8/16/15 (Part Two): Two Against the World

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A Most Violent Year, Abel Morales, Albert Brooks, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Ebert, All Is Lost, American Dream, Ben Rosenfield, Bradford Young, capitalism, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Christopher Abbott, cinema, corruption, David Margulies, David Oyelowo, dramas, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Elyes Gabel, family business, film reviews, films, Giselle Eisenberg, heating oil, heists, hijacking, husband-wife relationship, husband-wife team, immigrants, J.C. Chandor, Jason Ralph, Jerry Adler, Jessica Chastain, John Procaccino, Margin Call, Movies, New York City, oil industry, organized crime, Orthodox Jews, Oscar Isaac, period-piece, personal codes, Peter Gerety, Pico Alexander, Quinn Meyers, Ron Patane, set in New York City, set in the 1980's, snubbed at the Oscars, suicide, the American Dream, writer-director

While most people will freely admit to having some sort of unalterable moral code, the reality is much less black and white: I’m willing to wager that we’ve all compromised our personal codes, from time to time…that’s just what life is about. Perhaps you’ve tolerated prejudicial beliefs from an otherwise beloved relative. Perhaps you’re an environmentalist who’s taken a soul-killing corporate job with a King Kong-sized carbon footprint in order to pay the bills. When faced with the choice between suffering for our “code” or bending our beliefs in order to achieve some measure of happiness, it’s tempting to say that we would all be able to stand firm in the face of adversity. It’s tempting, sure…but is it true?

Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), one half of the married couple that stands at the exact center of writer/director J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year (2014), is a man with one of those aforementioned “unalterable moral codes,” an individual who prides himself on always taking “the path that is most right.” Abel is a man with principles, with drive, ambition and an internal compass that always keeps him oriented towards true north…or, as it turns out, his own personal notion of true north. When his world begins to collapse around him, however, Abel will be forced into a rather unenviable position: greet his massing enemies with the violence and corruption that they’ve shown him or stick to his code and, quite possibly, become nothing more than a minor footnote in someone else’s story. As Pink Floyd so eloquently put it: “a walk-on part in the war or a lead role in a cage”…Abel can have either one but he can’t have both.

Kicking off in the Big Apple during the titular “violent year” (also known as 1981), Chandor’s newest opus concerns Abel and his wife, Anna (an absolutely ferocious Jessica Chastain), as they try to carve out their own piece of the American Dream. They own a heating oil company and have just started the process to acquire a prime piece of seafront real estate, all the better to bring in their own shipments directly and cut out the middle man. While Abel tries to pull together the $1.5 million that he’ll need for the deal, he also must deal with a raft of other problems including his mercenary competitors, a nearly non-stop barrage of violent fuel hijacking and an overly zealous district attorney (David Oyelowo) who’s been investigating the Morales’ company for several years.

After another series of thefts, including one where one of Abel’s drivers, Julian (Elyes Gabel), gets his jaw broken, the head of the teamsters (Peter Gerety) insists that all of Abel’s drivers be issued handguns: he refuses to put his men into any more unsafe situations, despite Abel’s protests that faked gun permits are only going to add to his legal woes. As this is going on, Abel surprises an intruder in his home, a shady individual who drops a gun as he flees. Anna, putting two and two together, realizes that the attempted invasion might not be part of the year’s “crime wave” but actually related to their current problems with the company. The message is clear: the Morales’ aren’t safe anywhere, including their own home.

As Abel watches his carefully constructed plan fall apart, piece by piece, he’s goaded by his loose-cannon wife to take more drastic, unsavory measures: she’s the daughter of a mobster, after all, and those guys always know how to take care of business. Abel has that aforementioned “personal code,” however, and he’s determined to do everything on the up-and-up, even if it means putting his family and business through the wringer. When Julian gets attacked again and takes matters into his own hands, however, it forces Abel to scramble and try to put all the pieces back together before his time runs out on the real estate deal. Will Abel stick to his code or will he give in to the violence around him and respond in kind? Will he become the monster that he fears in order to get the life that he deserves?

Extremely stylish, beautifully shot and as cold as an iceberg, A Most Violent Year packs plenty of punch but still manages to fall short (to this viewer, at least) of Chandor’s previous film, the “Redford on a boat” mini-epic, All is Lost (2013). There’s plenty to like and respect here, no doubt: Chandor is a sure-hand as both writer and director, displaying an admirable ability to cut the fat and get right to the meat of the situation. That being said, A Most Violent Year feels too long and bloated for the relatively simple story beats involved: the structure and pacing feel off, leaving too much “dead air” and sapping some of the film’s forward momentum.

One aspect of the film that manages to shoot for the moon and score brilliantly, however, is the extraordinary performances. Front to back, A Most Violent Year is loaded with so many memorable performances and masterfully acted scenes that he handily establishes itself as a real actors’ showcase. The supporting cast, alone, would make the film worth a watch under any other circumstances: Albert Brooks turns in another great, weary performance as Abel’s lawyer/confidant; Oyelowo is solid as a rock as the dogged D.A.; Gabel offers up some genuine anguish as the conflicted Julian (the parallels between his failure and Abel’s success are one of the film’s most subtle motifs) and Jerry Adler (perhaps best known for his recurring roles as Hesh in The Sopranos) brings a surprisingly gentle, paternal quality to his performance as the Orthodox Jewish owner of the property that Abel and Anna are trying to buy.

The real stars of the show, however, are undoubtedly Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. For his part, Isaac downplays the character of Abel masterfully, allowing all of the anger, frustration and fear to bubble and boil just below the surface until it finally explodes skyward in a truly volcanic display. He’s a case study in restraint and chilly resolve and Isaac works wonders with nothing so much as a soft word and piercing glare.

Chastain, on the other hand, is a completely unrestrained force of nature, the raging hurricane that tosses the rest of the cast around like so much flying junk. To not put too fine a point on it, she’s absolutely astounding in the film: it’s impossible to look away whenever she’s onscreen. From the stunning showpiece where she blows away the wounded deer to the fist-raising moment where she tells Oyelowo’s D.A. just where he can shove it, Chastain’s Anna is, easily, one of the most memorable modern cinematic creations.

