I’ve been thinking on this film for a few days and wondering why it didn’t quite connect with me.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of WWII films, to be fair. Not because of the time period or the events. But because too often filmmakers use the setting to say something very important about war, life, or whatever, and trip all over themselves doing it. Which I get. We’re talking about a period that shaped the modern world today. It just too often reeks of tryhard. It becomes more of a vanity project for the director than a portrait of a history. Oppenheimer is a good example. So loud and bombastic just to dramatize a handful of guys in a dusty lab drawing on chalkboards. Inglorious Basterds was kind of obnoxious. Saving Private Ryan was decent, overall.
No, I mostly enjoyed The Great Escape. It’s a good film. It could have been great. But for some reason the film felt at odds with itself, and I think the main reason is the inclusion of the Steve McQueen character, Hilts, or “The Cooler King.” Now, I’ve not read the source novel, but apparently Hilts was added for the movie. Likely studios didn’t want to finance the picture unless they could insert an A-List American star like McQueen. But this editorial decision did a disservice to the story, as the Richard Attenborough character, Bartlett, or “Big X,” should have been the primary character. He’s the one driving the plot. He’s the one who concocts the whole tunneling and escape system. He’s wanted by the SS. I wanted to know more about his background and his character. He was like James Bond. Instead, he gets sidelined so we can get glamour shots of McQueen and his antics that get him stuck in the cooler.
Hilts was portrayed rather sterotypically all-American, too. Aloof, cool, daring, and, of course, a huge baseball fan.
This is what I mean when I say too often studios use WWII as a vehicle to show off rather than to tell a good story. A particularly egregious thing to do when it’s based on a true story, such as The Great Escape.
There were some tonal mismatches, too. At times it almost felt like I was watching a sitcom rather than a war drama. I’m a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H, so I know you can balance hijinks with solemnity. I also love films like Full Metal Jacket, which is rife with dark humor and outrageousness while still sticking to its theme of dehumanization. But then at the end you have a 50-man massacre when the Nazis mow down all of Big X’s guys, including Big himself, after they’ve recaptured them, and then frame them as attempted escapees.
I guess I went into the film expecting a tone more similar to Clint Eastwood’s classic Escape from Alcatraz than something closer to The Andy Griffith Show. Might have just been the audience sensibilities at the time. Escape was released not even 20 years after the war ended. It was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and many viewers were likely veterans themselves.
The tunneling sequences were well done. I’m a huge enjoyer of technical briefing and planning scenes, which are requisite in heist or prison escape films, no matter how “boring” they may be. Such as the one in Rififi when they test out stopping the alarm system.
Overall, The Great Escape was a worthwhile watch. But it’s a good example of how sometimes unnecessarily adding a character can detract from a story, even if it makes good business sense.
This film was at threat of becoming a discarded “air conditioning movie,” but I’m glad I stuck with it. I started watching this over a year ago on Prime, gave up on it around the first act, then finally returned to it last night to finish.
I do that a lot. I just did it to Soylent Green, in fact. Some movies, however “good” they are, just fail to grab me, and I put them off. It might be the result of simply getting older. I used to plop down in front of anything and let my eyes get glazed over. Now I’m like a mid-30s professional cat lady on a date–“I just didn’t feel that spark, that tingle. I need to really feel a connection.”
Right, we’ll just ignore the hundred dates you’ve gone on over the past year that make feeling a spark about as likely as igniting a soaking wet match.
Anyway, what is Saint Maud about? This horror/drama centers on a young nurse named Katie who becomes an increasingly obsessive religious fanatic after losing a patient under her care, and is determined to save the terminal woman she’s currently assigned from damnation. It’s really a psychological portrait of mental illness. A deeply unsettling slow burn one, too. It reminded me a little of Don’t Look Now, the 1973 horror starring Donald Sutherland, which really takes its time before delivering one hell of a final stinger. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is another similar film, which is definitely one worth checking out.
Saint Maud has a pretty good last minute stinger, too. Maybe not as amazing as some claim online. But pretty good. I won’t spoil it here. But if you like waiting 90 minutes just to see if a flick’s final image makes it all worth your time, Saint Maud has got your back.
Aside from the last second bitch smack, this flick does a very good job of depicting loneliness and isolation, which are often the twin demons that lead to mental breakdown. Just ask Jack Torrance. There are some good creepy moments throughout. But you have to be patient for them. Frustrating, yes. But you need a Saint Maud once in a while to counter the roller coaster popcorn horror flicks like The Conjuring.
Saint Maud was worth it in the end, even after taking a one-year long sabbatical from my initial watch.
At least now I know where Tarantino borrowed (or stole) that famous line from in Pulp Fiction.
“I’m gonna call a couple of hard, pipe-hitting niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”
Such a cold ass line from L.A. mob boss Marsellus Wallace. But it originally comes from the the 1973 crime thriller Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau, based on the book The Looters by John H. Reese.
“They’ll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”
Like they say, “good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Varrick is a largely forgotten crime flick about a New Mexico crop duster (named Charley Varrick) who stages a daring bank robbery, only to discover he’s stolen mob money. Lots of it. About $750,000, or over $5 million in today’s dollars. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of a mob hitman, who looks like Anton Chigurh’s older white cousin.
The famous line is said by the bank owner, who is fretting about how because his local bank got hit it makes him look like the one who planned an inside job. The mob doesn’t believe in coincidences.
It’s a fun, twisty film with a creative set piece pitting a crop duster plane against a car. It reminded me a lot of No Country for Old Men. You’ve got the stolen mob money. An unstoppable hitman sent to retrieve it. A trailer park. Set in the dusty southwest. And plenty of that dry, cynical wit you expect from the genre. I also see some of the DNA that later settled in Breaking Bad. Come to think of it, Charley Varrick might be the first movie I’ve ever seen set in Albuquerque. Such an overlooked area. Most movies/TV shows pick either Texas or Cali. Almost never in-between.
Charley Varrick also features the prolific John Vernon as the troubled bank manager fretting about mob retaliation. An actor who looks like if the ’70s were a person.
I finally caught Masters of the Universe, the newest He-Man film, on Amazon Prime. Which turned out to be mostly fun and engaging, but doesn’t quite land in the Franchise Zone that it was clearly aiming for.
