Author: swampflix

Oblivion (2013)

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One of my greatest personal shames is my unwatched physical media pile. I’m especially embarrassed by the DVDs I have left over from Blockbuster Video’s going-out-of-business sales and, even further back, the video rental chain’s regular 4 for $20 liquidation deals. 2013’s Oblivion is a perfect, distilled example of how a movie can collect dust for so long in these locked-away stashes. I’ve always had a suspicion that Oblivion would appeal to my voracious love of pulpy, highly-stylized sci-fi. Its general reputation is muted-to-negative, though, so I was never inspired to urgently pop it in the DVD player until a recent, especially idle night. Luckily, it turns out I was smart to hold onto that used copy of Oblivion for the last five years, as its reputation is a total injustice. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, whose only previous feature was Tron: Legacy (speaking of trashy sci-fi I seem to love more than the general public), Oblivion is a visually stunning slice of modern pulp that alternates between introspective sci-fi mystery & video game-style action violence. It’s a deeply nerdy graphic novel adaptation masquerading as a mainstream blockbuster, the exact kind of hidden gem that only improves as you get further away from its initial critical reception. As much as I would have loved seeing this film’s technical achievements projected as large & loud as possible in 2013, allowing it to quietly simmer in a stack of fellow forgotten titles instead was probably my best possible chance for falling for its geeky, trashy charms.

Tom Cruise stars as the last man on Earth, a government drone assigned to stay behind on a dying planet to repair & maintain more literal government drones. He shares an Apple Store-esque sky apartment with his coworker/wife as they fill their days completing routine tasks for a menacing, off-planet government/corporation. An untrustworthy history of Earth’s demise is plainly spelled out in an up-front information dump, the preferred exposition delivery system of all trashy sci-fi. Several major twists throughout the story (some also delivered via clunky information dumps) disrupt this early narrative wholesale, to the point where the story bends in on itself for a genuinely surprising development or three. The answers aren’t always as satisfying as the mysteries, but I do appreciate its most substantial gearshift more than most audiences seemed to five years ago. Even if the story were a turn-off, though, I don’t understand how audiences couldn’t help but be impressed by Oblivion’s visual achievements. The special effects have held up incredibly well and are backed up by a slick, modernist production design that proposes what might have happened if Steve Jobs collaborated with Spielberg on the set of A.I. The weaponized drones that serve as the film’s major physical threat are genuinely opposing & unnerving, resembling a flying antithesis to the wholesome cuteness of BB-8. The tension between the sleek, introspective mystery that builds off the machine-like coldness of the film’s design and the PG-13 violence of its sci-fi themed video game action sequences makes for a thoroughly engaging, deeply nerdy blockbuster experience, one I should have pulled the trigger on much sooner.

It’s not all that surprising that The Edge of Tomorrow was the 2010s Tom Cruise sci-fi action blockbuster that broke through critically instead of Oblivion. Oblivion isn’t nearly as cool, clever, or self-aware as that fellow graphic novel adaptation, but that uncoolness is a distinct factor in its charms. One of my favorite pieces of film writing all last year was Emily Yoshida’s article “Why Didn’t Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Find its Audience?” In it, Yoshida bucks against the idea that nerds have won the culture war and that geeky media is now officially cool on its own merit. She writes, “When it comes down to it, most people are so, so scared of seeing something uncool. Audiences are conditioned to dismiss unfamiliar, nerdy shit […] If geek culture truly ruled, it would be possible to launch a big budget genre film without an A-lister and a bucket of glib, self-aware jokes, because people would want to see a bunch of weird aliens on principle. We’d have an Ex Machina-grade middle budget sleeper hit every month and nerd-ass shit like Jupiter Ascending would have three squeals lined up.” While it’s true that Tom Cruise is the epitome of an A-lister and has been for a very long time, I think Oblivion easily qualifies as what Yoshida calls “nerd-ass shit.” The film’s endless mythology of its mandatory “memory wipes,” Saturnal moon colonies, and half-buried NYC monuments are almost embarrassingly geeky. That effect is only amplified by its PG-13 rating, which undercuts its brief indulgences in sex & violence to the level of a preteens-marketed comic book. With more self-aware, glib jokes and a hard-R approach to sex & violence, Oblivion might have snuck by the mainstream’s nerd defenses and become a modest hit. As is, it’s an underappreciated gem of slickly-produced, admirably uncool nerd-ass shit I wish I would have seen big & loud when I had the chance, contemporary reviews be damned.

I should also note that this film predicts that the 2017 Superbowl will be the last before Earth falls into chaos. So, if you’re looking to clear those physical media queues before we all bite the dust, now would be a great time to get started.

-Brandon Ledet

Movie of the Month: Hard Boiled (1992)

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Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Alli made Britnee, Brandon, and Boomer watch Hard Boiled (1992).

Alli: Modern action cinema is full of shaky-cam, grit, chaotic set pieces, and giant robots (nothing against giant robots, they’re just the sparkling vampires of the contemporary action film). Sometimes a single film features all four of these and it’s a mess. Every summertime action movie season, 90% of the films are trash (in the bad way). I know we can’t expect a Fury Road every year, but there’s a certain daring artfulness and style missing from the movies that Hollywood churns out year after year.

To be fair, action films are difficult to calibrate. With too many explosions & gun shot scenes and not enough character development, they’re just silly. Too few kapow!s and they’re boring. No tension and they’re a flop. They need the perfect balance of fun and danger to excel as cinematic junk food.

John Woo, while he has made his share of flops, is one of action cinema’s greats, and Hard Boiled is his masterpiece. It’s a perfect blend of style and tension. He manages to keep the stakes just as high as the amount of fun. The sequences of explosions and stunts are beautifully choreographed, displaying the influence of kung fu movies that Honk Kong is historically known for. The characters, while classic tropes, are compelling, with even small side characters being afforded a life of their own. It manages to follow the blueprints laid down by the movies before it, while also exploring new territories.

A hard-boiled cop,”Tequila” (Chow Yun-Fat), and his partner go on a stake-out in a tea house to take down gun-smuggling gangsters. The tea house is full of pet birds (a tradition called bird-walking) and shady underworld types. When the stake-out descends into a extraordinarily violent shootout in a flurry of feathers and bullets, Tequila’s partner is killed. He swears revenge. Against his boss’s orders, he tracks down those responsible and with the help of a deep undercover cop, Alan (Tony Leung). Together, they take the entire enterprise down in one final battle. That violent climax happens to be staged inside a hospital, where there’s an underground gun cache. Patients are killed, babies are saved, and of course the whole thing is blown up spectacularly.

