Decades of Terror: Takoma's Slow-Moving October Time Machine

Well, definitely make sure you watch all of it if you haven't done so yet, heh.

I would like to get your thoughts on part of the movie. None of us really had any understanding of what that was supposed to be about.

My thought when watching was that

Summer of 84, 1984

Davey (Graham Verchere) lives a quiet life in the suburbs, along with friends Woody (Caleb Emery), Tommy (Judah Lewis), and Curtis (Cory Gruter-Andrew). It’s all newspaper deliveries and late-night meetings in treehouses until Davey comes to suspect that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackay (Rich Sommer) is the serial killer who has been abducting teenage boys in surrounding communities. Along with the older girl Davey has a crush on, Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the crew sets out to prove Mackay’s guilt without arousing his suspicions.

Largely notable for its last act, the departures from convention don’t quite work out on balance with the rest of the film.

Ah, yes, one of those movies where the only part you really want to talk about is so deeply spoilerific that even trying to stay vague feels precarious.

But here goes: for most of its run time, this is a very familiar horror/thriller that hits the beats you’d expect, and yet hits them pretty well. Davey, with his initial suspicions, trying to convince his friends to help him in his quest. The absolute thrill of not only talking to his crush, Nikki, but discovering that she likes him, too. Davey’s parents, enemies of the cause because of course they won’t believe such a conspiracy theory from a son whose walls are covered with clippings about aliens, murderers, and cannibals who live in the sewers.

Verchere is a likable enough lead. Fans of the TV series Monk might give a little cheer on recognizing Jason Gray-Stanford as Davey’s dad. There’s a decent rapport between the boys, and Skovbye is also enjoyable as a woman who is young herself, but who seems so much more grown up by virtue of having just two or three years of age on them. Sommer’s energy in the role of the suspected neighbor is just right. I spent most of the movie wondering if he was guilty or not---the guy sure buys a lot of dirt!--and the film admirably doesn’t tip its hand either way until late in the running.

And then the last act---or really, the last 15 minutes rolls around---and everything changes. I won’t say a word about how, but there is definitely a single moment where it all goes a very different direction from what you would suspect. Does it work? Ehhhhhhh. The problem is not that the ending is bad. Quite to the contrary, I think the ending is very effective. But not only does it not follow from what came before it, 70 minutes is a lot of movie to watch in service of a bait-and-switch. Some last act shifts can wildly change how you see the film that came before it, but that’s not the case here. There is no illumination, no sudden awareness of missed cues or wonderful recontextualization.

It also must be said that the way that the movie looks, the way that it’s shot, all of those technical elements really don’t distinguish themselves much. And this doesn’t change in the last act. Perhaps if the jarring shift had truly altered the very DNA of the film from that point on, I’d have felt differently. As it stands, what happens at the end mainly made me wish that the whole film had been made from the same cloth. That rather than being saved as a surprise, the whole thing had just been a better, more original, more engaging film.

Some extra credit for the last act, but only so-so as a complete package.

The Wild Boys, 2017

Rich, indifferent teenagers Romauld (Pauline Lorillard), Jean-Louis (Vimala Pons), Hubert (Diane Rouxel), Tanguy (Anael Snoek), and Sloane (Mathilde Warnier) have a nasty habit of indulging in any vices they like. But then they take things too far---sexually assaulting and eventually killing one of their teachers--their families agree to turn them over to a man known only as The Captain (Sam Louwyck) who claims to have a foolproof method for taming wild boys. A violent, tense voyage eventually leads them to an island where they begin to understand the true extent of the Captain’s method.

I can’t tell if this movie is great, dumb, insightful, offensive, or just plain silly. All I know is that I couldn’t look away.