And that may be for several reasons. One, the fantasy genre is tough as hell to break into. There are really only two major fantasy properties doing well in it–Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I don’t count MCU stuff as fantasy, even when it involves Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff. The genre is so tough to crack that MOTU sadly bombed at the B.O., similar to another recent fantasy flick based on an IP that was largely popular in the 80s: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Like Dungeons, MOTU follows the Guardians of the Galaxy formula practically to a T. A group of ragtag heroes led by a charismatic but clueless dude, band together to overcome a purple villain. There is a wisecracking robot, which reminded me of the other wisecracking robot from Rogue One. Even their designs are similar. There is the super badass warrior chick character in Teela to satisfy the feminist box check. You’ve got the mentor character in Man-at-Arms played by a somewhat wasted Idris Elba. I say wasted as I feel he was miscast in this. He’s a better actor than a lot of material he’s been in, like the umpteenth sequel to Fast and Furious and that weird Pacific Rim series. But he plays as a solid veteran overall.
Then, of course there’s He-Man himself, played by Nicholas Galatzine, though he goes by Adam for most of the movie until the very end. Galatzine does a pretty solid job portraying what has largely been a two-dimensional muscley avatar of goodness meant to just sell toys in the ’80s.
Now, I never watched He-Man much as a kid. It was one of the few classic cartoons of the era I missed out on, so the film couldn’t hook me with its nostalgia barbs. So, I could watch it with a more objective eye. Though I am a little familiar with He-Man’s mythology and such.
It’s hard to pinpoint why He-Man didn’t do so well at theaters. It might have been the fantasy thing. The overreliance on the Guardians formula thing. Or just the fact that it’s a nearly 45-year-old IP that really hasn’t been relevant since the Reagan Administration. The CGI and blue screen stuff was all done well for the most part. Nothing really standout.
No, I think He-Man did itself a disservice by not including a certain character–Orko, the hovering juvenile wizard thingy. As I recall from seeing bits of the cartoon, Orko is the pratfall-riddled comic relief. He’s the character meant for young kids to port themselves into the story. In the movie, he only appears at the very end, to deliver the “lesson of today’s episode” segment, as he often did in the cartoon. Seeing him, I was honestly baffled. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t in the story at all, and it struck me as a real missed opportunity. Mid-way through the film, the characters encounter a drunken and depressed Man-At-Arms character, which was obviously done to give him a redemptive arc. Something again I feel didn’t really work.
However, the characters should have encountered an imprisoned Orko instead. Then you could have had a sequence where He-Man has to motivate Orko to use his powers and help them escape. You would have set up Orko in the beginning as a young jesteresque wizard who always makes a fool of himself trying to perform magic, then arc him into a capable enough wizard who comes in clutch when needed. Orko has a fun personality, and the movie could have leaned more into the magical element of the world of Eternia. Orko would have also played very well in trailers for the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film lost tens of millions by not including a kid-friendly character like Orko, and featuring him prominently. I mean, if you’re an eight-year-old kid, would you rather spend your afternoon with Orko, or a drunken bum Man-At-Arms? I know which one eight-year-old me would have picked.
Another missed opportunity was not including more Cringer/Battle Cat. He’s a cute, lovable scaredycat. You never turn down the chance to include a cuddly animal into a film that is meant for children. He-Man was basically made originally for 6-12-year-old boys. The 2026 movie seems meant for…aging Millennials in the 35-45 range? That’s a much smaller moviegoing demographic than the cohort that turned Super Mario Bros. into two billion dollar films. I mean, no kid cares about He-Man much less knows who he is anymore unless their parents showed them the cartoon or their dusty figurine collection. You have to make them care, and you do that by showing them characters that they will like and relate to. You can’t just lean on Member Berries. Think of how Pixar attracts a younger audience, even for films with more sophisticated themes, like Inside Out.
Aside from missing two huge characters that might have represented tens of millions in additional theatrical revenue (if not even more from merch sales), the rest of the film was okay. The humor mostly landed. There were perhaps a few more swear words than there needed to be. What’s with inserting profanity into films that are meant for families? I remember most family films in the ’90s and earlier to be largely free of it, save for one here or there. There are like at least ten in He-Man. There were a bunch in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well. There’s no reason for it, really. Adult dramas more than make up the difference.
If this latest MOTU is the final word on He-Man, I think that would be just fine. We don’t really need anymore at this point.
For those unaware, Michael Mann is planning to direct Heat 2. He also co-authored the novel with Meg Gardiner that is, of course, a sequel to the classic 1995 hit Heat starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and the late great Val Kilmer. The book is centered on the character of Chris Shiherlis, who, you’ll recall, was the lone surviving member of the ace criminal squad.
Heat is a fantastic fucking film, it goes without saying, featuring the classic shootout in downtown L.A. following the McCauley gang’s ingenious bank heist.
But what about Mann’s 2022 novel? Does it live up the legacy of the crime thriller drama that spawned a million imitators and inspired the style of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight?
Well, to quote the wild Detective Vincent Hanna, “This book has a great ass, and I’ve got my head all the way up it! When I think of great books like Heat 2, something comes out of me.”
Okay, okay, I’m not that crazed. But yeah, I liked this book a lot.
And I’ve been on a thriller novel kick lately. I recently finished The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey (Morton Freedgood). I’m currently reading Death Wish by Brian Garfield.
I also liked The Irishman, the 2019 gangster flick, if at times it felt more like Scorsese was just playing his greatest hits. Plus it was ridiculously long, slow, and heavy to watch.
I haven’t seen Gladiator 2, and I doubt I ever will. I find it a little odd, this latest trend of big directors returning to the well of their best works and putting out a sequel decades removed from the original. The Irishman is not a sequel, but it feels like the spiritual successor and final missing piece to the Cinematic Universe of Goodfellas/Casino. Gladiator 2, I felt, was a strange sequel to make. What’s next? Braveheart 2?
It’s usually not best for an aging director to return to the world of their previous hits, especially this far out from the OG. However, Heat 2 definitely landed for me, and if the film is able to capture the book well enough, it should make for a fantastic sequel.
:::spoilers incoming:::
Therein lies a huge challenge. Heat 2 is basically three stories in one. Which works fine for a novel. I’m not sure how successfully that will translate to film. You have a “present” timeline set in 1995, right after the bank robbery and shootout, with Chris’s escape to Paraguay and his attempt to move up in a new crime organization. There’s the past storyline in 1988 with criminal mastermind gigachad Neil McCauley getting the band together for its first gig, and running afoul of psychopath home intruder and rapist Otis Wardell. Then you have the “future” timeline in 2000, with Chris’s return to L.A. to set up some illegal biz with weapons systems shipments or whatever with his new partner and girlfriend Ana, who’s trying to branch off independently from her crime family. All culminating in a final clash with Vincent Hanna, who’s still chomping at the bit to put bad guys six feet under and wants Chris like a junkyard dog wants a trespasser’s throat.
