R.L. Stine’s The Graveyard Club

The town of Graves End is even spookier than Riverdale, but it ought to be. It is hard to imagine the CW show without the years of groundwork laid by children’s and YA author R.L. Stine. He popularized horror for a generation of young readers, placing the scares in the settings they knew best: school, camp, the neighborhood, etc. Stine is still writing—probably more than ever, including graphic novels. With obvious seasonal timing in mind, the first two installments of his latest franchise have been collected in the omnibus The Graveyard Club, illustrated by Carola Borelli, which releases this Tuesday.

Graves End is only distinguished by two things: the multiple cemeteries that define its boundaries and the large flocks of bats that often fill its skies. Bad things tend to happen there, like the disappearance of Parker West’s father. Almost nothing good has happened to West, except maybe his wooing of Patti Olsen, a fellow member of his loose group of pals, who call themselves the Graveyard Club, in honor of the one place they feel comfortable. However, that meant geeky Caleb came out the loser. Yet, the motley crew remains united against the bullying of corrupt Officer Ray-Ray Higgins and his nasty son Billy Roy.

In the first story arc, Revenge Game, their pal Trip convinces the gang to finally go for some serious payback. Of course, that is a dangerous door to open in the horror genre. In fact, it almost costs Trip his life when Billy Roy presumably retaliates. Indeed, thing go dark quickly, in ways consistent with the early season of the aforementioned TV series.

One of the coolest stories, is a shorty, “The Girl in the Graveyard,” sandwiched between the two full length tales. It is a great example of how Stine has “re-purposed” traditional motifs for younger audiences. More importantly, it delivers the kind of atmosphere that fans look for from horror comics.

Following the middle yarn, Fresh Blood continues to dial-up the supernatural elements. West is brooding even harder these days, because the anniversary of his father’s disappearance is fast approaching. It also affects fellow “Club” member Rhonda, since her father also vanished that same night, during their weekly poker night at the now abandoned Dockside Inn. Wanting some answers, they decide to visit the shunned building, naturally agreeing to meet at the dark of night. Of course, it turns out to be a great place for some serious horror business.

Brooklyn Horror ’25: Tales from the Woods

These fairy tales often leave the “happily” out of “every after,” but if you read the original Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, they often did so too. Not surprisingly, the genre filmmakers participating in this series of fairy tale-based short films had no trouble relating to their chosen stories, even though they often took extensive liberties. Nevertheless, the results still vary amongst the three short films in the Tales from the Woods series that screened at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

By far, the most successful is Mattie Do’s Sleeping Beauty, which turns Princess Aurora into a Fisher King curse. The Laotian filmmaker (The Long Walk, Dearest Sister) transfers the French folk tale to colonial Vietnam, where the governor’s biracial son Philippe falls under the spell of the sleeping beauty and brings her home to meet his parents.

Unfortunately, no amount of kissing will wake her up, but that doesn’t bother Philippe. His mother Dao recognizes the source of his bewitchment from folk legends, but she is too timid to act accordingly, even if it brings ruin to her family and the surrounding community. Obviously, Do incorporates some rather provocative taboo themes, but they deliver a subversive twist to the familiar fairy tale. Sonadala Sihavong is also terrific, in a crushingly human way, as Dao.

Surprisingly, the weakest constituent short film comes from the usually mind-bending filmmaker-tandem of Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Spring, The Endless, Synchronic, Something in the Dirt). Jacques the Giant Slayer opens with an intriguing late 19^th Century expedition vibe, but the creature encounter underwhelms.

In Our Blood: Found Footage Horror Worth Finding

Emily Wyland should leave family reunions to the Waltons and awkward family documentaries to Sarah Polley. Instead, she drags her camera guy down to record her homecoming in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her former (hopefully) junky mother Sam. Unfortunately, they quickly suspect some sinister horror movie business is afoot, preying on the meth gangs and illegal aliens whose deaths wouldn’t be reported. It is not a great advertisement for Las Cruces tourism but the techniques of found footage horror are unusually well-executed in Pedro Kos’s In Our Blood, which opens today in theaters.