Less Kay Corleone than Ma Barker, Anna is the true power behind the throne and Chastain tears into the role with absolute gusto. The fact that she wasn’t nominated for an Oscar only goes to show how vapid that particular process is: the fact that her performance was considered a “supporting” role in other nominations only goes to show how flawed that rationale is. Quite plainly, Chastain is as much a part of A Most Violent Year as Isaac is…perhaps more so, to be honest.

Despite the top-shelf performances, gorgeous cinematography (Bradford Young also shot Selma (2014), giving him two prestige pictures in the same year), great score (despite not caring for Alex Ebert’s main gig in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, his score is absolutely perfect) and effective mise en scene, I still found myself slightly let down by the whole thing. Perhaps it speaks more to personal choice than any major flaws in the film (short of really trite ending to Julian’s arc, there aren’t many major missteps) but A Most Violent Year never quite struck me as “essential,” merely very well-made.

In truth, short of two chase scenes (one decent, the other a real showstopper), the whole film ends up being rather uneventful. Sure, Abel and Anna are faced with a seemingly insurmountable array of problems but each issue ends up being resolved a bit too casually to provide much tension. The resolution of the Julian storyline, the resolution of the fuel hijacking, the resolution of the property deal…in each case, it feels as if Abel and Anna are plucked from the stew-pot just as the water begins to get nice and hot. One of the things that really struck me about the chase scene between Abel and the hijackers is how unhinged and dangerous it felt: for that brief time period, I really found myself questioning the outcome. Were that overriding sense of danger more present throughout the film, perhaps it might have gripped me a little tighter.

Ultimately, A Most Violent Year is a film that deserves no small amount of praise: the performances, alone, are enough to make this a must-watch. That being said, it’s also a film that never quite sunk its claws into me, never quite demanded my complete adoration. Perhaps, in the end, A Most Violent Year is a perfect case of “different strokes for different folks”: extremely well-made and quite evocative, there’s nothing overtly wrong with the film, yet it never quit kicks like it’s supposed to.

That’s quite alright, however: I’ll keep looking forward to Chandor’s films just like I have ever since All is Lost proved him to be a modern master. In an age where “bigger, louder, dumber” seems to rule the box-office, we could always use more films like A Most Violent Year. Essential? Not quite. Worth your time? Without a shadow of a doubt.

6/8/15 (Part Two): Boy Meets Demon

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Akom Tidwell, Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, Bovine Fantasy Invasion, cinema, creature feature, dead parents, demonic possession, demons, DIY filmmaking, Dustin Dorough, Emmett Eckert, Equinox, fantasy, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Goat Witch, gory films, Hex of the Vulture, horror, horror films, husband-wife team, indie horror film, James Sizemore, John Chatham, Josh Adam Gould, low-budget films, Lucio Fulci, made-up language, Melanie Richardson, Movies, multiple writers, Nightbreed, occult, possession, practical effects, Sade Smith, Sam Raimi, special-effects extravaganza, summoning demons, supernatural, the Dark Womb, The Demon's Rook, The Evil Dead, Tim Reis, underground colonies, writer-director-producer-actor

Stuffed to bursting with more genuine imagination, passion, invention and pure love for the genre than most films with a hundred times the budget and resources, burgeoning indie auteur James Sizemore’s The Demon’s Rook (2013) is that rarest of films: it’s a modern throwback to the glories of ’80s direct-to-VHS spectacles that manages to not only nail the look but also replicate the wide-eyed, anything-goes feel of the era. To boil it down to its purest essence, The Demon’s Rook is the real, no bullshit deal and Sizemore may just prove to be this generation’s Sam Raimi.

In certain ways, The Demon’s Rook plays like an ultra low-budget version of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (1990), as filtered through an ’80s-era Raimi sensibility. Young Roscoe (Emmett Eckert) seems to be fairly chummy with a demon named Dimwos (John Chatham): the two hang out in Roscoe’s room, at night, and the boy is constantly drawing pictures of his demonic buddy. This fact doesn’t really seem to bother Roscoe’s parents, who are either the world’s most understanding mom and dad or pretty confident that their kid has an overactive imagination.

Turns out, they should have paid better attention. One night, something emerges from the mysterious opening in the woods and reduces Roscoe’s parents to a couple of scorch marks on their bedspread. Dimwos leads the boy to the woods, straight to the mysterious opening. Flash forward “years later” and we see the now-adult Roscoe (writer-director Sizemore) emerge from the opening. He’s got a bit of the ol’ “wild man of the woods” look to him, along with some newly honed psychic powers (fuck the Clapper: Roscoe can turn off lights by just pointing at them!).

Roscoe reconnects with his childhood love, Eva (Sizemore’s real-life wife, Ashleigh Jo Sizemore), in time to warn her of a pending demon invasion. Sure enough, three very bad demons (helpfully color-coded as white, black and red) emerge from the fog-shrouded forest cavern and proceed to wreck unholy hell on the hapless denizens of the area. The demons’ preferred method of destruction is to possess their victims, thereby causing them to either rip into those around them or rip into themselves, depending on the needs of the particular scene. One of the “possessed” even turns into a sort of man/monster hybrid (the transformation scene is just about as good as this sort of thing gets) and runs around attacking everything around him like a super-pissed off Toxic Avenger. Needless to say: good stuff.

As Roscoe and Eva try to quell the unholy onslaught, things get even hairier after the white demon reveals itself to be a bit of a necromancer and raises the inhabitants of a nearby cemetery as a gut-munching, zombie army. Zombies, demons, a wild concert in a barn that’s one part hillbilly-rave-orgy and two-parts Grand Guignol slaughterhouse…it’s enough to make anyone throw in the towel! Good thing for the locals (and the world) that Roscoe and Eva are made of much stronger stuff: when it comes to bloodthirsty demons, these are definitely the people you want on your side. So, blast your Bovine Fantasy Invasion tape, keep an eye out for the Manbeast and hold on to your guts: The Demon’s Rook is one helluva rollercoaster ride right to the wild side!

First and foremost, it’s obvious that The Demon’s Rook is a real labor of love: not only do the majority of the crew, including Sizemore, wear more hats than a haberdasher (this is, after all, the very definition of “indie filmmaking”), but the attention to detail and infectious good humor seem to indicate that no one was just punching the clock. The cinematography looks great (Tim Reis, who also edited, is an easy nominee for MVP, although he’s got a lot of competition) and the score, attributed to a variety of performers, is absolutely phenomenal: the running joke about Bovine Fantasy Invasion is pretty great, culminating in the aforementioned wildly awesome barn blowout. While the score is fun and interesting, on its own, it also perfectly fits the film’s ’80s-video vibe: as someone who grew up on these films, this gave me a pretty warm sense of nostalgia, let me tell ya.

