Devouring Horror One Bloody Chunk At A Time….
There’s an antiquated saying that a man’s home is his castle. Jack Travis took it literally. A playwright who specializes in macabre tales, Jack bought a somewhat remote Scottish castle with the idea of making it not just a home, but a setting for his […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVThere’s an antiquated saying that a man’s home is his castle. Jack Travis took it literally.
A playwright who specializes in macabre tales, Jack bought a somewhat remote Scottish castle with the idea of making it not just a home, but a setting for his next work, exploring the malevolent deeds of its former owner, a nobleman who impregnated his maid servant. She fell to her death down a spiral staircase after bearing him a son.
When the child was old enough to know his heritage, he ridiculed his father, who in a fit of rage imprisoned his son behind a stone wall. Left alone to die, without water or food, the son allegedly made a deal with the devil to exact revenge.
Jack (William Holstead) has a master plan, affirmed when he discovers a painting of the nobleman, maid and their son, now proudly displayed in his office for inspiration. He’ll complete his play and then have performances inside the castle. There are obstacles to overcome, not the least of which is a bitchy teenage daughter, Bee (Grace Courtney), who resents her new home, her new school, and her father for the upheaval in her life.
That’s the setup for Playhouse, the directing debut of brothers Fionn and Toby Watts, who also wrote the screenplay. The Far North Film production just became available on VOD.
The creepy atmospherics begin to take hold when Bee gets the bejesus scared out of her, thanks to a couple of school chums, ably portrayed by Mathilde Darmady and Julie Higginson. In a game of truth or dare, they talk Bee into touching the wall where the nobleman’s son was ensconced. Bee’s reaction suggests an ethereal connection to the dearly departed.
Enter Jenny (Helen Mackay) and her husband Callum (James Rottger), who live not far from the castle, which by the way is more tall stone home than medieval edifice, one of the film’s few cheats. Jenny, we learn, has a kinship connection to the castle, and Callum aspires to be a writer not unlike Jack. Where Jenny sees trouble, Callum sees opportunity. The two are invited to dinner with Jack and Bee, but the father-daughter histrionics explode, ruining the dinner and mysteriously sending Bee into hiding, the nature of which we won’t learn until near the end of this tale.
Through all of this, Jack’s work slowly gets the better of him (think Jack Torrence in The Shining), with episodes of mania and, perhaps hallucinations, as when Bee’s mother Kathryn (Rebecca Calienda) makes an ill-fated appearance.
So as not to give away too much, let’s just say things go from bad to worse thereafter, with a dollop of heroics arriving just in the nick of time.
Playhouse is an ambitious film, most notably for its gorgeous cinematography. There is nothing chintzy about the look of this film. The interior and exterior shots make you want to visit Scotland with the next post-Covid flight out. The lighting is eerie, enhanced by the castle occupants’ preference for candles over electricity. A big congrats to cinematographer Andy Toovey.
It does falter a bit in pacing. This film requires patience, given its slow, suspenseful build. And frankly, the payoff isn’t as dramatic — or spooky — as the motif would suggest. Still, the Watts brothers deserve credit for coaxing the most out of their talented cast. Halstead is a bit over the top as Jack, but not annoyingly so. Mackay, in particular, is a standout.
The plot, while derivative, has enough novelty and nuance to sustain interest, and that’s ultimately the point, eh? So stick with Playhouse from start to finish. You may not give it a standing ovation, but I suspect you’ll demand a Watts brothers encore.
Neophyte underground director Christopher Bickel’s debut feature The Theta Girl was all the rage back in 2018. It was a memorable first impression. So, hopes are high for Bickel’s follow up feature Bad Girls which has just dropped a trailer and is available for pre-order. […]
Movies & TV NewsNeophyte underground director Christopher Bickel’s debut feature The Theta Girl was all the rage back in 2018. It was a memorable first impression. So, hopes are high for Bickel’s follow up feature Bad Girls which has just dropped a trailer and is available for pre-order. If this trailer is any indication, then Bad Girls looks to be a violent, sleezy good time.
Watch the trailer and read excerpts from Films Colacitta’s press release below, Horror Fans….
