THE RENTAL (US - 2020) Directed by Dave Franco. Written by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg. Cast: Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss, Anthony Molinari. (R, 88 mins)
"This'll be over soon, I promise."
"This will never be over." A confident and very well-crafted directing debut from apparent master of horror Dave Franco, THE RENTAL aims to establish itself as the quintessential Airbnb-from-Hell thriller and the end result is a merciless screw-tightener where the tensions are already very quietly simmering from the start. Co-written by Franco and mumblecore vet Joe Swanberg, THE RENTAL is one of these films that pulls a 180 at the midpoint and becomes something completely different. A set-up like this will inevitably prove divisive, with some preferring the character-based drama of the first half while others will wish the whole thing was a home-invasion horror movie like the second half, but things are so off with these characters from the get-go that their weekend vacay was doomed one way or another. Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT's Sheila Vand) are business partners at some unspecified trendy, Casual Friday-all-week-long startup. They have such an affectionate, touchy-feely camaraderie that it's a jarring surprise--barely a minute into the film--when her boyfriend Josh (SHAMELESS' Jeremy Allen White) pops into the office unannounced. Josh is also Charlie's younger brother, but he and Charlie's wife Michelle (Alison Brie, Franco's wife) are used to the harmlessly playful interaction between their significant others. To celebrate the closing of a lucrative deal, Charlie and Mina rent a huge oceanfront house on a cliff for weekend couples getaway.
Mina is already irked on the way there, since her attempt to reserve the weekend was denied while Charlie's was approved an hour later without hassle. Of Middle Eastern descent, Mina is convinced her last name (Mohammadi) is the reason for the rejection and once they meet the surly and vaguely intimidating Taylor (Toby Huss), things get off to a rocky start. "You own this place?" Mina incredulously asks the grizzled Taylor when she sees his beat-up pickup. "Why you gotta say it like that?" he replies. His brother actually owns the house--Taylor just manages the property and takes care of it. Offended by Mina's assumption that he can't possibly own a house like this and doing little to dispel the notion that the's kind of guy who has a problem with a surname like "Mohammadi," he prods a little further, asking her "How'd you get mixed up with this family?" The cringeworthy awkwardness of the confrontation (Huss is terrific with very minimal screen time) escalates when she confronts him about rejecting the rental application, leading to him angrily peeling out of the driveway. Things eventually settle down and they all go for a walk along the beach, where Charlie and Mina walk ahead of Josh and Michelle, with Josh expressing concern not so much about Charlie and Mina's work closeness ("They get pretty intense," Michelle says in a way that suggests it's frequently on her mind), but that the intelligent, successful Mina is out of his league, something Charlie and Michelle have felt all along. Recovering anger management case Josh is a Lyft driver and has been historically unmotivated, has always been in his brother's shadow, and spent a brief time in jail for beating the shit out of a guy in a bar fight, but sees Mina as the best thing that's happened to him and strives to be a better person because of her.
The tensions and the insecurities have long been there, silently accumulating, and there's nothing like a secluded weekend getaway in the middle of nowhere with some bonus molly to bring out the worst in everyone. Things happen. Things are said. Secrets are revealed. People make one wrong decision after another. Then Mina spots a small camera in the shower head of one of the bathrooms. Are they being watched by Taylor? Or someone else? What have they seen? Are there other cameras in the house? Why does a crawlspace under the porch have a secured door with a keypad? And what happened to Reggie, Josh's French bulldog that he brought along and kept hidden from Taylor because a "no pets" clause in the rental agreement?
Despite the immense popularity of Airbnbs (the term is never specifically invoked), there is something inherently risky about making the conscious decision to stay in the home of a stranger based almost entirely on positive reviews on an app. THE RENTAL plays on that fear, especially in the second half with the arrival of a black-gloved killer whose first appearance is a genuinely effective jolt. Franco wisely keeps this figure's onscreen presence to a minimum, but he's always lurking and watching. In his style and shot compositions, Franco has an undeniable flair for this sort of thing, and with the black gloves and a couple of visual shout-outs to Dario Argento's DEEP RED and Sergio Martino's TORSO, it's a good indication that either he or Swanberg are closet giallo nerds. It's a given that horror gatekeepers will bemoan the slow-burn character buildup of the first half before "it gets good," while Swanberg's mumblecore followers (he started out as part of that whole Duplass Brothers/Greta Gerwig crew that helped establish the movement in the mid '00s) will wish for more introspective relationship drama and ask why it had to turn into a slasher movie. But the transition is surprisingly smooth, largely due to the palpable unease that's established from the opening scene. Besides, Swanberg is no stranger to the horror genre, having been involved in various capacities in films like V/H/S, YOU'RE NEXT, 24 EXPOSURES, and THE SACRAMENT. The real surprise is Franco who, at least here, exhibits none of the self-indulgent, patience-testing tendencies of the "auteur" work of his older brother James, who proved with THE DISASTER ARTIST that he can make a good commercial movie, but usually just chooses not to. THE RENTAL doesn't reinvent the home invasion scenario, and it likely wasn't going to get a wide release anyway since it's from IFC (though In These Uncertain Times™, it is getting some play at drive-ins), but it's exactly the kind of efficient scare machine that, in any other year, could've easily turned into a sleeper summer hit in theaters.