I only briefly mentioned the side characters, but my favorite is “Mad Dog,” played by Phillip Kwok. He’s a motorcycle-riding, badass henchman. At some point he loses an eye and the eye patch only makes him look cooler. Brandon, what did you think of Mad Dog? Do you have any other favorite characters?

Brandon: “Mad Dog” is definitely a clear stand-out among the film’s legion of baddies. Compared to his heartless crime boss, who is coded to be Pure Evil merely for being the only player around with Caucasian features (a common theme in eternally typecast Johnny Wong’s career), Kwok’s eye patch-wearing motorcyclist is a relatively complex character who evolves as the film progresses. When his diabolical De Facto White Guy boss demands that he put innocent hospital patients, including babies, in harm’s way during the climactic gunfight, he refuses to oblige out of a sense of human decency. That means a lot in the greater story about an illegal arms business gone mad, where money means more than lives and no human obstacle is sacred. Hard Boiled is very economical with its characterizations, presumably out of necessity. Tequila’s self-contradiction as a tough guy cop who plays jazz clarinet, Alan’s in-too-deep psychological breakdown expressing itself through his origami hobby, and even Mad Dog’s eye patch-wearing leather demonry all have a pro wrestling quality as personality traits; you have to instantly know via visual language who is Good and who is Bad to leave room for the much more complex & fully-developed action set pieces to flourish. Mad Dog & Alan are allowed (to borrow a wrestling parlance) face-turns in their respective roles, which makes them more interesting than other, more static villains & side characters, but they’re still (as Alli points out) classical archetypes. Even with far less screen time, Mad Dog makes more of an impression than Alan does, though, mostly because he just looks cool

My favorite side character in the film gets even less screen time than Mad Dog, but to even greater effect. It’s the chubby little baby Tequila partners with in the climactic gunfight. In an action sequence so iconically bonkers it features heavily on the film’s poster despite having fuck all to do with arms dealing, Tequila & his fellow cops have to save a nursery full of newborn babies by smuggling them out of the hospital window in the middle of a chaotic gunfight. I rolled my eyes a tad at the way the perpetually sidelined Lady Cop is finally given something to do (besides receiving flowers) in this scene, only for it to be the domestic work of caring for children. That unease is more than compensated for, however, when Tequila pairs up with one baby in particular who was left behind in the flaming hospital. Chow Yun-Fat’s comedic rapport with this fat-cheeked baby is adorable, especially in contrast to the bursts of gunfire he has to interrupt to soothe the baby with coos & a novelty rap song (!!!). The baby isn’t just an adorable mascot in this scene, either. He gets actively involved in the violent mayhem by putting out Tequila’s clothes fire with his piss, effectively saving the day. Even without this absurdist touch, Hard Boiled would’ve been instantly recognizable as an over-the-top action classic, but that exchange really helped seal it for me, which makes the chubby piss-baby an easy pick for MVP.

Britnee, since character development is somewhat secondary to Hard Boiled‘s complex set pieces & stylized violence, I’d like to know which action sequences stood out to you as favorites. Besides the bird cafe & hospital shootouts Alli & I already mentioned, there’s a nonstop flood of mayhem that spreads throughout all corners of Hong Kong: public libraries, warehouses, shipping docks, etc. Was there any one set piece that stood out to you as a particular highlight?

Britnee: I have never seen an action film with this much . . . well, action. The shootout scenes seemed to last forever and the effects were top-of-the-line. Needless to say, there’s too many action sequences to choose from. The almighty hospital shootout scene is probably the most memorable in the film for me, mainly because I can’t think of any other action film that has such a violent scene set in a hospital. Staging so much violence in such an innocent background seems almost taboo, and I think that Woo did his best to make sure that viewers were on the edge of their seat for that sequence. I mean, newborn babies were dangling from a cloth outside a hospital window while the hospital itself was blowing up.

The hospital sequence may have been awarded Most Memorable, but I have to say that my favorite action set piece is the one in which dear Uncle Hoi is killed in the warehouse. I still can’t figure out how all those explosions and gunshots could occur in such a small space with so many survivors. It’s almost as though the characters in this scene were immortal; they were able to withstand untold amounts of gunfire and explosions. Not only was the action mind-boggling, but my favorite moment in the entire film occurs in this sequence. Amidst all the chaos, a motorcycle that is engulfed in flames plows through the crowd. I remember this moment being in slow motion, but it’s possible that the slow motion occurred only in my mind. My jaw dropped and a long “whoaaaa” fell out. It was so beautiful and terrifying at the same time, much like this movie as a whole.

There is a scene in Hard Boiled that I haven’t been able to shake since watching it a few weeks ago. It’s the final scene in which Alan is throwing his origami cranes into the ocean from his sailboat. Prior to this scene, Alan shoots himself in the stomach to give Tequila a chance to shoot Wong. Part of me feels like he really didn’t die because he would be smart enough to wear a bulletproof vest, considering the situation. Alan jokes with Tequila about leaving everything behind and starting anew in Hawaii a couple of times throughout the movie, so I wasn’t sure if that’s what was actually happening in the final scene or if this was Alan’s ghost fulfilling his dream.

Boomer, what is your take on the film’s ending? Did Alan really die? Or did he survive the gunshot?

Boomer: I like that this is left intentionally vague but tempered by heavy allegorical imagery that permeates the film’s final scenes. We see Da Chief setting Alan’s file aflame in his office, just as we saw the docket for the previous killed-in-action undercover officer burned, a kind of memorial for a fallen friend. I don’t think that Alan was wearing a vest, though. We did see what contemporary Kevlar vests looked like in the final battle when the more heavily-armed police forces arrive at the hospital; they turn these armaments into makeshift baskets for some of the last few infants left behind in the maternity ward, and we see these same officers get eaten up by bullets shortly thereafter. As much as I want the ending to mean that our handsome hero Alan is alive, I get the sense that the interpretive element of the presentation is not as ambiguous as it was in, for instance, The Psychic. Per his conversation with Tequila, each of Alan’s origami cranes represents a man that he had to kill, both in the line of duty and to maintain his cover. While these deaths were all of evil men engaged in the gun trade, they weigh heavily on his conscience. Alan also mentions that Hawaii is a place he has never seen, a kind of paradise to which he’s hoping to achieve entry by passing through the crucible of his assignment. As he drops each paper bird into the ocean at the end, it is as if Alan is letting the sins he committed fall away from him into the ether as he sails toward whatever lies next for him.