Right off the bat, this movie made me think very much of Guy Maddin’s films (specifically Brand Upon the Brain), and also Todd Haynes’ Poison. So immediately, yes, you are talking about a very distinct visual and narrative sensibility. If you’re a fan of those films/directors, you might just find yourself feeling very at home in the energy of this film, which is aggressively weird in a way that surpasses any pretense at deep art and allows itself to simply be wickedly funny and overtly perverse.

Begin with the fact that all of the boys are played by women, immediately lending a bizarre tension to a story centered on very “male” violence and imagery. (If you do not like ejaculation, or things that look a lot like ejaculation, this is NOT the film for you.) The Captain’s cure for the boys involves, by force, taking away the boys’ power, something that the film links directly with their masculinity and male bodies. Is feminine the same as not masculine? In this film, at least physically, the answer is a resounding yes. The boys are being subjected to an extreme version of chemical/physical castration. It’s disturbing generally speaking---though it must be said that they are definitely not all that likable as characters---but there’s some interest in the fact that the boys themselves are enforcing notions of power and masculinity.

I can’t say for sure that the film had a coherent idea about gender roles, whether women are inherently more docile, whether men are inherently more violent, etc. But I can say that despite gender being smack dab in the center of the film’s plot and visuals, I didn’t find myself all that consumed with trying to figure out the movie’s point of view.

Because of the penis plants.

The film’s phallic focus begins in a more disturbing and symbolic manner. Nudity from the boys during the teacher’s assault, the Captain frequently exposing his (much tattooed!) penis to the boys. But once they hit the island, it’s a phallic phree-phor-all! The boys must drink from plants whose shape is so distinct that the word “suggestive” doesn’t even begin to cover it. They must eat fruit that dangles above them in clusters designed so that you can practically feel the prop-master elbowing you in the ribs and winking. And that’s to say nothing of the way that the boys at times become trapped in webs of . . . . well, let’s call it viscous white fluid and let you take it from there.

It’s so overt that I couldn’t help but just give in and giggle. Every act becomes an immediate vulgar stand in for sex. Placing the boys’ shifting power and gender dynamics in this ludicrous setting makes it wickedly funny, but also disturbing in a weird way. The cruel streak in the boys isn’t being taken away---they are merely being placed in a position where they don’t have the same power to act on it.

Oh, also the boys worship a god they’ve invented called Trevor, who is basically a neon-bejeweled version of the Damien Hirst diamond skull and oh, my god someone else please watch this movie so we can talk about it or just give each other meaningful looks because you can’t put your feelings about it into words.

I saw this a couple of years ago. I pretty much agree with what you said, but you were a tad kinder than me.

__________________

I saw your review. Yeah, I think it got some indulgence from me because I needed something on the lighter side, which it was for most of its run time.

I wouldn't want to watch it again, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it. I was maybe about a half-star too generous with it.

Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl, 2016

Adele (Erin Wilhelmi) gets talked into moving into her aunt Dora’s (Susan Kellermann) house to help care for her. Dora is agoraphobic, to the point that she doesn’t leave her own bedroom. Things are okay, if a bit boring, at first. But then Adele meets Beth (Quinn Shephard) and her life turns upside down. Beth is sexy and wild, and easily convinces Adele to begin shirking her responsibilities, taking shortcuts in the shopping to have a little extra pocket money. Unfortunately, it’s not long before serious consequences follow.

Slight to the point of inexcusable thinness, this horror-drama merely gestures at its most interesting ideas.

I don’t automatically throw great ratings at films just for having certain attributes, but like any movie fan I have leanings that make me more inclined to enjoy a film if it’s built a certain way. So when I see a movie that looks kind of retro, kind of atmospheric, kind of subdued, kind of gay, and also there’s a cute cat, we should be talking at least a B- experience.

There were things I liked about this film. The cat is certainly cute. There’s a tense, barely-relatable section where Beth begins to push the boundaries of what Adele will do to stay in her good graces. I liked that Adele does seem to have some genuinely fond feelings for her aunt, but that the chance to be with someone as engaging as Beth warps her morality.

