The Killer In Me

It's official! I have totally hit the wall. I have seen too many movies over the past three weeks and information is just sliding off my head now. So I am just going to give myself permission to be lazy for the rest of this afternoon and not sit here feeling bad that I'm not writing anything. There will be more NYFF and NewFest and Brooklyn Horror Fest coverage coming next week -- perhaps even something over the weekend, but that's happened about 1% of the times I've said it would so we all know better than believing me. That said even if I'm temporarily not writing I will still be seeing a pile more movies this weekend, up to and including the most exciting one of all -- I am seeing David Fincher's The Killer with Michael Fassbender's triumphant return tomorrow! It's my last NYFF screening and you will obviously -- obviously! -- be hearing my thoughts on that one. Until then, then! Have a good weekend, everybody. 

Matthieu Charneau, Come On Down

You might think that I talk about Carlos Conceição's short film Name Above Title so often because it allows me to post more photos of gay male model turned actor Matthieu Charneau... and you wouldn't be totally 100% wrong. This is a clear and definite perk of bringing up Name Above Title. But as I said in my brief review of the hyper stylish serial-killer flick back in 2021 this heralds "a big gay one ton watch" and I was actually talking about the director, not Matthieu. 

Anyway Name Above Title (along with a few other films of Conceição's) got a fancy blu-ray release a couple of months ago via the finest folks at Altered Innocence (see my post about that here) but if you're a more "try it on for size before committing" then have I got good news for you today -- Name Above Title is available to rent on Amazon now. Why this news is so grand that we might have to celebrate this news by posting another picture of Matthieu Charneau!

A Horror Festival Grows in Brooklyn

I doubt anyone noticed but I am not covering TIFF this year, which is happening right now -- my work-load for the past couple of years, where I was in festivals from late July (starting with Fantasia) through the end of October (NewFest) did me in (considering I also have a full-time day-job) and I decided a little bit of a break would be a good idea. And since NYFF is my most beloved fest of them all and TIFF overlapped with that one the most, TIFF got the axe. Maybe I'll try to be that person again next year but I gotta say my brain is thanking me right now. NYFF screenings start next week (I talked about the line-up right here) and (to get to the point) today we've gotten the line-up for my other hometown fave, the Brooklyn Horror Fest which runs from October 12th through 19th (aka right as NYFF ends). Check it out right here. The Opening Night movie...

... is called Kill Your Lover and it's from directors Alix Austin and Kier Siewert and it's described as a body-horror break-up movie and I am down down down. Other highlights out of what I have already seen -- the Centerpiece Film is the deeply disturbed serial killer thriller Red Rooms I reviewed at Fantasia right here; they're showing the gay revenge movie Femme with George Mackay that I reviewed right here; they're showing Booger (a mental breakdown flick about a missing cat that must be seen to be believed) and Satan Wants You (a superb doc on the "Satanic Panic" scare of the 1980s) and Vincent Must Die (a stellar French thriller about a weird rage virus). I have seen all of those and they are all terrific!

And as usual they are including a kick-ass retrospective of older movies -- the Japanese horror Door! The new restoration of Messiah of Evil! An award ceremony for Maniac Cop and director William Lustig! It's gonna be another year of killer frights out in Brooklyn -- here is the link to the full line-up again; badges are on sale right now and individual tickets go on sale on Friday. Oh and here is the just released trailer for the Messiah of Evil restoration: 

Getcha Nutty Gay Stuff Here

With all due respect to my beloveds at the boutique physical-media label Altered Innocence I am going to use a photo of model-turned-actor Matthieu Charneau up top of this post in order to grab everybody's attention, and then down below I will post the physical media cover-art, which is nice but, you know, NOT THAT. Anyway to get to the point those wonderful people at Altered Innocence are putting out a collection of short films from Portuguese director Carlos Conceição next month, top-lined by his stunning and strange 2021 medium-sized movie (it's about fifty minutes long) called Name Above Title, which stars Mr. Charneau there as the sexiest goddamned serial killer you ever done seen. I reviewed the film briefly right here -- I really dug it, as its own little mixture of Almodovar and Bidgood and all kinds of queer influences, and the chance to finally see more of Conceição's work is very very exciting to me! Check out all of the details over at Vinegar Syndrome, where you can pre-order the set right this minute.

The world of Carlos Conceição is one inhabited by handsome characters exploring the boundaries of limitless pleasure, romance, politics, and even murder.

