The Mill, on Hulu

Slave labor is common place in today’s world. There is a good chance the smartphone in your pocket or the sports clothes on your back were made by Uyghurs detained in Xinjiang or trafficking victims in South and Southeast Asia. There is no need to treat it as a dystopian allegory, because it is a disgraceful reality. However, in this film, it is used as a symbol of mind-numbing office drudgery. Joe Stevens must work till he drops and then work some more in Sean King O’Grady’s The Mill, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

For years, Stevens has toiled away as a mid-level middle manager in the corporate Behemoth known as Mallard (a horizontally integrated conglomerate, in a fashion you would have more likely seen in the 1970s). Since his wife is expecting, Stevens wants to double-down on his career, so he is shocked to wake up in this surreal roofless prison cell. According to the computerized interface, this is a facility for Mallard employees who have potential, but are not fully pulling their weight.

Every day, Stevens must make his quota pushing an ancient stone mill, sort of like Conan the Barbarian did when he was a child slave. Of course, if you surpass your quota, Mallard quickly raises it, but failure to meet the quota results in punishment. There are additional “rules” the Mallard inmates must also follow, but the only person who tells him anything is his unseen neighbor, who is decidedly “unreliable.”

Watching The Mill will make you feel like you are imprisoned in a Mallard black site, just like Stevens. It just seems to go on and on. None of it is even scary, even though it is being promoted as part of Hulu’s “Huluween.” There is just a steady vibe of low-grade anxiety and foreboding.

Lil Rel Howey (who also produced) holds up well as Stevens, especially considering he is on-screen for almost every second. Genre favorite Pat Healy also makes the most of his relatively short time, appearing late in the film as a “surprise” (but not necessarily surprising) character.

The Pale Door, on Shudder

The Dalton Gang would be better off trying to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas than spending a night in this sinister town. There are no banks in “Potemkin,” but the bordello offers more dangers than mere communicable diseases in Aaron B. Koontz’s The Pale Door, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

In this Weird West, the Dalton family is much smaller. After the bloody prologue, only Duncan, the leader of the Dalton Gang, and his younger, straight-arrow brother Jake are still alive. However, Lester, a freed slave and fellow gang-member, has been like a surrogate father to Jake. Naturally, the one heist Jake volunteers to help with turns deadly dicey. They thought they were stealing some valuable cargo from its Pinkerton escorts, but they find a woman chained up in that trunk.

She is a strange one alright, but with Duncan slowly dying from a gut-shot, they agree to follow Pearl to her home town of Potemkin. Of course, entering town is the easy part. Leaving is another matter. The one-horse burg seems to consist entirely of a suspiciously hospitable brothel-saloon and an abandoned church. Needless to say, the ladies are not what they appear—and they are quite interested in Jake’s innocent blood.

The narrative of Pale Door (a reference to a Poe quote, the relevance of which will not be immediately obvious) is pretty standard stuff. An ancient coven of shape-shifting, blood-consuming witches preys on a pack of dumb cowboys. Eh.

Run, on Hulu

It seems wheelchair using characters are more commonly found in thriller and horror movies, because the sense of confinement creates tension (some examples being The Bone Collector, Monkey Shines, Silver Bullet, and sort of Rear Window). That doesn’t mean those genre filmmakers are bad. Arguably, they deserve credit for seeing the empowering resilience of such figures. However, director-co-screenwriter Aneesh Chaganty went a step further, casting a wheelchair using thesp as a wheelchair using character (for the first time in a major production since The Sign of the Ram in 1948, but thanks for your wokeness, Hollywood). It was intended for theaters, but because this is 2020, Chaganty’s Run debuts today on Hulu instead.

Chloe Sherman lives with asthma, skin sensitivity issues, lower-body paralysis, and an excruciatingly protective mother, Diane Sherman. By applying to college after years of home-schooling, she hopes to get a little distance from Mommie Dearest. Unfortunately, she has yet to hear from any of her potential schools, which instantly makes us suspicious as viewers. Her mother’s squirrely behavior regarding her surprise new proscription also arouses Chloe’s suspicions too. She tries to do a little sleuthing around the house, but it is much more complicated for a young woman who requires a wheelchair and an inhaler.

As Chaganty’s follow-up to Searching (a.k.a. Search, at Sundance), Run proves he has knack for helming thrillers built around rigid constraints that his protags must devise clever ways to circumvent. (He also shows an affinity for one-word titles.) Regardless, this is probably one of the most carefully blocked-out film without a lot of martial art fight scenes, which pays dividends.

Kiera Allen is getting a great deal of justifiable and deserved attention as Chloe. It isn’t just a matter of accuracy in casting. She covers a considerable emotional gamut, but always comes across as grounded and credible. It is also an impressively physical performance.

