As seen with SILVER CITY in 2004, SWING VOTE in 2008, and THE CAMPAIGN in 2012, timely political comedies usually seem to pop up during election years. Written and directed by Jon Stewart and produced by Brad Pitt, this year's IRRESISTIBLE was another COVID-19 theatrical casualty that saw its intended wide summer release relegated primarily to VOD, which was probably the best venue for it (as you can see to your left, Focus Features really went all out on that poster design). It's a generally bland and forgettable attempt at being Frank Capra with a mean streak, and its satirical digs are toothless and obvious. Stewart's old DAILY SHOW colleague Steve Carell stars as Gary Zimmer, a top Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and is looking for redemption. He finds his shot in Col. Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), an ex-Marine and small-town Wisconsin farmer whose YouTube-captured takedown of Republican Mayor Braun (Brent Sexton) convinces him that he's the next face of the Democratic Party. The town--which runs about 95% Republican-- has fallen on hard times, conservative Col. Hastings doesn't think Braun is getting the job done, and it doesn't take much prodding for Zimmer to convince him to run as a Democratic challenger, calling the folksy Hastings "Bill Clinton with impulse control." Zimmer's machinations get the attention of the media, and the story of a little mayoral election in nowhere Wisconsin blows up enough that Republican strategist and Zimmer's 2016 Trump campaign arch-rival Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) is sent in with unlimited financial backing to work Braun's re-election.
Carell gets to do a lot of his Michael Scott schtick from THE OFFICE, usually dismissing the townies as easily-manipulated rubes, while Cooper and Mackenzie Davis (as his daughter) do the idealistic, salt-of-the-earth "real Americans" bit when they object to Zimmer launching a smear attack on Braun. IRRESISTIBLE gets its biggest spark from Byrne, who dives into her role with gusto in some extremely vulgar ballbusting with Carell (Zimmer, finding Faith at the local coffee shop: "You know how I knew you were here?" Faith: "Your pussy tingled?"), but for someone as astute with the merging of politics and comedy as Stewart, this really errs on the side of cornball and formulaic, right down to its generic title. It's trying to say something about issues of too much money in politics, but it just never catches fire and rarely finds its inner WAG THE DOG, even with a twist ending that just magnifies the sense of cornpone Americana in the guise of contemporary satire. Stewart's barely-released 2014 directing debut ROSEWATER wasn't very good either, so maybe filmmaking just isn't his ideal medium. The supporting cast features familiar faces like Topher Grace and Natasha Lyonne as members of Zimmer's strategist team, and couple of political talking heads put in cameo appearances, but who knows what to make of Bill Irwin's bizarre cameo as a billionaire George Soros-type Democratic donor that sends things into absurdist DR. STRANGELOVE territory for about 45 seconds. It's a genuinely odd, out-of-nowhere gag that's funny but is wasted in this kind of middle-of-the-road "TV-movie with F-bombs" that uses Bob Seger's "Still the Same" over the opening credits and during a later "Hastings catching up on Braun in the polls" campaign montage. (R, 102 mins)
ROGUE (South Africa/UK - 2020)
It seems like Megan Fox was everywhere in the late '00s, but other than starring in the TMNT franchise reboot a few years ago and joining the cast of Zooey Deschanel's NEW GIRL for a couple of seasons, she's kept a pretty low profile of late compared to her TRANSFORMERS and tabloid overexposure heyday. She's back in a starring role in the action/horror film ROGUE, not to be confused with the otherROGUE, a pretty terrific 2008 Australian killer crocodile flick that didn't get the attention it deserved. This ROGUE deals with a team of mercenaries trapped on a seemingly abandoned farm in the middle of nowhere in Africa after a botched extraction, only to find themselves at the mercy of a very pissed-off lioness who starts picking them off one by one. It's hard to tell what's less believable here: the CGI lioness, or Fox as Sam, the tough-as-nails leader of the black-ops merc unit. Sam and her team were hired by a beleaguered governor after his daughter (Jessica Sutton) has been abducted by an Al-Shabaab terror cell and human trafficking ring led by Zalaam (Adam Deacon). They rescue the girl and two others, but when their chopper arrives only to be blown out of the sky by Zalaam, they're forced to take the girls and run for their lives, ending up at a farm that's been deserted except for one territorial lioness who doesn't take kindly to intruders on her turf.