Films included:
'Name Above Title'
'Bad Bunny'
'Versailles'
'Turquoise Boy'
'Goodnight Cinderella'
'Hell'
'The Flesh' pic.twitter.com/ZlnpJU2bY5

— Altered Innocence (@AltInnocence) August 1, 2023

Also of note -- VS is dropping Martin Walz's outrageous 1996 satirical AIDS comedy Killer Condom onto 4K, which is a sentence I really really really never thought I'd write. The set seems absolutely bonkers, stuffed with seedy extras and juicy special features -- pre-order that right here, and below I will share the trailer. I loved this movie when I was in college but I haven't seen it since -- hell I kind of forgot it existed. How that happened I have no idea! This movie should really be considered unforgettable, once you've beheld it. I mean, read this sentence: "Featuring gag-inducing special effects by notorious splatter master Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik, Schramm) along with Academy Award-winner H. R. Giger (Alien, Species) serving as creative consultant." Good lord!

Go Weird This Weekend

I see some sites saying that the studios aren't releasing anything right now because the Black Panther sequel next week is about to swallow everything up for a bit, but by my estimation there are four movies out today (five actually, counting streaming) that are definitely worth a look. So let's give you a run-down. First up Daniel Radcliffe stars as Weird Al in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a phony biopic that's very funny. I shared the trailer right here -- I have seen the movie and I enjoyed it but I'm not writing a review because I don't think I could string more than five sentences together on it. It's got some good laughs but I feel the entire thing slipping away less than a week on -- in ten years I imagine it'll pop back into my head randomly and I'll be like, "Oh my god, that happened" and that will be the extent of it. 

The only new movie that's out today that I have unfortunately not seen is Nocebo, the horror movie starring Eva Green that I told you about when it was announced as the Opening Night film for the Brooklyn Horror Fest last month -- the trailer can be viewed right here. Y'all oughta know by now what gigantic Eva Green stans we are around these parts, and Sara at Pajiba seemed to like the movie a lot (I only skimmed the review, since I didn't want any spoilers). This movie's only in theaters. 

Which leaves us with three movies that I have both seen and reviewed. First up we have Indonesian genius director Joko Anwar's new movie, Satan's Slaves 2: Communion, a sequel to his 2017 film, and it is on Shudder right this very second. Both of them are! Watch them back to back! I reviewed the new one right here at BHFF and said, "These movies are seat-jumping funhouses full of chaos and over-the-top terrors, and this one's as big a blast as any."

And speaking of scary the Nazi Wine Mom thriller (what a phrase) Soft & Quiet is out today and man alive talk about a terror -- here is my review of that one from earlier this week. Choice quote:

"The innocence of the American Dream is befouled, and this brave movie looks the filth of it straight in the face. It's the truest sort of horror -- the one too horrible to be anything but true."

This movie might be a lot to watch the weekend before the election honestly, but it's real good and I recommend seeking it out. I don't do "trigger warnings" because I respect y'all enough to be smart enough to know your own boundaries and whether you might be able to sit through something, but I'm not gonna lie -- this one's got some really rough fucking moments, mostly because they ring so true to the reality of our moment. 

Lastly, lightestly, but not leastly, we have Luca Guadagnino's documentary Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, which I shared the trailer for yesterday. This doc doesn't ask anything of you but it's well-done and a true comfort watch, following the original Ferragamo's creation of his brand through the earliest years of Hollywood, where he got his start making boots for Mary Pickford & Co. It's a surprisingly fascinating story! On a sidenote: I hope your foot is okay, Luca! How ironic that he attended the premiere of his documentary about shoes with a big cast boot on one of his feet!

13 Toilets of Halloween #3

Perhaps I chose this year's Halloween list theme counting down the "13 Toilets of Halloween" because I am a disgusting person worthy of your scorn. Or perhaps I did it because I have the stunted maturity of a ten-year-old. Or perhaps I chose it because the year that has been 2022 has been rich with Toilet Cinema? (True fact: it is probably all of these things.) But there are at least two Toilet Epics that hit screens in the past year that I can think of off the top of my head, and it only seems right to take this opportunity to highlight them. 

First, the one you can actually watch right now! Right now streaming on Shudder there is Rebekah McKendry's goopy Lovecraftian goof Glorious, which stars True Blood hunk Ryan Kwanten as a down-on-his-luck daddy who finds himself trapped inside a rest-stop bathroom with some kind of a monster speaking to him through a glory hole. A monster voiced by J.K. Simmons, cuz sure why not?

