Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
I saw two movies this weekend, both undone by serious overplotting. I’m reviewing A Cure For Wellness here, but I’ll get to The Mummy all in good time. The difference between these movies is that The Mummy is mostly bad throughout, and for a number of reasons. A Cure For Wellness doesn’t become bad overall, but the plotting ruins what starts as a good movie.
I don’t want to say that Wonder Woman is a politicized movie, but for some odd reason, it’s become a lightning rod for people on both sides of the gender divide. I suppose it’s inevitable in this sociopolitical climate that any genre movie with a lead female character is going to become this year’s feminist icon – I remember the massively overblown praise for Mad Max: Fury Road, as an “important” feminist action movie (I saw a movie with that title, but I don’t recall that version), and even the mostly awful Ghostbusters remake was hailed for pretty much the same thing. Well, now it’s Wonder Woman’s turn, and when Marvel eventually get around to toplining Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, the same plaudits will be flung around then too.
I’m hard to please when it comes to movies, I admit. But I’m not an unduly harsh critic, I don’t think. I know what I like, and I know what works for me in a movie, especially in the horror genre. In my recent review of Lavender, a “vengeful ghost” movie, I said that entries in the horror genre need not terrify, but they should at least have a noticeable “creep” factor. Let’s face it, it’s tough to actually terrify an audience these days, which is why so many horror movies rely – too much – on the jump scare. Done right, it enhances a horror movie, but in many cases, lack of atmosphere and good, old fashioned decent writing leads to the jump scare to carry the weight of the horror movie on its weak shoulders. But what happens if you create a horror movie that has neither atmosphere, nor jump scares? You end up with a movie like Lavender, and one I watched the other night, Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl, written and directed by A.D Calvo, who I’d never heard of before.
Dumb movies are everywhere, it’s a sad fact. In many cases, the box office reflects it (the recent flop known as Baywatch, for example), because the trailers are completely crap. Other terrible movies will make a pile of money theatrically because of gee-whizz CGI, like the punishing Transformers series, but those kinds of movies tap into a different kind of vibe. Sometimes people just want a burger and fries, and don’t care about the content. While the Transformers movies are not my thing, I’ve had a burger myself a time or two, so I understand the appeal. But what if you’re not trying to make $1 billion at the box office? What if you’re trying to make a horror movie to do business in the $150M – $350M range?
Raw, the critically acclaimed French-Belgian movie written and directed by Julie Ducournau is described on many sites as a “cannibal” themed horror movie, but while that’s literally what happens in the movie, it’s as much about cannibalism as the Antonia Bird movie Ravenous was back in 1997. Human flesh may be consumed here, but this is what Stephen King would call a vampire movie, using his archetypical definition in Danse Macabre, his fine non-fiction look at the horror genre.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 