(Okay! 
I've finally finished up my full review of the last four films I've seen at my local movie theater. It's been a rather long and arduous process, full of hiccups and interruptions, but here it is in all its glorious entirety!
September 13, 2024:
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (Tim Burton / 2024)
September 17, 2024:
SPEAK NO EVIL (James Watkins / 2024)
September 24, 2024:
THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat / 2024)
THE KILLER'S GAME (J.J. Perry / 2024)
Quite a lot to unpack here, but I'll certainly try to be brief...
(EDIT: I certainly failed on an epic scale in that department! 
)
I finally went to see the new
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with my younger brother Bryan this last Friday the 13th. I really have to say, it was well worth the 36-year wait. Michael Keaton fit back into his old role quite effortlessly, almost like he'd never left. That goes for Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara as Lydia Dietz and her still highly-strung mother Delia. There
were aspects of the film that didn't quite work for either my brother or myself. For his part, Bryan didn't care for the Mario Bava-esque backstory set in Italy, thinking that the character of Beetlejuice didn't really
need one. For my part, I didn't really care for Willem Dafoe's ghost detective / former action movie star character, thinking it was a layer of cheesiness that didn't really click. (Granted, Dafoe's screen persona
would fit into the Burton universe quite seamlessly, if only he had the right part.) However, everything else about it was absolutely ace. The use of Richard Harris'
MacArthur Park during the climactic wedding ceremony was perfect, echoing the use of Harry Belafonte's
Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) in the original film. Monica Bellucci was also quite intimidating as Dolores, the ex-wife from Hell, and Justin Theroux as Lydia's boyfriend Rory was
sooooooo annoying, but in that perfect way that was genuinely funny and let the audience know that the character would
not escape a comeuppance in the end. In addition, the visual FX - while inevitably being an advance on those of the original - still manages to preserve that weirdly handmade surrealism that made the first movie so distinctive. So, all in all...
not as good as the original 1988
Beetlejuice. But
that movie was a freakishly brilliant, one-of-a-kind entity unto itself, and would have been difficult to follow up on in any case. The fact that it took Burton and Keaton 36 years to do so attests to that. Ultimately, the stars have finally aligned, the creative juices are fully in sync, and
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actually
is extremely entertaining and is reasonably successful in doing more than just repeating the original.
Speak No Evil is a remake of a Danish film from 2022 that I still haven't seen. (Although I imagine I will one of these days.) This movie is a wonderfully uneasy, satirical horror thriller about an American couple named Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) with a young daughter, who have moved to Europe and meet a free-spirited British couple named Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), who have a mysteriously mute son. This couple invites the Americans to their house in England's West Country for a vacation, but all is not what it seems. The hosts behave in outwardly pleasant but often weirdly inappropriate ways, and Paddy shows rather unsettlingly aggressive behavior towards his own son, but the Americans - not wanting to seem judgmental or impolite - let most of these things slide. Ultimately, it's revealed that Louise and Ben are not the first couple that Paddy and Ciara have invited to the house, and the couple are finally moved to make their departure, but with a few...
slight delays. More than that it would be unfair to reveal, so I'll just say that while the movie really works like gangbusters as an out-and-out horror movie / thriller, it's also something of a pitch-black comedy about the way that good manners and the fear of social embarrassment often get in the way of reason and common sense. I would highly recommend this one, but I would also be interested in seeing the 2022 original directed by Christian Tafdrup. (Inevitably, the ending of the original would seem to be more downbeat.)
