Halloween 2026: October 3rd

 

The Dam (2022)
Al-Sadd 

 

The recent history of Sudan has been defined by civil wars, massacres, and government coups. The human drive to tell and record stories survives no matter the social circumstances. Which is my pretentious, hopefully not-too-condescending way of saying that Sudan has, over the decades, had active film-going and making communities. The country's history of “mobile theaters” playing out of trucks or how drive-in cinemas became popular again during the lock-down is extremely interesting to me. However, I've noted before that countries with an excess of real life horror don't often have time for horror movies. However, a title of note did pop up recently. “The Dam” was directed by Ali Cherri, a Lebanese filmmaker based in Paris, but the film was made entirely within Sudan and with a Sudanese cast. I don't think “The Dam” has gotten official distribution in the States yet and finding a subtitled copy took some digging. But let's see how this goes.

In a desert region of North Sudan, workers toil in the shadows of the Merowe Dam. From the waters of the Nile, they sculpt bricks. Among them is Maher, a usually quiet man. During his off-hours, he walks into the desert and works on a personal project. He has dreams and visions, of a grumbling voice rising out from the ground. He has a wound on his lower back, that seems to be growing worst. Despite his failing health, he continues to sculpt a mysterious figure out of mud, He is compelled to continue his mission, which seems tied to the weeping scar in his skin. All the while, rising social unrest plays out in the background. Signs of looming violence and economic disaster are never far beyond any of the workers' minds. 

If the above plot synopsis didn't make it apparent, “The Dam” is a film that is not heavy on narrative. It is a vague story, told largely through imagery. (Which helps, since the subtitles I found for the film were not always the clearest.) The story often feels like a dream, moving through mundane and uncanny events in a slow and meditative fashion. There's not much of a soundtrack, scenes more often scored to natural sounds or songs from the radio. The sound design, however, is quite good. The dream sequences, of Maher wandering into the jungle and hearing strange, gurgling calls from underground feature some truly eerie sound work. While the scenes of the protagonist contemplating nature or wandering from one place to another feels like stereotypical art house stuff, “The Dam” does capture a properly hypnotizing feeling. I felt drawn into the actions of the protagonist, despite the lack of clarity about what he's doing or what is happening to him exactly. 

That's probably the main reason “The Dam” couldn't compel me more. It's a film that never outright says what it is doing. The mystery of what Maher is building is never exactly answered. Is the force pushing him to make this mud sculpture supernatural or spiritual in nature? Does it exist entirely within his own head? There is evidently some sort of connection between what he's building and the growing wound on his skin. It also feeds into the building of the dam, with rising and falling water levels throughout the village. However, if you're expecting any sort of clarification or climax to these threads, “The Dam” isn't the movie for you. There is violence and conflict eventually, though on a fairly low-key level, but the tone remains vague all throughout. “The Dam” is operating more as an allegory, meaning filtered through symbols and suggestion, but what exactly it is allegorical of escapes me some. 

It clearly has something to do with the political situation in Sudan. I definitely do not know enough about that to make any sort of interpretation. Much less attempt to decipher the particular political leanings of the filmmaker, the story they are telling, and how it relates to any atrocities one army or another may be performing at this moment. I suspect the filmmakers were reluctant to pick a clear side over another. We hear news reports of civil unrest and military action from radios in the background. The lack of money, resources, and food the workers must endure is emphasized. There's a moment where Maher glares in anger at a border guard holding a machine gun. All of this certainly paints a picture of an impoverished society, with violent change and just plain violence pushing in on them. The film casts locals from the community to essentially play versions of themselves, the characters and actors sharing names. The dam in the background is very real and the performers were largely actual brick-makers. It all suggests that “The Dam” is about capturing life among the people in this place, at this moment, and seems to do an interesting job of documenting that. 

As for “The Dam” being the first horror movie made in Sudan, that's a debatable statement. A sequence where Maher walks through a darkened area, the underground voice beckoning to him, is eerie. The reoccurring presence of a wild dog or coyote has a somewhat threatening aura to it. I guess the weird scar on his back suggests a layer of body horror? I don't think tension, suspense, fear, or repulsion were any of the intended emotions by the filmmakers though. “Magical realism” is probably a better classification for this one, maybe “Dark fantasy.” It's still probably the closest thing to a horror movie Sudan has produced yet though. And it's an interesting, if very vague motion picture. I liked it enough to be interested in whatever Ali Cherri does next and hopeful that this gets a physical release of some sort eventually. [6/10]

 

Legend of the Werewolf (1975)

As fright films became more explicit and modern in the seventies, vampires in evening wear and fog-shrouded castles started to feel a lot more antiquated. This was a problem for Hammer Productions, who still specialized in the gothic stuff. They would put more flesh and blood in their films, try out newer tales of terror, and eventually drop Dracula into modern day London. It was all for naught and the studio basically didn't exist by the end of the decade. Yet as Hammer was dying, a start-up would appear making the exact same sort of movies. Tyburn Productions was founded by Kevin Francis as a deliberate attempt to revive the spirit of Hammer horror. He recruited several alums of the studio – most prominently his dad, Freddie Francis – to help on this mission. It didn't work out. Tyburn ceased productions for theaters after three tries. While I wasn't much impressed with the previous Tyburn joint I watched, I decided to give 1975's “Legend of the Werewolf” a try.

Hammer never made a sequel to “Curse of the Werewolf” but this one, from the title on down, is so derivative of it as to operate as an unofficial follow-up. Like that film's source novel, "Legend" is set in 1800s France. Its protagonist is also cursed with lycanthropy by the circumstances of his birth. A newly born infant has his family killed by wolves. The canines adopted the baby, instead of eating it. Eight years later, he's living in the woods as a wild child. That's when a traveling side show captures him to be an attraction. In time, he grows into a strapping young lad named Etoile. The full moon prompts him to change into a werewolf, ripping one of the worker's throat out. He flees into the city and finds work in a zoo, before falling in love with a prostitute named Christine. When jealousy over her clients rises up, he changes into a beast again and begins a killing spree. A pathologist named Professor Cataflanque is soon on the case.

Part of what made “Curse of the Werewolf” one of Hammer's best films, or at least my personal favorite, was how keenly human its characters were. Leon was a sympathetic victim of fate but the werewolf remained scary. The romantic subplot was passionate and the inevitability of what his father figure must do was tragic. “Legend of the Werewolf” is trying to replicate this but the balance is off. Etoile's devotion to Christine reads less as sweet than as pathetic. He's a naive man-child in love with a prostitute who he just met and who obviously can't return his feelings. He's clingy, overly protective, and expresses his feelings through crying or murderous werewolf attacks. A lack of likable characters is a big problem for the film. The sideshow crew that take the boy in are cynical, money-obsessed, and hostile. The unnamed zoo keeper that takes him is a sleazy crook, who feels bad about abusing his animals but does it anyway. The madam of the brothel is an alcoholic who is all-business, all the time. 

