If you're an established filmmaker with the right connections, and you write a script about a serious topic – motherhood, racism, cultural integration – you probably won't be able to get it made into a movie. If you throw in a ghost or a demon, you might have better luck selling the project. If you're exceptionally lucky, the movie actually gets finished, perhaps you'll win some awards at a festival, and get picked up by a hip distributor. The one everybody is gunning for is A24, since they actually give movies decent theatrical releases. Further down the list are IFC Midnight or Dark Sky, who will give you some buzz on the horror press circuit before a VOD release. Way further down that same list are the streamers: Netflix, Amazon, and the like who will give your movie minimal promotion before it quickly gets buried in the ever-expanding deluge of "content." This can happen even to movies that got great reviews, like Nikyatu Jusu's "Nanny." It earned some positive notices and then came and went late last year. I mean, come on, Amazon, this is a Blumhouse movie! It could've supported more than an awards season qualifying New York/LA run. Luckily, there are folks like me who will catch up with it a year after the fact.
"Nanny" follows Aisha, a young mother who has recently immigrated from Senegal to Manhattan. She has found work as a nanny for Rose, the little daughter of rich white couple, Adam and Amy. Aisha is saving to bring her own son, Lamine, to America with her. While she quickly bonds with Rose, and finds a charming and handsome boyfriend named Bishop, she still struggles. She works long hours, Amy has a bad habit of not paying her on time, and she never gets to talk to Lamine. Moreover, she starts to have disturbing nightmares and visions of trickster figures from African mythology, Anansi and Mami Wata. Is she loosing her mind, the way Bishop's mother did, or is she dealing with otherworldly forces, like Bishop's priestess grandmother believes?
This is just one of the themes that “Nanny” deals with. The father of Aisha's child was an older man who seduced her when she was a teenager, before running off. She has fears, at first, that Bishop will treat her similarly. This addresses issues of womanhood, especially among marginalized communities like immigrants from poor countries. Bishops' mother had schizophrenia, eventually taking her own life, which produced shame and grief among her son and mother. Considering Aisha's own slide into hallucinations and violent behavior, this brings up the concept of mental health in the same community. All of Adam's photography seems to focus on black people in other countries suffering, pointing towards the commodification of black pain in order to make upper-class white folks feel better about themselves. That the threats in the story are figures from African folklore also suggests tradition, repressed histories rising up in a gentrified world, the way Aisha eventually stands up to her unappreciative employers. There's a lot going on here.
It's clear that Jusu isn't just sneaking horror elements into her drama script to make it more marketable. “Nanny” does actually try and creep the viewer out, even if it takes its sweet time getting there. Her next project is lined up with Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions, so presumably she actually is passionate about the genre. “Nanny” is further supported by a strong cast, wit Anna Diop being quite impressive in the lead role. The film's utilization of folklore definitely appeal to me as well. Not enough horror movies out there about Anansi the Spider! It falls far short of the scare factor of the likes of “Hereditary” or “The Babadook,” but “Nanny” is a solid entry in the so-called “elevated” subgenre of horror. I wonder if the similarly themed "Good Madame" is this solid? [7/10]
Few people had a talent with high-concept premises like Larry Cohen did. Practically every project he ever wrote or direct had a perfectly catchy concept. “A string of mass murderers attribute their crimes to God!” “A bird monster nests in the Chrysler building!” “A sniper holds a man hostage in a phone booth!” All classic, pithy premises. Cohen was especially proud of his ability to subvert images you associate with safety, comfort, and innocence into figures of fear. He did it with babies, desserts, and cops. He would do a similar switch-a-roo with his underseen 1990 thriller, “The Ambulance.”
Comic book artist Josh is walking to his job at Marvel in new York City, when he encounters a pretty woman named Cheryl. He's immediately smitten with her and attempts to ask her out. She kindly turns him down before suddenly passing out. Turns out she's diabetic. A mysterious ambulance pulls up, puts Cheryl on a stretcher, and slides her into the back. Afterwards, Josh is unable to locate what hospital she's been taken too. While contacting Cheryl's also diabetic roommate, she is abducted by the same predatory ambulance. It then becomes clear that Josh has stumbled upon a conspiracy. He goes to the police, who dismiss him as crazy at first. Yet it soon becomes clear that there is a legitimate abduction ring revolving around this ambulance and Josh has just put himself in their target.
When you have such quirky characters, played by such a game cast, spitting such amusing dialogue, “The Ambulance” is pretty much guaranteed to be high entertaining. Yet Cohen never met a high concept he couldn't make even more eye-catching. “The Ambulance's” script is constantly seeking to top itself, with another twist or unlikely turn of events. Josh gets beaten up in a junkyard, which escalates to a fist fight with the untrustworthy ambulance attendants. An exciting chase scene through the sewers of the city is soon topped when Josh goes flying out of the ambulance, while strapped to a stretcher. The titular vehicle plows through a disco, in probably the film's most delightfully hectic motion picture. Cohen was always right in step with the demands of his audience. Just when “The Ambulance” seems like it's settling in, one more action sequence and thrill ride is tossed our way. This is a movie utterly committed to topping itself and keeping the audience smiling.