We can assume that the film has a Taoist perspective, given that Tequila makes his entreaty for reconciliation with Teresa and a new apartment to a shrine of Guan Yu. Even with that in mind, the various different sects of Taoism are notoriously disunified in their different perspectives on death and the afterlife, so even thoroughly researching the topic doesn’t yield particularly useful information. Although Alan would be traveling eastward to reach Hawaii from China (in fact, he’d be going almost due east, given that there’s barely one degree of latitude difference between Hong Kong and Honolulu), a cursory internet search hasn’t helped me locate a specific correlation between eastward travel and enlightenment or the afterlife in Taoism. Religions informed by Christianity do hold the east—the cardinal direction, not the region—to have religious significance, however. Most cathedrals are cruciform in construction (see the Pisa Cathedral for a good example), with the “upper” part of the cross lying on the eastern end so that the congregation faces eastward, in the presumed direction of Christ (“For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” -Matthew 24:27, KJV). It may just be my Western biases slipping through, but it feels like there’s a significance to Alan traveling east in (presumed) death, but I could be reading too much into it.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Alan could have survived. He’s definitely made of sterner stuff than other men, given that he takes a glancing shotgun blast to the back earlier in the film and survives. He also already survived a gunshot wound to the abdomen, as we see him tending the wound in his undershirt aboard the houseboat. We also know that he has implausibly good aim, as shown when he was able to slip a lighter into Fox’s pocket and then shoot him in such a way that the bullet was deflected from killing him by that same tiny piece of metal. Like I said: it’s up to one’s personal dissection, and my personal affection for Alan (and Tony Leung) means that I want the final shot of him embracing a new day to be a real event and not metaphorical, but the interpretation that he is dead is a much more rich vein, at least in my opinion.

Alli, you mentioned that you were a fan of Mad Dog, and I too liked that his character was multidimensional, especially in comparison to some of our “good” characters. Which characters, if any, do you feel simply don’t work (or pale in comparison to Mad Dog), and why? What would you improve about them to make them more lifelike or believable?

Alli: I am not a big fan of the character John Woo wrote for himself here. Supposedly this character was a late addition intended to help develop Tequila more, since many of his scenes playing jazz and pursuing his romance with Teresa were cut. The idea was that if John Woo was in a scene, why would he cut it? Though, I do get a director wanting to appear in a ridiculous movie that even from plot alone is a magnum opus. We didn’t need to watch Tequila seek advice from his bartender at the jazz club. The advice wasn’t even all that useful. It just felt like an unnecessary detail that added to the clutter. It’s understandable why in a movie with a cool badass like Mad Dog and the dreamy Alan going through moral dilemmas and tough choices, Chow Yun-Fat would want a character who doesn’t just ignore his boss’s orders and his girlfriend’s wishes, but I feel like there were better ways to handle that. The Mr. Woo scenes are a little too on the nose.

It’s hard for me to talk about this movie without comparing it to Die Hard. Both deal with rogue cops single-handedly taking down massive conspiracies and criminal organizations. Both are packed with iconic action sequences. Also, when it comes down to it, I think their main characters are extremely similar. John McClane isn’t really developed any more than Tequila until the action gets started, when we get a sense of his smug sense of humor and hear the “yippee ki yay.” In the same way, I think we see more of who Tequila is when he’s being a cop: smashing gangsters’ car windows, independently dropping into a warehouse full of baddies to shoot up the place, and, once again, the rap lullaby.

I’m sure there’s a ton of other Die Hard comparisons one could make, since they’re two of the finest action movies ever made, but I’m going to stop there for now. Brandon, are there any other movies you’d compare Hard Boiled to? Are the any movies heavily influenced by it that you’ve seen? What do you think of Hard Boiled‘s place in the action genre as a whole?

Brandon: The question of influence is a difficult one to detangle (except in blatant cases like the action spoof Shoot Em Up borrowing its baby-themed shoot-out concept wholesale), since Hong Kong action cinema drew heavy influence from its American counterparts before leaving its own mark on that industry in a kind of creative ouroboros. Since John Woo himself has since become an American cinema icon, the easiest points of comparison might be to look at his own work. Hard Boiled is weirdly positioned as the final film in Woo’s catalog before the two distinct markers critics usually cite as the downfall of Hong Kong’s action cinema heyday: the exodus of the movement’s most prominent directors to Hollywood and the handover of Hong Kong itself from British rule to mainland China in 1997 . With his following film, the JCVD vehicle Hard Target, you can already see the way American sensibilities (particularly the MPAA’s attitude towards violence) diluted Woo’s creative voice. By the time he directed pictures like Face/Off and the rap-rock opera Mission: Impossible 2, almost all of Hard Boiled‘s mesmerizing hyperviolence had completely evaporated, leaving only the over-the-top cheese behind. As a result, I’ve always shrugged off the suggestion that John Woo is an easy pick for the all-time greatest craftsman in action cinema. His American pictures maintain his playful absurdism, his obsession with white doves, and his excess of individual camera setups within a single action sequence (complete with slow-motion pauses for detail); they’re even (for the most part) really fun to watch. They don’t ever approach the intricate genius in craft or the blunt force brutality of Hard Boiled, though, and I feel like an idiot for avoiding seeing Woo’s work from his Hong Kong glory days for so long because of that slow American decline.

Britnee, what was your first experience with John Woo as a director? I’m assuming it was a 90s American picture as well. How did it compare to your experience with Hard Boiled?

Britnee: Hard Boiled is actually the first John Woo film that I’ve fully seen. I swear, I’m always late to the party for everything. When I was a kid, I saw parts of Face/Off and Hard Target thanks to the TNT and USA channels, but I don’t really remember much about either movie. Not knowing John Woo’s work is actually exciting to me, though. This is an entirely new world of action films that I can throw myself into. After looking at the decent-sized list of films Woo has directed, I noticed a good number of Hong Kong works. I’m curious to see if any of them are on the level of Hard Boiled, which would be freaking amazing.

I was a little nervous about being able to keep up with Hard Boiled when I realized it was an action film entirely in Cantonese. Having to pay attention to subtitles in an action-packed movie makes the film seem more like a chore than an enjoyment. Ultimately, I was somehow able to understand what was going on without really paying attention to the subtitles. It’s not that there was a lack of verbal interaction between the characters, either. I think credit goes to a blend of excellent acting and directing.

Boomer, did you have a similar experience with the subtitles?

Boomer: About two months ago, some friends and I were binging on all the Pop-Up Videos we could find on YouTube. One of these was the video for “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. There’s a point in that one where the song is playing, the subtitles say something different from the lyrics, and there’s a simultaneous “informational” pop-up; while watching it, it was like my brain blew a fuse for a second because it was impossible to keep up with every piece of information being presented. I think there’s definitely a danger in this kind of sensory overload in any action film, let alone one that is not in a language the viewer speaks. On the other hand, editing and tone are actually more important to an overall understanding of a film than even the dialogue is, and a good director, like Woo, knows how to use the languages of dialogue and the rhetorical space of visuals & editing to convey ideas. Film theorist Lindsay Ellis actually discusses this in the first entry of her fantastic series of video essays in which she uses the Transformers series as an easy textual representation of certain filmic ideas like affinity/contrast of continuum of movement.

