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

There is plenty of potential in the film in terms of all the themes you mention. But what does the film do with them? Absolutely nothing.

Wendigo, 2001

New York City couple George (Jake Weber) and Kim (Patricia Clarkson) and their young son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan) are heading up to spend the weekend in a remote cabin owned by their friends. On the drive there, they hit a deer with their car, something that gets them into a tense confrontation with Otis (John Speredakos), a local man who was hunting the deer. Once at the cabin, strange things begin happening, but are they Otis seeking revenge or the work of a spirit that lives in the woods?

Landing awkwardly somewhere between a class-conscious thriller and a straight-ahead horror, this one doesn’t quite stick the landing on either front.

While my reaction to this film was somewhat tepid, there were quite a few things I did appreciate about it, even if they didn’t necessarily live up to their full potential. First, this is a pretty good group of actors. Clarkson in particular captures her character’s well-meaning city mother, who genuinely doesn’t know how to react to a group of men in the woods at night butchering a deer around a barrel fire. Per Sullivan is also good as Miles, a sensitive young man who reacts to stories of the Wendigo with credulous belief and fear.

Something that crops up from time to time when indigenous mythology is used as the basis of a horror movie is the idea of supernatural creatures as something more akin to a force of nature. Miles helpfully runs across an elder (Lloyd Oxendine) who explains the Wendigo. While the “wise elder” character is a major case of trope-itis, I do like the explanation that the Wendigo is neither good nor evil, but simply a wild creature.

There’s a theme underneath this movie that centers on Miles----it’s to do with the uncertainty of the world, how we handle fear and loss, and how imagination is used to process tragedy. The Wendigo is a great supernatural entity for this theme. It’s never fully clear in the film if the Wendigo is real or if it exists only in Miles’s imagination, but it’s a perfect stand-in for death or merely for the inescapable reality of loss and pain that comes in life. Miles clutches a totem of the Wendigo as things get grim in the final act, and we see how embracing chaos might actually be a good coping mechanism for this sensitive child.

The film also almost manages to say something interesting about class conflict, in the loaded confrontations between Otis and the family. It’s a battle of privilege: the wealth of the family against the local knowledge and loyalty that Otis has. Obviously the couple is overall more empowered, but with poor phone service and no easy access to their safety nets, Otis has a temporary advantage. Unfortunately, the film skews the character of Otis too far into caricature. Not that there aren’t country boys who are violent creeps, but given the nuance that Kim, George, and Miles are given for their various issues and tempers, reducing Otis to a peeping Tom, chip-off-his-shoulder aggressor doesn’t sit quite right.

I was also a bit baffled as to why the film didn’t just hold its plot to Miles and his point of view. The film is at its best when it’s allowing us to watch these coded, semi-aggressive interactions (between Otis and the family, between Kim and George, etc) through Miles and his semi-naive state. I think that there are two really great sequences in this movie, and both involve taking things to a strongly subjective place with Miles. The first involves an accident while Miles and George are out sledding. The second takes place in a hospital, where Miles stares at a pair of shoes while processing events beyond his full comprehension.

When the film steps away from Miles, things just get bland and confusing. I’m not sure why we needed an extended sex sequence between Kim and George. I’m not sure why we needed so much conversation about George needing to do a photographic reshoot. And seeing things from Kim or George’s point of view just makes us frustrated with choices that are made. There’s exactly one appropriate response to finding that someone SHOT A BULLET AT YOU THROUGH A WINDOW, and that response is to immediately leave.

And while this might be something that’s not a negative for everyone, I had a mixed reaction to the shot-on-video look of the movie. At times, it seems like it really works, such as in the disorienting sled sequence. But other times it just looks a bit cheap.

Some interesting themes and ideas, but a bit underwhelming on the whole.

I've been meaning to watch this one for so long! I'll watch it tomorrow probably and get back to you on it.


Have you seen Last Winter, also from Fessenden? I quite liked that one, aside from some awful 2000s CGI at the end there.

Awesome. I'm pondering whether it might deserve closer to a 3.5/5, but at the same time I feel like there was a lot of unnecessary/uninteresting stuff diluting the strengths of it.

I don't think I've seen The Last Winter.