One of the most obvious (and impressive) things about The Demon’s Rook is its outstanding production design and practical effects. The film has an amazing atmosphere: with its thick, rolling fog and hard red, green and blue lighting, there are times when Sizemore’s micro-epic recalls nothing so much as the glory days of Dario Argento’s eye-popping oeuvre: the cave, in particular, is a really great, simple setpiece and a perfect example of how “less” can always be “more,” in the right hands.

Like the direct-to-video treasures that it so lustily emulates, The Demon’s Rook is a veritable orgy of disembowelments, exploding heads, severed limbs and over-the-top carnage. The kicker here, of course, is that not only are the effects all practical, they’re all absolutely astounding: from the makeup to the costuming to the gore effects, The Demon’s Rook actually looks better than most “professional” films. There’s a sense of physicality, here, that can only be achieved through latex, fake blood and boundless imagination. It says a lot when the worst thing that I can say about the effects is that the Manbeast ends up looking like a super-expensive, high-end Halloween mask: if that’s the biggest effects issue, I’d say they knocked the whole thing out of the park.

The stellar effects go hand-in-hand with the film’s constant sense of invention and imagination: like the best, gonzo ’80s films, there’s very much the sense that just about anything could be lurking around the corner. The film’s mythology is original (I, for one, cannot reiterate how unbelievably refreshing that is in this cookie-cutter era of remakes and re-imaginings) and there’s always the sense of larger-scale world-building going on in the background. While there’s plenty of room for interpretation and further explanation (I won’t pretend that the entire film made complete sense, only that it made “sense enough,” in a Lucio Fulci kind of way), Sizemore never gets so bogged down in the details that it prevents the action from rocketing forward at a nicely frenzied pace. If the “Dark Womb” and its demonic inhabitants are going to be Sizemore’s signature fantasia, I can’t wait to see how the world expands and develops.

As should be fairly obvious from the above, I’m a huge fan of The Demon’s Rook: whether it’s the genuinely terrifying red demon (talk about a perfect synthesis of design, function and performer), the ridiculous “I’m gonna marry Barbara!” jig, the Troma-approved barnstravaganza (complete with bemasked nude dancers, apple-bobbing, moonshine and metal detectors that look like weedwackers) or any of the endlessly inventive gore scenes (talk about lighting up the “Italo-horror” portion of my little, reptilian brain), there’s a whole lot to love here.

This isn’t, of course, to infer that The Demon’s Rook is a perfect film: it falls victim to many of the same issues that plague most micro-budget indies, although none of these prove to be critical injuries. The acting, with the exception of the Sizemores, is universally rough and ranges from non-acting (in every sense of the term) to passable understatement. The pacing can be uneven, especially in the film’s first half, and there’s plenty of “dead air,” so to speak: at nearly two hours, there’s no question that The Demon’s Rook could be tightened up.

The most critical issue ends up being the sound mix, which is so lopsided as to be constantly noticeable. Even with the volume cranked up to the max, I found myself missing dialogue, while the ensuing score/sound effects would end up shaking the walls. This becomes doubly frustrating given that the film isn’t exactly dialogue-lite: I have a feeling that some of my confusion might have been allayed if I were only able to hear what people were saying. To be honest, the sound mix is so bad that, in a lesser film, it would have turned me off almost immediately. It’s to the film and filmmakers’ immense credit that I ended up gritting my teeth and just baring through it: I’m certainly glad that I did but I wonder how many others might not be as willing to meet the film halfway.

Ultimately, despite a few shortcomings and the same growing pains that any like-minded filmmakers might experience (neither Raimi nor Peter Jackson sprung fully formed from the air, like Athena out of Zeus’ cranium), it’s quite obvious that The Demon’s Rook is something special. James Sizemore, Ashleigh Jo Sizemore (like James, she has her hand in everything from creating the demons’ unique language to working with the production design and effects) and the rest of the ultra-talented crew have an unabashed love for not only fantastic-horror but indie films, in general. In many ways, The Demon’s Rook reminds me of Equinox (1970), the ridiculously cool low-budget creature flick that would go on to influence Raimi’s iconic The Evil Dead (1981). If there’s any justice in the world, The Demon’s Rook will go on to inspire a whole new generation of horror filmmakers in the same way that The Evil Dead once did.

If I were you, I’d keep a close eye on Sizemore and his happy crew: in an increasingly homogenized era, this breath of fresh air isn’t only appreciated, it’s damn near necessary. If it’s good enough for Dimwos, you better believe it’s good enough for me.

12/22/14 (Part Two): The Sleep of Reason

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Alex van Warmerdam, alp, Annet Malherbe, auteur theory, Best of 2014, Borgman, Camiel Borgman, children in peril, cinema, Dirkje van der Pijl, Dutch film, dysfunctional family, Elve Lijbaart, Eva van de Wijdeven, fairy tales, fantasy, favorite films, Film auteurs, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, foreign films, forests, Hadewych Minis, husband-wife team, infidelity, isolated estates, Jan Bijvoet, Jeroen Perceval, Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, Mike Weerts, Movies, nightmares, Pieter-Bas de Waard, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, The Northerners, Tom Dewispelaere, Tom Erisman, Warmerdam, writer-director

What, exactly, would you get if you crossbred Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968) (or its American remake, Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), if you prefer) with Michael Haneke’s nihilistic Funny Games (1997) and then had oddball Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos direct the results while the ghost of Luis Bunuel shouted advise from the sidelines while playing sand volleyball with Lars von Trier? You would probably, of course, end up with a big, stinking, pretentious pile of pap: after all, that’s a whole lot of disparate arthouse balls to juggle at one time and we all know what happens to soup when the kitchen is full of cooks. If you’re one-of-a-kind Dutch master Alex van Warmerdam, however, you would take all of these ingredients and turn them into of the single most mind-blowing, difficult and flat-out amazing films to come down the pike since…well, probably since Warmerdam’s outsider classic The Northerners (1992) blew minds over two decades ago. But remember, kids: this guy’s a professional…do not attempt this at home.

