Pearl (2022)

Direction: Ti West
Country: USA

Ti West’s Pearl, a prequel to X (2022), is a psychopathy-driven horror film that almost never manages to surprise, being neither better nor worse than any other. Yet, it’s definitely a showcase for Mia Goth, who plays the unpredictable title character with absolute confidence. Constantly followed by the camera, she delivers a mix of emotional fragility and murderous fury in her portrait of a young woman with real dreams and a repellent soul. And she saves the film. 

But is this really worthy of your time? Well, even if what you’ll get from this tale is the cruelty of the protagonist and learn nothing, the film is bathed in darkness and its gory scenes are a bonus for fans of the genre. Maybe a hint of black humor would have given the whole thing a more cathartic dimension. 

This way, Pearl felt more confessional than disturbing, occasionally managing to give us the chills, like in a scene where Pearl chases her next prey with an axe in her hand. It’s a shame that the script doesn’t unpack more of these moments for the actress who co-wrote the script with West. The latter, never putting enough stylistic spin of his own in the mix, wastes more time with Pearl’s alligator than generating chilly vibes. The result never fully rises above the pack, but it’s still passable.

The Justice of Bunny King (2022)

Direction: Gaysorn Thavat 
Country: New Zealand

Australian actress Essie Davis (The Babadook, 2014) stars in The Justice of Bunny King as the title character, a true fighter and single mother of two who is bound to battle the social services to be near her children - Shannon, four; and Reuben, 14 - who are in foster care because she's homeless. 

She stays temporarily with her sister Grace (Toni Potter) and her boyfriend, Bevan (Errol Shand), counting every penny collected from washing windscreens in Auckland. With the Child Protection Services restricting all her moves toward the children, she can only dream of getting an apartment and reuniting with her family. But a terrible finding involving her niece Tonyah (Thomasin McKenzie) pushes that wish farther away.

This New Zealander drama is occasionally moving but never surprising. Benefitting from its authentic execution, even if engaging sporadically in some unnecessary clichéd proceedings (why does every drama include a feel-good scene with music inside a car?), this is a vividly etched depiction of how a loving mother and her children can grow apart. 

In her feature debut, Gaysorn Thavat knits the drama with serious and sobering observation, whereas the script by Sophie Henderson had some margin to improve. Still, the final sequence - formulated with good and bad choices - may leave you with a lump in your throat, even though you clearly see the ending coming. Davis delivers on the story's promise with a convincing portrayal. There’s no doubt she deeply cares about the character she plays, compelling us to feel the same.

Barbarian (2022)

Direction: Zach Cregger
Country: USA 

This sort of trapped-in-a-house horror exercise starts off well, but derails during the second half. Barbarian creates an oppressive atmosphere and fair suspense, and would have been successful if it wasn’t for the script, which, even with social-commentary ambitions, is so weak that it can't shake that stench of imitation that clings to the whole thing.

The story follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), who, in anticipation of a job interview, drives to a dangerous Detroit neighborhood to spend the night in an airbnb she had booked the month before. To her surprise, the house has already an occupant, an apparently harmless young man called Keith (Bill Skarsgård). Even reluctantly, she accepts his suggestion to stay until the next morning - he on the couch, she in the bedroom. Soon, she realizes that Keith is not the real threat in the house but something that lives beyond a secret door in the basement. 

Actor turned director Zach Cregger created a disembodied film, but not quite hollow, since it still displays a couple of visually attractive scenes. It just simply doesn’t achieve its ultimate ambition: to scare the viewer. Moreover, the inconsistencies in the story are blatant - too many coincidences, few explanations, and… why is nobody looking for these missing persons?

Between the comic and the monstrous, the final scenes are the best. But, again, everyone seems too cool in the face of evil, a relatively frustrating glimpse of what the whole film could have been.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (2022)

Direction: Dominik Graf
Country: Germany

Veteran German director Dominik Graf offers a wryly enlightened view of Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling), an advertising copywriter with compelling poetic skills who lives nonchalantly in the troubled final days of the Weimar Republic. The film is an adaptation of Erich Kästner's novel of the same name.

The year is 1931, and Berlin’s night life bursts with sweating brothels, lively cabarets, underground pubs, and intoxicated artistic gatherings. This is where Fabian and his best buddy, Stephan Labude (Albrecht Schuch), are found on a daily basis. The former is in love with Cornelia (Saskia Rosendahl), but falls victim to the financial crisis that darkens the city, whereas the latter takes a firm political stand against the quick advances of the right-wing party while trying to recover from a lost love. Meanwhile, the ambitious Cornelia propels her acting career with dire consequences for the relationship. 

