Backrooms Review

I have a rule: that I will only watch one film's trailer once whenever possible. Now, I know a common practice among film critics is to avoid trailers. But although here I slap away at my keyboard, putting digital words to digital paper about films for you the reader to read, I am a fan first and foremost. I love all kinds, and that includes horror. So when I first saw the preview for "Backrooms," the cinema buff in me perked up with unreasonable levels of excitement. I created expectations that no movie probably could satisfy. Then I actually saw it.

In a packed, rowdy theater, where even the nosebleed section was filled, I admired "Backrooms" for its ambition, it's spectacular premise, evocative set design and general sense of mystery, but I can't recommend it. Then again why can't I? Just because it is filled with idiotic characters, offers absolutely no explanation, is somehow both ten minutes too long and too short, and overall frustrating? How could I be frustrated if it didn't tickle that little film freak in me?

Set in the 90s, for no particular reason other than to possibly remove the problem of characters having cell phones, this is a movie that, yes, is about big, empty rooms. Walls colored an olive green, rooms connect with no rhyme or rhythm and they go on and on. You can hear the fizzing of the fluorescent lights and practically can smell the cigarette smoke baked into the carpet: the whole thing is innocent in theory but unsettling in practice.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a loser owner of a discount furniture store who is still struggling with his wife leaving him. He has no real friends, unless you count his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) or his two, dating, employees, Bobby and Kat (Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, respectively). Mary has her own baggage (probably could use a shrink herself), told through flashbacks of her abusive upbringing by her paranoid mother, but at least she has any development: our poor staff lover pair, um, well she wears flip flops and him shoes, I guess?

Clark's shop isn't doing too well, never a customer ever in sight, and to make matters worse, the lights keep flickering, sometimes going out entirely. An electrician notices some baffling breakers in the downstairs, which seemingly do nothing. But then one night, Clark is drinking, watching TV while lounging on his own merchandise (maybe it's used furniture?) when the TV shows what looks like security footage of some strange place, then turns off. The lights flicker too, so the inebriated business owner marches back down to the breakers, flipping them indiscriminately. Them all off now, he ends up walking past a wall when he notices something: a chartreuse mist barely poking through a seemingly solid wall.

It turns out that the wall isn't a wall, but a sort of doorway to the titular labyrinth. You can freely walk in and out as well, which doesn't really make any sense considering no one has ever even accidentally bumped into the portal. Unless Clark really never has any patrons, but I digress. 

What exactly is in the backrooms? On the first night, Clark senses something, seeing things crash about once he's further inside and needs to escape back to his store. But the surprising discovery and possible threat aren't enough for him to like, you know, call the police or the Ghostbusters or something. Instead, he spends several off-screen days crudely mapping it out on paper. He presents this to Mary, who understandably doesn't believe him, so he offers Kit and Bobby overtime to help him delve even deeper inside. Specifically, this one hallway that's at too steep a decline to traverse without a sort of rope or something. Armed with a video camera, Bobby goes down and well, I should probably skip past this.

Later on, and by reasons never defined, Clark leaves a message on Mary's answering machine, ultimately saying he won't be able to see her again. Then, in an obvious breach of the Tarasoff rule, she heads into his store, right as he described, and enters herself. Alone, without contacting anyone first. Now, I am no therapist, nor do I have one, but someone really should check this lady's credentials.

More things happen, then even more things, but there's less here than the sum of its parts. I appreciated the light touches of comedy (especially Clark's local commercials early on), but with moments of thrillers, science fiction, psychological and body horror, but to what end? Why are their security cameras? What exactly is inside these rooms, and why are they here? How has no one ever noticed them? You'd think construction workers or something would have stumbled into them by mistake.

"Backrooms" sets up all these interesting ideas but is ultimately untrustworthy with the power it wields. And just when you think it's going to settle down and fully explore one of the many different paths to take it's shockingly fun idea, the filmmakers pivot to yet another underexplained area. And I would be fine with an exercise in the philosophical, but you can't expect your film to deserve such mental gymnastics to comprehend when you only tackle such topics when you can come up with interesting ways to film it.