WEST COLUMBIA, SC – Films Colacitta announces the release of Bad Girls, a violent underground film by Christopher Bickel, premiering in early 2021.
2021 is poised to be the year of the underground film. Due to the void of Hollywood content caused by the 2020 pandemic, audiences are clamoring for new and unusual programming.
Heading the charge for unique DIY boutique cinema is Bad Girls, an eye-popping artsploitation road movie from acclaimed director of The Theta Girl, Christopher Bickel. The film’s producer, Crystal Colligan, describes Bad Girls as a “shocking drug-fueled post-modern female rage-odyssey.”
Bad Girls gleefully subverts genre tropes in telling its lurid, hyperreal tale. After robbing a strip club, three desperate teenage girls lead a misogynistic Federal Agent on a lysergic cross-country chase, scoring a duffle bag full of money, drugs, and a crew of willing kidnapees along the way.
Bad Girls is an underground film produced by amateurs in South Carolina for $16,000 — “about one-half of the CATERING BUDGET for a typical made-for-TV movie,” Bickel proudly indicates. The majority of that budget (some of which was raised by crowd-funding, some came from Bickel’s day-job in a record store) went to pay the cast and crew a modest daily stipend — something which director Bickel cites as being “of utmost importance to keeping harmony on set.”
Citing influences as diverse as Jack Hill, Russ Meyer, Greg Araki, R Kern, John Waters, and Robert Downey (Sr.), Bickel has crafted a vision more than just the sum parts of those influences — it is something unique in current underground cinema.
“These are characters people haven’t seen before, interacting in a violent world that is almost-but-not-quite our own,” says director Christopher Bickel of the “exaggerated reality” of the Bad Girls universe. “When you’re making a movie for the cost of a used car, you’re forced to get creative with the storytelling in ways that Hollywood focus-groups don’t allow. You won’t find Bad Girls in a Walmart because it doesn’t belong in a Walmart.”
Bad Girls stars Morgan Shaley Renew, Sanethia Dresch, and Shelby Lois Guinn as the titular “Bad Girls.” Cleveland Langdale and Micah Peroulis star as two cult rock stars kidnapped by the girl gang. Jonathan Benton stars as a geeky hotel clerk swept up in the madness. Mike Amason and Dove Dupree star as oddly-paired FBI agents following the wreckage of the girls’ cross-country crime spree.
Bad Girls was co-written by Bickel and star of The Theta Girl, Shane Silman. This is a first feature for most of the cast members, though Mike Amason, Cleveland Langdale, Dove Dupree, and Shane Silman are returning from The Theta Girl.
DOP Stephen Nemeth is known for his camerawork on the extreme horror film American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock (2015).
More information, including the red band trailer, can be found at www.BadGirlsMovie.com.
Pre-order: https://igg.me/at/badgirlsmovie
Are you a doer or a watcher? If you were to see a brutal assault take place right in front of you, would you try and stop it? Would you act like nothing happen and go on with your day as usual? Would you stand […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVAre you a doer or a watcher? If you were to see a brutal assault take place right in front of you, would you try and stop it? Would you act like nothing happen and go on with your day as usual? Would you stand by with phone in hand and record the brutality to show your friends? Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick has a new feature called Don’t Look Back, which delves into how the decisions you make, or don’t make, can come back to haunt you. The premise of this film is an interesting one, but does it make its point strongly enough? Grab a snack and watch your back as I tell you a little bit about Don’t Look Back.
The story starts out with a girl named Caitlin (Kourtney Bell) and her father having a mildly celebratory breakfast for her birthday and engaging in fun conversation. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. Caitlin opens it without giving it much thought and gets rushed by a couple of masked thugs. The thugs knock her to the floor, but she still manages to see her father get shot and killed.
Fast forward nine months when we see that Caitlin is in therapy to help her recover from the trauma. She tells the therapist that she’s doing well, but that she’s been having hallucinations. The therapist tells her that these hallucinations are “normal” and that her recovery is miraculous.
