The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra: A Fungus Story

Nothing scares a new home-owner like mold. Fungi is also becoming a growing preoccupation of world health authorities. With that in mind, since we have already had the Blob, so why not a killer fungus? However, screenwriter-director-cinematographer Park Sye-young takes a more experimental approach in The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, which premieres today on IndiePix Unlimited.

It first formed in the ratty mattress of an unhappy couple. He was rather irresponsible and lazy, so maybe it is fitting he becomes the first victim of the fungus. Despite the conspicuous black rot-like fungus, their former mattress gets passed around. At one point, it even ends up at a love hotel, where it attacks another unhappy couple. Ironically, it forms an affectionate bond with one of his victims, who remains bed-ridden on the offending mattress, presumably to prevent further contamination.

Since the film unfolds from the POV of the fungus, it is necessarily fragmented. As a result, it very definitely has an avant-garde vibe, but there are still vividly disgusting elements of body horror. Perhaps this is more interesting as a concept than an executed film. Even at an economical 65 minutes, it is a bit of a challenge to sit through a film dedicated to a toxic fungus.

Park deliberately frames the film from off-kilter and oblique perspectives, in a hazy, gauzy style. Yet, somehow, the performances of Park Ji-hyeon and Moon Hye-in are strangely, perhaps shockingly, emotionally resonant as two of the women most directly affected by the noxious, semi-sentient fungus.

The Pigeon Tunnel, on Apple TV+

It is not so hard to figure out where David Cornwell, the spy novelist known as “John le Carre,” got his ideas. British intelligence posted him to West Berlin during the time the Berlin Wall was built and Kim Philby fled to the Soviet Union. He was also the son of a conman. Before his death in 2020, le Carre sat down for several long, relentlessly candid interviews that Errol Morris shaped into The Pigeon Tunnel, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+.

Many times, le Carre used “The Pigeon Tunnel” as a working title for his novels, but it finally stuck for his memoirs (which Morris sort of adapted). It refers to the pigeons used as live skeet targets at a Monte Carlo casino the young Cornwell visited with his degenerate father. Morris is just as obsessed with the pigeon imagery as le Carre was, if not more so judging from how often it appears in the doc.

Pigeon Tunnel is definitely a very Morris-ish doc, but it stylistically and thematically suits his subject, who wrote about deceit after experiencing it first-hand. Le Carre/Cornwell clearly expresses his expectation that the film would serve as a final testament or summation, so his answers are always brutally honest, even when things are still a bit ambiguous in his own mind.

For le Carre fans and critics, Pigeon Tunnel will be a terrific resource. He confirms Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor is largely inspired by Philby, which everybody always largely assumed. However, it deepens our understanding of the morality of his novels and worldview. Terms like le Carre-esque have been used to suggest a moral equivalence between the NATO-West and the Soviets, but that now seems like an inaccurate, or at least incomplete assessment of his ideology.

He remains blisteringly critical of his former employers at MI5 and MI6, but that is understandable, considering he lived through the Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess debacles. However, he openly expresses anger and contempt for Philby, for his betrayal, even at his advanced age. It is complicated for le Carre, who acknowledges he would have been a prime candidate for Soviet recruitment. Yet, the atrocities of Stalin, whom the Cambridge spies initially served, represents a point of moral clarity for the writer, or so we can interpret from his sit-downs with Morris. He was similarly appalled by the Berlin Wall.

Killher

In slasher movies, camping trips and bachelorette parties have very high mortality rates. Eddie will combine them both her friend Mattie. That works out about as well as you would expect in Robyn August’s Killher, which releases tomorrow on VOD and in theaters.

Eddie is a lot, but she is determined to throw a wild party for Mattie, filled with many surprises. The first surprise is that they will meet up with her fiancé Jagger, once they reach the campsite. Yet, it strangely turns out they did not pitch their tent next his. Instead, it is the grumpy “Mr. Rogers,” who seems almost too conveniently misanthropic.

He definitely gives bad vibes to Mattie’s other friends, Jess and Rae, who were not so crazy about this plan to begin with. They do not exactly adore Eddie either, especially since she constantly pulls girl-who-cried-wolf-style horror movie practical jokes. Regardless, someone will start stalking the women later that night.

Killher is a pretty simple, straightforward slasher comedy, but it works surprisingly well, thanks to the energy and attitude of M.C. Huff, as the trying-too-hard Eddie, and Tom Kiesche (who also wrote the screenplay), as the anti-social Mr. Rogers. They get most of the funny lines and they have the timing to land them.

Butcher’s Crossing, Starring a Bald Nic Cage

For the American Buffalo, Miller was a one-man extinction event. Somehow, the species survived him, but it was not for a lack of bloodlust. Not surprisingly, he finds the Great Western Plains increasingly sparse of prey, so he sets off on an ambitious hunting expedition. His party encounters some serious karma in Gabe Polsky’s Butcher’s Crossing, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Will Andrews is taking a break from his Harvard studies to find adventure on the Frontier. He has a particular bee in his bonnet spurring him to find a genuine buffalo hunt. This is a really bad idea, as J.D. McDonald, a crusty pelt dealer who once knew Andrews’ preacher father, emphasizes in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, he has his heart set on it, so he unwisely funds the mysterious Miller’s proposed expedition to a hidden Colorado valley, where the you-know-what supposedly roam.

Miller is visibly erratic and he becomes borderline psychotic when discussing buffalo. Yet, Andrews is perversely drawn to him, partly because the dynamics of their party are so dysfunctional. Charley Hodge, Miller’s cook and wagon master is devout in a way that emphasizes divine retribution, which puts him at odds with the crude pelt-skinner, Fred Schneider, who goes out of his way to push and prod Andrews and Hodge. When the weather turns bitter, the tensions within the expedition steadily rise.

