SHE DIES TOMORROW (US - 2020) Written and directed by Amy Seimetz. Cast: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Jennifer Kim, Josh Lucas, Adam Wingard, Michelle Rodriguez, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Madison Calderon, James Benning, Oden Mack. (R, 85 mins) Amy Seimetz is no stranger to the indie mumblecore scene with roles in films like THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER, UPSTREAM COLOR, and YOU'RE NEXT, and co-creating the acclaimed Starz series THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, but she's also turned up in bigger and more widely-seen projects like ALIEN: COVENANT and had a recurring role on STRANGER THINGS. Channeling her inner John Cassavetes, she called in favors from some friends and reportedly used the paycheck she received for starring in last year's instantly forgotten PET SEMATARY remake to fund her latest writing/directing effort, SHE DIES TOMORROW. An intriguing apocalyptic horror film of sorts, SHE DIES TOMORROW stars Kate Lyn Sheil as Amy, a recovering alcoholic who's just bought her first home and is in the process of unpacking when she's overcome with an all-consuming sense of dread that she's going to die tomorrow. She calls her friend Jane (Jane Adams) and has already relapsed with several bottles of wine before Jane gets to the house. After telling Amy to sleep it off, Jane goes home and is soon stricken with the same paralyzing fear. She heads to her brother Jason's (Chris Messina) house, despite having already bailed on her bitchy sister-in-law Susan's (Katie Aselton) birthday party. Jane's incessant talk of dying tomorrow infuriates Susan, but hits a nerve with their party guests Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim). Soon, Jason and Susan are affected by the same crushing feeling of impending death that they're certain will come for them the next day.
If you can imagine a mash-up of PONTYPOOL, IT FOLLOWS, and Don McKellar's LAST NIGHT filtered through the surreal colorgasms of Panos Cosmatos and infused with the disconnect and alienation of vintage Antonioni, you sorta have an idea what SHE DIES TOMORROW is getting at. It's a pandemic of existential dread and anxiety, and though the film wrapped before the advent of COVID-19, the unintentional metaphorical implications are right there. Flashbacks and a non-linear structure (of course) show how the virus was transmitted to Amy via a new boyfriend (Kentucker Audley), but by the time Jane is passing it on to her brother and sister-in-law, their friends, and an ER doc (Josh Lucas), things become repetitive and Seimetz is just spinning her wheels. In the end, it's more of a stylistic exercise than anything else, and ultimately ends up coming off almost like an indie mumblecore parody. And that's even after it somehow recovers--for a while, at least--from an off-putting opening 20 minutes that's disorienting by design but ultimately doesn't really have anywhere else to go or anything else to say. Seimetz obviously has some directing chops and some dark comedic bits work (Amy doing some urn shopping online, a stressed Jane taking some time to step on some bubble wrap for that cathartic pop that everyone loves), but the tiresome SHE DIES TOMORROW just grows more tedious and pretentious as it goes on. And the incessant deployment of Mozart's "Requiem"--a clever choice in that it was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1791--ends up feeling like a highbrow riff on "Rocky Mountain High" from FINAL DESTINATION.
PET SEMATARY (US - 2019) Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer. Written by Jeff Buhler. Cast: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed, Alyssa Levine, Frank Schorpion, Sonia Maria Chirila, Suzi Stingl. (R, 101 mins) Stephen King has long considered his 1983 novel Pet Sematary his scariest work. It was certainly his darkest to that point, so much so that he sat on it for a few years, feeling he'd "gone too far this time." A hit movie version arrived in 1989 after several years in development, including a period where George A. Romero was attached to direct. It was ultimately helmed by music video vet Mary Lambert (best known for several of Madonna's most popular videos of the era), with King writing the screenplay himself and being an on-set presence to ensure that it was being done properly. Of course, King took liberties in streamlining the transition from page to screen, and while it had some flaws and it's certainly no CARRIE, THE SHINING, MISERY, or THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, it remains on the side of the better King adaptations, especially when held up against the likes of, say, 1990's GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1995's THE MANGLER, 2016's CELL, or 2017's THE DARK TOWER. King adaptations never really stopped being a thing, but the blockbuster success of 2017's IT seems to have kickstarted a resurgence in their major studio viability, which has led to another go at PET SEMATARY. King didn't have anything to do with this new version, which was scripted by Jeff Buhler (THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, THE PRODIGY), who rewrote an initial treatment by Matt Greenberg, who had some experience adapting King in the past, having written 2008's 1408 and 2014's straight-to-DVD MERCY, based on King's short story "Gramma." It's directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team behind 2014's STARRY EYES, one of many wildly overpraised indie horror films deemed "an instant classic" until something else came out the next week.