After her session, she decides she feels well enough to go for a jog in the park. During her jog, she encounters two men, one’s a suspicious looking fella and the other is a seemingly friendly man named Douglas (Dean J. West). As soon as she has a brief exchange with Douglas, he’s suddenly brutally assaulted by the suspicious looking guy. Douglas is getting the shit beaten out of him in front of a group of bystanders, all of whom do nothing to help.
Naturally, there’s a guy, standing around with his phone out, but he doesn’t bother to call the cops or do anything else helpful. Instead, he’s filming everything because that’s apparently the thing we do these days. Enter Douglas’ pissed off brother, Lucas (Will Stout), who wants someone to take accountability for what happened, or didn’t happen, regarding his brother’s senseless death.
Eventually, the group of bystanders, Caitlin, and Lucas are all brought together face to face. The folks who witnessed the assault are regretful for not doing anything to help save Douglas and they express their reasons for not helping to Lucas. The reasons include fear and selfishness among others, but of course, none of the excuses seem to really make Lucas feel any better or gain any closure.
Once that meeting is over, things finally begin to get kind of interesting. In a series of strange coincidental events, the group begins to get picked off one by one. And every time there’s a death, Caitlin seems to be at the scene. Also, the presence of a black crow accompanies every death. Who or what is killing the people who let Douglas die? Is Karma really a bitch or is someone just really pissed off? Oh, I forgot to mention that there’s also quite a bit of subtle and not so subtle religious stuff thrown into the mix, so it might even be the wrath of God striking down the people for what they did or didn’t do. Who knows?
Don’t Look Back is more of a bland thriller, even though it’s described as being horror. While this movie isn’t awful, it is pretty lackluster. If anything, the most horrific aspect to this film is the fact that it focuses on how society is okay with just standing by and watching terrible things take place. Otherwise, the story starts off slow and both the dialogue and interaction between the actors is just kind of boring. The kills and gore are pretty mild, but there are some decent effects used when the more supernatural elements of the story come into play.
If you want to give Don’t Look Back a watch for yourself, you can find it right now on Amazon Prime for $6.99.
Time is running out to save Dee and prevent Christina Braithwhite from completing her dark ritual. Tic, Leti, and Company, with the Book of Names in possession, must return to Ardham for a final confrontation with the evils of the Order of the Ancient Dawn, […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsTime is running out to save Dee and prevent Christina Braithwhite from completing her dark ritual. Tic, Leti, and Company, with the Book of Names in possession, must return to Ardham for a final confrontation with the evils of the Order of the Ancient Dawn, a confrontation in which all timespace hangs in the balance…
This didn’t work. Not just “Full Circle,” but Lovecraft Country itself. It’s a goddamn shame because at its best it was brilliant, reversing the Lovecraftian idea of the buried evils of the past to confront the real historical evil of racism and the odious slavery that was its nadir. But Lovecraft Country failed and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
Oh, it had some great ingredients: the menace of the Braithwhite cult with its body horror machinations, Tic’s unhappy position as unwanted heir to the cult’s power, Korean fox spirits, travel through the multiverse, a secret language going back to Eden—not to mention powerful acting from talents like Michael K. Williams, Wunmi Mosaku, Courtney B. Vance, Jurnee Smollett, and Jonathan Majors. But I could take a cake from a five-star Parisian bakery, stuff it with filet mignon and Maine lobster, and slather it in truffle marinara sauce and I doubt you would enjoy eating it.
Much as it disappoints me to say it, Lovecraft Country suffers from American Horror Story Syndrome. Not as badly, mind you. I’d still rather eat that unappealing combination of great foods than slurp down a bowl of shit, but what both share is the mistaken belief that throwing the audience a bunch of tropes is the same as offering a coherent story with a logical plot and understandable character motivations. Lovecraft Country left me with many unanswered questions: why did Montrose slit Yahima’s throat? Where did the “shoggoths” come from? How exactly did Leti become invulnerable? How did Dee get fitted with a robotic arm? And why are white people now unable to use magic? What makes Lovecraftian horror special is that, as Robert Bloch pointed out, it’s logical. There may be fantastic elements, but at the end of the day, there’s a nightmarish rationality to Lovecraft that complements the horror of the unknown. As Lovecraft Country runs on, it loses horror and logic in equal measure.