It had been years since Wyland last saw her mother. Their attempt at Thanksgiving dinner is not exactly a success either. However, Sam volunteers to make a long, cryptic “confession” on-camera. She certainly seems to feel guilty about something. Wyland hopes to extract more specifics the next day, when they arrange to visit the homeless shelter where her mom volunteers, but her mother no-shows. There are also no signs of her at home.

As they investigate her disappearance, Wyland and her creeped out cameraman Danny Martinez start to suspect it involves the local biker drug-gang, several of her aging hipster artist colony friends, and paranoid schizophrenic client of the homeless shelter.

Before long, they are deep in the trust-no-one horror-conspiracy weeds. It is definitely bad, but somehow Kos and screenwriter Mallory Westfall will probably manage to surprise a lot of experienced genre fans when they finally reveal the wizard behind the curtain.

The found footage conceit also really, really works for this film. Maybe there are a few times when you just have to accept that Wyland was also shooting footage, but that is relatively easy to look past, compared to the cheating you can see in most of its less ambitious sub-genre brethren.

Tenement: Submitted by Cambodia

It's prime affordable housing in Phenom Penh, as long as your soul comes cheap. Returning Cambodian expat Soriya and her Japanese boyfriend Daichi scored a short-term rental in a property loosely modelled on the so-called “White Building” but that was not a stroke of good fortune. She hoped to kindle inspiration for a horror manga, but she might find more source material than she can handle in director-screenwriters Inrasothythep Neth & Sokyou Chea’s Tenement, Cambodia’s official international Oscar submission, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

After her mother’s death, Soriya was surprised to learn she had an aunt back in Phenom Penh. As it happens, her editor just challenged her to explore her cultural roots for her debut manga. Daichi also happens to be between gigs, so off to Cambodia they go. There was even a vacancy in Aunt Mao’s building. However, Jam, their Chatty Cathy cabbie, is alarmingly alarmed to see where they will be staying.

Soriya is delighted to connect with her extended family, especially Mao’s daughter Nimul. Daichi isn’t crazy about her food, but surely that’s a cultural thing, right? Still, even Soriya must admit her zombie-like great aunt moldering in the backroom is deeply unsettling.

Frankly, Soriya’s long lost relatives are a little too welcoming, like the neighbors in Rosemary’s Baby, which looks an obvious influence on Neth and Chea. However, it is interesting to see it executed in a style that also pays tribute to J-horror. Regardless, the third act is quite a wild funhouse ride. Some fans might be frustrated with the quietly measured start, but the deliberate, slow building atmosphere pays dividends over time.

Armed Only with a Camera, in The Epoch Times

Flawed, but undeniably moving at times, ARMED ONLY WITH A CAMERA documents the death and repatriation of documentary filmmaker Brnt Reenaud, who was fatakky strafed by Russian forcs in Ukraine. At its best, it also shows the respect and sensitivity he and his brother Craig brought to their covderage of U.S. military personnel in Iraq. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Lazarus, on Prime Video

Dr. Joel "Laz" Lazarus is seeing ghosts, but at least they shouldn’t linger longer than fifty minutes. Apparently, he is experiencing visions, or something, from his late father’s life. Dr. Jonathan Lazarus was also a shrink, but his office was clearly not a safe space. Some of the sessions were rather intense, but they might help Laz identify his father’s killer, since his ghost can’t, or won’t explain directly. Regardless, each visit to his late father’s office brings new questions and often further family angst in Harlan Coben & Daniel Brocklehurst’s six-episode Lazarus, which premiers today on Prime Video.