Graf dominates the lens with peerless openness and gets creative in the presentation. He employs both picture-in-picture and fast-forwarded techniques, shooting off dazzling visual fireworks, and going totally burlesque in tone, often with a touch of madness. The influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his mundane depictions is very much on display here, but there are also glimpses of G.W. Pabst and Fritz Lang, almost in a sort of celebration of the classic German cinema.

The stirring beauty of Graf’s drama comes from the genuine feelings transmitted by the leads, who, together with the editor Claudia Wolscht, contribute to the furiously cinematic outcome. In turn, the big tragedy is called love, and not for a moment does Graf feed our fantasy that this romance will have a happy conclusion. In the end, one gets the notion that life, in all its turmoil, is not always fun.

Emily the Criminal (2022)

Direction: John Patton Ford
Country: USA 

Drowned in debt and with a criminal record on assault, Emily (Aubrey Plaza) has a hard time finding a job that pays her well in Los Angeles. She can only experience some financial relief when joining a group of credit card scammers co-led by Youcef (Theo Rossi), a foreigner with whom she gets emotionally involved. This man pursues his own dreams and goals, but it’s Emily who faces most of the danger when the bar is raised and the jobs get bigger.

This is the story proposed by director John Patton Ford in his very first feature, which counterweights familiar crime thriller and grounded indie drama. The script he wrote might be thin, but there’s an energy captured by the camera that makes the suspense palpable and gives credibility to the emotions. It wouldn’t be the same without Plaza (Ingrid Goes West, 2017; Black Bear, 2020), who knows how to convey pungency in the face of trouble. Playing a brave woman who’s definitely not the passive kind, she surfs the prickly tension of every scene with fierce determination. 

The film uses no fireworks, opting for clear views instead of shading assumptions. Yet, the finale is most likely to surprise you. If you like your crime thrillers slightly smoked with fraught anxiety, then you should be able to commune with this film at a satisfactory level.

A Chiara (2022)

Direction: Jonas Carpignano
Country: Italy 

With a focused handheld camera, in an observant style close to documentary, Jonas Carpignano confirms the growing scope of his cinema in A Chiara. This drama film, being realistic and objective as well as rugged and heartbreaking, is the last part of his Calabrian trilogy around the port town of Gioia Tauro, following Mediterranea (2015) and A Ciambra (2017). For this purpose, he filmed a real family, the Rotolos.

The last chapter depicts the tribulations of Chiara (Swamy Rotolo), a tenacious 15-year-old student who decides to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father (Claudio Rotolo) after an important family celebration. Ploughing a lonely furrow, from doubt to doubt, from clue to clue, Chiara sadly realizes that her father works for the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia-type organization that employs so many families in the region. More than anything, this astute teenager needs to understand what’s going on. She’s fiercely determined to know the truth, facing obstacles and maturely judging the options that may lead her to a better future. 

A Chiara is more family-oriented in its vision than a stereotyped mafia thriller. Despite the protracted party scenes at the beginning, Carpignano signs an honest film in which the atmosphere is heavy and the realism magnified by the fact that the mafia members, played by non-professional actors, are of the ordinary type. The young protagonist, who was first noticed in the casting of A Ciambra, fulfilled with distinction the role that the director had in mind for her. 

You will feel some suffocation among the tension and friction, and the result can be slightly disturbing in its forthrightness.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2022)

Direction: Dean Fleischer-Camp
Country: USA

The central character in this witty animated fiction in the guise of a documentary is the gorgeous Marcel (voice by Jenny Slate), a little-bigger-than-a-pee shell who lives with his aging grandmother Nana Connie (voice by Isabella Rossellini) in a house listed on Airbnb. The director Dean Fleischer-Camp moves into the house and finds this conversational little creature who likes to sing, sleeps on a slice of bread, loves to work out on top of a spinning vinyl, takes care of a dog named Alan, and really misses his family and friends, who suddenly vanished after the couple who lived there moved out.

Being a documentarian, Dean starts to film Marcel’s routines and the little shell becomes so popular on the internet that television journalist Lesley Stahl from CBS’s program 60 minutes wants to interview him. Whereas Nana Connie is immensely happy with the idea, Marcel has his doubts about taking such risks. But that’s the only option he has in order to find his family. 

