Aaron's Head Explodes Talking About Malignant

  It's been nearly two weeks and I'm no less fixated on Malignant than the first night I watched it. My girlfriend hates it, my closest friend hates it, both of my roommates and two other friends and co-workers all hate it. I have a couple of other friends who liked it but it's mostly a single-serving novelty movie to them. I'm a culture of one in the Malignant Fandom.

  The last time I was in the grip of a movie like this, standing at the forefront of a growing cult, was Tusk in 2014. But unlike Tusk, which I loved immediately and never questioned why, I'm no closer to understanding why I'm borderline obsessed with Malignant. I mean, I can point to specific things I love about it--and its overall vibe--but why I'm consumed by it is purely abstract. This is an insistent, confident, unruly movie and so are my feelings for it.

So polarizing that it's fucking symmetrical. Lol, Movie Magic

  Tongue-bathing fans and tongue-lashing opponents have debated Malignant's artistic intent and merit for a couple of weeks so, obviously, I want some of my spit in the convo: It's definably Giallo even though gatekeeping Horror elitists dismiss that claim. Every criticism of it; the hokey acting, the gaudy music cues, the unnaturally colorful lighting, the maudlin melodrama, and the ridiculous story is all prevalent in Giallo classics (along with the black gloves, the voyeuristic and gory murders, the unique blade, the detective/mystery element, and the female lead struggling with her psyche). I'm confident that, had this been made by an Italian filmmaker in the '70s or '80s, its Scream Factory blu-ray would be out of stock and those same horror hall-monitors would bitch about how 'underrated' it is. But because it's new and different: it's maligned for not blatantly paying its respects. Malignant is a patchwork-pastiche that doesn't explicitly telegraph its inspirations for Easter Egg-hunting YouTubers to Fansplain to us - it's very modern and juuuust self-aware enough without rocketing to Sharknado altitudes of flamboyance; it's camp, not a cheese festival. It even opens with the brand new Warner Brothers logo filtered through a VHS effect; Wan establishing from the jump that this is a throwback to Video Store oddities.
 

  It's more than just lurid Italian horror, it's also dreary and gothic, with shades of 2000s-era Dark Castle Pictures camp, body horror (more Henenlotter than Cronenberg), Japanese Horror, and even some John Woo action - an alchemical mixture that synthesizes into solid gold for some and solid turds for others. Wan said that when he made SAW, he was boxed in as a "torture porn" purveyor and, when he made Insidious and The Conjuring, he was labelled "the haunted house director." Malignant is him violently slashing his way out of every box, severing every label, and risking his reputation in the process. This was marketed on expectations for what a JAMES WAN movie is. The trailer is a weak, unimpressive promotional that I'm kinda thankful for; it kept my expectations low and effectively hid just how nasty, absurd, and aware this movie truly is. But loyal Wan fans fucking hated this movie for not being familiar - some even, understandably, accused of being a cynical "prank." I don't think it's a prank in any sense; Wan didn't betray his audience's trust, he just asked them to reconsider what it means to be his fan. I wasn't a fan until this movie because I didn't think he had it in him to be this playful. There's plenty of garden-variety comic relief in Insidious and Conjuring, sure, but nothing like the almost nonstop whackadoo here - a huge part of Malignant's charm is how fearlessly corny it is. It finds itself funny but not with any ironic scorn, it seriously asks you to laugh with it. Another release from this year, M. Night's OLD, has the same kind of earnest fearlessness. As Richard Brody put it "Just as it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, it takes a smart filmmaker to make a stupid movie, which I mean in the best possible way." It's a horror movie that dares to defy the Arthouse trends of 'elevated Horror' put out by A24 and its imitators.

  I didn't see Antlers but this piece of a review exemplifies why I appreciate the schlocky unimportant fun of Malignant. It's not frightening, no, but it is a goddamn delight:

  It's nice to have a horror movie that's this funny and devoid of any weighty allegorical meaning(s). Like, I love Midsommar, The Lighthouse, and Get Out for a lot of reasons but I come back to them, more than other Prestige Horror from the 2010s, because they're willing to be funny (even Hereditary has glints of humor that it doesn't get enough credit for [since it's mostly eclipsed by its howling misery]). But the most recent releases, in the past year, have all been so. fucking. DOUR. Look at The Dark And The Wicked, Relic, Censor, A Quiet Place Part II, and the especially joyless Saint Maud (and it's not like they make up for it with any real terror, either, so...). With all that said, I don't mean to undersell it: this thing is fucking violent and our harbinger of doom is capital-V Villainous.

