Viral (2016)

directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
USA
85 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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I didn't know this before I watched the movie, but Viral's directors are mostly known for making ultra-modern films that are very divisive, love-it-or-hate-it affairs: Catfish, a couple of Paranormal Activity sequels, and a few other things that are less well-known but have the same concept. These are movies that generally garner more disdain than approval, what with horror audiences in specific tending to be purists most of the time, and your opinion on Viral will most likely hinge on how much you can tolerate teenagers.

I personally don't have any problem with teenagers in real life being stereotypical teenagers. But I do have a problem when movies written by adults above the age range of the characters try really, really hard to write "hip" and "cool" teens who end up coming off as forced and awkward. Thankfully there's less of that in Viral than in a lot of other movies (sometimes it gets downright awful) but there's still a degree of self-consciousness in every shot of an iPhone screen, every usage of current slang, every outburst and every display of teenage apathy. Just write teens as people, they don't have to be these alien creatures with a dialect completely dissimilar to the public at large. Teen culture is a very distinctive thing but that doesn't mean teens live in a bubble that separates them from everyone else.

I kept waiting for a moment that would bring everything to the forefront, the "despair event horizon" where it would move from being dominated by teenager-isms to being dominated by the inevitability of death and the weight of grief, but that never came. To some people it would be relatable, but the air of privilege still hangs over it. Not everybody lives in an expensive development in the middle of nowhere (although, coincidentally, that "middle of nowhere" is where I grew up!), not everybody has the circle of friends the main character has, and not everyone even has a cell phone. If it was trying to be a "common people" version of the apocalypse, then eeehhhhhh I guess it kinda succeeds, but honestly I would rather see the popular model of societal collapse that's centered on the inhabitants of a large, urbanized city scrambling to keep themselves alive following a catastrophic event.

I'm nitpicking because this review would be nothing if I didn't criticize the film, but there isn't too much wrong with Viral, all things considered. While its attempt at being a relatable, everyday-mode picture of a plague-induced apocalypse ultimately failed to be as relatable as it hoped to be, there was still more good than bad and it's better than just a casual stab at the apocalypse genre.

To say something positive about it, I did really like the ending. I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil it, but it's a good ending and it differs from a lot of the usual apocalypse films that always want to be so pessimistic. Typical horror with just a couple distinctions: that's Blumhouse horror for you. It could practically be their slogan- Blumhouse: Horror... With A Difference!™

Alucarda (1977)

directed by Juan López Moctezuma
Mexico
75 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
----

You may know director Juan López Moctezuma from... what's that? He never directed anything else of note? Then why does Alucarda have the feeling of one of those directors (mostly giallo) like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, or Mario Bava who just churn out movies left and right? 

Somewhat of a cult classic these days and beloved by fans and directors alike, Guillermo del Toro occasionally sites Alucarda as an influence on his work. It's not too difficult to see why, although really the only del Toro film it shares similarities with is Pan's Labyrinth: It has a lot of fantastical elements but it's fairly nonchalant about them, existing in a slightly expanded world in which more things are possible yet not really commonplace. It reminded me of Suspiria, since both films are about a young woman falling in with various forms of witchery and black magic, but the difference is that Suspiria has a plot and a build-up whereas Alucarda is just kind of "So I just met you, and this is crazy, but I worship Satan, so join me maybe?"

Pretty much the only reason it works is because it's so un-self-conscious about everything. It's hard to explain but it feels like this movie really did try to be something significant and dignified even though it ended up incredibly corny. Most of me recognizes that it's ridiculous in every way, start to finish, but there's also something respectable about the way it conducts itself.

Which is why it's unfortunate that it had to fall apart so badly in the second half. The beginning was genuine fun, giddy and strange and full of a lot of love and curiosity, but it began to spiral out of control until there was essentially nothing going on but a bunch of nuns screaming and bleeding from various places, lamenting and moaning in the least believable way possible. Somebody says the word "devil" and a gasp ripples through the nuns as they all clutch their chests and go "The devil?!" At one point a priest- an old, sweaty, hairy priest- is brought in and subsequently loses his shirt somehow. There's more nudity than at a nude beach and after a while it barely feels like there was any attempt to be sexual at all. The two girls just happened to be naked a lot of the time. I guess that's one high point to the whole thing, it's not as exploitative as it could have been.

Also, there's really no reason for this movie to look as good as it did. Being so corny and dated I would have expected the sets and effects to be equally corny and dated. But- aside from a hunchback who looked like a bad Halloween costume- the sets are fairly gorgeous and all the practical effects hold up well too. I have no idea why this movie turned out to be so influential over the years but there's something almost charming about its ridiculousness that I suppose is where its cult status stems from.

Lake Mungo (2008)

directed by Joel Anderson
Australia
87 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

Most of the information about this film that you can easily find online alludes to the fact that it's not particularly scary overall, but it has one moment that sticks out as being effectively terrifying. It would probably be better to go into it not knowing that, but it's too difficult to avoid finding out about that moment so I wouldn't consider it crucial that you go in blind.

I'm gonna try as hard as I can to avoid mentioning the specific scene I'm talking about but it's there. I won't tell you when or what it entails but it's common knowledge that it is most definitely there.

So about the film in general. What makes it so distinctive is that it's not a terribly complex movie but it's just so ridiculously good at what it does that it doesn't need to have any hidden themes or metaphors. Pure and simple it's a movie about ghosts, but it's also a movie whose horror is deeply entwined with grief and it gives more attention and care to that grief than most other movies would. It lets mourning run its course, it lets the trauma of a family losing a daughter in the prime of her life influence all of its events and everything is defined by that grief.

It doesn't try to reinvent the genre or anything, but it's an attempt to go back to the most essential roots of what a ghost is. I've found that in a lot of cultures where the most prevalent belief system is one that doesn't place too much emphasis on ghosts and the afterlife, you'll get a lot more movies about how the ghost of a family member coming back to haunt their family is seen as a good and comforting thing, but in places in the world that have a stronger connection to folklore and belief in what the outside world would call the metaphysical, even a close family member or friend's spirit coming back is not a good thing at all. This film belongs to that second category of stories that are very dire about the presence of spirits, even ones that were previously people we knew and loved, and it puts the viewer in a situation where they have to really examine what a ghost is and realize the variously unsettling implications about the afterlife and about life itself that a proven actual haunting would bring about.

It requires a bit of patience, but if you can wait it out (and I bet you'll be able to given that it's very immersive due to being so staunchly realistic) it's one of the most well-made and truly ominous horror movies I've ever seen. The acting is great, the lighting is perfect, and the attention to detail is just phenomenal. This is not a cheap shot at the genre, this is a painstakingly crafted examination of ghosts and loss and death as they relate to everyday, mundane life.

What I'd really like to know is where director/writer/associate producer Joel Anderson disappeared to after this movie. I'm sure it's not like his whereabouts are mysteriously unknown, but he makes a barely-noticed short film called The Rotting Woman in 2002, directs Lake Mungo in 2008, leaves it as one of the best horror movies I've ever seen, and then goes quiet. I highly doubt he'd ever see this post, but if he does; Mr. Anderson: Consider this a plea to return to the horror genre and direct the excellent second full-length film I know you've got in you.

Mr. Jones (2013)

directed by Karl Mueller
USA
84 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

It's difficult to go into detail about why this is such a good movie because discussing the plot at length would spoil it and it's really better to go into it knowing the bare minimum. So to give a short, non-spoilery blurb to entice folks to see it: It's a surprisingly immersive and unique found-footage movie that eventually veers off into metaphysical territory and plays with genre tropes a bit.

If you've already seen the film or you're not that worried about spoiling it, I'll go into more detail about it in the next few paragraphs. I'm still not gonna be giving any overt plot spoilers, but it's just... one of those movies that's better to see with fresh eyes.

The beginning is unassuming, but once you look past the surface you see that it's got intelligence behind it. The old "couple moving into a secluded vacation home" setup is overused, sure, but the difference here is that while the audience can see the horror coming, it's still unexpected to the characters. Usually in horror you berate characters for lacking the foresight to not walk into the creepy abandoned building or go camping where there was a mass murder, but in this movie the characters genuinely don't have reason to fear where they're going.