The successful project took approximately 7 years to be concluded, with Fleischer-Camp working closely with Slate, his ex-wife, to accomplish his first feature. They found the perfect tone to pull the strings of this skillfully produced fairy tale where the prowess of technology intersects with the simplicity of the story. Overflowing with naturalistic dialogues, this touching and comical film also presents cheerfully colored images and an unremitting low pressure in the narrative that contributes to the tenderness of the outcome.
Marcel’s ability to express deep feelings is sure to melt the hearts of young and old folks alike.

Waiting For Bojangles (2022)

Direction: Régis Roinsard
Country: France 

This adaptation of Olivier Bourdeaut's bestselling novel flirts between nutsy comedy and tragic drama, holding up thanks to the energy of the actors involved. Although realistic in nature, the story exudes an air of dreamy fable stamped with a ‘French’ sign that implies quality production values, visual aesthetics and decor. Watching it feels like we’re reading a children’s book, but it’s just a love story with traces of Jean Pierre Jeunet and Michel Gondry in an arguable celebration of life through death. 

The scenario actively develops from the love at first sight between Camille (Virginie Efira), a beautiful bipolar blonde, and the hussar of her childhood dreams, Georges (Romain Duris). Beyond their obvious chemistry, there’s this assurance of one supporting the other in no matter what circumstance. That notion is reinforced when they have a son, Gary (Solan Machado Graner), named after the American actor Gary Cooper, his dad's favorite. The kid often compensates for his parents’ lunacy by thinking and acting like an adult. 

This fiction paints an eccentric and sensitive portrait of the family, and goes deeper than what it seems. But there’s a strong sense of deja-vu along the way, especially regarding the tone. Waiting for Bojangles, whose title references Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Mr. Bojangles” (here with an excellent interpretation by Marlon Williams who gives it a Nick Drake touch), never loses its lightness, even in the saddest moments. Duris, who also joined the director Régis Roinsard in Populaire (2012), and Efira, hold to their characters with absolute commitment.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Direction: Park Chan-wook
Country: South Korea 

In Park Chan-wook's latest film, a seasoned detective (Park Hae-il) falls for an enigmatic widow (Tang Wei) while investigating the death of her husband. She becomes his primary suspect, but he’s suddenly torn between his drive to solve the case and the strong physical attraction that devours him whenever she’s around. 

Assuming the classic type, Decision to Leave is the perfect antidote to the recent glut of stylish yet brainless thrillers. Being more character-driven than investigative, the script co-written with regular collaborator Jeong Seo-kyeong, forces Chan-wook to step away from the creepiest thrillers that made him famous (Old Boy; The Vengeance Trilogy). Taking the form of a romantic cat-and-mouse neo-noir, the film never burns, but sizzles and smolders, opting to enhance passion and sorrow to the detriment of thrills and violence. To be more specific, think of a Hitchcockian detective story (the director took inspiration from Vertigo) bathed with the filmmaking elegance of Wong Kar-wai. Although more formal and less furious, like in the sensual The Handmaiden (2016), Chan-wook refuses to adhere to conventionality.

In an early stage, the proceedings are quite subtle and the pace a bit torpid, but knowing the director’s filmography, one should expect some surprises and bittersweet tones along the way. His originality here is the clarity in the filmmaking, even dealing with multiple layers and complex temporal shifts in the story. He meets his goal with an incredible eye for detail and the help of awesome leading actors.

Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022)

Direction: Adamma Ebo
Country: USA 

This religious satire in the style of a mockumentary deals with disquieting topics such as hypocrisy, delirious ostentation, sexual scandals, and humiliation within a Southern Baptist church. But the script leaves you wanting something more. 

American-Nigerian writer-director Adamma Ebo carries her debut directorial feature with big ideas in mind but gets lost in a whirlwind of tonal inconsistencies. Her farcical depiction is obviously seen as a reprehension, but the narrative process - employing slapsticky dramatic sequences in reference to embarrassing situations, as well as on-screen descriptions - becomes a bit exhausted in its last third, when the film heavily decays. Also, no big laughs were found here, just some corrosive smiles that could have been taken further if the director had stuck with that particular tone.

Overall, the film should please iconoclastic crowds of disbelievers and get people thinking, talking and arguing. Actors Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall, who embody a proud yet sinful pastor and the recurrently humiliated first lady, respectively, are the real deal and even rap along to Crime Mob’s “Knuck If You Buck”. They conspire to reopen their megachurch and regain the heart of thousands of worshipers lost to a younger couple of preachers. 

