In the world of franchises when a character dies, they’re not really dead until people stop buying tickets to see the movies. Such is the case with “Saw X,” the latest instalment of the nineteen-year-old torture horror franchise.
Serial killer John “Jigsaw” Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, is the main antagonist of the “Saw” flicks. He’s the mastermind behind the ingenious traps, like the elaborate Laser Collar, the aptly named Knife Chair or the self-explanatory Shotgun Carousel, designed to inflict maximum physical and psychological trauma on his victims.
He is a bad man who communicates the bad news to his quarries through the creepy Billy the Puppet, a nightmarish ventriloquist’s dummy with garish red swirls on his cheeks.
Or I should say was a bad man. They killed the character off in “Saw III,” but in the “Saw” Universe, death isn’t enough to keep a good sadistic serial killer down, so he appears via flashback in subsequent instalments, and was the inspiration for a new killer in 2021’s “Spiral.”
Now through the magic of prequels, he’s back in the flesh, picking up the story where the 2004’s “Saw” left off.
The new film begins with Kramer, riddled with cancer, decamping to Mexico in the hopes of a miracle cure. The procedure is risky and experimental but, “The results have been stunning,” says Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund).
When it turns out the whole thing is a scam, designed to provide hope, but no actual medical benefit to patients, Kramer gets even in his own, terrible way.
“You all pretended to cure me,” he says, “but what I have planned for each of you is very real.”
The “Saw” movies pretend to have a moral, a manifesto driven by Kramer’s twisted sense of finding atonement through pain via deadly games of “Truth or Consequences.” That high minded philosophy is given lip service in “Saw X,” but takes a backseat to the graphic kills.
Put it this way: “Saw X” is less about the moral code and more about using a person’s intestines as a rope or sucking someone’s eyeballs right out of their sockets.
After a drawn out first hour of set up, the ick factor is notched up, making this the juiciest and goriest “Saw” film to date. Trouble is, it’s stomach-turning with very few scares. It’s unpleasant by design, but the dopamine hit you’re looking for, the rush of feeling scared in a theatre where you are safe, is replaced by a queasy feeling.
Each test is timed, and there are countdown clocks galore, ticking away to the end of the games, but there isn’t much tension, just an uneasy sensation that something terrible is coming.
It might be different if there was some kind of inventive symbolism in the games, a sense that there is something happening to stimulate the brain, not just the gag reflex.
For a movie that is all about games—Kramer refers to each of his tests as “games”—the R-rated “Saw X” is all gory games but very little fun.
The grisly events in “Barbarian,” a new house rental horror film now playing in theatres, are a better advertisement for staying in a hotel than anything the Canadian Hotel & Lodging Association could have dreamed up.
The story begins with Tess (Georgina Campbell) pulling up in front of an Airbnb in the rundown neighborhood of Brightmoor in Detroit. Turns out, the only house on the block without broken windows or a kicked-in front door, is doubled booked, and Keith (Bill Skarsgård), is already settled in. She booked on Airbnb, he booked on another site, wires were crossed, but instead of sending her out in the rain to find another place to stay, he invites her in. You take the bed, he says, I’ll sleep on the coach. She reluctantly agrees, won over by his charm and seemingly good-guy vibes.
After lights out, strange things happen. At first, it’s creepy but explainable, like creaky old doors that open and close by themselves, but, the next day, when she goes to the basement to retrieve some supplies, the house reveals a dark secret.
Cut to Los Angeles, present day, and the worst moment of self-involved television star AJ Gilbride’s (Justin Long) life. Accused of sexual impropriety by a co-star, he’s fired from his show and is the subject of an exposé in the Hollywood Reporter. His career in tatters and his bank account running dry, he decides to sell off assets, including an Airbnb property he owns in Brightmoor, Detroit. “I’m not here on vacation,” he tells his lawyer as he lands in Michigan. “I’m here for some liquidity.”
As the story of Tess and AJ collide, “Barbarian” takes one last left turn, this time to Detroit, circa the Reagan years, with the origin story of the innocent looking house’s evil.
“Barbarian” is an audacious thriller with a heaping handful of solid scares. Director Zach Cregger zigs and zags, trusting the audience to hang on for the wild ride. It’s worth the trip. The tense atmosphere of Tess and Keith’s story gives way to AJ’s MeToo cautionary tale and the sinister origin story before throwing it all into the hopper to create a genre-busting final third act. Nothing is off the table as the movie tackles the worst of human nature, narcissism, murder and even incest. It’s a heady mix that should have you moving toward the edge of your seat.
