Brad Anderson’s Worldbreaker

Monster movies never adequately explore the trauma of kaiju attacks, particularly for women and children. Instead, they are preoccupied with short-term issues like evading giant stomps and fire-breath, right? If you really think about the genre in such terms, please get help. Nevertheless, if you have, then this is the film for you. The angst and anxiety of growing up in a time of monsters is fully explored in Brad Anderson’s Worldbreaker, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

One day, the Breakers just erupted from a hole in the Earth, due to us people and our despoiling ways. The audience can’t miss that environmental message, because Willa’s “Dad,” as he is simply known, makes the point over and over through his “stories.” Subsequent Breakers manifest differently, including arriving from space or rising out of the oceans, but it is still all our collective fault—and don’t you dare forget it, you ruinous consumer, you!

Sometimes we literally become our own worst enemies, because humans infected with Breaker blood become zombie-like hive-mind Hybrids. You can kill a Breaker through decapitation but a hybrid keeps fighting until you crush its brains. Supposedly, “Kodiak,” the Breaker-fighting folk hero was the first to discover these tactics. Willa loves to hear her Dad tell Kodiak stories, because they are really stories and not Luddite sermons. They spend a good deal of time together, because he was badly injured fighting Breakers, but he didn’t turn—at least not yet.

In fact, “Mom” has become the Breaker-soldier in the family. In general, women now handle most of the fighting, because they are less likely to turn hybrid. However, Mom will need Dad to protect Willa when their shelter is overrun by Breakers. They have a family rally point on an uninhabited coastal island. However, Dad can only truly keep Willa safe as long as she maintains survival protocols.

Weirdly, Anderson and screenwriter Joshua Rollins take subject matter that traditionally lends itself to big genre spectacle and remolded it into a moody chamber drama. They only develop four characters to any real extent and two of them do not even have proper names.

Brad Anderson’s Blood

For what its worth, blood is rich in protein, so don’t judge Jess Stokes. It is the only source of nourishment her son can keep down after he was bitten by a hyper-rabid dog. Like any mother, she will do anything to save her child, but she must go to extreme lengths in Brad Anderson’s Blood, which opens Friday in New York.

Stokes had self-medication issues three years ago, but she is now totally clean. She is also a nurse, which should count for a lot, but her very ex-husband Patrick (who never shaves and always wears Carhartt jackets) still holds her past against her during custody hearings. She has just moved her teen daughter Tyler and ten-year-old-ish son Owen to her family’s old farmhouse, because that is what she can afford. Her ex is raring to regain sole custody, so Stokes is super-careful. Nevertheless, Owen gets himself bitten by his dog Pippen. After disappearing into the night, the formerly friendly pooch returned in a Cujo-like state.

For a while, Owen’s condition is touch and go, but he responds to blood transfusions—especially those taken orally. Stokes found out the latter part by accident and is reluctant to share her discovery with her colleagues. Instead, she takes Owen home to nurse him herself. Of course, as Seymour Krelborn could tell her, maintaining a steady supply of fresh human blood is tricky business. Plus, Owen’s behavior is altering.

Transsiberian, Hitting Sundance Now

These days, traveling from China to Russia is like climbing out of the fire and into the frying pan. About ten years ago, it was considered the opposite. Regardless, most rational Americans would be leery of taking the Transsiberian from Beijing all the way across Siberia, but for some reason it sounds fun to a train nut like Roy Nusser and his wife Jessie is willing to humor him. Guess what? They encounter corruption and danger in Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian, which starts streaming tomorrow on Sundance Now.

A French businessman warns the naïve Nussers how crooked Chinese and Russian cops are, but they really aren’t listening. Instead, he is totally fascinated by the train and she is perversely interested in their romantic but slightly sketchy traveling companions, Spanish Carlos Ximenez and American Abby. She is both jealous and somewhat disdainful of their free-spirited lifestyle. However, when klutzy Roy is left behind during a layover, she is initially grateful when the more experienced travelers accompany her as she waits for her wayward husband at the next stop.

Unfortunately, when Ximenez shows his true criminal colors, it leads to all kinds of complications. Nusser would prefer to forget the whole incident, but she is alarmed to discover the backpacker stashed a shipment of drugs in her camera bag—and their new cabin mate is Ilya Grinko, a senior officer with the Russian DEA.

