oldsharky

Frogman (2023)

Hey, you guys! Look at this footage I found!

Through a magical editing process, Frogman brings together all the filmed components of a quest to locate a legendary cryptid that allegedly inhabits the swampier suburbs of Loveland, Ohio.

Amateur filmmaker and daydreamer Dallas Kyle (Nathan Tymochuk) is worried that his career peaked as a child, when he snapped a photograph of a mysterious amphibian creature while on a trip with his parents.

It happened near Loveland, Ohio, a small town that stays afloat financially by luring v-loggers, podcasters, documentarians, and other media soakers to have a look around for their slimy mascot.

Tired of the world at large perceiving him as a kooky kid with a camera, Dallas decides to go back to Loveland and shoot a hard-hitting documentary about the Loveland Frogman.

Accompanying Dallas is his wedding photographer drinking buddy, Scottie (Benny Barrett), and his longtime friend and secret crush, Amy (Chelsey Grant), who is ostensibly on her way to Los Angeles to become an actress.

Inspired by Dallas’s passion to create something meaningful, the trio saddles up and checks in at a charming Loveland B&B run by Gretel (Chari Eckmann), an enthusiastic dame who acts as an unofficial tour guide for all things related to the Frogman.

As we see all too often, a lark expedition with three friends turns into a very nasty little trip (trap).

It’s easy enough to classify Frogman as a found-footage descendant of The Blair Witch Project, as it sticks to the interview-vs-wilderness template pretty closely.

If we look back to the earlier part of the previous century, it also bears some resemblance to Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which a nameless tourist stumbles into a dilapidated fishing village populated by folks with an unsettling “batrachian” appearance.

I believe writer-director Anthony Cousins purposely designed Frogman to dig deeper and bite harder than Blair Witch. It definitely establishes a darker shade of horror, especially after the viewer pieces together all the awful implications.

A big ol’ recommendation from Ol’ Sharky.

Nope (2022)

Maybe the world isn’t ready for a sci-fi/horror Western starring a nonwhite cast, but I sure as hell am.

Writer-director Jordan Peele muses on a number of subjects in Nope, some in subtle fashion, others with blunt force trauma.

Otis Junior (OJ, played by Daniel Kaluuya) is a hard-working fella who runs the Haywood family horse training business somewhere in the California desert, following the recent passing of his father (Keith David) under mysterious circumstances.

His wayward sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) is trying to help out, but the fast-talking urbanite hype gal and the plainspoken cowboy are clearly not on the same page when it comes to getting work, resulting in a blown TV audition for one of their horses.

Not too far away, Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child actor, runs an amusement park-frontier theme town. Park, a frequent customer of Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, lets OJ know that he would be interested in buying his entire operation.

These are the dramatic bones that make up the story, and Peele does his utmost to flesh out the situation by sensibly introducing creatures from another world on safari for exotic culinary specimens.

Time to cowboy up!

Peele delivers a ton of thematic groceries to the table, and it’s good eating. The pursuit of fame regardless of personal danger, appears to be his thesis statement, as both OJ and Ricky Park want to exploit the alien menace that hovers nearby for their own gain.

Fortunately, OJ comes to his senses. Others aren’t so lucky.

Nope stretches over two hours but Peele keeps everything smelling fresh. He definitely flexes a fondness for John Ford and Steven Spielberg, with bright, postcard vistas from the mysterious desert contrasted with tight indoor framing that clearly defines two different worlds—tamed and untamed.

Peele’s stinging observations about the invisibility of blacks and other minorities in the history of the motion picture industry are squarely on topic, and he remedies this historical omission with a brave black cowboy hero for us to root for.

When was the last time we saw one of those outside of Blazing Saddles?

The Haunting Lodge (2023)

A beleaguered Georgia landowner summons a husband-wife team of investigators to document possible paranormal parties driving away his customers at a remote hunting lodge.

The hunters are scared of ghosts that noisily walk around at night, and whose presence is felt by virtually everyone who stays there.