The result is a prickly feeling film, with little to draw the viewer in. Peter Cushing is the one non-repelling character in the film, as the eccentric detective on the case. Watching Cushing talk his way through various leads and explore clues is always charming. However, the resolution tot he mystery is a moot point. We, the viewer, know who the werewolf is, where he's hiding, and why he's killing. That creates a tension-free narrative. Once Christine rejects Etoile, he becomes a strangely non-active protagonist. He spends the rest of the movie moping in the sewers, unable to stop his murderous hunger. His arc evolves no further past this point. This goes hand-in-hand with a strangely limited lack of scope. For most of the movie, it seems the story rotates through three or four locations: The zoo, the whore house, the coroner's office and the sewer. The script passing back and forth between this handful of places makes the film feel short of budget, ideas, and a vision to implement them.

“Legend of the Werewolf” as a pale imitation of the earlier film is evident in another factor. When the protagonist transforms, he has a wreath of white and grey hair around his face, with a furrowed brow, and a torn open silk shirt. He looks a lot like Oliver Reed in “Curse of the Werewolf,” in other words. Though he's been assigned to remake one of his classic films, you can still see Freddie Francis trying to get something out of this. The film throws in a few creative visuals. The werewolf attacks are often preceded by red-tinted point-of-view shots from the beast. The focus is often on those bloody fangs, as they pull away from the neck of their victim. Another cool shot sees a body floating backwards through the waters of the sewer. A lot of these moments are framed from eccentric angles, askew or upside down. It's the most playful thing about a film that is mostly unlikable and warmed-over.

I like the bits where Cushing's relaxed attitude towards looking at dead bodies grosses out the people around him. Roy Castle has a great bit part as the squeamish photographer Cushing ropes into his plan. Those eccentricities in the cast represents the best parts of the film. Such as Marjorie Yates as the madam, a thoroughly nasty person who nevertheless gets a funny line or two. “Legend of the Werewolf” primarily made me think of two things. Ya know how Hammer's first “The Mummy” is a classic and most of the sequels they made to it feel lifeless and cheesy in comparison? If you pretend “Legend” is a sequel to “Curse,” the exact impression it gives. Secondly, after watching Tyburn's “The Ghoul” and also finding it to be bereft of likable humans, an image of why the company failed emerges. The company tried to adapt the more down-beat attitude horror took in the seventies and combine it with classic Hammer features, forgetting to make the former fully-formed and developed and the latter anything but warmed-over leftovers. [5/10]

 

 

The Hidden Room: Dangerous Dreams
 

You probably thought I was done talking about the Lifetime Channel, didn't you? Last time the cable station came up, it was during a transitional period in its identity. By 1991, the Television for Women premise had been established. The network had already gotten attention for its string of ripped-from-the-headlines TV movies, detailing the traumatic backstories of real women, usually played by slightly washed-up actresses. Again, this probably seemed like an odd environment to launched a supernatural themed anthology network. However, in the past, I've discussed how cable channels moving into original programming have a weird habit of trying to create their own anthologies. I guess “It's “The Twilight Zone” but about the entertainment industry/rock music/sad women!” is an easily understood pitch. Thus, “The Hidden Room” debuted in the early nineties, attempting to combine Lifetime's lady-centric melodramas with a spookier edge. While the series ran for two seasons, it's obscure enough today that online uploads of episodes are rare. The only one I can currently find is “Dangerous Dreams,” the season two premiere. 

Martha and Victor have recently married, following the death of his previous wife. This is a problem for Victor's teenage daughter, Alice, who resents the presence of another woman in the role formally occupied by her late mom. Martha isn't crazy about the kid either, as her prickliness often causes fights between her and her new husband. Martha is also beginning to have unsettling nightmares, that seem to foretell bad things happening in the home. Such as a sweater that belonged to Alice's mom being found sliced up, causing another argument. Or the garage of the house catching on fire. It gets bad enough that Martha decides to spend a night with a friend of her's. This is when the dreams take their most distressing turn yet...

Despite the extreme obscurity it's been cast into, “The Hidden Room” did manage to wrangle up a decent selection of recognizable names. Helen Mirren and Catherine O'Hara did episodes, for two examples. “Dangerous Dreams” stars more cult-friendly faces. Amanda Donahue plays Martha, a young Sarah Polley makes her second appearance this season as Alice, and – bringing it back to “Forever Knight” for me again – Geraint Wyn Davies appears as Victor. Unfortunately, a decent cast cannot elevate fairly maudlin material. “Dangerous Dreams” hits all the notes you expect from a story of a child adjusting to a new stepparent. The circumstances around the arguments are fairly contrived. A very ugly slashed up shirt seems petty as can be, while the garage almost blowing up seems a lot more serious than it's treated as. It all bends towards a narrative twist that becomes more easily predicted as the half-hour goes on. 

The reputation of Lifetime original programming is certainly maintained here. The world of “The Hidden Room” seems to be one filled with aggressive, sexually menacing, cartoonish street gangs. At least Wyn Davis is not a one-note jerk and him and Donahue, mostly underutilized, share some okay romantic chemistry. It's still hard to escape the chintzy quality at work here. The score is composed of either “Incredible Hulk”-sounding sad piano melodies or ominous bongo pattering, going a long way towards making this seem like the forgettable basic cable dross it was. Season one of “The Hidden Room' had a host, an old woman in the titular room blabbering “Hitchhiker”-style philoso-dreck, but she was removed in season two. As a fan of that kind of bullshit, I would've liked to have seen that but I get the impression that “The Hidden Room” didn't offer much otherwise. [5/10]

 

Friday the 13th: The Series: Pipe Dream

Here's another “Friday the 13th” where it feels like they cobbled together several different ideas for an episode. The episode is called “Pipe Dream” because the cursed antique is an ornate, very funny looking tobacco pipe with a devil's face carved into the bowl. When smoked, it produces an orange mist that envelopes the nearest person, causing their skin to crack and bubble before making them dissolve into nothing. This is largely incidental to the actual premise, which takes place at a high-tech weapon design firm. The pipe's first victim is a newbie to the company who has blue prints for a laser-guided, powerful rifle. Ray, unaware of the pipe's murderous abilities, accidentally kills the kid after seeing the blue prints, which he then takes and sells as his own. A tense week follows, with pressure on from the boss, he tries to pitch the rifle to a new contractor. Oh yeah, Ray is also Ryan's estranged dad. Father and son's tense relationship, Ryan invited back into Ray's life because he's also marrying his long-time girlfriend, is actually what drives the dramatic intent of the episode. 