Old Man Lazarus was supremely self-confident and he never owned a gun, so Laz considers his supposed suicide highly unlikely. However, everyone knows the senior Lazarus took the childhood murder of his daughter Sutton especially hard, because she was his favorite. Of course, the cops know all about Sutton’s murder, especially since DI Alison Brown is an old friend of the late doctor and DS Seth McGovern is the other Dr. Lazarus’s childhood buddy. In fact, McGovern still carries a torch for Laz’s other younger sister, Jenna, a psychic, who is quite offended that the ghosts come to Laz instead of her.

It works differently for old man Lazarus, who just walks up to Laz to start another conversation from beyond the grave. Yet, in most cases, Laz takes his father’s place in conversations from the past, experiencing them through his eyes. Frankly, the first time it happens, he simply assumes he is talking to a patient who is too crazy to tell him from his father. However, he soon learns Cassandra Rhodes is dead—murdered in fact.

Frankly, Laz is probably a little too confiding about the ghost business, especially to McGovern. Of course, he will eventually need some kind of reason to explain finding a corpse that has been hidden for over a decade. Meanwhile, Sam Olsen, the original suspect in Sutton’s disappearance makes a suspicious habit of walking around the late Dr. Lazarus’s office at all hours of the night.

Lazarus is not exactly horror per se, but it has enough of the supernatural and uncanny to feel appropriately atmospheric for October viewing. Frankly, the first five episodes are addictively bingeable. Coben and Brocklehurst dexterously dangle a juicy new cliffhanger-revelation at the end of each episode. Unfortunately, the concluding sixth installment plays out like it was conceived to disappoint, if not outright enrage, everyone who invested nearly fives hours of their lives in the Lazarus kin.

Frankly, five out six is not bad, especially for an anthology, but a weak dismount definitely hurts a thriller like Lazarus. Still, Sam Claflin delivers some of the best work of his career as poor Laz, whom Coben and Brocklehurst truly put through an emotional wringer. Each episode he has multiple freakouts, breakdowns, and existential crises.

Mistress Dispeller

Apparently, this phenomenon is a by-product of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The regime might like to boast of “traditional Chinese values” and “thousands of years of Chinese culture,” but one of the Mainland’s fastest growing service industries seeks to separate unfaithful husbands from their mistresses. For a top performer like Wang Zhenxi, business is booming. Elizabeth Lo follows Wang as she targets her latest love-triangle in “Mistress Dispeller,” which opens today in New York.

Eventually, Mr. and Mrs. Li and well as Fei Fei, the other woman, consented to the release of Lo’s highly revealing documentary. Presumably, it helped that the Hong Kong-born Lo agreed to never screen the film in China—which was a small concession, considering the remote likelihood Mistress Dispeller would be approved for theaters in the tightly closed Mainland market.

Having secretly discovered her husband’s affair, Mrs. Li seeks out Wang on the advice of her brother, who was once on the other side of her sleuthing. Soon, Wang is charming Mr. Li in the guise of his wife’s badminton buddy. Frankly, it is a good thing Wang works as a private fidelity cop, because could easily fleece plenty of marks as a con artist.

Indeed, Wang soon has Mr. Li confessing to the affair and agreeing to arrange a meeting for her with Fei Fei, his mistress. Yet, in this case, terms like “affair” and “mistress” almost seem a bit too strong. He has clearly played sugar daddy because he is intoxicated by her youth, while she has accepted his support out of economic need—and both feel guilty about it.

In fact, all three interested parties are riddled with insecurities and neuroses. As a result, it is relatively easy for Wang to sever the affair. Instead of passionate drama, the documentary is mostly defined by gloominess and regret.

