30 October 2024

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Guest Podcast!

 

My horror reputation knows no bounds as I was once again back on the Making Tarantino Podcast to discuss Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and all things Hammer Frankenstein! 



Thank you for listening! You can keep track of my audio/visual guest appearances with our Podcast and Video labels or hear us regularly on the Women InSession Podcast at InSessionFilm.com.


Read and Hear More:


House of Dark Shadows Guest Podcast

Our Top Ten Frankensteins

Draculas vs Frankensteins




28 October 2024

Guy Pearce Horror Movies Video Review

 

Those who follow my Twitter account @ThereforeReview know that I am neck deep in perusing through a Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch! In the spirit of the Halloween Season, here's a video review of Guy Pearce's Horror Films.



Thank you for watching! See, Hear, and Read More:


Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch 

Underrated Guy Pearce Movies Women InSession Podcast 

Sunrise

Ravenous

The Convert Video Review


27 October 2024

Halloween Horror TV – Jay Days Video Review! 🎃

 

Despite technical difficulties that prevented us from going live to interact with viewers, I was a guest once again on The Jay Days YouTube Channel with Jaylan Salah! This time, in full spirit of the Halloween Season, we dressed up in some bemusing costumes and talked about or favorite Horror television shows. Watch now for your Halloween viewing recs and feel free to comment on our costumes. Thank you for watching!



You can keep track of my audio/visual guest appearances with our Podcast and Video labels or hear us regularly on the Women InSession Podcast at InSessionFilm.com. Read my Horror Television reviews on Dracula, Dark Shadows, and more also at Keith Loves Movies. Peruse our episode by episode long reads:


Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Tales from the Crypt

Friday the 13th: The Series

Tales from the Darkside

Dark Shadows


View more Jay Days Video Reviews:


Jack Irish

Bound

The Convert

Desert Hearts & When We Rise


22 October 2024

Revisionist Almanac Let's Get Spooky Podcast Collab!

 

It was such a pleasure being asked by @AndrewCorns13 to take part in The Revisionist Almanac Podcast's Let's Get Spooky Project! My thoughts on my favorite horror films and a few more intriguing scary movie questions are included alongside several other podcasters. Listen now @RevAlmanac!



Also stay tuned for more 2025 spots at The Revisionist Almanac! You can keep track of my audio/visual guest appearances with our Podcast and Video labels and browse previous collabs:


Women InSession Podcast

Bedtime Stories Guest Podcast

House of Dark Shadows Guest Podcast



21 October 2024

Just Vamps 2024! 🧛🏻‍♀️

 

Retro Just Vamps 2024!

by Kristin Battestella


It's been awhile since I did some dedicated vampire viewing! Here's a trio of toothy throwbacks varying in their vampire success.


Pale Blood – It's 1990 and our thoroughly modern vampire traveling with a fold-out portable coffin hires a Los Angeles detective agency to solve a series of gruesome copycat crimes in this Hong Kong direct to video production that shows it's age with a flat print, poor sound, and far too many hustle and bustle traffic transitions. Voiceovers that won't make sense until the end, airport minutia, anonymous driving, logistical exposition, and then more driving make for a very slow start. Punk music at the club is edgy with tense, electronic seedy to set the mood, but the music montage vignettes serve no purpose – save for a nonchalant Sybil Danning (The Howling II) as a blink and you miss her pedestrian. Berets, brooches, boxy coats, vintage cars, and a mod vampire condo provide cool nostalgia while blue nighttime lighting, red spotlights, and neon signs pepper steamy scenes. Sensationalist news crews report on the dead body at the boutique, but our ingenue detective has Nosferatu clips and knows all the vampire lore. The clever deduction is well done with debates on the puncture marks and questions why a vampire wouldn't just take enough blood rather than unnecessarily kill. Where does the blood go if he's not drinking it? What do you do if the killer is a vampire and you actually catch him? Our cruising vampire needs no pick up lines – getting right to the strobe in the bedroom, colorful pink titillation, bitten boobs, and overhead revelry. Shadows and silhouettes accent violent flashes of the bloody crimes as the splatter and psychic visions escalate. Everyone in the club watching who might be the vampire when they each have a different piece of the puzzle creates tension. The enthralled dame loves his hypnotic eyes, but he doesn't want her to fall in love with him and uses an eerie echoing voice to make her forget him. However, our photographer repeatedly demands his models touch an egg during a suggestive shoot, luring hookers who need the money into sessions they don't want to do. Toxic masculinity abounds as the women are bitten, manhandled, and harassed before being strapped to the table with bloody tubes, sinks, and drains. Locked up vampires able to poof out and levitate make little sense before a one on one fight hampered by obvious cut corners filming. The style grows stagnant in last half hour with dated cheapness, and the silly twists run out of steam. Fortunately, the revelations are surprisingly smart with a bemusing finale comeuppance. This is an entertaining midnight movie – for the erroneous hokey as well as for the ambiance it gets right.


