested Richardson seems game for some perverse weirdness that never comes to fruition. Neil Maskell does an alright job as the rumpled, perpetually stubbled detective investigating Veronique's death, getting his inevitable wide-eyed Chazz Palminteri-in-THE USUAL SUSPECTS moment of realization when he finally pieces everything together. And it's a lot to piece together, as Dormer and Byrne can't stop piling up the surprise reveals with reckless abandon in the third act. One is so thuddingly obvious that you'll call it long before Sofia figures it out, and other is one of those that pretty much negates the entire movie and convincingly makes its case for the dumbest twist ending of 2018. (Unrated, 101 mins)




FLOWER
(US - 2018)

You know a movie's trying way too hard to be edgy when it opens with its 17-year-old heroine blowing the local sheriff, who asks "Where'd you learn to give a hummer like that?" and her reply is "Middle school." FIGHT CLUB already did a similarly tacky joke exponentially better (Helena Bonham Carter's immortal "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school"), but everything about FLOWER feels like you've seen and heard it years ago. If you can imagine Gregg Araki making a belated JUNO knockoff, then you'll have an idea what this has to offer. Directed and co-written by Max Winkler (Henry's son) and produced by the EASTBOUND AND DOWN and OBSERVE AND REPORT team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jody Hill, FLOWER stars 23-year-old Zoey Deutch (Lea Thompson's lookalike daughter) as Erica Vandross, a teenage sociopath in a small California suburb who has a lucrative secret gig blackmailing local guys by giving them blowjobs in parked cars while her best friends Kayla (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet) sneak up and record her finishing them off. Kayla and Claudine spend their cut of the take on clothes, but Erica is stashing hers away to bail her father out of jail, where he's been sitting awaiting trial after trying to rob a casino. Erica's mother Laurie (Kathryn Hahn) has moved on and is dating doofus nice guy Bob, aka "The Sherm" (Tim Heidecker), who's about to move in, much to Erica's disapproval. Coming along as part of the "Sherm" package is his troubled son Luke (Joey Morgan), a withdrawn, overweight outcast who's been in rehab for a year trying to kick an oxy addiction. He has a panic attack his first night out of the facility but rejects Erica's offer for a blowjob to help calm him down. The two later grab a burger at the bowling alley, where Luke has another anxiety attack after spotting Will (Adam Scott), a regular at the lanes who's dubbed "Hot Old Guy" by chronic daddy issues case Erica. It turns out that Will used to be a high school teacher who lost his job three years earlier after allegations that he fondled a 15-year-old boy. The accuser? Luke.

This sets in motion a half-assed scheme to blackmail Will but Erica finds herself falling for him. Unforeseen problems ensue in ways that recall both HARD CANDY and the forgotten PRETTY PERSUASION, and those comparisons, combined with the obvious JUNO influence, end up making FLOWER feel like a 15-year-old Sundance offering that was found frozen in the mountains surrounding Park City and just now thawed. From the various transgressions and would-be shock tactics that fall flat ("If we don't act now, then other little kids might get butt-raped!" Erica says when everyone else wants to back out of their plan to extort Will) to the casting of the appealing Deutch, everything about FLOWER feels forced and affected, and by the time things pan out in a predictably tragic way that culminates in Erica and Luke donning cheap wigs and fleeing to the Mexican border, it's clear that FLOWER doesn't have much to say. Deutch is a tremendously appealing actress, but Winkler tries to make Erica similarly appealing when she's really not, and a film that really wanted to explore the kind of darkness inherent in the story would recognize that turning her into the white trash version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (© Nathan Rabin) is the wrong approach. As a result, nothing feels real or believable for a second, not even when Laurie--who's historically been more interested in being Erica's buddy than her mother--finally melts down and tears into Erica for chasing away all of her potential boyfriends and calling her a "selfish twat." There is one legitimately funny line when Erica is asked what she plans to do with her life and boasts "I'm goin' to DeVry, bitch! 98% acceptance rate!" but no film that imagines itself to be an edgy and shocking dark comedy would actually have Erica look at Luke with tears in her eyes and say "I don't wanna run...I don't wanna spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders." (R, 94 mins)

In Theaters: KRAMPUS (2015)

KRAMPUS 
(US - 2015)

Directed by Michael Dougherty. Written by Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields. Cast: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Krista Stadler, Emjay Anthony, Stefania LaVie Owen, Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, Maverick Flack, Luke Hawker. (PG-13, 98 mins)