Well, I shouldn’t put that there is a “clash” with Hanna as he never even knows Chris is back in L.A. until the very end, and only after Chris escapes again. If I have a criticism, it’s that I would have liked to have seen more of Hanna hunting Chris.
Look, if you told me Heat 2 was going to be six hours long, I’d freaking love that. This flick is going to be The Phantom Menace for middle-aged dudes. But I’m not general audiences. I don’t see how this is going to get cut down to a coherent 2.5-3.5 hours without removing a TON. You have three movies here, really. The Paraguay stuff was less interesting to me, and frankly, a little hard to follow with all the backstabbing and double agent stuff. You have to have the 1988 sequence to introduce McCauley to set up the daughter of his girlfriend Gabriela, as she returns for the third act showdown with Wardell. So my guess is Paraguay will get cut down to make room for L.A. 2000, which will likely take up the whole second half.
Then there are the set pieces. If you thought the downtown shootout in the OG was awesome, the sequel has SIX shootouts. Yes, six. I think. I might have forgotten one or two. You’ve got Wardell’s home invasion, which turns into a shootout and car chase with Hanna and the cops. The first highway shootout in Paraguay. A cartel base robbery shootout. A shootout near the U.S.-Mexico border between McCauley and Wardell’s gang. The climactic highway shootout between Wardell and Chris. Then there’s a last-minute factory shootout. Yes, this book is packed with so much there’s even a lengthy shootout in the last THREE PAGES. Good lord.
Mann is going to have to go Avatar 2: Way of Water on this deal to fit everything in, and it looks like Amazon is going to carte blanche him. It worked out great for JC, we’ll see if it works for Mann.
Overall, I enjoyed the book a great deal and would highly recommend it. It kind of reminded me of Tom Clancy with all its globetrotting, multiple interweaving plots, and timeline shifts. Or the first half of Inception when Cobb is getting his team together across countries. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect for this as Chris, a role he’s finally just confirmed taking. Though personally I find Neil McCauley the more interesting character. A shame he’s only in the ’88 stuff but obviously he didn’t make it past ’95. I’d like a prequel just about him.
As much as I know I’ll enjoy this coming film, I can see it getting dinged for its plot excess. Hanna is somewhat underutilized, though I think Christian Bale is a solid Pacino replacement for Hanna. Yes, Hanna is just as insane in this as he was before, and it’ll be interesting seeing Bale channel some of Al’s signature spastic energy. I’m not sure about the guy doing McCauley, Stephen Graham, but he was pretty good in The Irishman. To be fair, nobody can replace DeNiro, but we also don’t want to see a de-aged Bob like in The Irishman. I’ve heard Adam Driver is possibly doing Wardell, but I don’t see him in that role at all. And the latest is Inde Navarrette is in talks to join, so she’s either Ana or Gabriela, and I’m thinking it would be Ana. A great choice there as she was pretty iconic in Obsession.
If anything, I expect Heat 2 to serve as a strong sequel to Mann’s 1995 masterpiece. Will it break the Curse of the Underwhelming Long-Awaited Successor To A Big Director’s OG Classic that seemed to befell Gladiator Dos and made theaters allergic to the lengthy The Irishman (it premiered on Netflix)? Time will tell.
Recently, I completed the first draft of a slasher novella I’ve titled CUTTHROAT that I began in early September.
The premise is stupifyingly simple, though, like many of my works, it’s riddled with satiric malice and dark humor:
A group of job applicants arrive at a sleek highrise for a coveted position, but find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic assessor known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.
This first draft clocked in at around 31,000 words, and it proved to be both exhausting and grossly liberating at the same time. This was one of those “cutting loose” sort of writing experiments, where I didn’t feel bound by the ordinary constraints of storytelling. Though there are two character arcs, a strong mid-point shift, a late reveal, and a twisty plot with some inventive kills. Thematically, it’s centered around the tortuous difficulties attendant with job hunting, with the whole ugly process personified in the form of a psychopathic killer known as Cutthroat, who poses as a job recruiter performing interviews, only to hack his unawares applicants apart. I really tried to go for the economic malaise zeitgeist’s jugular here that mainly desperate jobseeking Millennials and Gen-Zers are suffering through or at least might relate to. Armed with briefcases filled with all kinds of nasty weapons, Cutthroat sadisticallly plays his own twisted “assessment” games with the group of twenty-somethings, and it’s up to the protagonist to figure out a way to stop him, or at least escape with his life.
Writing a slasher is brutish work, to say the least. I’ve written my share of horrors, such as The Devil’s Throne, released a few years ago, but a slasher is another beast altogether. Slashers, obviously, are less known for their elegant exploration of human themes through a lens of supernatural or psychological chills like traditional horrors, and more about delivering a certain graphic and visceral effect on the reader/viewer.
Cutthroat is sort of “Terrifier in a business suit,” as I’ve come to refer to it as a means to sum up its ethos in a pithy “elevator pitch” manner. The slasher franchise set around Art the Clown is a real phenomenon for its cult following. Walk by any Hot Topic store in a mall and you’re bound to see Art T-shirts and other merch. He’s as big as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees were in their day. I’ve only seen the second film and the first half of the first one. That’s literally all I could stomach. From a writer’s perspective, I found them shockingly bereft of any “story,” even for a slasher series. The Terrifier films are more a bunch of gory vignettes strung together. A bloody highlight reel of makeup and special effects. Even Friday the 13th, with all its clumsy and meandering “plots” had a semblance of mythology what with Jason and his mommy issues. Not so for Terrifier, which seems content to just freak out audiences with new methods of bodily mutilation. Hellraiser seems tame by comparison, which seems not possible.
Honestly, I found writing my first slasher disappointingly mundane. How many ways can you really butcher human beings on paper? I found myself straining to somehow “make it more interesting.” I did this by interjecting a backstory for the villain in order to make him believable, and by adding humor wherever possible. At one point I gave up for a few days, put off by the whole thing. Only to return days later determined to finish the task.
Now that it’s done, like often happens when I’ve finished a writing project, I find myself wracked with a post-partum malaise. Though there is always the long and tedious editing process.