All of these ideas conflict for space within the episode. This is frustrating, as even the screenwriter clearly realized the main focus should be on Ryan and his dad's hang-ups. Michael Constantine, a character actor with a long career who I most recognize as the bewitcher in “Thinner,” plays Ray as a thorny guy. He's so focused on achieving his own idea of success that he's alienated his son. It's a surprisingly frank depiction of an asshole dad unwilling to accept his son's differing path. While you would expect this to lead towards a resolution between the two, where Ryan does finally earn his dad's respect and understanding... That's not what happens. “Pipe Dream” goes for a tragic ending instead and Ryan's trauma is left unresolved, lingering and eating at him. Which is a far more realistic and sad ending. Constantine still manages to make Ray somewhat sympathetic, hard-headed but also with an air desperation around him. He strikes me as a guy who has been struggling to survive all his life and, finally, has gotten a chance to get ahead, if only people would perfectly obey him. A common fault among dads, I've observed. 

This is also, perhaps, a compelling depiction of the nature of evil too. Ray isn't a bad guy. He doesn't mean to commit murder in the beginning, lighting the big goofy devil pipe unaware of what it'll do. At the same time, he still chooses to steal a design that wasn't made by him. I guess the Satanic appearance of the pipe is the obvious indicator of the Deal with the Devil set-up “Friday the 13th: The Series” usually utilizes. Financial windfall is given but only in return for rotting away at the soul. Ray is an average guy who compromises his own ethics to receive an easy answer. That's how good people become shitty ones, making choices that are selfish when proper pressure in their lives is put on them. While the ending is melodramatic in how downbeat it is, the latest in a line of sour endings for the show, it does follow this thread. Ryan's Dad takes the classic Faustian bargain but, unlike most of this show's weekly villain, he does realize the weight of his actions. And, like Faust, it cost him everything.

I say Ray is likable despite being a schmuck. That he also works for weapon manufacturers is another factor that pushes him into the asshole zone. Is this, perhaps, an anti-capitalistic message? Had Ray's soul already been sold when he chose to make a gun for a company that sells ways to kill people? When placed atop the emotionally-fraught premise of Ryan and his dad being at odds, this idea doesn't have the room to develop. I did like the sequence where Jack is knocked unconscious and placed behind a target at the firing range. That was decently suspenseful. I also can't undersell how silly that pipe looks. It's method of execution is also very silly, featuring some of the show's trademark dodgy special effects. Despite the flaws, I do think episode features some strong acting from John D. LeMay, who has been getting a lot of chances to cry lately. [7/10]

Halloween 2026: September 19th

 

Faces of Death (2026)
 

How do you remake "Faces of Death," not exactly a narrative film that mostly drew attention for including – or claiming to include, anyway – real footage of people dying? It's not like a major studio was going to stitch together genuine autopsy and car wreck footage and drop that shit in AMCs nationwide. Secondly, why would you want to? Does the title have much name recognition among the general public, outside the realm of hardcore horror buffs? These are the debates I recall with my MovieManiacs.net forum bros all the way back in 2006, when it was announced that Universal's genre label Rogue Pictures would be remaking "Faces of Death." This was during the 2000's remake trend, when seemingly every cult classic of any note was getting a greenlight for a shiny redo. So "Faces," of all titles, was an unlikely pick but truly no more obscure than "The House on Sorority Row" or "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." J.T. Petty was attached, a filmmaker who had previously made a mockumentary about snuff films, leading to speculation that his "Faces of Death" would follow a similar route. I vaguely recall some chatter about turning Dr. Gröss into a proper horror villain. Obviously, this iteration didn't get beyond the embryonic stage. Petty made a few more movies but seems to have shifted his focus to writing for video games these days. Rogue Pictures faced death in 2018. 

In the intervening twenty years, cell phones with HD cameras, inescapable social media, and a world more divided than ever has made real footage of death and destruction distressingly accessible. Clearly, in such a landscape, the idea of a new "Faces of Death" remained intriguing. This is presumably why Legendary acquired the rights in 2021, Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei attached to write and direct. Considering their film "Cam" had some real insight into life in the digital age, I was very curious about what form this project might take. Filmed in 2023, Goldhaber and Mazzei's "Faces of Death" spent three years trying to find distribution before IFC and Shudder actually did put it in AMCs nationwide this past April. It didn't make a lot of money but won positive reviews from the horror press, so time for me to catch up.

Margot is an adrift twenty-something working as a content moderator at Kino, a short-form video focused app. When an upload is reported, she's the one who has to make the choice of whether it contains objectionable material. She has chosen this difficult job as a way to cope with her own internet-related trauma: While performing a viral dance on some tracks, her sister was killed by an oncoming train. The clip leaked online and Margot became forever known as “Train Girl.” At work, she is presented with a clip depicting a bound person being decapitated by automated mannequins. She assumes it to be fake but the imagery sticks with her. Similar uploads soon appear, each depicting a person being violently killed by mechanized mannequins while a droll voice-over describes what is happening. Margot becomes increasingly convinced that the uploads are real and, after some sleuthing and with help from her horror buff roommate, learns that these are recreations of moments from the infamous “Faces of Death.” She's right. The videos are the work of Arthur, an internet-obsessed serial killer who is capturing people and using them as props in his deadly remake. Margot investigates further, soon drawing the attention of Arthur himself. 

As much as tech company overlords hope to eventually replace all paycheck demanding employees with computational models, as of this moment, a human being is double-checking the online content reported by a third party. This means every time a gore video, child pornography, animal abuse, and every other horrible thing you can imagine is taken down off Youtube or TikTok, presumably at least two sets of flesh-and-blood eyeballs had to look at it first. Unsurprisingly, this is a profession with a high rate of turnover, most not willing to deal with the psychological scars of seeing the worst humanity has to offer for eight hours a day. Setting a story around a job such as this is a fascinating premise. Now corporations are essentially paying people to watch private little “Faces of Death” videos every day, all day. If you stretch this idea out further, it means that shocking and violent imagery has become ubiquitous on the modern internet. Every time we open our app of choice, we are all taking a chance of seeing something way worse than staged footage of monkey brains being eaten. 

Goldhaber and Mazzei touch on the side effects of this in interesting ways. At the beginning of the story, Margot is no longer phased by videos of people taking nasty falls or of a bear dragging away a possibly dead body. She dismisses the first real murder she observes as a clever hoax. When she wants to get the police involved, her boss informs her to hold back, to allow disturbing content (as long as it's “fake”) to proliferate for now, because it's good for the shareholders. Outrageous content drives eyeballs and that makes money. When trying to determine if what she is seeing is real, she posts the clips to Reddit, where one commenter declares them to likely be real and then says it's a “nice find.”  What the fuck has the world done to us, where watching real death and human degradation has become a tedious job to some and a fascinating hobby to others? 