The Reflecting Skin – Viggo Mortensen contends with a would-be vampire in rural 1950s America for this 1990 British/Canadian co-production from writer and director Philip Ridley (also of The Passion of Darkly Noon with Mortensen). However the lovely golden fields and patriotic flag waving aren't what they seem thanks to the bittersweet score, youths tormenting frogs, and bloody pranks against kooky widow Lindsay Duncan (Rome). Unique, innocent names like Dolphin Blue and Seth Dove contrast debates on killing reptiles and if the dead are angels in heaven or in a coffin being eaten by worms. Seth's father reads a book about vampires that suck the life out of you while his mother obsessively cleans in hope that soldier son Viggo's return will make their downtrodden life better. She also makes Seth drink too much water until he pees his pants, and metaphors about drinking blood, dehydration, and thirst accent the creepy farmhouse with old whaling artifacts. It's actually funny how our imaginative boy with nothing to do jumps to the conclusion that the widow is a vampire. She gives Seth a freaky old harpoon and recounts how her husband hung himself and took all the sunshine out of her life. Of course, from a child's perspective, grief making a woman feel 200 years old is taken literally rather than as sad and lonely. When another youth goes missing, the hysterical blame scapegoats and social outcasts as the repressed isolation is passed between weird twins and screaming kids. The cartoonish sheriff advertises our dad's gay encounters because surely he must be the pervert responsible for the dead body in the well, and mom slaps her husband around for having to live down his gossip. Serving was the only way for Viggo's Cameron to get away from the fiery destruction and shrewdly layered symbolism on the repression about to burst, and he doesn't appear until forty minutes into the film. Their home is ugly and smaller now and he admonishes young Seth that he is not a hero thanks to his guilt over the atom bomb. Upon discovering a calcified dead fetus, Seth talks to it and keeps it under his bed like a doll. It's both silly and worrisome when he makes a cross and spies on his brother, not understanding the sadness at the cemetery nor his intrusion upon Cameron's flirting with Dolphin. Seth's lack of comprehension grows while his empathy diminishes; he mistakes Cameron's radiation symptoms as the vampire's doing when the naked man lies as the babe in her arms. Disturbing abductions and lies happen in the picturesque daylight, and there's no one to blame but ourselves once mentally unstable youth become little monsters filled with secrets and sin. Once his brother intends to leave with his lady love, Seth won't be left behind with his dead baby doll. He makes a demented choice to perpetuate violence as the sun sets on his innocence. Obviously this is not a true horror piece, however this dark social commentary still speaks on today's horrors of war that we pretend don't exist. This is an excellent, ahead of its time vampire as mirror to nature metaphor analyzing fear and fanatics. One bereaved mother asks what's killing our children but we are – and that's the real horror.