The way Mr. Jones manages to be so effective is by doing two things: Establishing realism and then introducing instability. It makes sure we can relate to the characters and understand what they're doing, and then it slowly begins to break down that familiarity by introducing elements that don't correspond to anything in reality, yet they still take place in what we've been lead to believe is a normal world. Probably the scariest atmosphere to create in a horror movie is one like this where it's our normal, everyday world, but tweaked just enough to be unsettling. In this version of the world, cosmic horrors do exist and bizarre events like fighting your doppelganger and becoming ensnared in a never-ending nightmare are possible. Basically it plays up the false sense of security for all it's worth, and it's extremely effective.

I rarely make an attempt to get people to re-examine the way they feel about a movie because I like to leave everybody to their own opinions, but given that this movie unfortunately falls victim to the anti-found-footage mentality, I'd love to try and get as many people as I can to take a closer look at it if they've already formed an opinion. Because on the surface this might seem like a lot of things- implausible, exaggerated, not cohesive- but it goes so, so much deeper. This was actually my second time watching it and I'd up the rating from four stars to a solid five because it messes around so much with the parameters of the fourth wall in such an interesting way.

If you liked Resolution, you'd probably like this, and if you liked this, you'd probably like Resolution. I want to namedrop that film because it's more popular and well-liked than this one so maybe mentioning it can get Mr. Jones some more views.

The Blind Owl (1987)

directed by Raúl Ruiz
Switzerland-France co-production
97 minutes
4 stars out of 5
----

There aren't actually any owls in The Blind Owl, but that's unsurprising given how nonlinear it is and how little anything in it resembles real life. The title comes from a book of the same name by Sadegh Hedayat, and if the point of the movie was to get me to want to read the book, it certainly does a good job. I'm curious to see if the book is anything like the film because if it is, managing to adapt it into a movie with the appropriate tone, atmosphere, details, etc. would have been quite the feat.

This is only my second Raúl Ruiz film, but it confirmed something I felt about the first one I watched (The Territory) that I had thought was just me: Ruiz' signature style is much more unsettling than I had expected. This feeling could very well be entirely in my own head, because I'd never seen anybody else calling his movies eerie at all. It could be my own fault that I'm interpreting the events of the movie as frightening due to everything having been too strange to understand. But somehow there's a feeling of isolation in The Blind Owl, some sense that the characters are trapped inside their own world where the rules are not what they are in real life, and the instability of that world and the chance that something overtly terrifying and impossible could happen at any moment gave me a slightly uncomfortable vibe. Too many things go unexplained.

If there is an actual meaning to any of this- and this is another point in favor of reading the original book- I can't figure it out. It genuinely does not seem to have any moral undercurrent, no message meant to be gleaned, no metaphors hinted at in its imagery. It's definitely got something to do with the nature of cinema, not as in filmmaking but as in observing and experiencing a film, but beyond that, it's impenetrable. I suppose the recurring figure of the dancer who appears in all "layers" of the movie's reality could have represented film itself, a sort of "muse" figure who brings her visual language into the picture through dancing much like how a cinematographer interprets a director's vision on camera. That's all just wild speculation, though, and having it down in text actually makes it look more nonsensical than having it in my head.

Now that I'm thinking it over, this movie is actually structured very much like Lost Highway. The two don't share any themes, but Lost Highway is the only other movie I can come up with that has the same feeling of having many layers and many paths it diverges into, going deeper and deeper into places where the line between reality and fiction is blurred.

Whether you're a fan of the style or not is up to you, but Ruiz' cinematography can't be divorced from the fuzzed-out VHS aesthetic almost all of his movies seem to have. You can't digitize his work, it would lose something tremendously important if these movies were transferred to a digital format and cleaned up to remove all the graininess and blur of what is technically a fairly awful surviving print. The low quality of the image somehow makes everything more mysterious; faces are more difficult to make out and in scenes where someone is standing in shadow it's hard to see if there's a person there at all. Playing with light and shadow is just another thing this film does really well and there's nothing else I've seen that looks like it.

Blood of the Condor (1969)

directed by Jorge Sanjinés
Bolivia
70 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

Blood of the Condor is a film confronting a byproduct of racism and colonialism not often mentioned due to the fact that it isn't really something that can be justified in any way: Forcible female sterilization. I think the reason nobody wants to admit to this issue is because you can't gloss over it, you can't justify it, the people doing it know how horrific it is but they continue to do it anyway out of some sort of bizarre superiority complex that's deeply embedded in US culture.

The US Armed Forces are not the only people perpetrating these crimes, but they're probably the most egregious example due to the United States' influence on world politics and lengthy track record of invading and ruining territory that doesn't belong to them. Fortunately the Peace Corps withdrew from Bolivia two years after the release of this film (whether the movie directly had anything to do with that, I'm not sure) but although it was a victory for indigenous Bolivians throughout the country, the practice continues throughout the rest of the world even today. This is a movie that doesn't dance around the fact that the US has blood on it hands, and I appreciated that such a great deal- that it's not subtle about making villains of Americans and that it's not gentle with the way it conveys information.

This goes outside the realm of filmmaking as a purely aesthetic practice and enters into filmmaking as political statement, filmmaking as refusal to keep quiet, filmmaking as active resistance. This film being made shoved the army's crimes into their faces; telling this story on film was a refusal to be made compliant, a record made for the future so no one can pretend they didn't do what they did to these communities. I'm not sure of the reason this couldn't have been made as a documentary, but I'd imagine that having it be partially fictionalized (while keeping the message loud & clear) takes away the factor of foreigners not really being interested in listening to indigenous peoples' voices when they tell their own stories for real.

It does deal with other problems arising from American and European interference with Bolivia's indigenous communities besides sterilization, but the main point is that these crimes tear apart families and ruin lives and villages. It can be difficult for someone not part of the victimized group to wrap their head around the truly senseless and murderous act of sterilizing a woman against her will and making a choice for her that should be her right and only her right to make. Understanding of these crimes is not the most crucial step in stopping them, though, and taking time to try and comprehend why anybody would do things like this isn't going to help those who are still dealing with the hurt and horror of this ongoing issue. I think it's important for anybody unaware of the damage that the American and European military forces have done to indigenous groups the world over to watch this and other films like it and not ever ignore or forget the things that have been done to these people. Distancing ourselves from it is allowing it to continue happening.

The Tunnel (2011)

directed by Carlo Ledesma
Australia
90 minutes
4.5 stars out of 5
----

This was my second time watching this movie and it was exactly as scary as the first time around.

Released by its creators for free via torrenting sites and YouTube, The Tunnel could contend with almost any horror film to make it relatively big in the past couple of years, but it still remains largely unknown to the general public. Most of the setups used in recent horror flicks come off rushed, half-hearted, and very difficult to believe, and it's not like The Tunnel wastes too much time revealing anything, but it does genuinely feel like something that could have happened in real life as opposed to movies where the reasoning behind characters' actions is paper-thin.

I am not one to argue for realism in horror and especially not in found-footage because it sucks all the fun out of a film to preoccupy yourself with trying to prove how this and that could never happen in real life, et cetera. But in this particular case I don't have to argue for realism because the movie does it for me. It didn't need to justify the cameras in order to be an engaging watch, but it does anyway and it does it believably and cleanly. That's why I wanted to mention that the setup is more... let's say "organic" than most: No one would really question a documentary crew going down to film what they expect to be an abandoned subway system full of endangered homeless people that the government is ignoring in the way that people would question the old standard, a bunch of teenagers breaking into an abandoned building for thrills and chills.

I really admire the filmmakers for knowing exactly what to put in and what to leave out because it's incredibly cohesive as a whole piece, it doesn't have that stop-and-start feel that I find often in horror and it doesn't have much of a chance to get bland, even before the action kicks in. The style of narration where it switched back and forth from interviews with the film crew to the actual footage they recorded in the tunnels helped a whole lot with cognitive dissonance, the sole reason for that being how un-exaggerated the interviews were. Nobody overacts, no one's account of the nightmarish situation underground feels faked.