Having revisited it in preparation for this remake, PET SEMATARY '89 has aged better than expected, and it still has some chillingly effective moments throughout, though there was undoubtedly room for improvement. To its credit, PET SEMATARY '19 does address a few of those issues, starting with Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz being better actors than Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby, and the long-brewing discord between the main character and his disapproving father-in-law is conveyed by a few seething, silent glares rather than the hysterically overwrought, corpse-tumbling-out-the casket funeral brawl in the 1989 film, which is straight from the book but didn't really work on the screen. PET SEMATARY '19 maintains the same core premise as the novel and the original film, with Dr. Louis Creed (Clarke) and his family--wife Rachel (Seimetz), eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), toddler Gage (played by twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), and cat Church--moving to the rural Maine town of Ludlow when Louis gets a position in the ER at the University of Maine. Behind their property is, as the misspelled sign states, a "Pet Sematary," where generations of Ludlow children have laid their beloved cats and dogs to rest. Their elderly neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) tells them all about it and forms a grandfatherly bond with Ellie. It's Jud who finds Church dead on the side of the road, struck by one of the many speeding semis that barrel past the house. Despite insisting to a hesitant Rachel that they need to be truthful with Ellie about the nature of death, Louis opts to tell Ellie that the cat simply ran away. Jud accompanies Louis to bury Church in the Pet Sematary but insists they go further, to the blocked-off land beyond it. The next day, Church is back, but he's not the same. He's disheveled, smelly, covered in caked blood, and is violent toward the family. Jud informs Louis that the area beyond the Pet Sematary is a tribal Wendigo burial ground of the native Indians who once inhabited the area, and there's something about the land that brings back the dead.
If you've seen PET SEMATARY, you know what happens next (the ghostly Victor Pascow character, played by Obssa Ahmed, is pretty much an afterthought that the movie seems to forget about), but this new version switches it up quite a bit in ways that the trailer completely spoiled. It's Ellie--not Gage--who gets mowed down by a truck. When a grieving Rachel, whose traumatic memories and suppressed guilt over her spinal meningitis-afflicted older sister Zelda (Alyssa Levine) come back to haunt her in the new house in Ludlow, takes Gage to visit her parents in Boston, Louis is left alone at the house with plenty of time to exhume Ellie's body and bury it beyond the Pet Sematary. And of course, she returns, and she's...different. Earlier on, Lithgow's Jud invokes the signature line "Sometimes dead is better," and sometimes leaving well enough alone is as well. I was with PET SEMATARY '19 to a point, and the idea of Ellie getting killed instead of Gage isn't a dealbreaker, but there needs to be a good reason for it. And the best reason I can surmise is that the idea of a murderous, scalpel-wielding undead toddler is a bridge too far in these more sensitive and easily-triggered times. Young Laurence is fine as the living and dead Ellie, and it's not her fault that Ellie returning from the dead with a droopy eye and having long conversations with her dad comes off as ludicrous when, even when brought to "life" by an animatronic puppet that didn't look quite real in 1989, the undead, killer Gage is far more unsettling than a loquacious near-tween with a "#whatever" sneer.