Nacho Vigalondo’s Daniela Forever

Nicolas makes sleeping his grief away a proactive strategy, rather than a form of denial. That’s because it is lucid dreaming, pharmaceutically boosted. Regardless, he reunites with his late girlfriend, who is exactly as he wants to remember her, until maybe she starts to get a little bit real in Nacho Vigalondo’s Daniela Forever, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Nicolas and Daniela were perfect together. At least that is how he remembers them as a couple, so her freak accidental death sends him spiraling downward. He gets so bad, his platonic friend Victoria arranges for him to join the test group taking her big pharma company’s lucid dreaming drug. She knows it works, because it helped her manage her post-divorce depression. However, the experimental controls are so lax, Nicolas accidentally starts dreaming of Daniela on the first night—and he keeps going back to her, filing fake progress reports for the scientists.

Initially, the dream world is his oyster. Daniela is just the way he remembered her, but when he’d prefer her slightly different, he simply instructs her to forget inconvenient memories. Their world is only limited by his past experiences, so the borders are a bit blurry and indistinct. However, the more time he lucid dreams of Daniela, the more their dream world expands and fills in. It might actually be turning somewhat, kind of real. That’s not my interpretation. Nicolas dreams that Victoria suggests that very possibility.

Vigalondo is incapable of making of boring films, but this isn’t among his best work. The early scenes are rather confusing, but he down-shifts into interesting territory when Nicolas starts to question the supposed unreality of his dream world. However, it loses steam when it morphs into a pseudo-feminist critique of the Twilight Zone episode “A World of his Own,” guest-starring Keenan Wynn, as an author who can change reality by simply recording into his Dictaphone. To make matters worse, the conclusion is a murky letdown.

Last Stop: Rocafort St.

It is like Barcelona’s version of Kisaragi Station, the supposedly haunted Japanese train station that has become the stuff of urban legend, even though it never really existed. Haunted or not, Rocafort Street has undeniably become a magnet for suicides. That would have been a good question to for Laura to have asked about during her interview. However, she needs this job as the station’s night attendant, so she stays long enough to witness a suicide. She then sees a lot more after that in Luis Prieto’s Last Stop: Rocafort St., which releases this Friday on VOD.

As we witness during the prologue, it wasn’t just suicides that happened in the Rocafort stop. It was there that notorious serial killer Elias Soro killed his final victims. The investigating detective, Roman Azpuru tried to stop him, but things turned out badly for everyone, including the disgraced Azpuru.

Nevertheless, Laura turns to Azpuru after witnessing a train engineer’s suicide. The distraught man told her not to look, but she did so anyway. Now she is seeing grotesque visions of the victim and perhaps the gory fates of others around her. There also seems to be a devil dog haunting the lower tracks, but when you see him, you’re really done for—because he is like Cerberus.

Initially, Prieto and co-screenwriters Ivan Ledesma and Angel Agudo follow the playbook of Asian horror films riffing on the Kisaragi mythos, like the Korean Ghost Station. However, they add elements of Aztec death cult mythology that probably appeals to Spain’s colonial guilt, but also distinguishes Rocafort from other haunted station films, like The Sound (which featured Toronto’s infamous Lower Bay subway stop).

The Chosen Adventures, in The Epoch Times

Prime's THE CHOSEN ADVENTURES success blends family-friendly humor and wise-cracking animaals with upbeat, positive Biblical stories and lessons in responsibility and compassion. Consequently, casual viewers should never feel like they are being preached at or proselytized to. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

The Path of the Dalai Lama, His Holiness in Graphic Novel Form

Like Superman and Batman, His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama is now the star of his own graphic novel, but his superpowers are mindfulness, nonviolence, and integrity. In a way, you could argue he also exhibits precognition. As the 13^th Dalai Lama, he foretold impending threats to Tibet and its Tibetan Buddhist faith, both from foreign and domestic sources. Yet, due to his nonviolent convictions, the 14^th Dalai Lama still tried to negotiate a peaceful arrangement with the CCP occupiers, to preserve the nation’s culture and traditions. It did not work, but it led to an ironically triumphant exile chronicled Tom Taylor’s graphic novel, The Path of the Dalai Lama, illustrated by Matyas Namai, which releases this Tuesday.