  Despite his glaring similarities to Belial from Basket Case, Gabriel is a great new horror figure. Even his weapon--a trophy awarded to one of the Doctors on his Physician-slaying Circuit--is iconic.

  Made from gold, razor-sharp, adorned with wings and the word EXCELLENCE, Gabriel's makeshift blade--complete with fashioned grips--is as idiosyncratic and memorable as Freddy Krueger's glove. Knees back, elbows forward, with our lead's face on the 'back' of his head, Gabriel is a significant screen presence. His reveal comes when he 'hatches' out of our heroine's skull, bearing brain and tissue. He hijacks her body, backwards, slaughtering everyone in his path with superhuman strength. Then there's his ability to control electricity, where he murders a security guard by blowing up his pacemaker - a memorably nasty kill. Played by contortionist Marina Mazepa walking backwards (wearing a mask of Annabelle Wallis' face) and the aurally-gifted voice actor Ray Chase giving the best performance in the movie, Gabriel is unforgettable.
 

  Malignant failed at the box office, to absolutely no surprise, and I'm conflicted because, on one side of the skull, I'm bummed since I wanted Wan's weird ambitions to pay off (not literally, he's swimming in Aquaman billions. This was money spent, not an investment). But on the other side I'm glad it wasn't a hit because that means the death of possible franchising. It should remain singular and since it's been popular on HBO Max and the most-searched movie on Rotten Tomatoes, people will be talking about it, arguing about it, and perplexed by it for years. I'll never forget it as a full-hearted horror comedy that went against the grain of every horror trend in 2021. It's not A24, it's not Blumhouse, it's not a remake or a sequel, and it's not even James Wan:

It's Malignant.

So Long, Marianne

"Marianne born on a Tuesday

Happy on a Wednesday

Married on a Thursday

Witch on a Friday

Caught on a Saturday

Judged on a Sunday

Executed on Monday

And buried on a Tuesday"

There's a shortlist of horror films that have given me the creeps. Ones that got under my skin and even given me nightmares. Marianne was the recent addition to this list. But it isn't a movie. It's a TV show. It's right beside Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House as far as scary television shows go. 

The look of the show is what pulled me in immediately. There's no gloomy or desaturated look that other horror shows have. The pallette is vivid with warm lighting. Director Samuel Bodin brings us back to a style of horror bereft of jump scares and instead focuses on drawn out sequences of dread. His focus on the human face and the many contortions it can contain is one of the things that separates this from your average horror show. 

The story is about Emma Seligman, a horror author who just put the finishing touches on her last book in the Lizzie Larcken series concerning a witch named Marianne. She is confronted by a childhood friend at a book signing that forces her to confront her past. Her friend, Caroline, tells her that her mother has been possessed by Marianne. She pleads to her to come back to her childhood home to defeat the curse. The actress who portrays Caroline's mother, Mirielle Herbstmeyer, is a face you will never forget after this series. 

One of the main themes of the show is childhood trauma. How the decisions we make as children cause us to self-sabotage as adults. Marianne, a combination of Pennywise's playfulness and Annie Wilkes' obsessive demand for a writer to write what she wants, brings about this trauma in her wake. Having the power to jump from body to body. It's a show that sustains it's terror right up until the climax. Leaving an ending that sticks the landing in its relentlessness. 

Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke

Trauma is a topic that is too often neglected in the horror genre. We got it in full force with Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. Kealan Patrick Burke's Kin poses a hypothetical: what happens to Sally at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre? She just saw her friends brutally murdered. How will she cope?

Kin answers this. Only it ramps things up to the nth degree. 

"On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded and half-blind at the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers- a family of cannibal lunatics- are closing in." 