Ellis asks: why is it so hard to remember what happens in those terrible movies? One answer is that there is a constant disruption of the continuum of movement between shots. When the eye has to move from one part of the screen to another when the shot changes, that is contrast of continuum of movement; a good director uses this intentionally in order to disorient the viewer after a period of relative visual stability. When it’s used constantly, however, it only serves to induce anxiety and confusion and prevents the film from coming together in a logical, sensible way. It effectively offsets what we call “persistence of vision” and baffles the mind, just like the aforementioned Pop-Up version of “Everybody Hurts.” I had this experience myself when I was 20 years old and went to see Transformers in theaters; I had gotten an eye infection the week beforehand, and was wearing an eyepatch at the screening. I still clearly remember parts of the film where the action was so intense and nonsensical that, through a single eye, the screen essentially went blank. The fact that this happens in a film in my (and our) native tongue is telling; there was no language barrier, but the film was still incomprehensible.

In general, though, competent directors know better than to try and hit more than one center of the brain at once, even if they only learn this skill through osmosis. In any given action scene, the protagonist will generally throw out a one liner either immediately before (“You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”) or after (“Welcome to Earth!”) taking action. Only a very poor director would attempt to have their lead recite a lengthy screed at the same time that dozens of weapons dealers storm a factory. Even in something like Wrath of Khan, in which Khan gives a recitation of the “From hell’s heart, I stab at thee” speech from Moby Dick, that dialogue doesn’t play out over footage of two starships shooting at each other; the invective is delivered in close-up. Not every director is competent, of course, and I’ve definitely seen a film or two that was confusing because of an editorial failure and not as an intentional device (Tribulation comes to mind), but Hard Boiled doesn’t fall into this category. And, hey, if you could follow the movie without dialogue, more power you.

Lagniappe

Britnee: I love how there wasn’t a lot of unnecessary lovey-dovey stuff in Hard Boiled. I hate when action films bring in a ridiculous love story because it always takes away from the adrenaline high that I get after a good combat scene or two. There’s a light touch of romance between Tequila and Teresa, but it’s not enough to be a major plot point. Alli mentioned that a couple of romantic scenes between them were cut, and I’m so glad that they were.

Alli: I have watched this movie so many times and I still for the life of me have no idea why the lead’s nickname is Tequila, especially since throughout the film he’s only shown drinking gin & tonic. I don’t know if I like it better that it’s not explained or if I really wish we had the answer to that.

Boomer: Alli, look away in case you want to preserve the mystery of Tequila’s nickname, but . . . he’s not drinking a G&T. That’s a tequila slammer, which is notable for the way that it’s mixed (slamming it).

For interested parties who want to know more about how the brain accepts and interprets information, both musically and not, I can’t recommend the video essay “The Mozart Effect” by Sideways enough. In it, he talks about the areas of the brain that are affected by speech-as-sound, subvocalization, and why certain sounds/music are more conducive to certain activities.

Brandon: My apologies for bringing up pro wrestling a second time in this conversation (my WrestleMania tickets must be eating a hole in my brain), but something else about films from Hong Kong legends like John Woo & Tsui Hark remind me of another wrestling term: the sell.

The stunts pulled off in Hard Boiled and its ilk are so convincingly dangerous that I often have a difficult time watching the screen out of fear for the actors’ safety. The fact that Hong Kong action stars were often pressured to do their own stunts instead of leaving the work to professional doubles makes the experience even more nerve-racking. It’s entirely possible that these were super safe sets and the danger onscreen was just “sold” especially well by the performers, but it’s still difficult to watch at times. Even professional wrestlers, who are often accused of being in a “fake” business, frequently get injured . . . or sometimes worse. I won’t deny that this sense of real-life danger is uniquely thrilling, though. It’s one of the many things that distinguish Hard Boiled & its Hong Kong contemporaries from their American counterparts.

Upcoming Movies of the Month
March: Brandon presents Suicide Club (2001)
April: Britnee presents Magic in the Mirror (1996)
May: Boomer presents Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)

-The Swampflix Crew

Phantom Thread (2017)

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Because of his reputation as a formalist & a high-brow intellect, people often overlook a very important aspect of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, even when heaping on praise: he’s damn funny. This may be because the humor in PTA’s movies is usually coated with a thick grime of terrifying, soul-destroying bitterness. For instance, it’s difficult to describe the humor of Daniel Day-Lewis threatening to slit a stranger’s throat in There Will be Blood or Phillip Seymour Hoffman shouting “pig-Fuck!” in The Master, but those moments are indeed amusingly intense. Anderson’s latest, Phantom Thread, is a wonderful feature-length continuation of this tradition. It may take audiences a few minutes to defrost from the expectation of watching an Important, Oscar-Worthy Drama to realize it, but Phantom Thread really is a wickedly funny movie, the perfect encapsulation of PTA’s bitter, hubristic humor. Detailing the power dynamics of a dangerously tense long-term relationship between a 1950s Londoner dressmaker and his waitress-turned-muse, you might be tempted to assume the film is a tragically dour period piece with little patience for silliness. Instead, Daniel Day-Lewis & relative newcomer Vicky Krieps verbally spar in a nonstop comedic assault for the full two-hour runtime. The film still excels as a gorgeous, meticulously crafted period piece with dead serious things to say about power dynamic struggles in artist-muse romantic relationships; it just does so while making you laugh in wholly unexpected ways at every twisted turn in its intimate, absurdly well-mannered narrative. Paul Thomas Anderson has certainly been funny before, but never at this duration or consistency.

Reynolds Woodcock is sure to be remembered as one of the greater, more intense characters ever performed onscreen, a name as iconic as Norman Bates or Rupert Pupkin or, appropriately enough, Daniel Plainview. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the renowned dressmaker with the delicate, careful darkness of Werner Herzog’s speaking voice. Having let the praise for his (admittedly gorgeous) dress designs go to his head, Woodcock has devolved into an insufferable twerp who demands that the army of women who actually put in the labor to make his business functional (including a rotating cast of muses-du-jour) bend to his every whim at a moment’s notice. Phantom Thread flirts with the thematic possibilities of championing the unnoticed work of the women whom Woodcock steamrolls or parsing out exactly what he means when he describes himself as an “incurable confirmed bachelor.” Mostly, though, it just has a quiet laugh at the tension his function as a tyrannical drama queen generates in a house of women who do not have the power to tell him “No.” This dynamic shifts when his latest muse, Alma (Krieps), refuses to be steamrolled along with the rest and defiantly intends to treat Woodcock like the “spoiled little baby” he truly is. From then on, the movie details a three-way power struggle within the Woodcock household (Lesley Manville holds down the third corner as Reynold’s deliciously icy sister, Cyril), with everyone involved seemingly getting perverted pleasure out of the clash, regardless of their overly dramatic complaints. Despite his delicate, mannered exterior, Woodcock drives, eats, and structures his romances like a thrill-seeking maniac. It turns out he enjoys having his hubristic displays of power challenged, though, something no woman in his life had ever dared to do before Alma (besides his cutthroat, no-bullshit sister). Through that challenge they build a curiously violent, deceptively well-balanced life together.