Any attempt to give a plot synopsis for Borgman (2013) is pretty much doomed to fail miserably but we’ll give it the ol’ college try, nonetheless. Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet), a mysterious transient of some sort, is roused from his underground forest lair by an armed posse (think pitchfork wielding villagers in Frankenstein films and you’re on the right track): narrowly escaping with his life, Camiel alerts the other forest dwellers and heads for the “safety” of a nearby upper-class suburb. After attempting to gain entry at various houses (he just wants to take a bath but, for some reason, folks seem rather hesitant to allow a mysterious, bearded vagrant into their homes for the express purpose of bathing…what happened to love your fellow-man?), he finally ends up at the Schendel residence. Life, as they say, will never be the same again.

Outwardly, the Schendels are the picture of modern success: husband/father Richard (Jeroen Perceval) brings home the bacon quite ably, even if he spends long hours at the office to do so; mother/wife Marina (Hadewych Minis) spends her time painting and working on her art and their three, young children, Isolde (Elve Lijbaart), Leo (Pieter-Bas de Waard) and Rebecca (Dirkje van der Pijl) are tended to by their au pair, Stine (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen). The Schendels live in a luxurious home, including a nearby “summer-house” that’s probably as nice as some folks’ “real” houses and seem to be the very picture of detached affluence.

This nice little facade of normalcy comes crashing to the ground, however, when Camiel ends up pushing himself into their lives. After provoking Richard to kick the ever-loving shit out of him, Camiel then appeals to Marina’s sympathy and she ends up hiding him in the summer-house, unbeknownst to her overly irritable husband. Despite her request that he stay put, Camiel freely wanders about the estate, slinking around the margins as Richard goes about his business, blissfully unaware. At first, Camiel’s motives seem inscrutable but largely harmless: he enjoys hanging out with the children and telling them stories and seems largely content to simply observe the family’s day-to-day activities from the shadows.

In short order, however, Camiel’s actions begin to seem decidedly stranger and more nefarious, not least of which when he cleans up his appearance and applies to be the Schendel’s new gardener after he bumps off the old one. Once he’s “officially” insinuated within the household, Camiel calls up the other “forest dwellers,” namely Pascal (Tom Dewispelaere), Ludwig (director Warmerdam, in a fantastic performance), Brenda (Annet Malherbe) and Ilonka (Eva van de Wijdeven), and seems to put some sort of grand plan into action.

With Pascal and Ludwig now working with Camiel as gardeners and Brenda and Ilonka functioning as a tandem hit-squad/cleaning crew, Camiel begins to insinuate himself more and more into the family. As he seduces the (very) unhappily married Marina, the others seem to be working their own games on the children and nanny, although the ultimate goal remains unclear. As Camiel and his crew finish up their grand, mysterious re-design of the Schendel’s garden and Richard grows more and more irrational and violent, Marina begins to be plagued by terrible nightmares, visions which seem to be seeping into her waking life. With the line between fantasy and reality growing ever blurrier, Camiel works towards an end-game that will either spell the complete destruction of the Schendels and everything they stand for…or their ultimate salvation.

For the most part, the less said about Borgman’s specifics, the better: part of the unstoppable joy of watching the film is experiencing the numerous ways in which writer-director Warmerdam constantly fucks with audience expectations. Suffice to say that the film does appear to follow some form of logic, albeit one that seems particularly alien to poor fools like us. There’s certainly a strong element of fantasy here, what with that exceptionally odd opening, the appearance of the dogs and the undeniably strange resolution, but the entire film is grounded in a kind of muddy realism that makes the more surreal elements stand out in even greater relief. In particular, I’m reminded of the way in which Haneke blended fantasy and realism in Funny Games: while the majority of the film can be read as a simple home-invasion scenario, the moment where one of the tormentors “rewinds” the action in order to get a different outcome is a distinctly fantasy element. Borgman is full of little moments like this, small details that cue us in to the notion that more is going on under the surface then we might at first notice.

Warmerdam has a particular way of staging certain events (such as the various scenes where the naked Borgman sits atop Richard and Marina while they sleep) that makes us question what we’re seeing: once Camiel is officially living with the Schendels, it’s almost impossible to fully separate fantasy from reality, especially since what occurs in the more overtly fantasy moments seems to directly affect things during the “realistic” portions. Lots of films are described as “dizzying” and “head-swirling” but Borgman is one of the very few films that earns those descriptors part-and-parcel.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Borgman is the film’s coal-black, dry-as-bone sense of humor. While very little in the film could actually be considered “funny,” per se, there’s still an undeniably comic thread that runs underneath everything. In particular, the ways in which Camiel and his gang react, largely unemotionally, to the increasingly passionate activities of Richard, Marina and Stine leads to some truly choice moments (the scene where Pascal blows off Stine’s advances and then goes to sleep while she’s standing there is a minor classic).

While some audience members may find themselves scratching their heads over Borgman’s denser, more outre elements, I’m sure that everyone can agree that the film looks absolutely stunning: from beginning to end, cinematographer Tom Erisman gives the film a rich, darkly fairy-tale-like sheen that compliments the strange doings to a tee. Similar to Lars von Trier’s exceptional Melancholia (2011), Borgman features some simply stunning visuals: one of my very favorite shots in decades has to be the gorgeous underwater ones that detail the outcome of the gang’s various “victims.” Borgman is the kind of film where you could turn the sound off and just admire the visuals: it’s easily as beautiful as one of Peter Greenaway’s epics or my personal go-to for this sort of thing, Gyorgy Palfi’s stunning Taxidermia (2006).

Whenever you’re dealing with hard-core surrealism, the acting can become a make or break element: as with everything else, Borgman has this locked down solid. Simply put, the cast is perfect, each actor bringing something unique and individual to the table. It’s tempting to single out Bijvoet here, since his performance as the titular Borgman is one of the most accomplished, impressive performances I saw all year. The truth is, however, he’s surrounded by great performances: Minis is stunning as the open-wound that is Marina, Perceval turns Richard from one-dimensional ape into something approaching a tragic figure, van de Wijdeven and Malherbe are superb as the most philosophical hitmen since Vincent and Jules and Ditlevsen is so bizarre as the au pair that she comes across as truly alien…there isn’t a single boring, “run of the mill” character to be found here, not one moment of lazy acting, nothing that takes us out of any of the characters. Surrealism like this is no mean feat to pull off but Warmerdam and his cast make it look elementary.