The Merrills, the family of cannibalistic lunatics in question, have a more than twisted belief system. They believe that God has given them a sign to kill all sinners and consume them. The Men of the World is who they deem as the poison that corrupts. The parents are named Ma-in-bed and Papa-in-gray, for reasons discussed in the book. The former being a hideous mass of flesh and stink that resides on a mattress. Papa-in-gray's backstory we don't find out until later in the story. 

Kealan Patrick Burke writes each chapter from a different character's perspective. In this, we are introduced to a number of damaged individuals with haunted pasts. There is Jack and Pete, the father and son who find Claire, naked and shambling down the road. There is Finch, an Iraq War vet whose brother Daniel, saw his end at the hands of the Merrills. Daniel was Claire's boyfriend. The one who decided to take a backwoods detour for 'adventurous sightseeing'. There is Louise, a waitress in snowbound Detroit who is trapped in an abusive relationship and soon gets an unexpected visit that leads her back on a road to a past she was trying to outrun. 

If you like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, backwoods horror, or just a great book to read for the occasion, make the trip up to Elkwood.  

Exploitastic: Two from John Hayes

There is a disconnect noticeable with genre fans. Specifically with male fans into classic horror. The mere discussion of female sexuality makes them squirm in their skin. Don't expect them to delve into the filmography of Jess Franco anytime soon...

Before Driller Killer, Abel Ferrara made 9 Lives of A Wet Pussycat. Between Last House On the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, Wes Craven made The Fireworks Woman. Bill 'Maniac' Lustig got his start with The Violation of Claudia. It shouldn't be any surprise that filmmakers who cut their teeth on adult hardcore films made their way into genre films. There's less industry oversight and have a certain artistry to them. 

These directors have all produced horror films that fans wear proudly on their shirts, jean jackets and have adorned bedroom walls. And yet, whenever these forays into filth are brought up amongst them, they cringe and write it off as 'that one porno he did'. A director should do whatever they want. Even if they want to dabble into hardcore. 

John Hayes did just that. He's not a particular director who I'd rank among my favorites, but he should be more known. Stephen Thrower lists him as one of the 'American independents' during the 70s and early 80s. During that time there was a surge in the American Independent scene. Productions were popping up all over the states- Malatesta's Carnival of Blood, The Premonition, Don't Go In the Woods, The Deadly Spawn. They found a home on the streets of The Deuce on 42nd Street.  The thing about these movies was that while their productions didn't have the big studio backing more well known films could afford, they had oodles of passion and dedication that went into them. The stories behind how these movies got made and who made them are as captivating as the movies themselves. 

John Hayes' career spanned four decades in various exploitation subgenres. Starting off in sexploitation in the sixties. His more well known efforts are when he started getting into horror: Dream No Evil and this little diddy...

'A vampire awakes from his slumber attacks a couple making love in a graveyard. He then rapes the woman, who later gives birth to his son. The newborn infant will only drink blood from his mother's breast.' That's the synopsis. It's 70's thru and thru. The screenplay was written by David Chase. Yes, THAT David Chase. The man behind The Sopranos. 

This film packs mood in full force. Foggy cemeteries, spooky seances, wood paneled basements and a mother singing 'All the Pretty Little Horses' to her vampire baby as it first drinks her blood. It takes it time but stay with it. When it kicks in, it has a real mean streak. 

Everyone has seen Rosemary's Baby. But have you seen Baby Rosemary? 

Hayes' film Dream No Evil shares a number of themes from this one: trauma, abandonment, and rejection of reality. Here, it's presented in an even more gloomy tone. The question going through my head watching this is: who is the intended audience? There are hardcore scenes but they are presented in the context of psychological breakdown. In thise sense, it is more in line with something like Roberta Findlay's A Woman's Torment which would come out a year later. A film that marries hardcore and psychological horror.

The big selling point here is the final 15 minutes in which an orgy takes place in a funeral home. All set to a disorienting soundtrack and a fog machine. It has to be seen to be believed. 

TOP 5 SCREAM QUEENS...OF MY DREAMS

Sometimes it’s unfair to dismiss an actress as “bad.” Sometimes they’re misused - wrong director, wrong material, wrong genre - and other times they’re just born in the wrong era. Speaking of: this list isn’t about nostalgia... entirely. It’s a little bit about that, I’m not gonna lie, but I’m more interested in forward-thinking What If’s.