But then I remember that this is director Kane Parsons and writer Will Soodik's first feature film, made with a reported budget of just ten million. This is not some sleazy, exploitative cheapie but a thought-provoking and thought-aggravating work of pure and blind enthusiasm.

Passenger Review

The new movie "Passenger" is tawdry, nonsensical, frustrating and boring, when it's not funny for all the wrong reasons. It tells the story of a young couple who live out of their RV when, one night after witnessing a car accident, are "marked" by a mysterious folk demon who terrorizes travelers under the moonlight. In other words, it's "The Hitcher" with ghosts.

Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell star as Tyler and Maddie, respectively, a young couple of very different upbringings. He comes from a broken home, and she the foster system, and for some reason they decide that the best way to find some form of stable life is living out of an RV. The two have packed up their belongings and quit their cushy New York City jobs as, something- ohh I'm sorry, did I say quit? I meant "retired." I mention this only because it's about the only other character development either receive.

On their first night on the open road, a speeding car pulls up next to them, their windshield smashed and the driver in a frenzy. They slow down to let them pass, thinking maybe it's a drunk or road rager, but a few miles up, they see the car in a ditch. It's crashed into the neighboring trees, so the two pull over to make sure the driver is alright. (These must be the nicest New Yorkers ever on film.) He's not and soon the cops arrive, but not before Maddie notices scratch marks on the back of the car. She then thinks she sees someone hidden in the woods, but even when they notice their van now has the same scars, she shakes it off like any good heroine in a horror movie would.

They then attend a nomad gathering for other people who live in their van, and boy, is Tyler in his element- he even finds someone who can buff out the scratch. Maddie, however, is fixated on a missing peoples board (she must be fun at parties), when she soon bumps into a fellow van-lifer (Melissa Leo), an old woman who warns never to drive at night and never stop for anything as if it's common knowledge. You'd think it'd be in the car's manual.

But Maddie keeps seeing things, a man specifically, dressed in black with his face obscured in the shadows, but only when she's near the vehicle. Inside a motel room? Shopping in an antique shop? Working out at a 24/7 gym? No strange visions. You would think she could simply stop living in the RV, but she explicitly discards that idea as "not how she thinks this works." I dunno, I thought it was at least worth a shot.

Anyway, at first it's only Maddie who is being stalked by the unseen stranger, but eventually Tyler begins to see it too. Now both of them are in a panic, and the two decide to hightail it to where they know that elderly vagabond from before was heading (you'd think they'd belong to the same Facebook group or something). Driving only under sunlight, they eventually track her down, where she lore-dumps what's going on. Yup you guessed it, they're being hunted by an ancient evil spirit and their only possible way out is, well, you get where this is going.

"Passenger" runs out of steam well before its final act, asking characters to do dumb things only dumb characters do in dumb horror movies, like crawling under an RV for lug nuts or wandering away from each other with the only light being the blinking red flash of taillights. You can tell exactly when something is going to jump out and yell "boo," by the way the music stops and the camera gets real close to someone's face, and that pattern is detected early on and never deviated from.

Then there's the villain himself, the "Passenger" as it were. He is chronically goofy looking, like an aging Cory Feldman with his face painted white. It's a laughable excuse for a horror movie icon. He looks more smelly than scary.

Seen in a relatively packed theater, the audience sat in total silence throughout its ninety some odd minute runtime, the myriad of painfully telegraphed jump scares failing to elicit any emotion from the crowd. I, for one, laughed a few times, rolled my eyes even more, but mostly, I tried with all my vigor not to fall asleep. (Movie tickets ain't cheap, ya know?)

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War Review

The most distracting thing about "Jack Ryan: Ghost War" isn't its occasionally misguided politics or overly loud action scenes, it is Jack Ryan himself. Portrayed by nearly a half dozen different actors over the past several decades, nobody will ever be able to take the mantel away from Harrison Ford's two-film run occupying the iconic literary hero. Every bit as convincing with a gun as he is delivering doomy monologues in big rooms filled with well-dressed government officials, his tenure casts a massive cloud over all who came before and after.

