Scary Movies XII: Villains

There is no “Make My Day” law in the nation that would cover the actions of respectable-looking George and Gloria when dim-witted Mickey and Jules break into their upscale exurban home. They could have just shot the moronic home invaders, but instead they try to scratch their psychotic itches in Dan Berk & Robert Olsen’s dark comedy, Villains, which screened during Scary Movies XII.

Only Mickey and Jules would knock-over a gas station, but forget to fill up the tank first. As a result, they find themselves broken-down near George and Gloria’s secluded home. Their original plan was to steal the car in the garage, but they get side-tracked when they discover a little girl chained up in the basement. At this point, their hosts walk in. Even though Mickey has the gun, George is the one in control of the situation.

Things get awkward quickly for Mickey and Jules. At least the little girl starts to warm to Jules. Frankly, she is probably smarter than the young crooks, who are definitely out of their league playing cat-and-mouse games with their nutty captors.

Villains basically shares the fundamental premise of Bad Samaritan, Monster Party, and to an extent, Don’t Breathe, but those films do their best to maintain a tone that is consistently tense and serious as a heart attack. Berk & Olsen’s game plan to extract laughs and suspense from the circumstances surrounding a child held captive in a basement is definitely gutsy, but the results are hit-or-miss in the extreme.

Nobody can blame the principal cast members, who are obviously working overtime to pull off the comedy and the horror scenery chewing. Maika Monroe is quite endearingly sweet and naïve as Jules, while Bill Skarsgård energetically plays against his It-type as big, dopey Mickey. Kyra Sedgwick is really weird and almost unrecognizable as the dangerously neurotic Gloria, but Jeffrey Donovan might even be more impressive, going all in and somehow pulling off all of George’s over-written dialogue with sinister verve.

The problem is we’ve been here before. The American movie business’s war on suburban normalcy is getting predictable. At this point, it would be more surprising if characters like George and Gloria were stable and decent. Not recommended, Villains opens September 20^th nationwide, following its New York premiere at Scary Movies XII.

Scary Movies XII: Black Circle

By now, the booming market for audiophile vinyl should have everyone convinced of the LP’s superior sound quality. That is great when you are listening to vintage Blue Note jazz, but not so hot in the case of a creepy 1970s self-help album with the dangerous power to mesmerize listeners. At first, two sisters feel empowered by the record, but the experience takes a dark turn in Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s Black Circle, which screens during Scary Movies XII.

You could think of the Stockholm Center for Magnetic Research as the Swedish equivalent of Tony Robbin and other such self-help gurus, who initially seem beneficial, but soon drag the unwary into a state of abject horror. To be fair, the now-defunct Institute tried to recall their LP, but somehow Isa found one among the possessions of a distant relative who recently passed away. After experiencing sudden success at work after listening, she passes it on to her slacker grad student sister Celeste.

After duly spinning the B-side before falling asleep, she is suddenly able to whip out her thesis. However, her second listening is interrupted by a stoned friend. As a result, Celeste sees something pretty disturbing that scares off spinning the record any further. Unfortunately, the dark, otherworldly process unleashed by the record has progressed much further in Isa’s case. To save her sanity and possibly her life, the sisters seek help from the people who created it, Lena Carlsson, a “master magnetizer” and daughter of the institute’s founder and Mårten, her late father’s surviving right-hand man. Of course, the process will be fraught with peril, but two young psychics happen to show up just in time to help, as if they were compelled to be there.

Black Circle is a triumph of genre art direction, cinematography, and mise-en-scene that brilliantly recreates the look and tone of 1970s Euro-horror movies. Every detail is perfectly rendered. Yet, the narrative is still wholly original and completely engrossing. Frankly, this is the best horror or horror-ish film to play with doppelganger themes since maybe the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, far-eclipsing Jordan Peele’s Us (which was admittedly pretty good).

Without question, Circle’s MVP is Christina Lindberg, the Swedish 1970s exploitation star, who plays Carlsson like the daughter of Peter Cushing and Lin Shaye. She basically magnetizes viewers with her commanding presence. Hans Sandqvist is also appropriately Nordic and reserved as old Mårten, while Erica and Hanna Midfjäll really keep the audience off balance, as Isa and her double.

Spanish-born Bogliano has steadily built an international reputation as a horror master, but his best films, the English language Night of the Wolf (a.k.a. Late Phases) and now the Swedish-set Circle, have been produced outside the Iberian sphere of influence. In terms of the constituent elements, Circle is almost as much science fiction as horror, but Bogliano creates an unsettling sense of foreboding and cranks up the tension to wickedly high levels. This is definitely auteurist genre filmmaking. Very enthusiastically recommended, Black Circle screens Monday (8/19), as part of Scary Movies XII.