By the way, “The Ambulance” features the first theatrically released acting credit of Stan Lee, essentially playing himself as “Marvel Comics Editor.” Lee, with his penchant for over-sized word balloons, fits right in with Cohen's stylized world. I'm sure comic fans got a kick out of seeing Marvel superheroes featured so prominently in several shots. Or to hear Jughead and Veronica mentioned in dialogue. Not that many comic fans probably saw “The Ambulance” in 1990. The movie was barely released into theaters before being dumped onto video. The movie has never gotten much attention, even after being unearthed on Blu-Ray. This perhaps is the best way to watch a movie like “The Ambulance,” an absolutely delight that prospers from an audience going in knowing nothing and with few expectations. These have always been the condition Cohen and his team have happily blown pass. A blast from start to finish, “The Ambulance” is exactly the kind of funny, smart, and relentlessly entertaining genre hybrid that Cohen did best. [9/10]
Most “Black Mirror” episodes are about how technology will ruin our lives but “San Junipero” takes an unusually optimistic approach. Beginning in 1987, the episode begins with a shy young woman named Yorkie stepping into a night club in the city of San Junipero. She soon meets an out-going woman named Kelly and instantly forms a bond with her. The two meet again a week later and begin a sexual relationship, Yorkie's first ever. Afterwards, she has trouble finding Kelly again and is told to look for her “in another time.” Yorkie travels ahead through the decades and finds her friend in 2002. This is when it is revealed that San Junipero is a simulated reality, where the sick and dying can download their minds and live forever. The digital avatars Yorkie and Kelly use in San Junipero does not tell the whole story about their lives.
All throughout “San Junipero,” I was admittedly waiting for the sting in the scorpion's tail. “Black Mirror” is, after all, a series about the consequences technology has on our lives. And those are usually negative. Yet “San Junipero” presents a digital afterlife, where the elderly can upload their consciousness to the cloud and be young for eternity. You'd expect “Black Mirror” to really get into the downsides of such a scenario: Wouldn't this mean a corporation more-or-less owns someone's soul? What happens if there's an outage or a server somewhere goes down? Moreover, what are the implications on a mortal person's sanity in the idea of existing forever in a simulated reality? This is only touched upon briefly, as Yorkie visits a night club where those who have lost touch with their humanity have rough, S&M sex. I'll admit, I would've liked to have seen those ideas explored a lot more.
Probably the most interesting about “San Junipero” is a easily missed line about “nostalgia therapy.” As soon as the episodes began, we see a poster for “The Lost Boys.” The club is full of vintage arcade machines. Every song on the soundtrack is immediately recognizable. At first, it struck me as pretty overdone, the episode really working overtime to make sure we understand we're in the late eighties. But, as more details about “San Junipero's” setting is revealed, it's clear that all of this is very deliberate. As the episode visits other time periods, they are similarly on-the-nose in their nostalgic details. I think the idea of a someone immersing themselves in the surface details of their past, to the exclusion of actual human connections, is a good – and dispiriting – depiction of our current relationship with nostalgia in the internet era. Of course, nostalgia therapy is an actual treatment for dementia but I have no doubt this was an intentional move on “Black Mirror's” behalf. “San Junipero” is a sweet, well-realized hour though I did find myself in the odd position of wanting “Black Mirror” to be more pessimistic for once. [7/10]
When reviewing the 1992 version of “The Lawnmower Man” earlier this season, I pointed out how it had almost nothing to do with the Stephen King story. Yet Brett Leonard's cyberpunk oddity wasn't the first time someone adapted the “Night Shift” tale. As part of his Dollar Baby agreement – where student filmmakers are allowed to adapt his stories for one dollar – someone named James Gonis made a twelve minute film of “The Lawnmower Man.” It is a faithful adaptation of the story, centering on a man named Harold Parkette. Parkette is in need of someone to mow his grass, after an accident with the neighbor's cat recently. He calls a strange new service and a rotund fellow in overalls soon arrives at the house. He's soon greeted with a bizarre sight: The man, in the nude, crawling behind the self-driving mower and eating the grass clippings. Harold doesn't react well and he ends up under the mower too.
King's “Lawnmower Man” is probably among his strangest stories, a literary non-sequitur that was probably cooked up during a cocaine binge. The story is basically a joke, I think, with its oddball premise and punchline like final moment. By transferring the story accurately to the screen, Conis makes it clear how ridiculous “The Lawnmower Man” is. The image of a hairy, man-boobed hayseed crawling around in the nude, green slime leaking from his mouth, as he talks about Circe and Pan is too bizarre to be anything but comical. The short continues in this direction by making Harold a blatantly cartoonish character and having the entire story play out with an air of absurdity. The film feels more like a freaky sitcom from some alternate universe than a proper horror story.
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