Ryan spends at least half of the movie sitting on the toilet -- although none of it's spent doing his business, don't worry. Not that the movie doesn't take full advantage of nauseating its audience -- toilet humor is just the first little step towards its infinite cosmic jest. The trailer's right here. Looking back I guess I never got around to reviewing this one but it's a lot of fun, and it's great to spend time with Kwanten again -- dude should really be getting more work. 

The other 2022(ish) movie that slid into our theme is Carter Smith's gay horror flick Swallowed, which also has a vital portion set inside a road-side rest-stop bathroom (and later an outhouse) -- it is about two best friends (Cooper Koch and Jose Colon) who get forced into drug-muling by Jena Malone (!!!) and eventually Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 star Mark Patton shows up as a sinister sissy (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and I loved it, oh I loved it so. 

Here is my review at Pajiba -- this hasn't been released properly yet, although it's been making the fest rounds; it just screened this week at the Brooklyn Horror Fest. I will obviously let y'all know where and when it gets its eventual release so everyone can experience all of its water-closet wonder. Bonus: funny enough as I was writing this piece I stumbled upon this piece at Paste Magazine about these same two movies and "Public Restroom Horror" so let's go read that together! And click here for all our "13 Toilets of Halloween" so far.

Brooklyn Horror 2022: "Old Flame"

Watching the ways that filmmakers have wrestled with the challenges of creatively making movies during a pandemic has been an endless source of fascination for me, especially when what they have done is used it as an excuse to do a two-person chamber-piece. Because when do we ever get two-people chamber pieces anymore? And yet I've seen more My Dinner With Andres over the past two years then I have every previous year combined. Contrary to what mainstream cinema would have us believe you can do an awful lot with two people sitting in a room talking to one another! 

Granted some of these have worked out better than others. But I found actor-turned-director Christopher Denham's latest film Old Flame, which is playing Brooklyn Horror tonight, to be among the best of these recent character pieces that I've seen tackle these limitations head-on. Mainly because it digs into some of the difficult conversations of our moment in time with real knifes-edge skill, and because it does so with a couple of surprisingly effective and believable performances at its center from relative newcomers.

Andy Gershenzon plays Calvin, a total dude-bro if ever there was one, who's left his wife and child behind to travel to his college reunion where he's volunteered to help out with setting up at the hotel and all of that college reunion jazz. The morning of the party, as he's arranging the punchbowl or whatever the hell one does to set up a college reunion, a familiar face appears through the fateful ballroom doors -- it's Rachel (Rebeca Robles), the girl who broke his teenage heart. She's early, they talk, they talk some more, and they keep on talking and they start drinking and then they move the conversation and the drinking up to Calvin's room...

Let's just say there are a lot of twists and a lot of turns in the literal he-said-she-said drama of where their conversations take them and leave it at that -- I think this is a movie that's probably best experienced not knowing where ye be going with it. I will say that, although not nearly as deliciously grotesque as the power-tripping pas de deux on display between Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska in Nicolas Pesce's ace film Piercing (which saw an escort and a serial-killer flip the tables on one another back and forth and back and forth inside a hotel room one night), I nevertheless thought of Piercing several times here -- high compliment coming from me, maybe the world's number one Piercing fan.

The most important factor in a chamber piece of this sort is something you can go into Old Flame unworried about though, because Gershenzon and Robles are quite good. They handle the deft turns of their characters pretty well for such unfamiliar screen presences. Perhaps that unfamiliarity helped? Perhaps I couldn't nail these two down because I had no vantage point from which to stand outside these actors? But there's a thrill of discovery in that, and I bought these two from start to finish even when they were each lying through their teeth. And Denham (with his first film since Preservation in 2014) proves skillful at edging tension out of the ever-more-claustrophobic circumstances -- I'm telling you, two people talking in a room can be the whole world.

---------------------------------------------------

Old Flame screened at Brooklyn Horror 2022.

Check out their ongoing line-up over here!

BHFF 22: "Satan's Slaves 2: Communion"

Don't go into the woods alone, they said. Don't go anywhere alone, they said! What is the first thing that we always make fun of horror movie characters for doing? Going to investigate a noise by themselves -- the infamous "I'll be right back" thing. Or going to a second more remote location with a sketchy character (like say for example Jena Malone). There is safety in numbers, we've long been taught -- hell that's basically the entire credo of civilization itself. And Indonesian genre king Joko Anwar's delightfully deranged Satan's Salaves 2: Communion, which just played the Brooklyn Horror Fest and which is premiering on Shudder here in the States on November 4th (after raking in blockbuster bucks in his home country), just shredded that whole damn idea to ribbons.