I remember reading about how John Carpenter, while struggling to write Halloween II (1981) hit some bad writer’s block. I wondered how in the hell could that happen. We’re talking Michael Myers here. Pehaps the most simplistic masked killer there ever was. Just set him loose in a school so he can stalk another group of dumb horny teenagers. How hard could it be, right? But after writing my first slasher, I can see where he was likely coming from, and how unfulfilled he probably felt trying his hand at the sequel. It’s no wonder he wound up throwing in the bogus development about Laurie Strode being Michael’s sister as a way to liven things up and add motivation. Something he later regretted adding to Michael’s “mythology” due to its inherent silliness. The whole point of Michael Myers is that he doesn’t need a “motivation.” That’s what makes him scary. But I can see how sheer boredom probably drove Carpenter to want to throw in anything, no matter how nonsensical, to make the writing process more palatable for him. At least The Thing had the intricate puzzlebox mysteries of “Who’s the Thing and who’s not?” “Who can you trust?” With Halloween, it’s more just about coming up with new ways Michael can kill people.
On the surface, writing a slasher is “stupidly easy,” sure. Kind of. We’re not writing a dense Cormac McCarthian Western here, even if Anton Chigurh is like a Mexican Michael Myers with a shotgun. But it takes a piece of your soul. There are also the tricky mechanics of coming up with a bigger than life villain. Something iconic. A Nightmare on Elm Street, to me, is the gold standard when it comes to slashers. It’s probably the most intelligent of them. Certainly it’s the best high-concept horror idea. A killer that stalks you in your dreams. The kind of idea that makes you go, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Overall, I enjoyed attempting the slasher genre, though it’s not one I’d quickly want to return to. Technically, it’s not actually my first stab at it. I handwrote a short story about a group of masked killers stalking a school way back when I was a teenager in high school. It was a story obviously ripped off of Halloween as I’d just seen that film on cable, though I added a “clever” twist by not having one, or two, but three killers. Genius, obviously. With this latest attempt decades later, I like to think I’ve grown and matured. I feel I made Cutthroat suitably gory and satisfied the demands of the genre with all the requisite tropes, while putting my own touch on things and bringing something new. If anything, it was a fun writing exercise that felt perfectly appropriate with Halloween right around the corner. 🙂
For some reason, this movie popped into my head recently, and I just had to rewatch it. I don’t know why. I seem to recall seeing it in theaters while on a beach vacation in Ocean City, Maryland back in the summer of 1998. Though the film actually stayed in theaters for over a year.
Films did that back then. Now they dip in and out in like two weeks before hitting streaming oblivion.
It’s weird watching something from the ’90s, as it is basically a period piece anymore. This film is nearly thirty-freaking years old! It is as ancient to modern audiences today as something from the mid-’60s would have been during its premier.
There’s Something About Mary is a screwball romantic comedy about a guy named Ted trying to reconnect with his old high school crush–the titual Mary. Mary Jensen, that is. Following a catalysmically awful prom date that goes sideways in the film’s second most memorable sequence when Ted gets his dick and balls stuck in his zipper after arriving at Mary’s house. Poor Ted spends the next 13 years still pining (borderline obsessing) over Mary, until he gins up a scheme to sick a private detective on her to hunt down her whereabouts. Finding her in South Florida, Ted takes off to reconnect with his old flame, encounting a series of mad-cap adventures along the way. But competing with him for Mary’s heart is the greasy private detective, an old college boyfriend, a slippery pizza delivery guy, and even a famous football QB star. Will Ted, the ultimate nice guy, win Mary’s heart in the end?
Of course, the film is BEST remembered for its “Is that hair gel?” scene when Ted and Mary are preparing to go on a date. Believe me, that line was the height of bawdy comedy in my high school during that year. Between that and the many Monica Lewinsky jokes flying around (and there were many), my junior year was beset with semen-based hilarity.
In fact, I’d say there has likely never been a time ever in human history when male ejaculation centered so prominently in the cultural psyche as it did in the year 1998.That’s all thanks to Monica and Mary.
There’s Something About Mary is beset with a hideous amount of ’90s anachronisms, both technologically and cultural. Things that just wouldn’t work in today’s self-aware uber ironic entertainment landscape. The ’90s was all about being okay with looking stupid. It was the decade of Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey, and wacky attitude-y cartoons like Animaniacs. Weird toys like Gak. Very stupid and cringey TV shows. And lots of bright neon colors.
People nostalgia-gazming hard on the decade often forget how damn silly the ’90s really was. And that’s probably the best way to describe Mary. Silly with a capital ‘S.’
The entire conceit of the film falls apart in the age of Facebook and Google. Now it’s not only easy to look someone up from high school, you likely can’t even get rid of them anyway if they follow you on Insta or Facebook.
Then there’s the whole stalking angle. What Ted does is technically kind of creepy. While he does sorta pay for it when he’s forced to confess at the film’s “All is Lost” beat, and is consequentially kicked to the curb, true love conquers all of course in the end.
There’s the idea of a bunch of men fixating on Mary as a sex object in a predatory way that would be seen as “problematic” now. The film gets away with it mostly due to its unflinching cartooniness. The Farrelly brothers were at their peak. The story has heart, though its punctured by a lot of slapstick nonsense.
There’s Something About Mary really is one of those films that wouldn’t be made today. It’s an odd time capsule of a film. A relic from a very niche era of cornball humor that couldn’t be replicated. A perfect representation of what the ’90s was all about.
It does have some classical elements, too. The recurring motif of the singers reminded me of the singing muses often seen in Shakespeare plays or Greek epics. The crude sexual humor harkens back to the stylings of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. There are some borrowed elements also. The police interrogation misunderstanding feels lifted from 1992s My Cousin Vinny, for instance. But overall it’s a funny original story with a handful of memorable scenes beyond the hair gel one. The fish hook gag, as an example.
Ben Stiller stars in one of his early big roles. At the start of his early 2000s tsunami of comedy hits like Meet the Parents and Zoolander. Cameron Diaz plays the lovely and lanky Mary. And there is the adaptable Matt Dillon as the greasy private eye with the porn stache.
Need some ’90s flavor in your life? Who doesn’t, right? Check out There’s Something About Mary.
I’m not a Tarantino stan by any means, though like many, I admire his work and his unique voice. I was too young to see his early stuff like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Only years later did I appreciate True Romance and Jackie Brown.
The two-time Oscar winner and pastiche-r of genres is kind of the patron saint artist for college students. Or cult leader, if you prefer. I would hear about him all the damn time and how great his movies are when I was in school. I think that’s why I put off watching them for so long. They were so constantly hyped up like “You gotta see it, bro!” that it had the opposite effect on me. I actually fell asleep the first time I was made to watch Pulp Fiction. I’m still kinda neutral about that one. I see the appeal, but it just never captured me, as most films featuring race as a prominent theme generally don’t. I have a younger cousin who loves it and calls it his favorite film.