There will doubtless be those who argue that Lovecraft Country’s failings are second to the conversations it starts and the representation it showcases. I will not countenance the racism inherent in such an argument. To judge work by creators of color on their ethnicity rather than the quality of their art is a monstrous infantilization and a tacit admission of the belief that black artists can’t do better horror than Lovecraft Country. If you are having Important Conversations About Race because of Lovecraft Country, then good for you. As a consumer of horror and dark fantasy, I regret to say I found it a disappointing waste of potential.
Despite that, I want Lovecraft Country to be successful. In fact, I want it to be wildly successful, making enough money that studio execs sit up and take notice, because despite the fact that it doesn’t work, it’s emblematic of a growing black horror renaissance, and that’s something we should all be happy to see.
I really don’t know how to start this review off, because I literally don’t know what it was that I just watched. From newcomer writer/director Rony Patel and the folks at Gravitas Ventures comes a completely weird, completely different movie called Chop Chop. Without further […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVI really don’t know how to start this review off, because I literally don’t know what it was that I just watched. From newcomer writer/director Rony Patel and the folks at Gravitas Ventures comes a completely weird, completely different movie called Chop Chop. Without further ado, buckle up and enjoy this bumpy ride.
Chop Chop starts off like a typical slasher movie. There’s a notice coming over the police radio saying that multiple headless bodies have been found and that there’s a person of interest on the loose, driving around in a red vehicle with a pizza sign on it. Flash forward to a creepy looking pizza delivery guy, apparently named Teddy (David Harper) in frame, walking down the sidewalk with a pizza in one hand and a bag of severed heads in the other. Now, keep in mind that this is one of the only parts of this film that truly makes sense.
Next, we meet a couple named Liv (Atala Arce) and Chuck (Jake Taylor) who are trying to have a romantic evening together. They eat dinner and have a little sexy time and enjoy themselves. That is until the dreaded surprise knock at the door comes. Chuck’s on the toilet with earbuds in during this time, so Liv is the one who winds up answering the door and seeing Teddy standing there. She’s visibly frightened and tells Teddy that she didn’t order a pizza and then shuts and locks the door. Liv looks through the peephole to see if he’s gone, but to her surprise he’s still standing at the door smiling. When she looks through the peephole a second time he’s gone.
She then notices a note has been slipped underneath the door and after she reads it, she turns to find Teddy sitting on her couch. Teddy says he has “powers” and thus begins a fight between Liv and Teddy, all while Chuck’s still on the shitter with the earbuds in and being oblivious. Eventually, Chuck comes out and helps Liv fight the guy and they wind up killing poor Teddy. However, rather than deciding to call the cops, for whatever reason, the two of them decide to hack up poor Teddy and put him into garbage bags which are thrown into the red pizza car and driven away by Chuck. This is the only other part of the film that really makes sense. From here on out, though, I don’t know what to tell you.
Chop Chop essentially comes off as a mashup of Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie. There are absolute homages to both in how the film is stylized and presented. The introduction of characters and/or chapters of the film via title cards is very reminiscent of Pulp Fiction and there are grotesque scenes of torture and gore that look like they’re pulled straight out of any one of Zombie’s works. Odd characters, strange plot twists and just pure weirdness is what Chop Chop is composed of. It’s definitely not a film for everyone, but it is worth a watch just for the experience alone. If you’re curious to see Chop Chop for yourself, it will be available on VOD on October 20.
With Dee in magical stasis, the search for The Book of Names becomes more urgent than ever as our heroes are forced to travel back in time to retrieve a copy from 1921 before it is destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre. But doing so […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsWith Dee in magical stasis, the search for The Book of Names becomes more urgent than ever as our heroes are forced to travel back in time to retrieve a copy from 1921 before it is destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre. But doing so will force Montrose to confront some very dark memories.