The film has few concrete answers, which are probably impossible to find anyway. Margot's own life is a consequence of this modern age. Where we are all obsessed with watching, real tragedies are recorded and spread around endlessly, and we all face it with little sense of injustice or outrage. Watching your little sister get hit by a train sucks and being constantly reminded of this all the time must surely chip away at the soul. Margot's personal tragedy has been reduced to a meme. That viral penetration is what the film's villain hopes to create with his murder clips, to achieve infamy by turning his victims' dying moments into internet hits. One of the first people he abducts is a would-be social media star, a teenage girl whose life seems to revolve around her phone's lens. Eventually, all Margot can do is accept her infamy and do her best to live on. The powers that be – the cops, the corporate overseers, other people with the power to step in – aren't going to do anything about it. It's up to the individual. This is the world we live in and we're stuck with it, some of us doomed to hunger for that viral superstardom and others cursed by it. 

It's the most honest conclusion the filmmakers could probably come to, even if it causes their “Faces of Death” to brush up against the often regurgitated horror theme of resolving personal trauma. However, more interesting ideas are within the film and remain frustratingly unexplored. When Margot first sees the violent clips, she doesn't believe they are real. (Much as in the original “Faces of Death,” a movie that less honestly played with the layers of reality.) This is also something all of us must deal with. All of us most be critical and skeptical of everything we see online now, because any of it could be fake. If we doubt our own eyes, what even is reality? The film's murderer is a sociopath, who sees other people as nothing but a means to an end. He cynically decides to pattern his killing spree after a cult classic 1970s mondo movie because “people love remakes.” It'll draw more attention to his crimes and insure his name goes down in history. All of his victims, people with lives and dreams of their own the script reminds us, might as well be A.I. simulacrums to him. This is not unlike an ice-cold studio exec, reducing all artistic endeavor to “content” that must be deployed in a calculated, revenue-generating fashion. Then again, if you watch a video about Iranian children burning to death after their home is struck by a missile and then pause and wonder “Is this AI generated?,” that's a damning statement about how the modern, capitalized era has fundamentally altered the empathy centers in all of our brains. 

The film ultimately looses the thread of the malleability of the truth, what that means for us, and how it reflects on our relationship with all the images we see on a screen. This must still be a thrilling narrative. That it certainly is. Mazzei and Goldhaber's script is well organized. They patiently, naturally lays out minor details that will become important later. Rather than Chekov's Gun, we have Chekov's Opioid Antagonist and Chekov's Metal Spike. The film is extremely tight in its editing. A split-screen sequence devoted to showing how Arthur easily determines Margot's identity and location from what she's posted online is a chilling reflection of how fragile our personal safety is now. The killer's identity being revealed right away allows multiple sequences of drawn-out suspense, where we watch as an unaware victim is observed by the person who means them harm. Multiple well done sequences of sneaking around, hoping to avoid detection, follow. The script smartly keeps other information close to its chest, waiting to reveal some aspects of Arthur's operation until Margot herself is discovering it. An attack in a darkened suburban home or a race from the killer's lair, as he spies his fleeing victims through the scope of a rifle, are excellently assembled variations on the same slasher movie tropes and Hitchcockian thriller techniques we've seen a hundred times before. 

If 2026's “Faces of Death” falls short of the bigger ideas it plays with, I can't hold that against the filmmakers too much. Goldfaber and Mazzei are extremely smart and know what they are doing. They've made a suspenseful, absorbing, grim horror movie here. More than one person has declared it to be a better “Scream” reboot than the actual “Scream” reboots we've gotten. This is also true, the movie actually presenting interesting observations about our modern relationships with violent images, old and new, within the context of an exciting killer thriller. The killer even wears a white mask, though the red contact lens are a nice touch. Also much like a “Scream” movie, Darce Montgomery's serial killer explains the thesis behind his master plan, also explaining part of what the filmmakers mean too. Montgomery also probably goes a little too far in acting like a screeching weirdo. (He also calls someone a “cuck” which, along with his overall shouting demeanor, causes us to assume he's right-wing or incel adjacent.) There's at least one sick, gnarly reveal that made me gag. The film also includes probably the best depiction I've seen yet of someone falling down an internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with a bizarre mystery they've discovered. Margot is so absorbed with getting the truth out that she actually delays escaping from the villain's house sooner, much to the annoyance of the other person there. Which is a good way to signal to the viewer that we are suppose to find her commitment to solving this thing unreasonably. But sometimes you get caught up in stuff.  

As a homage to John Alan Schwartz' largely mercenary original, 2026's “Faces of Death” is probably better than it deserves. The infamous Gorgon Video VHS release gets prominently featured. The re-creations of the original's most infamous moments are arguably creepier and better made here than in the seventies film. Should've sneaked the original's corny-ass theme song in there somewhere though. I was waiting for that. I also was amused by the way the remake's marketing played on the sense of being forbidden, much like the original did. Good to know we can still kind of pull that marketing gimmick off in the modern day, even if it's largely ironic. On the short list of meta “remakes,” this is a pretty good one. The ultimate horror film about the terror of the social media age and the dehumanizing effects of living behind a screen has yet to be made but this one is well done. Legendary missed a chance to make a collectable hollowed out monkey head popcorn bucket though. [7/10]

Devil's Bride (1974)
Velnio nuotaka

I don't buy movies on discs as much as I used to or would like to. This is mostly out of a desire to save money and because physical space for my collections is at a premium these days. Another reason is that the boutique DVD scene moves faster than I can keep up with. It seems like every month, a new label devoted to unearthing hidden gems and exporting international obscurities has popped up. What the hell is Deaf Crocodile, aside from a semi-aquatic reptile with a hearing aid? It's a home media company launched in 2025 that mostly specializes in art house cinema and animation from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc countries. They are doing noble work but this is a corner of the film buff world I don't often explore. I first read about "Devil's Bride" years ago, a folk horror-tinged musical considered a classic in its home country of Lithuania. I assumed it was one of those titles so obscure in the English-speaking world that I would probably never get to see it. Instead, Deaf Crocodile gave it a loving restoration and it's currently streaming for free on Tubi. What a time to be alive. Let's delve into this more. 

Our story begins in Heaven, with a flock of angels singing the praises of a sleepy, bored God on a golden throne. Whenever he nods off, the angels sneak away to indulge in some earthly vices. One such ethereal being's not-so-virtuous activities are discovered and plucked out of Heaven. The being lands on Earth as the demon, Pinčiukas. He is soon found by elderly miller, Baltaragis, who ensnares the devil and makes him his slave. Baltaragis insists that the demon give him a beautiful wife and success and, in exchange, Pinčiukas will receive the couple's first-born daughter. This comes to pass but demons are a tricky sort and Baltaragis' wife perishes after birthing their daughter. The child grows up into Jurga, a stunning young woman. She quickly catches the eye of traveling laborer Girdvainus and the two fall in love. Determined to get his promised end of the bargain, Pinčiukas goes about manipulating and tricking the people in the village into breaking the young couple up. (While Baltaragis, full of regret, tries to set the demon up with his hefty, sexually veracious sister.) 