Tarantino dominated the 1990s. His turn-of-the-millenium output has seen equal critical and commercial success, though maybe not in the same generational-zeitgeisty way as his early stuff. Even now, I passively follow his work, which for me remains hit or miss. I only recently saw Inglorious Basterds. Miss. Never saw Death Proof. Saw Django Unchained once. Eh, it was okay. Hated The Hateful Eight. Enjoyed Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, though it felt underdeveloped and indulgent.
I do, however, fucking love Kill Bill Vol. I and II.
Credit: Miramax
Kill Bill holds a special place in my heart. Not just because I really like the story, but because of the memorable venue where I originally saw it. I was 21 and going to a private college in north Chicago in 2003. Loyola University sits wedged alongside Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan, and like many city schools, criss-crosses different neighborhoods of varying class levels. You’ve got your gentrified hipster streets, your more “ghetto” areas, your working class avenues, and your young professional couple cheapo condo building spots. Of course you have all the retail staples. Chinese food. Delis. Convenience stores. And bars. Lots of bars.
And you have the “ghettoplex.”
Chapter Two: The “Ghettoplex”
The “ghettoplex.” This was a tiny run-down old fashioned style theater on North Sheridan Road. Opened in 1913, it’s name was originally The Regent. In 1990 new ownership renamed it Village North Theater. Then it became the New 400 in 2009. Like many theaters, Covid punched it hard in the face. But it eventually reopened. Only to suddenly (and finally?) close in 2023.
I never knew the theater by any of its real names. It was just the ghettoplex around campus. The ghettoplex had only a few auditoriums. It attracted an eclective mix of people from all walks of life. Mainly broke college students. But also hipsters. Whites, Blacks, Hispanics. Uptight professionals. Homeless. Thugs. Everyone. Every screening was a melting pot and often chaotic, with people shouting at the screen, getting up and down, arguing, throwing food, amongst other activities. Even though I typically hate interruptions during movies, the ghettoplex was the one venue in which it seemed not just appropriate, but even welcome.
In other words, it was the perfect place to watch the vibrantly raucous Kill Bill: Vol I.
I was instantly attracted to Kill Bill from the trailer and all the advertising, as it looked unlike anything I’d ever seen. Which is ironic, considering it’s a blend of several classic film genres; namely spaghetti Westerns and ‘70’s Bruce Lee-style Martial arts flicks, combined with noirish crime and pulpy gangster revenge stories. Some people credit No Country for Old Men (2007) with starting the neo-Western trend that still continues today with The Last Stop In Yuma County (2023). But I think Vol. II of Kill Bill has an argument for being a bigger influence.
That Tarantino was splitting his new film into two parts felt audacious also. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions did that the same year. But they were both highly anticipated sequels to the beloved 1999 hit. It felt strange for even a respected artist like Tarantino to do the same with an original story that didn’t already have millions of built-in fans. Especially after a six-year hiatus from film making. His last film Jackie Brown (1997) didn’t exactly light the world on fire. There were even whisperings that Tarantino was just a ’90s man. That he wouldn’t make the jump to the new century with us coming-of-age Millennials.
I didn’t really care about Tarantino’s earlier works. I hadn’t even seen them at the time. All I knew was Kill Bill looked pretty badass. So, off to the ghettoplex I went the weekend of October 10, 2003.
Chapter Three: Ratatino, The Giant Rat
Movie theaters today are trying so hard to create immersive viewing experiences. There’s 3D, IMAX, 4DX, those D-Box seats that vibrate, stadium seating, and the latest and greatest in The Sphere in Las Vegas, NV, which has a near 360-degree wrap-around screen that’s so transportive it will give you anxiety. I highly recommend going. It’s mindblowing.
However, no theaters have considered the visceral experience that our good friends of the Rodentia order can freely provide during a film screening.
Kill Bill provoked hoots, hollers, “oh shits,” “fuck nawws,” and more from the get-go. The opening scene where The Bride surprises suburban homemaker Vernita Green (aka Copperhead) was a riot. “I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba,” brought laughs. The Kaboom cereal attack and its subsequent knife to the heart caused gasps. It was the kind of rare opening where you just knew you were in for a classic good time.
For me, the strongest reaction came at about the mid-point. It was right after when The Bride visits Hattori Hanzo to have a custom-made Samurai sword made and she’s off to Tokyo to deal with O-Ren when a giant rat ran across the bottom of the screen.
Now, for years I had often heard the legend of New York City’s giant sewer rats. As a new citizen of Chicago, it had not even occured to me that such massive cat-sized rodents could also live in the Midwest.
This rat was fucking huge. I’m not sure if it was in front of the screen or behind. It was a giant black shadow that scurried underneath Uma Thurman while she was determinedly seated on the airplane as The Green Hornet theme played. It ran across, its tail flopping behind it as thick as a coaxial cable, until reaching the other side and disappearing. The memory is burned into my brain. I’m not sure if anyone else even noticed it, as nobody reacted. I asked my friends that I’d gone with later about it, and they swear they never saw a rat. But given that the theater was called the “ghettoplex,” perhaps such gargantuan infestation was simply expected. Maybe this particular R.O.U.S. frequented the establishment and was well-known. I don’t know. But it freaked me out in kind of a good way.
What made it even better was that not long before, The Bride tells Hanzo about how she has a giant rat to kill (meaning Bill, of course). Did “Ratatino” (the name I gave him) hear Uma mention his species namesake, and take that as a cue to come out of hiding? Who knows. But I’m glad he did. God bless you Ratatino, wherever you are.
Chapter Four: Kill Bill and I
Have I mentioned how much I fucking love this movie? Good, I’ll jump into the many reasons why.
1. Uma
Credit: Miramax
Okay, ngl, Uma Thurman became my movie crush for years after Kill Bill, displacing Katie Holmes’ solid four-year run, and knocking out an insurgent Jessica Alba. But aside from my own star-struck amore, Thurman really was perfectly cast for the role of The Bride/Beatrix Kiddo. I only found this out recently, but it was actually she and Quentin who conceived of the idea for Kill Bill while on the set of Pulp Fiction. This is why the credits for the story are “Q&U.” Tarantino refers to Thurman as his “muse.” It’s easy to see why. Uma’s tall, near-Amazonian figure ignites the screen, hacking and slashing away like a blonde supermodel Grim Reaper. The movie thrives on juxtapostion and irony — West meets East, red blood on snow, spaghetti Western meets Kung-fu flick — a killer ex-bride (and mom) on a bloody rampage is striking. Her big blue eyes are as close to “anime eyes” as one can physically get without CGI enhancement. The whole effect is instantly iconic.