Director MJ Bassett, best known for SOLOMON KANE and her TV work with episodes of ASH VS. EVIL DEAD and STRIKE BACK (her 2007 survivalist thriller WILDERNESS is an underseen gem), co-wrote the script with her daughter Isabel, who plays one of the other kidnapped girls, but despite its noble intentions in offering a female-focused genre film, ROGUE fizzles with slack pacing, entirely too many predictable jump-scare kills that won't fool anyone who's seen DEEP BLUE SEA, and Fox just not even remotely convincing as a mercenary. Bassett, who most recently directed the surprisingly not-completely-terrible Universal 1440 DTV sequel INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED, does get a fun performance out of STRIKE BACK star Philip Winchester as Sam's wisecracking second-in-command, and his running gag involving the Backstreet Boys isn't bad, nor are a few decently-crafted action sequences that don't rely on the amateur-night CGI. The digital lioness is so awful that it seriously looks like a placeholder effect that someone forgot to finish, and it looks even sillier in a couple of scenes where Fox's Sam tries to negotiate with her woman-to-woman, or rather, bitch-to-bitch to reference the star's climactic quip that falls so flat that if you listen closely, you can probably hear the crickets chirping on set. (R, 106 mins)
THE TURNING (US - 2020) Directed by Floria Sigismondi. Written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes. Cast: Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, Brooklynn Prince, Joely Richardson, Barbara Marten, Niall Gregg Fulton, Denna Thomsen, Kim Adis. (PG-13, 95 mins) Many of pop culture's most effective and familiar ghost story tropes can be traced back to Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, the chilling tale of a prim, proper, and--through as much suggestion as standards of the period would allow--sexually-repressed governess put in charge of two orphaned children in a gothic mansion which may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of the previous governess and the sinister groundskeeper. The story has inspired an untold number of horror novelists and short story writers and has been been adapted for stage, screen, and television dozens of times. The most famous, of course, is Jack Clayton's 1961 classic THE INNOCENTS, with Deborah Kerr as the governess. That was followed by a 1974 TV-movie from DARK SHADOWS creator Dan Curtis and starring Lynn Redgrave; a 1992 version with Patsy Kensit; 1999's Spanish-made PRESENCE OF MIND with Sadie Frost; as a 2000 PBS production with Jodhi May; 2006's IN A DARK PLACE with Leelee Sobieski; and as a 2009 BBC production with a pre-DOWNTON ABBEY Michelle Dockery (and while not a direct adaptation, Alejandro Amenabar's 2001 film THE OTHERS, with Nicole Kidman, owes a tremendous debt to The Turn of the Screw). Not only is James' story always the source of serious chills down the spine, but the governess role is a strong, complex, and multi-layered one for any actress to tackle, so much so that screen legend Kerr often cited her work in THE INNOCENTS as her best performance, and it wasn't even one of six for which she was Oscar-nominated.
The latest film to tackle James' renowned novella is the misbegotten THE TURNING, which moves the story to 1994--with an early shot of a TV showing breaking news of Kurt Cobain's suicide--apparently for no reasons other than fetishized nostalgia and the idea that even The Turn of the Screw needed to be revamped in order to pander to the AMERICAN HORROR STORY/STRANGER THINGSification of today's horror, right down to the presence of IT and STRANGER THINGS co-star Finn Wolfhard as one of the orphaned children. The 1994 setting probably seemed like a wink-and-a-nudge from director Floria Sigismondi, directing her first feature film since 2010's THE RUNAWAYS and who's best known for her music videos for David Bowie, Marilyn Manson (she directed the video for "The Beautiful People"), Tricky, Bjork, Fiona Apple, and The White Stripes, and in more recent years, Pink, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, and Dua Lipa. Sigismondi clearly has stylistic chops and a good reputation in her field in order to land so many high-profile gigs in the music industry, but THE TURNING just doesn't work. The script by twin horror scribes Chad and Carey W. Hayes (still dining out on the two CONJURINGs, while hoping we forgot they penned $3 Big Lots DVD rack fixtures like the Paris Hilton HOUSE OF WAX, THE REAPING, and WHITEOUT) is content to recycle every hoary horror cliche of the modern era, while attempting to give some contemporary subtext that it introduces in a half-assed fashion and almost instantly abandons. There's enough sexual overtones to James' story that a modern update (or modern-ish, if we consider the grunge-era setting, with songs not from that era but rather, current alt-rock throwbacks like Warpaint, The Kills' Alison Mosshart, and Soccer Mommy) could've been an insightful commentary on #MeToo and #TimesUp, but after laying the groundwork for such a topic, the filmmakers don't do anything with it and instead opt to move on to the next tired jump scare, as if Sigismondi suddenly remembers (or was reminded) that she's contractually obligated to deliver a PG-13 film.