In addition to unexpcted enthusiiasm for advanced science, His Holiness is also surprisingly receptive to comics and graphic novels, because he gave Taylor and Namai his blessing for this project, based on their comic adaption of Orwell’s 1984. Their collaboration follows the historic events that might be familiar to many, especially if you have seen Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, despite Disney’s efforts to hide it. Yet, they cover some telling and undeniably significant incidents, like the 13^th Dalai Lama’s aforementioned prophecy and the year and a half he spent as a hostage to Muslim Chinese warlord Ma Bufang, before the young newly identified reincarnate was finally allowed to continue to Lhasa.

Clearly, Taylor’s graphic novel will not appear on the CCP’s reading lists. In addition to documenting the horrors of the late 1950s invasion and colonization, he also devotes considerable space to the late 1980s mass protests and the mid-1990s self-immolations, which have been almost entirely forgotten by the Western media in recent years. Taylor does a decent job channeling HH’s personality, but his real strength comes in the way he crystalizes decades of personal and national history into 100-some pages of incredibly striking comic panels.

Wisdom of Happiness, Starring the 14th Dalai Lama

He promoted "mindfulness" before it was cool. He still advocates nonviolence even though it is currently out of favor, with violence and terrorism regularly celebrated on the streets of New York and London (especially the anti-Semitic variety). In some ways, the Tibetan Buddhism espoused by His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama has already had tremendous influence on the Western world, since his exile in 1959. Yet, in other ways, we need his teachings now more than ever. Fortunately, the Dalai Lama obliges, delivering essentially a summation of his teachings that he offers for both longtime followers and casual newcomers in Barbara Miller & Philip Delaquis’s documentary, Wisdom of Happiness, executive produced by Richard Gere, which is now playing in New York.

Although His Holiness provides a brief recap of his flight from Tibet, stressing how his willingness to come to an understanding with the CCP was undermined by Mao’s betrayal, he essentially seeks to lay a practical philosophical groundwork for personal happiness. He starts with the premise that everyone desires happiness and peace, which, arguably might only be half true in these times, while admitting that this will be an increasingly difficult goal in the 21^st Century (which is hard to deny).

Much of what the Dalai Lama recommends will dovetail nicely with the mindfulness movement/industry, such as his practice of conscious meditation. Yet, ironically, many woke extremists have turned against him, due to manufactured outrages. Nevertheless, for real “progressives,” His Holiness’s teaching should hold great appeal. Throughout the film, he champions scientific inquiry, suggesting that it is religious dogma that should give way when the two conflict. (Indeed, Dawn Gifford Engle documented his scientific curiosity at length in The Dalai Lama: Scientist).

Frankly, he serves up progressive catnip when His Holiness argues for greater female representation among national leaders, because he has observed women have an inherently more peaceful nature. Yet, the Dalai Lama is perhaps at his most progressive when he discusses the need for wiser environmental stewardship.

Truth & Treason, in The Epoch Times

TRUTH & TREASON, from Angel Studios, shines a light on he remarkable true story of Mormon Helmuth Hubener, the youngest prisoner of conscience executed by the National Socialists. It is a thoughtful period production that avoids bias, favoritism, and cheap sentimentality. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Köln 75: The Making of the Hit ECM Live Album

ECM Records is known as an incredibly artist-friendly label. The Köln Concert is a major reason why they can afford to be so supportive. Keith Jarrett was well known for his previous releases and his sideman recordings with Miles Davis, but few A&R execs would have recognized the double live album’s commercial potential. Yet, it became the best-selling solo jazz album of all time and a perennial catalog seller for ECM. There were no standards, no arrangements, no sidemen, and no pre-planning. It was just Jarrett freely improvising on the piano. That might sound simple, but the events leading up to the solo concert are quite chaotic in director-screenwriter Ido Fluk’s mostly fact-based Köln 75, which opens today in New York.