Very often, whenever talk of “badass action heroines” comes up, the go-to examples are always Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor. Sadly, The Bride seems to be constantly left out, and deserves to be placed atop that stage. Uma’s performance is also enhanced mightily by the character’s maternal qualities, which mirrored her own. She’d already had two children by filming, and her daughter Maya Hawke was almost the same age as her movie-daughter B.B.
Uma also deftly handles the film’s more darkly comedic elements. Tarantino flicks are known for their outlandish violence, but it’s their nuance, complexity, and subtext that make them endearing and memorable. During The Bride’s interactions with O-Ren, her attitude shifts across a range of channels — vicious determination, inside humor, cruel taunts, sharp retorts, respect, and even tenderness. There’s a sense the two women were once best friends before the falling out. A hard subtlety to pull off, which Uma does in spades. Her whole performance is solid throughout.
2. Soundtrack
It may be cliché to describe a film as a “symphony,” but in the case of Kill Bill, it’s apt, and largely because of its pitch perfect soundtrack. As we first saw in Reservoir Dogs with the “Stuck in the Middle With You” scene, Tarantino likes to pick ironic music during violent scenes. But many of the musical cues are also just traditionally fitting. And “original.” Not in the sense that all the music was written specifically for the film. In the sense that much of the music was comprised of lesser known hits that Tarantino dusted off and reused in surprising and dove-tailing ways.
Some of my favorites are “The Flower of Carnage,” which plays directly after The Bride gives O-Ren the worst haircut ever. The song bears significance, as it’s sung by Meiko Kaji, an icon of Japanese cinema, who famously played Lady Snowblood (1973), an inspiration for Kill Bill. “Crane/White Lightning” by RZA is another one I enjoy. “The Demise of Barbara and the Return of Joe” perfectly encapsulates the end of the climactic battle between Beatrix and Bill. “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” was a major hit from the soundtrack.
3. The Mythology
One of the ways a great film pulls you into the embrace is with its often implied but sometimes depicted mythology. Star Wars is the best example of this, of course. Who the hell is this Darth Vader guy? Why has this Ben guy been hiding out in the desert? What’s a Clone War? While its prequels and sequels filled in the details with mixed results, what makes the original special is all the mysterious backstory.
Kill Bill does a similar thing. Giving us just enough backstory through flashbacks to keep the main story going, but also digging into the classified files, so to speak, of many of its characters. There’s a whole animated sequence that shows O-Ren Ishii’s tragic childhood that lead her to taking over the Yakuza gang in Tokyo. Even O-Ren’s bodyguard Gogo Yubari gets a mini biopic.
My favorite is the chapter “The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei,” which shows us quite explicitly how The Bride became trained to what is practically a supernatural-level of martial arts expertise. Then there’s the sequence with Hattori Hanzo. If there’s one criticism I have, it’s that I wished we could have seen a little of Hanzo actually making the sword. But perhaps it’s better that it remains a mystery how a seemingly simple bar owner in Okinawa is able to craft a weapon that can “cut God.”
4. The Venn Diagram “Super Movie”
To go along with Number 3, Kill Bill is also a good example of what differentiates a great story from a pretty average one. It combines a number of narratives that could on their own be a movie, into a “super” movie— like a Venn diagram — with the main one in the middle. You could do a whole film just on Bill founding the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Pai Mei, O-Ren, even Gogo Yubari.
To say nothing of the some of the “loose ends.” What in the hell happened to Sofie Fatale? Actually, I don’t want to know. Did Elle Driver make it out of the desert after losing her eye? My vote is the Black Mamba snake eventually got her. Will Vernita Green’s daughter Nikki grow up seeking revenge on The Bride? More on that in Chapter Five. Here’s where editorial and artistic restraint are needed. Sometimes it’s better to leave people wondering. It’s not always best to fill in all the details, as some of the excessive and creatively bankrupt Star Wars spin-offs have shown.
5. The Subversive Humor
Credit: Miramax
The Pussy Wagon. Kaboom cereal. Much of the Bride and Elle’s fight. Budd’s shitty station in life as a bouncer at the titty bar. Beatrix Kiddo’s name reveal in the kid’s classroom. Boss Tanaka provoking O-Ren’s sensitivity about her mixed Japanese and Chinese heritage (a scene I always appreciated as a mixed-race person myself). I could go on and on.
Striking the right balance in tone for a movie about a woman going around cutting people’s heads off is tough. But necessary. Like much of Tarantino’s work, Kill Bill is very self-aware and post-modern. The bloody graphic kills in the Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves are cartoonishly but purposely over the top.
6. The Cliffhanger
The end of Kill Bill Vol I., where Bill reveals to the butchered Sofie that The Bride’s daughter is still alive elicited a few gasps from the rowdy audience at the “ghettoplex,” as I recall. It’s one of the first real film cliffhangers I remember that left me really wanting to know what happened next. As I was never a fan of the Star Wars sequels, the ending of The Empire Strikes Back never rustled my jimmies. The end of Matrix Reloaded was tepid and actually kind of confusing. The only other film ending that left me really wanting more was, oddly enough, The Blob. A film with a sequel tease that’s still not been paid off some thirty years later.
Making it all the better was that Kill Bill Vol. II premiered on April 16th, my birthday, the following year (2004). What a perfect birthday present.
I’d be remiss not to mention the Herculean (or perhaps She-Hulkian) physical contributions made by the peerless and legendary stuntwoman Zoë Bell. Bell sustained serious injuries filming the scene where The Bride gets blown away by Budd’s shotgun blast. In addition to being a “crash and smash” double for Uma, Bell also doubled for her in the fight scenes, becoming trained on swordplay and combat moves herself. Stunt work is often underappreciated, but the work done in Kill Bill went above and beyond. Both Bell and Uma got put through the ringer for our entertainment.
There’s also this dark episode from the making of the movie that honestly hampers my enjoyment of the film. Tarantino pressured Thurman to perform a dangerous driving stunt that wound up leaving her hospitalized with neck and knee injuries that she still suffers from to this day. The accident led to a falling out between her and Tarantino for 15 years. Uma doesn’t blame him so much as she blames the film’s executive producer Harvey Weinstein — yeah, this fucker again — for trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Check out this link here detailing Thurman’s account of the ordeal, which also contains a frightening video of the car crash. It’s very sad and sickening for any actress to be forced into a stunt for which she is not trained or prepared. But to do it to the star of your movie who inspired the story itself, is grossly irresponsible and monstrous. This is on top of Thurman having had an encounter with the disgraced former Hollywood producer in which Weinstein allegedly assaulted her in hotel in the ’90s. You can read about that here.