John Krasinski dons the famous name this time, reprising it from the Amazon Prime show from a few years back, and he simply isn't up to snuff. Mostly credible with a machine gun, sure, but that's not what Jack Ryan is about. He's an analyst, something even this movie makes a point of emphasizing, but come on, this is Hollywood we're talking about. So they give him guns and he blasts away bad guys, big deal. That's more a fault of the script and not the actor, but Krasinski can't dominate the screen like his far-removed predecessor even when the screenplay accidentally gives him something to do other than hold a weapon in a place he probably shouldn't be. 

The plot, which involves the CIA's Deputy Director Greer (Wendell Pierce) and an old secret black-ops unit called "Starling," long believed to be deactivated, only it isn't. He's unaware of its continued operations, and when MI6 asks for him to "pick up a package," he sends Ryan, now a civilian, to retrieve it. Why he doesn't go himself is never explained, nor why he doesn't send, you know, someone who isn't retired to go, but it's a good thing such a high-ranking official stays behind his large solid-wood desk: Ryan and his contractor partner (Michael Kelly) are ambushed on a boat in Dubai. They're held hostage, er well, I mean "saved," well, more like taken into custody by an MI6 agent Emma (Sienna Miller), where they learn Greer's old pal Crown (Max Beesley) not only was behind the attack, but also Starling's current enterprise.

Oh, and the package? It ends up being a crushed pack of cigarettes, given to Ryan by a nervous Cooke (Douglas Hodge), who we first meet in the film's opening trying to steal a list of contacts from Crown. This whole thing sounds like it could have just been a phone call.

The plot is needless political hodgepodge, name-dropping 9/11 and words like "terrorism" and "torture" as if there aren't more relevant headlines in today's news, but then I remember the character of Ryan originates from 1984, so no wonder the whole thing smells a bit musty. (Suppose I should be grateful it's not about the USSR.) 

And it surely can't be this difficult to get right- I mean, there's, what, over a dozen novels worth of material they could use. But that would take actually picking up a book and reading, and honestly, who reads books?

But I don't care that the narrative is antiquated or a bit silly, but what I do fault is how it is unnecessarily convoluted: characters often stand around from a safe house to a secret hideout trying to explain the plot to each other. Scenes are overproduced and excessively slick, director Andrew Bernstein staging things like a music video without music, the camera swinging in large angles as big, black SUVs drive quickly down the streets of London and New York. The whole production ends up a James Bond movie stripped of the gadgets, effortless humor and sexiness. What's left is an unmemorable, somber political thriller that checks the boxes of the genre instead of trying to have fun with it. 

Obsession Review

Despite having a plot, the new movie "Obsession" isn't about plot. It's about texture, an uncomfortable and eventually irritating texture where the whole point is to make the audience feel restless and uneasy. It's "cringe horror," if you will. The film, which was written, directed and edited by Curry Barker, goes as far as to not only kill a cat within the first five minutes, but to come up with all sorts of twisted ways for the deceased animal to be desecrated, including consumption. Is that a spoiler? Trust me, I don't think it's any easier to watch with that knowledge.

The film follows a meekish music store employee Bear (Michael Johnston), who is absolutely smitten by his old friend and coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). His other friend (and of course, coworker too) Ian advises him to "wait for the right moment" before gushing his puppy love for her, and one evening, after trivia night at the local bar, he gets his chance. He gets to drive Nikki home, alone. It's the perfect time, or so anyone who's ever flirted before in their life would know, but he blows it. She asks him flat out if he likes her and he says no. She walks inside her house, and he sits in his car unable to believe what an idiot he is. If only he knew just how much more of an idiot he's soon to become.

But waiting for another time isn't what Bear is about, because inside his bag is a "One Wish Willow," a vintage novelty item he finds in the local mystic shop. You know, the kind that sells rocks with "energies" and probably weed. The packaging claims it grants the user one wish one time. He had planned on gifting it to Nikki, but decides to use it himself, because he wants results now, dammit. The love of his life almost immediately appears back outside his car, asking for him to spend the night or, for her to spend the night at his place. Again with this guy- he has no idea how to take a hint.