Skip Unless You Want to Laugh


Dracula's Guest – This low budget 2008 direct-to-video production is very loosely based on Bram Stoker's titular short story, and the amateur acting and bad accents compound the overly wordy, trying to sound ye old script. The in media res opening also has Elizabeth Murray telling her betrothed Bram Stoker that Dracula has raped her with the seed of his beast, giving away the violence, death, and family secrets before going back six months earlier for time-wasting fencing and BFF sparring. Coastal photography, spooky crescendos, and tolling bells herald Dracula's realty request for a rental with high walls and no windows. However his constant scowl is... a choice...., and the men bending over backward for his commission are humorous alongside proper Victorian fathers tut tutting at an arm around the shoulder as practically fornicating in public. Admiral Murray demands Elizabeth and Bram wait a year to marry, so she runs away to be captured by Dracula. The talking back dialogue is too modern yet naive, and cutting away from danger for men talking about what they are going to do about it again wastes time whilst also hampering any attempt at patriarchal commentary. Simple sets, low budget necessities, and minimal effects are fine; but it's a disjointed hop, nonsensical skip, and instantaneous jump to Transylvania as convenient. Rather than staying with the candlelight menace, we cut away again to lovelorn Bram taking scenic strolls when his hackney old landlady does her best Una O'Connor impression. Such unnecessary elements short change the story with unintentional laughter on top of the erroneous attempt to make the rapaciousness romantic as if this were Meatloaf's “I Would Do Anything for Love.” Despite being in a dungeon with only a mattress and her corset, Elizabeth never realizes her peril. She cries out for Bram – who's being chased by French peasants through Germany on Walpurgisnacht – and that's actually the only segment from the Stoker source. Unfortunately, the poor pacing, weak writing, and character stupidity play like a parody of Billy Crystal and Carol Kane in The Princess Bride. The entire opening scene repeats in the final twenty minutes, and despite some attempted eerie sequences, there are no really scary scenes. Action hero Bram dangles on the castle ledge, putting up his fists and vowing to defeat Dracula with his Notre Dame logo looking self before the Admiral's sword fight with Dracula makes room for a bad quip between every thrust and parry. Our Big Man Vampire is easily defeated with little point to Elizabeth being pregnant and immortal with her own supposed magical abilities. If this wasn't going to be a self-aware comedy, then it should have stuck more faithfully to Stoker's story. Although this isn't a waste of time if you can laugh, it can't be taken seriously, either.



14 October 2024

LGBTQ Double Review Video – Desert Hearts & When We Rise

 

We're back on The Jay Days YouTube Channel with @jaylan_salah! This video review is a 2 for 1 special request aired in honor of International Lesbian Day. Jaylan and I chat about the 1985 lesbian drama Desert Hearts as well as the 2017 AIDS miniseries When We Rise.



I'm so grateful for review requests asking for our film and television opinions, and it's superb to be a rainbow ally directing more viewers to diverse, touching, and informative LGBTQI programming you may have missed. Thank you for this special platform, Jaylan!


You can keep track of my audio/visual guest appearances with our Podcast and Video labels or view more Jay Days Reviews:

Jack Irish

Bound

The Convert


Stay tuned for more!


11 October 2024

Lone Screenplay Nominee Guest Podcast!

 


It was such a pleasure to be invited by Matthew to chat on The Lone Screenplay Nominee podcast! We talked about Stand By Me and why Adapted Screenplay was it's only Oscar nomination. Follow @TLSNpodcast for our episode.



I hope you enjoy our chat. Thank you Matthew!


You can also ready my Stand By Me review at InSessionFilm.com and hear my Women InSession chat with @jaylan_salah on River Phoenix. Stay tuned for more guest podcasts and video appearances! Here are a few more recent collaborations:


Jack Irish Video Review

Bedtime Stories Guest Podcast

House of Dark Shadows Guest Podcast



05 October 2024

Guy Pearce Re-Watch: Hidden Gems

 

Hidden Gems of the Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch! 💎



Those who follow my Twitter account @ThereforeReview know that I have spent these pandemic years perusing through a Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch. I retreated to this happy place because Pearce can always be depended upon to turn in a great performance in often exceptional films. 

This countdown's order is more arbitrary, as it's worth seeking all of these hidden gems for their film quality and variety of Pearce performances. Though capable of breaking the internet from time to time, Guy Pearce is not the marquee actor cast to put butts in the cinema seats. Fortunately, he is the go-to actor for quiet gravitas as seen in the unique pieces here. 


Please click through to previously written reviews and videos at I Think, Therefore I Review, InSession Film or with the Women InSession Podcast and Keith Loves Movies for more in depth analysis along with these quick commentaries and countdowns.




9. The Hard Word Crooked lawyers and corrupt cops facilitate heists carried out by conveniently release jailbird brothers in crime in this 2002 Australian who's who including Joel Edgerton (It Comes at Night) and Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under). It's tough to tell if this is about the crime or the comedy with turnabout circumstances, zany personalities, and backward Butcher Talk code suggesting humor while the dramatic prison visitations are very well done. Reflections on each side of the dividing glass accent the confrontations over who's screwing whom, and the camera accents the cleverness and crime realizations in the second half. Pearce is at times unrecognizable thanks to a bad fake nose that doesn't really move with his expressions. However his smart brother Dale slips into each disguise as needed. Though thematically uneven and not as taut as it should be with convoluted betrayals and unnecessary bad guys, literal runs with the loot and quirky characterizations keep this a bemusing late night heist. 


