Homegrown thriller Poser gets its big screen premiere this weekend before hitting theaters across the country. How is it? How about that unnerving new one from David Cronenberg? As gross as it sounds? Well, we have all the answers, plus recommendations for some stuff for horror fans, families and lovers of poetic drama. Read on!
Poser
At Gateway Film Center
by Hope Madden
No matter how familiar the synopsis might sound to you, know for certain that Poser will surprise you.
Directors Noah Dixon and Ori Segev, working from Dixon’s script, drop you into the indie music scene you may never have realized existed in Columbus, Ohio. Lennon (Sylvie Mix) wants to change that with her podcast. She may not have a lot of listeners, but she promises those who do listen a deep dive into the scene, with interviews and performances from the best bands you’ve never heard of.
She’s kind of banking on that last bit, actually.
Mix’s open stare and stealthy movement — a technique she used to great effect in her haunted Christmas flick Double Walker — here feels slyly deceptive. Lennon’s an introvert, a fan, an artist herself. Or is she?
A clever opening in an art gallery sets wheels in motion, and you’re never quite sure how sympathetic Lennon really is. Mix masters pseudo-innocence, only betraying Lennon’s true nature in glimpses during meet-ups with her sister.
Lennon’s real purpose materializes with the introduction to idol/muse Bobbi Kitten, a rock star on the scene who is all that Lennon would like to become.
Like a cagey, pink-haired Jena Malone, Kitten commands the screen playing a version of herself. The singer from Columbus-based indie band Damn the Witch Siren, Kitten performs along with bandmate Z Wolf, whose presence adds a fascinating air of whimsy, danger and apathy.
Though Kitten and Mix are more than enough to keep your attention, the music scene and Columbus itself offer fascinating, pulsating ensemble support. The music for Poser, and the likely ad-libbed dialogue from band members, enliven every scene.
And Columbus looks terrific. Logan Floyd’s gorgeous cinematography meshes with performances and story to depict the melancholy and madness that go hand-in-hand with youth, art and punk rock.
Grade: A-
Crimes of the Future
At Gateway Film Center and Drexel Theatre
by Hope Madden
Not everyone is going to enjoy Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s latest and perhaps most Cronenberg film. But Cronenberg fans will find plenty to enjoy.
Well, enjoy might not be the right word.
In a dreary world where “surgery is the new sex,” two performance artists (Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux) turn one’s mutant organs into art.
If that doesn’t sound like a Cronenberg movie, nothing does.
Saul Tenser (Mortensen) has evolutionary derangement, a common problem these days. The human body has started simply sprouting new organs, Tenser more than most. But he and his partner Caprice (Seydoux) expel them from his body, which is okey dokey with the New Vice squad and the New Organ Register’s office, run by a couple of people passionate about new organs: Timlin (Kristen Stewart) and Wippet (Don McKellar).
From there, Crimes of the Future turns into a kind of science fiction detective thriller. In the cons column, it moves at times too slowly and there is one uncharacteristically weak kill sequence. In the pros, it’s unusually funny for the filmmaker. Also, there is still no one who delivers visceral, physical horror quite like David Cronenberg.
The king of corporeal horror hasn’t really made a horror film since 1988. He’s made moody, disturbing indies (Naked Lunch, Crash, eXistenZ, Spider) before producing two massively successful mainstream(ish) films: 2005’s A History of Violence and 2007’s Eastern Promises. Both earned Oscar nominations. Both were brilliant.
Cronenberg had a little more trouble finding his footing after that, never reaching the same degree of commercial or critical success and essentially retiring in 2014.
But more than 30 years after his last horror flick, Dead Ringers—one preoccupied with organ mutations, sex and surgery—Cronenberg returns to the ground that was most fertile in his early career. Literally, his latest effort concerns organ mutations, sex and surgery.
Crimes of the Future—like Crash and Videodrome—is specifically, grotesquely sexual. It plays like an ecological fable, though the theme, as stated by Lang Daughtery (Scott Speedman) remains the same: “It’s time for human evolution to synch up with modern technology.”
Turns out, it’s a theme that hasn’t outstayed its welcome. But it often feels like the movie is more about the filmmaker himself than it is about his thematic preoccupations. Indeed, Crimes of the Future is so Cronenberg it’s almost meta.
The film references, directly or indirectly, The Brood, Dead Ringers, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Crash, and most frequently and obviously, Videodrome. Like his main character, Cronenberg has long been an “artist of the inner landscape.” And after several decades of excising that tendency from his work, Cronenberg has come full circle to accept what was inside him all along.
Grade: A-
Watcher
In theaters
by George Wolf
If you’re a fan at all of genre films, chances are good Watcher will look plenty familiar. But in her feature debut, writer/director Chloe Okuno wields that familiarity with a cunning that leaves you feeling unnerved in urgent and important ways.