“Barbarian” is one of the rare, recent horror movies that truly keeps the viewer off balance throughout. It’s never clear where the story is going, and that off-the-hook storytelling keeps the creepy story compelling. It’s a roller coaster in which only one thing is clear: Never rent an Airbnb built over a catacomb.
“The Cursed,” a new werewolf movie now in theatres, shoots for the moon by throwing the traditional rules of lycanthropy mythology out the window to create a fresh and timely take on an old genre. But does it bite off more than it can chew?
The film opens in the trenches of World War I during the Battle of the Somme. A French soldier is killed with a silver bullet before the action jumps back in time thirty-five years to the ancient province of Gévaudan in southern France and the true beginning of the story.
Coldhearted land baron (is there any other kind?) Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) is unafraid to spill gallons of blood to protect his property, wife (Kelly Reilly) and children. When a Romani clan lay a claim to his land, Laurent retaliates, attacking, burning and mutilating every one of them. “Do you think you can ride into my country,” Laurent sneers as his hired killers laugh and take photographs with the dead, “take my land and do whatever you like?”
As the last victim is being buried alive, she utters a curse, damning Laurent’s estate and entire family.
As the curse echoes in his ears, everything changes. Laurent’s family is soon affected and his carefully constructed life begins to crumble.
Son Edward (Max Mackintosh) suffers for the sins of his father. His weird dreams of creepy scarecrows and a set of strange metal teeth lead him back to the scene of the Romani massacre. When Timmy Adams (Tommy Rodger), the son of one of the other area land barons, finds the metal teeth buried in on the killing field, before you can say, “Werewolves of London,” he puts them in his mouth and bites Edward, piercing his neck. “We will all pay for the sins of our elders,” says Timmy. “We’re all going to die.”
Timmy scurries off into the woods while Edward is tended to at home. When Edward disappears from his bed, a search party is convened but the boy isn’t found. Meanwhile, a bloodthirsty beast, whose bite either kills or transforms its quarry into a werewolf, terrorizes the area.
John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), a visiting pathologist with a personal link to the case, understands what’s going on and knows that the only “cure” for the werewolf outbreak is a silver bullet.
“The Cursed” has a title that sounds as though it should be attached to exploitation fare, bloody with a side of gross. While there are bloody and gross moments sprinkled throughout, the bulk of the running time is quiet and austere, shot in the low light, greyish tones of so much 19th century horror on film. Director Sean Ellis builds to the scares, constructing a sense of dread and suspense that pays off during the attack scenes.
More interesting is Ellis’s reinterpretation of the werewolf legend. The curse and the silver bullet survived from established mythology but he throws the rest away to create a new look and feel for his creatures. These beasts don’t represent the duality of the werewolves of yore, the mix of animal and spiritual. They don’t wait for the full moon to turn. Nor do they look like the customary Lon Chaney Jr. monster. Instead, as one scene memorably details, the victims are enveloped in a werewolf casing.
No spoilers here, but the creatures are primal killing machines, not the tortured souls of other werewolf movies who are trapped by, but fight against, their nature.
“The Cursed” is a fresh take on the werewolf legend but simultaneously feels like a throwback to the Hammer Horror films of old where charismatic Van Helsing types battled creatures and corsets and tailcoats were still in fashion. A mix of elevated and primal scares, of brains and schlock, it contains enough suspense and memorable visuals to make it worthwhile.
Father Peter (Guy Pearce) is a priest with a past I the new exorcism drama “The Seventh Day,” now on VOD.
The rough-and-tumble holy man comes complete with Sonny Crockett stubble, a fistful of smokes and a muscle car. He’s a badass who says, “An exorcist doesn’t hide from evil. He runs TOWARD it, feels the evil in his bones and can sense when it’s close.”
He stands in stark contrast to his latest protégé, novice priest Father Daniel (Vadhir Derbez). The trainee does not have his mentor’s swagger and Father Peter is less than impressed with Daniel‘s “two grueling weeks of exorcist nursery school.”
Nonetheless, the duo are a team, buddy exorcists off in search of evil to expunge. After a run in with the devil at a homeless encampment they come across Charlie (Brady Jenness), a pre-teen who murdered his family with an axe. Is he a bad kid or is he possessed by the devil?