She goes home with him, but not in the traditional, romantic kind of way. Her cat died, she says, only to quickly correct herself that it was him who lost a pet, but actually that her dad has cancer. She is lonely and vulnerable but even a dope like Bear knows something is wrong. That night things continue to get weird, well, Nikki does at least, and the next morning, Bear tries to explain what happened to Ian. He fails to mention the little prayer he made, of course: he isn't exactly the most trustworthy a protagonist. 

But in no time Bear and Nikki are obviously a couple, going on dates and practically living together, but there's still something off about her. He wakes one night to find her in the corner, watching him sleep yet he doesn't really realize how messed up their situation is until it's far too late. In many ways it's a lot like 2024's "The Substance," but at least that picture knew what it was trying to say. "Obsession" is content with just showing us nonsensical images of the macabre.

But I give credit where credit is due: this was at times truly difficult to watch, my body slumping into a distressing lump in my theater's reclining leather chair. Things don't necessarily jump out at you, but in its place is this intense feeling of anxiety. One that, without an actual purpose behind the nasty images onscreen, ends up hollow emotional exploitation. 

There is a nasty, sexist undercurrent to the narrative the movie is happy introducing but not discussing. Throughout the runtime, it is implied that this "new" Nikki has taken over the "old" Nikki's body, who is only able to break out at random. This means Bear effectively has kidnapped her, not to mention constantly raping her, but the script never probes this. All it does is effectively reduce Nikki to a sex object, put through one humiliating situation after the next, all while wearing about as much as Austin Powers did that one time he walked through a hotel lobby. There are plot holes big enough to fit a roll of burning sage through, but narrative cohesion isn't what "Obsession" explores. Barker is clearly a talented director, but next time let us hope he finds an actual writer to work with.

Normal Review

My favorite moments in the black comedy action thriller "Normal" are the, admittedly rare, quiet ones, where quirky characters do or say odd things that simultaneously feel expected and unexpected. There's a little yarn shop run by a little old lady (who keeps tabs on the sheriff with her combination police scanner/CB radio), but a highlight for me is early on, when a dorky deputy, played by Billy MacLellan, walks into his provisional boss' office and whispers something to the tune of "I don't know if I should be telling you this, but we have, like, the same mustache."

Bob Odenkirk stars as Ulysses, the interim sheriff of the snowy little town of Normal, Minnesota, on week one of eight until the full-time sheriff is elected. What happened to the previous one? Found dead, frozen outside in the middle of the night, fishing rod in his hand. Smells, ahem, fishy.

Trying to get over the demons of a shooting at his last job, Ulysses takes this temp job with the hope of leaving the town the same as he found it, as he puts it, staying at the only motel in town. He orders Chinese food from the only Chinese restaurant in town, and drinks at what's probably the only bar in town too. In case you haven't guessed it, it's a really, really small town.

But Ulysses begins to suspect something is afoot in this idyllic place, and he's right. He doesn't do anything about it, of course, that is, until one day there's a robbery at the bank. Two crooks, a couple played by Reena Jolly Lori and Brendan Fletcher, are in way over their heads as guards accidentally shoot each other, a bystander has a heart attack, and so on. Ulysses decides to go in to try and cool things down, to negotiate you might say, but the other two policemen there, well, let's just say they have other plans. The mayor (played delightfully by Henry Winkler) orders them to shoot their stopgap sheriff and the robbers, fearing they might find out about the vault. Good thing for Ulysses that the other cops are such bad shots.

What's in the vault? Tons of money, gold bars, military-grade weapons, the works. The contents belong to the Yakuza, who we find have paid off everyone in town, from store owners to politicians. Their money has helped keep this 1950's town thriving in the year 2026, despite the continuous beat of time. Ulysses teams up with the two burglars, blowing up everyone who stands in their way, like a crooked parody of John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13." Like that film, the mayhem is pleasantly free of any obvious CGI. In fact, the only thing that I noticed was a moose, which the mayor is obsessed with.