Anwar's first Satan's Slaves film from 2017 (itself a remake of the 1980 Indonesian classic from director Sisworo Gautama Putra) introduced us to a rural family of Mawarni (Ayu Laksmi) and her husband Bahri (Bront Palarae) along with their four children -- the eldest and most responsible Rini (Tara Basro), the teenager Tony (Endy Arfian), the pre-teen Bondi (Nasar Annuz), and the youngest, Ian (M. Adhiyat), who was deaf. By that film's end Mom was dead and little Ian had been whisked away by a Satanic cult and the family had high-tailed it out of the nowheresville village they lived in to the safety of the city... or so they thought!!!! And yes you should insert a thunder clap there, in case those exclamation points didn't make that perfectly clear.

Several years on and the family has settled into their little corner of a massive brutalist high-rise building that's stuffed to the gills with the blessings of other people. It might not be luxury accommodations -- it's really a bit of a run-down slum -- but the kids all have tons of friends and there's comfort to be had in numbers. Especially when the isolation of the first movie turned out so poorly for everybody involved. Sure, the fact that the elevator sputters and creaks when it gets overloaded with all of these blessed people is a bit unnerving, but the alternative... well that's how your little kid kidnapped by satanists, am I right? 

As Anwar proved with the two horror films he made in between these Satan's Slaves films -- Impetigore (which he wrote and directed) and especially The Queen of Black Magic (which he only scripted) -- he's an ace at juggling a pile of characters, and Communion finds him at the top of his game with this. Besides the entire family at our film's center there are reams of new people to get to know here, and he does so with astonishing ease -- by the time the lights go out and the horrors begin piling up up up as high as the high-rise goes we feel like we know all of these folks, at least enough to be scared for them anyway.

Because, as the title makes clear, this movie isn't gonna be community gardens and bake-offs. It turns out there's no slipping through the crowd from a curse -- that darned curse is gonna curse up everybody you try to stack in its way. And there's also the fact that with this many neighbors you can't get to know everybody -- indeed who knows, knock out one brick between you and the couple next door and who knows what you might find. Photos of your dead mother, maybe. Wouldn't that be weird...?

Basic gist: if you're not keeping up with the horror movies of Joko Anwar and the folks he's working with then you're missing out on one of the great treats of our time, and his Satan's Slaves sequel only further cements that status. As the major vibes of U.S. horror slip away from the artiness of so-called "Elevated Horror" into an embrace of sloppier, goofier, splashier stuff -- even though I wasn't a fan James Wan's over-the-top Malignant is a harbinger of where we're headed, I think -- we can just glance over the ocean to somebody who's been acing that vibe for half a decade now. These movies are seat-jumping funhouses full of chaos and over-the-top terrors, and this one's as big a blast as any.

-----------------------------------------

Satan's Slaves 2 screened at Brooklyn Horror 2022.

Check out their ongoing line-up over here!

Brooklyn Horror 2022: "The Weird Kidz"

I have been in high school gyms and in dentist’s offices in my life, so obviously I know “Teamwork” is a thing people celebrate – I have seen the inspirational posters. And with good reason, often – Teamwork gave us the Pyramids and presumably Fruity Pebbles, and I think both of those things are neat. But as an only child and a loner (some might even say “a rebel”) I find a special kinship with people who find ways to make things themselves. What do you think this website is, after all? It’s me being an insular weirdo!

Thankfully for people like me the internet and technology have made it easier to be an insular weirdo while not being all alone about it – we can all be insular weirdos together. And The Weird Kidz, the decade-in-the-making animated film from first-time animation filmmaker Zach Passero, feels like a triumphant celebration of that home-made single-mind aesthetic. It’s about those things literally, in that it tells a tale of a bunch of weird kids who are forced into a makeshift community in order to fight an apocalypse of giant killer ants (so perhaps I should call it an “ant-pocalypse”).

But it seems important to note that this movie was made by one dude sitting at home pounding it out over the course of a decade. He had a few collaborators – his wife Hannah Passero being the big one, who’s credited as “background artist” and whose first pregnancy inspired the telling of this tale. But also the vice cast, which includes the great Angela Bettis and Ellar Coltrane of Boyhood fame. But The Weird Kidz feels dumped out of the same singular brain, fueled by one person’s rhythms and obsessions – it feels deeply idiosyncratic in the way of a Xerox’d 90s zine or a comic-strip buried at the back of somebody’s notebook.