I’ve already established that Borgman looks amazing, is endlessly fascinating, brilliantly written and genuinely creepy…but what is it actually about? To be honest, that’s a pretty great question. I’m not too proud to admit that I was often completely lost during the film’s relatively short run-time (it’s under two hours but feels closer to 90 minutes), although that fact never bothered or frustrated me. In fact, this was one of the very few films I’ve seen recently that actually made me research it after it was over. Although I’m still not quite sure that I understand what Warmerdam is getting at, I’m pretty sure I’m in the right general area. The film can be read in at least a dozen different ways (I absolutely wasn’t joking about the parallels to Down and Out in Beverly Hills) but I think that Warmerdam feeds us clues throughout that helps point to a distinctly fantasy-oriented explanation: note the similarities between Camiel’s night-time visits to the Schendel bedroom and Johann Heinrich Fussli’s iconic painting “Nachtmahr” to see where I eventually ended up.

Ultimately, however, I really don’t care what Warmerdam’s end-game was: the resulting film is so damn cool that I’m perfectly happy to continue to imperfectly understand it until…well, until I finally figure it out, I suppose. As far as I’m concerned, a good film is like a puzzle but a great film is like one of those mammoth 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzles that seem to be mostly generic blue sky pieces. I’m not saying that you should work up a cranial sweat every time you sit down to watch a flick…there’s nothing wrong with flipping your internal switch to “idle” every once in a while. A truly great film, however, requires complete investment on behalf of the audience: if the filmmaker is trying to tackle something important, the least you can do is keep up. As far as I’m concerned, Borgman is one of the most undeniably great films of the year, a complex, confusing masterpiece that demands your complete attention, makes no concessions and has an absolute blast doing it. I may not have completely understood it but I absolutely loved it and can’t recommend it highly enough.

 

12/14/14 (Part One): 99 Red Balloons Go By

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13 Sins, Alexandra Lydon, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Audrey Marie Anderson, balloons, Barak Hardley, Bryan Bertino, camcorders, children in peril, cinema, clowns, Emily Alyn Lind, film reviews, films, home invasion, horror, horror films, husband-wife team, Lee Garlington, Mockingbird, Movies, mysterious contests, mysterious gifts, The Strangers, Todd Stashwick, twist ending, VHS tape, writer-director

Suppose you received a mysterious, gift-wrapped box containing only a camcorder and a note that said “Keep filming”: would you? If you’ve seen as many horror films as I have, absolutely not. If you’re one of the characters in writer-director Bryan Bertino’s Mockingbird (2014), however, you might: otherwise, of course, you wouldn’t have much job security, now would you? Returning to the big-screen for the first time since his effective home-invasion debut, The Strangers (2008), Bertino turns in a film loaded with foreboding tension, yet slightly too familiar to really set the world alight. There’s plenty of genuine scares to be found, however, along with a truly amazing final setpiece that will stick in your head long after the credits roll.

Utilizing a found-footage aesthetic, Mockingbird weaves together the events of one particularly traumatic evening for three separate groups of people: Emmy (Audrey Marie Anderson) and Tom (Todd Stashwick), a married couple with two young daughters; Beth (Alexandra Lydon), a lonely woman whose just suffered a bad breakup, lives on her own and gets constant phone calls from her over-protective mother; and Leonard (Barak Hardley), an absolutely pathetic loser who still lives with his horrid mother (Lee Garlington) despite being in his mid-twenties. The one thing that seems to unite these disparate folks is the mysterious video cameras that they all receive, along with the various notes that say things like “Keep filming” and “You’re a star.” Emmy and Tom think that the camera must be some sort of prize from one of the endless contests that Emmy keeps entering, Beth has no idea what’s going on but seems happy to be receiving attention from anyone and Leonard’s notes indicate that he’s involved in some sort of competition for $10000: if he successfully completes all of his “tasks,” the cash prize is his, which makes Leonard just about as giddy as a kid on Christmas Eve.

At first, everything seems fairly normal, if slightly strange but sinister elements soon begin to inject themselves into the evening, culminating with the moment where they all realize, separately, that something rather terrible is going on. Once they’re in the middle of everything, however, none of the characters can fully extricate themselves for reasons ranging from saving their family to winning the “game.” As time ticks down towards the “game’s” terrible conclusion, the various groups rush headlong towards a meeting that could involve their salvation…or their complete and total destruction.

Despite being completely unpredictable, Mockingbird is not a terrible original film: rather, Bertino’s sophomore flick functions as a sort of “greatest hits of modern horror,” throwing handfuls of genre tropes at the viewer in an effort to see what sticks. We get home invasion elements (ala Bertino’s previous film), evil video tapes, sinister clowns, children in peril, creepy dummies with automated voices, humiliating tasks for cash rewards, mysterious wrapped packages, found-footage elements, strange videocameras…pretty much the whole nine yards. To his credit, Bertino does manage to mix-and-match these in some pretty interesting ways (despite how familiar the film is, I still wasn’t able to call the ending, which has to count for something) but it’s sort of akin to watching the reels of a familiar film in a random order. I’ll also freely admit that the ultimate resolution made no sense whatsoever and seemed like a rather arbitrary way to tie together the film’s disparate threads: suffice to say that they could have pegged a winged unicorn as the main villain and it wouldn’t have been any more random or out-of-left field than what we get.

For all of the film’s issues, however, it’s still an extremely well-made, exquisitely plotted affair, full of genuine tension and some truly memorable scenes. In particular, the frenzied finale, set in a balloon-filled house to the tune of Grieg’s towering “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is a complete showstopper: despite how I felt about the rest of the film, the balloon-bit is pretty much as good as modern horror gets and really elevates the film. I also liked how Bertino divided up the film, structurally, via differently colored intertitles (things like “The Family,” “The Woman,” and “Let’s Play a Game”): it was an eye-catching technique but it was also a subtle way to invoke mood and foreshadow via the color scheme. Throughout the film, I never had a doubt that Bertino is a talented filmmaker: despite its obvious budget constraints and found-footage aesthetic, Mockingbird always looks good, although I really wish the dialogue (especially the recorded voices) had been mixed louder…there’s nothing I hate more than riding the volume control on a film, especially when the music and sound effects are set to “stun.”