8. Dating the Enemy – The dated fashions, peppy ear worms, Valentine's Day cliches, and corny humor of this 1996 Australian body swap comedy starring Claudia Karvan and Guy Pearce takes me back to simpler times. Certainly part of me wishes there was more depth to the battle of the sexes explorations beyond his not being able to understand pantyhose and her zipper mishaps – women's locker room secrets and sleeping with your disappointing male best friend were ripe for more humor and sophistication. Likewise I also think our opposites attract exes should have switched back thanks to the unexplained wishes and moon magic and not because they had fulfilling sex while in each other's bodies. Learning what the other person wants and needs in a relationship and knowing how to give of yourself mind and body should have happened after they swapped back. Compared to American sex comedies the discourse is tame, played for all audiences without nudity or raunchy, shallow titillation. Our man realizes it sucks to be a woman not taken seriously who can't eat pizza every day while she has to do both their jobs. Fun performances anchor the preposterous mystic versus science of it all with walks, postures, and mannerisms reflecting the mind inside the wrong body voiceovers. The audience is along for the romantic ride, and I miss this kind of lighthearted, fanciful, charming little picture.


7. 33 Postcards – This 2011 international production also featuring social worker Claudia Karvan chronicles soon to be paroled inmate Pearce and his secret sponsorship of an orphaned Chinese teenager. Though naive and isolated from the real world for her age, young Lin Zhu (The Demon Hunter) runs away from her traveling choir to find her sponsor, getting in over her head in the Sydney chop shop scene. Some viewers may be bothered by the dated musical moments, dual languages, cultural mix ups, and slightly amateur English but our Mei Mei has a certain fearlessness – unafraid to ask for help whether people are friendly with the map or potentially taking advantage of her. Her positive outlook rubs off on others as the initial pen pal awkwardness gives way to making up for time served and loners realizing they don't have to be alone. Despite writing fanciful postcards filled with beachy Down Under fun, Pearce's inmate is actually pale, pasty, shaky, and squirrely small. He remains hunched with his hands in his pockets, fearful of re-entering the outside world after his ten year sentence. Immigration visas, bad relations, and parole red tape interfere as our would be father and daughter try to take care of each other, and tense prisoner harassment escalates to shower perils, shank chases, and children in danger. You know today a Hollywood version would be dark, scandalous, and cliché; however the youthful, personal moments here make for a simple, endearing little picture about finding your own family and making your own music. 


6. Hateship Loveship – Jennifer Jason Leigh (Possessor), Christine Lahti (Chicago Hope), and Nick Nolte (Cape Fear) are underutilized in this disjointed 2013 drama based on Alice Munro's short story. The slow paced plain and realistic bare mirroring the too old to be putting on makeup for the first time wallflower Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) may be boring and naive for some viewers. Fortunately, attention to detail in character clothing, cigarettes, and shabby motels sets off the misunderstandings as Guy Pearce becomes the erroneous, not so put together object of our shy housekeeper's affection thanks to a sneaky letter writing campaign by his daughter Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and her snotty friend who doesn't get the comeuppance she deserves. Well timed country music lyrics accent the foolishness and elbow grease as the down and out, who's taking advantage of whom realizations come to light. Wigg is subdued in a strong dramatic turn – humbly anchoring the broken people and second chances. Today's audience may balk at her runaway devotion, but Joanna makes the best of the fix despite her sheltered honesty, his flaws, fatal pasts, and drug abuse. Pearce is grizzled, shaggy, and sickly, having served for his mistakes but continuing to use, steal, and lie. People can't change immediately, but this late bloomer starting over romance could be the positive healing they need. Our hard working gal has her own money and takes action to achieve what she wants in this lovely little piece for fans of the cast.