The first thing you'll notice about "Devil's Bride" is the stunning photography. The film is in vibrant color. The red interior lighting of the mill, Jurga's golden blonde hair, and the orange gowns of Pinčiukas' demonesses all pop right out. The most prominent colors are the natural greens and blues of the gorgeous Lithuanian countryside. Most of the film takes place in the rolling fields, lush forests, and quint lakes of the area. This setting is made further picturesque by wonderfully engineered props, like that striking windmill, God's golden throne, or a festooned window that shows up a few times. That last detail points towards what is the film's greatest strength, its sense of whimsy. Among Pinčiukas' various japes is summoning a black carriage out of a swamp, causing black-gloved hands to pop out of the water, or making coins rain from the sky. Those orange-clad familiars of his never contribute much to the story but are at the film's margins, boogieing down in the woods or throwing smoke bombs around. While the setting is ostensibly grounded in historical reality, lightly surreal touches like these created a dreamy tone of fantasy, play, and myth. "Devil's Bride" is, in other words, a fairy tale that fully transports its viewer to a place that looks a bit like our world but where much more fantastical things can happen. 

This is a fitting atmosphere for a musical to capture. Characters bursting into song and dance already establish this as an improbable story so it's good that the environment matches. The clear visual inspiration for "Devil's Bride," at least to my doofus American eyes with no prior familiarity with Lithuanian cinema, is "The Sound of Music." While these hills and field are certainly alive with melodies and harmonies, the soundtrack is far from Rogers and Hammerstein. "Devil's Bride" is instead powered by a consistently groovy rock guitar. There's a little bit of fuzz to the funky chords too, rooting the film's sound firmly to the early seventies psychedelic rock scene. "Devil's Bride" is a sung-through musical and I don't usually like those. It's hard for any song to stick out from the rest when the entire movie is singing. Individual melodies or lyrics tend to fade into a mishmash of indistinct notes. I guess "Devil's Bride" is not immune to this. I wasn't humming any bars or had any single songs stuck in my head after watching. However, the various movements are linked enough to the individual scenes, and the feelings they are summoning, to make it work for me. The music here is fun and bouncy, sung in a meaningful way, and always matches the emotional flow of the story. 

The most prominent of those emotions is longing. Every character in the film wants something. Pinčiukas gets kicked out of heaven because he wants to do something other than chanting "Holy holy" while circling Yahweh's throne. Once cast into the mortal realm, he wants his freedom and the girl. Jurga wants Girdvainus, Girdvainus wants Jurga. Her dad longs for his dead wife and for his daughter to be set free from the devilish deal he made. Even the side characters are characterized by unfulfilled desires. The town drunk dreams of unlimited money, with which he can buy endless booze and infinite women with, and he sells his soul to get it. The impish Pinčiukas is an object of desire too, for the miller's sister. (Who, in an amusing Winona Ryder/Jamiroquai situation, is randier than the diabolic beau she's set up with.) This makes every song in this singing/dancing musical an I Want song, connecting this archetypal story to a universal feeling. Everybody knows what it's like to want something they can't have, usually in matters of the heart. The solution the film finds brings its heavenly prologue down to Earth. Pinčiukas learns to love the one he's with and the united lovers find divine, ever-lasting bliss with each other. Ooh baby, do you know what that's worth? The final image is one of the funniest takes on a story's cast – even the demonic trickster – living happily ever after that I've seen recently, pulled off with the film's trademark casually surreal humor. 

"Devil's Bride" is probably not the best choice for an autumnal horror marathon. Yes, there are demons in the story but the main one is a guy with a silly beard in a funny hat, not horns and hooves. His acts of supernatural deception are more mischievous than startling. The eternal damnation that usually follows deals with devils doesn't come up much. (This is opposed to the source material, a 1945 novel by Kazys Boruta with a notably downbeat conclusion.) The element that most pushes the movie into the spooky set is a last act montage of "Witchfinder General" style binding and dunking. Otherwise, this one is heavy on the "folk" but not-so-much the horror. There's been a couple of horror movies made in Lithuania more recently, if you're trying to find a truly macabre example. However, I still had a great time with "Devil's Bride," a brief but delightful dose of music and the fantastique rich with  cultural specificity. [7/10]

In Search Of...: The Ogopogo Monster

 

Much like his “Star Trek” co-lead, Leonard Nimoy was a great Canadian export. This makes it only sensible that, while monologing gravely about preposterous bullshit on “In Search Of...,” that he would discuss what is commonly called Canada's Loch Ness Monster. That would be Ogopogo, a serpent-like creature said to inhabit British Columbia's Lake Okanagan. The “In Search Of...” crew did their due diligence and connect the legend to local tales from the Secwepmc and Syilx tribes. They talk of a spirit dwelling in the lake called Naitaka, who offerings are made to before crossing. The documentary crew also sought out a diver, who swims around the lake and finds nothing much but rocks and cold. Mostly, the half-hour is filled out with stories from people who have claimed to have seen the monster. Before “in Search Of...” presents what they call the most compelling piece of evidence of Ogopogo's existence: A blurry home movie of a dark, splotchy shape moving under the water. 

As I mentioned when talking about “In Search OF's” episode devoted to Bigfoot, it's hard to deny that the evidence presented here isn't that convincing. Nimoy's host segments note how sincere and credible these eye-witness accounts are. This is in the same episode where some local pranksters pushed three tires attached to a inflatable dingy out onto the lake to hoax the TV show. When you look at the playful smiles on the faces of the people telling their tales, or the hard-to-believe claim that a couple has seen the serpent “forty or fifty times,” I would say we can never dispel people's tendency to just make shit up for their own amusement. Nor the need of authors to sell their work, as the presenter of the above mentioned home movie also wrote a book on the topic of Ogopogo. 

A scientist at an aquarium  compares what he supposedly saw in Lake Okanagan to a shark's skin. That would be a more notable statement if even experts weren't susceptible to bias and their own imagination. The episode's most convincing statements come from the episode's resident skeptic, trotted at the end. He points out that the lake is too small to support a breeding population of such a large animal. That it was formed by glaciers millions of years ago, with no connection to larger bodies of water since then. Though he does concede that “sea monsters,” in the sense of a large animal of some sort living in the depths of the ocean, can be said to exist. 