You may be able to find a better version of this kind of tragically classy romance in an Alfred Hitchcock or Douglas Sirk picture. The Love Witch may be a flashier attempt at a playfully fashionable period pastiche with strong feminist themes. mother! may offer a more convincingly absurdist critique of artist-muse relationship dynamics. The Duke of Burgundy may be a more immersively gorgeous, cheekily fun examination of power struggles in a kinkily-mannered long-term romance. What Phantom Thread offers that resists comparison to other works is a very particular sense of humor distinct to Anderson’s collaborative energy with Day-Lewis. It’s difficult to describe why Woodcock peering menacingly over his glasses or the way PTA substitutes food for sex in this picture are so wickedly amusing; I actually suspect a lot of people won’t see it that way at all, given the subjective nature of humor. If you enter Phantom Thread looking for a modernist critique of the tyrannical Troubled Artist type set against a visually interesting backdrop & a sweeping, classy score (from fellow frequent PTA collaborator & Radiohead vet Jonny Greenwood), the movie is more than happy to oblige you. If you’re not laughing through the tension of the weaponized “polite” exchanges between Reynolds, Alma, and Cyril Woodcock, though, I’m not sure you’re fully appreciating what the movie is offering. This really is one of the finest comedies I’ve seen in a while. It has a wickedly peculiar, distinct sense of humor to it that you won’t find in many other features, a comedic tone Reynolds himself would likely describe as “a little naughty.” Just pray you don’t find yourself in a dead silent audience of intellectuals hellbent on taking every detail of that naughtiness seriously.

-Branodn Ledet

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

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It’s not exactly a fresh, revolutionary impulse to point out that women’s accomplishments have been historically swept under the rug to make room for the acknowledgment of men’s, but I can think of few better examples of that injustice in cinema than the case of Lotte Reiniger. Even as someone who regularly seeks out traditional animation, I’m just hearing of Reiniger for the first time in my 30s, when she should be just as much of a household name as Walt Disney or Hayao Miyazaki. Only preceded by a couple lost Romanian films, Reniger’s magnum opus The Adventures of Prince Achmed is considered to be the oldest surviving animated feature film. Produced over three physically taxing years on the floor of a German garage with a full crew, it’s a work not only impressive for it value as a historical landmark, but for its passionately intricate artistry. Inspired by live action shadow puppetry, Reniger invented her own style of animation involving cardboard cutout silhouettes, thin sheets of lead for shading, and a rudimentary multiplane camera. It was a method that was reasonably suited for her many experiments in short films, but proved painstakingly complex for a feature. It wouldn’t be until Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves over a decade later that another animated feature would even attempt to follow in its footsteps, as the early processes for traditional animation required phenomenal feats of labor at that length. It’s amazing that Reiniger took on that process as a D.I.Y. art project instead of a commercial enterprise, an accomplishment that isn’t as loudly or as frequently lauded as it obviously should be.

Truth be told, the narrative explored in The Adventures of Prince Achmed is not nearly as interesting as its visual form. As the title suggests, the film works as a kind of anthology of tangential adventure short stories, an attractive structure for a filmmaker looking to graduate from shorts to features. Mining Middle Eastern folktales pulled from Arabian Nights, these strung-together adventures follow the handsome, titular Prince Achmed as he confronts witches, demons, magicians, and sorcerers in an effort to rescue two damsels in distress: his sister & his beloved. There’s a fair amount of outdated politics to be expected in this silent era German film that extend far beyond sidelined women waiting to be rescued. Middle Eastern culture-gazing & offensive Jewish stereotypes also sour some of the film’s magic at the border of the frame. The anthologized approached to feature-length storytelling also becomes disruptive at a critical point in the film when a side plot involving Aladdin (yes, that Aladdin) overpowers Achmed’s foreground narrative. Still, even for all its outdated politics & structural faults as an exercise in feature-length storytelling, the film is downright intoxicating as a visual piece. Tinted color frames, intricate lacework-style cutouts, and mythical creatures like a flying horse & a gaggle of gorgeous peacock women conjure a magic far more powerful than any modern, nitpicky concerns about the story they serve. In more ways than one, this film is a testament to the transformative powers of animation. Backlit slivers of cardboard & a thin, anthologized story shouldn’t amount to anything nearly this substantial.

I’d just as much recommend reading up on Lotte Reiniger as a historical figure as I’d urge you to watch her landmark magnum opus. My public domain DVD of The Adventures of Prince Achmed included a biographical feature titled Lotte Reiniger: Homage to the Inventor of the Silhouette Film that was an especially good primer for discovering a life well-lived, if not well-enough known. Even if you’re just browsing her Wikipedia page, though, you’ll be taken aback by how such a significant artist is so blatantly absent from The Most Accomplished Auteurs of All Time conversations. Much like with stop-motion animation, her silhouette technique has a handmade quality to it where you can see the humanity behind the artistry onscreen. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a must-see for film nerds & history buffs, but what’s even more pressing is that we start including Reiniger among the names of directors who pioneered cinema as a medium. The shadow puppetry element of her work suggests a kind of old-fashioned artistry, but her advancement of traditional animation & early adoption of a multiplane camera setup position as her as a trailblazer, one whose name should be on everyone’s tongue.

-Brandon Ledet

Paddington 2 (2018)

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“If we’re kind and polite, the world will be right.”