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)
Indie filmmakers Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, and Ti West form the core of a relentlessly busy crew of DIY mumblecore filmmakers who took part in the V/H/S anthology and have received acclaim mostly in indie hipster circles but seemed poised to break into the mainstream with the terrific 2013 slasher film YOU'RE NEXT, directed by Wingard, written by Barrett, and co-starring Swanberg and West. West, who had some acclaim away from this posse with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and the overrated THE INNKEEPERS, also directed Swanberg in the current THE SACRAMENT. Swanberg wrote and directed 24 EXPOSURES, which stars Wingard and looks like what might happen if West teamed up with Henry Jaglom to make a slow-burn re-imagining of the 1983 cult slasher film DOUBLE EXPOSURE. 24 EXPOSURES is obviously a film shot cheaply and quickly. It's as minimalist as can be, with some really bad acting and a score that vacillates between "1980s John Carpenter" and "Skinemax fuck scene." Wingard is "fetish photographer" Billy Wingard, who specializes in graphic still death shots of staged murders. Helping him is assistant/girlfriend Alex (Caroline White), who's open enough to allow model Callie (Sophia Takal) to join them in bed. Billy is also preoccupied with Callie's friend Rebecca (Helen Rogers), whose possessive boyfriend (Mike Brune) doesn't want her taking part in his photo sessions. Meanwhile, down-in-the-dumps and improbably-named detective Michael Bamfeaux (Barrett) is given the boot by his wife but still has to do his job, which involves investigating the murder of a model who never showed up for a scheduled shoot with Billy and Alex.
Starting with Wingard's character having the same surname, 24 EXPOSURES is meta almost to the point of self-parody. This is especially the case by the end when, after a whole lot of very little has happened, Bamfeaux, moonlighting as an aspiring writer, turns his search for the murderer and his friendship with Billy into a memoir as a literary agent (played by Swanberg) goes through a laundry list of his manuscript's flaws, go-nowhere plot details, and general construction weaknesses and rattles off ways to improve it, almost like Swanberg is stopping to critique his own film, still in progress. It's that kind of nonsense that shows he's more interested in being "clever" than constructing a real story. Some parts of 24 EXPOSURES look almost Tommy Wiseau-like in their sub-softcore-porn production value. You'd think for as long as Wingard and Barrett have been friends, they could at least convincingly play friends in a movie (Barrett, in particular, is awful). But this is the kind of film where the sense of amateurish artifice is intended and the bad performances are by design, but to what end? Other than Swanberg drawing facile parallels between Billy and Bamfeaux by showing them both eating dry cereal as a snack, there's no real attempt at character or thematic depth. 24 EXPOSURES is a tediously self-indulgent home movie made by guys who should know and have done better. It's either an inside joke among their clique or, more likely, an excuse for Swanberg and Wingard to hang out with some naked chicks on set. (Unrated, 77 mins)
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (US - 2013)
When it debuted at 2013's Sundance Film Festival, it seemed highly unlikely that ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW would ever be seen again afterwards. With an inheritance from his grandparents providing the budget, writer/director Randy Moore and his cast and crew pulled off one of the most audacious and ambitious guerrilla filmmaking stunts in the annals of cinema: with season passes to both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, they shot the bulk of the black & white film inside the parks, using scripts stored on their phones and armed with handheld (or concealed) cameras and sporting wardrobes that made them look like average tourists. Moore said in interviews that as many times as they went back to the parks and as many times as the actors got on the rides (he reportedly had the four main actors ride It's a Small World 12 times in a row until he got the shots he needed), none of the Disney cast members got wise to what they were doing. Much to the surprise of Moore and everyone else, Disney, fiercely protective of its image and its intellectual property, never attempted to block the film's release and never publicly addressed it, though it has been added to the online supplement to Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia.
On the last day of a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida, Jim (Roy Abramsohn) gets a call from his boss telling him that he's been fired. Jim keeps this devastating news to himself and focuses on giving wife Emily (Elena Schuber) and kids Elliott (Jack Dalton) and Sara (Katelynn Rodriguez) one last fun day before going home. It's a day that becomes increasingly surreal as every song, every attraction, and every animatronic character becomes more sinister and nightmarish by the minute. And that's on top of the everyday horrors of a nagging wife, screaming kids, rude or constantly coughing patrons, lines that won't move, and Elliott getting sick on Space Mountain. Jim is also bewitched by two seductive, giggling French teenage girls (Danielle Safady, Annet Mehendru) who turn up everywhere before he starts deliberately following them. It's clear early on that Jim's current level of reality might not actually be, and the completely off-the-rails second half becomes a horrifically dystopian version of the Disney experience, fusing elements of TOTAL RECALL and VIDEODROME, with a cat-flu epidemic, turkey legs made of emu, rollercoaster decapitations, a secret crew of cleaners, and Disney princesses who double as high-priced courtesans for wealthy Asian businessmen. By the end, it's basically an elaborate TWILIGHT ZONE episode and would probably work better as such, but Moore's daring filmmaking process and his ability to make do with what he had--a lot of the shots are composed as such to avoid copyright infringements and being discovered--are very impressive. Regardless of how the film even turned out, it's a major accomplishment that he was able to get it done. As a story, it loses its way a bit and seems to drag even at 90 minutes, but as an exercise in DIY filmmaking, it's not to be missed. (Unrated, 90 mins)