Inspired by a nightmarish holiday figure in Germanic folklore, KRAMPUS is at times quaintly old-fashioned in the way that, with a few tweaks, it could've been pretty much the same movie 30 years ago. It's got some dark elements in line with today's more snarky and cynical audiences, but in terms of style, score, and visual effects (yes, there's CGI, but there's a lot of practical-based work as well), it's the kind of GREMLINS-era mix of horror and dark comedy that recalls both the best of Joe Dante and a high-end, big-budget Full Moon title. It's a film out of its own time, much like its young protagonist Max (Emjay Anthony), a ten-year-old who's already nostalgic for a few years ago, desperately clinging to the notion of Santa Claus as his childhood slips away. His older sister Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) is always off with her boyfriend, and his parents Tom (Adam Scott) and Sarah (Toni Collette) love each other but are very slowly growing complacent and drifting, with Tom spending so much time at work and Sarah's realization that time keeps ticking. The mood isn't helped by the holidays, which are supposed to bring cheer but instead bring relatives: Sarah's sister Linda (Allison Tolman), her right-wing, gun-nut husband Howard (David Koechner), and their abrasively unpleasant children, bullying tomboys Stevie (Lolo Owen) and Jordan (Queenie Samuel) and silent-except-for-belching, Mountain Dew-guzzing Howie Jr (Maverick Flack, easily the most awesomely-named horror movie child actor since 28 WEEKS LATER's Mackintosh Muggleton), plus the bonus surprise of booze-guzzling, constantly-complaining Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell).

In its earliest scenes, KRAMPUS does a great job of nailing all the terrible things about the holiday season, starting with an opening credits sequence that shows a mob of frothing-at-the-mouth shoppers stampeding into a big-box retailer in a symphony of destruction and mindless consumerism. Likewise, anyone will be able to relate to the dread and unease of family--people you might not necessarily be close to but they're family so you spend the holidays together--visiting, whether it's the way a judgmental aunt criticizes your cooking or your decor or the way you have to listen to your conservative blowhard brother-in-law bitch about Democrats and parroting what he heard on talk radio. When Stevie and Jordan make fun of Max's letter to Santa, Max tears it up and tosses it out the window. This fateful act awakens Krampus, a hooved, horned demon described by Tom's German-speaking mother Omi (Krista Stadler) in a beautifully-executed animated detour as "the shadow of St. Nicholas," the vengeful spirit who brings death and destruction on those who've lost sight of the true meaning of Christmas. When a blizzard hits the next morning, knocks out the power and makes travel impossible, the family is holed up inside the house, forced to deal with each other and the evil elves of Krampus, who's trying to get into the house to teach them all a lesson.

KRAMPUS is directed and co-written by Michael Dougherty, a Bryan Singer associate who co-wrote X2 and SUPERMAN RETURNS but is best known for writing and directing the cult horror anthology TRICK 'R TREAT, which was bounced around the release schedule for two years before going straight-to-DVD in 2009. I found it merely OK, but TRICK 'R TREAT has become a beloved Halloween favorite for today's horror fans, and with KRAMPUS, Dougherty establishes himself as the go-to guy for holiday fright. Both films have Dougherty demonstrating a fondness for (relatively) old-school horror, particularly the crowd-pleasing types of the '80s. KRAMPUS isn't necessarily scary, but it has a nicely creepy feel throughout, whether it's the snowbound desolation or the way ominous-looking snowmen keep popping up in the front yard and moving closer to the house. There's also a loving homage to the video-store favorites from Charles Band's Full Moon, with some evil toys and gingerbread men coming to life and attacking the family in vintage DEMONIC TOYS fashion, with an incredulous Howard, after shotgun-blasting gingerbread men who were attacking him with a nail gun, shouting "I just got my ass kicked by a bunch of Christmas cookies...I'll believe anything!" Of course, the family bands together and casts aside their differences to survive the holiday onslaught, and KRAMPUS is probably accessible enough that kids would enjoy it, but it does get darker than you'd expect, especially in the way it pulls no punches in terms of who it's willing to kill off and in its deceptively happy ending that's really anything but. I don't think Dougherty has quite made his knock-it-out-of-the-park horror classic yet (despite horror scenester hype that KRAMPUS is "the next great horror classic!"), but his is a welcome voice that still has a lot of promise if he doesn't keep taking eight years between movies.