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but Lovecraft Country has jumped the shark. What started as a smart, socially relevant take on Lovecraftian horror has collapsed in a pile of tropes with only the thinnest thread of plot to bind them together. It’s a goddamn shame, because it started so promisingly as the story of a young black man bound by blood to the leader of a malevolent cult founded by slaveowners obsessed with breeding monstrosities. There were a lot of meaty plot and subtextual possibilities there, most of which are only half-explored.
What exactly are we to take away from the last few episodes, which have meandered from Korean fox spirits (which conveniently go away when asked, evidently) to Many Worlds quests for identity to time travel? How is it that Aunt Hippolyta conveniently knows how to repair a dimensional gateway machine and why exactly is Leti magically protected from fire? These and many questions like them are either incompletely dealt with or unanswered as the show’s plot turns to an incoherent soup.
I really want to like Lovecraft Country because it was once exciting and new and atmospheric. I want to enjoy the talented acting as part of a cogent, logical story. I really want to believe that creator and writer Mischa Green will pull some fantastic twist out of her sleeve that will knock me on my ass with its power, unexpectedly unifying all these disparate elements.
But with one episode left, it seems increasingly unlikely that will happen.
“Jig-a-Bobo” begins shortly after the lynching of Emmett Till, a horrific murder with deep echoes for the Freeman family, since Till was a friend of Diana Freeman (Jada Harris). Trying to escape and be alone with her grief, Diana runs afoul of the Chicago police […]
Movies & TV TV Reviews“Jig-a-Bobo” begins shortly after the lynching of Emmett Till, a horrific murder with deep echoes for the Freeman family, since Till was a friend of Diana Freeman (Jada Harris). Trying to escape and be alone with her grief, Diana runs afoul of the Chicago police while Tic, Montrose, and Leti race to find a way to prevent Christina Braithwaite from realizing an evil plan.
Something about “Jig-a-Bobo” doesn’t quite work, and it’s difficult to pinpoint precisely what. Directed by series creator Misha Green, it’s a technically well-done episode, with some appropriately horrifying imagery, but the main thread of the story feels more and more tenuous. The unexpected reappearance of a major character is little more than an aside, and the magical mechanics of the world remain hazy. What exactly is the ultimate aim of Christina Braithwaite’s plot, which now has a deadline? It all feels murky, like a particularly interesting conversation the adults are having while the viewer is stuck at the kids’ table. I won’t say Lovecraft Country has jumped the shoggoth, but it feels like it’s lost its way. With two episodes left to go, I hope Green can right the ship and steer a generally great show satisfyingly home.
Welcome back, Walking-Dead Heads! Before I pull apart the guts of the final eight episodes of The Walking Dead season 10, (the six-episode season 10 addendum airing next year notwithstanding) let me qualify everything you’re about to read with a few thoughts. Right off, I’d […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsWelcome back, Walking-Dead Heads! Before I pull apart the guts of the final eight episodes of The Walking Dead season 10, (the six-episode season 10 addendum airing next year notwithstanding) let me qualify everything you’re about to read with a few thoughts.
Right off, I’d like to ask that you please excuse this review for being more than a bit truncated. It’s truly a review like none other I’ve written before. This season’s second half debuted back in February, right before COVID-19 – a deadly, highly contagious corona virus – began sweeping across the U.S. in addition to the rest of the world. While the crew behind AMC’s flagship property, The Walking Dead, managed to get all eight episodes shot, the postproduction work on the season 10 finale was suspended indefinitely. Like all of us, it was paramount that the good folks working on these episodes stayed safe and stayed home as much as possible and like many of us, their jobs were put on hold while we collectively tried to figure out how best to manage life in the midst of this vile disease.
After seven episodes, concluding with this season’s penultimate hour, Sunday nights went zombie-free for approximately six months before the season finale finally shambled onto our TVs this week. That’s a long time under normal circumstances. And it’s a really long time when you’ve lost your income, your health insurance, and your ability to see your friends and family all while trying to avoid being infected by an insidious, deadly, and very real adversary.
So, again, please forgive this review for being a little scant on the finer details of this season. Fictional plagues don’t leave quite the same impression when you’re trying to survive the real deal.