Coralie Fargeat's new body horror film
The Substance belongs to a special, elite category of film for me, sharing company with the likes of Oliver Stone's
Natural Born Killers (1994), Paul W.S. Anderson's
Event Horizon (1997) and Darren Aronofsky's
Requiem for a Dream (2000), as the sort of moviegoing experience where I stagger out of the theater in a daze, wondering if anyone got the plate number of that semi truck that just ran me over...
and I absolutely can't wait to see it again! Those are the kinds of movie experiences that I absolutely
live for, and which I find increasingly rare in the current cultural climate. (I also have the feeling that I would have had the same type of experience if I had been alive to see the original theatrical runs of Ken Russell's
The Devils and Sam Peckinpah's
Straw Dogs in 1971, or that of John Schlesinger's
The Day of the Locust in 1975. As it is, for me the home viewing experience of those movies is quite intense in and of itself.)
The Substance is, to put it quite simply if admittedly hyperbolically, the
ultimate body horror film. Believe me when I say that this movie is utterly ruthless, not just in its horrific content, but in driving all of its thematic concerns to a logical, if admittedly OTT, conclusion.
Set in an admittedly stylized and heightened pop-culture reality, it is the story of a faded Hollywood actress named Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore in what is quite possibly a career best here), who has become the host of a Jane Fonda-style aerobic workout program, but having hit the dreaded age of 50 has been deemed past her prime by her sexist swine of a boss, the TV producer Harvey (played to a grotesque fare-thee-well by a top-form Dennis Quaid). During a visit to a hospital, a young male nurse gives her a USB flash drive labeled "The Substance." Watching the USB drive on her TV at home, she sees a program which promotes a serum that, once injected, will give birth to a newer, younger, more "perfect" version of herself. She orders the serum, picks it up in a package at a mysteriously derelict site, takes it home and opens up the package and finds a set of syringes, an intravenous food package, a serum marked "Activator" and designated as single-use, and a "Stabilizer" serum that must be used daily. The ultimate catch of this particular "substance" is that Elizabeth can only become this new and younger, more "perfect" self for a week at a time, while her original body lies unconscious being fed intravenously, after which her consciousness reverts to her "original" 50-year-old self for a week and she must take care of the unconscious form of the "younger" self. After injecting the serum, Elizabeth falls unconscious and, as promised, a younger "self" emerges through a tear in her back. This younger incarnation comes to identify herself as Sue (Margaret Qualley), and in no time at all she auditions for the newer replacement version of Elizabeth's aerobic workout program and (inevitably) the swinish Harvey is absolutely
delighted and over the moon to have this younger, hotter, more beautiful incarnation of Elizabeth bringing in higher ratings numbers. He can even work around the fact that Sue can only work every other week, claiming to have to take care of an ailing relative (which in a way is kind of true). However, when Sue's career takes off like a rocket, the older Elizabeth finds herself eclipsed and spends most of her waking moments at home, with a giant billboard of the much younger Sue placed across from her apartment window almost looking out at her in mockery. And Sue starts cheating, taking more time for herself and extracting more fluid from Elizabeth's body, and this lack of respect for the balance between them causes her to wither and age. Elizabeth and Sue may be two different versions of the same person, but ultimately, due to the narcissism of their shared character, the balance cannot be respected and a battle of wills between the increasingly estranged "selves" ensues. I will not reveal any more of the plot, but suffice to say that this is the sort of scenario that can only end in catastrophe.
Well... as much as I genuinely loved
The Substance, I
did have certain reservations about it. The movie is directly pitched as a satirical attack on the unrealistic beauty standards of the entertainment industry, and the boorish sexism of the mostly male executives who run it. Which is all fine and well, I get it. However, the movie is rather... how shall I say?... rather
strident in making its points, a little bit on the nose, if you will. (One is sort of reminded of the "Architects Sketch" from
Monty Python's Flying Circus in which the word
SATIRE flashes at the bottom of the screen when Eric Idle's tower block apartment model bursts into flames.) But it's ultimately
not all that detrimental, seeing as how the movie's reality is a rather exaggerated and heightened one, and such obviousness ends up being a forgivable sin. Speaking of heightened reality, it's also not all that clear what time period the movie's set in. The Demi Moore character's aerobics workout show has a very '80s feel to it, but we also have USB drives like in our current period, and Dennis Quaid's character smokes cigars like some alpha-male head honcho from some bygone Hollywood era. But again, this mixing and matching of cultural signifiers of different eras reminds the viewer that they are
not meant to judge the movie by any sort of stringent standard of absolute authenticity or realism. The movie is more a parable or fable than anything else.