Poster for the 1989 version
The chain of events that unfold once Ellie returns from the Pet Sematary ultimately takes PET SEMATARY '19 from loose adaptation to straight-up Stephen King fan fiction, so much so that it starts to resemble a modern reimagining of the "Wurdalak" segment from Mario Bava's 1964 classic BLACK SABBATH more than anything else. While Clarke and Seimetz are a step up in thespian ability over Midkiff and Crosby, this version is sorely missing the sense of folksy camaraderie that the great Fred Gwynne brought to the 1989 film. His Jud was just as readers pictured (ayuh), even though both the 1989 and 2019 films dump Jud's wife Norma from the narrative aside from establishing that Jud is a widower (she's in the book, where Louis even saves her from a heart attack at one point). Lithgow brings a certain level of wisdom and gravitas to Jud, but that's due more to his being a seasoned pro who can make something out of nothing, as Jud is just on hand for reams of exposition and nothing else. There's no real friendship with Louis, which was key to both King's book and the 1989 film, and his decision to even bring up burying Church beyond the Pet Sematary seems both unnecessarily sinister and completely boneheaded (and a throwaway line even implies that Jud had something to do with Norma's death). Lithgow is one of our finest actors, but he's just collecting a paycheck here. PET SEMATARY '19 is a film that cuts corners on the assumption that you're already familiar with the material and it's working from a checklist of things it knows test audiences and genre fans enjoy. You got kids in creepy masks, Blumhouse-inspired jump scares, shout-outs to other movies (including the 1989 PET SEMATARY), a shitty new cover of the Ramones' closing credits song "Pet Sematary," and why the hell is Jud invoking the Wendigo other than to pander for cult horror nerd cred and to make Larry Fessenden hard? Again, it's not like PET SEMATARY '89 was an untouchable classic, but while PET SEMATARY '19 offers a precious few improvements, they aren't nearly enough to justify its existence.
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (UK/Germany/Greece/France - 2014)
A moody, melancholy vampire film as only Jim Jarmusch could make, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE has almost no concern with the horror angle or any other genre trends. Jarmusch's centuries-old protagonists--Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston)--have loved one another through time and have been witness to countless historical and cultural touchstones: they knew Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, Adam worked with Nikola Tesla, ghost-composed pieces for Schubert, and was an early supporter of his friend Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. They've drifted apart, with Eve living in Tangier and Adam in Detroit. She passes her days devouring great literature and he holes up in his dilapidated Brush Park mansion with his extensive collection of guitars, recording shoegazing garage rock instrumentals. A limitlessly-wealthy shut-in, he gets his necessities from local rock club kid Ian (Anton Yelchin) and procures blood at a local hospital from hematologist Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright). Bored in Tangier, seemingly destined to live forever, and encouraged by her vampire mentor and blood supplier Marlowe (John Hurt), Eve flies to Detroit to rekindle her romance with Adam, but everything gets thrown in jeopardy with the arrival of her irresponsible, hard-partying sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) from Los Angeles.
Jarmusch tells his tale with a significant amount of dark and deadpan humor that could come across as "cute" in the wrong hands but he plays it perfectly, with everything from Eve and Adam enjoying frozen bloodcicles to Adam sounding not at all like the cultured immortal he is when he expresses his everyman hate for his de-facto sister-in-law and complains that their uninvited, imposing houseguest is "drinking all the O-negative." Jarmusch makes very effective use of Detroit locations, not merely shooting there but incorporating the city's culture, blight, and wasteland-like surroundings into the story. Adam takes Eve on a tour of crumbling and decaying Detroit landmarks like the Packard Plant and the old Michigan Theater, and they serve as metaphors for relics of a long-gone day, much like Adam and Eve themselves. Unlike the misanthropic, dour Adam, Eve sees beauty in the ruins and its cultural significance ("I love Jack White!" she exclaims as Adam shows her the musician's childhood home in a now-rundown neighborhood). Swinton and Hiddleston are excellent in this very offbeat genre piece that's unlike any vampire film you've seen. Like most Jarmusch films, it's extremely slowly-paced, very much the distinct work of its maker, and mostly quite rewarding in the end. (R, 123 mins)
FADING GIGOLO (US - 2014)
An odd, low-key comedy written, directed by, and starring John Turturro, FADING GIGOLO seems like it's going for goofy and raunchy early on, but it settles into a very quiet and leisurely-paced (almost to a fault) character piece. Turturro's film is set in the kind of Brooklyn you don't see much of in the movies anymore, very nicely shot by Marco Pontecorvo, son of legendary Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo (THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS) and has a definite Woody Allen influence, which even extends to Allen co-starring in one of the rare occasions over his 50-year career that he's acting in a film he didn't write and/or direct (the last were Douglas McGrath's barely-released COMPANY MAN and Alfonso Arau's even less-seen PICKING UP THE PIECES, both back in 2000). Allen is Murray Schwartz, an aging Brooklyn bookstore owner who's closing up shop and in dire need of money. His bisexual dermatologist (Sharon Stone) happens to tell him that she and her girlfriend (Sofia Vergara) are interested in a menage-a-trois, prompting Murray to offer the services of his nice-guy florist pal Fioravante (Turturro). Before long, Fioravante becomes a sought-after Brooklyn gigolo with Murray his unlikely pimp (if this sounds like a nebbishy version of the HBO series HUNG, you're right), but things get complicated when Fioravante develops feelings for a Rabbi's widow (a de-glammed Vanessa Paradis), who's being courted by an angry Hasidic beat cop (Liev Schreiber).