Anderson’s genre films are often all over the place and Transsiberian is no exception. Honestly, the first two acts are bizarrely slow and traveloguish. However, third act cat-and-mouse game, back aboard the train with Grinko is tense, nerve-jangling stuff. Not surprisingly, Sir Ben Kingsley is far and away the film’s MVP, portraying Grinko with chilling ruthlessness. (Arguably, it hardly matters whether he is crooked or not, since he is serving a rotten regime.) Thomas Kreschmann is almost unrecognizable, looking very Russian and very sinister as Grinko’s thuggish partner Kolzak.

Brad Anderson’s Fractured

In this case, better electronic medical record-keeping might have prevented an awful lot of trouble. Yes, that is the takeaway we’re going with. Ray Monroe gets a little concerned when a hospital that is more concerned with paperwork than bedside manner loses his wife and injured daughter in Brad Anderson’s Fractured, which premieres today on Netflix.

While driving across country, Ray and Joanne Monroe bicker like cats and dog, while their daughter Perri listens to CDs. When the disc-player’s batteries die, they pull for a pit stop (in fact, the hygiene-challenged service station is literally called “The Pit Stop”), where Perri takes a nasty fall after getting spooked by a snarling dog. The Monroes rush her to the nearest hospital, but the admitting department is more interested in her organ donation status than her injuries. Eventually, she is examined by a doctor, who recommends a CAT scan.

When Monroe awakens from a brief doze in the waiting room, his wife and daughter are nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, the hospital staff insists they were never there in the first place. When Monroe begs to differ, they first react dismissively and then become increasingly hostile, eventually reaching for the sedatives, but the desperate father won’t be having any of that.

Anderson has made a number of interesting genre films, like Vanishing on 7^th Street, Stonehearst Asylum, and Beirut, which is why Fractured is such a disappointment. The premise is somewhat old-hat to start with, but the film also seems to take forever to build up any steam. Still, Anderson and his intense star, Sam Worthington, manage to keep viewers invested enough to be annoyed by the predictable but still deeply unsatisfying conclusion. “All that for this,” viewers might ask.

Sundance ’18: Beirut

There was a time when Lebanon’s capital city was a prime tourist destination, renowned for its night life. Then the PLO moved in and the party came to a screeching halt. Up-and-coming Foreign Service Officer Mason Skiles was stationed there when things first started to go bad. Reluctantly, he agrees to return ten hard years later in Brad Anderson’s Lebanon, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

In 1972, Skiles’ star was on the rise. Lebanon was getting more violent, but it was not the wasteland ruled by the Hezbollah terrorist group that it is now. Skiles and his wife were in the process of adopting a war orphan named Karim, but unbeknownst to the Yanks, the scruffy thirteen-year-old is actually the younger brother of notorious Munich terrorist Abu Rajal. That is why the Mossad crashes the Skiles’ soiree hoping to grab Karim, but his brother’s faction gets him first.

Flashforward ten years. Skiles is now a boozy labor mediator, who wants nothing to do with the Middle East. However, he gets pulled back in when all-grown-up-terrorist Karim abducts Skiles’ old pal, Cal Riley, the local CIA hand. Karim demands the release of his brother in exchange for Riley and he insists on Skiles as the negotiator. Rather inconveniently, the CIA is not holding Rajal and they are far from sure the Israelis are, either.

Tony Gilroy’s screenplay is very le Carré-esque, in that it posits mixed motives and duplicity on all sides. At least in this case, that includes the PLO, who might be the scummiest of all, which indeed they are. Regardless, there is plenty of enjoyable intrigue and a fair degree of action. Using Morocco and CGI, Anderson also gives us plenty of opportunities to gawk at the wreckage of the city, Holidays in Hell-style.

As Skiles, Jon Hamm makes a perfect boozy anti-hero in the Graham Greene tradition. He has the right look, size, and presence to be a disillusioned policy wonk who can mix it up with terrorists. Frustratingly, Rosamund Pike is largely squandered as Riley’s trustworthy protégé, but Mark Pellegrino exhibits his usual flintiness as the hardnosed Riley.

Beirut is a cynical film, but what can we expect, given the backdrop? If anything, the prognosis for the Hezbollah-dominated nation is even worse now, than during the civil war-torn 1980s. Anderson maintains a healthy pace and juggles the large cast of characters adroitly enough. Recommended for fans of murky international thrillers, Beirut screens again tomorrow (1/27) in Park City, as part of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Stonehearst Asylum: the Poe Treatment

Dr. Silas Lamb certainly understands the pluses and minuses of corporal punishment and anesthetizing drugs as treatment for lunacy. He is after all based on the superintendent of Poe’s short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether.” He will indeed reveal a revolutionary and irreversible new treatment to his naïve young colleague. Yes, there has been the proverbial reversal of positions in the remote mental hospital, but the standard of care has arguably increased in Brad Anderson’s Stonehearst Asylum (trailer here), which releases on DVD and BluRay today, from Millennium Entertainment.