Initially, Fluk’s film largely follows Vera Brandes, a German teenager who becomes an unlikely jazz promoter. Frankly, she and her friend Isa seem like rather shallow leftwing activists, but at least they like jazz. However, British tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott finds Brandes rather charming. However, instead of anything untoward, the old gent propositions her to book a German tour for him, because he couldn’t imagine anyone “saying no” to her. Of course, old Ronnie’s instincts prove as sharp as ever.

Soon, Brandes is secretly running a considerable jazz promotion business, at the inevitable expense of her high school studies. She even hires her deadbeat older brother, to keep him from tattling to their emotionally abusive parents. However, she maybe bites off more than she can chew when she books the Köln Opera House, at great personal out-of-pocket expense, for a solo Keith Jarrett concert.

The film really gets going when it shifts its focus to Jarrett, as he suffers through a series of European engagements with his record producer, Eicher, who is also acting as a de facto manager. John Magaro is shockingly good portraying Jarrett, capturing his cerebral intellect, eccentric prickliness, spiritual depth, and the taxing physical pain he suffered. Instead of playing jazz cliché hopscotch, he really humanizes and embodies Jarrett’s artistry and anxieties.

It is also very cool to see Eicher getting his due credit and significant screentime in the film. Alexander Scheer’s quietly sympathetic portrayal makes it easy to understand why artists who sign with Eicher stay with ECM for years or even decades. Plus, Michael Chernus really elevates the fictional (but true-in-spirit) jazz journalist Michael Watts. He also archly delivers several of Fluk’s tongue-in-cheek jazz lessons, while nicely serving as a foil to open Jarrett up for audiences.

OTHER, on Shudder

If you put dumb people in a smart house, it reverts back to being dumb again. The same is true for movies. It turns out Alice’s late estranged mom’s house was too smart for her own good. Evidently, someone or something else hiding in the shadows has a better command of the system than she or Alice in David Moreau’s OTHER (a.k.a. Other, a.k.a. O.T.H.E.R.), which premieres today on Shudder.

Despite the inconvenience, Elena felt compelled to hide her face while she was running for her life, but the mystery stalker kills her anyway. For reasons that will be revealed later, Alice wants to have her body cremated quickly, so she can be done with her once and for all. However, she is stuck at her mother’s remote smart house, because the medical examiner won’t release her mom’s body. Also, the key-fob for her rental car mysteriously disappears.

The audience can see an indistinct shape scurrying down halls and around corners, but Alice can’t seem to notice. She is too busy fighting with the alarms and environmental controls. To further confuse matters, there is also a weird live-streamer skulking around the surrounding woods, who shouts unhinged-sounding warnings to Alice that she should cover her face.

Frankly, it is hard to describe OTHER, because it is so disjointed. It plays out like a collection of high-concepts mushed together during a brainstorming session. Arguably, even the title does not make much sense up until the final five minutes.

It is a shame Moreau did not spend more time filing down the awkward excesses of his script, because the execution is often oddly effective, particularly the way he contrives to avoid showing any faces except that of his star, Olga Kurylenko. The vibe is like a drunken fusion of Italian giallos and the unconventional POV of Good Boy.

The Black Phone 2: The Grabber is Back

Finney Shaw survived the Grabber in the original Black Phone movie, which was a good thing. Since then, he has been known as the boy who killed the serial killer, which hasn’t been great. Unfortunately, he is about to learn he and the Grabber have a deeper connection than he ever knew, which is very, very bad. Even though he is dead, the Grabber still wants a piece of Shaw and Gwen, his sister with the “shine.” However, the Shaw siblings are still tenacious survivors in Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone 2, produced by Blumhouse, which opens Friday in theaters.

Several years have passed, but Finney still gets phantom calls on out-of-service pay phones (this is the early 1980s, so there are plenty of them out there), which he ignores and Gwen still has ominous dreams. Her latest vision is that of her late mother calling from Alpine Lake, a Christian winter-sports camp in the Colorado Rockies. Basically, if you camped at Alpine Lake as a teen, you could graduate to staying at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining as an adult, because similarly bad things happened both places.