Tribeca ’17: Take Me

Frankly, in today’s neurotic world, the concept behind Ray Moody’s Kidnap Solutions, LLC has commercial potential. His simulated kidnappings offer aversion therapy (in the tradition of the Tales from the Darkside episode, “Bigalow’s Last Smoke”) and fetishistic escapism. He just isn’t the right person to realize its potential. Anna St. Blair would be the perfect client to spread word-of-mouth, but it is unclear whether she really is a willing customer. The kidnapper and kidnappee may have been set-up in Pat Healy’s Take Me (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

There was a time when Kidnap Solutions was growing in leaps and bounds. Sadly, when Moody’s ex-wife walked out on him, she left him holding the bag for a kidnapping that went awry. Personally and professionally, he still has not recovered from her betrayal. However, the lucrative gig St. Blair is offering will give him a bit of the seed capital he has been seeking. The only catch is her request for more rough stuff than he is ordinarily comfortable with.

When the abduction starts, St. Blair seems genuinely terrified. When she is subsequently reported missing, Moody realizes he might be in serious legal trouble. Rather awkwardly, St. Blair does not seem inclined to forgive and forget, so he will have to hold onto her until he can convince her to see reason.

As lead actor and debut director, Healy has crafted a spritely farce seasoned with tar-black humor. This is a comedy that draws blood (all of it his own). Arguably, he is his own best asset, playing Moody as a likably nebbish striver in the tradition of Willy Loman (wearing a balaclava). Even when we laugh at his humiliation, we sort of want to see him overcome. As the second half of the more-or-less two-hander, Taylor Schilling is a smart, forceful, and altogether worthy foil.

Granted, the predictable predictableness of the final twist is maybe not so surprising, but the film is more about the verbal sparring and gamesmanship of the two leads than the actual power reversals. It is just good fun to watch and listen to Healy and Schilling verbally spar. It is a relatively modest production, but if Take Me becomes a hit, Healy and Schilling could perform it on stage as a nostalgia act for years to come. Recommended for viewers who enjoy a bit of shaggy dog mayhem, Take Me screens again tomorrow (4/27), Friday (4/28), and Saturday (4/29), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Small Crimes: E.L. Katz’s New Film on Netflix

Joe Denton is not the slightest bit remorseful, but he sure is sorry. Formerly a corrupt cop, the recently released ex-con has caused a lot of trouble for people close to him. However, the truth of the incident he did time for is even worse than people think. Unfortunately for Denton and his prospects for a straight life, the gangster who ordered it all might be considering turning deathbed stool pigeon in E.L. Katz’s Small Crimes (trailer here), which debuts on Netflix this Friday.

Denton might have conned the parole board, but his long-suffering parents doubt whether he has truly reformed—not that they will see much of him after his release. Having survived a random, small-time set-up (awkwardly orchestrated by the wayward daughter of Phil Coakley, a prosecutor literally scarred by Denton’s misadventures), the ex-cop gets a good talking-to from his ex-partner, Lt. Pleasant, who isn’t. Vassey, the gangster who ordered the disastrous hit-job Denton claimed was self-defense, has been having long conversations with Coakley. Pleasant insists Denton must kill Vassey or potentially suffer the consequences.

However, getting close enough to Vassey will be difficult, thanks to the interference of his psychotic son Junior and the diligent care of his nurse, Charlotte Boyd. Denton starts romancing her for strategic reasons, but finds himself genuinely attracted to Boyd, which complicates matters even further.

Small Crimes is an insidiously clever one-darned-thing-after-another crime thriller, featuring a veritable who’s who of genre cult favorites in its supporting cast. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (from Game of Thrones) is absolutely terrific as Denton. He has such disheveled sad sack charm, you lose track of how truly degenerate he is, until the totality of his jerkweedness comes back to roost down the stretch. He also develops some surprisingly subtle and mature chemistry with Molly Parker’s Boyd.

Co-screenwriter Macon Blair (screenwriter and star of Blue Ruin) adds color and poignancy as Scotty, the oblivious brother of the best friend Denton kind of, sort of killed, while Pat Healy does his thing as the sadistic Junior. Larry Fessenden adds further genre cred in a small but appropriately sleazy role. However, nobody upstages or in any way steps in the light of Gary Cole’s entertainingly evil Lt. Pleasant.

Small Crimes is old school all the way. Its characters exist in a world where evil prospers because it is more fun. Katz keeps the noir badness lean and mean, with credit also due to the tight work of frequent horror movie editor (and sometimes actor) Josh Ethier. If you want to enjoy some skullduggery without any tiresome teaching moments, this is your cup of spiked tea. Enthusiastically recommended for hardboiled fans, Small Crimes starts streaming this Friday (4/28) on Netflix.