Honk for Jesus has painful truths in it, but even eschewing the sort of cynical, tasteless jokes that a project of this nature would naturally attract, it would need some ingenious twists besides the obvious to succeed. What it lacks in vision, it narrowly makes up for with entertainment.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Direction: Halina Reijn
Country: USA 

Directing from a screenplay by Sarah DeLappe, Dutch actress turned director Halina Reijn (Instinct, 2019) fabricates a repetitive, dodgy and sloppy horror farce bogged by unoriginal ideas. At an early stage, and despite the familiarity of the scenes, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. But as the story proceeds, I found myself scratching my head with boredom and impatience, with the film constantly struggling to impose an acceptable rhythm as well as failing to scare and surprise. 

The story recycles the models of other films, describing the sinister outcome of a drugs-and-alcohol-infused party held in a secluded house. In the sequence of a wink murder-style game played the young adult friends, real deaths start to occur. With a tropical storm enhancing the bad vibes, the film turns into a whodunit psychological fraud with a rancid conclusion. 

We are always a little off and the emotion suggested is totally fake as all the actors lack charisma. The banality of the dialogues and the unnatural hysteria is what really scared me, while its malfunctioning mechanics failed to cause anything other than a severe headache. Reduced to its miserable insignificance, Bodies Bodies Bodies is instantly forgotten.

The Other Tom (2022)

Direction: Rodrigo Plá, Laura Santullo
Country: Mexico

Husband and wife Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo have been working together since 2007 with successful results - he as a director; she as a screenwriter and occasionally producer - making the Uruguayan cinema more appealing. Titles such as The Zone (2007), The Delay (2012) and A Monster With a Thousand Heads (2015) put on display what they are capable of. Their latest drama, The Other Tom, marks the first time they share directorial duties.

The story brings into view the difficulties of Elena (Julia Chavez), a hardworking single mother who depends on the social services to eke out a living. Her life wouldn’t be so tumultuous if her nine-year-old son, Tom (Israel Rodriguez), didn’t have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome). The kid, besides being sidelined at school, is treated with inadequate medication with dangerous side effects. What he wishes the most is to see his father (Rigo Zamarron) again, who keeps promising him a visit for three years. 

The Other Tom disappoints when it comes to pacing and sins for its length, but we must recognize in Plá and Santullo a fierce desire to battle the system and its injustices. Faithful to a naturalistic approach, the pair combines the inclusion of the sordid cruelty of reality and a certain candidness found in the mother-son relationship without taking much advantage of that. Their register is cadenced and lukewarm, and there’s almost no climax. 

Halfway through, the film spirals into a decrescendo of plot arcs that make it repetitive. Incapable of claiming an original identity, this is, nonetheless, a finely crafted picture where family values and the courage to revert an erroneous decision are present.

Vengeance (2022)

Direction: B.J. Novak
Country: USA 

B.J. Novak wrote, directed and starred in Vengeance, his first directorial feature. He is Ben, a New York writer and podcaster who has one of those real Texan experiences when practically forced to travel south in order to attend the funeral of a young woman with whom he had a one-night stand. With the help of her pro-gun family, he decides to dig more into the possible causes of her death, primarily identified as a drug overdose. This way, he turns the film into a crime investigation with a journalistic perspective and an Altman-esque American contemporaneity that gradually shapes as a self-discovery journey. 

The film seduces through provocative observations, in one of those rare cases where the characters and their lines are more absorbing than the images. Not that the visuals are bad, but the incisive social commentary about America (gun control, conspiracy theories, work ethics, law enforcement inefficacy, criminal negligence, and more) is what makes Vengeance a satisfying standout. It could have been another banal mystery film, but the cleverly written lines make it more than that. Only the acid conclusion wasn’t enough. Anyway, it was delicious fun watching Novak and Ashton Kutcher scratching under the varnish of American society with a sly tone, during their nearly philosophical discussions. 

With something pertinent to say, Vengeance normally breathes pocket-sized suspense into a story that also benefits from a good sense of pacing and unusual characters. Attentive viewers will definitely extract something from this neo-noir experience.

Bullet Train (2022)

Direction: David Leitch
Country: USA 

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Japanese writer Kôtarô Isaka, Bullet Train marks the eighth collaboration between director David Leitch and actor Brad Pitt, who first worked together in Fight Club (1999). The story follows five assassins on mission on a high-speed train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Their goals, despite varied, are interrelated.