The premise starts out like an R-rated sitcom and has some funny moments from Allen, coming up with would-be intimidating pimp names for himself, such as "Iceberg," and "Bookmaster Moe." But once Fioravante starts pining for the widow, the laughs get dialed down quite a bit and a somber Turturro frequently comes off like a black hole in the center of his own movie, almost like he knew Allen would steal all the scenes, so he's not even going to try. But even some of Allen's scenes don't work all that well, particularly a dreadful sequence where he's hauled off to some Hasidic kangaroo court with his lawyer (Bob Balaban). Fioravante's transformation from shy homebody to sexual dynamo seems forced, as does Turturro casting himself as someone that Brooklyn's sexiest, richest wives can't resist. FADING GIGOLO is a strange film that never settles on a tone and never really comes together, but Allen seems to be enjoying himself, even if this is just a minor footnote to his long and storied career. Allen's onscreen appearances, even in his own films, are a rarity these days and maybe if this was called FADING PIMP and focused on him, it would've been a bit more successful. This ended up being a small arthouse sleeper hit for Cannon cover band Millennium over the spring and summer of 2014, almost breaking into wide release like the company's BERNIE after landing in the top 15 on just 356 screens. (R, 90 mins)
THE SACRAMENT (US - 2014)
Ti West got a lot of attention in the cult horror scene with his impressive THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009), a very creepy and very methodically-paced '80s throwback that seems to have spawned a "slow-burn" movement in the genre: films where long periods of time pass with very little happening. An assured director uses this to ramp up the tension, and while it worked with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, it failed with West's follow-up THE INNKEEPERS (2012), an inexplicably acclaimed horror film that was all slow-burn and nothing else. West, in many ways the Wes Anderson of horror, is so revered and coddled so gingerly with kid gloves by both critics and cult horror hipsters that it often seems like his career was granted by the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On the basis of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, I want to like Ti West's films (he also directed and disowned the long-shelved CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER), but I just can't get on the bandwagon. Something's just not working for me when it comes to his films and I don't know if it's the films themselves or that everyone seems to be seeing some kind of magic that's eluding me.