When we left off, Carol (Melissa McBride) had just chased the leader of the Whisperers—Alpha (Samantha Morton)—into a hidden cave system. Inside, Carol discovers Alpha’s ace card—an enormous herd of walkers.
The entire crux of the first half of this season was how our heroes would handle antagonist Alpha and her large, crazy henchman Beta (Ryan Hurst) while those two had an army of the dead at their disposal to unleash on our heroes’ various safe havens. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) – the villain from seasons past – had been in the midst of trying to redeem himself after having been jailed in Alexandria until the chaos wrought by the Whisperers had made it necessary that he be freed. Our heroes’ tenuous trust in Negan appeared to have been misplaced as he had joined forces with the Whisperers before the midseason hiatus.
This next section contains SPOILERS so skip ahead if you must.
As the second half of The Walking Dead season 10 begins, the overarching giant-horde-of-walkers conundrum remains, and it persists largely unchanged until the last couple episodes. The survivors use their Whisperer assets Gamma (Thora Birch) and Alpha’s estranged daughter Lydia (Cassady McClincy) to gain a strategic advantage in their plan to defeat the Whisperers. Meanwhile, Eugene (Josh McDermitt) is smitten with a mysterious woman named Stephanie (Margot Bingham), whom he’d met over the radio, and promises to keep their conversations secret for their mutual protection. Eventually, the two of them plan to meet.
The Whisperers infiltrate Hilltop and burn it to the ground sending small groups of survivors scrambling. Beta finds and kills Gamma, but Negan one-ups that move my decapitating Alpha, assuring that his baby-face turn was in earnest (despite he and Alpha having gross, mind-stink inducing sex in the first episode following the midseason break). It’s revealed that he and Carol hatched this murder plot together.
While all this is going down, Michonne (Danai Gurira) inexplicably leaves everyone behind including her daughter Judith (Cailey Fleming) to go find her lover and series protagonist Rick Grimes who’s been missing for a couple seasons now and whom Michonne suspects is still alive. In reality, Andrew Lincoln – the actor who portrays Rick – bailed on the show and Danai Guriria decided to follow suit. Sometimes art is forced to imitate life, I guess. Given that this wasn’t a creative decision by showrunner Angela Kang and the writers’ room, but rather a case of reality affecting the direction of the show, they get a pass this time.
As Eugene Leaves to meet the mysterious Stephanie, Beta leads the enormous zombie horde to Alexandria, but he finds it empty. The Alexandrian survivors have holed up in a nearby hospital. Beta soon leads the horde there, surrounding the hospital with his dead army. No matter, though, as the survivors execute a plan to lead the walkers away and eventually over a cliff and into a quarry…just as they have done many times throughout the series. They’re aided in their mission by the “surprise” return of Maggie (Lauren Cohan). Incidentally, Cohan had also bailed on the show for an opportunity to star in a series called Whiskey Cavalier, but it was cancelled after its inaugural season.
Our survivors’ plan has some tension-ratcheting, plot-making hiccups, but when the smoke clears, Beta has become walker snacks and the horde lay broken at the bottom of the quarry. The season 10 epilogue depicts Eugene’s group getting captured at gunpoint by a group comprised of what appear to be Star Wars cosplayers in bad stormtrooper costumes.
You may now proceed SPOILER-FREE.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past five seasons railing on the deteriorating quality of what was once one of my very favorite shows. I’m admittedly difficult to please. That’s what makes me okay at whatever it is I’m writing here for you all. But nonetheless, The Walking Dead has grown objectively less good in recent seasons.
Its trajectory is remarkably like that of Dexter – a dramatic series about a serial killer who kills other serial killers that ran for eight seasons on Showtime and that I also wrote about extensively. The first half of that series was remarkable. Frankly, it was way better than any of us had a right to expect it to be. Then, after the conclusion of its brilliant fourth season, the show’s quality followed Sunday night’s walkers right over a cliff. The deterioration wasn’t subtle or gradual and its cause wasn’t any one easily identifiable factor, but rather a veritable death by a thousand cuts that involved multiple showrunners, cast issues, and other things that come along with the business of doing a television series. Dexter’s final four seasons frustrated fans as the series whimpered off into an underwhelming, ungratifying, and incredibly nonsensical oblivion.