The game is simple, and I know you’ve played it before (we all have): Fantasy Movie Football. 

I often find myself recasting movies in my head—after all, that’s where the best movies always reside—and every so often I stumble upon a particularly exciting revelation: Oh shit! So-and-so should be making horror movies instead! And oftentimes these so-and-so’s are could-be Scream Queens—actresses who I’d love to see drenched in blood, or running for their lives, or facing off against Clint Howard or Killer Santa Clause. 

So, what defines a great Scream Queen? Well, nothing really. Not even acting chops. And that’s what's so fun about this. A list of this kind falls squarely between the subjectively objective and the objectively subjective. We can all play, and nobody can win.

Here are five (technically six) starlets who I’d love to see on the cover of Fangoria but never have. These ladies have yet to live up to their horror potential, and I’m here to right that wrong! ...in my dreams.     

 

 

HONORABLE MENTION: Elle Fanning

She almost was one. The Neon Demon wore its giallo influences on its sleeve, but it still floated somewhere on the fringes of textbook horror. Let’s file it under “close, but not quite.” But close is good! If nothing else, it whetted the palette. I’d pay to see Elle top billed in Carrie, or Suspiria, or Repulsion, or even Ginger Snaps.  

5. Odessa Young

You’re a chump if you still haven’t hopped on the Sam Levinson hype train. Go watch Assassination Nation and tell me I’m wrong that he should remake Scream. And if/when he does, our logical heroine will be this caustic Aussie. 

Adjectives that come to mind: intense, intense, intense. 

DREAM CASTING: Scream, The Blair Witch Project, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Silence of the Lambs

 

4. Jennifer Lawrence

I never disliked Jen, but at the same time she always looked awkward on screen. I couldn’t put my finger on it... until 2017. Mother! was, among many things, a big “aha!” for me. Like Neon Demon, it whetted the palette for something more explicitly horror. Ms. Lawrence (or is it Mrs. now?) can match whatever insanity you throw at her, so don’t leave her sitting on the bench just ‘cause she swings at everything when she’s up to bat.

Buuuuuuut it’s probably never gonna happen. Her narrowly-defined celeb persona is so solidified that you could already write her obituary, and that persona doesn’t leave room for much outside of David O. Russell movies and X-Men.  

DREAM CASTING: Rosemary’s Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beyond, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Slither, The Blob

3. Amanda Seyfried

The third season of Twin Peaks taught me a lot—about time, about consciousness, about identity, about sweeping—but perhaps the most valuable lesson I took away from it was that Amanda Seyfried is a latent horror icon and nobody knows it ‘cept me. Forget that Final Girl bullshit, ‘cause she was scary enough as Becky Burnett to be the fucking killer! 

Jennifer’s Body was DOA for two reasons: 1) it was simultaneously ahead of its time and behind the times as a quirky-teen-comedy-horror-pastiche, and 2) Megan Fox was the center of attention.

Seyfriend is so close already that it hurts. 

DREAM CASTING: Child’s Play, Candyman, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Bug, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, The Shining

     

2. Lucy Boynton

Another “almost.” After Blackcoat’s Daughter, only Emma Roberts and the Mad Men girl continued down the horror route. Lucy, on the other hand, went the Bohemian Rhapsody route (yikes). Ever since then she’s become synonymous with innocuous romantic comedies and Netflix series you probably haven’t seen or heard of. She was in Sing Street, too, but that’s a whole other headache. 

This is all very, very wrong. 

Whatsername is the new Sabrina, and Emma is a card-carrying Scream Queen—she’s the only one of the three to get that far. She successfully pried the crown from the cold, dead hands of the slasher genre with the help of the ever-nostalgic Ryan Murphy. And that’s cool... kinda. I like Emma. She’s fun to look at. But Lucy is fun to look at and watch, ja feel?

DREAM CASTING: The Fog, Psycho, Bram Stoker's Dracula, When a Stranger Calls, The Haunting

   

1. Tiffany Helm

And finally, the pièce de résistance. 

Unfortunately, this is another “never gonna happen,” but for more obvious reasons. This train has left the station altogether.  