Polsky and Liam Satre-Meloy’s adaptation of the novel written by the late John Edward Williams (a longtime professor at the University of Denver, go Pioneers!), lacks the kind of incisive bite viewers will hope for. As a director, Polsky is not fully capable of corralling all the tension Nic Cage’s crazy behavior generates. However, if you have always wondered what it would be like to see Cage portray Col. Kurtz or Captain Ahab, this film will give viewers a pretty good idea.

Shape Island: Creepy Cave Crawl, on Apple TV+

If you do not enjoy Halloween, you’re a square. That is literally true in this very young-skewing Apple TV+ series. In a Three Bears-like distribution, Square is miserable during Halloween, Triangle loves the holiday, especially the tricks, while Circle enjoys celebrating in responsible moderation. Circle will most likely have the right approach in Shape Island’s holiday special, “Creepy Cave Crawl,” which premieres this Friday on Apple TV+.

Basically, this is a late bonus episode for season one of Shape Island, but it is still nice to see Apple semi-revive the tradition of the animated holiday special (remember the B.C. Easter special?). The scares are all very gentle, but Triangle is still cruising for a Halloween bruising. Circle is usually more indulgent of his monster-themed pranks, but he is really pushing it this year. In fact, when he repurposes all the holiday jam she and Square just finished making for his haunted cave tour, they both storm out in a huff. That leaves Triangle alone with all the cave’s spooky inhabitants, who had been quietly watching them.

Of course, there is no gore or serious peril in “Creepy Cave Crawl.” At least this special is also refreshingly free of woke messaging and virtue signaling (I can’t vouch for the rest of the series). There is also enough pumpkin spice and innocent Halloween cos play to satisfy young viewers’ seasonal expectations.

The character designs (adapted from Jon Klassen’s illustrations for Barnett’s books) are obviously very simple, but they have distinct personalities. For older viewers, just seeing a Halloween special is sort of nostalgic. It makes you hungry for Dolly Madison Zingers. Nice and age-appropriate, “Creepy Cave Crawl” is recommended for kids when it starts streaming Friday (10/20) on Apple TV+.

The Canterville Ghost, with the Voice of Stephen Fry

Not all ghosts are scary. Some are rather sad, because they mark the passage of time. Sir Simon de Canterville is definitely like that, but he also shares a kinship with Captain Gregg, Mrs. Muir’s ghost. He was once a holy terror, but he meets his match in a thoroughly modern American family in Kim Burdon’s animated adaptation of The Canterville Ghost, co-directed by Robert Chandler, which opens Friday in theaters.

For three hundred years, Sir Simon scared the willies out of everyone who tried to inhabit Canterville Chase. Unfortunately, Yanks like the Otis family are far too materialistic for ghosts. Virginia’s father Hiram considers himself a man of science, whose electric lights frazzle the ghost’s nerves. Her bratty twin brother torment poor Sir Simon with practical jokes. Of course, she is not scared of him either, but as the late 19^th Century equivalent of a moody goth teen, she is drawn to Sir Simon’s tragic romanticism.

Alas, the ghost would much prefer to be dead, so he can finally be reunited with his beloved wife. Death played a mean trick on him, which made him onery. Otis would like to break his curse, but that will be a complicated and dangerous proposition.

Screenwriters Cory Edwards, Giles New, and Keiron Self collectively did a nice job adapting Oscar Wilde’s novella, retaining his major themes, while punching up some of the dark and stormy bits, for Halloween. Wilde scholars might take issue with Hugh Laurie’s Angel of Death character, but he helps stir the pot and raise the stakes. There is plenty of animated mayhem, but deep down, this film is sadder and wiser than Casper or Topper.

Canterville is indeed a tragic figure, given Shakespearean dimensions (and references) by Stephen Fry’s hammy voice. Emily Carey makes Virginia Otis appealingly smart and sensitive, despite her teen angst. Freddie Highmore sounds appropriately young and befuddled as the Duke of Cheshire, but his voice works surprisingly well in conversation with Carey’s.

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls

Don't pay attention to people who dis on the Eighties. The truth is, the Satanic should always make you panic. Marcus J. Trillbury will have to learn that the hard way, because he is a moron. He wants to escape his dead-end life through the occult. Unfortunately, that just might happen in Andrew Bowser’s Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, which screens nationwide this Thursday, via Fathom Events.

Trillbury wants everyone to call him Onyx the Fortuitous, but that is obviously ridiculous. It also is not very accurate, since he lives in his mother Nancy’s basement, constantly bickers with her second husband, and works at a cut-rate fast-food joint. He has applied to participate in a mysterious ritual hosted by his heavy metal icon, Bartok the Great, believing it will change his life. However, Bartok has a much different role in mind for the five lucky “sacrifices” he selects, including Trillbury.

The five are a strange group, including an academic (Mr. Duke), a grieving housewife (Shelley), a tattoo-artist-groupie (Jesminder), and a non-binary witchcraft experimenter (Mack). With the help of the resentful Farrah, a minor demon in human form, Bartok intends to raise the grand demon Abaddon and assume his powers on Earth. To do so, he must consign his sacrifices’ souls to eternity in the Talisman of Souls. However, Duke and Mack are smart enough to recognize Bartok and Farrah are not being straight with them.

Apparently, Bowser’s Trillbury character is the star of a popular series of viral videos. That kind of makes sense, because after three minutes, he becomes excruciatingly annoying. Onyx the Fortuitous happens to be over one hour and forty-five minutes. If Bowser had turned his persona down three or four clicks, it would have been much easier to spend all that time with him.

It is a shame, because Onyx the Fortuitous reunites Reanimator co-stars Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs as Nancy and Bartok. In many ways, this is an appealing satanic panic horror yarn, somewhat in the tradition of Chemical Wedding, featuring a number of colorful characters. Unfortunately, the Trillbury shtick simply does not wear well over time.