5. In Her Skin Lovely landscapes, dancing, and original songs contrast dark skies, empty trams, and every parent's worst fear in this 2009 Australian true story starring Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings), Guy Pearce, and Sam Neill (Dead Calm). A daughter hasn't returned home, and the number of days since the disappearance anchors episodic acts focusing on the parents, killer, and victim. Blasé officials see these cases everyday, but emotions are high for the family facing this awful new experience with frantic phone calls, television pleas, sobs, and swoons. Sensuality, nudity, love, and sex are also shown in different dynamics – the young bloom, ugly body dysmorphia, tenderness between couples, and brutally suggestive strangulation. Panning camera work, demented voiceovers, fantasy-esque flashbacks, and windswept distortions are spooky and slightly off kilter, getting viewers inside our killer's state of mind alongside disturbing letters, violent artwork, bullying, and a devious sense of empowerment with Electra undertones from the award-worthy Ruth Bradley (Humans). Today it's difficult for us to believe no one noticed or provided mental health intervention, but the performances carry the uncomfortable grief and realistically stilted shock in this intriguing psychological drama.


4. First Snow – Subdued psychic J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) warns sleazy salesman Guy Pearce he's on borrowed time in this 2006 parable waxing on fate versus destiny and self- fulfilling prophecy. Eerie, intense palm readings provide sports scores, highway warnings, and the titular ticking clock. Threatening phone calls, EKG check ups, amateur investigations, and screwed over business deals pepper angel on the shoulder girlfriend Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) versus paroled Shea Whigham (Kong: Skull Island) coming back to haunt our smooth talker. Dialogue and sounds often bleed into the next scene, and moments are intercut with flash forwards or past memories, visually mirroring the predestined plots. Low on the highway angles, rear view mirrors, up close windshields, choice zooms, and headlights match the rushed, coming and going, hitting the pavement metaphors while answering machine harassment, mail box threats, and gunshots build intensity. This is a bright picture with desert vistas, whiteouts, and spotlights, and our Jimmy often hides behind his sunglasses. He's said to have the gift of bullshit – smoking, slicking his hair, and mocking the ill-fated prediction before getting in over his head thanks to past mistakes, current paranoia, and increasing, gun toting isolation. Jimmy's appearance doesn't change, but this is a great character arc from Pearce, and his countenance is altered. His smile and wink become genuine as he mends fences, pays his bar tab, and faces his fate. However, putting things right becomes dangerous, escalating even as we know the full circle outcome of this taut character study.


3. Lorne – It's quite unsettling as the grizzled Guy Pearce sits across the campfire and looks directly into the camera for this 2016 fifteen minute, one man short from director Jesse Leaman (Mad Martha). He asks questions of us, his apparent visitor, for he's used to being alone, sullen, and with his rifle at the ready. His shabby hat and raspy breath indicate the cold desolate while gunshots punctuate the wilderness, and it's clear our forlorn, titular woodsman has been alone too long. Overhead angles show how small he is in the vastness, yet up close shots of Lorne's hands, face, mucky teeth, and dirty nails are uncomfortably intimate. Lorne's paranoid by our stare, wondering what his reflection looks like after this year of on edge isolation, and we don't want to go further into the dark forest with him. He curses and shouts into the void, apprehensive but prepared in the bush with tools and supplies – ready to die over something meaningful but not get killed in the wilds for nothing. He wonders if he's dead already, but the camera glances at his rifle as he talks about his father admiring its craftsmanship more than the dangers. Lorne misses his family and imagines they are there with tearful, introspective regret – realizing that there is only one thing left to do. Although I would have liked to have seen the rest of this story in full form, for fans of taut short films, this is a must see show reel of what Guy Pearce can do with nothing but the emotion on his face.


2. Spinning ManForeboding flashes, yellow tape, and photos of the deceased open this 2018 thriller starring Professor Pearce, detective Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye), and wife Minnie Driver (Phantom of the Opera). The professors debate hypothetical opportunities with young students, but working out while the cheerleaders look leads to crushes, stolen glances, and unspoken flirtations as the camera lingers on a girl's smile longer than it should. Professor Pearce is cool about his alibi, yet other times he protests the police questioning for no reason. Paralleling police mirrors or the man made small and isolated in the frame visuals accent interrogations while careful editing matches the police interplay and family arguments. Classroom philosophizing and literal versus figurative plays on words build suspicion, for it's easy to talk one's way out of anything if the truth is subjective. Suspect lipstick and circumstantial evidence lead to awkward family trips, narcissistic blaming, and maybe maybe not memories. No one says what they actually mean and guilty perceptions create duality – for hiding suspect behavior may be as innocent as putting up missing posters for a child's pet you know to be dead or as bad as rationalizing a scandal that puts an entire university in jeopardy. This is a character drama rather than a tense a minute thriller with fine performances providing mature introspection as the lies come full circle.