But a fundamental problem here is that Adele starts off in not too sympathetic of a position. We don’t get to see enough of her being a decent person to really feel the tragedy of the way that Beth pulls her astray. And, frankly, Adele doesn’t seem to try hard at all to do the right thing. One word is all it takes for her to skimp out on her aunt’s CRITICAL HEART MEDICATION. Watching a good person be pulled to the dark side is awful. Watching a mediocre person be nudged off the barely-right path just doesn’t have the same zest.

I was also distracted by a few plot points that simply didn’t make sense to me. Adele is stuck in the aunt’s house for hours and hours at a time, yet she fails to notice a certain something that is in plain sight? Adele’s aunt is the kind of woman who is hyper-specific in her shopping lists and also has strict rules and protocols down to how the sardines are arranged on her toast. You’re telling me this kind of woman doesn’t count or at least check her medications when they arrive? For such a short movie, too much happens that just doesn’t wash, and it distracts from the slight plot.

A film after my heart on paper, but one that sadly underdelivers.

They Look Like People, 2015

Reeling from a recent breakup with the woman he thought was the one, Christian (Evan Dumouchel) invites his long-time friend Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) to stay with him. Christian is trying to rebuild his confidence, including pursuing a romance with an intriguing co-worker named Mara (Margaret Ying Drake). What Christian doesn’t know is that Wyatt is convinced that the world is being taken over by possessing demons that inhabit the bodies of every-day people. As Christian grapples with work and romantic dramas, Wyatt is preparing for the end of days. The only question is: when the time comes, will Wyatt see Christian as an ally or an enemy?

Benefiting greatly from a very solid last act, this is a solid directorial debut and entry in the independent horror canon.

I will admit that I grappled a bit with this film for the first half. I think that there comes a point where a film can be almost too successful in its portrayal of something, and for me that was the case with the characters of Christian and Wyatt. Listen: I know anxiety when I see it. I know the way that manic speech and noise can be a way of covering up fear or doubt. Part of my job is keeping a neutral manner when I see kids behaving this way. But darn if I wasn’t ready to put my foot through the screen if I had to hear another single “Hurrah!” from them!

I also had concerns about what felt like predictability when it came to the plot. It’s a pretty common horror trope at this point---especially in independent/lower-budget horror---to spend a whole film with a person slowly losing their mind, always questioning if they actually are mentally ill or if it’s real. And while some beats of this film are somewhat familiar, the performances and the plot itself go in unexpected directions.

I really enjoyed Drake as Christian’s love interest, Mara. While her character flirts with some manic-pixie-dream-girl elements---she has an adorable voice! She does judo! She makes a sock into a little puppet!--she’s also a certain kind of no-nonsense that cuts through both Christian and Wyatt’s self-involvement. In most other films she’d be reduced to the terrorized girlfriend, and I appreciated the way that she appeared (or didn’t appear) in specific parts of the story.

There’s also an interesting balance of the drama and horror elements. Christian and Wyatt are essentially living in different movies---one a romantic drama, the other a sci-fi horror---with those stories set on a collision course. The film doesn’t pick a single character as our main point of view, and so we hop back and forth between them as their destinies are drawn closer and closer together. Christian has one idea about what’s happening when Mara visits after a rough day at work, while Wyatt has a completely different take on it.

And then comes the final act. I won’t spoil it at all. I’ll just say that I thought it resolved both of its plotlines in a way that from a more clinical point of view I found a little silly, but that on an emotional level somehow works. There were a handful of surprises for me in the last 10 minutes, and I always appreciate that in a horror film.

Certainly worth a watch, and an impressive directorial debut.

Although that was on my list of recs, I confess that I recall next to nothing about it. A glance at the trailer didn't even ring any bells. Glad you didn't hate it.

LOL.