Quantum Leap: Closure Encounters

When you are a time-traveler, it is a little harder to automatically dismiss UFO reports. Suddenly, Dr. Ben Song finds himself investigating those claims, as a Special Agent attached to Project Blue Book’s predecessor program. Frankly, Dr. Song would rather chase flying saucers than deal with his ex-fiancée and designated holographic guide Addison Augustine in “Closure Encounters,” this week’s episode of Quantum Leap, which premieres tomorrow night on NBC.

For Song, no time passed since his season one finale jump. For Augustine and the rest of the team, it has been three years. During that elapsed time, Augustine grieved, had a funeral for Song, and started seeing Tom Westfall, from DOD, who is now jointly overseeing the Quantum Leap project with “Magic” Williams (who is still totally cool). Song has not met Westfall yet, but he quickly deduced Augustine had moved on.

Normally, he would be more Scully than Mulder, but Song rather recklessly charges into this leap. He sympathizes with Carrie Baker, who claims her car was driven off the road by a UFO. Unfortunately, she will be railroaded for the mysterious injuries that rendered her friend and passenger, Melanie Hunt, comatose. He also likes her grandfather, Sheriff Woodrow Morgan, whose hands are largely tied by Hunt’s wealthy land-owning father.

Raymond Lee and Caitlin Bassett always had solid chemistry throughout the first season, so it is sad to see Song and Augustine on the outs, but their drama is very believable, given the extraordinary circumstances. Frankly, it is nice to see the goody-two-shoes Song start to develop a few cowboy tendencies. Louis Hertham is also a terrific guest-star, appealingly balancing sensitivity and manliness as Sheriff Morgan.

Sri Asih: A New Indonesian Superhero Rises

She is like Wonder Woman, except she has a red scarf instead of a golden lasso—and her latest film doesn’t stink. Tired of the MCU and DCU movies? Who isn’t? The CGI is terrible, the writing is too woke, and everybody who isn’t a super-fan has to google all the meaningless character cameos. Indonesia is doing a much better job of superhero movies—and they too have two shared universes going. The Legend of Gatotkaca launched the Satria Dewa. Now we get the second film of the Bumilangit universe. However, you do not need to know anything about the first film to enjoy UPI (Avianto)’s Sri Asih: The Warrior, which releases tomorrow on DVD and VOD.

Alana always had a lot of fight in her, even in the orphanage, following her parents rather spectacular volcano-related deaths. Fortuitously, her mother happens to be the wealthy proprietor of an MMA gym. That was a convenient happenstance, but obviously, not really.

As a young woman, Alana is a contender. Unfortunately, that means she attracts the attention of crimelord Prayogo Adinegara’s wastrel son Mateo, who fancies himself a cage-fighter. He pressures Alana to take a dive, to stroke his ego. Reluctantly, she agrees for the sake of the gym, but his jerky behavior ignites her anger.

It turns out Alana has anger issues, straight from the goddess of anger, herself. That is because the sinister deity knows the goddess Asih has invested Alana with her own powers of righteousness. There are people who can help her master her powers, so she can defeat the rival goddess’s earthly host and foil a gruesome sacrifice.

There is a lot going on in Sri Asih, but it all boils down to G vs. E, good versus evil. That is why it works better than any recent American superhero movie. If you were cool with Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, you will be just as happy with Pevita Pearce as Alana/Sri Asih, if not slightly more so.

The Lake: a Thai Kaiju Rises

Remember kids, kaiju eggs are not keepsakes. When a village girl steals on of its eggs, of course the alpha kaiju will come looking for it. Ditto for when the big city cops capture a junior kaiju. The resulting carnage might even satisfy the bloodlust of Ivy League student “activists.” Death comes wet and muddy in Lee Thongkham’s The Lake, which screens at the Spectacle in Brooklyn.

When torrential rains wash a batch of kaiju eggs to the shore, you better expect one of the beasts will come to retrieve them. The next morning little May luckily stumbles across the last one left and she refuses to give it up when her family asks: “what the heck.” Arguably, this will all be her fault.

When the first kaiju attacks the village, Keng and Lin barely escape, but his wound gives him brief, disorienting moments of kaiju vision. Unfortunately, the creature follows them to the bigger city, where he is receiving treatment. Soon, Suwat, the police chief, summons all officers to handle the attacking kaiju. That would include James, an inspector, who leaves his truant teen daughter Pam in the backseat of his cruiser, because what is the worst that could happen under the circumstances? Remember, they haven’t even seen the big one yet.

The kaiju effects are cool, which is, by far, the most important thing about The Lake. The junior kaiju sort of looks like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Xenomorph from Alien. For some shots, there is still a dude in the suit—and he acts incredibly pissed off. It was augmented with CGI, but the mix looks terrific on-screen. The senior kaiju clearly owes a debt of gratitude to the king himself, Godzilla. It has a big set-piece scene that clearly rips off Jurassic Park, but they do it well.

There is no question the biggest stars of the film are the kaiju, designed by Jordu Schell, whose sculptural effects have been seen in films like Starship Troopers, Cloverfield, and Hellboy. The people, on the other hand, are somewhat hit-or-miss. However, the great Vithaya Pansringarm brings a lot grounded maturity to the film as Chief Suwat (who also must worry about his own daughter Fon, a junior officer on the force).

Theerapat Sajakul is also impressively hard-boiled as Inspector James, but his character is not a good decision-maker or strategic thinker. Frustratingly, the younger the character, the less patience viewers will have for them.

Lovecraftian Horror at Anthology: The Stone Tape

One of the only cool things about the 1970s was all the great made-for-TV horror movies that were released. That was also true in the UK, where they produced one of the best. Nigel Kneale is now considered one of the great television writers and this Lovecraftian-themed original definitely helped solidify his standing. Fittingly, Peter Sasdy’s The Stone Tape, written by Kneale, screens as part of the Lovecraftian horror series at Anthology Film Archives.

