Revenge

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.

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.

Fresh (2022)

Ask anyone. The dating scene can be murder, especially if the relationship consumes you.

In director Mimi Cave’s black-comic thriller Fresh, Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a smart, witty, modern girl just looking for a meaningful nibble in her stagnant dating pool when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a super-attractive doctor at her local produce market.

After a quick roll in the sack, Noa is whisked off for a magical weekend trip with the too-good-to-be-true Steve, despite warnings from her lesbian BFF Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs) that there are some definite red flags in this picture.

Next thing Noa knows is waking up chained to a floor. This is never a good sign.

Turns out Steve has a thriving black market business that needs new blood occasionally.

“What the fuck is happening?” Noa screams at Steve.

“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to freak out,” Steve replies.

Noa is in a very bad place, but she shows grit and determination by convincing her captor that she shares his unusual tastes for the very finest cuts of meat.

Yes, it’s every bit as gruesome as you think, and then some, but Cave also sneaks in stress-relieving laughs when we need them most, particularly after one of the director’s many rapid-fire meat-cutting-and-eating montages designed to make the viewer queasy with self-loathing.

“I don’t eat animals,” Steve tells Daisy in the early days of their courtship. Not ones with four legs, anyway.

Fresh doesn’t pull any punches in its portrayal of toxic masculinity, embodied by the charmingly evil Steve, a respectable man with a home and family who just can’t resist a tempting morsel.

Unfortunately, as any upset stomach commercial ably demonstrates, sometimes your food will fight back.

The Lake (2022)

The Lake is a movie about many things. Oddly enough, a lake isn’t one of them.

Rather, Thai filmmaker Lee Thongkham has gifted us with a magnificently exotic specimen that defies easy categorization. It also has to be one of the dampest movies ever! There is pouring rain in like 75 percent of the shots!

In a humble Thai village, bordered by a river and a lake, humble Thai fishermen and toad wranglers gather in the gloomy darkness (with rain dumping buckets) to hunt their respective quarries.

While pursuing tasty amphibians one group of men discover an enormous egg and wisely decide to run off with it, no doubt with visions of enormous omelettes in their futures.

Seeking quick profit over respecting the sanctity of the nest, draws the ire of a rampaging parent monster and the interlopers are dealt with harshly.

The egg is found by May (Wanmai Chatborirack) a curious and empathetic little girl who becomes its protector, much to the dismay of her older sister and brother, who now find themselves as the heads of the household and in charge of the willful child, since their father, an unlucky fisherman, was recently squashed by the angry monster.

One of many points raised by writer-director Lee Thongkham, is that the family unit is a sacred thing, which explains why the kaiju from the lake is so thoroughly pissed at these poor starving peasants who’ve made off with her bambino.

Thongkham encourages peaceful solutions to the conflict between the enraged monster and the humans that poached its egg. On the way to forgiving and forgetting, there are many lessons to be learned, including, who knew that Thai monster movies were such a kick?

The creature effects are first-rate. Whether it’s a very nimble dude in a rubber suit raising hell among the fleeing villagers or the XXL version that’s ready rock in Bangkok, fans of monster mayhem will be tickled pink.

Go ahead and take a dip in The Lake. You’ll get all wet, but it’s quite refreshing.

Cobweb (2023)

Pity poor Peter (Woody Norman), an eight-year-old kid who just wants a decent night’s sleep, a life without bullies, and a normal mom and dad.

In Cobweb, we learn that Peter’s school days are spent hiding from evil classmate Brian (Luke Busey, a third-generation movie psycho), while his home life is watched over by his stern parents Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr), an odd, secretive couple who aren’t afraid to dish out severe punishments for being too curious.

The problem is, Peter is being kept awake at night by intermittent tapping in the walls and his freaky parents dismiss his concerns by telling him he has an overactive imagination!

Peter tries to enlist the help of Miss Devine (Cleopatra Cole), his new teacher, but her appearance at his home results in the lad getting locked in the creepy basement, where he makes further contact with someone else living in their house. Someone who develops a powerful hold over the lonely tyke.

Cobweb‘s rookie director Sam Bodin shows off a fully stocked cabinet of gothic panache, creating a nightmare landscape to rival Tim Burton, one that seems all but inescapable to our young protagonist.

Bodin and writer Chris Thomas Devlin understand a child’s limited worldview and what perceived threats can endanger it.

Question: Is it my imagination or does the creative team of this movie enjoy tormenting kids just a bit too much? In any case, Cobweb is a fiercely original film that should scare the bejesus out of any average, run-off-the-mill rugrat.

It’s not for them, anyway.

Dark Harvest (2023)

I’m going to make a bold prediction that Dark Harvest becomes a Halloween movie-night staple.

Alternately luminous and vicious, Dark Harvest is a captivating adaptation of Norman Partridge’s 2006 novel about a cursed small town that must destroy a local monster every time the calendar hits October 31.

In a seasonal swash of ultra violence, the legendary Sawtooth Jack, a pumpkin-headed demon, rises from the cornfield and is hunted by a posse of hungry high school boys. Jack must be killed before the church bells chime midnight, or the community will be plagued by storms and misfortune for an entire year.

It’s a tradition, you understand.

At harvest time, the boys from the local senior class are locked up for three days without food so they’re properly motivated to bring down Sawtooth Jack, a frightening and deadly foe that is nonetheless loaded with candy.

Director David Slade and writer Michael Gilio conjure magic, madness, and terror in a coming-of-age tale that pounces on the viewer like a midnight collaboration between Ray Bradbury (luminous) and Joe Lansdale (vicious)—with a bit of Hunger Games thrown in after some focus-group input.

Editor’s Note: The kids attend Bradbury High School.

Dark Harvest could have used more exposition and context, but the fevered sepia-toned sights of raving teenagers versus an uncanny enemy, is first-rate cinematic mayhem that actually does justice to its literary origins.

Make it a welcome addition to your annual festival of fright films, m’kay?

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)

This creature has life! But what kind?

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a powerhouse debut written and directed by USC film school grad, Bomani J. Story.

In another cross-stitching of Mary Shelley’s well-seasoned source material, we fade in on Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes), a budding teen scientist from the ‘hood who’s just lost her older brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy) in a gang shooting.

Rather than grieve and move on, Vicaria decides to take matters into her own hands and bring him back from beyond. From her jerry-rigged laboratory in a condemned building she summons sufficient wattage to jolt Chris back to consciousness.

Oddly enough, her creation largely disappears into the woodwork, because Vicaria has plenty of other shit to deal with, namely working off a debt to Kango (Denzel Whittaker), the local drug lord that keeps her poor father (Chad C. Coleman) strung out.

The monster’s presence is often felt, particularly by Jada (Amani Summer), a chatty, precocious neighbor kid who seems quite up-to-date on its whereabouts.

Writer-director Story has fashioned a curious creature, the likes of which we haven’t seen before. While some plot developments don’t make much sense (e.g., Vicaria seems awfully into Kango, the guy who deals to her daddy), the look and feel of The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster pulses with an otherworldly glow and a fresh current of rage, not to mention a towering title character prowling the night in designer streetwear seeking revenge.

Or maybe he’s just looking for his home. In any event, he kills people.

Vicaria is the electricity that animates this action, and actress Laya DeLeon Hayes delivers high drama with a cool head. Here is a young woman that’s seen enough death for one lifetime—and does something about it, despite the endless obstacles placed in her path by institutional racism, classism, and sexism.

And if at first you don’t succeed in defeating death, try, try again, because hope springs eternal and shit.