In fact, three kids were killed at the camp shortly after their mother quit working there as a counselor. It was closed for years, but ‘Mando, a former employee, bought the camp and reopened it, so he could continue looking for the victims’ missing bodies. Wanting answers about the mother they hardly knew, Gwen convinces Finney and her pseudo-boyfriend, Arnesto Arellano (the brother of Robin, whom the Grabber abducted just prior to taking Finney), to join her as trainee camp counselors. However, a not-so-freak blizzard (again, this is Colorado) traps the three teens in Alpine Lake, with the Grabber, who has become something like Freddy Kruger.

The first film was a very Blumhouse production, mostly confined to the Grabber’s sinister dungeon. Fans might have been skeptical of the sequel’s wider scope, but Derickson and co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill successful incorporate elements of The Shining and Nightmare on Elm Street, in a manner that feels compatible with the first film’s mythos.

However, sometimes it arguably departs from King/Hill family themes, in good ways, by giving the Shaw siblings’ father redemptive moments and not demonizing the camp for its Christian origins. Plus, regardless of where it was filmed (apparently somewhere in Ontario), Black Phone 2 feels like a very Colorado-kind of film.

The teen principals, Mason Thames and Madeline McGraw returning as the Shaws and Miguel Mora, switching from the role of Robin Arrelano to his younger [living] brother Arnesto, work well together and they all show a youthful maturity you rarely see in horror movies. These are clearly kids who have seen more than their share. Demian also gives grown-up viewers an adult presence worth caring about as Mando, while Jeremy Davies has some shockingly resonant moments playing the guilt-wracked Shaw father.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, in The Epoch Times

TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: DEATHWATCH was not really written by Clancy, but it probably better reflects the perspective of his novels than the most rcent movie adaptations. It largly avoids ideology, but invites sympathy for its former Navy SEAL hero, while delivering high-energy animated action. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Panahi’s It was Just an Accident

Their relationship was so “intimate,” Vahid could recognize him by his smell and the sound of his walking gait. He was a prison torturer and Vahid was one of his many victims. Frankly, he never saw his tormentor’s face, but when they suddenly cross paths, all Vahid’s traumatic memories come rushing back to him. However, he wants 100% confirmation before taking the final step towards vengeance in Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning It was Just an Accident, which opens today in New York.

Driving home with his pregnant wife and young daughter, Eghbal accidentally hits a stray dog (dogs have it rough in Islamist Iran). Shortly thereafter, their car starts sputtering, but Eghbal manages to coast to Vahid’s garage, where his co-worker gives the engine a temporary patch-up job. However, Vahid remains in the shadows, because hearing the man’s voice and squeaky prosthetic leg makes his blood run cold.

Overcome with rage, Vahid follows Eghbal home and continues stalking him. Soon, he strikes, abducting his former torturer—at least Vahid is ninetysome percent sure Eghbal is the man who terrorized him night after night. He is ready to bury the regime loyalist in the desert, but he wants to be completely certain, so he visits Shiva, a photographer friend of a mutual dissident friend, who also suffered at the hands of the interrogator with the artificial limb. She remembers the feel of the leg, because he often made her touch it (yuck, in the most believably disturbing way), but she never saw his face either.

When Shiva’s client, Goli learns why Shiva is so distracted by the contents of Vahid’s van, she insists on seeing Eghbal for herself, because she was also a victim. Yet, again, she cannot ID him with absolute certainty. Without changing from her wedding gown, she and her groom, Ali, join Vahid and Shiva, in search of Hamid, a further member of their imprisoned circle. However, Hamid’s ordeal left him with anger management issues bordering on mild psychosis. He will not be a stabilizing addition to their party.