Looking over some other reviews, I see the usual jabs at found-footage that the majority of people tend to make, and I do kind of have a problem with that because if any found-footage movie deserves to be the exception to the generally poor reception of such films, this one is it. It does everything right- it justifies the camera, it stays calm when it has to but goes panicky and incredibly tense only when necessary, it's not childish or overflowing with goofy teens, and it never blows the Big Bad's cover by showing too much of it and making it lose its scare factor. Looking at this and then looking at all the larger horror films that have bombed recently proves that talent can come from anywhere. A movie securing a widespread theater release with a star-studded cast and a seasoned director isn't a guarantee of its quality. Sometimes the most authentic and frightening horror comes from out of left field.

At the end of the day, maybe this movie could have had some more bells and whistles on it. But at the end of the day it does what's necessary and nothing more to ensure an effectively scary experience that's genre-savvy and doesn't mess around.

Krysar (1986)

directed by Jiří Barta
Czechia
52 minutes
4.5 stars out of 5
----

If you're into Czech film, you've probably heard of Jiří Barta. If you read often as a kid, you've probably heard of the story of the Pied Piper, sometimes with "of Hamelin" tacked onto the end, sometimes not. If you're a Radiohead fan, then watching the music video for There There informed you of the magic that can be done with taxidermy rats in stop-motion. And if you're all three of those things then Krysar is the movie for you.

It's not enough that the film takes place in the Auld Tymes, it also looks like it could plausibly have been made during the time period it's set in. Instead of clay, cloth, or any of the other materials typically used in stop-motion animation, everything (save for some clothing, metal, and occasionally a real live rat or a real dead one) is carved out of wood, presumably by hand. Stop-motion can be seen as just sort of a novelty sometimes, something impressive but largely for children. Even if you're usually dismissive of the style, you've got to admit that the effort needed to bring Krysar to life was monumental. From the articulation on every individual puppet's fingers to the personalities behind them, from the elaborate clothing right down to the movements of the puppets' mouths when they chew, the movie has better atmosphere than half the live-action films I watch. If you can appreciate Boyhood for having been filmed over the course of ten years then perhaps you can also appreciate Krysar for how much detail went into every frame.

For the most part it follows the legend of the Pied Piper pretty closely until an unexpected twist takes it down a darker road. The entire thing is impressively dark & ominous, with a genuine air of seediness to the city it takes place in- I never knew you could convey corruption and deceit so accurately with nothing but puppets. It feels claustrophobic, it feels like a disgusting, polluted city. Even the Piper has his hidden motives, not quite the hero of the film but more of an aggravated mystic with the power to either save or bury the town. No bright spots of hope hide in the film because no one in the film is portrayed as deserving of salvation.

There is a long history of Czech animation (both stop-motion and traditional) being top of the line and this is an excellent entry into that history. It might make a good starting point for anybody looking to get into Czech film because it's one of the more popular stop-motion pieces to come out of the country but it still bears the signatures of the regional style it belongs to.

The Lovers' Wind (1978)

directed by Albert Lamorisse
France/Iran
70 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

Some backstory on this first: Iran's Ministry of Culture and Art commissioned French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse to create a film showcasing their country, but upon its submission to them, they felt that the film didn't highlight the industrialization of Iran enough and called Lamorisse back to film some additional scenes to insert into The Lovers' Wind that would fit their needs. While filming, the helicopter carrying Lamorisse and his crew crashed, and all onboard were killed. Lamorisse's widow completed the film and it was released eight years later, in 1978.

It may have failed to be what the Ministry of Culture and Art had envisioned, but it most certainly does not fail as a documentary. I can see why they may have wanted it tweaked to represent a more modern Iran, because it's largely concerned with cities that had fallen and been buried by sand a long, long time ago, as opposed to bustling, newly-built cities like Tehran. Although it does show Tehran and some other larger modern cities, and although it isn't entirely disparaging towards them, its viewpoint is probably not at all what the commissioners intended. The narration of the film highlights the resilience of Iranian society throughout millennia, throughout the entire country- and it calls for a more gentle, organic form of civilization, one shaped by farmers who are attentive to the Earth rather than developers looking to build skyscrapers. Most of the people it focuses on are nomadic people living and working in the desert, and that is so because in the words of the narrator, these people understand that the Earth belongs to no one.

The issue of the narration itself was most likely another point of contention with the film's overseers, as it has an almost fairytale-like perspective on its subjects: It is narrated by one of several winds present in Iranian folktale that apparently inhabit the country and influence it to a degree further than anything or anybody else. This is actually a very interesting perspective for it to have taken because it's not as hung up on being "above" the people it depicts like a lot of other documentaries are. It is literally above the land, though- all but a handful of scenes are shot from a helicopter- but the wind as narrator is a fairly delightful way to combat godliness in documentary filmmaking.

The method of shooting is interesting as well, because aerial shots are always so much fun even when they're in fictionalized films with any trace of the camera taken out. In this one there's no effort made to hide the dust and foliage the helicopter disturbs or disguise the fact that animals in the desert are startled and running from it. As most if not all of the people onscreen were filmed unawares, we also get this really neat look into various people's automatic reaction to seeing a camera: Most of them will turn towards it and at least wave, but some dance, some fishermen show off large fish they've caught, some people just ignore it and go on working. In reality a helicopter bearing down upon them was probably pretty intrusive, but onscreen it translates to a very non-confrontational, unbiased way of looking at the landscape.

It isn't as modern as the Ministry would have liked, but it's a wonderful celebration of Iran that does indeed present the country as stunningly beautiful and its people as ingenious and inventive. It's soundtracked by gorgeous traditional music as well, rounding it out as a showcase of more than just a single form of culture and art present in beautiful Iran.

Long Dream (2000)

directed by Higuchinsky
Japan
58 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
----

As with many horror fans, I may not be up on manga in general, but I sure do love Junji Ito. The original Long Dream manga that this was based off of might be my favorite of his because it was one of the first that I read and it made an impression on me. As far as movies based off of his work go, there's a lot out there, and not all of them are that great- the most popular is probably Uzumaki, which is definitely one of the best- since horror adapted from print to film more often than not loses too much in translation to hold its own.

To give a quick summary for anybody who needs it: Basically Long Dream is about a guy who starts having these "long dreams" where he'll be asleep for a few hours or even maybe a day in real life but inside his dreams he's living days, months, years, aeons without ever waking up. It eventually takes quite a severe toll on him, not just in a medical sense but in the sense that he starts becoming... unwholesome. This is probably the most Lovecraftian Junji Ito has ever gotten and I actually love this particular story as an example of what "Lovecraftian" can mean, because it's not typical Lovecraft (I.E., tentacles; racism) but it follows the common theme that pops up in his works fairly often of there being something fundamentally disturbing deeply embedded in human nature, a kind of feral state hidden away beneath layers of civilization and evolution that can reveal itself if things go wrong enough.

The movie is far less scary than I'm making it out to be. The original manga is pretty creepy but I suppose the best way to look at this movie is to say that it is to the manga what Hammer horror is to, for example, The Exorcist: One is frightening and remains frightening through the years, the other is kind of goofy and if it ever scared anybody it was in a bygone era and doesn't hold up to the standards of truly scary horror today. The movie isn't scary, but it's genuinely very endearing with its early-2000s shot-on-video aesthetic that looks somewhere between an amateur ghost hunting documentary and a television ad for a psychic that would play on the local news channel. And surprisingly, the practical effects are actually really good- they managed to keep the "final transformation" looking exactly like it did in the manga and I was impressed.

Unfortunately it does become a little bit overlong even though it's not even an hour. It could have ended neatly and cleanly at the half-hour mark but they had to stick a weird romance sideplot in to pad the runtime. I guess there just wasn't enough material to work with since the original is actually one of Junji Ito's shorter works, but cutting away that unnecessary romance, even if it would sacrifice a good chunk of the runtime, could have taken this movie up multiple notches in terms of overall quality.