Boasting the opening credit "Eli Roth Presents," which is probably the point where the target audience had seen enough to conclude that it was a new masterpiece of modern horror and the Academy should bestow its first Participation Oscar to its maker, West's latest, THE SACRAMENT, may be the most pointless film of the year. And in using the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana as the story template, I can't imagine a more dead-on metaphor for the Kool-Aid guzzling, fanboy adoration of West's work. Here we have a film specifically engineered for the uninformed or those younger genre fans who are blithely unaware of anything that happened prior to their lifetime. If you've been waiting patiently for Jonestown recreated as a found footage/faux-doc--and if you have, then you're not quite ready to run with the grownups--then THE SACRAMENT is for you. Sure, it's set in the present day and has two Vice staffers (AJ Bowen and the inevitable Joe Swanberg) tagging along to make a doc with a colleague (Kentucker Audley) whose recovering drug addict sister (Amy Seimetz) has run off with the cult. And yes, it changes the name of the cult's compound from Jonestown to Eden Parish and the messianic leader is known simply as "Father," but he's Jim Jones, right down to the folksy drawl, the black hair, and the dark glasses. Gene Jones (best known as the gas station clerk in the "friendo" coin toss scene in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) is OK in the role, but he doesn't do anything that Powers Boothe didn't already do in the then-topical 1980 TV-movie GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES or, for that matter, Stuart Whitman as "Jim Johnson" in the spectacularly trashy GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED (also 1980). But everything you know about Jonestown, right down to the cult members being held captive, the brainwashing, the Kool-Aid, the sex, and the drugs, is all here. There's nothing surprising. If you know the story of Jonestown, then you know what's exactly what's going to happen in THE SACRAMENT. So who is this movie for? Why does it exist? Why retell this story now, in this fashion? If West thinks the faux-doc angle with obligatory CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST/BLAIR WITCH PROJECT dropped-camera shots justifies a rudimentary, connect-the-dots, Wikipedia retelling of the story--and even the would-be doc stuff is handled erratically and inconsistently--then I'm calling bullshit on the entire Ti West mythos. In fact, I may even take it one step further and go full ROOM 237 and say THE SACRAMENT is West's confession that he's all smoke and mirrors, that he's been punking us all along, and that there really is nothing there. (R, 99 mins)
Directed by Adam Wingard. Written by Simon Barrett. Cast: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Rob Moran, Barbara Crampton, Sarah Myers, Ti West, L.C. Holt, Simon Barrett, Larry Fessenden, Kate Lyn Sheil. (R, 94 mins)
More than any other film genre, horror makes its fans wade through some real shit to get to the worthy offerings. It seems like every other week, Fangoria or Dread Central are hyping some must-see game-changer that's ultimately mediocre, forgettable, and populated with the same cast of interchangeable horror-con fixtures and other perpetual C-and-D-listers. And even the next generation of so-called "great" horror filmmakers mostly seem to be people who are probably a lot of fun to watch horror movies with, but can't resist the urge to get snarky and meta with their own stuff. And God help you if you think "found footage" is the answer to the horror genre's problems. YOU'RE NEXT is finally getting national distribution nearly two years after it played the film festival circuit. It's directed by Adam Wingard, whose name is usually bandied about as one of these "future of horror" guys. He got some acclaim with his 2011 film A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE and was involved in both V/H/S anthologies as well as THE ABCs OF DEATH. YOU'RE NEXT is easily the defining statement of his career thus far, and if you've suffered through some bad horror movies in recent years, I'm here to tell you that it all pays off with YOU'RE NEXT.
Opening with a couple (the guy is Wendigo-obsessed cult horror director Larry Fessenden) being killed by a figure in a creepy animal mask, YOU'RE NEXT shifts its focus to an isolated mansion a bit further down the road, still in the middle of nowhere. It's the 35th wedding anniversary of wealthy, retired defense contractor Paul Davison (Rob Moran) and his wife Aubrey (RE-ANIMATOR scream queen Barbara Crampton), and they've invited their children and their significant others to a weekend gathering: oldest son Drake (Joe Swanberg) and his wife Kelly (Sarah Myers); college prof son Crispian (AJ Bowen) and his Australian grad student girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson); daughter Aimee (Amy Seimetz), and her "underground documentary filmmaker" boyfriend Tariq (Ti West); and youngest son Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his goth girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn). There's hints of typical family dysfunction that explode during dinner when the abrasive, insufferable Drake (who tells Tariq he should consider "documentary commercials") keeps prodding the thin-skinned Crispian about a variety of issues (his relationship with Erin starting when he was her professor; how his round face makes him look fat, etc). The arguing temporarily ceases when one of them notices something outside the window and ends up with a crossbow arrow in their skull. Quickly realizing they're under siege by at least two or three killers wearing the same animal masks from the opening murder sequence (and one of them is already hiding in the house), the family is picked off one by one in a variety of gruesome ways, with "You're next" scrawled in blood on the wall. Luckily for the Davisons, Erin happens to have had a crazy dad who raised her in a survivalist compound in the Outback, which immediately establishes her as the most resourceful of the bunch when it comes to outwitting the killers. Using a variety of impromptu booby-traps that at times bring to mind a stalk-and-slash version of HOME ALONE, Erin proves to be more than the killers were anticipating, but that's only the beginning of the twists to come.