Imbued with cartoonish spirit, this indigestible fast-food-type of action-comedy tries to strike the eye with acrobatic moves but quickly sinks deep into labyrinthine involvements and the mistaken idea that ‘the more the stupidity, the more you laugh’. Leitch nods to Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, without equaling them, in an inconsistently unfunny exercise that shows emptiness of mind. The stunts, inspired by the slapstick comedy of Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, are mostly dull, and the unattractive scenario is filled with thin characters, including a risible appearance by Sandra Bullock in the final minutes. 

Ineffectively blending different cultures to make a concoction of Japanese yakuza and manga styles, Mexican fury à-la Robert Rodriguez, an American stroke of nonsensical serendipity, and British Trainspotting-like tantrum, the film fails to drum up any kind of interest. I ended up asking myself what was more vexing in this film: the allusions to popular culture, the crass hypocrisy of an overworked plot, or the phony action sequences.

What Josiah Saw (2022)

Direction: Vincent Grashaw
Country: USA

Supported by actors always close to their characters, What Josiah Saw casts some obscurity in the first instance, gradually clearing the blurriness as we move into the revelatory and extremely disturbing third chapter. Director Vincent Grashaw conducts this Southern gothic procession with strong dramatic power and ominous tones, giving the best sequence to a tragic story written by Robert Alan Dilts. It’s a nightmarish journey of no return to hell, where the human center still holds for quite some time. Yet, the hope once insinuated soon goes up in flames.

The film reveals the paths of three shattered siblings - Thomas (Scott Haze), Eli (Nick Stahl) and Mary (Kelli Garner) - immediately before they reunite in the remote farmhouse where they grew up. Robert Patrick (the T-1000 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day), who plays their alcoholic father, Josiah, is remarkably good, and the eerie score by Robert Pycior empowers the desired slow-burning tension throughout. Here, family values are plowed under by greedy oil corporations but also by dark secrets, madness, and enduring suffering.

Tackling a few topics in need of renewal, Grashaw deserves to be saluted for handling a challenging structure with a firm hand while progressively escalating the tension. There’s absolutely nothing charming or pleasant in this bleak slow-burner, and what remains is both shocking and creepy-crawly enough to make us remember it.

Adieu Godard (2022)

Direction: Amartya Bhattacharyya
Country: India

Have you ever heard about Jean-Luc Godard movies being banned from a little village in India? Probably not, but this comedy written, directed and edited by Amartya Bhattacharyya fictionalizes that possibility with nearly cartoonish characters, cultural satire, and life-lesson intentions.

The plot follows Ananda (Choudhury Bikash Das), an old inhabitant from a small Indian village who has a reputation as a pervert. In truth, he is addicted to pornography, but that embarrassment changes on the day he gets to watch Godard’s masterpiece Breathless, which was given to him by mistake. From that moment on, he becomes so obsessed with the iconic French filmmaker that he proposes to organize a foreign film festival in an attempt to change the cultural torpor of the village. His friends are divided, whereas his studious daughter, Shilpa (Sudharsri Madhusmita), gets happy with the idea.

Armed with pragmatism in the execution (with the exception of the miscalculated fragments presented in color) and a compelling black-and-white cinematography, Adieu Godard lures at specific points but never hooks. The humor only works when the focus is on the confront between the festival organizers and the outraged villagers. 

By planning to cover too many topics, the director makes his mockery inevitably episodic, scattered, and sometimes too histrionic to fully captivate. It’s like if he had got lost in the smoke of his inspiration’s auteurism, incapable of propelling the story beyond the minimum basics.

Prey (2022)

Direction: Dan Trachtenberg
Country: USA 

10 Cloverfield Lane’s director, Dan Trachtenberg, proposes a prequel to the first four installments of The Predator franchise. Although he doesn’t properly innovate in Prey, he also doesn’t complicate, embracing narrative straightforwardness and modernizing through spectacular imagery and effects. 

The conventional yet functional screenplay by Patrick Aison takes us to the 18th-century Great Plains, describing the feminist conquest by Naru (Amber Midthunder), a relentless and brave young Comanche warrior who wants to prove to her family and tribe that, like her acknowledged brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), she’s ready for big hunts. She tracks down no lion but a horrific alien predator (Dane DiLiegro) armed with technically advanced weaponry. 

