J*A*S*M

When it’s time to reminisce this year’s horror BESTs, The Final Wish will very probably be in several. The least likeable hero. The most overacting actress (the friend of the main character). The most idiotic editing. Even thought the film is not that bad in the visual sense (it’s clear that the budget wasn’t small, the photography is nice overall), the direction is very incompetent – the supposedly tense and spooky scenes are in fact funny. I’m sorry for Lin Shaye, but her character goes from nowhere to nothing. Another example of critics at Rotten Tomatoes being paid (currently it’s at 88%, with a 6.7/10 rating), in this case, a positive review can hardly be defended.

A tarted-up lot of nothing that’s nice to look at. The visuals are unsurprisingly superb, Rodríguez’s direction is surprisingly solid and focused, and the robotic/computer generated main character is very likeable. I wouldn’t have a problem with it overall, if, somewhere in the middle, I hadn’t realised that the film not only wasn’t moving towards the central clash, but that it would also elegantly avoid it. To be continued, basically.

I was really looking forward to it. The notes and the distribution backing of my beloved A24 suggested that it could be a horror film fitting to my taste. It kind of is, but not very tight. The plot is unfortunately way too clearly drawn and simple, and it doesn’t get interesting until the last third, where The Hole in the Ground gets a character of its own and begins to tread nicely. Up to that point, though, it’s a parade of clichés that failed to interest me. It’s fine as a snack, but as a film that’s supposed compete with, for example, The Babadook (with which it overlaps several times), Cronin’s début doesn’t manage it at all.

A nicely shot, manipulative, hipster, eco-agitprop. For a while, I wanted to acknowledge its above-average quality, but, no, I won’t make myself do it. This is a film that uncritically forces the viewer to sympathize with an ecoterrorist, while ostentatiously overlooking the possibility that her actions are not all that kosher, because all of her ideological antagonists are portrayed as psychopaths unwilling to listen. Why doesn’t this woman engage in civil action for instance? For what it’s shown, I’d conclude that she has plenty of time for that. Another thing is that we really don’t know that much about this heroine. Why doesn’t this one and only “rational lady” have a relationship or try to find one? She can’t have her own children or she’s had bad experiences with men? We don’t know. What we do know is that she “knows she’s right” and that’s why she’s cutting power lines and would love to adopt a Ukrainian girl. Spoiler: The conclusion is supposed to be something positive, like “the lady enjoyed a little bit of happiness”, but what I saw was mostly a selfish person for whom everything is clear-cut, even what she’s willing to sacrifice, and who, without hesitation, avoids assuming any responsibility. That’s because these eco-activists are used to the fact that rules don’t apply to them – we’ve seen that here, haven’t we? End of spoiler. So I won’t applaud that. I realised Benedikt Erlingsson was not my cup of tea already with Of Horses and Men, now I can confirm it.

I still don’t fully understand how it’s possible that two essentially identical projects have come out of Korea at the same time: this Netflix series and Rage. They are so similar that they have to be adapting the same template, but even that it’s weird – just like the almost identical names of their directors :D In any case, Netflix comes on top. Kingdom beats its film competitor thanks to better drawn and more likeable characters and a clearer and better narrated plot. The craftsmanship is flawless, the scenery of the Korean landscape and ancient palaces is gorgeously captured, and when it comes to the zombie action, there’s nothing to complain. The first half of the third episode is one of the best zombie sequences that I’ve ever seen on film. All the time I looked forward to the sixth episode, expecting it to be brutal, but instead of a zombie massacre, what we got was an episode that moves the plot forward with several interesting twists. All we’ve left to do is to look forward to the second season.

Mitzi Peiron is certainly a talented filmmaker whose future is probably worth keeping an eye on. She shows a lot of style in her début, but plotwise it’s a bit of a mess. At first, it’s an apparently straightforward story about two junkie criminals who decide to solve their financial problems breaking into a childhood friend, who, to put it mildly, “digs it”. But it gradually becomes so complicated that, in hindsight, it’s quite hard to put back together what actually happened. On several levels, it reminded me of Pacal Laugier’s Ghostland, but he had his work more firmly in control. Nonetheless, thumbs (carefully) up.

An original and bizarre premise won’t make on its own an exceptional film. In my opinion, it needs a longer leash and a shorter run would also help. The way we have it, Velvet Buzzaw struggles with several different approaches that unfortunately fail to blend. Character-wise it’s too wacky - almost to the point of parody - to be taken seriously, while also being not fun enough to be taken as, well, just fun. In fact, the film never managed to really interest or absorb me; I was unable to get into a stage of viewer satisfaction beyond some sort of bored and passive wait for the next somehow interesting moment, which the film is certainly lacking – at least some inventive bite or a well directed satirical morsel about the world of art galleries. But there are few and, unfortunately, the cotton wool between them failed to hook me.

Robitel delivers exactly what the trailer promised: a very well crafted, fast-paced technological-puzzle thriller with hints of Cube and Saw. It’s 100% and without any doubt a popcorn flick, free of any horror art that could be engraved in my memory, but I have no problem with that. If all popcorn cinema tasted like this, it would be great. As a fan of real scape rooms, I appreciated that the premise is used properly. Many of the rooms and puzzles that can be seen in the film reminded me of things that you can find in actual scape rooms. So, at least in this, the film is well anchored in reality, even if the plot is farfetched at times (especially the final setting for the sequel). The resolution is a bit disappointing, the creators didn’t bother too much with explaining all of it, and the point lies basically on what anyone can come up with first. But I can take that. Overall, it’s pretty good fun and won’t refuse a sequel.

Well, fuck me! This is something! Kajganich and Guadanino take the original, and relatively simple horror tale and stretch it to the left, right, up and down, and also turn it upside down, and the story about a poor student who realises that her ballet academy is run by a witch clan suddenly becomes a political and philosophical reflection on human histories that are portrayed as a carousel of power struggles driven by false gods and manipulative ideologies that “enchant” their followers. The main motif then is the abuse of power, which blends into several of the twists, and the setting in divided Berlin is not all that arbitrary. The guilt of the corrupted patriarchy versus female power, that’s another layer that’s explored thoroughly. It goes so far, that in the end, the only important male character who tries to be “good” bears the blame on several fronts. And we all know who plays that role… /// After the first viewing, without a Czech translation, I’m not entirely sure if all these motifs fit together completely, but I love digging into them. Formally, the new Suspiria is even better than I’d expected. The dance and dream sequences are absolutely brilliant, intensive, and the atmosphere is perfect. In the end, the ideas prevail over the horror (with all that thinking about what the hell is going on, there’s no time to be scared), which is a bit of a shame, but I’ll take it. For the moment 9/10, but I really want to watch it again – it might go up, or down.

With its filmmaking qualities, unsurprisingly somewhere on the level of an East German porno when there’s no “humping”, it is actually funny. The “humping”, though, is more than average and will satisfy anyone who’s into it. But there’s no use pretending that this is something exceptional, or that the film has more quality elements than the gore (like a script or cinematography, hahaha!). Any expectations that Trauma will reflect seriously on what the Pinochet regime did with the soul of the nation are downright risible. For the creators, that motif is nothing but a fig leaf to hide the fact that they just wanted to shoot brutal brutality. This is made very clear when two lesbians show up, the lesbian sex will start in the second scene, at the latest, and we will see everything about it. The inspiration on actual events evidently begins and ends with Pinochet, or maybe with the fact that in Chile sometime someone raped somebody. Some of the decisions of the characters in the second half of the film are just pure fantasy. 5/10 and I’m being nice.