Another huge plus working in YOU'RE NEXT's favor: Barrett's mostly unpredictable script (the one weakness: when one character vanishes for a long period of screen time, it's obviously for a reason) is also funny without being snarky or condescending. The characters here never stop to talk about how they're in the middle of a stalk & slash film in an old dark house and they don't have any ironic quips to make about it. The humor in YOU'RE NEXT ranges from smart to dark to outright absurd: Drake still acting like a complete blowhard asshole even with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder for most of the film; needy Aimee fishing for Daddy's validation even as bodies pile up around them ("I can run fast, but nobody ever believes in me!" Paul: "I believe in you, Princess!"); Erin getting the edge on one of the killers and smashing his head to a pulp with a hammer, then asking Felix "Do you recognize this guy?" to which Felix deadpans "It's kinda hard to tell." The performances generally range from functional to decent--several of the cast members (Swanberg, West, UPSTREAM COLOR star Seimetz) are also writers and directors--but a star is born in Vinson's ballsy turn as the tough-as-shit Erin, instantly staking her claim as one of horror cinema's all-time great Final Girls.
For horror fans around my age (40), there's a nostalgia for the movies of our youth that shows no signs of abating. Wingard is in that same demographic. There's a reason he utilized practical gore and a reason he uses Carpenter-esque music cues (plus the creepy utilization of the Dwight Twilley Band's minor 1977 hit "Looking for the Magic"): because he's a fan first, he knows what fans want to see and hear. There's no shitty CGI here. In fact, when one person is stabbed in the eye, there's some very visible latex. Latex! In a horror movie in 2013! The only concession Wingard seems to make to modern horror from an aesthetic angle is using a lot of shaky hand-held in some sequences, but it's done in a way that's appropriate to the film and not simply shaking the camera around to make things look busy. The point is this: it's tough being a horror movie fan today. We long for things as good as the influential classics of our past (of course, everyone thinks "their" stuff was the best, just like our parents thought most of the '80s stuff was too over-the-top) and most of today's horror movies just aren't fun. There's something missing and YOU'RE NEXT is as close as I've seen in a long time to getting it back. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. For once, a buzzed-about horror flick lives up to the hype, and if this came out 25 or 30 years ago, it would be a film that we're still talking about today. I'm sure there'll be no shortage of nitpicky, cynical contrarians who just can't allow themselves to enjoy the hell out of this thing that gives them exactly the kind of entertaining, old-school jolts that they want, but it's the most fun I've had with a horror movie in ages.
Shane Carruth's no-budget 2004 indie hit PRIMER came out of nowhere to become arguably the greatest time-travel movie ever made. It took the flight simulation software engineer-turned-filmmaker nine years to return with his self-distributed second effort, the even more enigmatic and perplexing UPSTREAM COLOR. PRIMER's dovetailing, backtracking plot is almost quaintly simplistic compared to the mind-twister he delivers here. Carruth fashions a story here, but isn't as concerned with putting all the pieces together. UPSTREAM COLOR focuses more on mood, feeling, patterns, sound. It's too much to take in on one viewing or maybe even ten, and its mysteries aren't necessarily meant to be solved. Almost like what might happen if Terrence Malick made a sci-fi film with horrific overtones, UPSTREAM COLOR opens with graphic designer Kris (Amy Seimetz) being implanted with a worm-like parasite by a man who will come to be known as The Thief (Thiago Martins). Through this parasite, the Thief is able to brainwash Kris and control her, keeping her busy with mundane activities like crocheting, hand-writing pages of Thoreau's Walden and gluing the sheets to make paper chains, all part of an elaborate plot to get her to take out massive loans on her home equity and make off with the cash. One morning, Kris awakens with worms burrowing under her skin and no recollection of what's happened. But now she's broke, she's lost her job, and she's had some kind of surgery involving a parasite being removed from her and planted into a pig by a man known as The Sampler (Andrew Sensenig).