This sci-fi horror action flick is exactly what you think it’s going to be, nothing more, and certainly nothing less. It doesn’t aim high, but from a rhythmic point of view the film never stops; it’s brisk in the moves and the director, showing off a luster for filming handsome, explores the possibilities of his story with technical accuracy. 

Flawed as it is, with a minimal narrative and a charismatic heroine, Prey is a suitable entertainment for a Sunday afternoon, doing simpler but better than those previous spinoffs and turgid sequels such as Predator 2 (1990), Predators (2010), and The Predator (2018).

Earwig (2022)

Direction: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Country: UK / France / Belgium

This haunting, imminently methodic exercise directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic is replete with pathos and stoic silences. A thread of disquietness infiltrates every pore of our skin while watching a taciturn, solitary middle-aged caretaker (Paul Hilton in an outstanding performance) employed to house-sitting a 10-year-old girl (Romane Hemelaers) in need of special dental care. 

The French director of Bosnian descent rubbed elbows with Geoff Cox (High Life, 2018) in the script, adapting Brian Catling’s beautifully written novel with dreamlike realism. Following the 2015 horror thriller film Evolution, this was the second time they worked together. 

From the very first minutes, we are captive to the bizarre enchantment of a psychological drama, whose style goes hand in hand with some deliberate narrative cloudiness. Occasionally erratic, it's still rewarding, with the abstruse tones and noir tinges evoking the worlds of Kafka, Murnau, Von Trier, and Borges. 

The early moments, slow but never discouraging, force one to search for more than what the eyes are seeing. It takes 24 minutes for the first line to be said, and then the ambiguity gradually dissipates until a final scene that, being so sad and ferocious, made me realize this wasn’t a passive viewing experience. 

Portending great things for the director, Earwig is somber and quiet, a canvas exquisitely painted with the talents of cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (The Death of Louis XIV, 2016; Still Life, 2016), and with something undeniably effective about its creepiest moments.

Nope (2022)

Direction: Jordan Peele
Country: USA

Nope is Jordan Peele’s worst show; a completely missed shot by the director of Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). Limited in scope and visually unattractive, the film is presented with a messy structure and anticlimactic developments. On top of that, the contrasting performances by the leads, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer (he is hyper passive; she is annoyingly electric), are both debilitated and forgettable. 

They pair of actors play siblings - OJ and Emerald - whose remote horse ranch at Agua Dulce, California, becomes a UFO hotspot with intriguing daily activity. To discover more about it, the siblings enlist tech expert Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and renowned cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) as allies in their attempt to capture the occurrences. Yet, the threatening flying saucer, nicknamed Jean Jacket, abducts showman and former child actor Jupe (Steven Yeun) as well as his audience and animals.

The film, besides being emotionally handicapped by its ridiculous ambition to get near Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, feels interminable. Its tempting science-fiction concepts are overwhelmed by an apathetic atmosphere, plot inconsistencies, and sequences of pretentious gibberish and empty silences. Thus, the meek mysteries are meager for real enthusiasts of sci-fi, while the script is too cautious for the ones who look for a consistent, good story.

Peele expects us to react to disturbing energetic fields and intermittent power outages that never cause uneasiness. More audacity was expected from him. Do I recommend it? The answer is in the title.

Resurrection (2022)

Direction: Andrew Semans
Country: USA 

The tension accumulated in Resurrection, Andrew Semans’ sophomore feature, doesn’t take you anywhere but a dead end where you are left with lots of unanswered questions. This psychological thriller tries to disturb with the wrong elements, and the film’s examination of traumatic maternity, physical and psychological abuse, and madness falls short.

Rebecca Hall doesn’t have a single bad scene in it, and yet the deliriously tedious story meanders towards an exaggerated conclusion that is almost drastically fun in a portentous sort of way. She is Margaret, a successful forty-something businesswoman and suffocating single mother who’s been living a peaceful, stable life for 22 years in Albany, New York. Before that, in her late teens, she was heavily brainwashed, intimidated and harmed by a much older boyfriend, David Moore (Tim Roth). When she first spots him in town, an uncontrollable fear, followed by a severe panic attack, takes hold of her. He came to demand a few more “kindnesses” from her, which are nothing but insane requests supposed to ease her pain from a guilty past. 

A better script might have helped, but without it, this one shapes up as another manipulative nonsense that rarely dares to be smart. The characters don’t convince and the film ultimately frustrates by not knowing its own limitations. In the face of these predicaments, I’m actually upset about how little the movie even tried to escape inveterate clumsiness.