Maika Monroe is sensational as Julia, an actress who has left New York behind to follow husband Francis (Karl Glusman) and begin a new life in Bucharest. With a mother who was Romanian and a fluent grasp on the language, Francis instantly feels at home.
Julia does not, and her feelings of vulnerability are compounded by her trouble communicating, the news reports of a serial killer, her husband’s late nights at the office…and the man in the window across the street (the effortlessly creepy Burn Gorman) who is constantly watching her.
And as soon as Julia makes accusations, the games begin.
Is the watcher really a threat? Is he stalking Julia, or is she the one who’s following him?
None of these beats are new, and as events escalate, others are pretty clearly telegraphed. But it’s the way Okuno (who helmed the impressive “Storm Drain” segment from V/H/S/94) slowly twists the gaslighting knife that makes the film’s hair-raising chills resonate.
She finds a perfect conduit in Monroe, who emits an effectively fragile resolve. The absence of subtitles helps us relate to Julia immediately, and Monroe never squanders that sympathy, grounding the film at even the most questionably formulaic moments.
Even as Julia pleads to be believed, the mounting indignities create a subtle yet unmistakable nod to a culture that expects women to ignore their better judgment for the sake of being polite.
And from the friendly bystander who jokes about the creeper’s “crush” to Francis’s weak-willed humoring, Okuno envelopes Julia in male gazes that carry threats of varying degrees, all building to a bloody and damn satisfying crescendo.
Grade: B+
Benediction
At Gateway Film Center
by Christie Robb
A languid, disjointed film about British WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon, Terence Davies’ Benediction sets the stage for several exquisite recitations of Sassoon’s poetry.
And the poetry is really the star of the show.
This isn’t to say that Sassoon’s life is boring and without conflict. Not at all. As a lieutenant fighting in France, Sassoon was horrified by trench warfare, and the tone of his poetry shifted from romantic and patriotic to a gritty depiction of rotting corpses, suicide, and a growing sense of futility amidst the mud and gas attacks.
He was awarded the Military Cross for “conspicuous gallantry” and then wrote a letter to his commanding officer (forwarded to the press and House of Commons) refusing to return to active service, condemning the motives of an unjust war. Instead of being shot for treason, he was sent to a Scottish war hospital to recover from “shell shock.”
After the war, he had several love affairs with men (writers, actors, and aristocrats). He married a woman, had a son, converted to Catholicism and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Writer/Director Davies doesn’t give the story of Sassoon a clear focus/narrative arc. It bounces back and forth in time, setting the few jewel-like moments in which the poems are performed among a series of vignettes from the author’s life. In these, he searches for authenticity and connection in a fractured world. Sometimes we wander about through tasteful interiors while people in sumptuous clothing shout about relationships that aren’t completely explained. Occasionally this is intercut with archival footage from WWI.
This experimentation in form and use of stream-of-consciousness is a technique employed by literature in the period after the Great War. It allows us to experience Sassoon’s longing and disappointment as he tries to find meaning and salvation in political action, relationships, family, and religious devotion—all of which fail him.
Both the actors playing Sassoon, Jack Lowden (young) and Peter Capaldi (old), give heroic, emotionally vulnerable performances. My only real criticism here is that there isn’t enough of a throughline connecting Lowden’s open-hearted optimism (even post-war and post-breakup) to Capaldi’s cantankerous hatred of all things modern.
Lowden does such a good job of keeping Sassoon’s emotional self locked behind a façade of genteel wit and English manners that, in the scenes from his later life depicted by Capaldi, the Sassoons seem like two completely different people.
Still, the fragmented structure of the film and the character does a superb job of depicting the trauma sustained by a generation who experienced the unprecedented horrors of what was supposed to be the War to End All Wars.
Grade: A
Unhuman
On VOD
by Hope Madden
No one ever said high school was easy.
Since the day Hollywood realized that teens spent a lot of money on movies, films have depicted high school angst. Often enough those movies offer suggestions, simple enough remedies to the woes inside those hallowed halls.
A makeover, perhaps? Saturday detention? Karate lessons?
Director Marcus Dunstan’s darkly comedic Unhuman thinks maybe an apocalyptic field trip could do the trick.
A high school science class and one teacher who’s no better than the worst of the teens set off on an extra-credit adventure. And before you know it, you’re eyeball deep in a zombie flick, redneck menace film and John Hughes movie all rolled into one.
Briannae Tju (TV’s I Know What You Did Last Summer) plays Ever, who keeps her head down, her mouth shut and tries not to make waves. She and bestie Tamra (Ali Gallo) are having a moment—it’s that moment when the cool kids want only one of you for their clique and you pretend you aren’t both aware of it.