Kris meets and forms a tentative bond with Jeff (Carruth), an accountant and recovering drug addict who lost his job and his wife when his habit compelled him to embezzle from his previous employer. Like Kris, Jeff is putting his life back together and bears the scars of a mysterious past, figuratively and literally as he has nearly identical parasite/surgery-related scarring as Kris. As these two damaged souls drawn to one another, building a relationship and a future together, they're haunted by shared memories they can't comprehend, telepathic connections to the pigs on The Sampler's farm, and prone to almost hypnotic states where a visual or aural cue will remind them of the brainwashed trauma they don't recall...until the pieces start to come together. That is, for them. Not necessarily for the viewer. With the late-film introduction of two gardeners picking orchids and other flowers, there's some hints of a mythic "death/rebirth" Circle-of-Life motif, and one possible reading of the plot would be to say that Kris and Jeff are already dead, but I'm fairly sure that Carruth isn't going for that kind of rote, Shyamalanian simplicity. I don't think the mysteries are important to appreciate the film, though things probably become a little more clear around the 10th or 15th time through. Carruth (who also edited, served as a camera operator, and composed the very Cliff Martinez-ish score) has fashioned a trance-like film that's very Malick-ian in its visual beauty and might make an interesting double feature with Panos Cosmatos' somewhat similarly-themed and equally dreamlike and impenetrable BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW. (Unrated, 96 mins)
REVENGE FOR JOLLY! (US - 2013)
REVENGE FOR JOLLY! is the brainchild of writer/star Brian Petsos, a Second City and FUNNY OR DIE! vet who rounded up some of his more famous friends to join him in this grim, bleak black comedy that played the festival circuit over a year ago and never got a theatrical release. Even with the closing credits rolling at 77 minutes--with an extra-slow credits crawl stretching it to 84--it feels padded and overlong, but it's a great premise for a short film and has some undeniably effective and oddly touching moments amid the relentlessly graphic carnage. Low-level Staten Island criminal Harry (Petsos) lives alone, has no friends, and cares only for Jolly, his beloved Miniature Pinscher. Harry owes some people money and when he returns home one morning after drinking with his cousin Cecil (Oscar Isaac), he discovers Jolly has been killed. Overcome with grief and rage over losing the only thing in his life that mattered, Harry asks Cecil to accompany him on his search for Jolly's killer. Learning early on that the man responsible is one Bachmeier (Ryan Philippe), Harry and Cecil leave a trail of dead bodies over their 36-hour quest to locate the killer and avenge Jolly.
With its cavalier attitude toward mass slaughter, it's little surprise, given some events of the last year, that REVENGE FOR JOLLY! might've made some distributors a little skittish. It's extremely unsettling seeing Harry and Cecil crash the wedding reception of Bachmaier's sister (Kristen Wiig) and start mowing people down. Petsos doesn't seem too concerned with making either Harry or Cecil particularly likable, but he makes Harry's grieving serious enough that in a strange, sick way, you understand where he's coming from. There's some surprising heart to a monologue of Harry's where he shares his favorite memories of Jolly, talking about a night where he made bologna sandwiches and fed her some bites. Petsos convincingly sells it when he says, with his eyes filled with tears, "That was a great night." The film takes place in a strange Staten Island that may not be real and may just be a revenge fantasy in Harry's head, or it's just set in an unspecified past: Harry drives a mid-1980s Cadillac, and no one seems to have a cell phone to dial 9-1-1, and there's no cops in sight, but I guess you just have to roll with it. Directed by Chadd Harbold (another FUNNY OR DIE! vet), REVENGE FOR JOLLY! is uneven and doesn't have enough material to justify even its brief running time, but there's some interesting and occasionally daring stuff here (and a cool, synth-based score by Whitey) and at least as a writer, Petsos might be a talent to keep an eye on. The large supporting cast of well-known or recognizable faces includes Elijah Wood, Garret Dillahunt, Kevin Corrigan (delivering the most uncomfortable best-man speech imaginable), Adam Brody, Bobby Moynihan, David Rasche, Jayne Atkinson, Gillian Jacobs, Amy Seimetz, Stephen Payne, Britt Lower, and John DiBenedetto. (R, 84 mins)