Just saw Wendigo.


It's very close to being something I would recommend, but I don't know that it's there yet. The first section is very long and very uneventful. What makes it really interesting is the directing. Larry here has a lot of ideas and a lot of vision, and that's what makes the whole movie kind of interesting at least. There's a lot of places where the movie didn't take the path I thought it would, with the cop later on and with the hunters right at the beginning.


I have a positive feeling about it overall, but I'll say the directing is definitely what stands out here. The script could have been tighter.

Bruiser, 2000

Henry (Jason Flemyng) is a worker at a magazine called Bruiser. Henry has a submissive personality, and almost everyone in his life happily takes advantage of him. His wife (Nina Garbiras) is cheating on him; his best friend (Andrew Tarbet) is blatantly stealing from his investments; his boss (Peter Stormare) openly harasses and berates him. After a particularly rough day, Henry wakes up to discover that his face has been replaced by a blank white mask, an event that lowers his inhibitions to the point that he begins taking violent revenge on those who have wronged him.

A solid premise isn’t quite backed up with great setpieces or a satisfying character arc.

The premise of this film is really good, and I wish that the movie had done more to explore the questions that it raises about the main character. Does the mask make Henry commit those acts of violence, akin to possession? Or does the small amount of anonymity it affords him simply unlock violence that was always lingering under the surface? The film does seem to lead toward the second option, as we see that Henry frequently has fantasies about harming other people (always women) who disrespect him even in small ways. I wish that this aspect had been a bit more ambiguous, because it’s the most interesting aspect of the main character.

While the film doesn’t make enough of its premise, it does make more than enough of one asset: Stormare’s hilarious and disgusting performance as Henry’s toxic alpha male boss, Milo. Milo is absolutely the worst, and yet Stormare manages to convey the way that men like Milo are able to command respect/fear through a mix of confidence, wealth, intimidation, and a demented charm. A major problem in this film is the lack of character development, and while Milo is basically a caricature, he’s just the right level of loathsome that it keeps you watching to see him get his comeuppance.

The film does get some good visual moments courtesy of the white mask. The mask fits closely to Henry’s face, in an unsettling place between something skin-tight like a latex mask and something more stiff like a wooden mask. One of the best images comes from Henry’s friend, Rose (Leslie Hope), wearing one of the blank white masks as she swims in a pool. I also enjoyed the unhinged masquerade party at the end of the film. Designed to suit Milo’s particular tastes it features: sexy women dancing, harnesses that lift attendees over the party, a bunch of dudes fighting, fake stabbings, port-o-potties, and more! It’s the inside of a pervy macho creep’s brain made visible, and it’s kind of great.

The fundamental problem with this movie, though, is its main character. Cinema is full of introverts and pushovers who are interesting characters and easy to root for. The way that the movie is shot implies that we’re meant to be solidly on Henry’s side, and yet the movie purely defines him by how others treat him. There’s a difference between being a nice person and being a doormat. Sure, Henry is passive and meek, but is he nice or a good person? I’m not sure. The main glimpse we get into his internal life consists of the violent fantasies he harbors against the women in his life. His friendship/flirtation with Rose---who happens to be Milo’s wife--is probably the best thing the film has going for it in terms of real character work. The movie itself flirts with something interesting when Henry berates Rose for staying with Milo despite his cruelty and infidelity, despite the fact that he’s stayed in a marriage with a wife who treats him much the same way.

The violence/kills themselves are also just so-so. Most of them are pretty abrupt, and aside from one sequence at the end of the film, they just don’t make much of an impression. His victims are one-dimensional and thus it’s hard to feel the tragedy of their murders, and Henry himself is so thinly drawn that we can’t feel the horror of him crossing the line to commit those horrible acts. The film goes with Henry being a quippy killer (“Turns out I do know what to do with an extension cord!”), and the humor mostly doesn’t land.

I do want to shout out one comedy set-piece that I did enjoy, namely the poodle that belongs to Henry’s wife. This poodle is great. I did laugh out loud when the poodle looked Henry in the eye and then used her paw to turn on a table saw. “Oh yeah,” says Henry’s wife. “She just learned how to do that.” Big points for the poodle.