But if I had my way, she’d be in every goddamn Friday movie, including Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason. She’d be Jason’s (or Roy’s?) Laurie Strode. She would’ve grown old with the franchise and returned for a reboot. And her look would’ve become a pop horror staple (it still could if we all work together!).

Yeah, yeah, I know, she’s barely in Part V. She’s just a colorful extra body to add to the kill count... 

...and how! A simple way to test if somebody has a strong screen presence (or scream presence, eh? Fuck you.) is to give them nothing more to do in a film besides dance. I could watch this New Wave Goth Babe dance for hours. And no, not just because of Pseudo Echo, though they don’t hurt.

DREAM CASTING: every Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Near Dark, Return of the Living Dead, The Craft     

Sette Bobinas In Nero: BTR's HorrorFest

This Halloween season, we at Between the Reels are asking you: Don't answer the phone. Don't look in the basement. Don't go in the house. Don't go in the woods. Don't deliver us from evil. Don't be afraid of the dark. Don't panic. Because if you think of skipping horror this year in favor of the 153rd Marvel movie...

Spirit Halloween has already cropped up in your local town, so we're dragging you by the hair into the festivities. 

Every Halloween, I make it a goal to watch as many horror films I can. With one major caveat- the bulk of them have to be ones I have never seen. Classic staples remain like The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, etc. Then there are the one's that demand to be watched because of their seasonal flavors- the Halloween series, Night of the Demons, The Midnight Hour. 

If there's one thing about the horror genre, it's that the well is bottomless. As soon as you think you've seen it all, out comes a new blu ray of a film you never heard of from a blu ray label you respect. I've sung the praises of Vinegar Syndrome many a time, but I can't understate their importance in this regard. They are rescuing obscure horror from the depths and giving them transfers we never would have dreamed of. Severin, Blue Underground, Scream Factory, AGFA, Mondo Macabro, Synapse, Scorpion Releasing own our wallets. They know exactly what they are doing. And we happily fork over the hard earned cash. 

It's not that horror fans already don't have discerning taste. Everyone has their own ways of combing over the selection out there and cherry picking what sounds interesting to them. Through the years, I've found lists and podcasts by horror experts like Stephen Thrower, Troy Howarth, Kat Ellinger, Samm Deighan, Kim Newman, Joseph Ziemba, Kier-La Janisse and many others that have helped me weed out the ones I need to see. 

These books have proved invaluable to me in my hunt:

Fangoria: 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen

Fangoria Issue 300: The Ultimate Horror Movie Guide

House of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse

Nightmare Movies by Kim Newman

Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents by Stephen Thrower

So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films Vol. 1 1963- 1973 by Troy Howarth

So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films Vol. 2 1974- 2013 by Troy Howarth

Bleeding Skull: A 1980's Trash Horror Odyssey by Joseph Ziemba and Dan Budnik

Bleeding Skull: A 1990's Trash Horror Odyssey by Joseph Ziemba, Anne Choi

Between those books and various online lists, I managed to cull together a list of films I have never seen before. As always, anything I don't get to this year, spills over into next year. 

Leading the charge this year will be Mario Bava's 1971 slasher classic Bay of Blood aka Carnage aka Twitch of the Death Nerve. Or, the coolest sounding horror title. And what better movie to lead. Beyond 2021 being the movie's 50th anniversary, it kicks off a major theme I will be chasing this season: The Gothic, The Ghastly and the Godfather. Each one belonging to a director whose body of work I am either woefully underseen or barely seen at all. 

                                                   The Gothic World of Mario Bava

I've seen and fell in love with the classics: Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace, Kill Baby Kill, Bay of Blood. I haven't really delved into his 'second tier' work. The films that are not as popular but still are held in regard as good work. The films that caught my eye the most are The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Whip and the Body and Lisa and the Devil. 

Andy Milligan: The Ghastly One

Andy Milligan is a name I never heard of until Vinegar Syndrome dropped Fleshpot on 42nd Street. His name was sung high and low (mostly low) on the streets of The Deuce back in the 70s. In The Ghastly One, Jimmy McDonough the time where Andy was at his mother's funeral. He shouted "She was a bitch!" and walked out. Much to the disgust of everyone else there. Family trauma and mother issues abound in his films. 