If this story were happening today, Ryan Electric Products would be battling competition (and possibly state-sponsored corporate espionage) from China. In 1972, R&D head Peter Brock is obsessed with beating Japan. To that end, he launches a massive “pure research” endeavor, hoping his team’s unrestrained brilliance will produce a providential breakthrough. To house his project, Ryan Electric acquired the “Taskerlands,” an ancient manor built above even more ancient ruins. The place has a dark and stormy reputation. It even had an exorcism that reportedly did not take, according to the research of Roy Collinson, Ryan’s facility manager and an old mate of Brock’s.

Somewhat awkwardly, Brock’s former mistress, Jill Greeley, has been assigned to Taskerlands as his computer programming. Apparently, she has heightened susceptibility to the building’s bad supernatural mojo. She feels it so acutely, she nearly crashes her car when first approaching. Initially, Brock condescendingly dismisses the strange sights and sounds of a ghostly woman she reports, until they are corroborated by others. As a stubborn materialist, Brock directs his team to devote their entire powers of computer-driven analysis to the “haunting.” He hopes the sinister stones of the chamber where the presumed spirit of a long dead maid appears will hold the secret of a radical new recording technology. Of course, their investigation will take a decidedly Lovecraftian turn.

Kneale’s screenplay gave rise to an entire paranormal hypothesis known as “The Stone Tape Theory” that posits supposed hauntings are actually the recordings of viscerally traumatic events. Few horror movies have that sort of lasting legacy, but its reputation really endures, because it is so darned creepy.

In addition to being one of Kneale’s best scripts, Stone Tape represents some of Sasdy’s best work (along with his episodes of Hammer House of Horror). Using vintage Doctor Who-level special effects, he creates a sense of dread that is truly Lovecraftian. He and the design team made Taskerlands a very distinctive place that exudes massively bad vibes.

Murdaugh Murders: The Movie, on Lifetime

Alex Murdaugh's family had been political power brokers in South Carolina when it was part of the solid Democratic South. They still maintained their influence when the state turned red through their money (fundraising for Biden and Hillary Clinton) and wheeling-dealing legal practice. However, Alex (or Alec) Murdaugh destroyed the family reputation by committing a host of crimes, including (but not limited to) murder. The whole true-crime scandal unfolds in the two-part Murdaugh Murders: The Movie, which premieres tomorrow on Lifetime.

Even though it consists of two installments, Lifetime is calling Murdaugh Murders its 500^th original movie. That is a lot of cheating wives and dentists stalking their patients. A sleazebag like Murdaugh is comfortably fits in their power zone. Of course, he is universally respected when the film starts, as the heir to a dynastic Low Country law firm. However, his son’s legal troubles will ignite his spectacular fall from grace.

Eventually, Murdaugh will be tried for the murder of his wife Maggie and son Paul, but writer Michael Vickerman and director Greg Beeman do not make the latter’s death look like any great loss to society. Thanks to a drunken boating accident, Paul Murdaugh was facing criminal and civil proceedings. Inconveniently, the Murdaugh finances were already precarious, due to Alex/Alec’s mismanagement, so he started stealing his clients’ settlements. He did not merely skim a little extra off the top. He redirected the whole darned payout to accounts he controlled. He also maybe murdered the family’s longtime housekeeper.

Murdaugh’s motives for gunning down his wife and son remain a little vague, but it is clear he was cracking from the combined pressures, also including an increasingly angry unpaid Oxy dealer. Regardless, there is no ambiguity regarding Murdaugh’s guilt, largely due to Bill Pullman’s wildly jittery meltdowns as the sociopathic Murdaugh.

Pullman’s certainly follows Lifetime’s melodramatic style sheet, starting with his weirdly reedy mint julep-and-pimento cheese accent, which slips and slides all over the place. Be that as it may, Pullman’s twitchy showmanship is entertaining. Lauren K. Robek is credibly down-to-earth as Maggie Murdaugh, but Curtis Tweedle is absolutely charmless as the entitled Paul.

Frankly, #500 could have used a strong nemesis to play off Murdaugh, but the cops, FBI agents, and prosecutors are all disappointingly generic. Besides Pullman, only Serge Houde leaves any appreciable impression, as the understated but shrewd defense attorney, Jim Griffin.

The Philosophy of Horror: A Symphony of Film Terror

Experimental filmmakers can make anything feel slow and inaccessible. You can see that clearly in this “docu”-essay film. Ostensibly, it is based on Noel Carroll’s monogram explaining the appeal of scary stories and films. We can thank Carroll for his influential critique of Marxist critical theorists, like Lacan and Althusser, but his horror ideas are not fleshed out to any great extent in director-editors Peter Lichter & Bori Mate’s The Philosophy of Horror: A Symphony of Film Terror, which screens at the Spectacle Theater, as part of its Collage Horreur series.

Ironically, the best parts of Philosophy of Horror are the “Overture” and “Intermission,” which are sort of like audio collages of creepy movie sounds, including dialogue from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The other sections simply present quotes from Carroll’s treatise that do not clearly relate to the images that follow.

Most of Philosophy resembles a Bill Morrison film, like Dawson City: Frozen Time. Stills from Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street and the first sequel, Freddy’s Revenge have been defaced and distorted, making them almost unrecognizable (although fans will still know Johnny Depp’s half-shirt when they see it).