Uma Thurman describes her experience after the crash as “dehumanization to the point of death.” It’s a stark and scary reminder that for all its glitz and glamour, Hollywood is at its core, a brutal business that has allowed some real abusive assholes to gain power. There is a human cost that sometimes takes place behind the camera that often goes unnoticed. The unseemly developments I’ve mentioned don’t ruin Kill Bill. They do, however, give me a recontextualized appreciation for all the literal blood, sweat, and tears that went into making it.
8. Poetic Fights And Fates
Perhaps Kill Bill’s most creative component are all the diverse and fitting ways in which members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad get their comeuppance for their role in Bill’s attack on The Bride. Vernita Green’s death is quick and brutal, hinting at the fact that likely the two women were never exactly close. As I mentioned earlier, O-Ren’s drawn-out “graceful” demise indicates that she and Beatrix were probably besties at one point.
As her former brother-in-law, it seemed The Bride was satisfied with giving Budd a quick and painless death by surprising him at his shitty trailer. But a Black Mamba still wound up getting him anyway due to the vicious one-eyed Elle Driver. Driver and Beatrix were clearly hated rivals of one another, both professionally, but also romantically over Bill. Elle tells Bill, “You need me baby, I’m there,” over the phone before her surprise confrontation with The Bride. Their duel is a messy cat fight, ending after Beatrix yoinks Elle’s eye. This after Elle sneeringly and proudly confesses to poisoning Pai Mei, who plucked out her eye for impudence during her training.
Then there’s Bill’s death, which is both cathartically satisfying, but also bittersweet and tragic. At its core, Kill Bill is about a serious marital spat, and all the fallout that ensues. Both sides can be blamed. I always got the sense that if Beatrix had explained her side to Bill about not wanting her daughter to grow up in the life rather than just running off, he’d have likely understood and made proper arrangements. A workable compromise probably would have been reached. But this is not a story about rational, level-headed people. This is a story about brutal killers who think impulsively. We’ll never know what could have been.
9. Even Side Characters Are Memorable
This kind of goes along with mythology in Number 3. One of Tarantino’s gifts is in creating very lived-in minor characters that look like they were breathing and eating long before being summoned for their short appearance. Take Esteban, for example, the Mexican pimp and father figure to Bill. There’s a whole history to this guy and and how he raised Bill, but he’s gone after all of five minutes of screen time.
And let’s not forget Buck. Who’s here to do what? Fuck. A rather simplistic and base behavioral drive. But an unforgettable one, for sure.
10. The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique
It’s fucking awesome. ‘Nuff said.
Chapter Five: The Blood-Splattered Sequel Rumors And Conclusion
Credit: Miramax
This past October 10th, 2004, it’ll have been 21 years since the premier of Kill Bill Vol. I. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed. For me it’s a literal whole other lifetime ago.
Not long after the conclusion of Vol. II, rumors began to swirl about a possible third installment. All kinds of theories abounded regarding possible plots. The most popular being a grown-up Nikki Green seeking out Beatrix to get revenge for killing her mother, with an assassin-trained adult B.B. being in the mix.
As much as the fan in me would love to see a third Kill Bill, I’m not sure it should happen. I’m very much a “completionist.” When a story is done, let it be done. I feel that way, as do many others, about the first two Alien and Terminator films. I feel that way toward Kill Bill. It ends as perfectly as it could. Why ruin that with a sequel? The whole point of the two-part film is The Bride rescuing her daugher from her savage life for a peaceful one. Which she does. But perhaps Bill is right in his “Superman talk.” Maybe Beatrix Kiddo is a killer at heart. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before that deadly assassin life will pull her back in. We’ll just have to wait and see. But I’d much rather think of Beatrix and B.B. living happily ever after.
I’ve been on a horror kick lately. I finally watched Barbarian. A film I wanted to see two years when it premiered, only to completely forget about until it resurfaced on Prime recently.
Barbarian is the latest in the “socially conscious” horror trend, which started with Get Out in 2018. Even our horror film franchises have to be woke nowadays. I recall a much simpler time. A time when all you needed was a mask, preferably a white one, and some maniac with a knife. A little cat and mouse. Some butchered coeds. And there you go, you had your movie.
Of course, the slasher tropes started by Halloween and Friday the 13th were tired and formularic even by the late 1980s. This is why Scream was such a refreshing hit back in 1996. It playfully toyed with the genre conventions in a fun, meta way, with characters using them as a “rulebook” to help ensure their own survival.
Don’t go off alone.
Never say you’ll be “right back.”
Never, ever have sex.
Scream was the shit back in the day. It not only kickstarted the teen slasher craze all over again, it helped director Wes Craven get back in the game. It was a mega jackpot win for screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who wrote the script on spec. It’s unlikely his record for most commercially successful spec script not written by a writer/director will ever be broken. The Scream franchise has scored nearly $1 billion at the box office alone. Imagine that. Being some rank nobody 31-year-old screenwriter and you have a pdf file on your rickety old PC computer that’s worth billions. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. And he wrote it in a weekend.
Two sequels quickly followed the original hit. Then the franchise went dormant for awhile. This is back before reboots and requels and prequels became a big thing in horror. In 2011 Wes Craven directed Scream 4. That was followed by another movie lull, though the TV series Scream ran from 2015–2019. Until finally Scream (the fifth film) and ScreamVI came out back to back in 2022 and ’23, with plans for a seventh on the way.
It isn’t just Scream’s almost 30-year longevity that’s amazing, but the relative high quality the franchise has maintained. Most horror series fall apart after the original. Some keep chugging along despite being objectively goddawful, i.e. Halloween, Saw, Hellraiser, etc. With the exception of Scream 3, every installment in the franchise is fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Final Destination, with its clever teen-killing conceit, sits mainly in the sub-50s on RT.
So, what’s Scream’s secret? Why has it qualitatively lasted for so long while so many others have pathetically limped from one refresh to another?