And that is such a gosh-darn thrill. No it’s not quite the massive achievement of Oscar-winner Phil Tippet’s thirty-years-in-the-making stop-motion masterpiece Mad God - considering the resources that Phil Tippet no doubt had access to, that’s a wildly unfair ask. But it’s in the same spirit – a closer comparison would be Dash Snow’s movies, especially last year’s phenomenally odd and entertaining Cryptozoo. And that’s some stellar company to be in, but The Weird Kidz earns its place.

Reminiscent at times of Stranger Things in the ways it very clearly is made by a person who is deeply in love with the latchkey-kid entertainment of the 1980s (so go we all), The Weird Kidz tells the story of three pre-teen boys going on a camping trip with an older brother and his girlfriend only to stumble upon an ant-hill of quite epic proportions. It’s Them! and it’s The Goonies and The Monster Squad – having only recently seen Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders From Mars myself I think it’s also some of that too.

It’s a 50s sci-fi monster-movie meeting Stand By Me, with genuine heapings of horror piled on top – granted you’re reading a person right now whose worst fear is entomophobia so all the gigantic bugs very much tickle my worst freak-out fancies, but there are some truly madly deeply fucked up moments in this movie! The Weird Kidz relishes the Wild West of that specific 1980s proto-PG-13 moment where a movie like Poltergeist could show a man ripping his own face off and scar an entire generation in the process. And I think Zach Passero would join me at the thought of giggling over scarring an entire generation, and for that this singular, wildly entertaining little gem has my gratitude. Now make another one! Just maybe don’t take so long. I’m impatient.

---------------------------------------------------

The Weird Kidz screened at Brooklyn Horror 2022.

Check out their ongoing line-up over here!

The Monsters Are Taking Brooklyn Again!

First things first -- that might be the most gorgeous artwork for the Brooklyn Horror Fest to date? Totally gorgeous. Anyway this fest, one of my faves, is up to its seventh year now, and yes I have been covering it all seven. And today they announced the first round of titles for their 2022 spectacular -- you can see them all right here but the things that leapt right out at me (beside the fact that the fest has been officially taken over by Shudder, which is not a surprise in the slightest) are this. One, they are doing a retrospective of Lucio Fulci movies! It's eight films long and it will include the new 4K restoration of The Beyond that the master musician Fabio Frizzi created an entirely new score for. 

And two -- the Opening Night movie stars Eva Green! Called Nocebo it's from director Lorcan Finnegan (who made Vivarium) and it has Eva playing a woman plagued by a mysterious illness, who starts taking folk remedies that a Filipino caretaker (who just...shows up one day... dun dun dun), which leads to a rift with her husband (played by Mark Strong). I am sure this will all work out well for everybody involved! Anyway I'm intrigued (slash nervous) to see how the racial aspects play out here, but Eva Green anything is always welcome.

And third -- they've got Joko Anwar's new movie! The Indonesian master has made a sequel to his 2017 film Satan's Slaves and it's been out in his home country for several weeks now and I have watched in absolute raw jealousy as raves for it over there have passed by my eyes -- I wasn't sure when we'd get to see it here in the US, so this is welcome news indeed! 

Anyway there are several more titles of note in this, just the first announcement -- they've got the new V/H/S anthology film, they've got Benson & Moorehead's latest, they've got a doc about Stephen King movies and they've got Kyle Gallner and they've got the very fine movie The Harbinger, which I reviewed at Fantasia last month right here. The fest runs from October 13th through 20th and you can buy your fest badges right now at this link. Click on over and check it all out! Or else...

Sociopathic Miscreants Unite!

Heads-up on a terrifically weird and weirdly terrific upcoming movie called Stanleyville, which will be playing for a week at the Metrograph theater here in NYC in exactly one month on April 22nd and then moving on to other locations thereafter -- I saw this movie during the Nightstream horror film festival last October and wrote up my briefs thoughts right here, some of which just so happened...

... to make its way into the just released trailer today! That passage (which hysterically accounts for like one-fifth of my entire review) is probably the least quote-whorey thing ever written, so the fact that it made it into the trailer is spectacular, just spectacular. And fitting for such an off-center movie -- here's the plot description:

"One fine day, prim and proper Maria (Susanne Wuest from Goodnight Mommy) decides to unceremoniously walk away from her boring job, her inept husband, and her obnoxious daughter. Moments after doing so, she’s invited to participate in a bizarre and—as it turns out—potentially very dangerous sweepstakes contest, the rules of which are seemingly unknown to even its organizers, competing with a collection of idiosyncratic characters for the chance to win true enlightenment... and one slightly used habanero-orange compact sport utility vehicle. Dark as night and deadpan hilarious, with every fresh escalation progressing according to a warped logic that makes perfect (non)sense."

