The Grand Son: Hollywood Family Values

Tod and Lani’s grandmother is sort of the Norma Desmond of home shopping television. The former movie star has lost her touch hawking cubic zirconium, so she has had her loyal grandson liquidate the furnishings of their once palatial Hollywood mansion. However, trusting Tod could very well be a grave mistake in Robert Logevall’s The Grand Son (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

Things are getting so bad, Judy’s grandchildren might have to get jobs—real jobs, not the bogus acting gigs Lani is constantly auditioning for. Tod knows his grandmother will soon get the axe from the shopping network, because he is sleeping with her producer Barbara. He would like Judy to pass the baton to Lani, but it is not in her nature to step aside. For their part, Barbara and the network executives have little to zero interest in Lani, so it will all take a good deal of string-pulling on his part. Fortunately, Tod has a convenient scapegoat for his schemes in Jacob, the surly boy toy house painter both grandmother and granddaughter have been using in bed.

Grand Son (two words) is no Sunset Boulevard, that’s for sure, but it is entertainingly lurid, in a gleefully amoral kind of way. This is the kind of over-the-top family drama that unleashes the full-contact Dynasty-style catty-slapping before breakfast. It is all very much a guilty pleasure, but you have to guffaw at its energy and shamelessness.

Perhaps the best thing going for the film is Lesley Ann Warren (Oscar nominated for Victor/Victoria) who is perfectly cast and looks terrific as Grandma Judy, the Danielle Steel character from Hell. Fabianne Therese (John Dies at the End, Sequence Break) is so relentlessly petulant and entitled as Lani, it really is funny. Rhys Wakefield also makes quite a creepy little sociopath as Tod. However, Nathan Keyes is so drearily dull as Jacob, it is hard to believe he could last thirty seconds amid such flamboyantly nasty company.

Logevall’s last feature was All God’s Creatures Can Dance, an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story released in 2008. It should be safe to describe Grand Son as a change of pace. This is far from the smartest, twistiest thriller of the year, or even the week, but it has all kinds attitude. If ever there was a VOD movie this is it. Recommended fans of Warren (she was also Miss Scarlett in Clue, so show the proper respect), The Grand Son hits VOD platforms today.

Hover: Keep Watching the Skies

Drones—they’re not just for delivering Amazon packages anymore. They can also kill people Scanners-style. That is what you call a practical application. Unfortunately, a slow, lingering death seems to be a common side effect among farmers who adopted drone technology. When she isn’t killing people, a euthanasia specialist will try to get to the bottom of the mystery in Matt Osterman’s Hover (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Claudia and her partner John are busier than ever dispatching clients in their district. Their latest case work was especially difficult, because she just discovered the boss made her pregnant and he is dealing with the very early stages of a fatal illness. Of course, that gives the conspirators a perfect cover story when they fake his suicide to prevent him blowing the whistle on their arrangement.

Somehow the nonprofit and euphemistically named Transitions is in league with the drone company. Claudia will start to put the pieces together herself with the help of some rural conspiracy cranks and a dissident maintenance worker at the drone company.

Yes, that’s right, Hover combines two super-fun topics: euthanasia and agriculture. Hello! Is anyone still reading this? Arguably, Hover essentially reworks the premise of Michael Crichton’s Runaway, but what was cautionary speculation in 1984 is basically old news in 2018.

Still, Osterman invests the film with a moody vibe that mostly works for it, but screenwriter Cleopatra Coleman struggles to carry the film as its weak lead. On the other hand, Craig muMs Grant is worth remembering for future casting thanks to the smart and intense presence he shows as John. Not surprisingly, Beth Grant is convincingly nutty as the tinfoil hat wearing Joanna, while Dré Starks is a real standout as Victor Smith, the paranoid and anti-social son of a Transitions client. Plus, it is fun to see horror movie regular Fabianne Therese appear as Claudia’s duplicitous assistant, Tania.

You have to give Osterman and Coleman credit for their thoughtful and complex treatment of euthanasia. This is not an advocacy film by any stretch. It might even damper some viewers’ enthusiasm for the practice. It also avoids most of the dystopian clichés, setting the film in a world nearly indistinguishable from our own. Still, a little bit a future world building would have made the visuals more interesting. The resulting film is well-meaning, but probably already too late. Not very compelling, unless you are a diehard drone-phobe, Hover opens this Friday (6/29) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Fantasia ’17: Sequence Break

There was a time when you had to deal with people if you wanted to play video games. Players would put their quarters up to claim the next game and everyone would patiently wait their turn, through common consent. These days, an arcade is a good place for a technician like Oz (short for Osgood, not Ozzie) to hide from the world. Yet, both a cute but neurotic woman and an evil mother board will find him in Graham Skipper’s Sequence Break (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Jerry’s arcade-slash-stand-up arcade game wholesale business is on its last legs, but one of their final customers happens to be Tess, who is really interested in Oz. Much to his surprise, he starts seeing her romantically. They will have a chance to spend a lot of time together while he minds the shop for Jerry. He assumes his good-natured boss has already left to visit family, but he has actually been murdered by a mysterious drifter who intentionally left behind a sinister game board. After Oz installs it in a compatible cabinet, he finds the game exerts a disturbing influence over players, both physically and emotionally.

Sequence Break is a nice example of an emerging loose ensemble of recognizable horror specialists and cult favorites, who almost constitute a throwback to the glory days of the repertory players featured Hammer and Amicus horror films. Skipper himself is better known for starring in nifty retro films like The Mind’s Eye and Beyond the Gates, which also co-starred Chase Williamson, who is terrific as the socially awkward Oz. He also develops some shockingly endearing chemistry with Fabianne Therese, with whom he previously co-starred in John Dies at the End. (She also appeared in Starry Eyes with Noah Segan, who was also in Camera Obscura with Williamson and Mind’s Eye with Skipper. Get the picture?)

Given its retro 1980s arcade aesthetic, Sequence Break’s budget constraints are almost a blessing. The arcade setting and the in-game graphics look absolutely spot-on. The small ensemble really works well together, most definitely also including Lyle Kanouse as old Jerry. The visual effects are basically in keeping with the retro eighties nostalgia, but the practical cables-coming-out-of-throats effects are sufficiently gory and gross.

Basically, Sequence is a lot like Electric Dreams with a strong element of body horror added. However, there is just no getting around how disappointing the ending is. Maybe you can argue it is part of the eighties homage, but it is still lame. Nonetheless, Skipper and the cast press so many nostalgic buttons, it is impossible to stay angry with the film. Recommended for fans of modern horror’s repertory players and the films and video games of the 1980s that inspired Skipper’s screenplay, Sequence Break screens tonight (7/18) and tomorrow (7/19) as part of this year’s Fantasia.