Creepshow Season Four

When a series is based on a classic George Romero-Stephen King film, it better be mindful of horror movie traditions. That continues to be the case for the strongest horror anthology currently going. The very first episode, “Grey Matter” co-starred Adrienne Barbeau in a King short story adaptation. Then it incorporated elements of the films Horror Express and Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in Night of the Living Late Show and A Dead Girl Named Sue. There are highs and a few lows, but as usual, the best episodes harken back to the 1982 fan favorite during the fourth season of Creepshow, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

“20 Minutes with Cassandra,” directed by showrunner Greg Nicotero and written by Jamie Flanagan starts out as a monster-stalker story, which it definitely is, but it takes an interesting turn. Ironically, this is the most thoughtful tale of the season, which makes it an outlier, but in a good way. Samantha Sloyan is also terrific as Lorna, the invaded home-owner, especially in her scenes with Okwe, the pizza delivery guy she is trying to keep out of it, played understated humor by Frankie Francois.

The second story of the season premiere, “Smile” directed by John Harrison and written by Mike Scannell, is also super creepy. Somehow, an award-winning photojournalist and his wife find themselves stalked by a mysterious figure, inexplicably taunting them with pictures he or it should not have been able to snap. In this case, it is the eerie details that make the stalking so intense.

The second episode starts with some serious horror fan service in “The Hat,” directed by Kailey & Sam Spear and written by Byron Willinger & Philip De Blasi, tipping its titular Homberg to authors like Richard Matheson. Those are the kind of legends Jay Stratton wants to join, so he borrows the hat formerly owned by his idol, Stephen Bachman (a mashing together of Stephen King and Richard Bachman) once sported. It is suitably macabre in an EC Comics kind of way and Marlee Walchuk’s portrayal of his literary agent is very funny, but not fundamentally inaccurate.

Unfortunately, the B-side, “Grieving Process,” directed by Kailey & Sam Spear and written by Mike D. McCarty and John Esposito, is gorier but much less fun. A Michelin-star chef’s wife barely survives a brutal attack, but her personality changes drastically. So does her appetite. This is probably the lowest point of the new season, because it is so downbeat and predictable.

Next episode, “Parent Death Trap, directed by P.J. Pesce and written by Erik Sandoval & Michael Rousselet, returns to the black comedy of the last season. Although miserable Lyle Veljohnson is rich in money and position, he is dirt poor when it comes to family love and support. His WASPy parents are so nasty, he finally kills them, but that won’t be the end of things. Not even close. Shaughnessy Redden and Loretta Walsh are indeed pretty hillarious as his ultra-snobby and controlling parents. It is backed by “To Grandmother’s House we Go” (director: Justin Dyck, writer: William Butler), which is an okay werewolf yarn that appropriately shares familial themes.

“Meet the Balaskos,” written and directed by John Esposito, is by far the most heavy-handed, lectury installment of the new season. It is sort of like Fright Night, except the Vampire-Americans who move in next door are just another under-represented demographic group, who must endure the prejudice of their new next-door neighbor. However, “Cheat Code,” directed by Justin Dyck and written by Claire Carre & Charles Spano, is one of the season’s best. A recently widowered father tries to bond with his son through an old school cartridge video game, but they deduce its sinister powers a little too late. Coming on the heels of Totally Killer, “Cheat Code” should further establish Lochlyn Munro as one of the top horror dads.

Cohen on the Bridge: Rescue at Entebbe (short)

Ever since it was founded, Israel’s neighbors have tried to wipe it off the face of the earth, but the Israeli people have always successfully risen to their own defense. Yet, they have often paid a tragically high price for their freedom. The rescue at Entebbe that resulted in Yoni Netanyahu’s heroic sacrifice obviously has extra resonance in the days following Hamas’s genocidal terror attacks. Perhaps more importantly, it is also an example of Israeli resilience. This is indeed a fitting week to revisit the Entebbe mission, particularly given the economy and style of Andrew Wainrib’s short animated documentary, Cohen on the Bridge, which is now available on Vimeo VOD.

Amir Ofer was the first soldier to breach the terminal at Entebbe International Airport. However, his story started much earlier during the Holocaust, when a man wearing a National Socialist uniform held his grandmother at gunpoint on the Mostar Bridge. Eventually, he will explain the dramatic parallels between her story and the Entebbe raid.

There were other connections between Entebbe and the Holocaust, because many of the hostages were survivors. The Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris stopped in Athens, where the non-existent security allowed the PLO and Leftist German terrorists to board the plane with grenades and automatic weapons. Documentaries like Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story do a nice job explaining the hijacking and the rescue, but Wainrib’s twenty-one-minute short does a comparable job in a quarter of the time.

The Puppetman, on Shudder

Michal isnot a normal, well-adjusted college student, but unlike the spoiled sociopathic millennials celebrating genocidal terrorism on Ivy League campuses, she has a good excuse. A demon used her father’s body to brutally murder her mother. Since then, the evil entity kept tabs on her, as viewers can see from the dead bodies that follow in her wake throughout Brandon Christensen’s The Puppetman, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

Michal went from foster care to college, so she will be staying in the dorms during break. So will her roommate Charlie, apparently because she has a weird obsession with Michal and her lurid family history. Unbeknownst to Michal, Charlie has video documented her frequent episodes of sleepwalking she never knew were happening. Charlie also binges true crime podcasts about her father, the so-called “Puppetman” in reference to the mysterious controlling power he blamed for making him kill Charlie’s mother.

Michal and Charlie will also be partying with three of their boring friends. At least that was the plan, until people start dying in freakishly unlikely suicides. Det. Al Rosen is out of his depth, but Ruby, the psychic who maybe isn’t a complete fraud after all, might have some insights.

The Puppetman might be Christensen’s best film yet (far better than Still/Born and more consistent than Z), thanks to some genuinely eerie séance sequences and the super-nasty spin it puts on demonic possession. Christensen takes viewers to some dark, twisted places, which is great.

Quantum Leap: Ben & Teller

One excessively indulgent hostage negotiator can create unrealistic expectations for the next negotiator. There is no way these bank robbers are getting a helicopter, even though some Fed out in Arizona apparently rustled one up the week before. Obviously, this hostage standoff ends badly, because Ben Song leaps into it in “Ben & Teller,” tonight’s episode of Quantum Leap.