Without question, this is one of the best films of Panahi’s accomplished career. In some ways, it brings to mind Death and the Maiden, but it is much more than that. This is a deeply humanistic film with a surprisingly absurdist streak. Vahid’s ever-growing carpool would almost bring to mind It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, if the subject of their quest was not so grimly serious. Indeed, this film is shocking one moment, funny the next, and then deeply unsettling. Yet, there is never any feeling of whiplash. Under Panahi’s sure hand, viewers understand this is what it is like to live in contemporary Iran.

The tremendous range and flexibility of the cast is a major reason why the constantly shifting gears come across so smoothly for the audience. They obviously appreciate the dire stakes and the simultaneously bizarre absurdism of their characters’ situation. Accident ought to win awards for best cast, but it won’t, because that would take guts.

The Mannequin

Everybody knows the Kim Cattrall movie was an outlier. The Twilight Zone and Christopher Eggleston’s Doctor Who taught us those model dummies bear watching. You never know when they might come alive and do something weird, especially this one. Up-and-coming fashion-designer Sofia Rojas should have been more suspicious since it came with her newly refurbished loft. Extra bonuses always turn out to be costly in horror movies, including hers. That would be John Berardo’s The Mannequin, which releases today on VOD.

Years ago, sleazy glamour photographer Jack Bernard murdered wannabe pin-up model Ruth Calvert in the loft. Then he murdered several more models in decades that followed. Perhaps he is still killing from beyond the grave, using the mannequin Rojas dubs “Alice Baldwin” as his Chucky-like vessel. Sometimes, the spirits of his victims also appear to be present, but they are never helpful—quite the contrary.

Regardless, Rojas’s first night in her new loft turns out to be a rough one. Several months late, her sister Lianna moves in, hoping to pick up Sofia’s fashion mantle as well. She will have the help and the hindrance of their friends, Hazel and Nadine. Although they resent some of Lianna’s poor coping techniques, they still try support her, especially when her behavior takes a disturbing turn. Unfortunately, the time they spend with her means they are also “marked” by the force controlling the mannequin, whether they believe it or not. Super-reluctantly, Lianna seeks the help of her ghost-chasing YouTuber ex-boyfriend Peter, who launches a red alert as soon as he runs a basic internet search on the loft.

Forgive Us All

It turns out Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family had it easy. This homesteading mother must contend with viral-rage-zombies, cannibals, and over-zealous quarantine enforcers. Rather conveniently (for them), the second and third are one and the same. You can’t blame her for remaining secluded in the family cabin with her grizzled father-in-law. Unfortunately, she still blames herself for her daughter’s death, so she hopes to achieve some redemption by helping a stranger in Jordana Stott’s Forgive Us All, which releases today on UK VOD.

Rory and her late husband’s father, Otto, try to keep to themselves and maintain a low profile—for good reason. Logan and Scout are those reasons. The former is apparently the leader of a clan of cannibals who have forged an alliance with the quarantine colony managed by the latter’s colleagues. Frankly, Stott and co-screenwriters do a poor job establishing the basics of this post-apocalyptic, neo-Western world, but that is a functional hypothesis.

Regardless, Logan, Scout, and a disposable henchman are chasing Noah, because he stole a vial of their antidote to save his infected daughter. Unfortunately, he did not get away clean. Having collapsed outside the cabin, Rory shelters him for the night, despite Otto’s misgivings. Of course, the three villains soon ride up demanding they surrender Noah. They offer to ignore Rory’s quarantine violations, even though they dismiss her private property assertions. According to Logan they abolished private land ownership, so we know which side Mamdani would ride with—and once again, it is not the good guys.

Frankly, there are seeds of potential greatness in Forgive Us All, but Stott can’t do them justice. By far, her biggest sin is the sluggish pacing. Basically, this film is the Power of the Dog of zombie westerns, but only in the unflattering ways. As previously alluded to, the world-building is also decidedly sketchy.