Ultimately, Mockingbird is well-made, tense and reasonably scary, even if nothing about the film is particularly original or surprising (other than that ridiculous resolution, that is). Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that I had the exact same reaction regarding Bertino’s previous film, a remake of the French chiller Ils (2006): while it didn’t blow me away, it was well-made and reasonably tense. Same deal with Mockingbird, although this one has the added benefit of that awesome balloon scene: if nothing else, that one segment makes this worth at least a casual watch. At this rate, Bertino has piqued my interest enough to anticipate his next project: here’s to hoping he can wed his talents to something a bit more original, next time.

 

10/20/14 (Part Two): Even Zombies Get the Blues

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31 Days of Halloween, anti-zombie activists, anti-zombie serum, Barry Flatman, cinema, Claudia Bassols, dramas, Emily Hampshire, film reviews, films, flashbacks, foreign films, Hatem Khraiche, husband-wife team, Kris Holden-Ried, Manuel Carballo, Melina Matthews, Movies, Paulino Nunes, post-zombie world, prejudice, retroviral drugs, Shawn Doyle, Spanish-Canadian films, The Returned, zombie, zombies

Imagine a world where zombies are not only real but have pretty much become accepted as a fact of life. Thanks to a revolutionary retroviral drug, those newly infected with “zombieism” have the chance to lead normal, productive lives, provided they continue to receive regular doses of the serum. These walking dead would look, talk, feel, think and hurt just like the rest of us: they would be virtually undectable, these zombies who were once our co-workers, loved ones and friends. And now imagine what would happen if the life-giving serum began to run out…and there was no hope of getting more?

Such is the focus of Manuel Carballo’s somber The Returned (2013), a joint Canadian-Spanish production that takes a hard look at the measures that desperate people will go to in order to get even a little more time with their infected loved ones, measures that will ultimately lead to betrayal and murder. Offering a fairly fresh take on the zombie film (this isn’t the first of this kind of “reluctant zombie” film but it’s not an overwhelmingly large peer group, either), The Returned often plays more like a melancholy drama about (nominally) losing a loved one to a terminal illness than it does an epic of gutmunching proportions. Nonetheless, the filmmakers manage to come up with a pretty decent combination of zombie violence and indie tear-jerking, offering zombie-philes something a little different to chew on.

Our erstwhile hero, Kate (Emily Hampshire), is a medical researcher who’s on the frontlines of helping to development a synthetic replacement to the dwindling anti-zombie retroviral drug: the original drug is derived from the remains of actual zombies, which are, ironically, becoming harder and harder to come by in a post-zombie world. The breakthrough can’t come soon enough, as news of the disappearing retroviral has begun to send shockwaves through society: those who infected loved ones protest, picket and scheme to get more of the drug, while those who take the old-fashioned “kill ’em all” approach to zombies see the loss of the only controlling agent as a sign that it’s time to just start “killing” the remaining undead and put an end to this part of the proceedings.

Kate has a secret, of course: her beloved husband, Alex (Kris Holden-Ried), is infected and their supplies of the retroviral are running out, too. Kate has been buying extra doses on the sly, from a shady hospital colleague, but the black-market medicine is becoming more expensive and more difficult to acquire. Meanwhile, anti-zombie activists have begun to break into the hospitals that are treating the “returned” and are slaughtering the infected, putting everyone on edge. The government wants the infected to “voluntarily” quarantine themselves into special zones, a tactic which strikes Alex an awful lot like what the Gestapo used to do.

Into this toxic mix are thrown Jacob (Shawn Doyle) and Amber (Claudia Bassols), Kate and Alex’s best friends with their own little secrets. Amber is best-selling children’s’ author who’s decided to branch out into thrillers and Jacob is her adoring agent/husband who constantly propels her career from the margins. The friends want Alex to submit to the government’s quarantine request, if only because they take the stated promise of an upcoming synthetic replacement seriously and want everybody on the right side of the law when it all blows over. A stunning act of betrayal will shatter everyone’s illusions of safety, however, leading Kate and Alex to pursue an increasingly desperate and hopeless series of actions that barrel relentlessly to a tragic, if foregone, conclusion.

Despite being well-made and acted, there came a point during The Returned where I was perilously close to throwing in the towel. To put it bluntly, the film has a habit of trafficking in pure, undiluted misery that can, over time, become a bit overwhelming. Similar to the pitch-black tone of Aronofsky’s Requiem For a Dream (2000), Carballo and company (working from a script/story by Hatem Khraiche) keep piling one disaster after the other onto poor Kate and Alex, making the whole film one long, tense game of Jenga to see when they’ll come crashing down. At a point, it almost begins to seem bleakly comical, as Kate suffers one mishap after the other, all while the clock ticks down relentlessly to Alex point-of-no-return. The film’s final twist, in particular, is unbelievably cruel and ends the film on a truly sardonic tone.

Hampshire is great as Kate, bringing a strength to her character that balances nicely with the overall sense of impending doom and helplessness. Holden-Ried, for his part, is rather bland but pleasantly so: he makes Alex seem like the kind of nice, anonymous person that most of us probably know, even if we don’t know that we do. That being said, there’s not much depth to his performance, which is a similar issue with Doyle and Bassols’ rather one-note takes on Jacob and Amber. Doyle gets a few nicely emotional scenes with Holden-Ried but Bassols is one archly-raised eyebrow after the other and her sense of coyness wears after a while.

All in all, The Returned was another film that was easier to respect than to actually like. While the movie is well-made, it’s also a pretty unrepentant downer. As someone who’s always appreciated “bummer” endings in horror films, it might seem a little strange to decry a film for this reason (there are minor things to quibble about, of course…the film is far from perfect) but there’s something about The Returned that often feels rather mean-spirited and lop-sided, as if the filmmakers were setting out to punish the characters, for some reason. While The Returned certainly isn’t a chore to sit through, it’s also not a lot of fun, either.