As grimy and perverse as his films are, he hated drugs and alcohol. From what I have gathered from Fleshpot, sadism, lurid melodrama and a streak of white hot anger are sprinkled all throughout his filmography. 

The Godfather of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis

He's the Powell and Pressburger of horror. When I think of his movies I think of dayglow reds and bright colors. Tongues being pulled out. I've neglected his filmography for too long. It's time to rectify that. 

WHAT I'M READING

I started this book last year and I will continue it this year. A compendium of horror like this one doesn't demand to be read all at once. Put together by David Hartwell, The Dark Descent chronicles the evolution of horror fiction from Lovecraft to King. I can see this becoming a seasonal tradition. 

"On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded and half-blind at the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers- a family of cannibal lunatics- are closing in." 

Trauma isn't give a lens nearly enough in the genre. So upon reading the synopsis for this, I instantly bought it. Burke wrote a 70 page novella called Blanky that I think about constantly since I've read it. This novel, in which Burke begins at the end of  nightmare, studies the aftermath of survivors upon their return to the real world. 

The horror fiction scene is lighting up with praise for Stephen Graham Jones. This one sees him take on the werewolf story. 

 I've read his novella Mapping the Interior and came away haunted and impressed. 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

I've posted my Top 100 horror films before. Like any list, it has mutated. It's current form will be unveiled on Halloween. 

The first update has already posted below: Jacob's Slashers: The Black Sheep. Check it out and stay tuned for more to drop. 

SLASHERS : The Black Sheep

 ...and the search continues for takes that are still hot. Hopefully, the ones below will help keep you warm as autumn looms.

Initially, I struggled to define “black sheep.” Is this just gonna be a list of movies that are considered bad? What about remakes and their sequels?

 

Instead of over-intellectualizing the qualifications, I decided to play it safe (unlike these movies) and stick to what we can all agree on. So, here’s the Mount Rushmore of “wait, you like that one?!”

 

The Big Four. Let’s find out if they’re too big to fail.

 

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

First of all, it’s not even a slasher, which is its biggest strength: it’s entirely its own thing. That, and Tom Atkins. 

If the Halloween franchise was meant to be an anthology then Witch definitely resembles a segment in an anthology film. Translation: it should’ve been 30 minutes long at the most rather than an hour and 40, and that’s where things turn kinda sour (if they have any flavor at all). Ill-fitting humor and an even more ill-fitting romantic subplot are used to pad out the runtime. The quirky mythology that carries the story is just that and only that. Visually, it’s better than its successors but not its predecessors, and the score is wallpaper (one of Carpenter’s weakest). 

It’s not the worst Halloween movie and it’s not the best. For me, it’s the most disposable entry on this list. Neither its former infamy nor its newfound popularity are fully deserved, but in film culture there are no centrist positions. It should be remembered as the middling seasonal hallmark that it is. Y’know, like Halloween.

I will say, though, that despite all its stalling disguised (unconvincingly) as plot momentum, it does manage to effectively build to an exciting sequence: the death of the Kupfers. The movie’s structure more closely resembles a thriller than a traditional horror film, and the subject matter dips into sci-fi - that murky genre soup ties back to it being “its own thing.” The scene itself is not so much creepy as it is freaky - the kinda thing that makes you scrunch your nose. Conceptually it’s cool, sure, but what I take away from it is this: killing your unsuspecting comic relief in such a vile and sacrificial manner is a great tone-setter. Too bad the tone isn’t set until the 70-minute mark of this 100-minute movie.

BEST SCENE(S): the death of the Kupfers, the ending

WORST SCENE(S): Dan and Ellie’s love scene 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge 

Full disclosure: I have no dog in this fight. I’m generally neutral on this franchise. Film geeks seem to appreciate it more than other slasher franchises because of its subversion of tropes and its surrealist ambitions. Personally, I’d rather watch something whose reach doesn’t exceed its grasp. But the Cinephile Stamp of Approval on this series makes the hatred toward this particular installment kind of ironic: it’s arguably the least ‘slasher’ Freddy movie and the most surreal (next to New Nightmare). If you squint, parts of it could pass for a sort of drive-in Fire Walk With Me. I can just hear Robert Englund growling “I want to taste through your mouth” whilst brushing aside Mark Patton’s hair with his claws — not to mention Mark’s screaming rivals Sheryl Lee’s. Ahem.