In Theaters: BLACK MASS (2015)

BLACK MASS
(US/UK - 2015)

Directed by Scott Cooper. Written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth. Cast: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson, Corey Stoll, Rory Cochrane, David Harbour, Adam Scott, Julianne Nicholson, Juno Temple, W. Earl Brown, Bill Camp. (R, 122 mins)

If you listen closely in the theater, as the lights go down and BLACK MASS starts, you can almost hear CRAZY HEART and OUT OF THE FURNACE director Scott Cooper say "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to make a Scorsese movie." So it is with the much-anticipated BLACK MASS, touted as a return to form following a surplus of whimsical dress-up and endless self-indulgent eccentricities from former actor Johnny Depp. Even the most devoted Depp apologists turned on him after the loathsome MORTDECAI and to that end, BLACK MASS does showcase Depp's best performance in years, even if it's by default. Though he's not as "Depp"-y, it's still more of the same to some extent: as infamous South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, he's again buried under a ton of caked-on makeup, a combination bald cap/receded hairline, and a pair of ice-blue contact lenses that look not unlike those used on Bill Bixby at the beginning of a Hulk-out into Lou Ferrigno on THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Taking place from 1975 to 1991, BLACK MASS covers a lot of ground with a lot of characters, but it has all the depth and insight of Bulger's Wikipedia page. There was probably a longer, more epic film here at some point--even shortly before the film's release, it was still being tweaked, with Sienna Miller's entire role as a Bulger girlfriend ending up on the cutting room floor due to what Cooper termed "narrative choices."

Though Depp is front and center as Bulger, it almost feels as though the film should be about FBI agent John Connolly, played here by Joel Edgerton (THE GIFT). A childhood friend of Bulger and his state senator brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), Connolly approaches Bulger in 1975 with an offer to become an FBI informant in an effort not to take down Southie crime operations, but rather, the Irish mob's Mafia competition. As the years go on, Bulger's Winter Hill Gang empire grows as he gives nothing to Connolly, who becomes complicit in Bulger's crimes by alerting him to FBI operations and falsifying reports under the guise of Bulger cooperation. Bulger is the devil on Connolly's shoulder, but their relationship really isn't explored, nor is there much in the way of escalating tension as Connolly gets in way over his head in his labyrinthine machinations to steer the FBI away from Bulger. We see him and co-conspirator agent John Morris (David Harbour) getting into shouting matches with incredulous colleagues played by Kevin Bacon and Adam Scott in superfluous extended cameos, and we see Connolly's new-found flashy sartorial choices not going over well with his wife (Julianne Nicholson), but nothing really happens with him until a new special agent (Corey Stoll) takes charge and starts holding him accountable as he still struts around the bureau office with a "What? Me Worry?" demeanor.

Connolly is a man obliviously drowning in his immoral and unethical choices and his pure hubris, but Cooper and screenwriters Jez Butterworth (EDGE OF TOMORROW) and Mark Mallouk are much more interested in Depp's feature-length Whitey Bulger impression. Depp is fine in the role, but at the end of the day, it's still not very far removed from what he's been doing for the last several years. He's using an intimidating monotone voice but letting the hairline and the contact lenses do almost all of the heavy lifting, and there's numerous scenes--the "family recipe" bit with Harbour's Morris, in particular--where he's just riffing on Joe Pesci and the "Funny how?" scene from GOODFELLAS. Cooper wants the entire film to be a Scorsese love letter, whether it's to GOODFELLAS or THE DEPARTED with its Baahston accents and Bulger being the prime inspiration for Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello in the latter film. Cooper doesn't have the style or the sense of energy to pull off Scorsese beyond a basic homage, and as a result, his film often keeps you at a distance.

BLACK MASS is a pretty decent movie, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it could've been an exceptional one. There's a great cast and a fascinating story here and all we really get when it's over is a Whitey Bulger Greatest Hits package that gets into a comfortable and too-familiar groove and never tries to go further than scratching the surface. Everyone loves a good Scorsese-style crime saga, but why not just watch a real one instead of a pretend one? For all the presence Depp has as Bulger, his performance is still pretty one-dimensional in execution, with very little known about him other than his skills as a master manipulator and feared killer. Other than Edgerton, everyone else just drops by on occasion. Dakota Johnson has a brief role as the mother of Bulger's young son, but when the son dies from Reyes' Syndrome, she's never seen or mentioned again. We also see a lot of Bulger soldiers, but with the exception of hapless schlub Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane), we learn little about them, other than they all eventually turn on Bulger to save their own asses. BLACK MASS is compelling from start to finish, but you've seen it all before. Overt Scorsese worship is fine when you can master the style and give it your own spin (like David O. Russell with AMERICAN HUSTLE), but Cooper's direction is workmanlike at best. Without a Thelma Schoonmaker by his side to help him find those distinct patterns and rhythms, Cooper is only capable of delivering Scorsese-lite.  And Scorsese-lite works if you're looking for a two-hour, empty calories crime story to watch when nothing else is on. Just don't expect anything substantive.