This just feels like a mediocre stab at what could have been a neat piece of character-driven horror.

Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, 1999

Morgana (Holly Fields) helps her boyfriend burgle an art museum, something that ends with them murdering two security guards and freeing ancient Djinn Demerest (Andrew Divoff). Trying to fulfill a prophecy that would see him take over the world, Demerest sets about claiming souls when they make wishes from him. Morgana, who has become linked to Demerest and an integral part of the prophecy, seeks help from former flame Eric (Chris Weber) who is now a priest.

Constantly at war with itself over just how stupid it wants to be, pretty much every element here doesn’t work.

It’s hard to even really say anything about this movie, which is bad but in that barely-watchable way that also manages to be inoffensive and forgettable. A fundamental problem is that the movie totally refuses to choose a tone or point of view for its main character, or even consistently apply its own rules about the Djinn’s powers.

There’s nothing wrong with the film’s basic premise: a genie whose every granted wish backfires on the wisher in comically gruesome ways. Two of the movie’s kills actually show the absurd fun to be had with such a concept. A prisoner wishes that he could “walk through the prison bars” to freedom. A mob boss says of his enemy, “I want his head!”. And were the movie just a laundry list of such sequences, I think it would be campy fun.

Unfortunately, the majority of the kills/chaos don’t make sense. A man wishes he had never been born, and so he . . . ages backwards? How is that “not being born”? And also, this wish should theoretically means he never lived, and yet other characters in the film continue to talk about him and their relationship to him as an adult. Other times, the dialogue is written in such a vague way that the bad consequences don’t actually feel like a clever extensions of the wishes.

It’s hard for me to fault Divoff’s performance too much, because I think he’s really hamstrung by the terrible and all-over-the-place script he’s given. Demerest ranges from a cringe-worthy quip machine who does things like freezing people and then saying “Chill out” to a formally-speaking old-soul evil type. The script can’t decide which one he is, and so the character ends up being wildly inconsistent, even from one scene to the next.

It’s also really hard to root for Morgana, who we meet as she helps to murder two innocent men. To be fair (I guess), Morgana does regret murdering a husband and father of two, but are we really supposed to believe that she took a loaded gun to a robbery and didn’t anticipate that she could end up seriously hurting someone? Her character’s main job is to toss and turn in bed as she has visions of Demerest getting closer to creating hell on Earth. She also does things like: Googling Persian mythology, saying “stop it, stop it” when people try to make wishes, and making minimal effort to become the “pure soul” she’ll need to be in order to put an end to Demerest’s plan.

There’s an actual potentially good subplot in the form of Eric’s character, though it’s entirely underutilized. As a Christian, Eric approaches his interactions with Demerest from the context of that mythology. There is some humor to the way that Demerest must constantly correct Eric: no, he’s not the Devil; no, he’s not in a war with God; no, he’s entirely unmoved by being shown the cross. Eric’s inability to grasp this is pretty funny, and is one of the only intentionally funny aspects of the movie that works.

Easy-to-watch, but fails to make the most of its campy premise.

The Quiet Family, 1998

Mr. Kang (In-Hwan Park) and Mrs. Kang (Na Moon-hee) decide to turn their home into a lodge for travelers with the help of their adult children, Yeong-Min (Song Kang-ho), Mi-na (Ho-kyung Go), and Mi-Su (Yun-seong Lee). When their first visitor dies of a gruesome suicide, the family decides to cover up the death to avoid scandal. But that death is merely the first of what will become a series of deadly mishaps and confrontations featuring their guests.

More subdued than its remake, this is nonetheless a very funny comedy-horror with a game cast.

At first I was worried that this film, which takes a more subdued approach than Miike’s 2001 nutty-but-hilarious remake, wouldn’t land as well because it would feel more dialed down. And while it’s true that this film doesn’t hit the same outlandish notes as the remake---no pedophile sumo wrestlers here!--I ended up enjoying this more grounded version. I mean, I say more grounded, but this is still a very slapstick, over-the-top comedy/horror.