After three years of silence, Ian Wright finally picked up Song again, but from the leaper’s perspective, no time had passed since the season one finale. To support Song, Wright gets all the old gang back together, including the eternally cool Herbert “Magic” Williams, who is supposedly retired now, but the showrunners’ statements to the media assure us he isn’t going anywhere. Addison Augustine is also back, sort of. Its complicated, for reasons involving this week’s embargoed character.

Regardless, the pressing issue will be guiding Song through this leap, since the clock is quickly ticking down. Emotions are perilously high, because one of the armed robbers is the screw-up younger brother of assistant branch manager Rebecca Egan, who lost patience with his self-pitying loser behavior long ago.

Flying Boat, on DVD

They were the original party boats—and they also flew. Back in the day, if you were “flying down to Rio,” or Havana, you were flying on some kind of sea plane. Perhaps no aircraft better symbolized freedom and escape, which is why a small handful of aviation enthusiasts still love and restore them. Viewers can escape the anti-Semitic hatred we are seeing on TV, including on the streets of New York, for at least 77-minutes, through the welcome respite of Dirk Braun’s documentary Flying Boat, which releases today on DVD and VOD.

Flying boats used to be the way to fly, because there were more harbors than runways. Then WWII happened. Their ability to land in remote bodies of water or desert dunes continued to appeal to the adventurous, but commercial air-travel became anchored on dry, solid land. For a while, the Navy and Air Force maintained a few Grumman Albatrosses, because of their flexible landing capabilities. They also enjoyed a brief vogue among drug smugglers, for obvious reasons. In fact, one of the owners Braun interviews nearly unknowingly sold her Albatross to El Chapo. True story.

Today, it is mostly romantic collectors who own and fly the Albatross, like commercial pilot-turned author Tom Casey. He is trying to restore an Albatross that is literally in pieces, with bird nests knotted in its engines. It will be a lucrative gig for his mechanics, but also a labor of love.

Throughout Flying Boat, Braun incorporates some gorgeous aerial cinematography that dramatically captures the Albatross’s grace in the air and its ability to reach stunningly beautiful locations, where no other signs of human life are visible. Without question, this is the best-looking documentary of the year.

The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Rock Queen

Too often, the media and Twitter (X) users just shrug their shoulders at genocide, so we inevitably get more of it, like Hamas’s horrifying genocidal terrorist attacks still rocking Israel. It is time to face up to genocidal crimes and the ideologies that commit them, from the CCP’s systemic campaign against the Uyghurs to the Marxist Khmer Rouge, who decimated Cambodia’s artists and intellectuals. Sadly, the widely popular vocalist Ros Serey Sothea was one of them. Gregory Cahill tells her story in the graphic novel The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Rock Queen, illustrated by Kat Baumann, which goes on-sale today.

You might know the basic facts of the singer’s life from the documentary, Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll. Many of the details are Cahill’s speculation, but reasonably based on the circumstances of Cambodian history. The “Golden Voice,” as she was dubbed, was nationally beloved, because she was a country girl who made good. However, that would not earn her much slack from the Khmer Rouge, especially given her tumultuous relationship with one of Lon Nol’s married officers.

Three quarters of the graphic novel covers events prior to the Khmer Rouge genocide. That might make it sound less depressing, but she still endured plenty of pain and struggle during her professional life. Regardless, the inevitable tragic end hangs over the entire narrative.

In fact, the ways Cahill fills in the gaps in Sothea’s life seem highly credible and well thought out. Conversely, his creation of two American “non-advising” military advisors read like mouthpieces for historical exposition and the writer’s opinion on American policy.

The Boogeyman, on DVD

For those who do not recognize the generic title, this Stephen King story is part of the Night Shift collection, along with the stories that inspired Children of the Corn, Chapelwaite, and Sometimes They Come Back. It has been “dollar-babied” several times, but this year it got a professional studio treatment. If nothing else, viewers will appreciate a properly hung closet door that stays shut during Rob Savage’s The Boogeyman, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Dr. Will Harper has bad vibes about walk-in patient Lester Billings, but the man is so obviously hurting, he cannot turn him away. Unfortunately, while Harper calls the cops, Billings hangs himself in a closet, after trashing Harper’s late wife’s studio. Obviously, this will not help his daughters, teenaged Sadie and the younger Sawyer, who still struggle with their mother’s death.

Ominously, Billings’ sketches and ravings about a “boogeyman” match the nightmares Sawyer starts having. The little girl is so terrified, Sadie investigates the Billings home, where his widow, Rita claims to still battle a monster who lives in the shadows. She warns Harper if the Boogeyman knows about her family, it will start preying on them next.

Despite its King lineage, this is a pretty conventional, commonplace horror story. However, what elevates The Boogeyman to some extent, is Savage’s super eerie execution. There are several very scary scenes of Sadie Harper stalking the Boogeyman, or vice versa, in the candlelit halls of the Billings house and her own darkened basement, which really work. However, the narrative and characters are just kind of meh.

Chris Messina’s Will Harper is one of the few Stephen King dads who isn’t an abusive drunk, but he is still woefully slow on the up-take. David Dastmalchian is terrific as Lester Billings, but you can tell from on look not to emotionally invest in his character. LisaGuy Hamilton (the judge in Lincoln Lawyer, season one) is terrific as the Harper family analyst, Dr. Weller. (Frankly, King fans will wonder if there is an alternate ending in which she plays a different “role.”)

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.

Aberrance, Horror from Mongolia

J-horror and K-horror have rabid fans in the United States and Europe, so could this be the start of a M-horror movement? Considering how well this film works, sure, bring it on. It is not the first Mongolian horror movie, but it is being billed as the first Mongolian horror film to get an American theatrical release. Regardless, most viewers will probably get their first taste of Mongolian horror from Baatar Batsukh’s Aberrance, which is now playing in theaters.

