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Because I had today off from the work, I decided to go see a movie last night and went to Werewolves. What followed is something that I had not done in many many years, I walked out of a movie before it was over. So, be aware that this review is based pretty much on the first act alone of the movie I truly did not enjoy.

braircliff entertainment

Why did I walk out? I could have gotten past the flat ill-defined characters. I could have gotten past the exposition heavy set-up and even the truly idiotic action of supposedly intelligent people. Even a character has wildly unlikely as our protagonist who was, 1) an infantry combat veteran of American’s wars in the middle east, 2) a dedicated first responder, AND 3) a world-class research level medical doctor. Such a collection of skill is well suited to pulp adventure but badly placed in a horror movie, but I could have let it slide.

No, it was the actual film making and cinematography that drove me out of the theater. Director Steven C. Miller is so enamored with lens flares as to make J.J. Abrams appeared restrained and suited for period drawing room dramas. I was literally muttering under my breath ‘enough with the lens flares’ before any story had started. Miller is also overly fond of extreme close-ups. I am talking about framing actors faces so their chin touches the bottom of the frame and forehead exceeds the top. This is used in a Heads-Up-Display much like Iron Man in the MCU but far far too often. During chaotic action sequences where the characters are suffering the consequences of their poorly thought out set up the audiences are shoved so close to the actors faces with so few cut away shots it is nearly impossible to know exactly what is going on.

All of that pales before Miller’s devotion to strobe effects.

When things turn to shit in the research center because none of the brilliant characters were able to remember that people can reach between bars of a cage the chaotic fight and flight scenes in addition to being filmed with far too many full-face close-ups is lit with so many intense strobes that I literally had to hold my hand between my face and the screen. Of course, with my hand positioned like that I could no longer follow the action and I still acquired a nice migraine. I tried for a little bit longer to watch but between the stupidity onscreen and the pain escalating behind my eyes I determine coming home was a far more intelligent option.

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Heretic: a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma. (Merriam-Webster)

Released by A24 Heretic is a horror film that falls more broadly in the genre of psychological horror than traditional horror thought elements at the films conclusion can be interpreted to move the movie into a supernatural realm.

A24 studios

As depicted in the films trailer, two Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) have come to the home of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) because he has expressed an interest in learning more about the Mormon church. Deceiving the pair into believing his wife is at home he traps them in the house and begins a cruel psychological cat-and-mouse game with the young women.

First off let me state just how much I am loving Hugh Grant in is villain era of acting. From a corrupt English politician in A Very English Scandal, thru his campy and quite enjoyable rogue in Dungeons & Dragon: Honor Among Thieves to this controlled and chilling performance I have enjoyed Grant so much more than in his good looking rom-com days.

Written and Directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, Heretic is a thoughtful film that doesn’t treat any of its characters as cheap and as strawmen. It poses interesting and challenging questions about the nature of faith, belief, and organized religion without presenting any particular answer as ‘truth’ but only as truth seen through flawed human perception.

The three central performers are all operating at what looks like the top of their games, giving detail and subtle performances that illuminate character without broad exposition. Reed’s worldview is internally consistent but like any not without fault or logical fallacy. The Sisters are presented neither as caricatures of their faith nor as unblemished adherents.

Cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon makes use of unsettling and unconventional close-ups that allow the audience of share in Paxton and Barnes growing terror as their situation becomes frightening clear.

Heretic at time reminded me of Barbarian but without that movies disbelief shattering descent into superhuman silliness. Save for a single event near the films climax Heretic keeps itself firmly grounded in conventional reality and even the event in question is open to various interpretations.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and I am thrilled that I managed to make time to see it in the theater before it run closed.

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Ever since 1978’s Dawn of the Dead the sequel film a decade after the original Night of the Living Dead the vision of the world overrun with shambling corpses has been the standard for projects using the monsters created by Romero.

But the math just doesn’t work.

For 2022 the mortality rate in the United States was about 982 persons dying each year per 100,000 of population. Even that number is a bit high has it includes excess mortality due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Averaging that out over a standard year, 365.25 days, that a daily mortality rate of 2.69 deaths per day per 100K people.

San Diego county where I live has a population of 3.3 million people which yields a daily death rate of 89 deaths per day.

Modern graves are not simply holes dug into the earth but concrete lined underground structures from which the walking dead could not escape so we only need concern ourselves with the unburied dead.

Most Americans are buried with 7 days of death. Multiply the daily death rate by 7 and we end up with 623 unburied dead to be reactivated into zombies on Zed Day.

623 versus a population of 3.3 million. The entire zombie army is about the size of a largish movie theater audience. Hardly the inescapable horde that can besiege countless building and paralyze all law enforcement and military units.