The Territory (1981)

directed by Raúl Ruiz
Portugal
104 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

First off, Raúl Ruiz is a director who I knew I was going to like a lot based on what I've heard other people say about his signature style, but before today I hadn't actually seen anything of his since his movies are particularly hard to get a hold of. So seeing The Territory was not only a first for me but a highly-anticipated first, and I suppose that may have given me a bit of bias, but does it really matter if I have high expectations if the film ends up meeting those expectations?

The Territory was marginally similar to the last movie I watched before it, The Interior, in that both of them involve characters going into a forest where nature seems to be very unwelcoming towards them. Unlike The Interior, I think The Territory would ultimately benefit from the viewer knowing at least a little bit about it before watching, because it's got a distinct and unusual style that, if seen unawares, could easily come off as being bad or unintentionally bizarre. I thought that for a few moments at first, too; because the acting in this film is honestly not the greatest upon first impression, but after a while I realized that the actors in the film actually might have been very good actors instead of very bad, because even though their performances were stiff and awkward it all seemed deliberate and it must have taken a special kind of self-awareness to be able to pull that off. And besides, this movie feels much more like it was intended to be regarded as a whole rather than having one element of it isolated and focused on. That's why it achieves the feeling of being inside its own little universe that it has.

Right from the start it's got that environment-as-character thing that I think Ruiz is somewhat well-known for. There's shots of the characters dwarfed by the nature around them, giant trees and endless green and trails leading off beyond what the eye can see, et cetera. It really does feel like the setting is as much a player in the film as the characters are. When it takes place inside the characters' house it feels, somewhat illogically, like they're surrounded by forest on all sides and that there's just nothing else beyond the forest. That the forest is infinite. That it's all there is. That feeling of isolation may have been baseless, but the movie's dreamlike (and occasionally nightmarish) tone lends itself to speculation like that.

Of course, as is in line with what I expected from Ruiz, it is also gorgeously shot. Just the sprawling green of the forest would have been beautiful enough but Ruiz tends to put solid blocks of color in his films like the early days of cinema when shots were all in one color or another, but never multiple colors. A harsh red filter or harsh orange filter applied to the scene gives off an almost summery atmosphere, a thick coating of heat-haze and hallucinatory feverishness, surreal and dreamy and oftentimes uncomfortable. There's gonna be a lot of discomfort in this- apparently Roger Corman financed it and requested that Raúl Ruiz make the movie "very, very, very disgusting". While it doesn't hit vomit-worthy levels of disgust and never, ever feels tasteless or shocking, there are several scenes filled with sustained paranoia and confusion that can impart upon a viewer some serious anxiety.

It drifts through its subject matter at a lackadaisical pace, as unconcerned with things as the characters themselves. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. Ruiz may shoot his films on Earth and fill them with human actors but it feels like he's filming a place totally unknown to us.

The Interior (2015)

directed by Trevor Juras
Canada
80 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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This is a movie you should definitely go into without knowing anything about it, so please regard this entire review as a spoiler. If you want. This movie was so good it probably doesn't matter all that much what your preconceived notions of it are.

Anyway. I'd been waiting to see The Interior for so long that I had forgotten why, and looking up a synopsis didn't help much. However, earlier in the day before I watched it I stumbled upon somebody saying it "scared me in a way I didn't think possible", which really caught my interest. So going into it I knew to assume it would be a horror movie, or at the very least a non-horror movie that was frightening, and it definitely was.

If you didn't know what to expect you could get pretty far into it without noticing that anything was amiss. It doesn't really "begin" until about halfway through- I mean this literally, that's when the title card comes in. Before the movie enters its clearly-defined second half, it's actually very, very funny in a modern, relatable sense: Our main character is shown encountering the boredom and malaise most adults encounter in their everyday lives, and we're shown some of the fantasy sequences he takes comfort in to get him through the day, things like walking up to his boss, stuffing his donut into his mouth, and flipping him off; among other impossible-but-satisfying scenarios. This is all done in slow motion backed by classical piano music, which makes everything funnier, of course. The main character is well-written aside from being one of a thousand carbon-copy white men in film, but it's interesting how they bring us somebody the audience can see themselves in and then they give him some embarrassing attributes, like a cringey rap career and believing that the radiation from a microwave can change the taste of coffee.

Even for a little while after the main character makes his big break from the rat race and goes camping in the forests of British Columbia (which is mainly what the movie is about) you still might not be able to tell what's wrong. If you miss the strange noises it can seem like the main character is just getting really paranoid for no reason. But slowly and surely, his torment begins: All he wanted was to be alone with himself for a change, and he ends up facing something far worse than the people he had to deal with in his old life. And although I've personally seen too many movies with virtually the same tone and atmosphere as this one for it to have been as surprising to me as it might have been to other people, the horror is refreshingly potent and genuinely comes out of nowhere.

Us horror fans tend to complain a lot about horror movies not being "realistic" enough, and if you can even consider this a horror movie, it's the answer to that complaint. This is an extremely organic form of horror that feels like it isn't sensationalized for film. You ever been camping? Then you've experienced this movie. It goes straight for that primal fear you feel when you're alone somewhere, and you could be having a perfectly happy day but as soon as you hear a strange noise your stomach drops and everything becomes sinister in a heartbeat. That's what this movie is for- exploring illogical fears of the dark, fears of being watched, fears that stem from a place deeply personal to you.

I would love to see more of the same from this director but I can kind of tell that this is a one-off sort of thing. You try to make this too many times in the same style and it will become boring. But this singular film from an unknown director populated with unknown actors is a perfect example of modern indie horror that's thoughtful and original. Recommended if you liked the way Resolution did horror, but weren't so hot on the meta aspects of it.

Confusion Na Wa (2013)

directed by Kenneth Gyang
Nigeria
106 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
----

Confusion Na Wa is about the chain of events that occurs when one man is killed in public and two other men snatch his cell phone, mess with his contacts, and generally get into some trouble. It's a movie that posits the idea that people will invariably do what they want to do regardless of how it might effect other people, but it doesn't present this idea with dourness or melodrama, it's just a shrug and an "oh well" attitude where you have to be out for yourself and yourself only because people will steal from you and whatnot. The story is full of petty and occasionally not-so-petty crimes committed in the name of just getting by and maybe even having a bit of fun while you're doing it. The ethics are shaky but it's a "what can you do" situation.

There are a few technical things about the movie that are rough around the edges, particularly the sound design- everybody seems to be mic'd a little bit wrong and certain punching/kicking sound effects get overused in the fighting scenes. However, it's easy to see that this is not at all due to ineptitude on the filmmakers' part, it's just that they probably didn't have the biggest budget ever so they did what they could and even though it might not have the world's highest production value, it has a lot of value in other things besides cinematography. In its more quiet moments, it's actually got a lot of almost Coffee & Cigarettes-style back-and-forth dialogue covering things like how The Lion King is a metaphor for colonialism. The movie does have a brain behind it but I guess it's more like a brain floating in a jar: Doesn't look as pretty as it could, but at least it's intelligent and unique.

Unfortunately it takes a very masculine perspective on all of its issues and women are essentially just accessories with little to no autonomy. There's also some casual homophobia thrown in here and there, but that and a lot of its other prejudices are intra-community issues; if there's a problem with homophobia and misogyny in Nigeria then it doesn't really make sense for me as a white American to butt into discussions about it because I don't belong to that country so I don't have the same perspective as people who do. The most I can say is that I wish this could have been better and maybe it's not as intelligent as I made it out to be if it can't elevate itself above stereotypical flippancy towards women's bodies and sexuality.

Lastly, although this movie was much less boring than I expected, its biggest problem is its length. At 106 minutes it's not too long but it does not make the best use of that runtime. The stuff with the cell phone and all the unrelated characters being tied together with it was all great and a lot of it is genuinely funny, I could probably have watched 106 minutes of that because it was interesting and set up well. But between the things that actually mattered it brings in random romance subplots backed by cliche piano music that had nothing to do with the story, and the more non-essential stuff that happens, the less the movie could hold my attention. It's got a good start and a good end- the two actually bookend each other- but in the middle is some weirdness played out over a runtime that could have been used more efficiently.