Lyle, 2014

Pregnant Leah (Gaby Hoffman) moves to New York with her wife, Jane (Ingrid Jungermann), who is on the verge of a big break in the music industry. Their new apartment seems wonderful, but as Leah spends more and more time there with their young daughter, Lyle (Eleanor Hopkins), she starts to sense that something is not right. These feelings come too late to save Lyle, who dies in a tragic accident. But as Leah’s due date grows closer and closer, she begins to fear for the safety of her unborn child and specifically begins to suspect that there is something or someone in her apartment building who hurt Lyle and wants to hurt the new baby.

Immensely anxiety-ridden and full of quiet unease, this is a fantastic and horrifying tale of pregnancy and isolation.

Usually a shorter review means that I didn’t like a movie, but here I find myself holding back because I don’t want to give away a single twist or turn of this incredibly satisfying and upsetting film. Clocking in at barely over an hour, the amount of character development this film squeezes into ten minutes of runtime surpasses many much longer feature-length films.

I am comfortable saying that the cast here is absolutely fantastic. Hoffman spends the first 5-10 minutes as a loving mother to the feisty Lyle, and then the rest of the film as a woman trying to keep it together with varying degrees of success. I can’t overstate how good I thought Hoffman was in this movie. You can literally watch the thoughts and moods pass over her face, like clouds passing over the sun. One minute she has convinced herself that all of her fears are just in her head---results of the grieving process. The next minute, she’s sure that she and her baby are in immediate danger, and she has the drowning look of a woman who needs help but won’t get it from anywhere.

The rest of the cast is also very good, and that includes little Hopkins whose Lyle makes enough of an impact in her brief screentime to carry Leah’s grief and anger through the rest of the film. Without showing a drop of blood, we feel the loss of Lyle because the film lets us hear the little clip-clop of her shoes, or watch the way she leans out of a doorway to babble at a visitor.

Jungermann, whose character’s energy seems more devoted to her career than her family, runs hot and cold as Jane. While she says that she feels Lyle’s loss as deeply as Leah, you can see that Leah is always in some disbelief that Jane isn’t also wanting to tear things apart at every moment. Then there’s the marvelous Rebecca Street as the couple’s landlord, Karen. Karen, who is probably in her late 50s or early 60s, is obsessed with pregnancy, even pretending to be pregnant for attention. As the film goes on, this escalates from quirky to menacing. Kim Allen is a likable, calming presence as a model who lives upstairs from the couple and is sometimes a confidant to both of them. Michael Che also makes an impression as Threes, a musical artist whose signing cements Jane’s arrival in the big leagues of music agency.

Now as for the plot itself? Woof! Loved it! It’s creepy and the film maintains a lovely ambiguity even as it builds to a climax that gives an entirely different understanding to a ton of what came before it. In the spirit of a lot of great lower-budget/indie horror, this one creates terror through the world it builds and the capacity for evil, all layered under the question of just how much of that evil is in the protagonist’s head.

I’ll admit that I have been eyeing this film for ages, based mostly on its fantastic poster. For me, it more than lived up to my hopes.

I mean, just look at that!

How do you generally feel about that kind of ambiguity?

I don't mind it, as long as whatever way the film goes (all in their head, or it's all real!) creates a kind of internal consistency within the film.

The only time I don't like it is when it gives more of a feeling of the creators not knowing how to end their film, and so just staying in a "who knows?!" grey zone.

I love Gabby Hoffman

She was truly excellent in this film. Have you seen it? (Free on Tubi, if not!)

Nope, but I'll keep it in mind

Witching and Bitching, 2013

Jose (Hugo Silva) and Antonio (Mario Casas) rob a jewelry store with the help of Jose’s small son, Sergio (Gabriel Angel Delgado). Fleeing the scene of the crime along with a hapless taxi driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordonez). Intending to make it to France, the men soon run afoul of a group of witches, including the imposing Maritxu (Terele Pavez) and the lovely Eva (Carolina Bang). Can the men evade the pursuing police and whatever depraved ritual the witches have in store for them?