Part of the joy here is just seeing some familiar faces a few years before the films that put them on my radar. Song Kang-Ho, of course, on hand as the no-good son of the couple. But there’s also Choi Min-sik as Chang-ku, the uncle of the family who isn’t as much on board with all of the shenanigans. The cast of this film is very deep, and I found all of the actors to be very delightful in their roles. Lee Ki-young is very funny as a hired assassin who enters the plot late in the movie, and runs up against Yeong-Min who doesn’t realize the nature of their new guest.

The kills are not all that gruesome, but work because either they play on the terrible luck of the family or because of their slapstick nature. The first guest uses his room key to kill himself, something that feels very much like an omen. But as the film goes on, the deaths progress from accidental, to reactionary, to premeditated. It’s a fatal domino effect that all begins with the decision to cover up the first death and grows wildly, wildly out of hand. Mr. and Mrs. Kang frequently bemoan their bad luck, but in the manner of people who are totally oblivious to the way that they are in part contributing to that luck.

An interesting aspect of the film is the seemingly random nature of who ends up on the chopping block. There are bad people who die accidentally, good people who are killed, and everything else in between. As the family gets deeper and deeper into their coverups, their own sense of morality gets totally warped to the point that their priority is keeping the deaths a secret, no matter who gets hurt. Chang-ku and the two daughters are the only ones who seem hesitant about the many, many bodies that the family ends up burying in the backyard.


And this goes on with the general way that the morality of the family erodes. The first death is a catastrophe. But it’s not too long before, on finding a body, the father nonchalantly says, “Get the bags”. I think that it’s especially true in families that strange or immoral behavior can become normalized. In this film, murder quickly becomes a family value as long as it's in service of keeping the lodge open.

While the whole movie is pretty funny overall, it does manage to stick the landing in a particularly enjoyable last act. I’d definitely recommend this one, it was a good time.

The Killing Jar, 1997

Michael Sanford (Brett Cullen) and his wife Diane (Tamlyn Tomita) move back to Brett’s hometown so that he can take over the family’s wine business. But shortly after they arrive, two families and their young children are brutally killed. While Diane at first believes that Michael was a witness to one of the crimes, she soon starts to suspect that he may have actually been involved.

Forgettable and frustrating, this one barely coasts on Tomita’s sympathetic lead performance.

Sometimes you’re watching a movie and you just get that sense: I don’t know exactly how this is going to end, but I know it’s going to annoy me. That’s definitely the case here as Michael agrees to undergo hypnotism to try and recall details about the car he saw stopped by the side of the road, leading to a series of vivid visions and mood swings. With his neon flashes of knives and screaming people, is Michael remembering murdering those people.

Well, no, right? Because that seems way too obvious. And because it’s obvious, we sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. But that sitting around is brutal, and it’s filled in quite poorly. First we get a bunch of scenes of Michael acting totally unhinged and abusive toward his wife, who also happens to be pregnant. Then we get lots of scenes of Michael getting into confrontations with the workers at the vineyard, explaining to his employees that he can’t pay them a decent wage yet, but don’t worry: he has IDEAS.

This is frustrating on multiple levels, not the least of which is watching the way that Michael treats everyone. Yes, he’s under a lot of stress and also reacting to some past trauma. But his behavior toward Diane in particular crosses a line where she needs to be seeking help, not waiting around to see what he does next.

There’s also the fact that a whole slew of decent actors are on the payroll here, but they are for the most part woefully underutilized. Wes Studi gets the mediocre role of a manager at Michael’s vineyard, whose main job is telling the irate workers to cool their jets. Brion James is in the film for about 5 minutes as the hypnotist. M Emmet Walsh is the local sheriff who just sort of muddles around. And Xander Berkeley appears late in the film, but too late to make much of an impression.

The details from this film are already slipping from my mind. What’s to recommend it? I liked a sequence where Diane discusses the murders with a couple who owns a shop in town, and the sharp look they give her when they mention the location of the murders and she blurts out “Michael was there last night.” And I guess shoutout a decently sexy shot of Michael pulling up Diane’s nightgown as she lays in bed, the blocking of which I found kind of original. That’s all I’ve got.

A bland mystery that has just enough interest to pull you through if you’re in the mood for something unchallenging.