Filmmakers Kendall and Vera Whelpton set up shop in the antler-festooned farmhouse, promptly noting atmospheric changes on their EMF readers, and seemingly making contact with an entity that flashes lights in response to questions.

Eventually the Whelptons bring in a rather theatrical psychic, Jill Morris, who makes her own connections into the spirit realm that causes a minor metaphysical ruckus.

Keep in mind, The Haunting Lodge is a DOCumentary and not a MOCKumentary.

The Whelptons maintain that what we are watching is a genuine event, a legitimately filmed paranormal happening.

Therefore, the doors opening and closing by themselves, accompanied by the sounds of booted feet marching down the hallway, are real ghosts.

And there are a few glimpses of beings (?) that appear and move digitally through the darkness.

With plenty of “Did you see that?” moments, the footage allows disbelief to be temporarily and precariously suspended.

Actually, it doesn’t matter if you believe what you see here. It’s the storytelling equivalent of saying, “I swear! It’s true! It happened to my Mom’s cousin’s sister!”

In any case, The Haunting Lodge clocks in at a lean 67 minutes, so it’s not much of a time investment.

Infested (2023)

Even Stephen King loves Infested!

So how come I don’t?

French filmmaker Sebastien Vanicek spins an undeniably creepy tale about the rag-tag residents of a dilapidated apartment building besieged by Middle-Eastern spiders that reproduce at an alarming rate.

Our hero, Kaleb (Théo Christine), is an exotic animal fancier and sneaker pimp with a troubled personal life. Seeking to numb his sorrows with a little retail therapy, he buys an expensive spider from a shady agent and promptly loses the little bugger once he gets home.

Next thing you know, there are spiders everywhere! Big ones, small ones, nasty ones, climbing out of every nook and cranny!

The poisonous pests lay eggs in their human victims, so they can emerge from the corpse, en masse, for maximum “ick” factor.

Kaleb’s flat is in the remarkable Picasso Arenas, near Paris, designed by architect Manuel Núñez Yanowsky, which makes for an artfully labyrinthine backdrop for the anxious apartment dwellers trapped between advancing arachnids and brutal, unsympathetic cops trying to contain the threat.

My main beef with Infested is that the spiders themselves are rather lacking in character. Once ensconced in the building, they aren’t especially aggressive, though they do erupt in an impressive array of shapes and sizes.

When I saw Arachnaphobia (1990) in the theater, the audience was so rapt that we were continually brushing our clothes due to imagined, unseen invaders.

Perhaps it was the smaller screen, but the uncanny feeling of being trapped in a web never really materialized in Infested, though not for a lack of effort by Vanicek and a likable cast that spends most of its screen time cowering in dark corners.

This is where the lion’s share of the character development takes place. Old friends confessing their various misdeeds and misunderstandings, diminishing the sense of urgency necessary to sustain tension or terror.

It’s a pretty good movie, just not all that scary. Let’s see if the Arachnophobia reboot can do any better.

You’ll Never Find Me (2023)

Welcome to a dark night of the soul. Even bad people have them.

In some nameless Australian trailer park, Patrick (Brendan Rock) sits in his living room drinking whiskey. Outside, there is thunder and lightning, just like the night Frankenstein’s creature woke up.

Patrick is alone, but not for long.

A wayward woman (Jordan Cowan), lost in the storm and soaked to the skin, pounds on his door seeking a telephone.

“You’ve knocked on the wrong door,” Patrick tells the shoeless visitor.

Of course, things are not that simple. The wrong door depends on who’s standing where.

You’ll Never Find Me, written and co-directed by Australian newcomer Indianna Bell, is an intricately constructed two-person play, featuring unexpected shifts in the power dynamic taking place over the course of a dark and stormy evening.

It’s Patrick’s house, and he’s obviously a formidable man who prefers solitude. A drenched woman with no shoes can’t possibly be a threat.

So why is he uneasy?

Patrick explains to her that feral kids living in the park routinely beat on his door and run away. Even at two in the morning during a violent storm?

That’s enough to drive anyone mad.

Gradually, Patrick warms up to his guest and promises to help her, but he’s also clearly suspicious about her point of origin. She claims she fells asleep at the beach.