This episode probably needed more of “In Search Of's” trademark creaky reenactments. The episode begins with a pretty good segment re-creating a young wake-boarder screaming upon encountering the supposed beast. Otherwise, we simply get footage of some Native Americans sitting around a camp fire. Which isn't to say this episode doesn't have some camp value. The extremely Canadian accents of the people interviewed made me chuckle, with one fellow even ending his sentence with “eh?” Or a reporter who describes coming to the lake and hearing about the monster with baffled amusement. “In Search Of...” was never great television but it was incredibly cozy. I am not immune to the charms of lo-fi blurping seventies electronic music playing over footage of Moray eels squirming around a tank. [7/10]

 

Friday the 13th: The Series: Tales of the Undead

 

I think we've previously seen Ryan reading some comic books in past episodes of "Friday the 13th: The Series." It would seem it is more of a passion for him than previously revealed, as "Tales of the Undead" begins with him visiting his local comic shop. The owner has recently come into possession of a rare original copy of "Tales of the Undead #1," the first appearance of a hugely popular superhero named Ferrus the Invincible. To increase its value, the book has also been signed by Jay Star, the character's creator. A kid in the shop desires the pricey book and breaks into the display case to steal it. Upon grabbing the comic, he turns into Ferrus and murders the shop owner. Ryan and Micki determine the comic is the latest cursed artifact they have to track down. They reach out to Jay Star, an elderly and ill man who was screwed out of his share of the profits his character has made for the publisher. Upon hearing about what happened, Star tracks down the thief and grabs the magic book himself. Now able to change into the indestructible robot hero he created, the old man sets out to take revenge on those that wronged him. The only way Ryan and Micki can stop the monster, they believe, is to track down the lost artwork for the scraped issue that killed Ferrus the Invincible off. 

"Tales of the Undead" is one of those "Friday the 13th" episodes that feature a notable name in the opening credits. Alfred Sole, director of "Alice, Sweet Alice," apparently worked on the story for this one. In some ways, the episode suggests that the writers were quite familiar with the world of comics. The set-up nods at the speculators' market around the hobby that was shortly to reach its peak around this time. "Jay Star" is acknowledged to be a pen name based on the author's possibly Jewish or Polish last name, another insider detail. Mostly, the story of an artist who created a long-running character that has made millions for its parent company. but has been left penniless in his old age is as familiar to the industry as heroes fighting villains. The struggles of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby to regain some control over the iconic heroes they created are well known. Even today, writers and artists whose work formed the basis for billion dollar franchises have to turn to GoFundMe to pay off medical bills or die from treatable conditions. 

In other ways, "Tales of the Undead" seems weirdly out-of-touch with the world of caped heroes it's riffing on. The focus on Star writing a story that kills Ferrus off, in the hopes that would at least spite those that betrayed him, is one thing. The idea that the company would not publish such a story, because they can't kill off their golden goose, is frankly implausible. When have comic companies ever been reluctant to kill off popular heroes that can easily be resurrected later? It's also a little weird that a superhero would debut in a comic called "Tales of the Undead." Maybe this was an example of a horror book following market trends and changing its focus after the debut of a popular character. That idea rubs counter to this being a first issue or published in the thirties though. Ferrus, a towering and hyper-violent robot guy, does seem more like a villain than a hero. I guess this could be an Incredible Hulk or Etrigan the Demon situation.  

That's just me being a nerd though. "Tales of the Undead" is a decent episode otherwise. Whenever someone transforms into Ferrus the Invincible, there are comic book panel style transitions. This is a clever workaround for what was surely the limited budget the episode had and also a neat homage to the media the episode is based on. A special guest star is brought into play Jay Star: Ray Walston, of "My Favorite Martian." This is the kind of part very much in need of an industry old-timer with plenty of age and experience on his face. Walston is good, showing a genuine anger at those that screwed him and even some creditable villainous cruelty as the episode goes on. The sequences with the killer robot are a bit awkward but mostly decently done. I wish the script was a little more consistent about how indestructible this supposedly invincible guy is though. He goes down fairly easily in two scenes. I also like the detail of Micki initially being dismissive of old comic books before getting hooked on them. The episode uses that turn-of-events as a prelude to more flirting cousins shenanigans, of course. Do you think Ferrus the Invincible ever crossed over with the Escapist or Condorman? [7/10]

 

OSCARS 2026: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

In 2012, Kier-La Janisse published "House of Psychotic Women." The style of film the book covered had existed since at least 1928's "The Wind" but Janisse's "autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films" helped put a label on a subgenre of melodrama and psychological horror that had previously been unclassified. It's a very hip style of film, as the influence of "Persona," "Possession," and "Fire Walk With Me" grows ever more apparent. Should Janisse ever publish an updated edition or sequel to her most discussed book, it would surely mention "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." The latest from filmmaker Mary Bronstein, it represents the taste makers at A24 tricking the Academy into watching something weird and abrasive. While it scored no other nominations, Rose Bryne does seem to be the popular second place choice for Best Actress as of this writing. 

Linda is having a hard time. Her daughter has a medical condition that necessitates a feeding tube. This means Linda must drive her to appointments every day and pour nutritional powder into a machine every night. If the kid can gain fifty pounds, the tube can be removed but Linda's child is a very picky eater. Her husband is an officer in the Navy and currently at sea. Upon returning home one day, she discovers a leak in the ceiling... Which quickly turns into a downpour, a massive hole erupting through the house. Linda and her kid move into a sketchy hotel while the repairs drag on. All the while, she continues to go to her day job: Therapist to women in crisis and horny teenage boys. Her own therapist seems increasingly antagonistic to her. Unable to sleep, Linda engages in riskier behavior. Such as drinking, buying drugs, sneaking into her old home, leaving her daughter unattended for long stretches of time. As the endless stresses pile up, the line between dreams, nightmares, visions, and reality blur.

After checking into the hotel they'll be spending the rest of the movie in, Linda is awoken by her daughter's feeding tube machine beeping in the middle of the night. This is opposed to the regular beeping the machine makes when it's working correctly. Whenever she ventures out of the hotel room at night and leaves her daughter behind, she carries a baby monitor with her so she can still hear the beeping. That low level of worry, of frustration, of annoyance, is always present. “If I Had Legs” is basically a cinematic panic attack, which is accomplished by adding ever more disturbances and concerns onto its heroine's head. She can't sit in her car outside the clinic without a man tapping on her window, telling her she can't park here. She can't get a bottle of wine because it's past 2AM. When she arrives early to buy the same wine, she is told she needs her I.D. Her daughter's voice, almost always petulant and needy and demanding, is usually heard crying off-screen as well. Her patients bother her at work and at home. It's never ending for Linda. She has no peace, no quiet. The explosive flood of water into her home in the opening act is not a climax of her worries overflowing. It's the beginning of a chain reaction of bothers that do not cease. 