Erkhmee has brought his ambiguously “disturbed” wife Selenge to a remote country cabin, so she can rest for the sake of her advanced pregnancy. He is highly protective of her, perhaps too protective, judging from the perspective of their new next-door neighbor. Selenge’s vivid nightmares are also quite alarming. There is clearly something sinister afoot, but Batsukh is deliberately withholding the full picture. The truth is definitely the stuff of horror movies. It will even involve axe murders.

Initially, Aberrance seems to follow the classic low-budget horror movie playbook, with its small cast of characters and easily manageable locations. However, its Mongolian cultural origins, particularly the traditional emphasis placed on “hospitality,” deepens the significance of the terrors that unfold.

Frankly, Batsukh’s talent for misdirection would be impressive in any context. Experienced genre connoisseurs might be able to hazard a guess, but there is no obvious telegraphing. You can see up on the screen how much talent and potential he has, as a genre filmmaker.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, in the Epoch Times

Military service is never easy. Neither is the pursuit of justice. The late William Friedkin makes both points very clear in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, while presenting a suspenseful courtroom drama for the audience’s entertainment. Epoch Times exclusive review up here.

Miranda’s Victim: The Crime Behind the Landmark Ruling

There is a reason you have not seen dozens of earnest documentaries and melodramatic TV movies about the case that gave rise to the Miranda Warning. The real-life events did not fit the preferred media “narrative.” The titular Ernesto Miranda was not found innocent of kidnapping and raping the woman referred to as “Trish Weir” in this film. The Supreme Court only annulled his trial, allowing Arizona to re-try him without the excluded confession. Of course, reliving the trial experience was a painful ordeal for his victim. Director Michelle Danner finally presents the Miranda case from her perspective in Michelle Danner’s Miranda’s Victim, which releases today in theaters and on-demand.

As viewers will see only too clearly, in 1963, the horror of a rape continued for victims when they tried reporting it to a doctor and the police. That is why Weir’s mother Zeola keeps telling her to forget it and move on with her life. Although never explicitly established, it is implied Mother Zeola endured something similar earlier in life, but her maternal instincts are still clearly flawed. Regardless, Weir gets crucial support from her sister and brother.

The latter even gets a partial plate number for a car matching Weir’s description, returning to the scene of the crime. With that, Det. Carroll Cooley tracked down Miranda. For the era, Cooley was reasonably respectful of Weir. He was also relatively restrained in his interrogation of Miranda, but he obviously did not Mirandize him.

Unfortunately, Miranda was the perfect test case for the ACLU and hotshot attorney John J. Flynn. In a scene guaranteed to cause consternation, Maricopa County prosecutor Lawrence Turoff reaches out to Flynn, hoping he will reconsider the Miranda case, asking “What about Miranda’s victim.” In the film, Flynn replies: “Lawrence, I really don’t care.”

Of course, Weir will have to endure another grilling from Flynn when Turoff re-tries Miranda. Danner and screenwriters George Kolber, Richard Lasser, and J. Craig Stiles are more interested in giving a voice to sexual assault victims than re-litigating the Miranda Warning ruling. Yet, it is hard to think of a sexual assault victim more silenced and marginalized than her, considering the ruling that bears her assailant’s name is regularly celebrated as a progressive victory.

This story will be new to a lot of viewers, but despite some unnecessary flashbacks, Kolber and company do a nice job explaining the circumstances of the investigation and subsequent court cases. Throughout it all, they squarely focus on Weir and the ways she was repeatedly victimized by this case. Danner’s approach as a filmmaker is always sensitive and respectful, but also conventional and decidedly not flashy, which was probably for the best.

Abigail Breslin is incredible as Weir. It is an emotionally devastating performance that is never cliched. She ought to have a place in the awards chatter, but she won’t. Mireille Enos ultimately makes her mother a very sad figure. Luke Wilson and Enrique Murciano are solid as Weir’s allies, Turoff and Cooley, but they are nowhere near Breslin’s level.

FOE: The Lazy, Hazy Near-Future

Supposedly, this near-future world is dangerously overpopulated and environmentally degraded, but you would not know it from the vast lonely prairie vistas surrounding Henrietta (Hen) (who never has need of any protective gear). She endures the loneliness that drove the Badlands settlers mad. For her husband Junior, this is what life is supposed to look like. Perhaps that is why their marriage has been strained. However, they must soon spend a year apart, except maybe not exactly. Their dystopian government has a plan to address their needs, but as usual, it will have unintended consequences in Garth Davis’s FOE, which opens today in theaters.

Terrance is from the government and he is here to help. It turns out Junior has been selected to work on the international space station for a year. You wouldn’t think they need many dirt-farmers in space, but it is for some kind of rural poor representational quota. Of course, that means he must leave Hen alone for an entire year, in the over-populated world, where her only contact with other people comes from waiting on tables in a tiny little diner.

For her sake, Terrance will AI-clone Junior, but to do so properly, he must know the darkest corners of Junior’s mind and truly understand the state of their marriage. To that end, he moves in with the couple and constantly asking uncomfortable sexual questions, like James Spader in Sex, Lies, and Video Tape.

FOE could have been an effective Outer Limits-style thriller if it played up the dystopian paranoia and wasn’t set in the middle of acres and acres of wide-open scrub grass. However, Davis opted instead to make a Terrence Malick film. Although, in a weird way, all the hazy, sun-flared staring off into the horizon misdirects viewers from the surprise twist.

In fact, FOE addresses some big ideas in a surprisingly thoughtful manner. However, getting to that good stuff requires enduring the equivalent of cinematic anesthesia. If you’re not sufficiently caffeinated, it will likely put you out. To say the pacing is slow and deliberate would be diplomatic.