The Burning (1981)

directed by Tony Maylam
Canada
91 minutes
3 stars out of 5
----

The Burning is a movie that clearly and unashamedly seeks to capitalize on the recent (at the time) success of slasher films in the late 70s/early 80s. Not even going so far as to come up with an original plot or unique motive behind its killer, it takes place in a summer camp in which lurks the horribly burned ghoul Cropsey, bent on revenge and armed with a pair of garden shears. Notably, it takes from the real-life urban legend of Cropsey and adds some artistic liberties, itself serving to perpetuate the Cropsey myth and continue to add new details to the rumors.

It aims to titillate, it aims to pacify, it aims to satisfy those who don't particularly want to have their viewpoints challenged by the media they consume. It plays off of the public's fear of deformity and fear of being targeted for crimes they did not commit, fear of unjustified retribution and fear of people who do not mourn or grieve in a way we deem acceptable. From the beginning Cropsey's appearance is hyped up to a level where I began to wonder if there was some joke I was missing- hospital staff exploit him, treating him as nothing more than an unfeeling sideshow act, showing him off to one another while making claims like "You're never gonna see another freak like this!" and unsubtly dehumanizing him for thrills. Cropsey, of course, ends up escaping this hospital somehow and targeting the summer camp where he had his disfiguring accident. I did admire the makeup on him because it was done by Tom Savini who can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, but the way the character was introduced was pretty cringe-worthy.

Unlike a lot of slashers, the overall atmosphere is vivacious. The teenagers at the summer camp are possibly the bubbliest, most optimistic people ever written and acted, brimming with idealism and hormones and continually aiming to impress each other with their youthful bravado. There's an abundance of nudity, as there always is with things like this, except some of the teenagers honestly look like children and this movie does not at all shy away from turning its lens on their naked bodies indiscriminately and as often as possible. One by one, they strip, they kiss, they get killed. No deviation from the norm, nothing exceptional, just an old, cliched, mildly entertaining slasher cloning its plot and its villain from better films that came before. Amusingly though, one of the teens is Jason Alexander, whose line delivery is so consistently distinctive that it's impossible to see him in this film and not re-interpret his actions as being those of George Costanza.

I think the people responsible for giving this movie its cult status and relatively high average rating are all those who grew up with this kind of thing, people for whom this was their first exposure to horror and as such it burned itself into their minds. The nostalgia vote has got to be extremely strong with this one for it to have the notoriety it does, because it's unremarkable at best. I'm not condemning people for rating things based off of their own fondness for them, but as somebody who never lived with the first wave of slashers like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp and the like, it's pretty obvious to me that this movie is nothing special and probably wasn't anything special when it first came out.

Travelling Actors (1940)

directed by Mikio Naruse
Japan
70 minutes
4.5 stars out of 5
----

This was the first Mikio Naruse film I've seen, which is a shame, tragedy, embarrassment, et cetera; so I won't be able to rank it among his other films. I can look at it as a stand-alone piece as well as comparing it to others of that era but my knowledge of Naruse's oeuvre is woefully underdeveloped at the moment.

A lot of films by Naruse and his contemporaries that came out in Japan in the couple decades or so surrounding Travelling Actors all tend to have a very slow, untroubled pace that's really unique to that movement and that time period. A lot of them portray matters of family or love or childhood and most of the time they don't sport any gimmicks or anything making them "cinematic", they just follow people living their lives almost like a documentary would. But in the films of this wave that I've seen, they still remain more beautiful and detailed than any documentary, capturing not only a situation but a mood and transmitting that to the viewer even if that viewer is, like me, watching the movie some 70-80 years after its initial release.

Travelling Actors has that sort of humor that holds up well over all that time. Its primary concern is two actors with a travelling kabuki troupe who play the head and the backside of a horse. Apparently one of these actors is actually a famous character actor of that time period in real life, but unfortunately I'm not well-versed enough to know him by sight. But having him there and having him gripe about acting as if he's talking about his actual career is one of a few ways this movie becomes an obvious- but not obnoxious- commentary on the reality of filmmaking. There's a lot (and I mean a lot) in it about actors with smaller roles not being appreciated, how important it is to believe in your role no matter how inconsequential it may be, and other sentiments related to acting as an art form.

An obvious interpretation of most of the plot would be that you should put 100% into whatever job you happen to be doing, even if it's not glamorous and you don't enjoy doing it. I want to think that it's more strictly about art, though- that it carries a message of having to be confident in whatever sort of art you make, no matter what form it is, and how if you have that confidence you can always take pride in what you're doing and find satisfaction in it. There's also a part where the two horse actors get replaced by the guy financing their play and an actual horse, and that felt like it was meant to represent how you shouldn't let your higher-ups who have no experience with art try to control your art just because they think they can dominate you due to their status. You have to stick up for whatever you're doing and have it be yours and yours alone.

It's also funny because the two actors being replaced by a horse is basically the opposite of how workers today are afraid of being replaced by machines. This film is a strong advocate for the necessity of the human touch even when that touch may mean something is slightly less realistic than it could be. It shows that being human and being rough around the edges can be a more essential trait to a film or play than perfectly polished execution to the point of being unnatural.

Ukamau (1966)

directed by Jorge Sanjinés
Bolivia
75 minutes
4 stars out of 5
----

I'm not sure why, but I expected this to be a bit more... bucolic? It does have a lot of scenes involving farming and working outdoors and that sort of thing but in general it's not particularly focused on farming or on life in the cities. I guess I was expecting something more focused on beauty when the point of the film is instead to focus on the consequences that occur when something beautiful is taken away.

The plot is fairly cut-and-dry revenge film stuff: An Aymara man living and working in the mountains slowly decides to go after the man who murdered his wife. When I say slowly, I mean slowly- it doesn't feel like it given the time constraints of film, but the plot unfolds over the course of slightly more than a year. Most revenge films utilize a slow-burning method of unwrapping their storyline, but this isn't even a slow burn, it's something much more subtle. There is no point where the main character Andrés sits down and says to himself that he's going to kill his wife's murderer, nor is there any moment where the murderer conversely sits down and plans how he's going to evade Andrés. But, although it's not discussed at length, both men have a goal in mind and they know how to accomplish it. Whether that takes weeks, months, or years- it doesn't matter to them.

Because both of the men are virtually solitary and don't really have anybody they hang around with enough to confide in, a lot what goes on in the film occurs in their own minds in the sense that we as viewers can practically see the gears turning as the two characters plan their courses of action non-verbally. It's a pretty quiet film when it needs to be, there's absolutely nothing in the way of bravado or even any real violence aside from at the beginning and the very end. Even then there's no blood- this movie knows it doesn't need to use that to get the point across. Or maybe they didn't have the budget for fake blood. Either way, it works fantastically well without viscera.

I was surprised by how meticulous this movie is in terms of depicting what I just mentioned about the majority of the plot taking place in the characters' inner dialogues with themselves. The camera pays close attention to the two men's facial expressions, and it doesn't come off as goofy or like they're overacting at all, it's a competent way to convey emotion without having one character talk to another as is the usual method for letting viewers know what somebody's thinking. We see the murderer have a look in his eye just before he commits his crime that says he knows what he wants and he knows he's about to get it. We see his guilt, in various forms, as his life continues on after he's done what he's done. We see a whole spectrum of emotions come over Andrés- confusion, grief, determination- and among all these, satisfaction is absent: We never get to see if killing the man who killed his lover ties up a loose end in his mind or if he realizes, as happens so often, that nothing will really bring him closure.

The cinematography is stark and pared down only to the essentials. Creating a form of dialogue that a viewer would understand visually rather than having to hear it spoken aloud is clever and innovative, and still there's many movies that can't accomplish what this one does. It's not depraved, it's not violent, it's a story of revenge played out inwardly among the only men who know what they've done and are about to do.

Die Präsenz (2015)

directed by Daniele Grieco
Germany
82 minutes
3 stars out of 5
----

Germany's submission to the found-footage subgenre. I'll say that first just in case anybody reading this holds the opinion that found-footage can't ever be good, because I know there's a lot of that sentiment out there, though I don't agree with it at all.