I stubbornly ignored all recommendations for the first Paddington film for a solid two years, mostly out of disgust & disinterest inspired by its advertising. The CGI design of the titular bear was especially a huge turn-off, giving off the feeling of a computer-animated Charmin commercial flavored with a pinch of British whimsy. When the unanimous praise for Paddington 2 started rolling in recently, I finally decided to give the first one a shot (it was lurking on Netflix, after all). The experience turned out much better than other recent experiments where I allowed critical praise to bully me into watching children’s films I had zero interest in (Moana and Coco both come to mind), but I still couldn’t quite match the consensus enthusiasm. Paddington is a decent, occasionally clever children’s film about an undeniably lovable bear. Paddington 2, it turns out, is a massive improvement on that initial outing: a total, absurdly wholesome joy. Where the first film only got past my heartless cynic defenses enough to elicit a few chuckles & “awwwww”s, the sequel made me cry for the last five minutes solid, both out of grief & out of elation. Paddington 2 reminds me of the trajectory of the Babe series, where the first film is a simple, adorable portrait of a wholesome talking animal and the second, Pig in the City, is a feverishly ambitious work of fine art that contrasts that lovable animal against a harshly cruel world that does not deserve them. Like Babe, Paddington makes everything he touches better through pure, unashamed kindness, so it only makes sense that his own film franchise would only get better the more time it spends with him.

I suspect this is a holdover from the Paddington storybooks, but the real crux of this series is its function as an allegory about modern immigration. An orphaned bear “from deepest, darkest Peru,” Paddington is a sweetly polite, courteous cub who is shunned on sight by most strangers he greets in London. Peter Capadli is the most flagrant racist in Paddington’s life, referring to the bear as “an undesirable” and forming a “community defense force” to keep an eye on his potentially criminal behavior. The first Paddington film profiles a white, affluent London family (featuring Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville & The Shape of Water’s Sally Hawkins) as they grow to love the bear for the kindness inside him, despite their initial prejudices. Paddington 2 finds their neighborhood transformed into a harmonious cultural tapestry where people of widely varied backgrounds coexist in functional peace, thanks largely to Paddington’ s bottomless aptitude for kindness & politeness. We then see how grim the world becomes without the impossibly wholesome influence of this Peruvian bear. While merely attempting to purchase a birthday present for his aunt, Paddington is framed for a white man’s crime and leveled with a ten-year prison sentence, thanks largely to old-fashioned racial profiling. Of course, he makes the best of this situation as he can, transforming his Dickensian hellhole of a prison into something resembling a Wes Anderson confectionary or a live-action adaptation of Animal Crossing. It’s still a difficult-to-stomach injustice, though, one that leads to a speeding train conclusion more befitting of an action thriller than a children’s movie. I don’t want to spoil any of the weird, emotionally traumatic places the movie goes as its story flies off the rails in a delightfully excessive climax, but I will say this: when Paddington does finally get his aunt a birthday present, I cried like an idiot baby. I’m having a difficult time just writing about it without crying; it’s that goddamn wholesome.

Besides its heartwarming empathy for immigration narratives and general, genuine sweetness, the Paddington franchise also impress as a visual achievement. The dollhouse miniatures of the first film were an excellent start for an aesthetic perfected in the second. Paddington 2 is a multimedia sensory experience, mixing in 2-D pencil-sketch animation, pop-up book landscapes, and even more complex miniatures to convincingly capture a sense of childlike wonder. There has always been dissent against the wholesome tweeness of visual artists like Michel Gondry & Wes Anderson (whose Grand Budapest Hotel feels like an especially strong influence here), but those naysayers typically don’t give full credit to the deeply devastating sadness that lurks just under their works’ meticulously manicured surfaces. Paddington 2 nails both sides of that divide – the visually precious and the emotionally fragile – while teaching kids an important lesson about applying simple concepts like politeness & manners to their interactions with social & cultural outsiders. It also backs up its precious visual indulgences with an informed, classic sense of physical comedy, directly influenced by silent era legends like Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton. I could see an outsider being turned off by the promised whimsy of the film’s steampunk circus backdrop, treasure map side plot, and cutesy pop-up book illustration asides, but director Paul King carefully arranges all these visual influences & aesthetic touches with such a careful sense of craft that it’s near impossible not to be won over by them in the moment. We always say we wish more children’s films were ambitious in their craft & purposeful in their thematic messaging; Paddington 2 wholly satisfies both demands.

I don’t want to suggest that watching the first Paddington movie was a waste of time or a total letdown. If nothing else, it functions as a kind of superhero origin story (if kindness & politeness can be understood as superpowers), laying a lot of the visual & metaphorical groundwork for what’s accomplished in its magnificent sequel. It’s worth watching just to get accustomed to Paddington’s world, as everyone from the director to single-scene side characters returned for the second go. Everything about Paddington 2 is an improvement on its predecessor, though. The physical comedy is funnier. The visual craft is more inspired. The villain is more entertaining & complex (I swear Hugh Grant is channeling Theatre of Blood-era Vincent Price here). Even Paddington’s impossibly sweet selflessness in the face of prejudice – as he sacrifices his freedom to improve someone else’s birthday – comes across more clearly. Paddington 2 is the perfect, heartwarmingly empathetic children’s film confectionary everyone’s been trying to sell me with the first movie for the last two years. Now it’s my turn to be an annoyance and hyperbolically promote this picture to people who have zero interest in watching it.

-Brandon Ledet

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2018)

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Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the exact kind of movie that’s destined to be undervalued & taken for granted on sight. The first picture from the Studio Ghibli spinoff production company Studio Ponoc, it’s automatically going to suffer many unflattering comparisons to classic Hayao Miyazaki works like Kiki’s Delivery Service & Spirited Away. Adapted from the 1971 fantasy novel The Little Broomstick, which heavily features a school for witches & wizards, the film is also likely to be compared unfavorably to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (which likely borrowed just as much from its source material as it did elsewhere; Rowling’s work is practically a pastiche). Instant familiarity is destined to temper a lot of enthusiasm for Mary and the Witch’s Flower, but that kind of dismissive ungratefulness doesn’t consider just how rare of a treat this kind of thoughtful, traditionally animated work actually is on the modern children’s film cinema landscape. Given how much of a sucker I was for the goofy magic of The Worst Witch (speaking of works that likely heavily inspired Harry Potter) and the anime-lite tones of Little Nemo’s Adventures in Slumberland at the time, I’m convinced this would have been my favorite movie as a kid, were it released in the early 1990s. Anime has gradually become the last refuge for thematically thoughtful, intricately crafted traditional 2D animation. It’s worth celebrating a new studio’s arrival as a contributor to keeping that tradition alive instead of brushing them off for feeling like they’ve always been around. Besides, as a subject, witchcraft is just inherently badass.

