AAIFF ’24: Decoupling

When she reaches her teen years, Yinan Wang’s daughter will hate him because of this documentary (and her toddler nude scenes). For now, he is more worried she hates him, because she hardly seems to know him, thanks to their Covid separation, complicated and prolonged by geopolitics. Wang’s documents his struggles parenting in Decoupling, which is available for online screening as part of the 2024 Asian American International Film Festival.

Wang lives in America on a student visa. His Yujing has a resident work visa, but as your MAGA uncle can easily explain to you, their American-born daughter Wangwang is a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, Wang’s parents agreed to take her back to Mainland China for several months, once his wife’s maternity leave ended. They were feeling overwhelmed and his parents were eager to help. It takes a village, right? Then the pandemic hit, canceling all flights between the United States and China.

Even when international travel revived, few flights to China were resumed. Many factors contributed to the decline of bilateral relations, most of which Wang avoids mentioning, like the draconian “National Security” Law in Hong Kong used to crush dissent and the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. Consequently, when Wang hears Trump discuss the term “decoupling,” he decides to use it as the metaphor for his film.

Eventually, Wang finally arranges visas to bring his daughter home, but she is standoffish towards him. Presumably, most parents will feel Wang’s pain at finding himself a stranger in his daughter’s eyes. From what they see in Decoupling, viewers do not need to be child psychologists to understand how ineffective FaceTime parenting is, especially at that age. However, most parents will also wonder how in the world Wang and his wife could let things get to that point. In some ways, they sort of asked for this.

Perhaps not so ironically, some of the most poignant moments in the film focus on his mother’s relationship with her uncle (his great uncle), who clearly suffered enormously during the Cultural Revolution. (Much to his misfortune, the regime classified him as “landed Gentry,” with predictably dire results.) In fact, a previous Anti-Rightist Campaign also hit his family hard. Frankly, the affection and protectiveness Wang’s mother shows for his great-uncle suggests he might have missed the bigger story. Maybe Wang should not necessarily made himself the star of his own documentary.

Creepy Crawly, on DVD

Nobody was more responsible for Covid shutdowns than Donald Trump. He implemented everything Anthony “Gain of Function” Fauci wanted and then gave his Covid policy chief an award when he left office. With that in mind, you might call this Thai hotel a “Trump Hotel,” because during the Wuhan pandemic, it caters to quarantine business. It definitely houses a public health risk, but the parasitic monster is much more dangerous than Covid in Chalit Krileadmongkon & Pakphum Wongjinda’s Creepy Crawly (a.k.a. The One Hundred), which releases Tuesday on DVD and BluRay.

This “Trump Hotel” has definitely seen better days, so the quarantine business represents a lucrative lifeline for the slimy hotel manager Wit, who will sexually harass anyone wearing a skirt. However, he is a bit alarmed to learn Fame, one of his reluctant new guests, is a travel influencer, who can ruin the hotel’s reputation. She also has a rare blood disease she has tried to keep secret from the clinical staff.

Fame is traveling with her brother (and video editor) Fiew, but she immediately develops a bit of chemistry with Leo, a Taekwondo champion traveling with his little sister and their deaf widowed father. Leo resents the old man for reasons that will be revealed, but the family will have to come together when the centipedes start to attack. The creepy-crawly things would be bad enough on their own, but they are being controlled by a “Tablongplum,” a giant insectoid monster that apparently has body-snatching powers, sort of like the monster in John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The centipedes are really creepy, but the film is never so disgusting it becomes unwatchable (so dismiss any comparisons to Human Centipede from your mind). Frankly, the centipede swarms might even be more unnerving than the monster directing them. The seedy hotel is also an effective setting.

However, Wit’s jerkweed behavior gets to be a real buzzkill. The guests’ acquiescence is also the film’s biggest credibility issue—it is hard to believe every single guest obediently refrains from calling the cops after the first incident—unless it is all meant as a commentary on society’s compliance during the pandemic—in which case it is spot on. After all, it is not by coincidence this film is set during Covid-times.

Sick, on Peacock

You know when they lose Blumhouse, the Fauci school of pandemic management has lost the nation. Maybe they haven’t fully lost the studio chief, but screenwriter Kevin Williamson has a lot of ironic commentary to offer on the quarantine lock-down era, while staying true to his slasher roots. Unfortunately, two millennials can’t quarantine themselves from a home-invading slasher in John Hyam’s Blumhouse-produced Sick, which is now streaming on Peacock.

With the economic and educational shutdown of 2020 looming, entitled party girl Parker Mason and her judgy, strait-laced pal Miri Woodlow decide to quarantine in the luxury cabin owned by Mason’s dad. Basically, it looks Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone character might live there, but there do not seem to be any guns in the house, which stretches credibility.

Of course, they both announce their every move on social media, so a tech-savvy stalker can easily follow them to Pop Mason’s cowboy McMansion. We can tell this psycho is effective, based on the murder he committed during the prologue. In this case, even Mason’s jealous hook-up, DJ Cole can crash their party. That means there are three potential victims, waiting to get hacked and slashed.

It is hard to explain the context without spoiling elements, but Williamson’s screenplay definitely skewers the compulsive masking experience. It also brings back embarrassing memories of Clorox wiping your groceries. Perhaps most incisively, it portrays the weird Covid-Puritanism (sometimes expressed by the likes of Howard Stern) that blamed victims and carriers. Arguably, the mystery slasher represents its fullest logical manifestation. However, all of Williamson’s inspiration is reflected in his razor-sharp dialogue, whereas the characterization largely falls back on flat stereotypes.

Regardless, experienced genre director John Hyams skillfully builds the tension and stages some hair-raising confrontations (even more so than he did in Alone). As is Scream, the slasher (if there is only one) is definitely a mortal, who takes bumps and bashes just like the prospective victims. Indeed, each grisly encounter could go either way, so there is genuine suspense. Among the cast, the clear standout is Jane Adams as Pamela, whose sinister role would be spoilery to reveal.