10/10/14 (Part One): What a Drag It Is Not Getting Older

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31 Days of Halloween, Adam and Eve, Anton Yelchin, art films, auteur theory, Bill Laswell, Christopher Marlowe, cinema, Dead Man, Detroit, drama, ennui, eternal life, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Ghost Dog, hipsters, horror movies, husband-wife team, independent film, Jeffrey Wright, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Mia Wasikowska, Movies, Only Lovers Left Alive, romance, romantic films, Tangiers, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Vampire Code of Conduct, vampires, vampires vs humans, writer-director, youth vs old age

In certain ways, the classical notion of vampires is equitable with the current phenomena known as “hipsters”: vampires are intelligent, urbane individuals who look down on the dregs of “normal” society, take pleasure in obscure, archaic entertainments, consider themselves to be more sophisticated than those around them and lament the tawdriness of the modern age in contrast to purer, more interesting “times gone by.” Minus the blood-sucking bit and aversion to sunlight (well, perhaps not completely forgetting the aversion to sunlight bit…), that description sounds an awful lot like the current conception of hipsters. At the very least, both groups appear to share a common attribute: a completely world-weary and jaded viewpoint that makes snark and sarcasm more natural go-to responses than honest simplicity. For bored, ageless vampires, the business of “living” appears to be as much of a burden as “regular folks” are to the modern hipster. The whole thing is just so…gauche.

Auteur Jim Jarmusch’s newest film, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), takes the above parallel between vampires and hipsters to its logical extreme, positing Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as the bored, ageless vampires Adam and Eve, doomed to cast a disparaging eye on the wreck that is humanity for more centuries than they care to recall. Or, at least, that’s definitely Adam’s take on the whole mess of existence. In fact, he’s so agitated with the inanity of the “zombies” (the vamps favorite descriptor for humanity) that he’s commissioned a wooden bullet and plans to commit the ultimate act of bored defiance: if this world won’t cease its tedium, he’ll just have to cease his existing.

Eve, on the other hand, views things just a little differently. In fact, it’s probably easiest to view Eve as a Gothic variation on the whole “manic pixie girl” ideal: unlike Adam, she hasn’t lost her sense of joy at being alive. As she sees it, living for hundreds of years can get tedious and humdrum, of course, but it also allows for more experiences and wonder than any “regular” person could ever have. After all, she’s best friends with the one and only Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt)…how many “regular” people can say that?

This contrast between Adam and Eve forms the foundation of Jarmusch’s film, his rather belated follow-up to The Limits of Control (2009). As befits someone who tackles genre films in the most unconventional ways possible (Dead Man (1995) is a trippy art-film masquerading as a Western, while Ghost Dog (1999) is a treatise on Eastern philosophy filtered through a gonzo Mafia framework), Only Lovers Left Alive is a highly unconventional film. For one thing, there isn’t a whole lot of narrative thrust to be found here: much of the film’s running time is taken up with the relationship between Adam and Eve and what happens when she leaves her home in Tangiers to come see him in Detroit (despite being married for, apparently, hundreds of years, the couple live across the world from each other, which has to one of the handiest metaphors for long-distance relationships in some time). Plot points do raise their heads from time to time, of course: the couple is visited by Eve’s young, out-of-control sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), and must figure out how to replenish their exhausted blood supply. On the whole, however, Jarmusch is largely uninterested in the vagaries of a traditional plot: this is all about atmosphere and vibe, two fronts which Only Lovers Left Alive really takes to the bank.

More than anything, Jarmusch’s newest film is an art film: the emphasis is most definitely on mood, with evocative shots, exquisite slo-mo and deliberate framing taking precedence over any traditional narrative devices. To that end, events sometimes come and go with a sense of arbitrary randomness: Adam’s best friend, the human Ian (Anton Yelchin), is dispatched early on but it so much as cause a ripple in the narrative. Ava seems poised to serve as some sort of villainous character (she’s so selfish, obnoxious and derisive towards humans that she feels cut from a much more traditional “vamps vs humans” film) until she’s pretty much written out of the story without so much as a second thought. Adam appears to be a rock star, of some sort, and much is made in the film about him constantly hearing his music in surprising places (a restaurant, for example) but this ends up having no bearing on the story whatsoever. Like much in the story, these various plot ends aren’t meant to be tied up neatly: they’re used for seasoning, like salt on a steak.

Lacking any sort of driving narrative, the responsibility for the success (or failure) of the film rests solely on its considerable craft: as with anything else in his catalogue, Jarmusch is more than capable of not only making this work but making it work spectacularly well. For one thing, Only Lovers Left Alive looks fantastic: the well-lit daytime scenes may seem a little blown-out but the night-time scenes are exquisite and highly evocative. The score, all hyperbole aside, is a true thing of beauty: not only does it manage to elevate the film, as a whole, but Jarmusch’s musical choices are just a ton of fun, all on their own. The scene where Adam plays his music is pitch-perfect (apparently, vampire music sounds like droning, Eastern-tinged shoegaze, which makes complete sense), as is the truly nice moment where Adam and Eve dance to a Motown tune. The Bill Laswell instrumental that closes the credits totally rips and this was the first art film I’ve seen in sometime that practically demands I check out the soundtrack.

As with all of his films, Jarmusch assembles a first-class ensemble and puts them through some pretty excellent paces. Hiddleston and Swinton are absolutely magnificent as the ageless lovers: not only is their relationship genuinely romantic but the pair make a truly unearthly couple…they not only look but act and sound like age-old creatures living in an era not of their construction. Wasikowska turns in another great performance as the childish, casually evil Ava and is quickly proving to be one of this generation’s most capable genre actors. It’s always good to see John Hurt in a film and he tears into the character of Christopher Marlowe with gusto, although I wish he got a little more screen-time. Likewise, Yelchin and Wright turn in great supporting performances as Ian and Dr. Watson, respectively: Hiddleston’s scenes with Wright are definitely a highlight of the film.

As a huge fan of Jarmusch’s work (Dead Man is one of my all-time favorite films), I went into this expecting nothing short of greatness and, for the most part, my expectations were met. Only Lover’s Left Alive is definitely an extraordinary film, from the peerless performances to the gorgeous cinematography and back to the picaresque locations (the dilapidated, ramshackle setting of the once-might Detroit makes a pretty awesome, if obvious, metaphor for a vampire film, since the city seems as undead as the vampires). That being said, I still found myself slightly letdown by the film: there’s nothing inherently wrong with the picture – truth be told, there’s a lot about it that’s very, very right – but it still manages to feel somehow slight, at least when stacked up against his previous work. Whether this due to my perception or Jarmusch’s intention, there definitely seems to be a disconnect (at least for me), a disconnect that I rarely noticed in his earlier films.