This is one of those very odd movies that speak to my very particular odd wavelength so your mileage may vary, but I assume a lot of you come here to MNPP because you share at least some of my particularities and/or interests and/or odd wavelengths, so I hope this movie's for you, too. I really dug it. Here's the trailer:

Do Anything But Kills

Mia Hansen-Løve's new film Bergman Island, the first of Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie's tremendous 2021 two-some -- the other one being the even better reunion between Lie and Joachim Trier called The Worst Person in the World, which you should be very excited about -- is out here in NYC this weekend, and if you're around to see it, do! It's great. Indeed there are several very good movies out this weekend that you can watch instead of the shit-tornado that is Halloween Kills (my review of that here) -- there's NewFest happening! And the Brooklyn Horror Fest happening! Metrograph has the new 4K remaster of Possession streaming online! Or there's the movie Luzzu about the hot Maltese fisherman playing at the Quad, and at Film Forum there's Ryusuke Hamaguchi's marvel of a movie Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which is also one of a 2021 two-fer with his movie Drive My Car, also excellent, coming later this year. These damn overachievers! Anyway treat yourselves and watch a good movie, please.

Also out today, at @FilmForumNYC! Forget Halloween Kills -- Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy will kill... your emotions!!! https://t.co/s0THtz0vg7

— My New Dead Pants (@JAMNPP) October 15, 2021

Brooklyn Horror: Good Madam (Mlungu Wam)

We don't quite have a handle on the strained relationships and creeptastic traumas that form the tangled heart of Good Madam (Mlungu Wam) until well into its runtime. When we first meet Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) she seems strong, smart, and capable, hefting a mighty bullshit-detector around with her -- all the better to say "Peace, out" with when a storm cloud of smiling hypocrite relatives descend on the home she's lived in with her just-deceased grandmother since childhood. She doesn't have the power in the situation and they all but force her out -- leaving is her way of seizing some control. She also seizes her grandmother's favorite coat on the way out the door, because fuck them.

Tsidi grabs her adolescent daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya) and reluctantly heads off to stay with her own estranged mother Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe), who's been the life-long live-in housekeeper for a rich white lady (the good madam of the title). And here's where Good Madam introduces the historical and political space that it's about to be keen on dissecting -- post-Apartheid South Africa, where the generational change between the experience of a child and that of their parent is as wide as ocean itself. Mavis is tied to the past, not exactly a slave but entirely subservient and dependent on her madam's bedridden graces, while her daughter, flailing about the way free people do, is living the uncertain life of modernity, with its inherent trade-offs. 

And these tensions will inevitably come to a big ol' boil as Good Madam tippy-toes toward its climax -- the free generations smashing up sugar bowls while the older one scrub the floors and get buried in the backyard under some overgrown trees as eternal payment for services rendered. Tsidi, far more heartbroken than we realize at first glance, becomes somewhat of an unreliable narrator as the film courses along -- this fancy house brings with it bad memories of her own childhood; when her daughter asks her why she doesn't like this place she replies that this place doesn't like her. Enter an estranged half-brother who Tsidi's mother gave away to be raised by the white folks and slowly you get the picture of how claustrophobic and strangling this beautiful beige suburban home is under its surface, and that's even before Tsidi digs up what she calls a curse about eternal servitude from the middle of a set-aside book.

Indeed the cloistered air of this house of dying -- where the madam reigns half-glimpsed from her bed, heaving every breath a la original Suspiria's spittle-choked Mother Marcos -- begins to infect all those who enter. Winnie, seen early on as a good girl, becomes petulant and demanding, the white privilege of the place seemingly coating her person like a poisonous film. Tsidi's even worse though, paranoia leaking into her imaginings, hallucinations and dreams of dead white dogs and bloody teeth winding her too tight to breath. I think some of Good Madam's finale might have gotten lost in translation -- I was more confused by a couple of its revelations than I think I should have been, and I'm not sure if it's just my own unfamiliarity with the spiritual and supernatural customs of this place and people or if the film is being vague on purpose, or by accident -- but its riddles are unsettling nevertheless, its performances acute and sharply drawn; this is a good movie about bad madams and how the horrors of the past echo across the present flesh. Very much recommended.