Totally Killer, on Prime

All the best slashers take you back to an Eighties state of mind. This one literally takes Jamie Hughes back to the 1980s. Late in the awesome 80’s, the mysterious Sweet Sixteen Killer murdered three high school girls, stabbing them sixteen times. Then, suddenly, he reappears in 2023, killing her mom. Through an odd chain of events, she travels back in time to stop the killer in Nahnatchka Khan’s Blumhouse-produced Totally Killer, which premieres today on Prime.

For years, Pam Hughes was preparing for the killer’s return, like Laurie Strode in Halloween (2018), but she wasn’t quite prepared enough. The killer targets her daughter next, but Hughes (as in John?) escapes in her best friend Amelia Creston’s science fair project, a time machine. Somehow, it works when the killer’s knife gets jammed in the control panel.

Obviously, returning will be a problem, especially since it needs wifi. Fortunately, Creston based her designs on plans in her mother Lauren’s old notebooks. The 1980s Creston will work on the technical problems, while Hughes tries to catch the killer, but it will be even more difficult than she expected. For one thing, the teen Pam and her mean girl friends are too busy partying to take her warnings seriously, until they start getting killed.

Screenwriters David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, and Jen D’Angelo score some laughs at the expense of 80’s attitudes that now look dated, as seen through the eyes of the woke-entitled Hughes. Yet, despite their intentions, the Reagan decade still looks like way more fun than our current scoldy watch-what-you-say times.

Surprisingly, their take on time travel is more consistently fun and entertaining. Hughes will indeed change things, but not always in the way she hoped. Murders still happen, but the victims and locations change. It turns out fusing slashers and time travel resulted in a fresh take on both.

The Exorcist: Believer

Everyone should know by now Satan never sleeps. That means you can always have one more demonic horror sequel. In this case, we are talking about a franchise built by one of the greatest horror films of all-time and a criminally under-appreciated third installment. The rest are not so fondly remembered (especially #2), so Halloween 2018 rebooter David Gordon Green largely disregards them in the Blumhouse-produced The Exorcist: Believer, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

Thirteen years ago, Victor Fielding and his mega-pregnant wife Sorenne were vacationing in Haiti when the 2010 Sean Penn earthquake hit. She was killed, but doctors managed to save their unborn daughter, Angela. Of course, Fielding still has lingering pain and trauma you-know-who is sure to exploit when he gets a chance.

As a young teen, Angela is increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of the mother she never knew. So much so, she and her friend Katherine try to raise her spirit through a ritual in the forest, which is an exceptionally bad idea. Three days later, Fielding and Katherine’s Evangelical parents finally find them, but they are different. At first, everyone assumes they are just in shock, but their behavior grows nasty, violent, and just plain evil.

Fielding is not a believer, but his neighbor, a former nun, certainly is. When she gives him Chris MacNeill’s book about her daughter Reagan’s demonic possession, Fielding is so struck by the similarities, he seeks out her advice.

You have to wonder what William Peter Blatty (who wrote the original Exorcist novel and screenplay) would think of the way Believer depicts the Catholic Church. Rather insultingly for fans, Blatty’s name never appears in the opening credits, but this film would not exist without him. However, he might begrudgingly admit there is some veracity to its feckless depiction of the Catholic Church, in the Francis era. How can a Church that makes deals with the CCP find the faith to fight demons from Hell? At least, Ann the former nun will try, along with several other clergy, including Katherine’s Evangelical pastor. Ironically, he is portrayed in largely sympathetic terms, as Victor’s neighbor, Stuart, a Pentecostal lay leader, is as well.

Green and co-screenwriters Peter Sattler, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride make a point to emphasize faith, rather than the faith, but evil is still rotten and corrupting to the core. Frankly the “village” trying to conduct the exorcism needs a Father Karras and a Father Merrin—and they would be the first ones to admit it.

The heralding return of Ellen Burstyn as MacNeil is real a coup for Green. Even though she only has fifteen or twenty minutes of screen time, her presence has authority and the apostolic connection to the 1973 film lends Believer massive additional credibility. Despite the limited time, Burstyn is quite poignant and her post-Pazuzu life is well-written and believable.

Bargain, on Paramount+

Imagine getting trapped in a 1970’s-style disaster movie with the absolute worst people in the world. That is the position Noh Hyung-soo finds himself in. Of course, he is one those gross characters. He thought he was coming to the remote hotel for a questionably legal sexual encounter, but instead, a gang of organ-harvesters intends to auction his inside parts to the highest bidder. Then a massive earthquake interrupts everything in creator Byun Seung-min’s six-part Bargain, which premieres today on Paramount+.

Park Joo-young lured Noh pretending to be a high school student offering her virginity for sale, but she will actually be his auctioneer. About a dozen potential buyers will bid and then the Mandarin-speaking surgeons from Mainland China (the world capital of organ-harvesting) will carve him up, sort of like when you order a live lobster in a restaurant. It is almost like divine retribution when a sudden earthquake rips a giant hole through the center of the hotel.

Suddenly, Park and Noh must work together to survive—or so he keeps telling her. Obviously, neither really trusts each other, but they recognize they are probably the best of the bad lot. Civil war erupts among the organ-harvesting gang, between factions loyal to the boss and his chief deputy. Park would probably side with the boss if she had to choose, but she does not feel much loyalty, since she was also trafficked into the gang.

Meanwhile, they also must contend with the clan of troglodytes in the basement that dispose of the bodies and the increasingly unhinged buyer, Guk-ryeol, who keeps insisting Noh must make good on the kidney he purchased for his dying father.

Clearly, Bargain is the sort of feel-good drama, where everybody learns we are all just the same deep down: nasty, brutish, and mean. The first three episodes are so dark and scuzzy, you might want to take a quick shower before proceeding further. However, the brutal fight scenes and karmic payback of the last three episodes are definitely satisfying, in a grungy, exploitative kind of way.