Leprechaun 4: In Space, 1996

The evil Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) has kidnapped a beautiful alien space princess, Zarina (Rebecca Carlton), in order to fulfill his desire to become a king. Standing in his way is a military outfit under the direction of deranged scientist Mittenhand (Guy Siner). Ultimately, it’s up to shy scientist Tina (Jessica Collins) and beefcake marine Books (Brent Jasmer) to put a stop to the madness on board the marine spacecraft.

Achieving pitch-perfect stupidity, this is a heck of a fun watch.

There are so many obnoxious movies out there that try to go for camp or so-bad-it’s-good status and just end up failing miserably. But this movie right here knows exactly what it’s doing and, further, pretty much nails the mission objective.

Taken on their own, the different elements of this film are so bizarre that even describing them feels like an exercise in madness. Should we talk about the Leprechaun swimming up a urine stream because some dumb-dumb decided to take a pee on the supposedly dead monster? How about Mittenhand communicating with the crew via a television monitor with the camera held at an inexplicably low angle? And what of the idea that you can create a DNA-altering serum merely by chucking a few items in a blender?

What should feel cobbled together instead feels like intentional chaos, and for me it simply worked. I laughed. Yes, sometimes I was laughing at the movie---such as when the crew is very poorly CGI’d onto an outer space background---but mostly I was laughing with it. You can’t tell me that Siner’s performance wasn’t intentionally hilarious. Or that there isn’t something amazing about the way that the main character slowly loses her clothing until she’s reduced to a skimpy shirt and underwear combo. (This movie doesn’t have anything like parity in the nudity department, but Books also manages to lose his shirt before the film is over.)

There’s also some very funny mileage to be had from the characters of the princess and the Leprechaun. While the Leprechaun intends to wed, bed, and kill the princess, she’s no wilting daisy. The cliche would be to have her be a shrieking victim, and while the movie does spend a fair chunk with her in the perverted hands of Mittenhand’s assistant, Harold (Gary Grossman), once she’s back on her feet she’s just as ruthless and scheming as her captor.

And the rest of the cast is just as game. Miguel Nunez Jr is a lot of fun as one of the marines. Tim Coceri gives a strange, all-in performance as Metal Head, the leader of the marines. The characters of the rest of the military group aren’t necessarily all that developed, but they have names like Mooch, Lucky, and Kowalski, and they all dutifully bite the dust in outlandish ways.

The effects are a mixed bag given the camp nature of the film. I like that the movie just embraces the absurd nature of its story. Character deaths are, for the most part, cartoonish and silly. There is a monster introduced in the final act that is a gleeful mash-up of monster design.

Here’s a film that seems to be exactly what it wants to be, and I for one enjoyed the ride immensely.

I'm relieved to see that you had exactly the same experience of Leprechaun 4: In Space that I did. It kind of came out of nowhere in that series of films - the one I distinctly remember as enjoyable.

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Wishmaster 2? My rating and complaints are somewhat similar to yours, although I do like the idea that prisoners and people in Vegas are desperate for his wishes. Compared to the basketball coach in 1, the protagonists in 2 are pretty weak.

Repo: The Genetic Opera? I think I liked it better than you did, the odd aesthetic between comic books and big screen opera/rock musicals. I don't think you mentioned the triangle at the heart of the film, a battle for the soul between Head's Nathan Wallace and Paul Sorvino's Rotti, the head of GeneCo for Alexa PenaVega's Shilo, a teen sheltered from what is going on. That clicked for me more than it did you. Also, director Darren Lynn Bousman did a good job making the most of Paris Hilton's limited range as Amber, spoiled heiress to the Largo empire.

Not everything worked. The mix of horror and musical leads to some clashing tones. Outside of Zydrate Anatomy and the two opera (op'ra?) songs, there's a lack of catchiness to the music which is kinda telling for something that's being labelled the new Rocky Horror. That, and of course, Rocky knew exactly what it wanted to be: an old school Frankenstein with some modern sensibilities (and catchy tunes). Their attempts at humor fail more often than succeed. And the whole film suffers from a need to over-explain things.

Still, I get why this has developed a bit of a cult following. Horror rock musicals aren't things that just happen everyday.

Can I just skip ahead to Leprechaun In Space or do I have to watch the first three - or even one? 'Cuz that ain't happenin'.