----------------------------------------

Good Madam screen last night as the Opening Night film of this year's Brooklyn Horror Fest, which is running -- both virtually and with in-person events -- until October 21st. Check out the full line-up here!

Three New Yorker Specific Things

It's the first day of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival here in my hometown city -- different borough from me, but there are trains! -- and if you missed my preview of this year's fest click on yonder where I link to my thoughts on several of the films they're showing and toss off a few titles I'm psyched to see anew. The photo above is from tonight's opening film, a South African picture titled Good Madam (Mlungu Wam) which is about three generations of grieving women confronting some sort of supernatural presence; read more here. I'm being vague because I am keeping my brain vague for when I see it. Best not to know too much! I'm psyched they're opening the fest with a foreign horror flick too -- broaden the scope, baby! Anyway if you're in town you should go. I plan on being there! You can stalk me and shit, just as an added bonus to the scary movie. BHFF runs for one week, until next Thursday.  

And then tomorrow my hometown LGBT fest NewFest kicks off! I also did a preview of coming attractions for that a couple of weeks ago -- check that out here. I'll be at tomorrow night's screening of the documentary Mayor Pete, about Mayor Pete, in case you're not able to stalk me tonight. Now that I'm triple-vaxxed I am going places and doing things again, and it's terrifying! But I'm dealing. (No I'm not.) Anyway stay tuned for reviews from both NewFest and Brooklyn Horror over the next week or so, I should have some of those coming to you soon. And thirdly...

... for your future New York City plans, it was announced today that the Anthology Film Archives are going to be hosting a kick-ass retrospective of Folk Horror Films from October 28th until November 11th, to go along with the epically-delicious folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Day Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, which I've sung the praises of several times now, including reviewing it right here when it screened at SXSW at the start of the year. This line-up is nuts nuts nuts, and I am trying to decide how I weight my continuing COVID fears with going to as much as I possibly can. I could list about ten titles that I want to see but the unmissable ones are my beloved Messiah of Evil, which I've never seen on a big screen, and same goes for Viy. Things like The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, while awesome, they usually screen somewhere at Halloween-time every year, but Messiah of Evil and Viy, those are unusual. Can't wait!

Nightstream: Name Above Title

Wordless, only an hour long, and with far, far, far more style than substance, I will still heartily recommend Name Above Title to you, and actually for all of those exact reasons. Starring the too-handsome-to-be-real former male model turned actor Matthieu Charneau (see more here) as a horned-up bestached sociopathic serial-killer wielding my single favorite killing weapon of the past oh let's say dozen years, Carlos Conceição's film plays more like a series of stunningly realized still lifes captured in Academy ratio -- piled high polaroid frames of our Summery Discontent; Instagram selfies spelling out our Doom. It's all very Knife+Heart and y'all know I love Knife+Heart. In that vein it's got flashes of giallo but its last act spins into something more early Almodovarian, maybe a dash of Bidgood for good measure -- whatever its recipe this situates Conceição as a great big gay one to watch.

Name Above Title streamed as part of the Nightstream Festival.

Nightstream: Stanleyville in 150 Words or Less

I always appreciate a piece of art that looks out unto the world and sees one big snake-pit of absurdity staring back, and Maxwell McCabe-Lokos' Stanleyville (which just screened as part of the Nightstream Fest) sees the snake-pit and raises it by order of a circus. Like an episode of Survivor for sociopathic miscreants who've inhaled enough helium to induce a psychotic break, the film drops five strangers into a locked room and tells them if they do so-and-so one of them will win a car -- it's just the "so-and-so" where things get sticky, and before you know it -- sticky everything! Possibly dreamt up by Agatha Christie on a peyote trip, Stanleyville revels in preposterousness, and as such speaks my language. I dug, I dug.

(Oscilloscope will be releasing this movie, stay tuned for more info.)

The Nighstream Returns!

While waiting in line at my NYFF screening this morning I was complaining to my pal Joe (hi Joe!) about how I've been too busy with film festivals to get myself into the Scary Movie Mode that the month of October demands -- I'm really looking forward to being able to binge some spooktaculars soon! Maybe even find some horror movies I've never seen before? Those feel increasingly rare, especially of true quality, but there are always new movies to watch, and there are two horror film festivals in the next couple of weeks that just might be able to deliver what I'm looking for. I already told you about this year's Brooklyn Horror Fest, which runs from October 14th through 21st -- check out that post here -- but before that one, starting this Thursday the 10th and running until Sunday the 13th, is the second edition of the virtual-based Nightstream Festival! 