“The beach?” Patrick wonders aloud, as if he’d never heard the word.

Viewers are left to puzzle and ponder the scant information provided by these mysterious players, as both sides continue to distract and interrogate the other while passing the time with a few hands of cards.

We can tell from the outset that Patrick is a (deservedly) haunted man, and as the tension in the trailer escalates, a very big decision about his future—the same one faced by Hamlet—becomes an unbearable burden.

With its single set, minimal action, and tiny, terrific cast, You’ll Never Find Me is a harrowing and claustrophobic watch, with revolving doors of trust and deception leading to the ultimate question: To be or not to be.

Original, highly rewarding, and vigorously recommended.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Has it really been 27 years since that summer when everyone knew what we did?

Type O Negative’s gloomy cover of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” playing over the opening credits should have tipped me off.

There’s angst in the air, probably from Y2K, just over the horizon.

We’ve got major marquee value here. I Know What You Did Last Summer has a formerly fresh cast to die for, led by Sarah Michelle Gellar as Helen Shivers, a small-town beauty queen being chased by a vengeful fisherman decked out in foul weather gear.

Along for the ride is her angry douche boyfriend, Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe), the group’s moral compass, Julie James (Jennifer Love-Hewitt), and Julie’s working-class beau, Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr).

Best-looking cast ever assembled? No dogs in that bunch.

On a fateful Fourth of July evening, the four most attractive graduating teens in a North Carolina fishing community accidentally run over a pedestrian on their way home from a make-out sesh at the beach.

The formerly close-knit quartet quickly comes apart at the seams. They decide to ditch the stiff in the Atlantic Ocean, and seal their secret by vowing never to speak of this unfortunate incident again.

We skip ahead one year to find out that our pretty protagonists are suffering the effects of collective guilt as their lofty ambitions have fizzled out.

Instead of heading off to New York to become a star, Helen is stuck in town working at her family’s bridal shop. You know, in the fishing village.

Julie, the brain, is bombing out of college, and rich kid Barry is holed up at his parents’ house drinking and brooding. Ray is on a boat.

Then Julie gets a note with the title of the movie in it, and the band gets back together!

The script by Kevin Williamson (Scream) is played with a straight face, so anyone expecting witty insights into horror movie tropes, are simply left with a bunch of tropes to sort through.

The plot proffers suspects aplenty, red herrings, and a few surprises, but it’s all pretty standard cat-and-mouse revenge stuff that unfolds at a leisurely pace.

The kills, courtesy of a maniac mariner armed with a gaff hook, are nothing special, and the eventual unmasking contains zero drama.

Tack on a WTF ending and cue the music.

Most of the “entertainment” value derived from IKWYDLS comes from screen time spent with the spirited ensemble, but Gellar, Phillippe, and company aren’t given much to work with.

The principal characters are rough sketches from better movies, and our comely cast is mostly reduced to fleeing and fretting.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with seeing TV’s Buffy Summers afraid of some swab in a raincoat, and eventually being snuffed out in cursory fashion.

I get it, this is a different character, but even so…

Apparently there were sequels and a remake. I can’t imagine why.

The Changeling (1980)

George C. Scott in an understated role as a classical composer bedeviled by spooks in Seattle? It’s true!

I reviewed The Changeling upon its release for my high school newspaper, wherein I declared it “really scary.”

More than 40 years later, I am revising my opinion. Sometimes “scary” doesn’t age well. But then, neither do I.

Ivory tickler John Russell (GCS) is a recent widower, having lost wife and daughter in a wintery road accident. He takes a teaching job at a small college in Washington state to hopefully get his head together and start composing again.

Instead, the massive mansion generously rented to him by Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere, his real-life wife) from the local historical society, comes with a ghost in the attic that wastes no time banging around upstairs, depriving the maestro of much-needed rest.

A seance arranged by Claire with a psychic couple confirms the presence of a restless child murdered in the house, and it becomes Russell’s mission to bring metaphysical justice to the situation.