It is, in other words, the life of a mother. The hole that burst through Linda's ceiling in the first act is an image the movie returns to repeatedly. The opening is yonic in appearance but also recalls both a gaping wound. Not unlike the hole in her daughter's stomach. Throughout her nightmares, the opening begins to resembles both a circle and an ovum about to be fertilized. And if you're standing in the middle of a circle, what is it besides a prison? During a meeting with her daughter's doctor, Linda goes on a largely incoherent rant about how everything is the mother's fault. She sees footage on a TV of a woman eating a baby in a horror movie. Her most desperate patient ends up abandoning her screaming infant child at Linda's office. When she contacts the child's father, he berates her. Being a mom doesn't only mean constantly being needed and being relied upon, it also means that any time something goes wrong, you are to blame.

It's not as if the men in her life are any help at all. Her husband – played by a special guest star that made me point at the screen like in the Leo DiCaprio meme – is rarely anything more than a chastising voice on the phone. In one pointed moment, he's at a baseball game while on the phone with her. He gets a break. Her perpetually annoyed therapist is played by Conan O'Brien, his ability to translate bemusement with only a look finding an extremely suitable use here. She tries to enter his office during an emergency and he repeatedly tells her to leave, fighting over the gap in the door like the tips of their shoes are sabers. Finally, once he's had enough, he simply says this isn't working and gets up and leave. When you're a man, you can do that. The father of the abandoned child demands Linda drop everything and bring his baby to him, because he's busy right now. Guys can leave whenever they want but motherhood is forever. 

In the beginning, Linda being a therapist is a sick joke of sorts. She has all these problems in her life pushing her to the absolute edge... And her job is to listen to other people bitch about their issues. What makes her job even more humiliating is that she does genuinely care about her patients. Caroline is the woman who, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, drops her kid at Linda's office. She is worried about Caroline, trying to contact her, genuinely hoping to help her. Much the same way she cares about her daughter – always off-screen, only her hands or feet seen – despite being forever stressed about her. Being a therapist is a commitment to care about your patient. The same way being a mother is a commitment to care about your child. It's a relief to someone else but a burden to you, no matter how sincere you are. 

All of which is to say that “If I Had Legs I'd Kick You” is an utterly nightmarish cinematic experience. Christopher Messina's cinematography is excellent at making mundane spaces, like the hallway of Linda's office or a beach at night, look uncanny. At a certain point, I began to wonder how much of what Linda was experiencing was a nightmare or her increasingly strange waking reality. The film does not give us the catharsis of confirming one or another. This is a another way it makes us feel trapped in this hell world with its protagonist. Rose Bryne is excellent at conveying how Linda is always only barely pushing back the tide of emotions overwhelming her at all times. Honestly, as someone who does regularly deal with actual panic attacks, I found the film to hit a little too close to home. The most grotesque and unsettling scenes – an escalation of minor horrors involving a pet hamster, that opening deluge, the tidal finale – had me straining the muscles in my jaw from grimacing so hard. 

I would sum the picture up as for the folks who thought “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was too cuddly and light-hearted. Though it features no ghosts or ghouls or hatchet murders – though a little bit of bodily mutation before the end – it is absolutely a horror movie. Like any modern horror story, it features a final scare right before the credits too. In this case, it is the suggestion that Linda's madness is sure to be passed onto her daughter, the same way her mother passed it on to her. That's what I think the vague title means, by the way. A baby is known to kick its mother from within the womb, the beginning of a child putting pressure on its parents. But the young daughter's future offspring hasn't developed legs yet. But it will and it'll kick her too, when the time comes. File this one under one of those films I must admit is extremely well made and thoughtfully created in many ways that I have no interest in ever watching again. [7/10]

OSCARS 2025: Bugonia (2025)

2003 would see the release of Jang Joon-hwan's oddball dark comedy “Save the Green Planet!” The film would receive a DVD release stateside some time afterwards, grabbing a little bit of press among the horror fandom and cult movie crowd. This was around the same time South Korean crime and horror movies like “Oldboy” and “A Tale of Two Sisters” started to develop a real following around the world. “Save the Green Planet!” never quite got that kind of attention though. Currently, it doesn't even have an American Blu-Ray release. You're going to have to import the UK disc or dig up the out-of-print SD release to own a physical copy. Certainly, I didn't expect a big name director like Yorgos Lanthimos to remake such an obscure title. Meaning I was intrigued by “Bugonia” from the moment it was announced. A notoriously weird filmmaker remaking an already weird movie, unsurprisingly, resulted in a pretty quirky flick. Despite that, Lanthimos has gathered such a following among Academy voters that “Bugonia” managed to score four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Lanthimos' by-now go-to muse Emma Stone. 

Will Tracy's screenplay hews relatively closely to most of the original's story beats while approaching from a very different tonal perspective. Either way, the set-up is the same: Teddy is an apiarist and a conspiracy theorist thoroughly convinced that Earth is under threat by an insidious invasion from the Andromeda galaxy. He believes that Michelle Fuller, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Auxolith, is one of these aliens walking among us. With the assistance of his neurodivergent cousin, he kidnaps Fuller. They shave her head, believing her hair to be an antenna to communicate with the mother ship, and cover her in skin cream. Fuller attempts to talk her way out of this bizarre situation, Teddy unmovable in his belief that only he can save the human race before the mother ship arrives with a lunar eclipse. Soon, his interrogation of Fuller turns towards torture. As the situation progresses, more of the captor's backstory is revealed and the reality of what exactly is happening here gets murkier. 

When “Save the Green Planet!” was released, conspiracy theories were still regarded with a degree of whimsy by most. The fantastical idea of extraterrestrial life were still centered in most of these beliefs, removing any degree of serious consideration from these ideas. They were kooks, figures of mockery with no cultural power. Things are very different today, when Q-Anon and far right dip shits have effectively taken over the top tiers of America's government. Moreover, in a post-Epstein files era, we have to reckon with the unavoidable conclusion that the cranks were not entirely off-track. This is the mood “Bugonia” inhabits and why it is a lot darker than the frequently wacky original. The film is essentially trying to play out the current anxieties of our times in microcosm. It is a chamber drama showdown between a heartless corporate overlord and a nut case who nevertheless has some good points. 

Fuller is a pharmacy company CEO, directly responsible for the suffering of thousands and never held accountable. She confronts Ted's seemingly unhinged speeches with therapy-speak platitudes, insincere strategies to regain control of the situation. On the surface level, “Bugonia” is a tale of evil versus evil. Much like the collapsing colonies Ted is obsessed with, Fuller is a queen bee, ruling over a colony of what she sees as drones. Her opening scene has her guilt-tripping employees into staying after the hours they can legally be kept on, to get around new worker rights mandates. Ted is an extremist, a kidnapper who electrocutes his bound and captive prisoner. His rantings make Fuller seem like the reasonable one. However, during a key confrontation, she reveals that she's exactly as petty as you'd expect someone in her position to be. She sees herself as superior to underclassmen like Ted and his comatose mother. In other words, while Ted's methods might go too far and his beliefs are delusional, he is actually taking the fight to the Powers That Be and seeking out sorely needed justice. Both are bad but, ya know, at least one is recognizable as a human being and not a blood-hungry capitalist. 