The setup goes as usual. Three buddies break into an abandoned castle for reasons that are trivial at best. You've got to commend their courage because they plan to stay in the castle for ten whole days, which may actually be the longest anybody in a horror movie has ever set up camp at any abandoned place. Usually it's for just one night of thrills, chills, and most likely some spills, but these people go whole hog. Go big or go home, I guess, possibility of death by ghost or not.

The reason I liked this movie and felt that it's necessary to give it a second chance and not dismiss it for being found-footage is because in terms of the actual process behind the haunting, it diverges a lot from what's typical of POV haunted-location horror films. Rather than leaving the backstory of the haunting without any detail and thus leaving viewers to assume it's nothing more than your average "somebody died here and now they're a ghost" type of haunting, it proposes the marginally popular concept that the castle itself is the root of the haunting. Terrible, tragic things did occur there but they occurred because of something far more fundamental and ancient that inhabits the grounds. Even a tiny bit of that concept can improve any horror film, as not only is it creative but it harnesses that fear of the unknown that makes everything scarier.

It also seems, to an extent, to be aware of itself: One of the characters' reasoning for breaking in is to film a documentary on hauntings in popular culture, and at some points he explains to the camera how the archetypical haunting begins subtly, just like the movie begins with less severe happenings and slowly escalates. Framing it as almost a film-inside-a-film or at the very least a film conscious of being a film is another way, in addition to the presence of the unknown, to distinguish a horror movie from the sea of generic slashers and ghost stories.

With all of this taken into account, it doesn't surprise me that this is actually a pretty scary movie. It manages to cash in on that primal, baseline fear; the kind of fear you feel standing alone in a pitch-dark room where you know that logically nothing is there that wasn't there in the daytime but there's still some part of you back in the primitive parts of your mind that tells you you have reason to be afraid. It bungles the jumpscares pretty bad (just because there's about a thousand too many of them) but there's parts here and there where you're made to stare at a certain spot for a while and the tension that builds as you wait for something to jump out at you is almost painful.

It isn't all perfection and it loses a lot of steam in the third act, but it felt like effort was put into it. If you liked this, another found-footage movie that shares an almost identical tone and atmosphere with this one is Hollow (2011), but honestly I think this movie was a little bit better.

Alléluia (2014)

directed by Fabrice Du Welz
Belgium
93 minutes
4 stars out of 5
----

Fabrice Du Welz, who brought us Calvaire, now brings us a new movie based off of the real-life story of the Lonely Hearts Killers. The blurb on the poster advertises it as being a "holy, obsessive terror", which sounds like some pretty high praise. Can it live up to that hype? Can it even live up to Calvaire? The answer, as it turns out, is that it most definitely can.

Each part of the description of it as a "holy, obsessive terror" is true. It revolves around a theme of dependency that turns into dangerous obsession and the backbone of the film is girlfriend Gloria's all-consuming desire to be needed and loved by boyfriend Michel. There is a sense of worship in the way she views him and builds him up to be this godlike figure that can redeem her and make her whole again, and in how she's willing to ignore every horrible, murderous aspect of him if he'll just say he loves her. There's a feeling all throughout the movie of something having gone very wrong, not with the environment but with the characters themselves- you get the sense that these are two people who have broken, and that their pain and longing draws them to each other in a way that isn't good for either of them (but mostly Gloria).

It's an uncomfortably close examination of a relationship that's extremely unhealthy. Michel doesn't put even half as much effort into loving Gloria as Gloria puts into trying to be loved by Michel. Her life centers on winning his affection and keeping him close to at all costs. Eventually, whether intentional or not, Michel figures out that he can exploit this desperation. He knows what she's willing to do. Gloria's inability to cope without having the promise of Michel's love is a powerful force that she seems incapable of keeping inside, throwing tantrums and scrabbling to try and fix everything, to get everything the way it should be in order for the two of them to be together. I haven't read reviews yet but I can tell she's the type of character a lot of people would instantly want to pin the blame on, when in reality what she needed was to find help and instead she found a man who only exacerbated her loneliness and turned it into something far more sinister.

The horror of everything is unflinching, displayed in a controlled-chaos whirlwind of anxiety and obsession. A wash of reds and blues are used effectively to convey emotion at crucial points and the visual language accompanies the events of the film perfectly. It's a well-directed movie that runs the gamut from strangely pitiful and sympathetic to wild and disturbing and always, always keeps that sense that everything going on is too real, too close, too genuine. A scene where Gloria and Michel are dancing like animals in front of a raging fire felt like it defined the tone of the entire film: That desperate, flailing need to reach out and grab somebody and then hold on as tight as you can while driving away every perceived threat to your relationship. It's definitely on the same level as Calvaire and I'm surprised I haven't heard any kind of buzz or praise for it at all, because it's great.

Carnage Park (2016)

directed by Mickey Keating
USA
90 minutes
4 stars out of 5
----

Mickey Keating has achieved a remarkable amount of success in a short time. With three films of note having come out in the past two years (and one from 2013 that seems to be the black sheep) he's not only created films that have been largely well-received but he's also managed to make every single one of those films unique. It's clear how much Keating is capable of when you look at just how different those recent three are- Pod being the amped-up sci-fi horror, Darling being the homage to classic psychological thrillers and dark tales of Hollywood starlets, and finally Carnage Park reaching new territories by being a terrifying romp through the California desert.

The scale reached in this one is unlike what Keating has done before. It doesn't just remain in a single setting like Pod and Darling (mostly) do. Instead he takes what feels like the whole desert and surrenders it to this film's villain, turning an impossible stretch of land into this torture chamber of sorts, this darkly-lit labyrinth of trash and blood and guts and mess that feels like it goes on forever. You can feel the psychological torture of the main character as she stumbles her way through, never certain if she's being pursued, never certain if she'll make it out in one piece. I was half-asleep through a lot of this movie and honestly something about that state of mind drew me into Carnage Park the location and made it feel like it spanned miles and miles more than it may have actually occupied.

In the first act, before the real villain shows his face, it may be guilty of romanticizing a tiny bit. We've got a two-man criminal duo, one half named Scorpion Joe and the other half dying too fast to get a cool moniker. It has the sheen of 70s grindhouse to mask what it would be like in reality; while nothing in the film is ever depicted as being something you would remotely want to befall you, it still has a little glint of idealism and debauchery. That's just the first quarter, though- after we're through with Scorpion Joe we get to enter Carnage Park itself. The first villain's exit was actually a very interesting way to introduce the big bad, sort of a "the only thing scarier than the monster is what scares the monster" thing. Scorpion Joe's bravado becomes no more than a tiny accent mark on the reign of Wyatt Moss, gasmasked mastermind of crime brilliantly played by Pat Healy.

In contrast with Keating's earlier works- and this is surprising considering its leanings towards grindhouse- there's a certain type of edginess that's absent, which I appreciated. It shows a lot of gruesome detail, but in both Pod and Darling (especially Darling) I felt that there was almost an immaturity to the horror in some spots, a tendency towards throwing around buckets of blood and using death metal to see just how shocking it could get. Those were dark spots on those two films, I felt, because they relied on cheap shock factor when both movies were doing perfectly well without it. Carnage Park, though, has no cheapnesses, just good characterization and a realistic sense of confinement.

The reason the villain in this film works so well is the same reason Michael Myers was so instantly frightening when Halloween came out- he's elevated to an almost inhuman level. Where Myers had his ability to seemingly teleport to right where he saw fit to do some murdering, Wyatt Moss has the whole desert at his disposal, rigging it up with loudspeakers broadcasting his own gibberish and constructing disorienting pathways through nowhere. I'm not sure if this is Mickey Keating's best but it's certainly his broadest in terms of scale.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter (2014)

directed by David Zellner
USA
105 minutes
5 stars out of 5
----

Director David Zellner enjoyed some under-the-radar praise with this movie, praise that he should have gotten for his excellent previous film Kid-Thing but didn't. That brief popularity seems to have come and gone by now, though, and while I don't really hear this movie's name being spoken that often anymore, it's going to be on my shortlist of things I would recommend to anybody and everybody going forward.