Like I said before, the movie is ruthless in driving the movie toward its ultimate conclusion. I admire the movie's absolute fearlessness in that regard, yet the movie
does risk going rather off the rails towards the end. Not to reveal too much about the ending, but when the lead character's
final incarnation starts getting dressed for the New Year's Eve party and putting on her earrings, I actually started to queasily laugh and go,
"Really? We're actually going there? Wow, we're really determined to go all the way and crash into the wall here, aren't we??" The movie's blood-soaked finale threatens to spill way over the top into a kind of demented camp, and yet... once
again... it's really not all that detrimental, because that kind of... I can only call it
fearlessness... is so rare these days and one has to admire a movie that's willing to pursue its vision to such a deranged conclusion, even if it risks disfiguring the actual movie as well as its protagonist(s).
One might say that it's a negative - or at least a
worrying - sign when any movie reminds you of too many other movies or stories, but in this day and age, everybody's roots tend to show. I'm reminded of David Bowie's famous claim to be a "human Xerox machine," claiming to be less an original creator of ideas than an assimilator of others'. Quite similarly, the films of director Quentin Tarantino also proudly wear the influences of forbears on their sleeve. And writer/director Coralie Fargeat proves to be a similar kind of magpie with
The Substance. The obvious influence here is the early work of David Cronenberg, but the movie also has many other forbears, both cinematic and literary.
Here are just several examples:
1) Seconds (John Frankenheimer / 1966)
Early on, as the story started to unfold, I was very much reminded of this John Frankenheimer thriller about an aging businessman who is tired and disenchanted with how his life has turned out, and when a mysterious organization gives him the chance to fake his own death, get extensive facial surgery and give himself a brand-new identity (Rock Hudson). Inevitably, things inevitably do not go as the character wanted or expected, and the movie tilts inexorably toward a very dark, distressing conclusion. As I was watching
The Substance in its earlier scenes, I started to think that this was like the distaff, female counterpart of
Seconds.
2) The Fly -
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg / 1986 - 1988)
After a while, the main characters(s)' physical deterioration begins to resemble that of Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundle, including a peeling fingernail and a lost ear. Also, the situation of Elizabeth and Sue's being two incarnations of the same soul very much brings to mind Jeremy Irons' double act as the Mantle twins in the '88 film.
3) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson / 1886 novel)
Perhaps the very prototype of this kind of split-personality story.
4) The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde / 1890 novel)
Another very obvious literary forbear. But in this case, the original and the "double" (in Wilde's case, the portrait) switch places and it is Elizabeth who starts to deteriorate as Sue begins to drain more than her fair share.
5) The Shining (Stanley Kubrick / 1980)
Interestingly enough, there is a later scene in
The Substance that actually fuses two different images from Kubrick's 1980 Stephen King adaptation. Elizabeth's deterioration, in addition to resembling that of Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg's
The Fly from '86, also strongly resembles a certain supporting character in the Kubrick film. (In Mike Flanagan's 2019 film of King's sequel
Doctor Sleep, this character is finally identified as "Mrs. Massey.") And there's a very interesting reference - via camera angle - to the scene of when Jack Nicholson's character Jack Torrance is locked in the pantry.
6) The Thing (John Carpenter / 1982)
Less of a direct thematic or textual reference here, but the aforementioned "final incarnation" of the main character very much feels inspired by the grotesque, nightmarishly imaginative work of Rob Bottin in Carpenter's film.
