SXSW 2021: Goretastic ‘JAKOB’S WIFE’ Is the Most Fun Vampire Movie in Years

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Barbara Crampton, Jakob’s Wife, Kathy Charles, Mark Steenland, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021, Travis Stevens 2 Comments

According to Biblical etymology, the name Jakob as found in Genesis is derived from the word for “heel”. In Jakob’s Wife, the eponymous Jakob (Larry Fessenden) is indeed a heel; an old-fashion minister who looks down his nose at his parishioners and town’s hoi polloi and treats his wife as a subservient inferior. When an old flame comes through town, obedient church mouse spouse Anne (a perfectly cast Barbara Crampton) gives into temptation…and is delivered unto the ultimate evil: a primordial vampire hiding out in the abandoned mill in their small town. Read More

SXSW 2021: Dead in the Water ‘OFFSEASON’ A Bloated, Shambling Corpse of a Seaside Haunter

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Jocelin Donahue, Joe Swanberg, Melora Walters, Mickey Keating, Offseason, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

A featherlight folk horror from Mickey Keating (Carnage Park), Offseason fails to conjure much of a reason for its existence, plundering the corpses of similar seaside folklore horror stories but bringing zero new ideas or visual intrigue to the table. At only 83 minutes, the barebones haunted town horror tale still majorly drags, a problem born from its dramatically inert narrative and exacerbated by numerous pacing problems. There are a couple (as in exactly two) memorable visual tableaus that shock the viewer out of a state of near-total apathy but it’s far too little too late to salvage Keating’s creation from sinking to the depths of horror movie irrelevancy. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘THE FEAST’ Is Scrumptiously Unnerving Folk Horror

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Annes Elwy, Julian Lewis Jones, Lee Haven Jones, Nia Roberts, Roger Williams, SXSW, SXSW 2021, The Feast Leave a comment

High in the Welsh hills, an elemental force awakens. This land is sacred and foreign; a far-flung neverland where verdant hills and the marble-mouthed language both prove striking and ancient. A place where helping neighbors lend a hand and whisper of mythical no-no’s. The first shot of Lee Haven Jones’ gothic folk horror juxtaposes man’s greed and his demise as a ruddy pipe in close up drills muddy oil from the ground. In the distance, a construction site worker flops over and dies. Man takes. Man dies. The cycle begins. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘WITCH HUNT’ Explores a World Where Witches Are Real and Illegal

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Abigail Cowen, Echo Campbell, Elizabeth Mitchell, Elle Calahan, Gideon Adlon, Horror, SXSW, SXSW 2021, Witch Hunt 1 Comment

America never got past its Salem period in Elle Calahan’s allegorical social horror movie Witch Hunt. The only difference is, in Calahan’s world, witches actually do exist. The United States is a perilous place for those magical few; the practice of witchcraft has been banned and is punishable by death; families of convicted witches are forced into deep-cover and permanent hiding; their only hopes being smuggled south to the Mexican border where freedom from institutionalized prejudice looms. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘HERE BEFORE’ A Tricky Psychological Thriller That Just Might Awaken the Undead

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Andrea Riseborough, Here Before, Reviews, Stacey Gregg, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

Andrea Riseborough may be our greatest under-appreciated actress working today. Delivering standout turns in indie favorites like Mandy, Possessor, and Birdman as well as leading Amazon’s excellent crime drama ZeroZeroZero, Riseborough has slowly proven herself a transfixing chameleon presence. A la the great Tilda Swinton, with whom she shares vampiric lily white skin and sharp angular features, Riseborough creeps into the skin of her roles, the real persona rarely peeking through. Read More

SXSW 2021: Floral Horror ‘GAIA’ a Nightmarish Reckoning with Nature

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Alex van Dyk, Carel Nel, Gaia, Horror, Jaco Bouwer, Monique Rockman, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

Eco-horror is having a resurgence of late, as are psilocybin mushrooms as a visual language in film. Jaco Bouwer’s formidable woodland creeper Gaia fits snugly into a recent wave of psychedelic folk horror, a subgenre that binds Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth (a recent Sundance release that would make a pitch perfect double feature with Bouwer’s entry) and even Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Sparked by an increasing awareness of humanity’s abusive relationship with nature, eco-horror pits the survival of man and earth against one another and in the light of a global pandemic, those themes have never been as prescient. Read More

SXSW 2021: ALS Activism Documentary ‘NOT GOING QUIETLY’ a Devastating, Inspirational Call to Arms

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Ady Barkan, Documentaries, Nicholas Bruckman, Not Going Quietly, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

Hope is a hammer, Ady Barkan attempts to say. His tongue, lungs, and the rest of his body devastated by ALS (an incurable degenerative disease that paralyzes and eventually kills its victims), Ady tries again and again but just can’t get the words out to the audience of thousands gathered to hear the American healthcare activist speak. This moment, one of many heartbreaking scenes in Nicholas Bruckman’s not-so-quietly devastating documentary Not Going Quietly, perhaps best encapsulates the ironic paradox of Ady’s emergent and often viral voice: the more his body fails him, the less he is physically able to move and speak, the more he has to say and the more people gather to listen to him. Read More

SXSW 2021: Racial Dystopia Roosts in Brazilian Social Thriller ‘EXECUTIVE ORDER’

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Adriana Esteves, Executive Order, Lázaro Ramos, lfred Enouch, Seu Jorge, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

In present-ish day Brazil, the fight for reparations for citizens of African descent reaches a violent impasse. Lawyer Antônio (Alfred Enouch) wants his government to impose equitable laws to atone for the nation’s past sins, chief amongst them slavery, but the fascistic government opts instead to offer a one-way ticket way “back to Africa” as a kind of mocking fuck you to the idea of reparations. Confusion, outrage, and mockery follows but the high-melanized (the term “black” has fallen out of politically-correct vogue) population have no idea how bad things will soon get when the government imposes an executive order that will instead force any citizen with a hint of melanin out of Brazil and back to Africa. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘THE END OF US’ a Pandemic Breakup Movie With Just Enough Heart

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Ali Vingiano, Ben Coleman, Henry Loevner, Steve Kanter, SXSW, SXSW 2021, The End Of Us Leave a comment

Timing is a fickle thing and often means a world of difference. Timing divides those who murder the stock market and those that are steamrolled by it. It’s the difference between perfectly scrambled eggs and inedible burnt yellow mush. And in the case of recently broken-up Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano), bad timing means that you have to quarantine with your ex during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in The End of Us. Read More

Humanist Spy Thriller ‘THE COURIER’ Is On a Mission to Move You

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Abel Korzeniowski, Angus Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic Cooke, Ironbark, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Reviews, The Courier, Tom O'Connor 1 Comment

I’m calling an early shot here: if there’s one movie out of Sundance 2020 that stands a decent shot at a Best Picture nomination almost a year from now, it’s very likely The Courier (formerly titled Ironbark). The Cold War espionage thriller takes a classical approach to its telling, leaning into familiar biopic/historical nonfiction tropes, while viewing events through an extremely humanistic lens. Read More