Set for release in February 2019 and shelved for nearly a year until a weekend could be found for a slightly more appropriate January dumping, THE TURNING uses enough of James' source work but also tries to split the difference with the little-remembered 1972 film THE NIGHTCOMERS, a prequel to THE INNOCENTS before the term "prequel" entered the moviegoing lexicon. Freed from the cinematic restraints of just a decade earlier, THE NIGHTCOMERS enjoyed the relatively new freedom of the R rating in its INNOCENTS origin story about the previous governess Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) and her sweaty, sadomasochistic sexcapades with groundskeeper Quint, played by Marlon Brando just before his triumphant GODFATHER comeback. THE NIGHTCOMERS is essentially INNOCENTS fan fiction that erases the mystery and ambiguity of the older film's much-debated ending and again, subtly incorporating those sexual aspects could've taken THE TURNING to some intriguing places. In the governess role, Mackenzie Davis is Kate, a college student who takes a job as a live-in teacher for seven-year-old orphan Flora (THE FLORIDA PROJECT's Brooklynn Prince) at a massive gothic estate in an isolated region of the Pacific Northwest. Devoted and judgmental housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Barbara Marten) is an obvious keeper of dark secrets who insists Flora never leave the grounds, and claims to not know what happened with previous teacher Miss Jessel (Denna Thomsen), or how her mysterious "disappearance" relates to the accidental death of Quint (Niall Greig Fulton). It isn't long before Kate starts hearing strange voices, creaks, and moans in the middle of the night and catches glimpses of faces that look like they might be Miss Jessel and Quint. But instead of leaving, she sticks around. She feels a duty to help young Flora, and while she didn't lose her parents in a tragic car accident like the little girl did, she understands the notion of a rough childhood after her father walked out on her and her psychologically-disturbed mother, who's now in a mental institution. In what's really THE TURNING's sole inspired decision, Kate's mother is played in two brief scenes by Joely Richardson, making her yet another member of the Redgrave acting dynasty to appear in an adaptation of the story: her aunt Lynn Redgrave starred in the aforementioned 1974 TV-movie, her uncle Corin Redgrave appeared in the 2009 BBC version, and her grandfather Michael Redgrave played the cold-hearted uncle who hired Kerr's governess to care for his niece and nephew in THE INNOCENTS.
Complicating matters is the unexpected arrival of Flora's older, teenage brother Miles (Wolfhard), who's been expelled from boarding school after violently attacking a classmate (of course, Mrs. Grose refuses to believe it, since both children are "thoroughbreds"). Miles immediately antagonizes Kate and undermines the bond she's formed with Flora, and she even wakes in the middle of the night to find him standing over her and caressing her. One of the main ideas of James' novella and THE INNOCENTS was the governess' belief that the spirits of Miss Jessel and Quint were attempting to possess the children in order to continue their secret relationship. But it's never really a certainty that these ghosts exist and there's significant evidence that the governess is projecting her own neuroses and psychosexual hang-ups on to the children. Having a teenage, hormonal Miles demonstrate some leering designs on Kate--if indeed he's possessed by Quint--is an example of THE TURNING potentially updating James with contemporary relevance. But every time it even flirts with any story element of that sort, it backs off and takes the safe route, with more rote jump scares, extended dream sequence fake-outs that only seem to be there to pad the run time, a brief sojourn into AMITYVILLE HORROR/ "we need to get out of this house!" territory with the enraged ghost of Quint going on an estate-wide rampage, and finally, the lamest non-ending to a horror movie since THE DEVIL INSIDE sent the audience to a web site to see how things panned out. Attempts at ambiguity can't work when there's no subtlety to the story and no underlying themes on which to build it. THE INNOCENTS remains one of the most terrifying of horror films, and those shots of the ghostly Miss Jessel standing on the lake in the distance are still the stuff of nightmares. By contrast, THE TURNING is a film that can't even be bothered to come up with a cliched twist ending and instead just abruptly peaces out, dumbing down THE INNOCENTS and Henry James into a pointless post-Blumhouse jump-scare machine with a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material. Davis essays her role with convincing anguish and emerges unscathed, as does the very promising Prince, one of the most natural and unaffected child actors in recent years, and who was so memorable as Moonee in THE FLORIDA PROJECT. They--and everyone else--deserve better than THE TURNING.