At just ninety minutes in length, the film feels longer than it actually is, neither ending where you expect nor with satisfying results. The relatively listless direction from Ben Wheatley is at the mercy of Derek Kolstad's sometimes funny script, but the end-result isn't able to sustain this blend of violence and humor the way the superior Liam Neeson vehicle "Cold Pursuit" could. The jokes here feel achieved almost as if by accident, and the infrequent action is bloody enough to be distracting but not vulgar enough to work as satire against the peaceful municipality.

The story paints itself into a corner about two-thirds of the way through, forcing characters to act in a way that only serves to wrap things up. The ending, which I won't spoil, only makes sense if no one, that's both you and the characters, never stop to think about it. And that's a shame: these characters are all interesting enough that I began to grow kinda fond of them, only for the whole production to cheat the relationship I build with these wacky people by having them form alliances they didn't earn. And of course, keeping things open just enough for a possible sequel.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review

If anything, writer/director Lee Cronin having his name above the title in "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" makes this one easier to reference, as there's been, by my count, four other films just called "The Mummy." In fact, it's been almost ten years since the last one, the shared universe non-starter starring Tom Cruise that I am probably the only one who enjoyed. This latest attempt narrows the scope to a few locations, no big actors and an emphasis on horror, which makes sense considering Lee's filmography. Problem is, he hasn't made a mummy movie: he's made "The Exorcist" with sand.

The film follows the Cannon family, with parents Charlie (Jack Reynor) and the expecting Larissa (Laia Costa) raising their two kids, Katie (Emily Mitchell & Natalie Grace) and Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams & Shylo Molina) in Egypt. Charlie works as a TV reporter and Larissa a nurse, but the two are hoping that he gets that job in New York. He does, spoiler alert, but while he's on the phone getting the good news, little Katie is being groomed by a cloaked woman (Hayat Kamille). She's apparently been ploying her with candy, but today, she offers her a tangerine, but Katie's apparently never seen "Snow White" and accepts the fruit. An insect hops out, goes into her mouth, and by the time Charlie notices she's not inside, she's gone. Ah yes, the old cliche of showing a kid in danger as a cheap ploy to evoke emotions. Classy.

The woman is able to kidnap her, some plot happens, and now we flash forward eight years. The family now lives in New Mexico with Larissa's mom (Verónica Falcón), the couple now having another child, played by Billie Roy. By the way, her name is Maud- must be big Bea Arthur fans.

Then one day, the family gets a call, their missing daughter has been found. And she's alive! But it is the strangest thing: she was only discovered back in Egypt, found among the wreckage of a plane crash, wrapped up in cloth inside a sarcophagus. She looks, well, exactly how you'd expect. The doctors explain the lack of sun exposure, etc., are the cause behind her wrinkled, twisted appearance. Yes totally, being trapped in a box for almost a decade without food or water, no need to investigate. All her vitals are fine too, which is odd considering tradition insists the brains are removed during the mummification process. This must have been one of those "budget mummifications" I see advertised on late night TV.

The hospital sends her home almost immediately, saying that time with the family is just what the doctor ordered. This infuriated me to no end: there should be everyone from NASA to the scientists at the end of "ET" there, quarantining her and running every test in the book. And here I thought the American healthcare system was crap.

Back at home in the states, things clearly are not right with Katie. At first, the family holds out hope, but then strange things start to happen. She escapes into the walls of the house, crawling like a possessed monster, before eating a scorpion. Then soon after, the mom, trying to clip her toenails, ends up peeling off a strip of her leg skin. She bursts out and is found stabbing the wound with a fireplace poker. And these people still decide to keep her here! Well, the mom does at least: Charlie expresses concern about his newfound daughter, but Larissa takes this as a slight at her ability as a mom, leading us to a mild detour into marriage discord, just what every horror film needs.