The more we learn of Ted's history, the more sympathetic he inevitably becomes. Through black-and-white dream sequences, the film's most willfully surreal moments, we learn of his relationship with his mother. She was seemingly an addict who underwent an experimental treatment that stuck her in a coma. The corporate reaction to this was insincere. No wonder he's pissed. He references a time before life got all fucked-up. I hope we've all learned that nostalgic feelings for an idealized past is based more in fascist ideology than any reality. At the same time, I don't blame this guy for longing for a more innocent period in his life. When he still had his mom, before his world fell apart, back when things made some degree of sense. Conspiracy theorists look for patterns in the universe to establish order over the seeming chaos of our lives. Naturally they appeal to someone whose life has too often been at the mercy of the cruel and unpredictable.

There's a specific reason he's stuck in this childhood mindset too. An early scene has Ted waxing poetically on how bees pollinating flowers is like sex without “the messy parts.” He chemically castrates himself and his cousin with hormonal injections so they are not distracted by sexual thoughts. Later on, we meet a local cop who was apparently Teddy's childhood babysitter. And, we learn soon enough, molested him as a boy. Lanthimos cast Stavros Halkias, best known as the chummy co-host of a hilariously vulgar podcast, to emphasize how commonplace abuse like this truly is. Teddy's entire paranoid mindset is a reaction to sexual trauma in his childhood, another way to impose order on the random horrors of life. Sexual trauma as the origin point of a splintered mind is a well understood phenomenon. If you've dug into the schizo-posting that's run rampant on social media in the past months, you also know conspiracy theories swirl around abuse such as this as a method for mind control. I don't know about that but all of these things are different types of control. If “Bugonia” is a film concerned with queens having sway over their hives, about the strata of power, these ideas fit right in.

All of that is extremely dark and depressing stuff. Which might seem at odds with “Bugonia” also being a comedy. Yorgos Lanthimos' particular brand of absurd humor is well established by now. “Bugonia” rests unsteadily between the inhuman horror of “A Killing of a Sacred Deer” and the darkness-tinged wackiness of “Kinds of Kindness.” Working from someone else's script means the film is not as heavy on the oddball, staccato dialogue as Lanthimos' earlier work. However, the director's style is still undeniable. Robbie Ryan's cinematography is precise, placing the characters like figures within a diorama. The production design is similarly exact, the sterile offices contrasting with the filth of Ted's basement. The musical score acts as a punchline of sorts, a burst of bombastic sound that put an exclamation point on many absurd moments. The most apparent evidence that we are meant to be amused somewhat by these events on-screen are the bursts of cartoonish ultra-violence. When blood splatters in “Bugonia,” it comes in “Evil Dead”-like waves of crimson. 

Those bursts of over-the-top gore points towards my biggest problem with “Bugonia” and why I've not been able to embrace it fully. Something else the visuals, often looking down at the characters from an elevated distance, bring to mind is a dispassionate god watching ambivalently as these meaningless little ants circle their own destruction. Teddy is a sympathetic figure but he's also a clown. It's hard to deny that we are meant to snicker as he spits his insane theories with utmost conviction. The character of Donny, his cousin, seems to be on the autism spectrum. He speaks in clipped sentences, with an unsteady and lisping tone. Is the implication here that only someone mentally disabled would go along with Ted's bullshit? The actor playing Donny, Aidan Delbis, is genuinely autistic but the way the film regards him, as a foolish other open to mockery, can't help but bother me. When these characters are bloodily torn apart, it is meant to amuse. Are we meant to regard everything that happens in this film as dark comedy? Lanthimos' cold absurdity betrays him here, creating realistically broken anti-heroes and still tugging them along on marionette strings more because it cracks a smile than anything else. 

We head next into spoiler territory but it must be discussed. The assumption “Bugonia” operates on is that Teddy is insane and Fuller is his victim. Any attempts Fuller makes to approach Teddy's crazy bullshit on its level is her trying to bargain with her captor. When Emma Stone delivers a stone cold monologue – that outlines the backstory of the Andromedan beliefs, seemingly mixing Altantis pseudo-history, Oscar Kiss Maerth, dinosaurs, and UFO religion – it represents the film willfully playing with the ambiguity of its situation. Might Michelle Fuller actually be an alien? Is the crazed conspiracy theorist right? This deliberate uncertainty extends right up to the climax of the film before a lengthy epilogue... Confirms it as all true. (While also dropping the bomb that Teddy was a de-facto serial killer.) This reveal in “Save the Green Planet!” was the wacky punchline to a frequently silly film. In “Bugonia's” much darker take on the material, it feels like the bleak end point of the film's cold point-of-view. The final images of the film are of apocalyptic extermination, all of humanity wiped out by alien overlords who have deemed them too innately savage to save. 

It's a sequence impressively pulled off, a darkly detached montage of corpses piling up in multiple mundane scenario. However, what are we meant to take away from this ending? “Bugonia” is a psychic scream about how deep into the shit we are in the 21st century, disinformation and corporate greed battling it out over a planet spinning towards ecological collapse. And the saddest, most frustrating part is the messiness of it all is partially the work of broken humans trying their best. That ending is dismissive, the darkest chuckle at all the horrors that go on here. (Both in the film and in this world, I mean.) There is a note of poetry to them. The sequence is scored to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” that plea to how we are all caught in a repeating cycle of short-lived innocence leading to death before being reclaimed by the Earth. The final shot of a bee buzzing around a flower, when contrasted with earlier images of dinosaur bones in a museum, suggest this as maybe natural. Humans had their time, just like the thunder lizards did. The Earth will spin on and some other lifeforms will inherit it next, starting the bloody cycle all over again. And that's interesting, more interesting than the snide messaging that none of it matters anyway and we can only be smugly amused by humanity's efforts to fight against the dying of the light that the rest of the film points towards.

The title, by the way, comes from an ancient folk ritual to spontaneously generate bees from the corpse of a cow. Perhaps suggesting all of these events are sacrifices worthwhile as long as they bring the bees back. All of which is to say that “Bugonia” is a very, very interesting film with a lot of fascinating ideas on its mind that ultimately puts me off by being too coldly critical of its own characters. By sanding off the more manic comedy of “Save the Green Planet!,” it's probably a more consistent film. However, I can't help but wonder if Lanthimos' tendency towards coldly considering the foibles of humanity with nothing but a dark grin was the right approach here. Technically, it's a magnificent film. Stone and Jesse Plemons are excellent. It's a movie that buzzes about in my head persistently, that I can't quite dismiss, that I also can't quite love. [7/10]