Idealistic Dr. Edward Newgate has arrived at Stonehearst determined to talk his way into a job. He has a passion for psychiatric medicine that duly impresses Dr. Lamb, even though he was not expecting a prospective assistant. Although he talks a progressive game, Newgate is rather shocked by Lamb’s indulgent methods. Several of the patients even perform nursing duties and dine with the staff at night. However, he is even more preoccupied with Eliza Graves, the abused wife of a rich and powerful society scion. For her own protection, Lamb promises to keep her safely committed. Of course, Newgate has his own ideas regarding Ms. Graves that become ever more confused when he discovers the real staff chained up in the dungeon.

It goes without saying, but Stonehearst would have been so much more awesome if it had been made by Roger Corman. Anderson and the design team get the trappings right, but they never properly convey an atmosphere of gothic dread nor a flair for cheeky camp. It is sort of like a middling BBC historical drama set in a nut house.

Still, Sir Ben Kingsley gets a spirit of things rather admirably. He certainly is not bashful when it comes to chewing on scenery and freaks out quite convincingly when he has to. Unfortunately, Jim Sturgess and Kate Beckinsale make pretty vanilla Victorians as Newgate and Graves, respectively. Michael Caine and Brendan Gleeson have their moments as more conventionally problematic alienists, but there is only so much they can do. Even David Thewliss seems to be forcing matters as the malevolent groundskeeper known as “Mickey Finn.”

Screenwriter Ben Gangemi is about as faithful to Poe as the classic Corman adaptations, adding a further ironic twist that works well in context. Nevertheless, a costume genre film really ought to be more fun. Instead, Stonehearst is strangely determined to make a serious statement about the shortcomings of the Victorian mental health system, which seems beyond unnecessary at this point. Kingsley is a gamer, but only Poe completists should feel the need to catch up with Stonehearst Asylum, now available on DVD from Millennium Entertainment.

Detroit Story: Vanishing on 7th Street

Having driven out all local industry, perhaps Detroit has finally found its place in the world economy. Evidently, the depressed city is suitably creepy locale to film a horror movie. While the city is disappearing in real life, supernatural forces hasten the process in Brad Anderson’s Vanishing on 7th Street (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As a film projectionist, Paul is used to working in the dark. An avid reader of the occult and unexplained, he happened to be skimming the story of the lost Roanoke Colony when nearly every living soul in his multiplex disappears. We quickly surmise his miner’s light saved his life. The darkness is rising, consuming any living being not protected by a light source. Somehow, Paul and a handful of survivors make their way to Sonny’s, a local dive with its own generator and a jukebox stocked with some hip soul jazz and old school R&B.

Even if Vanishing did not establish Luke had just left his wife for a shallow TV anchor, we would know he is a morally flexible punk, because he is played by Hayden Christensen. Not exactly an altruist, there is considerable friction between him and James, a sensitive adolescent nervously awaiting a mother who clearly is not coming back. Instinctively drawn to the young boy, Rosemary is a doctor with a host of emotional issues further acerbated by the current crisis. Together, they must keep the darkness at bay, even though, in a bit of a cheat on the film’s part, the laws of nature seem to be bending to the otherworldly force.

While good villains are really essential to genre pictures, Anderson and cinematographer Uta Briesewitz effectively compensate with the malevolent creeping darkness, masterfully setting the eerie mood and tone. Vanishing features a number of smart touches, including the Roanoke references and the appearance of cult horror actor-director Larry Fessenden as an ill fated bike messenger. Wisely, Anderson never reveals too much, maintaining a sense mystery regarding the evil forces at work. However, genre purists will be frustrated by the film’s refusal to play by a consistent set of rules, as well as the rather ridiculous ending.

Perfectly cast as Paul, John Leguizamo nicely conveys both earnest geekiness and desperate fear. Though he has played this part before, Christensen once again makes a convincing jerk. Saddled with a rather melodramatic character whose lack of assertiveness might be problematic to some, Thandie Newton does what she can as Rosemary.

A disciplined, mostly cool excursion into apocalyptic horror, Vanishing smartly works within its constraints. If not another Night of the Comet, it should certainly hold considerable cult appeal when it opens this Friday (2/18) at the Village East.