The titular Mary is a bored preteen wasting away the final scraps of her summer in her great-aunt’s gorgeous country home. This idleness inspires her to follow a couple mischievous kittens into the woods in a down-the-rabbit-hole experience that lands her in a magical realm of witchy universities, mad scientists, and wild hybrid beasts that resemble psychedelic Pokémon. She accidentally stumbles into a Chosen One plot arc in this new world thanks to a magical flower & a sassy broomstick that temporarily grant her extraordinary witch powers. From there, it’s a race against the clock for Mary to save a damsel in distress Anime Boy from the clutches of the evil schoolmarm & her side kick scientist and to put a stop to put their cruel animal experiments before she’s found out to not be the Chosen One at all, but rather an intruder & a fraud. The story Mary and the Witch’s Flower tells isn’t nearly as complex thematically as it is impressive visually. The lessons learned here are, again, familiar to classic children’s media narratives: learning to be confident in your own abilities and accepting the things you cannot change about yourself (especially your physical attributes). The movie is much more interesting in the way it wakes its young audience up the magic of the mundane. Simple, everyday activity like the pleasure of gardening and the science of electricity is framed as a kind of real-world witchcraft, enticing children to find interest in both magic & science and the grey area between them. It may not be a mind-blowing feat in intricate storytelling, but it is adorably animated and easy to love. This is the exact kind of immersive comfort food I would have ground into dust, were it released in the days of obsessively repeated VHS viewings.

Instead of focusing on how Mary and the Witch’s Flower isn’t quite as intricately animated as Ghibli classics or as immersive in its books-long world-building as the Harry Potter series, I was swept away by its warm, familiar charm. It’s an increasingly rare treat to see traditional animation on the big screen in recent years, anime or otherwise, and I greatly appreciate the arrival of Studio Ponoc (and the surprisingly trustworthy distribution company GKIDS) for keeping the experience alive. The onscreen witchcraft was dazzling. The glockenspiel-heavy score occasionally felt like a G-rated Suspiria. The world it created was a fantasy space I’d love to mentally dwell in for a magical eternity. The only real bummer for me was that the theater was sparsely attended by appreciative cinema & anime nerds instead of being packed with wide-eyed, witchy children. I would have loved for Mary and the Witch’s Flower’s easy familiarity to have been a result of it always being in my life the way titles like Little Nemo & The Worst Witch have; I hope it finds the right kids at the right time so they can have that experience in my place.

-Brandon Ledet

Saving Face (2004)

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There’s a distinct style of comedy cinema that’s rooted more in the humor of recognition than it is in the intricate construction of a punchline or bit. It’s a mode of humor that’s more likely to make you say, “That’s so true!” than it is to double you over with laughter. That humorous recognition of truth is usually tied to a highly specific cultural or economic backdrop so that it can hinge its observations on minute details & personal experiences. Sometimes these hyper-specific cultural narratives can break through to a larger audience by tapping into universally relatable truths, as was the case with last year’s Pakistani-American medical dramedy The Big Sick. Sometimes they’re unfairly forgotten or buried by the larger public on the face value of their surface details, as seemed to be the case with black, lesbian political meta-comedy The Watermelon Woman. 2004’s Saving Face appears to fall halfway between those two points. It experienced neither the breakout success of The Big Sick, nor the hellish distribution limbo of The Watermelon Woman. It’s just as culturally & personally specific as either work, though, detailing the sexual & romantic follies of two generations of Chinese-American women living in New York City. Saving Face builds its narrative tension around a mother-daughter relationship as the two women struggle to reconcile their private sexuality with their public personas & the cultural norms within their conservative Chinese-American community. Constantly referencing soap operas for context, it’s a movie that is not at all afraid of grand gestures of drama & sentimentality. Mostly, though, it’s mostly a personal, culturally specific comedy of recognition, where humor is mined more from observations of miniscule, real-life details than it is from over-the-top scenarios or dialogue.

A middle-aged mother strives to improve her adult children’s lives even though her son is a successful businessman and her daughter is a skilled, in-demand surgeon. She intends on making her daughter’s social status more respectable by essentially arranging her marriage to a series of ill-fitting men who frequent their community’s regular soirees. Two crises within these women’s lives flip this power dynamic in time: the daughter is a closeted lesbian who has zero romantic interest in her mother’s proposed beaus and the mother becomes pregnant outside of wedlock, which excommunicates her from their traditionalist, conservative community. Both women struggle with maintaining privacy & social decorum in the tension between their private relationships & their public personas. The daughter falls in love with a dancer who pressures her to find the courage to come out. The mother keeps the identity of her unborn child’s father a secret as she struggles to adjust to a more independent NYC lifestyle. The daughter even reverses their original dynamic by setting her mother up on dates with men whom she has no interest in. The whole thing blows up in soap opera-worthy displays of sentimentality at both a wedding & an airport before sweetly settling on a position of “Fuck ‘em,” with the two women resolving to live as their true selves with confidence instead of fretting over public condemnation. Their self-confidence and their familiar relationship are stronger for the crisis. Their community is also given more of an impetus to catch up with the evolving morals of modern life. The dramatic struggles of Saving Face are mostly intimate & insular before their climactic soap opera blow-ups and the whole move is guided by a subtle, empathetic hand as two-well-defined female characters learn how to become their best possible selves. It’s endearing.

It’s no surprise to learn that writer-director Alice Wu based much of Saving Face off her own personal experiences with coming out as lesbian in her Chinese-American community. This is the kind of delicately comedic, occasionally sentimental work that requires highly specific personal & cultural details at the margins to resonate with an audience. I don’t intend to suggest that it’s entirely stylistically muted either. An occasional eccentric reaction shot or the mother telling her daughter things like, “Had I known you would be so ungrateful, I would have held you in” punches up the comedy beats. Grand romantic gestures at the climax and touches like a tender sex scene set to a Cat Power ballad anchor the dramatic end as well. A scene where the daughter finally verbalizes her hidden sexual orientation to her mother, who was already reluctantly aware of it as a kind of open secret, is especially complex in its dramatic tones (as well as being an incredibly well-handled exchange between actors Joan Chen & Michelle Krusiec). For the most part, though, Saving Face’s dramatic and comedic beats impress in the way they ring true to real life detail & lived experience. It’s a type of comedy that sometimes breaks through to find mass appeal, but is much more significant in the way it offers representation to communities that aren’t used to seeing themselves visible onscreen. I’m sure there’s a Chinese-American lesbian out there in a major US city with an early 00s coming out story very similar to Wu’s, for whom this is the greatest, most relatable film ever made. It’s a kind of personal touch we could stand to champion more prominently as audiences, even if it isn’t nearly as flashy as more traditional, over-the-top comedies.

-Brandon Ledet

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

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Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Call Me by Your Name (based on the André Aciman novel of the same name), has earned loads of critical acclaim since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January and subsequent Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. After watching the film for the first time last night, I can truly say that it lives up to the hype. Here I am, an entire day later, still thinking about all the beautiful scenes shot on 35mm film. In addition to the movie’s vibrant beauty, its ability to pull the audience in emotionally is incredible. The entire theater was silent (minus a few sniffles for those heartbreaking moments) as everyone was wide-eyed and open-mouthed.  It felt like we were part of a virtual reality experiment.