As for The Walking Dead, the end is nigh. After years of star defections, waning ratings, zombie fatigue, and varying degrees of bad execution, AMC finally officialized the proverbial writing on the wall while The Walking Dead was comatose by COVID, announcing that the forthcoming, extra-large eleventh season will be its last in addition to the aforementioned six-episode addendum to season 10 coming early next year. They also announced three spin-off series coming over the next three years, one of which – The Walking Dead: World Beyond – premiered immediately after Sunday night’s finale and will be its own perhaps ill-advised can of worms. I’m not convinced that saturating an already dying market with multiple series and movies that relatively few people seem to be clamoring for is the best idea. We’ll find out. In any event, the series that started it all will end sooner rather than later.
The tenth season of The Walking Dead wasn’t its worst – not by a long shot – but it also doesn’t belong among the series’ best seasons which were truly great. The issues that have marred the last four seasons remain – namely the incessant undermining of years of characterization in favor of quick plot-hole fixes – but these issues are easier to accept now that I can feel the warm light at the end of the tunnel. Stay safe, Horror Fans.
Final Grade: C+
Hot in pursuit of the Book of Names, Tic realizes he may have a family connection to it and goes to St. Louis to track it down. Meanwhile, Aunt Hippolyta begins investigating what happened to Uncle George. Both come together at an enigmatic observatory, laying […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsHot in pursuit of the Book of Names, Tic realizes he may have a family connection to it and goes to St. Louis to track it down. Meanwhile, Aunt Hippolyta begins investigating what happened to Uncle George. Both come together at an enigmatic observatory, laying the groundwork for the trippiest episode of the series thus far.
“I Am,” directed by Charlotte Sieling, is a frustrating episode. It’s not that it’s bad per se. Indeed, some of the imagery is very striking, and the interdimensional journey taken by Aunt Hippolyta is very artfully done—and totally lacking in horror. Are we being set up for a dark reveal? If so, Sieling gives us no indication of it, part of Lovecraft Country’s frustrating tendency to detour from its storyline in favor of pursuing other, more tangential subplots.
Lovecraft’s work doesn’t entirely lack a sense of wonder, but Lovecraftian wonder is always couched in alienness, like a coral reef at night. For all its art and high production values, “I Am” fails to provide the mixture of Lovecraftian horror and meditation on race that has thus far made the series stand out. With only three episodes left in the season, let’s hope Misha Green and her team get the story back on track.
Lovecraft Country has teased Tic having had “a girl in Korea” several times already over the course of the series, and in Episode 6, “Meet Me in Daegu,” we finally find out who she is. Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung) is a demure nursing student with a […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsLovecraft Country has teased Tic having had “a girl in Korea” several times already over the course of the series, and in Episode 6, “Meet Me in Daegu,” we finally find out who she is. Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung) is a demure nursing student with a love for American musicals who lives alone with her mother Soon-Hee Meeh (Cindy Chang) on the eve of the Korean War. But Ji-Ah has a terrifying secret, and when she meets with Tic under very dark circumstances, it lays the groundwork for a haunting love story with implications for the rest of the series.
Directed by Helen Shaver, “Meet Me in Daegu” is good old-fashioned East Asian horror, drawing on concepts from Korean folklore to create a story of pathos, tragedy, secrets, and the supernatural. Jamie Chung and Cindy Chang have a great onscreen dynamic, and the slow reveal that their relationship may not be what it appears is well-handled by both actresses and director. The episode also has a gut-punch for the viewers when we learn what Tic’s Army service entailed, casting his character in a new light.
My complaint about “Meet Me in Daegu” is similar to the one I had regarding Episode 3, “Holy Ghost.” As well-done as “Meet Me in Daegu” is, it feels at times like an awkwardly placed flashback with little in the way of transition or connection back to the main arc of the story, as though series creator Mischa Green wants to have her horror anthology series and eat it too. As good as Episode 6 is, I can’t complain too vociferously, I hope Episode 7 shows us more of Ruby’s slide into magic and insanity.