I'm certain that this wouldn't have been the same without Rinko Kikuchi in the title role. She inhabits her character like she's playing somebody she's intimately familiar with, bringing to life small touches like her gait, her messy, cramped apartment, and her inwardly-focused attitude. Kumiko as a character is the opposite of the typical "cute awkward girl" trope designed for mass consumption: She's not quirky-cute in a likable, easy way but is genuinely ill at-ease in the larger world. She is one of the most distinctive anti-heroes I've seen in modern cinema.

The concept of the movie hinges on a mysterious VHS copy of the movie Fargo, but if it's meant to be an homage, it's a weird one. It's got no similarities to Fargo save for Kumiko's attempts to find the suitcase full of money Steve Buscemi's character buries in the film. My interpretation- at least of the first half, the second is much different- is that it was a statement on nostalgia: As of late, VHS tapes and other forms of media used in the 1990s to early 2000s have been very popular for people who want to have sort of a "revival" of their childhood days, the TV shows they watched and foods they ate as children are kept close at heart and there's a kind of mutual understanding among people of a certain age that says "if you are like me, you shared this experience". I felt that this movie was in part about the attachments we form to inanimate objects that were significant to us- a VHS tape, a blanket, anything from childhood. I'm probably completely wrong about this but that seemed like a point that was being made intentionally.

Another element of it that stuck out to me was how much presence Kumiko has in her own little world despite being a very introverted, asocial person and how the film seems to be looking at modernization/urbanization not through the bleary eyes of office drones like many cynical modern-day movies do, but as an environment where even in the most inhospitable concrete jungles, we keep finding places to nest. We- or Kumiko in this particular instance- eke out these personal spaces for ourselves, messy apartments and pets and late-night ramen by the glow of an old TV, and we inhabit them like small cocoons of personal warmth and safety in the face of all of our other responsibilities.

The second half of the film is where it becomes relatable in a more conventional sense, because Kumiko sets out on her own and manages to find herself somewhere in Minnesota, unable to speak much English and unable to convey just how incredibly important it is to her that she finds this buried treasure. It's more reasonable that a viewer might see themselves in her drifting around an unfamiliar environment, but it's a mistake to think every movie sets out to be relatable. That second half is harsh and unforgiving and ultimately tragic. But at no point in the movie is Kumiko characterized as naive, misguided, or delusional: The treasure isn't some manifestation of her anxieties or a sign that she's snapped, it's truly real and it's the most important thing in the world to her. This modern-day mythology of her quest for the treasure is a welcome refresher from overdone "urban fairytales" and stories that infantilize their protagonist as bumbling around in a world they can't negotiate with. There's nuances to this film that I might never be able to unravel and for the unique, one-of-a-kind experience it gave me, I'm very thankful.

And at some point you have to ask, how deep does this concept go? How recursive is this thing? In 20 years, will someone make a movie about a strange woman finding an old DVD copy of Kumiko the Treasure Hunter and following the secrets she finds within its plot?

Mr. Thank You (1936)

directed by Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan
78 minutes
4.5 stars out of 5
----

The titular character of this film is a friendly bus driver in a poorer, more rural area who gets his name from his signature "arigato!" to anybody who moves out of the way of his bus. None of this would work today, most of Arigato-san's "arigato"s would not be required thanks to modern roads being wider and usually paved. So this is definitely a movie that exists within a certain time period and it's a classic example of what Japanese cinema was like in the 30s, a time when- in my opinion- Japan was top of the line in terms of how many consistently excellent movies were being made. Despite being so old that people refer to movies as "talkies" and an entire village would come and listen to just one record, it still holds up well.

It's not meant to be a feel-good movie despite its cheery atmosphere and upbeat soundtrack. It's a reflection of depression-era Japan, and although it doesn't come right out and say it, it clearly depicts a young woman whose parents have sold her for money, and many more cases of the same thing are mentioned throughout the film. It's a particularly difficult time for girls and women, and maybe some of the vagueness around the subject was due to the English translation I had to watch, but there's a lot of murky, indirect allusions to the shame and degradation women were forced to endure to bring back money for their families. There's nothing Arigato-san can really do, and anyway it's not a character study of him but rather a road movie with dialogue between several different characters, not just one.

The situation is unideal for everyone involved- passenger and driver alike as well as the various people they meet along their lengthy journey. But there's always the bus, and there's always Arigato-san. Buses are an underused setting for movies that want to explore varied socio-economic backgrounds and make a commentary on life during the time the film was released, because everybody uses the bus: There could be poorer people as well as more well-off folks who don't have any other way to get where they're going. And most of all, the bus just keeps going forward. I wonder if perhaps that was the intended metaphor in Mr. Thank You. No matter your problems, no matter where you're going, you're moving ahead; and the bus will always be there to take you. I suppose this is somewhat applicable in real life as well, though bus drivers these days are more the silent type- if you don't have a car, as long as you can scrounge up bus fare (something nobody had to worry about in this film- would be wonderful in modern times!), somebody will take you wherever you need to go, day-in and day-out, whenever you need them.

Also, bonus points for a suddenly-appearing all-female kabuki troupe advertising an upcoming performance in the middle of the road and unintentionally becoming possibly the earliest example of a pop-up ad.

III (2015)

directed by Pavel Khvaleev
Russia
80 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
----

III (on Netflix as "III - The Ritual") is a purely visual movie. It's filled with meticulously-assembled imagery with little to nothing behind it, copious amounts of digitally-enhanced color and shading to hide a glacial plot and poor, clunky character development. That's not necessarily a bad thing- film is a visual medium, after all, and there's much worse things that could have been done. The aesthetic isn't an ugly one. It's just the kind of movie where you have to get accustomed to not caring about the broken shards of a half-developed plot that are mixed in with the overcompensating cinematography.

It dwells right on the line where the physical and metaphysical split; between repressed memories, psychic phenomena, and the inner workings of the mind bleeding into reality. Set in a dingy, sepia-tinted town seemingly stuck in time, it's impossible to pinpoint exactly where or when it's supposed to be taking place- the clothing looks modern, but the lack of technology combined with what looks to be a pretty established and developed town is confusing. This is all there to add to the atmosphere, of course: Who cares if it doesn't make sense? It looks good.

With its focus on personalized dreamscapes, mental anguish, and sad-looking girls, it's got a lot of similarities to other movies, but it's really still in a class of its own (which I'm thankful for). I could say "Oh, it's just like Inception!" or "Oh, it's just like Sucker Punch!" but none of that would be accurate enough to convey what this movie is. Maybe the whole "you gotta go into your mind" thing is overdone, and maybe- by which I mean definitely- this movie skimps on backstory, but it still looks and feels different from other movies.

I almost feel like this movie's biggest shortcoming is that it's too perfect. When I watch things on Netflix the picture quality is often so good it feels unnatural. I'm far from being that person who wants film to go back to the way it "used to be"- whatever that means- but especially in a genre film, having every blade of grass and every speck of dust on the ground be sharp and visible is distracting. III is too self-conscious, too detailed. I totally fell for its show-don't-tell style of filmmaking but I can still acknowledge that it's got a lot of problems.

Steppe Man (2012)

directed by Shamil Aliyev
Azerbaijan
80 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Steppe Man doesn't start out with the main character being a steppe man. For a little while, we follow him as a steppe boy before his sudden transition to adulthood comes. Usually I'm not too fond of boys' coming-of-age stories, but I really did like the way this one approaches growing up. There's not as much gruffness and machismo as usual. The boy's father doesn't coddle him but he also doesn't seem like the type to just shove him into situations headfirst with no love or encouragement. He tells the boy stories, does things for him, you know. It's a hard life they live but they make room for tenderness.

I really admired this movie for not being afraid to be purely visual sometimes, to not try and put in dialogue where it would have made a situation seem forced or too obviously scripted. It's not afraid to have a dramatic orchestral swell and then just show some camels being corralled. It's not afraid to have big lead-ups with no real payoff other than another shot of the dusty steppes and the main character's herd of camels. Being submitted to the Academy Awards, this film would have to contend with not only movies from the US but also movies from smaller countries that went a more modernized route with their aesthetic, and since this is an unassuming movie with no real hidden message (aside from maybe "don't make fun of people living alone out in the steppes"), I'm not surprised it didn't get as much recognition as it deserved.