1. Breathe In This 2013 drama from writer and director Drake Doremus (Equals) about a would be romance between teacher Guy Pearce and student Felicity Jones (reunited with Pearce for the newly acclaimed The Brutalist) is not played as some steamy, tawdry affair. Superb classical piano and cello music, natural lighting, and intimate camera angles are vivid and authentic – taking time for the telling notes, lingering looks, and increasing contradictory lies that do not go unnoticed. We should hate cookie jar collecting, controlling wife Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) as she quotes the negative logistics of her husband leaving a secure position for a city symphony chair. She always drives, often speaks for him, belittles his music as a loud hobby, and tells him no in front of others as if he's a teenager like their daughter. However, if Megan didn't smile, deflect, and hold fast to their seemingly idyllic home with scrapbooks and keeping up with the Jones barbecues; Keith's romanticizing of the struggling musician's life wouldn't buy their daughter a car. Young Sophie's Electra issues, on the other hand, are clear. She's brought her own copy of Jane Eyre and carries sheet music yet doesn't play now that her favorite uncle and musical mentor died. Her exchange semester in New York was a spur of the moment decision, and she immediately relates to Keith's despair in song. He drinks and smokes behind his wife's back, sitting on the empty swing set wondering what he has missed in life. Pearce's silent and still demeanor invokes a compelling melancholy– hiding a look of constant anywhere but here contemplation behind his glasses. The lid on the piano is closed no matter the emotional intimacy or sacrifices unsaid, and the painful glances are excellent alongside the shattered cookie jars and reckless teen angst. Nothing physical happens, but juvenile runaway plans lead to deception, cruelty, and consequences. Photo shoot bookends reveal how easy it is to feign happiness, and the superb performances carry the realistic relationships and bittersweet reflections. It's a pity this was released several months before Iron Man 3, for this is so little seen in comparison yet remains the better film.




30 September 2024

Recent Religious Horrors

 

Recent Religious Horror

by Kristin Battestella


This trio of 2020s frights takes on evil in several forms. However, some results are better than others are – ranging from decent to frustrating and downright bad viewing experiences.


Pretty Good


The First Omen – Sonia Braga (Kiss of the Spiderwoman), Bill Nighy (Underworld), and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) provide supporting gravitas in this 2024 prequel to The Omen co-written by debut director Arkasha Stevenson (Vessels). Tolling bells, scaffolding perils, and shattered glass begat shadowed confessions and whispers of unnatural conceptions. Black hoods, bound rituals, pregnancy, blood, and pleas to not be touched again make for a chilling start before the sunny arrival of our friendly American nun at the 1971 Roman orphanage. The old corridors look shabby with an amber, aged patina, and we wonder what goes on in this villa filled with women. These nuns smoke and giggle about the milkman, however union protests and youth counterculture that distrust church authority worry the Cardinal. Our novice recounts being a problem child herself, punished and subdued as a ward of the church for what was said to be an overactive imagination. She's reluctant to sneak out and hit the neon disco but soon gets into the dancing and sweaty kisses before regrets, kneeling, and prayers. Lookalike women, sisterhood suggestions, lesbian taboos, and repeated creepy hair fanning out upon the pillows foreshadow more while an excommunicated priest warns of evil things happening. Immolation, delirious weirdness, and monstrous nasty provide what we think we see in the dark fears amid eerie frescoes, hidden rooms, and disturbing offspring. Pregnancy is not a beautiful experience but gory with medical tools and horrible visions of demon hands and orifices. Backward chants and altars treat the Cesarean as ceremony – escalating to claws, growls, retching, convulsions, and baby cries. The elders claim this abomination is a miracle to save the church, however viewers will know what's what re mother and jackal before the ninety minute mark, and this didn't need to be two hours. Pointless arty shots and short cryptic scenes are disjointed while silly jump scares negate the more natural simmering horror mood. Swelling music calls attention to itself, heralding the spooky when the chorales should only be heard as diegetic and innate to the ritual vows. The revelations are overdone with repeated mark of the beast questions and Antichrist goals that don't make much sense when the sixth month, sixth hour, sixth day approaching should have driven the plot. Though very atmospheric and overall entertaining thanks to sudden, disturbing horrors; the last half hour drags on with fiery slow motion and but wait there's more too many endings. Instead of leading up to the picture of Gregory Peck and fin, this overstays its welcome by eking out room for The First Exorcism 2: Boogaloo.