But suddenly, after a bus crash, scary radio broadcast and a throat-biting murderous attack, Ever and Tamra must team up with those cool kids and whoever else escaped the bus to survive the field trip.
Expect more than you bargain for, including solid performances from Tju, Gallo, Benjamin Wadsworth and a busload of actors finding ways to color outside the lines.
This is the same writing team that launched into the horror scene with Project Greenlight winner Feast. Unhuman shares an irreverent tone with that early work.
Dunstan, co-writing with longtime partner Patrick Melton, sees a darling simplicity in old-school teen movies. At one point, Randall (Wadsworth) tells us, “It’s a microcosm for life. High school doesn’t end. It spreads.”
The filmmakers sell that kind of ’80s influence well, but don’t assume Melton and Dunstan buy it.
There’s real cynicism lying under the viscera, although the surface-level laughs and shocks help Unhuman masquerade as simple bloody levity.
Grade: B+
Maika: The Girl from Another Galaxy
On VOD
by Tori Hanes
Mourning the recent loss of his mother, young Hang (Truong Phu) is tasked with helping the recently crash-landed alien Maika (Chu Diep Anh) in her search for her lost extraterrestrial comrade. Director Ham Tran drives the classic setup through otherworldly twists while still steering delicately toward a grounded yet humor-filled reality.
Maika has one thing pulsing through its veins that bleeds into every aspect: heart. A big, family-friendly, overly sentimental, beating heart.
The film finds beauty in its earnestness but the sincerity can become suffocating, specifically within the first thirty minutes. Hung’s mother has passed away, his best friend is forced to move, his father’s business is failing, his neighborhood is being poached by gentrifiers… you may feel beaten over the head with a lead pipe of ethos.
So, when Maika is introduced and the E.T.-esque romp of intergalactic friendship begins, the audience is relieved. We have suffered sufficiently.
Once the film is able to find its balance, a fun-loving tale ensues. Billionaire bad guys, sleazy goons, alien technology – it seems obvious that Tran was inspired by the glory days of ’80s children’s adventures.
With this, a unique aspect of what immortalized the Goonies/Gremlins/E.T. generation reveals itself – a willingness to explore with a young audience. This interest in pressing uncomfortable, interesting, and sometimes frightening topics gives children the permission to safely authenticate these emotions and ideas. That is where Maika succeeds.
Unfortunately, much like its ’80s counterparts, Maika meanders. At an hour and 47-minute runtime, the plot drags before picking up breakneck momentum, only to rein itself back to a turtle’s pace. It’s hard to not feel some form of whiplash. Still, the story ultimately succeeds in retaining and respecting the audience’s attention.
At surface level, Maika aims to please. And ultimately, it does just that. But it also wants to feel, to hurt, to explore, and to breathe… and the invitation it extends to the audience to participate is what sets Maika apart.
Grade: B+
Wolf Hound
On VOD
by Rachel Willis
Three American fighter jets are shot down in France by Nazi pilots flying British Royal Air Force planes. One pilot, Captain David Holden (James Maslow) sets off on a mission to save his fellow soldiers.
Director Michael B. Chait, working from a screenplay by Timothy Ritchey, starts with an interesting hook, but fails to hit the right mood with WWII action-adventure, Wolf Hound.
The most exciting and tense moment of the film happens right in the beginning, as our American heroes face off in the air against the Nazis. Amazing stunt work and great visual effects set up a promising film. Unfortunately, the air battle gives way to a one-man rescue mission à la Rambo.
Captain Holden’s foil comes in the form of Nazi Captain Rolf Werner (Michael Wayne Foster). Each pilot has a vendetta against the other, but where Werner is obsessed with Holden, the American is focused on the rescue.
Films sometimes fail to strike the right tone, and that’s the case with Wolf Hound. At times, the movie wants to tackle serious subject matter, but it often embraces high action-adventure. The score emphasizes tension in one moment, then shifts rapidly to melodrama. It leaves you wondering whether to laugh or scoff. A particularly strange scene that sets torture to the sounds of a recorder had me doing both.
Lending to the high-adventure feel is the stereotypical characterization of Nazis. These soldiers are villains, with no shades of grey, no sense of camaraderie, and no qualms about their many war crimes. One even uses his fellow soldier as a shield during a shootout. Villainous, indeed. But also pretty dull with nothing to distinguish one from another.
Much of the action is admittedly exciting, which distracts from the recycled story elements. With little downtime between action sequences, the film moves, even with a runtime of over two hours.
If Chait had managed to strike a better balance or had fully embraced the adventurous elements, Wolf Hound might have been more compelling. Instead, it’s an uneven mix that relegates the one component that sets it apart to little more than a gimmick.
Grade: C-
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