There's not a whole lot that actually happens throughout the runtime of the film, but it's a testament to directorial (and writers') talent that it never gets boring or even slips into the category of being deliberately meditative. It's a bare-bones movie, but not a slow one. The filmmakers knew how to set up two characters- steppe man and his love interest- and have them play off of each other without talking, and although I'm also not particularly fond of that brand of love story where one half starts out hating the other half, the way steppe man and his woman orbit around each other for a long time before steppe man realizes how he feels about her was very well set up.

It does kind of botch the ending a bit though. It's much too abrupt. I guess since there was very little in the way of conflict, there wasn't much of an opportunity for a climax that would have brought the film to a neat close. The ending is as simple as the 85 minutes preceding it, and like the rest of the film, it's not some elaborate tearjerking journey from rags to riches like the Academy generally tends to go wild over. It's just a story about a man living apart from the greater world. He doesn't have to change, he doesn't have to have any revelations about his life. He just follows the same pattern he's presumably been following all his life and we as viewers are here to witness that.

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (1979)

directed by Grigori Kromanov
Estonia
80 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is based on a book by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who also penned the source material for Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker- possibly the best movie of all time- as well as a few other notable things. If you know the authors or you've seen other adaptations of their work, you'll know what to expect: Unnamable feelings, mysterious places bordering on the metaphysical, and the thin line between science fiction and something altogether weirder.

It's almost noirish in the beginning, or at least it would be if it wasn't drenched in a neon 70s pop-art aesthetic. A police inspector arrives at a hotel in the mountains and is accompanied by an "inner voice" narration in typical slinky detective style. The hotel hosts many strange individuals, including alien enthusiasts, wall-climbing physicists, a man who's extremely casual about his tuberculosis, and a St. Bernard who has been trained to recognize numbers and will bring guests' baggage to their rooms. Soon an avalanche wipes out the only entrance to the hotel, and everyone is trapped there! And of course, somebody is murdered! Strange things are definitely afoot at the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, but what? At times the assemblage of mildly odd events seems to be leading nowhere, and when it all culminates in the reveal of who the guests really are, it feels more like a "seriously?" moment than anything else. Don't look up the synopsis on letterboxd, by the way, it's got spoilers in it. Although to be fair when the twist kicks in I barely even realized it was a plot twist.

Many sci-fi and horror authors are notorious for being difficult to adapt into film. They have a style that just doesn't translate well to the big (or small) screen, mainly because their work deals with concepts far more nebulous and metaphysical than film has a language for. It's the transfer of impossibilities that conjure up images in a reader's head to those same impossibilities depicted in the constrains of the physical world that makes that transition from book to film nearly impossible. Often the best adaptations of their works are those where the director strays very far away from the source material. I've never read the original Dead Mountaineer's Inn book, but from other movies inspired by the Strugatsky brothers (although the majority of them are well above average), I would guess that their books have this same problem.

Evidently the original book was intended to be a spoof of the detective genre, which is another thing that definitely does not come across in the film version. No, instead of clearly being comedic, the flamboyant cast of characters and their theatrics come off as a product of the times at best and a case of overacting at worst. This is a movie that constantly seems to be reaching for something, some tone or atmosphere that was probably present in the original book but that it overshoots on film. Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, but it doesn't feel faithful to the source material- but again, I've never read it, so I can't vouch for its authenticity.

The Light Thief (2010)

directed by Aktan Arym Kubat
Kyrgyzstan
77 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Here we have another film from the same director as Beshkempir, who also plays the title role. Again it takes place in a village in Kyrgyzstan, and again it follows one character and his interactions with his fellow villagers, his environment, and some corrupt officials from elsewhere looking to do shady business with him and his town. It feels much less like a documentary this time, the presence of the camera has completely changed to where instead of being a non-intrusive lens on village life it now feels noticeably like it's watching people act. Which is fine, the acting in this movie is very good, it's just different.

The main character is an electrician everyone calls Mr. Light. He provides the power for the village and sometimes he does it in ways not deemed to be legal, supplying power to all people no matter if they can pay or not. Mr. Light's way is one of many ways to do revolution: Not slow change, not young protestors occupying Wall Street or petitioning against a local Walmart- though those are still legitimate forms of resistance- but a conscious disregard for what he knows is corruption and what most other people are not willing to go up against. It may not be that the higher-ups Mr. Light has to contest with genuinely want the village to remain without power, but they are unwilling to provide power unless the village can agree to their terms and pay the sum they want them to pay. This is revolution outside the lines of local government, this is revolution that is firmly illegal and doesn't fit into a neat peaceful-protest agenda, this is revolution putting power back in the peoples' hands.

I think any area that is still without electricity or only has unreliable electricity in 2016 is often thought of as being "underdeveloped" in the public eye. Here is a movie that proves that wrong. Mr. Light's village is very much developed, its inhabitants are intelligent, capable people who happen to be at the mercy of a system that was built to fail them, a system that says they don't deserve power unless they agree to yield to the powers that be. I guess part of the moral of the story is that if something isn't working, fix it, and fix it in a way that benefits not only you but the people around you. It's a huge struggle for this village to overcome the outsiders who want to oppress them, and the solution isn't easy or pretty or quick, but nobody gives up in this movie, ever. It's enviable the way even a small shred of change can be reached by directly interfering with the government whereas in countries like America and, more recently, the UK, there is practically nothing a singular person can do to change what is harming them.

It's a deftly crafted film. You'd think it might get boring occasionally but it doesn't, at all. This struggle between villager and government is as exciting as any blockbuster intending to sensationalize the financial or governmental world. The focus on nature is somewhat reigned-in this time when compared to Beshkempir, there's more dialogue and it's closer to the general conception of a "traditional" film, but the importance of culture and the beauty of regional folk songs and dress is still there and still given importance.

Mekong Hotel (2012)

directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand
60 minutes
5 stars out of 5
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Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is known for contemplative films that are usually fairly lengthy, so I was curious about Mekong Hotel because I wanted to see how his style would fare in a movie with a runtime of only an hour. Turns out it's just as good as his longer works, I felt like it could definitely have been expanded into a full-length movie but I don't think it lost anything by being so short either.

As the title would imply, the movie takes place in a hotel on the Mekong river. The river is visible in a lot of shots and if you concentrate you can almost make it look like the hotel itself isn't rooted there, that it's drifting down the river very slowly. That's basically the vibe of the whole film, that it isn't standing still but moving ahead slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet constantly. It's hazy, hypnotic, and subtly surreal, like being immersed in a dream taking place while you're so deeply unconscious the waking world may as well not exist.

And about the tinges of surrealism: This is a movie that has some supernatural elements depicted as fitting into the rest of the environment seamlessly. I think a common response to seeing these things in a movie that's otherwise so strictly realistic would be to take them as a metaphor, and I could be wrong on this, but I strongly doubt that's how they were intended. In a body of work so intent on capturing every single element of an environment, the supernatural is just another thing included in the broader landscape of the film. There are spirits in this movie because there just are, they're as real as anything else, you've got to take yourself out of the mindset that says such things don't actually exist because they do here without a doubt.

Somebody else said something about this movie (pilgrim945 on letterboxd, credit where credit is due) that put it and all the rest of Weerasethakul's works into a new light for me: Everything in the film is given the same importance. That's it right there, that's Joe's style, that's the key to all of his movies insofar as something so oblique and filled with symbolism can have a "key". Every event, every object, every scene is given the same weight, and it's not a sliding-scale type deal, it's not that everything is either not important or is very important, it's just... all important. Laotian refugees and tight jeans and a mother whose spirit leaves her body and kids on jetskis. I'm glad somebody said that because I've been searching and searching for the perfect way to describe the rest of Joe's oeuvre and how/why it's different from any other filmmaker out there, and that's it.