Before you can have the zombie apocalypse you need a massive die off of the human population that creates fields of corpses to be reactivated,

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Co-written and produced by horror icon Dario Argento The Church was originally slated to be part of his Demons franchise, but the director wanted it to be more of a standalone project and elements tying to the earlier films were excised from the script.

ADC

A new librarian comes of a German cathedral built on the site of a massacre of witches with the mass grave beneath to the building and along with an artist restoring artwork with the church stumble upon its ancient secrets releasing the evil it has suppressed.

Despite the re-write at the insistence of director Michele Soavi The Church bears many of the hallmarks of an Argento story. Events follow one another in a sequence but there is actually little cause and effect to the unfolding story creating the sense that things ‘just happen.’ It takes the movie quite a while to get going with much of the front half a dreary slog that neither establishes mood no explores or illuminates character. The second half is a succession of lesser characters facing and dying in strange and inexplicable manners as the evil forces from beneath the church grow.

The Church, for a religiously themed horror, lacks any real sense of morality or even message. The massacre in the opening makes the knights seem quite sadistic and evil but the power from the witches is equally brutal without cause or reason. In this manner the movie much like Argento’s work in general, set-up for elaborate ‘kills’ but lacking in a cohesive plot or narrative.

I have yet to find an Argento guided project that really works for me and The Church is simply another piece that mostly bored me.

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In 1968 when George A. Romero released the extinction level event movie Night of the Living Dead and altered the cinematic landscape forever an editing mistake when the titles were changed dropped the film into the public domain robbing him of his justified rewards for such an original creation.

21st Century Film Corporation

In the late 80s, working with his original producer John Russo and his talented make-up special effects artist Tom Savini he produced a remake of the film in hopes of pulling the original back into copyright. Romero failed to achieve his legal goal but did release in 1990 the newly envisioned Night of the Living Dead.

The bones of the original are the bones of the remake. A disparate collection of characters take refuge in an isolated farmhouse as a mass of undead reanimated corpses lay siege seeking to devour their living flesh.

Led by Patricia Tallman as Barbara and Tony Todd as Ben the plot and for all intents and purposes the characters are the same as the ’68 version. Mr. Cooper remains the principal human antagonist with his wife Helen more of a placeholder than a character and their injured daughter Sarah the ticking undead bomb within the building. Tommy and Judy, the young couple caught in the disaster have a little more to do this time around, though Judy’s (Katie Finneran) high pitched screams grew tiresome quite quickly and she was unconvincing as someone who supposedly knew their way around a truck and its operation.

Patricia Tallman’s Barbara unlike the progenitor character is not a woman incapacitated with grief and trauma but rather, once she recovers from the shock and horror of the events, the voice of reason and rationality as the men bicker, fighter, and lose their sense of proportion and objective with their overly emotional manner.

The most irritating aspect of this film was not the lackluster cast, excepting Tallman and Todd, but rather the unmotivated and pointless repeated fade to black between shots.

Film has a grammar. Dissolving between shots shows an intense connection between the subject of the two shots. Hence when Vader and Luke are communicating telepathically in The Empire Strikes Back fast dissolves indicate that for these two it is as if the space in between doesn’t exist. Fading to black at the end of a shot is most often used to denote a passage of time. It can be minutes, hours, days, years, centuries are any appreciable jump in time for the story. In the 1990Night of the Living Dead someone, either director Tom Savini or editor Tom Dubensky decided fade to black between shots when no change in time had passed. Barbara stays downstairs, Ben goes up to search. Fade to black. Fade up on Ben reaching the top of the stairs. That should have been a straight cut to not a fade. The first time it happened I thought that they were forced into by having missing coverage that would have made the edit jumpy and abrupt, but it was a stylistic choice that persisted throughout the film and proved to be a great irritation.

The 1990 version modifies the ending significantly and proposes a different theme than the original. Overall, the film is effective if flawed but frankly the original is the version to watch.

Toho Studios

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Toho studios celebrated 30 years of the King of the Monsters, Godzilla, in 1984 with The Return of Godzilla. A re-edited version with clumsy inserted scene featuring Raymond Burr, much like how the original was treated, was released in the US the next year as Godzilla 1985.

Eschewing all of the continuity since 1954 Godzilla Returns places itself as the direct sequel to the original film with the kaiju once again raising from the seas and raining disaster upon Japan.

As is typical of this eras approach to the franchise the human story, one of dedicated military men, scientist, lost and found relatives, all are secondary to the spectacle of the massive monster trashing urban Japan. One does not watch these movies for deep exploration of the human condition and soul. (That you will find excellently done in Godzilla minus one.)

I watched Godzilla 1985 on its theatrical run, enjoyed it, but there little doubt that the inserted American scenes detract from the film and it is best to watch the original version with its original dialog track.

The Return of Godzilla is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.