The film is set in northern Italy during the summer of 1983. Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and his parents (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar) are spending time at their Italian villa. Elio’s father is a professor of archaeology and invites a handsome young research assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer), to stay with them during the summer. Elio is a seventeen year old with wit and talent beyond his age, and Oliver, while extremely intelligent, falls a little into the frat boy stereotype. At first, the two develop a friendship that involves intellectual conversation, daily swims in gorgeous Italian waters, and going out to local night clubs. Slowly, Elio begins to develop more of a sexual interest in Oliver. Without stating that he is homosexual or bisexual, he approaches Oliver and makes his desires known. Oliver, while hesitant at first, indulges in these desires as he feels the same for Elio. The two then engage in a very brief, yet passionate affair over the summer.

What I love the most about Call Me by Your Name is the film’s pace. It doesn’t move too fast or too slow; it’s just the right speed. There’s a gradual build-up before Elio and Oliver consummate their relationship, but the film doesn’t come to an abrupt end after this occurs. Instead, the audience is able to watch their relationship blossom into something beautiful. This kind of intimacy was responsible for getting me so emotionally invested in the film. Understanding Elio’s feelings before he approached Oliver and watching the passion between them grow more and more each time they were together was absolutely magical.

This is the first Guadagnino film I’ve seen, and I am immensely impressed by his ability to create an atmosphere that is so appealing to all the senses. I could taste the fresh apricot juice as it was flowing down Oliver’s throat. I could feel the warmth of the sun as it was beaming down on Elio’s face. Even the use of music in the film was phenomenal. From the memorable sequence of Oliver dancing in his high socks and Converse shoes to The Psychedelic Furs hit, “Love My Way” to Sufjan Stevens’ “Mystery of Love” (nominated for Best Original Song) during Elio’s heartfelt moment of self-reflection, all of the film’s musical components add emphasis to these little moments.

While the performances from Chalamet and Hammer were above par, the most pivotal exchange in the film is Stuhlbarg’s monologue during a father/son discussion that goes beyond a father telling his son that he’s supportive of his sexuality. Chalamet showed up and showed out during this scene, and it had everyone in the theater in tears. In film, these conversations usually occur between mother and son because the father is usually too “macho” to understand anything about homosexuality. I was thrilled that this memorable moment was shared between Elio and his dad rather than Elio and his mom.

Call Me by Your Name is a coming of age love story that has left me with nothing but fond memories. I’m looking forward to watching this one a few more times once it’s released on DVD.

-Britnee Lombas

Episode #48 of The Swampflix Podcast: 2017’s Honorable Mentions & A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

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Welcome to Episode #48 of The Swampflix Podcast. For our forty-eighth episode, we’re doing a little tidying up. Brandon, Britnee, and James continue their discussion of the Top Films of 2017 with some Honorable Mentions. Also, James makes Brandon watch John Cassavetes classic A Woman Under the Influence (1974) for the first time. Enjoy!

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

-James Cohn, Brandon Ledet, and Britnee Lombas

The Open House (2018)

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Warning: Spoilers ahead!

A Netflix Original thriller set in a big, spooky house deep in the mountains seemed like the perfect first 2018 film for me to watch. I made a cup of hot chocolate with whole milk just for the occasion. For the majority of The Open House, I was on the edge of my seat. My anxiety levels were at an all-time high as I waited for the killer to be revealed so I could get some closure. Unfortunately, that never happened. Not only was the killer’s face never shown, but the two individuals being hunted by the killer both die in the end. I’ve never been more disappointed in the ending of a film in my entire life. Concluding a film with unanswered questions is quite common and even enjoyable if done properly, but The Open House doesn’t leave many clues for viewers to come up with their own version of who the killer was or why was he/she so set on killing our main characters. It’s a damn shame because everything leading up to the ending was actually entertaining.

The Open House gets its cheesy title from its setting: a mansion in the mountains that is on the market. After the sudden death of her husband, Naomi (Piercey Dalton) and her son Logan (Dylan Minnette) are forced to move into her sister’s mountain mansion until it sells due to financial reasons. From the moment they settle in, strange things start to occur. The pilot light turns off while Naomi takes showers, Logan’s phone goes missing, the basement door randomly opens, etc. Their creepy neighbor, Martha, makes an appearance a handful of times, and each one is more peculiar than the next. There’s even a scene where Dylan is in the pitch black basement and Martha’s face appears behind him. For a good while, it seems as though Martha is responsible for the mysterious happenings, but then Chris (Sharif Atkins), the friendly salesman Naomi meets in town, randomly shows up at the house. He claims that he noticed the open house sign in the front of the road, and he is interested in taking a look inside. Naomi lets him in, and while she isn’t looking, he disappears into the basement with a unsettling look on his face. At this point, he becomes a suspicious character as well.

The film’s pace picks up quickly when Naomi is out on the town and receives a call from her sister informing her that someone broke into the house. Once the police arrive, they aren’t much help and basically blame the break in on local kids pranking around. Chris is then invited to spend the night to provide some comfort to Naomi and Logan since there scared shitless. Because Chris had this artificial kindness to him, I really thought that he was going to reveal himself as the person responsible for all the strange activity, but Logan ends up finding him with a slit throat in their family SUV. Was Chris’s character purposely supposed to seem suspicious or was Sharif Atkins a crappy actor? We may never know.  Logan then gets his head bashed into the window and is doused with water while passed out in freezing temperatures by what appears to be a man. With Chris scratched off my suspect list and the killer not matching Martha’s physique, I assume that this person may be Martha’s son or husband.

The unknown killer then gets into bed with Naomi with his hands in prayer position across his chest. This was probably the most bone chilling part in the film for me. Naomi gets up to use the bathroom and gets back into bed with him! I’m assuming this is a California king size bed for her to not even flinch before getting in. As soon as she realizes the creep in the bed, he captures her, ties her up, and breaks her fingers one by one. Frozen Logan makes it back into the house, and accidentally stabs his mother, which then led me to believe that he was going to get Final Boy status because one of them would need to survive in the end, right? Nope. Just when I thought Logan escaped, he meets his death by the still unknown killer, and the movie comes to an abrupt end.

The ending just felt so lazy. There were so many cool elements in this film that could’ve been used to create a jaw-dropping conclusion, but all the buildup in the film’s last 20 minutes led to nothing but disappointment. I feel like I’ve been ripped off, even though the film is available on Netflix. Watch The Open House only if you enjoy frustration and disappointment.

-Britnee Lombas