Three Films Make A Post: Want to hear a scary story?

Bring it On: Cheer or Die (2022): Turning this perennial cheerleading movie franchise slasher-wards is a goofy idea that’s also all kinds of brilliant. Alas, the execution of this idea, as directed by Karen Lam with a screenplay credited to Alyson Fouse, Rebekah McKendry and Dana Schwartz, is about as limp, uninspired and un-fun as this could have turned out. The PG-13 rating surely doesn’t help the film, for where other horror sub-genres can survive without getting to gruesome, a slasher without creative kills lacks an important ingredient to work as it should. That the film only does much of anything with its cheerleading core in its final act when it turns out that cheerleading is a type of martial arts is another disappointment. Also not helpful are jokes that don’t hit (this is apparently supposed to be a horror comedy, though it’s difficult to notice), a cast that couldn’t handle funny lines anyway, and direction I’ll politely call uninspired.

Devil’s Workshop (2022): A struggling actor (Timothy Granaderos) in the running for a role as a demonologist spends a weekend at a real demonologist’s (Radha Mitchell) who pulls him into a bit of a supernatural psychodrama. At least half of the time, Chris von Hoffmann’s film actually is the twisty, blackly humorous, psychologically thrilling two-hander it so clearly wants to be, with some clever moments where a character’s inner life is supernaturally brought to the outside. Alas, it is a bit too distractible to quite reach its full potential, wasting too much time on the travails of our protagonist’s arch enemy (Emile Hirsch at his weaselliest); setting up a punchline really shouldn’t take up twenty minutes or so of screen time.

Mitchell does one hell of a job being ambiguous, weird and intense; Granaderos, while no slouch in the scenery chewing business sometimes can’t quite keep up with her.

Scare Me (2020): Speaking of actor’s workshops, this movie about two horror writers – one successful (Aya Cash), one would-be (writer/director of the film Josh Ruben) – acting out horror stories in a cabin during a power failure sometimes has a certain whiff of that sort affair. However, it’s a workshop where both main parties act and imagine their asses off in the best possible way, and whose director may be a bit showy, but also brilliantly effective in his showiness, building tension and mood out of thin air and sheer inventiveness. Unlike in our first entry, the sardonic humour hits nearly every time, and the script is much deeper and more clever than it at first appears; unlike in our second one, both leads are on the same level and wavelength throughout.

I suspect this is going to be a bit of a marmite film: its very specific type of cleverness and its go-for-broke intensity and personal weirdness will rub some people the wrong way. I found myself, unexpectedly, loving this approach to talking about scary stories, success and jealousy, and the kind of human interactions that can only end in tears and/or blood quite a bit.

Three Films Make A Post: You'll float too.

Drifter (2016): I’m not always a fan of too knowing exploitation movie throwbacks, but Chris von Hoffman’s post-apocalyptic (one assumes) cannibal town trip mostly knows when it’s okay to wink and when to be straight. It’s a very low budget affair, so a prospective viewer should adjust accordingly and cope with a script that sometimes drags a bit, dialogue that isn’t always spot on, and other minor flaws of this kind. On the other hand, the film is much better acted than most films in its bracket, is shot with a lot of style and a great feel for making the most out of the available locations (none of which is one of those damn warehouses), and generally gives the impression of a movie made by people who know what they want and what they are doing. It will probably be not quite a new cult classic for anyone, but I came out of it entertained and with respect for the filmmakers.

Wheelman (2017): Speaking of throwbacks, this Netflix production directed by Jeremy Rush certainly is inspired by crime and car based movies of the 70s, though it does look and feel very much like a slick 2010s production, particularly since Rush opts for the not terribly 70s gimmick of shooting most of the film in the car. That technique could have resulted in strained artiness, but in Rush’s hands, it actually feels like a way to let the audience share the tension of a main character (Frank Grillo still very much in what looks and feels like his unexpected career high to me) completely out of his depth in more than one regard. Plus, the director is playful enough even to have a great moment where the car that audience and character(s) share changes, and knows when to move his camera out of the damn thing, so the story – simple as it may be – doesn’t end up overwhelmed by the way it is told. On the writing side, this is very competent and entertaining genre business, not terribly surprising, but made with too much verve for that to matter terribly much.


Bay Coven (1987): This NBC TV movie about a couple of mostly likeable yuppies – Pamela Sue Martin and Tim Matheson – moving to a strange island community that will turn out to have rather problematic traditions (at least if one values one’s life and one’s sanity), was made in a time when supernatural horror wasn’t really the thing to do on TV anymore. Director Carl Schenkel doesn’t seem to care, though, and tells a merry, American Gothic tale of witchcraft, insanity, and a very peculiar kind of marital trouble most couples won’t encounter in their lifetime with a degree of verve. There are quite few effective spooky moments, as well as some entertainingly silly ones, a proper dramatic climax, and even a director and script (by Tim Kring very early in his career) who realize they are also making a film about female anxieties about alienation from one’s partner, and the secrets and lies in a marriage, and make proper use of the possibilities this offers them.