Scream has some built-in requisite elements that act as quality control. Every Scream film has its gimmicks — mainly a twisty whodunnit plot with multiple meta references. A balanced measure of comedy, thrills, and melodrama. A tone that strays just outside the lines of realism into cartoonism. This precarious tight rope act isn’t easy. The latest two films are meta inside of meta; referencing the in-movie Stab series, which itself is a self-aware horror film that replicates scenes from the first Scream. The whole self-referential effect becomes like an MC Escher staircase, but with blood and knives.
‘Scream’ (1996): Dimension films.
Scream has also served as a recurring mirror of the current state of horror, if not the cultural subtext influencing the genre. In 1996, it was quite innovative to introduce a beloved B-list sweetheart like Drew Barrymore, only to brutally kill her off in the opening. By 2011, the franchise had to adjust that formula with multiple twists, with mixed results. The latest two films have followed Hollywood’s latest diversity push, replacing the mainly White teen cast in the previous four with two leads of Hispanic origin — Jenny Ortega and Melissa Barrera — and assorted minority back-ups, with hardly a White male in sight (save for villainous roles, of course). All while letting OG Scream-ers like Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox reenter on occasion.
It all makes for a nice adaptive organism of a franchise that can constantly reinvent itself to fit the times. I wonder what sort of State of the Horror Union address a Scream re-re-re-boot might make come the 2030s or even 2040s. The latest sequel already transplanted us to the Big Apple, à la Jason Takes Manhattan. Ghostface in Space is just a matter of time.
These days, it’s not enough to just throw another set of endangered teens out there and watch them get butchered in obscene ways. Scream films are a thinking man’s slasher flicks, dare I say. At the least they offer something a cut above your typical violent bloodletting. I find myself strangely looking forward to the next one.
Last night I finally had the chance to catch Barbarian, the 2022 horror film written and directed by Zach Cregger. Like most films with memorable twists that I’m not able to see the very second it premiers, I had this one spoiled massively for me due to rampant YouTube reviews with certain images in the thumbnails.
Can we talk for a second about the humanitarian crisis this clickbait spoiler-craze really is? Barbarian is the just the latest in a string of highly anticipated films and shows that had plot reveals ruined for me. Don’t Look Now was, too. I’ve also had every major plot twist of Invincible (my new favorite show) shoved in my face thanks to YouTube shorts and “critical analysis” vids. It’s frustrating, but I suppose that’s the way things are now.
That said, SPOILERS incoming.
Barbarian starts off appearing to be your standard Hitchcock-style roommate stalker thriller, like The Resident or Single White Female. A young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) shows up late at night during a thunderstorm to her AirBnB in a decrepit part of Detroit, only to find someone else staying there. A young man named Keith, who looks nice enough. But can she really trust this guy? Somehow their reservations were booked simultaneously, leading to the awkward situation of two strangers having to share a house for the evening.
After Tess is unable to find a hotel due to a medical conference, she’s forced to spend the night. But soon she discovers this AirBnB has dark, macabre secrets, including a creepy basement room with a dirty mattress and a subterranean labyrinthine that seems straight out of a Kane Pixels “backrooms” video. But that’s only the beginning of the terror. A hideous humanoid monster also lives down there, too. And she feels the need, the need to feed.
Then suddenly we cut to Southern California, where working actor AJ (Justin Long) is cruising along in his convertible when he receives word from his agent/producer that he’s been accused of rape by a former co-star. With his life in shambles, he’s forced to liquidate some assets to pay for legal defense. So he flies off to Michigan to visit his, you guessed it, AirBnB rental property, where Tess and Keith just disappeared. It isn’t long before he too is captured by the monster, who has a bizarre need to “mother” her captives by forcibly breastfeeding them.
Suddenly, we’re launched into a flashback to the early 1980s, when the neighborhood was in good shape. We’re introduced to Frank, a middle-aged single man who kidnaps young women and holds them prisoner in his house of horrors. The “mother” creature there now is the hideous offspring of numerous inbreeding generations over four decades. Essentially, the ultimate thematic representation of male sexual assault coming home to roost.
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Barbarian is mostly a smartly-written B-movie flick with a tight opening act. But I’m not sure the transition from its tense-filled beginning into a sequence straight out of The Hills Have Eyes, entirely works. It feels like two seperate stories were mashed together in the service of creating a Get Out-style socially conscious horror film. It’s tonal shift and plot twist is basically Psycho. Even Keith, played by Bill Skarsgård, reminded me of Norman Bates. The underlying theme regarding male violence, sexual harassment, and rape, is a relevant and timely one.
The movie is a cut-above the “hilbilly horror” schlock of the early 2000s, such as Wrong Turn or Jeepers Creepers. I enjoyed it, overall. But the film was far more engaging during its subtext-soaked first act, when even something like a simple bottle of wine appears menacing. When it becomes a freaky monster mash, it loses its thematic impact. Sexual predators rarely appear like the monsters they are. They’re often smooth talkers, manipulating their victims emotionally, only implying the threat of violence, until finally trapping them. Sexual assault is a grotesque physical crime, but much of it is psychological, too. Such ghastly human behavior is better explored realistically to relay its horror. AJ has a conversation with his best friend at a club, where he confesses how he had to “convince” the young actress to have sex with him, which is far creepier and more true to life. As is his later drunken phone call to his victim. AJ is a classic “mild-mannered” wolf in sheep’s clothing abuser. Clark Kent, except he rapes instead of changes into a hero in a phone booth. That sort of everyday psychopath is far more intriguing to observe than just another mutated creature.
There are many illogical plot turns and character choices that no sane person would ever make. While it’s believable that a single woman might stay at an AirBnB with a strange man by herself due to a reservation mix-up, you’re telling me she never even checked out the surrounding neighborhood? Google Maps is your friend. I also highly doubt anyone, male or female, would keep heading down into a creepy labyrinthe, even if their new guy friend was supposedly in trouble. The irritated police showing up, only to dismiss Tess as just another slumming crackhead, was far too convenient. Most police have very good sixth senses. Tess comes across as clearly educated and articulate, i.e. someone you take seriously. And wouldn’t there have been a history of young women disappearing in the general neighborhood that would trigger some suspicion from the cops? Frank’s abductions numbered in the dozens. There was no logical need for AJ to even visit his rental property, as liquidating it could all be done via email and pdf file signatures. He only went there because the plot needed him to. And how did a malnourished inbred freak develop super strength and become a giant? Most victims held prisoner in similar cases have usually turned up bony and uncoordinated due to isolation and vitamin deficiencies.
Then there’s that ending, which was almost laughable.
These questionable elements aside, and its jarring narative shifts, Barbarian is a decent film worth checking out.
Dean Brooks 