Funny and high-energy, this is a rollicking good time.

In the first moments of this film, the witches sit around a cauldron trying to read the meaning in prophetic cards. With both anticipation and perplexity, they talk about a group of men consisting of someone who is green and also someone who is a . . . large sponge? Cut to the robbers dressed as cartoon mascots as part of their plan to infiltrate the jewelry store.

One of the running gags in the film comes from a conversation that the men have early in the taxi ride about the advantages that women have over men, and the many ways that women ruin male lives. From there, the witches often become a very funny, supernatural exaggeration of these fears. When one of the witches takes a liking to Jose, she will literally destroy him if he doesn’t decide that she’s more important to him than his own son.

What elevates this above being just a funny allegory is the fact that the witches themselves are so fun and full of personality. They banter and lovingly chide one another. At any given time, at least one of them has a smear or dribble of blood---usually toad, sometimes human--across a cheek or down a chin. Bang is incredibly sexy and fun as the mercurial Eva, and she does a fantastic job of transitioning from sexy seductress to clinging girlfriend in a short time.

It’s also fun watching the way that Jose and his ex-wife Silvia (Macarena Gomez) argue over the care and custody of Sergio. The film works relentlessly to cast---in a comedic way---Silvia as the bad guy, despite the fact that Jose took his son TO AN ARMED ROBBERY. I did think that there was some good comic tension in the fact that Silvia becomes part of the “enemy”, despite probably being the better overall parent. I think that asking us to be on Jose’s side is one of the funnier aspects of the film, intentionally funny or not.

And part of why this all works is the overly comic nature of the violence. I was honestly never actually all that worried for Sergio’s safety, as it felt like actually hurting a child was a line that the film wouldn’t cross. And with that safety net in mind, it was easy to enjoy the way that the adults around Sergio do a pretty terrible job of protecting him. There’s a great “rule of three” moment in the film as a frightened Sergio tries to hail down help on the highway.

The action is also right in line with that comedic sensibility. As with some of Alex de la Iglesia’s other work, I find the action effective when it’s more small scale, but less so when it moves to a larger scale. Big set pieces often don’t do it for me, but I still mainly enjoyed the action in the final act.

A good time, and a great spooky season film.

Interesting.
I haven't talked to anyone who's seen this film since I saw it, probably, 6 years ago. And I've never been sure how I felt about it.
Although, ultimately, I was pretty sure I kinda liked it despite feeling that it had a lot of issues for a contemporary movie... though also just having to understand that maybe in Spanish filmmaking they just don't have the budgets we're used to in "the West".
It's probably not quite as bonkers as it could have been, but it's definitely funly (coining it) bonkersish. And, **** it, I think I just enjoyed it.
But I think I needed to hear something from someone else to process that.

Edit: A couple of points I think I want to add.
A couple of parts of the success of the film for me that both dovetail with and depart from the way you received it are:
To me, the witches, not the men are the star of and center of the film. The men are the foils or the "straight-men", if you will, there to give the witches material to play off of. We are never really expected to see them as the heroes or good-guys, they are hapless fools. We have some sympathy for them only because they are JUST fools (they're not malicious or cruel or anything) who are being dragged into something way worse than they could ever have been prepared for.
Which includes Carolina Bang's movie-hanging presence. I mean, yeah, she's lovely but she is also utterly deadly and a bit crazy even for a witch. That's a scary partner to have suddenly fall for you. And she delivers on that in a big way. As a heteroish-man I can confirm that she is one of the scariest types of women to hetero-men, the woman who is too sexy too resists but probably more dangerous than you really bargained for. Just an exaggerated version. And she does a wonderful job of capturing that to the degree that she made me cringe a bit over the resemblance to my ex-wife.
But yeah, I think you're right, it's just a fun film and deserves to just be enjoyed and not nitpicked so I'm gonna just let my nits go unpicked and say I like the movie.