Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, our weekly movie review post where two buddies talk about the movies they watched in the past week. This week's theme was horror movies and there were some goodies.

1: What We Do In The Shadows
I loved this movie. So much. Its about a bunch of vampires living in a house together in New Zealand. The movie is shot reality television style and plays on the format very well. It was written and directed by Taika Waititi, who also wrote Eagle vs Shark, and Jemaine Clement from Flight of The Conchords. I loved both of their other projects that I have seen, and this movie only makes me want to see more. This movie had it all: It was funny, heartwarming, and tragic. The cast is great, and have good chemistry. Also, I love Rhys Darby and wish he got more work. Definitely watch this with some friends and have a great time.

Eshi: We watched this movie twice in twenty four hours and I'm still craving it. Jemaine is fucking fantastic, Taika Waititi delightfully offbeat and the whole tone of the film is just grand. There are no words for how much I love this movie. 

2: The Babadook
This was an odd movie. It starts out feeling like a movie about a Damien style kid, then turns into a possession movie where the mom is a bad guy, and ends as a monster movie. Usually I like a more coherent movie than this, but I might need to change my tune on that. The constantly shifting antagonist added to the uneasiness that accompanies horror movies. This movie also has a novel way of dealing with the monster, which you don't see that often, and was impressive to me. So many movies try to kill off the monster whenever they get the chance, but this one fucks with that trope in a nice way that fits with the interesting mythology it sets up. I loved watching Essie Davis playing the mother. She has an arc that forces her to change up the tone of her character a lot, and she handles the shifts very well. It also loves to Chekov's Gun the shit out of stuff and not deliver. I think this happens to set up more of the uneasiness that comes from the constant reevaluation of reality. All in all a good film, if not a classic. Watch it if you feel like seeing a movie about the dangers of reading.

Eshi: The Babadook plays a lot of cards very quickly, and it does it pretty well. The only non-shitty people in this whole film are an old lady and a horny nurse, and weirdly that helps. You aren't really supposed to like anyone for most of the story and that lends a layer of catharsis when the shit goes down, as well as a layer of disquiet when characters start evolving. Its pretty good at keeping you on your toes, and I really enjoy that.

3: Nightbreed
This movie was brought to my attention by Eshi when he saw it a little while ago. We watched it this week on his recommendation and I was kind of surprised. I am not really a fan of Clive Barker's work, but the setup in this movie was interesting. It feels like the beginning of a long series, and as some minor research showed, was. Nightbreed was supposed to be the first in a trilogy adapting Clive Barker's book Cabal. Unfortunately it was a flop, though Barker claims this is because they tried to market it as a slasher instead of a dark fantasy epic. We watched the latest cut of the film, and not the cut from the theaters, and it wasn't bad. David Cronenburg was kind of a surprise for me, I could not remember having ever seen him act. I am aware of his horror background though, and his acting fit the movie well. The oddest thing about this was the romance between the leading lady and man. Lori (Anne Bobby) seems consistently hostile towards Boone (Craig Sheffer) and it feels like they are in an abusive relationship, with Boone being manipulated emotionally by Lori. I am definitely going to go find the novella this is based on, just to see more about the world. Its an interesting movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a movie that depicts movie monsters as people.

Eshi: The most engaging part of Nightbreed is the mythos, which is both great for immersion and almost entirely unexamined. I can easily see why this movie flopped if they tried to sell it as a slasher. That said, taking it on its own terms, Nightbreed is very good. The social commentary is by no means subtle and the structure is pretty disjointed, but those both serve to make it a more complete and evocative experience. As Brian says, the primary romance is super fucking manipulative, crossing well over into the realm of emotional/psychological abuse, and I'm not certain how to feel about that without the context of the rest of the goddamn story. Honestly the only legitimate complaint I can muster on this one is that we don't get to see the rest of it.