Ultimately, however, my slight dissatisfaction ends up being a pretty moot point: Only Lovers Left Alive is a pretty great film and certainly one of the more interesting vampire films to emerge in some time. The main idea, that ageless individuals with access to all of the music, art, history and time in the world, can still manage to be bored and listless is an extremely relevant one in this day and age of the Internet: after all, humanity now has access to just about everything that Jarmusch’s vampires do and we’re not content, either. It’s an interesting notion, is this idea that having it all really means we get nothing. It’s certainly not the kind of idea that’s par for the course in most vampire films. When you’re dealing with Jarmusch, however, “usual” and “par for the course” are pretty meaningless terms: he’s been doing it his own way for over 30 years, now, and I’m imagining he won’t be stopping anytime soon.

5/20/14: Holidays in Cambodia

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actor-writer, Antony Starr, Cambodia, cinema, drama, drug smuggling, feature-film debut, Felicity Price, film reviews, films, husband-wife team, indie dramas, infidelity, Joel Edgerton, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Movies, relationships on the rocks, Teresa Palmer, vacations from hell, vanished into thin air, Wish You Were Here, writer-director

There can be very few pains as acute as not knowing what has happened to a missing person, especially a loved one. When someone has died, there is, if nothing else, the opportunity to arrive at closure. When someone is missing, however, there is no such opportunity: any sighting could be a lead…any missed call could be a plea for help…any half-seen face, a glimpse of familiar clothing, might mean something. There’s always the hope that the person might, one day, just walk back into the room: while there’s (not usually) this hope for the dead, the missing could always come back. Possibly. Perhaps. The indie drama Wish You Were Here (2012) deals with the pain and fear that accompanies just such a disappearance and how the resulting actions can stir some very dark waters.

The film begins, in happier times, with two couples jaunting around south Cambodia in one of those sequences that looks alarmingly like a credit card commercial: husband and wife, Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice Flannery (co-scripter Felicity Price), are expecting child number three and want one more chance to let their hair down, while Alice’s sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer), has just met a dreamy new guy, Jeremy (Antony Starr), who wants to treat her (and Alice and Dave, by extension) to an all-expenses-paid vacation in southeast Asia. They seem to be having a blast, sampling the local cuisine, swimming, dancing, visiting beautiful temples and smoke-filled dance clubs. It’s a really kinetic, fun sequence that ends with a shell-shocked Dave stumbling around, on his own, in a desolate countryside. Something has happened, it would seem…something very bad.

We find out that Dave and Alice are now back home in Sydney, while Steph has stayed behind to try to figure out what happened to Jeremy, who’s been missing for nine days, at that point. Both Dave and Alice seem concerned, as befits the situation, but life must go on and they have their hands a bit full. When Steph is unexpectedly ejected from Cambodia for making a nuisance of herself, she returns to Dave and Alice, setting off a chain-reaction of unpleasant revelations, not the least of which is that she and Dave had themselves a little sex on the beach on the night that Jeremy disappeared. As this revelation tears apart Alice, Dave and their two small children, darker revelations begin to seep to the surface: does Dave know more about Jeremy’s disappearance than he’s letting on? Why are the local police so interested in Jeremy’s import/export business? And where, exactly, did Dave go on the night that Jeremy vanished?

For the most part, Wish You Were Here is a suspenseful, involving feature-film debut from Australian actor Kieran Darcy-Smith, co-scripted with his wife, actress Felicity Price. Darcy-Smith is known for brutal crime films like The Square (2008) and Animal Kingdom (2010) and there’s definitely a lot of that grit found in his directorial debut, although the meat of the story is still focused around Dave’s infidelity and the impact it has on the family. To be honest, however, I actually felt this split focus to be a bit of a problem: the missing-person storyline, which technically provides the base of the film, is a much more interesting story than the rather tired infidelity angle. I do understand the need to add weight and emotional heft to the film but the cheating aspect quickly subsumed the mystery angle, to the discredit of both. On the one hand, not enough attention gets paid to the idea of Jeremy being missing in a foreign country, under mysterious circumstances, while undue attention is paid to the back-and-forth between Alice and Dave over his affair with Steph. It’s not spoiling anything to say that the two aspects of the film don’t actually have anything to with each other, unless on a purely coincidental level: removing one aspect or the other wouldn’t have radically changed the opposing storyline, even if it would have made for a much different film.

The acting, especially from Edgerton and Price, is outstanding across the board, although I really wish that Antony Starr would have been utilized more. I’ve been a big fan of Starr since his work on the Australian TV series Outrageous Fortune and was looking forward to seeing him on the big screen. Alas, his role amounts to scarcely more than a cameo: playing the missing guy in a movie about a missing guy generally means that you spend large chunks of time off-camera…unless you’re Tom Hanks, that is. Starr isn’t Hanks but he does bring a breezy, easy-going quality to Jeremy that also leaves room for a little ambivalence: how “nice” of a nice guy is Jeremy, really? Teresa Palmer, as Steph, is the only potential buzzkill in the cast: she vacillates between shrill and wheedling, which assures that her character is almost never sympathetic. Most of the time, you just want to tell her to get on with it, already, which plays as much into Palmer’s performance as to the character.

Darcy-Smith ends up with a pretty good look for the film, although his cinematographer overuses certain filters and visual effects, a tendency which occasionally makes it difficult to differentiate between the films numerous flashbacks and the “present day.” These flashbacks become a bit of a problem as the film progresses: often, it’s difficult to tell what timeframe we’re in and there was one specific instance where I thought Dave had flown back to Cambodia on his own (which would have confused the hell out of me) only to find out later that this was more footage from the night Jeremy died. This seemed needlessly confusing, especially since the film wasn’t trying to tell a particularly tricky story: it just seemed like an overly clunky way to do it, that’s all.

Wish You Were Here isn’t an amazing film and it’s definitely not an original film but it is a consistently well-done and absorbing film. There is some genuine tension to the mystery and I’ll be honest: I didn’t guess the “truth,” which made me pretty happy. The resolution is no “Sixth Sense”-esque mind-bender but it is a fairly nifty revelation and repaints many previous scenes with a new air of menace. All in all, the film is a decent drama about a fractured couple working to rebuild their marriage while looking for their missing friend. If it could have been a much better film as an all-in mystery about looking for Jeremy (something along the lines of Midnight Express (1978) from the outside, perhaps), that’s a bit of a shame.