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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Surreal and Disappointing ‘LUCKY’ Bungles Its Message of Female Dread 

Director Natasha Kermani is onto an intriguing germ of an idea with Lucky, a message movie masquerading as a thriller, but the execution is simply not there. The film stars Brea Grant as May, an author of a feminist-forward business series, who is assaulted nightly by a masked man. Her distant husband is bizarrely disinterested in the attacks and the police treat them as almost meaningless happenstance. Kermani obviously wants to explore the notion that women are confronted with a world constantly at odds with female safety, where public and private spaces alike are feeding grounds for male predators, and instances of assault are met with apathy and assigned a normalcy that’s both disturbing and omnipresent. Between unconvincing performances (from Grant down through the supporting cast list) and a repetitive cycling of events with fails to capitalize on the threat of invasion of space in creative and varied ways, Lucky ends up being an idea in search of a movie; the mere shadow of something potentially interesting. (C-) Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Geriatric Satanists Will Do ‘ANYTHING FOR JACKSON’

There’s little in the world of Hollywood and Holly-would-be more fascinating than a director breaking out of their wheelhouse to make something completely unexpected. Think Mike Nichols’ shift from directing critical darlings like The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to “slum it” with the campy horror outing Wolf; or Mad Max franchise director George Miller shifting gears to direct the talking pig sequel Babe: Pig in the City; or filmmaker royalty Francis Ford Coppola coming down from Godfather and Apocalypse Now acclaim to direct the family-friendly Robin Williams vehicle Jack.  Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: ’BLOODY HELL’ Crosses Australian Horror and ‘Iron Man’ to Excellent Effect

Australian horror movies have no qualms pushing buttons. Sean Byrne’s underrated classic The Loved Ones took teenage romantic obsession to new extremes. Wolf Creek toyed with audiences accustomed to a sense of justice within the slasher genre. Even The Babadook featured one of the most grating children in cinematic history. Buttons. Were. Pushed. Bloody Hell, the brainchild of writer Robert Benjamin and director Alister Grierson, follows proudly in the grand tradition of Australian horror, remarking upon the genre in irreverent fashion while adding a more-than-worthwhile entry to its growing legion. Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Haunting ’32 MALASAÑA STREET’ Delivers Effective Spanish Frights

It’s 1976 and the Olmedo family has decided to uproot their lives, moving from the countryside to the hustle and bustle of Madrid. Little do they know that their new flat comes furnished not only with sofas and dusty photographs but a malevolent spirit set on making their transition harder than they could have ever imagined. This slick and spooky Spanish-language supernatural-thriller takes interest in the human element and horror alike, calling to mind movies like The Conjuring and Haunting of Hill House and delivering scares with an international appeal.  Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Atmospheric Horror Game Adaptation ’DETENTION’ Left Me Cold

John Hsu’s Detention gives a horror movie makeover to Taiwan’s darkest moment in history. Taking place during the country’s period known as the “White Terror”, a 38-year period of martial law where 140,000 alleged “political dissidents” were jailed and countless others executed by the state, Detention attempts to mix dark fantastical elements in with real-world political histories much like Guillermo del Toro did with the Spanish Civil War in Pan’s Labyrinth. The end result here is much, much less effective.  Read More

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NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Rancid ‘HUNTED’ A Sadistic Episode of Pointless Cruelty and Unchecked Misogyny

French writer-director Vincent Paronnaud’s (Persepolis) fetid attempt to pair art house with meat grinder results in one of the worst films of the year: Hunted. An impotent rape-revenge fairy tale, which borders on snuff with its malignant streak of cruelty and misogyny, Hunted takes form as a woman (Lucie Debay) is chased through the woods by two psychopathic men.  Issuing threats to “f*ck her to death”, the sexually violent antagonist (played with deranged glee by Christian Bronchart) spends the feature screaming at our heroine that she’s a “f*cking whore” or “f*cking slut”. Charming.

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SUNDANCE 2020: Scattershot ’THE NOWHERE INN’ A Meta-Movie About Celebrity Expectations

Singer St. Vincent (real name Annie Clark) enlists close friend and filmmaker Carrie Brownstone to make a documentary about her biggest tour yet. The trouble is: she’s incredibly dull off the stage. She does her crunches, snacks on farm-fresh radishes, plays Scrabble. She is no feral rambunctious rockstar. Her Smell this is not. Read More

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SUNDANCE 2020: ‘RELIC’ and the True Horror of Senility

Relic, an old-folks-being-creepy offshoot of midnight squirmer, explores the true-to-life horrors of a matriarch’s deteriorating mental state. Dementia is scary enough before you add in family curses, labyrinthine structures, and ghouls under the bed and in her impressive debut, director Natalie Erika James filters her own traumatic experience confronting her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s through the prism of horror cinema, allowing for an emotionally rich and impressively eerie slice of dramatic horror that speaks to real-life terrors.  Read More

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SUNDANCE 2020: ‘POSSESSOR’ Is A Blood-Soaked Murder Inception That Continues The Cronenberg Legacy 

The King of Venereal Horror has begat a true Prince of Pain. Brandon Cronenberg, the 40-year old offspring of Baron of Blood David Cronenberg, takes up his pops’ mantle circa the turn of the century, when the elder Cronenberg began to pivot away from visceral science-fiction-tinged horrors (Videodrome) and bodily transformations (The Fly) and towards more dramatic affairs (A Dangerous Method) and electric thrillers (A History of Violence). As one sun sets, another rises and with Possessor, a movie that marries the chilly intersection between technology and humanity and some absolutely spine-tingling visual depictions of bloodshed, the younger Cronenberg has come into his own. Read More

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SUNDANCE 2020: Amusing ‘DOWNHILL’ Remake Assumes American Stance, Lets Comic Giants Ride

A remake of the critically-acclaimed Swedish drama Force Majeure, Downhill is kind of exactly like most American remakes of critically-acclaimed foreign dramas: amusing but unnecessary. A blue-square redo of a double-black-diamond story. With the hard-packed dual casting of Will Ferrell (who’s better here than he’s been in years) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who also produced), the dramedy from The Way Way Back co-writers and directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash borrows the premise and some of the critical breaking points from Ruben Östlund’s film but also finds room for new traumas and dark comedic moments to unfold. Read More