Frustrating


The Harbinger Native American seer Irene Bedard (Smoke Signals) educates writer/director/producer/star Will Klipstine (The Evolution of Andrew Andrews) on saving his damned daughter in this devilish 2022 tale. Hangings, mysterious death relics, and burning in hell declarations lead to our on the go family refusing the psychologist's concerns. Sunny flashbacks of happier times are oddly intercut with a cliché driving montage and an ominous gas station stop before an annoying neighbor gives the newcomers the bigoted scoop on the nearby cursed reservation. Our daughter kills a frog and pushes children out of the tree house, but the something evil afoot parental arguments are too on the nose – forcing the sinister amid disjointed scenes that don't happen organically. Viewers wonder what's on purpose, deflection, or padding as more caricature neighbors come and go. Little miss creepy is unwelcome at the reservation, but our seer both says there is no hope for such evil yet there is something they can do. Although not stereotypically portrayed, there also simply aren't enough Native American motifs. Mystical explanations devolve into magical gobbledygook about quests, blessed daggers, and sacred stones. Repetitive scenes with redundant exposition get preposterous as everyone tells but no one actually does anything. Our father finally admits the devil has his daughter's soul, and his having been a single parent would have been much more interesting. The best moments here are between dad and daughter with her asking if he remembers what she was really like and his carrying her to bed as always. One scene with our wife going to confession and the priest kicking her out goes nowhere thanks to demonic reflections, spooky whispers, dreams, and sepia speakeasy specters negating the too few and far between emotional family moments. Continued happy flashbacks don't create emotion, just delay the current inaction as our passive family makes no progress. The Mrs. hardly interacts with her daughter unless it's to be whooshed around the kitchen, complaining her husband needs to do more rather than being proactive herself. Likewise, our seer tells of colonial curses and sacrifices in the town crypt but she's not actively involved in any ritual to prevent the collecting of souls. Dead animals accumulate and demons attack the bed as more deaths and comeuppance are given after the fact. Police investigations again fall back on flashbacks – repeating the deals with the devil and harbinger exposition twice more with who's actually in on appeasing the devil. Their faith in God and any Catholicism are a non-factor but convenient cemetery maps and prohibition tunnels provide action contrivances, convenient angels, and gangster ghosts. The horn and hoof red devil begats back and forth flying daggers stabbing people like it's “Who's on First” – the effects aren't terrible but the finale descends into unnecessary twists and obvious self-sacrifice. Diablo ex machina reincarnation and more historical exposition thrown at the screen become terribly frustrating, silly, and overlong. Though watchable if you accept this is a flawed production that had potential, this should have been a taut, streamlined ninety minutes.


Skip It


The Exorcism of God – I want to appreciate the Mexican setting, Spanish flavor, and Catholic mood of this 2021 parable, but my gosh if this isn't pieces of every other exorcism movie put together. I laughed in the first five minutes over the Exorcist knockoffs and ridiculously sexual opening exorcism – predicting it was a prologue that would to jump to a new many years later focus. Even priests named Michael and Peter are derivative of the maligned The Seventh Day, and it was very easy to zone out and half pay attention when not chuckling at the demon special effects. The earnest performances are so earnest they don't know they are in a horror movie. Sometimes that is good, most of the time it isn't. Every set piece scare is also for the audience – negating any of the priestly conflicts with repeated, increasingly hammy sexual possession shocks. This setting deserved a much better script, and Saban should really stick to Power Rangers instead of trying to make horror movies. How could a studio/distributor release forty-five films in 2022? Even if that was somehow pandemic backlog, terrible movies like this result in such littered streaming. More important than the assembly line industry, however, is the downright offensive, trying to be shocking, scandalous possession and sex ploys toward church abuse victims. A priest claiming a demon made him molest young women in his care is your plot? Who thought rape jokes were a good idea?