Things escalate with possession of the other two kids, wolves that stalk the house outside, something that crawls on the ceiling, floating bodies, VHS found-footage, a cult and at least one person being flung out a window to their death. Lee goes all in with style, overwhelming us with slime but never able to actually scare us. I saw "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" in a mildly populated theater, and I heard one "gasp" one time. The yelp was not from me, who stared at the screen in bored silence on my fully-reclined leather chair. And as I did, I found myself appreciating his technique as a director, but lamenting his inability as a writer.

Thrash Review

It's "Shark Week" this week on "So I Went to the Movies," but sadly Netflix's latest, "Thrash," is a pretty unsatisfying way to kick off summer. Maybe it's because it's still April- yeah that's it, Hollywood is saving the good stuff for when sunscreen season officially begins. Let's forget this one and check back in June. Please?

Oh I couldn't do that to you. So what's "Thrash" about? Picture it, South Carolina, present day. The fictional town of Annieville is besieged by a category five hurricane, and the government orders the entire place to evacuate. The once dry land quickly becomes flooded, bringing along some very hungry hungry sharks. So yeah, it's the exact same premise as 2019's "Crawl," trading violent reptiles for violent fish, as well as some of the minor details, and while I did like that creature feature, "Thrash" suffers from the comparison.

Whitney Peak stars as Dakota, a young woman tormented by panic attacks whenever she leaves her house after the offscreen death of her parents. Her uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou), a marine biologist, because of course he is, promises to pick her up since he knows she can't (and doesn't) skip town to safety. She is content with just chilling in her home, feeling sad for herself, probably trying to think of a way to get out of leaving once her uncle shows up. 

But wait, there's more! Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), a single pregnant woman, is driving home from work as she complains to her mom over video call that her boss made everyone come in today. (Vehicular video calls are illegal in SC, the interwebs tell me, but I digress.) But soon she crashes into a tree, trapping her inside with the water slooooooowly rising. She works at the local meat packing plant, and by pure movie-magic coincidence, a tanker truck from her company carrying, um, liquid meat product, is carried away and splits open, leaking blood everywhere. I don't know if that's actually how meat is moved across the country (I hope not), but then again, it's been a long time since I read The Jungle.

Now obviously, the blood will draw sharks, everyone knows that, but why bother having her work at the slaughterhouse? I kept waiting for some type of satire on the corporate exploitation of its workers, but no, the evil mammal flesh place just exists to, ahem, make sure the plot swims along.

Also under fishy assault are a trio of siblings, whose foster parents (Matt Nable and Amy Mathews) also refuse to leave the aquatic salvo. They are a pair of generally unpleasant folks, hicks who swear at the three youngsters while drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, hoarding steaks in the basement while feeding the children white bread. I guess the adults don't need bread- you know what I'm thinking too much into this.

And with that, we see the film's biggest failings: we have way too many characters, some of whose stories never intersect, and you don't need to be a genre veteran to tell who was going to be shark food and who was going to live. The characterizations are as shallow as the water the sharks are swimming. Compare Dale to another film marine biologist, Hooper from "Jaws." I'm not implying Richard Dreyfuss is a better actor than Djimon, but the abundance of these kinds of pictures means everyone knows something about sharks. This renders Dale's monologues about the animals boring and unnecessary; anyone who's ever watched a single episode of "Shark Week" knows everything the film knows, and clearly doesn't know, about these ancient animals.

But what about the violence? If a monster movie isn't going to bother much with populating its world with interesting people, then all that's left are the attacks. "Thrash" comes up short here. Some of it comes with the territory: because sharks don't go on land, a lot of the attacks are underwater, so you see some splashes, red water, and yelling. Writer/director Tommy Wirkola does give us one nice kill, where you see a head bit in half, but with a story this stale, you really need some more of that kind of sick creativity.

That's to say nothing of the wonkiness of the special effects. Some shots of the water crashing through the levee look real, but many others look painfully like wet actors standing around in a cold pool. The rest? Like the sharks, clearly CGI. I hate to say it, but "Thrash" is trash.