Director Peter Hyams (The Relic, Time Cop), a thoroughly capable and professional filmmaker, does a thoroughly capable and professional job on The Changeling.

The problem isn’t him, it’s me.

I suppose a scene in which a possessed antique wheelchair chases Claire around the upper floors of the mansion was sufficient to make teenaged me go, “eek!”

Since then, I’ve logged thousands of hours of community service watching ghosts, ghouls, creatures, cruel killers, and assorted hell-spawn ravaging their way through humanity.

The Changeling, even with its star cast and engaging mystery, comes off as quaint and dated. Weak tea and dry toast.

It’s not simply an age thing. A masterpiece of atmosphere such as Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) requires nothing more than sound and camera movement to convince us that the supernatural world is all around us.

The Great Scott, who does not bellow, growl, or bloviate, is convincing as Russell, a (literally) haunted man vulnerable/receptive to unseen forces, due to the fresh tragedy in his life.

Though Hyams, Scott, et al, give it the old college try, their collective efforts fail to generate any genuine shock wattage in the 21st century.

Alone (2020)

“That’s one of the most stressful movies I’ve ever seen!”

This quote comes from Mrs. Sharky, who perhaps unwisely left the selection of this evening’s entertainment to me.

She says that Alone is like death by a thousand cuts and accurately represents the kind of micro-aggression that women traveling by themselves encounter far too often.

Sometimes it’s just assholes, sometimes it’s Ted Bundy.

Jessica (Jules Willcox) decides to pack up her troubles in a U-Haul and head for greener pastures after her husband commits suicide—a similar premise to Alex Garland’s recent film Men.

Instead of rest and recuperation, her healing mission gets derailed by a menacing motorist (Mark Menchaca) who proves harder to get rid of than a mosquito in your tent.

As previously mentioned, sometimes extreme tragedy and trauma are considered action items in the universe we live in, as the landscape shifts from indifferent to malign and the real character development gets started.

Alone director Johm Hyams (Black Summer) and writer Mattias Olsson devise a brutal (and stressful!) battlefield in the rainy tall timber of the Pacific Northwest.

There is very little dialogue and our protagonist spends much of her screen time hiding in the bush from a diabolical serial killer who knows the area well. Jessica’s propensity to make noise (heavy breathing, mewling whimpers) during these anxious interludes drove my wife nuts.

“Shut up, already!” she shouted more than once. “It’s easy to hide in the woods! Just shut the hell up!”

Pursuit, capture, escape, more pursuit, and murder are the forces at work here, and the tension levels go “pop” on several occasions, such as when Jessica agonizingly overhears her stalker talking jovially with his wife and child on the phone, telling them he’ll be home in a few days.

Take a break if you need to, but stick with it. Alone delivers a satisfyingly savage finale that will make your blood pressure dance the meringue.

Who says cinema should be relaxing? Take up yoga, or something.

The Fog (1980)

The Carpenter Kick continues.

Three years after John Carpenter set the night on fire with Halloween, The Fog, his return to the horror genre, earned lukewarm reviews and is generally considered one of his lesser efforts.

People forget that Carpenter came up helming made-for-TV movies with micro budgets, like Someone’s Watching Me, and Elvis, a surprisingly good Presley biopic from 1979 starring a young Kurt Russell, who was nominated for an Emmy.

Carpenter’s theatrical movies, which tend to feature desperate characters trapped together against unearthly enemies, are similarly economical affairs with superior practical effects by master technicians.

The Fog once again forces his cast indoors as vengeful spirits from a doomed sailing ship descend on a coastal California town on the night of its 100th anniversary.

Speaking of master technicians, makeup and effects whiz Rob Bottin even gets to step in front of the camera as Blake, the leader of the ghostly mariners.

Antonio Bay, California is the setting, as citizens excitedly prepare for the upcoming centennial celebration. Sad-sack sermonizer Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) discovers a diary written by his grandfather, detailing a treacherous deal offered by town founders a century earlier.

It seems that Blake, a well-to-do leper and his flaky followers, were determined to settle near the still-undeveloped Antonio Bay, even sealing the deal with a generous amount of gold.