Check out this year's line-up here. Nightstream popped up last year when we couldn't have in-person fests, as a conglomeration of several local horror fests from around the country (including the Brooklyn one), and it kicked ass -- you can see my previous coverage here. And this year's line-up looks just as fun -- I've seen and reviewed several of the movies that they's screening previously from earlier-in-the-year fests, so here are a couple of links:

Kier-La Janisse's epic doc Woodlands Dark and 

Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, reviewed here

Alien on Stage, reviewed here

King Car, reviewed here

Poser, reviewed here

After Blue, reviewed here

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, reviewed here

Those are all terrific movies! Other movies they're screening which I have seen but not reviewed and yet still recommend -- Mickey Reece's Agnes, Andrew Gaynard's All My Friends Hate Me, Jane Schoenbrun's We're All Going To The World's Fair, Samantha Aldana's Shapeless, John Adams' Hellbender, and especially especially Phil Tippet's thirty-years-in-the-making stop-motion epic Mad God, which is one of the rare beasts I felt safe pulling the word "masterpiece" out for the same year as its release. I never do that, I have a rule against it, and yet I knew on first sight that Mad God will be a part of my life forever. 

So much beauty! Anyway hopefully I'll be there this weekend digging into these titles alongside y'all -- there are a dozen that look swell that I still haven't seen myself! So stay tuned and maybe I'll review some of them for you. And go check out the line-up and buy your pass, scare yourselves silly, and do come crying to me.

The Monsters Are All Moving To Brooklyn

Hello to my fellow New Yorkers! Or "People who might be in the New York Metropolitan Area between October 14th and 21st"-ers! Tickets have gone on sale today for the 2021 version of the Brooklyn Horror Fest, which is always a solid little blast of oogies-boogies and gore-soaked entertainment. It will be virtual and not-virtual this year, meaning people will actually be able to go to a movie theater to see a bunch of its titles -- as always, we implore you to be a vaccinated person if you're going to leave your damn house. If not, stay home and rot. That said there are a ton of titles that BHF has in their clutches this year that are worth leaving the house for, several of which I've already reviewed: 

Here is my review of After Blue! 

Here is my review of The Feast! 

Here is my review of The Sadness!

I've also seen but not reviewed Earwig, The Last Thing That Mary Saw, When I Consume You, and of course the classic Trouble Every Day from Claire Denis which is screening for its 20th anniversary. All of these things have their moments! Oh and they're also screening Session 9 for its 20th, and that has more than "moments" -- that movie is a straight up masterpiece. 

Of the movies I haven't seen yet that I'm dying for there's Night Teeth, aka the forthcoming Netflix vampire movie that stars The White Lotus breakout Sydney Sweeney alongside Megan Fox, Lucy Fry, Alexander Ludwig and Raúl Castilloooooooooo. I'm sure the movie is too hetero to have Alexander & Raúl make out but I'll just put that thought out into the world. You're welcome. Oh and they're screening Gaspar Noé's Lux Aeterna which stars the gutsy-and-then-some two-some of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beatrice Dalle, too! I'm so excited for Spooky Movie Season! Go buy some tickets!

Get Lucky Living or Get Lucky Dying

Heads-up on a fine new feminist horror flick coming to Shudder on March 4th -- written by and starring Dexter and Heroes actress Brea Grant (and directed by Natasha Kermani) Lucky is a fast nasty little fable about what it's like for women living day-in-day-out in a dangerous man's world, and I dug it when I saw and quick-reviewed it at the Nightstream Fest last fall. It certainly gets its point across with swift, brutal certainty. They just dropped a trailer for it, which I'll share below, but you should just go in blind as I always recommend with all horror flicks. March 4th! Shudder! Be there!

Yes, Queen

Heads-up on a creepy-crawly horror flick coming your way (as long as you've got Shudder, and you really should have Shudder) -- on January 28th y'all can see The Queen of Black Magic, the latest wowza coming out of Indonesia, a country that's really been bringing it to the genre over the past few years. And the biggest name in Indonesian horror is attached to this one to boot -- Joko Anwar, whose flick Impetigore (written on previously here) is Indonesia's submission for the Oscars this year, wrote its script. 

The flick was directed by Kimo Stamboel, who previously was one-half of The Mo Brothers, a horror directing duo. I reviewed The Queen of Black Magic last fall when it screened as part of the Nightstream Festival -- you can read it here -- although maybe just watch the movie, then read my review. Same goes for the trailer, seen below -- as with all horror movies it's better to just go in blind, says me! You decide!