On the positive side of things, this is the only movie in the Elm Street saga where Freddy actually looks like a burn victim instead of Robert Englund wearing rubbery prosthetics. In fact, you can extend that criticism to the overall aesthetics of the franchise: most of these movies were too clean-looking and HD (especially the 90s ones). The visuals and audio mix in Freddy’s Revenge are a bit more low-fi and gritty, which is a plus for any horror film.

On the negative side, the opening and ending school bus sequences are too silly for my taste (they’re also baffling when you contrast them with the self-serious tone of the rest of the movie). In between those mediocre bookends is a lot of tedious teen psychodrama made sorta sufferable by Patton’s admirable performance (which, in turn, is balanced out by Kim Myers’ obnoxious line deliveries).

BEST SCENE(S): the chest-burster/Freddy’s arrival, Lisa vs. Freddy at the factory 

WORST SCENE(S): opening and ending school bus scenes, Coach Schneider’s death 

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning 

 

It feels like the exact opposite of what it is: a Friday movie trying to be something new. Instead, it feels like something new masquerading as a Friday movie (there’s a Roy Burns pun in there somewhere). The glove doesn’t quite fit (the “ki ki ki ma ma ma”s are especially out of place), but it’ll take a helluva lot more than that to cut the legs out from under this exceptionally idiosyncratic ensemble. One after another, we’re roped into colorful vignettes - some funny, some sweet, all endearing - that trick us into thinking maybe - just maybe - we’ve finally met our Final Girl or our Final Boy, but no. Each death hurts because any one of these characters could easily carry their own movie, and the characters who do survive are just as expendable as those who don’t, which makes their peril that much more palpable. It should be taught in screenwriting courses. In fact, the big problem with this movie is that the actual Final Girl is the sole uninteresting character in the story. 

I have no defense of the final 20 minutes, but the first 70 are the Greatest Hits of the Friday canon and maybe the subgenre as a whole. It doesn’t bother me that Jason fans were unsatisfied with this proverbial flipping of the script, because if you’re a fan of the first four Fridays then disappointing you is a good measure of quality. 

This is the only slasher I’ve ever seen where the victims are more interesting than the killer, but what if the killer had been as compelling as his prey? Well, this could’ve been kind of a masterpiece. Hell, given time it might just ascend to being my all-time favorite of the subgenre. Yeah, you heard me right, you big dildo.

BEST SCENE(S): Joey’s, Victor’s, Violet’s, Reggie’s, Demon and Anita’s, Robin and Jake’s, Vinnie and Pete’s, Ethel and Junior’s

WORST SCENE(S): the last 20 minutes

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

The second one swapped out tangible filth for cartoonishness, but three and four were a welcome return to depravity - even if it was cartoonish depravity in the final installment. 

McConaughey, alone, makes it funnier than Part 2, but don’t overlook the straight (wo)man: Zellweger, who gives the strongest Final Girl performance of the franchise. These movies were pretty consistent with finding Final Girls who had chemistry with the Sawyers. 

Okay, now that I've exhausted every bit of praise I have for the movie, let’s talk about how it’s not very good. The teen comedy stuff tests my patience whenever I watch it - in fact, almost everything but McConaughey tests my patience - but the elephant in the room is Leatherface -- or, I should say, I wish he was the elephant in the room.

Instead, he’s overshadowed by Vilmer. It’s not the first time Bubba has played second fiddle to his brother, but it’s certainly the most severe example. ‘Leatherface in Drag’ is a cute idea for a t-shirt, not a whole feature. And while the contemporary TCM movies are far worse than Next Gen, this installment kind of deserves its reputation. Kind of. Not every movie on this list is going to get props from me for being “different.” Indeed, in the case of Next Gen, its positive qualities are the ones it has in common with the first and third installments.

As an aside, McConaughey has never disowned this film, not even after his Oscar win. Respect.  

BEST SCENE(S): Vilmer’s 

WORST SCENE(S): every...thing else