Instead of welcoming their new neighbors with casseroles, locals lured the leprous crew’s ship onto the rocks with a false campfire, sending the scabrous sailors to a watery grave.

Once the founders lifted the lepers’ loot from the wreck, they had sufficient capital to incorporate and become an actual spot on the map.

To no one’s surprise, this original sin results in sword-wielding spooks rolling into town via a glowing fog bank on founders’ day to slay six unlucky souls to match the number of drowned crew.

The Fog isn’t exactly scary, but it’s got a ton of atmosphere, the 44-year-old effects are decent, and Carpenter keeps the action—and heads—rolling while notching the tension with minimal dialogue and unforeseen events, such as dissonant symphonies of car horns going off at night.

Carpenter’s cast is filled with reliable talent, including, Holbrook as the guilt-ridden Father Malone, Adrienne Barbeau (his wife at the time) as sexy DJ Stevie Wayne, Jamie Lee Curtis as a free-spirit hitchhiker, and her mom, Janet “Psycho” Leigh as the town mayor.

As is par for the course, Carpenter crams everyone into a church in the final scene to keep the spectral swabs at bay, but they only leave after Father Malone returns most of their gold and gets beheaded for his trouble.

And so, order is restored, because you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

This is definitely a case that calls for an enhanced re-release with better picture quality, because The Fog is a very dark movie, and I don’t mean thematically.

Note to auteurs: If you plan on a lengthy career don’t use cheap film stock. It can can dim the enthusiasm of the newly curious.

Last Night In Soho (2021)

I’ve been a fan of Edgar Wright from his earliest work on Spaced, the hilarious BBC sit-com from the tail-end of the previous century.

This foundational series teamed director Wright with writer/actor Simon Pegg, a partnership that flourished with ace collaborations like Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).

Pegg is certainly the more visible of the two, appearing in high-profile film franchises based on TV shows from the 1960s, Star Trek and Mission Impossible.

In Last Night In Soho, Wright’s musically minded, bloody Valentine to swinging London, he affirms his true love (and understanding) of those riotous times through masterful manipulation of color, sound, and movement in telling the story of two girls from different eras whose lives overlap in Dreamland.

We open with Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a spirited lass from Cornwall with dreams of being a 60s-inspired fashion designer in London.

Upon landing in the big city, Eloise is treated rudely by her designing classmates to the point that she’s forced to abandon the dorms in favor of lodging with Mrs. Collins (Diana Rigg) a lovely old-lady landlord who doesn’t allow male guests after 8pm.

Soon after acquiring the new digs, Eloise begins a dream odyssey about the adventures of Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy), a live-wire hip chick who captures the attention of everyone she meets during her meteoric ascent in London’s nightclub scene, circa 1965.

Coincidentally, it’s the very same historical period that Eloise obsesses about through her clothes and music. Cilla Black, Kinks, Chad & Jeremy, and Petula Clark can be heard plugging away on the phonograph, while her attempts at creating swing silhouettes and bubble dresses are clearly influenced by Mary Quant and other Carnaby Street regulars.

Eloise and Sandy overlap in these subconscious interludes: Sandy is portrayed by Taylor-Joy, but whenever an opportunity for a reflection appears, it’s McKenzie looking back at the action.

A lesser director would milk this device as a gimmick. Wright uses it to set the story to a fevered rhythm, as Sandy, a beautiful rising star, sees her ambition smashed to bits by horrible old men.

When not living her dream, Eloise styles herself as the beguiling Sandy, until the viewer loses her sense of identity in both the sleeping and waking worlds.

Last Night in Soho is a rise-and-fall fable that kicks off with a dazzling bang, and shifts gears into a sordid nightmare spiral that’s grim going indeed.

Wright’s poise and whirlwind finesse with the camera is thoroughly transportive, evoking both delirious highs and utter misery in strikingly composed scene after scene.

This is a bumpy ride, but Last Night In Soho is more than worth it. Instead of grousing about getting the rug yanked out from under, we should be thankful that an artist of Wright’s ability has fully materialized in our present day.