7) Hellraiser (Clive Barker / 1987)
Admittedly a less obvious comparison - and it's a connection that I doubt most other reviewers would ever make - but Fargeat's film is in its own way a vision of Hell. And as in the work of Barker, the damnation is ultimately self-inflicted. While it's never made clear who created "The Substance" or who's financing its creation, there is no real "bad guy." Just as the Cenobites are ultimately the facilitators of what the people who open the Lament Configuration puzzlebox think are their deepest desires, "The Substance" is ultimately giving people what its creators think they want. But human desire is boundless and doesn't always have reasonable limits, so in both cases the characters are ultimately torn apart for their troubles. (Similarly, getting back to Frankenheimer's
Seconds for a moment, one might conjecture that the creator/financier of "The Substance" is rather like the kindly old billionaire played by Will Geer in the '66 film, whose only desire is to improve the lives of others and make their lives happier, and always decides to press on with his vision even in the face of horrifying failure and destroyed human lives.)
I'm sure there are many other references or influences on Coralie Fargeat's new body horror masterpiece that I haven't thought of yet. But suffice to say, Fargeat manages to skillfully blend all of these influences into a very unique and distinctive creation. While the results are thematically strident and
very excessive, and the film
does go rather over the top in its finale, its sins are ultimately forgivable in the face of Fargeat's willingness to pursue all of the attendant themes and ideas and images to a horrifyingly logical conclusion. And as strident as
The Substance is in its critique of the entertainment industry and its unrealistic standards of beauty, the movie does
not let Elizabeth / Sue off the hook, for the horrors which befall the character are the result of her narcissism and her lack of self-acceptance, as well as an internalization of the bankrupt values of the industry she's a part of.
While not quite perfect (but then again...
what is? 
),
The Substance is the most brilliant horror film I've seen in quite some time, and one which I'd heartily recommend to all those viewers out there who've got the intestinal fortitude to handle the ride. And believe me, it's a wild one!
I remember, way back in 1997, when I saw
Event Horizon for the first time and been quite shell-shocked by its hellish visuals, I was actually going to
two films on that day. After
Event Horizon was done, I immediately caught a showing of
Breakdown, starring Kurt Russell, at the very same theater. It was just as well that I did, for I needed something to shake off the vibe of the first film, a comedown of sorts. But it was only
partially successful, seeing as how Kathleen Quinlan and Jack Noseworthy were actually in
both films and managed to create a weird psychic "carry-over" between them.
Similarly, after seeing
The Substance, I immediately required something to dispel the nightmare vibe. So for a bit of light entertainment, I went and saw the new action comedy
The Killer's Game, starring Dave Bautista as a highly skilled assassin named Joe Flood, who falls in love with a ballerina named Maize (Sofia Boutella) and makes tentative plans to retire from "the life." However, he ends up being diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and has only a limited time to live, so he decides to order a "hit" on himself. Problem is, there was a mix-up at the medical lab and he was actually
mis-diagnosed, so now he's got a whole plethora of colorful and lethal characters coming out of the woodwork to take him out (including an actually quite likeable Terry Crews as superfly assassin Lovedahl). Not much to report here, beyond a really strong influence from Tarantino's
Kill Bill and the
John Wick franchise. A lot of clever wisecracks, shootouts, swordfights, kung fu, bloody coups-de-grace, the odd poignant character moment or two, and even the lead character's confession of his past sins to a priest in a church before getting married to Maize. (Haven't seen that one before, I must admit.) Dave Bautista isn't much of a thespian, admittedly, but he makes for a very capable and likeable action man, and he's got good support from Ben Kingsley as Joe's friend and mentor Zvi Reeves. (Kingsley's admittedly punching below his weight here, and he's even forced to deliver a hackneyed
"Don't hate the player, hate the game!", but he looks like he's having fun here. I imagine the paycheck doesn't hurt...)
In short,
The Killer's Game isn't
great, but it's far from terrible. I actually found it quite fun. But mind you, it's
The Substance which is going to have greater staying power and stick with me longer!
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