Yeah, I think having a decent director made a big difference.

Yes, that's one interesting sequence that is much better than anything else in the film.

None of the story clicked much for me, because I was so distracted by all of the horrible talk-singing. And I thought that the comic book aspect felt more like the film trying to be cool than actually being cool. Actually, I think that's how I felt about 90% of the movie.

I think this is the only movie from the series I've seen in full and I was just fine.

I think they did the comic book aspects as a way to cut costs.

If you didn't like Repo: The Genetic Opera, then odds are you won't like The Devil's Carnival 1 or 2. Same director/writer team although it's actually a bit darker than Repo.

I'm sure they did. But there are ways to be cheap without looking cheap. And there are ways to look cheap that are interesting. Neither was the case for me in Repo.

This makes it sound like I hated it or something, but really it was just incredibly underwhelming. Just one or two more people who could actually sing would have made a huge difference!

I did like The Devil's Carnival though I had no idea it was from the same team as Repo.

The Addiction, 1995

Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is a graduate student, studying philosophy, with a particular focus on genocide and war crimes. One night, she is assaulted by a stranger (Annabella Sciorra) who corners her on the street and bites her viciously on the neck. From that night on, Kathleen’s personality begins to change. Her body starts to decay, and she finds that she has a new lust for blood.

Working as both horror and allegory, this is a stylish, empathetic look at addiction and its victims.

Sometimes I can get in my own head too much when I know that a film is about something, but I’m not sure if I’m correctly interpreting what the film is actually trying to say about the topic. With this movie I feel some of that uncertainty, but I also know that even if my reading is not 100% accurate to the film’s intentions, I got a lot out of watching it.

It’s right there in the title: addiction. The obvious connection that most have with that word is the abuse of substances. Maybe some might think of something like food addiction or gambling. But as we are repeatedly reminded through Kathleen’s studies, human beings also seem to have an addiction to violence and to hatred.

There’s a running phrase through the film, one that is often called out in other reviews I’ve read: the woman who attacks Kathleen and Kathleen herself tells victims “Tell me to go. Don’t ask, tell me, like you mean it.” This line definitely has impact, as it seems to implicate the victims of violence in their own assaults. But the line of dialogue that stood out more to me is one directed at one of Kathleen’s victims, a young graduate student (Kathryn Erbe), who cries in shocked disbelief at Kathleen’s assault and Kathleen’s nonchalant manner afterward. Kathleen coldly tells her, “My indifference is not the concern here. It’s your astonishment that needs studying.” In this view of the world, the people who don’t expect cruelty and violence are the foolish ones.

The cast of this film is fantastic, including a standout performance from Taylor as a woman whose morality and body are decaying in ways that terrify and exhilarate her in turn. In addition to Sciorra and Erbe, both excellent, we have Christopher Walken as a late-act arrival, playing a man who is intimately familiar with Kathleen’s affliction. Edie Falco plays Jean, Kathleen’s best friend and confidant. Paul Calderon shows up as Kathleen’s graduate advisor.

I also have to mention the way that this film leverages the magical combination of gorgeous black and white photography with the architecture, scope, and decay of its New York City landscape. In this film, the lack of color transforms the city at times into a place of magic and mystery. The same streets that during the day witness the mundane harassment of Kathleen and Jean as they walk to class later becomes a hunting ground for the characters. Some acts of violence are committed in out of the way stairwells, while others occur right out in the street.

I thought that this film was pretty fantastic. It certainly is a horror film that hews more toward drama than scares, but by the same token some of its imagery and interactions are incredibly disturbing. In many ways, a woman trying to stop the bleeding from a wound on her neck as her attacker speaks to her with contempt is worse than a bloody murder. There’s the sick awareness that all of this violence will go unpunished, that its victims have no real recourse.

Solid, disturbing stuff.

I've always felt Taylor was way under-utilized.
I expect her participation in The Haunting sank her. Which is a shame because that should have been a good movie and the right role for her too, could have been a significant turn upward in her career but instead almost seems to have tanked it.

Agreed. I think that she has a look and an energy that sits in a really interesting place between mainstream charisma and outsider-edge.