“The Seventh Day” starts strong with the exorcism gone wrong that formed Father Peter’s hardened exterior. “The evil was the strongest I’ve ever seen,” he says. Unfortunately, after that it goes downhill faster than you can say “Father Karras” three times fast. The mix-and-match of “Training Day” with “The Exorcist” could have offered up some edgy thrills but instead falls prey to clichés borrowed from dozens of other devil movies dating back to when Father Merrin first bellowed, “The power of Christ compels you!”
Pearce, who also co-produced, attempts to inject some life into “The Seventh Day” with a big hammy performance but his flamboyance is counter-balanced by flat work from Derbez whose work mimics the film’s listless pacing.
“The Seventh Day” seeks to reinvent the exorcism movie via the buddy cop genre but succeeds only in combing the most hackneyed bits of each.
The very best zombie movies are never simply about the dead coming back to life. Sure, the good ones smear the screen with buckets of blood but just as important as the gore are the brains, and not just the kind the undead use as entrees. The memorable ones use the flesh-hungry creatures as metaphors for societal ills. George A. Romero knew this and infused his movies with allegories to social justice and consumerism, among other issues. Director Jeff Barnaby knows this as well. His exciting new zombie film, “Blood Quantum,” new to VOD this week, contains a powerful central premise: Indigenous people put in danger by allowing white folks on their land.
The film begins with an ancient settler’s proverb. “Take heed to thyself, make no treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering.” It’s a portentous warning that foreshadows “Blood Quantum” action. Set on an isolated Mi’gmaq reserve called Red Crow, it takes place before, during and after a plague that has turned most of the world into bloodthirsty zombies. The Red Crow, however, are immune, placing tribal sheriff Traylor (“Fear the Walking Dead’s” Michael Greyeyes) in the position of having to protect the reserve, including ex-wife Joss (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), sons Lysol (Kiowa Gordon) and Joseph (Forrest Goodluck), Joseph’s pregnant girlfriend Charlie (Olivia Scriven) and father Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman), from hordes of undead outsiders.
“Blood Quantum” offers up the blood and guts you expects from a movie like this but director Barnaby also infuses every frame with a vivid sense of indigenous heritage. From the title—which refers to a much-despised colonial blood measurement system used to establish a person’s Indigenous status—to using a zombie apocalypse as metaphor for the fight against annihilation by colonial settlers, it drips with social awareness and gore.
A new take on the zombie apocalypse tale, it brings a fresh perspective to a much-examined genre. The characters are well defined and have emotional arcs amid the madness and skull crushing. The use of occasional animation sections adds visual interest to an already cool looking film—Barnaby has a deadly eye for composition—and will even make you laugh from time to time. A broken narrative timeline doesn’t work as well it should but Barnaby and Co. deliver on entertainment and intellectual levels.
Come for the entrail eating, stay for the cultural observations… and more entrail eating.
With his remake of the classic Dario Argento supernatural horror film “Suspiria” director Luca Guadagnino has made a film as glossy and grandiose as the original giallo. Maybe even more so. What he has also done is intellectualize the story to the point where you don’t actually get scared you just think you do.
Set in 1977 Berlin, the film begins with a manic episode. The first of many. Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz), on the run from the Tanz Ballet School, is distraught. Making her way to the office of her psychiatrist Dr. Josef Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf a.k.a. Tilda Swinton under and inch or two of make-up) she’s in the midst of a breakdown, ranting about witches before disappearing into the city leaving Klemperer with more questions than answers.
Cut to the story of American ballet student Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), Patricia’s replacement at the prestigious dance school. A Mennonite from rural Ohio she arrives for an audition with the school’s formidable head teacher Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton in more recognizable form) despite never having studied or danced professionally. Her raw talent is enough to earn her a berth with at the school and soon she has not only formed a bond with Blanc, but is dancing the lead in a production of the avant-garde piece “Volk.”
Dr. Klemperer and Susie’s roommate Sara (Mia Goth) think something is wonky at the school but can’t figure out what is wrong. Imagine their surprise (SPOILER ALERT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE ORIGINAL FILM!) when it becomes apparent the school is run by a coven of witches intent on human sacrifice.
Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich keep the bones of Argento’s story, fleshing it out with much talk of the terrorist Baader-Mienhof bombings, Susie’s backstory and Klemperer’s search for his long lost wife. Aptly subtitled “Six Acts and an Epilogue Set in a Divided Berlin” the new version is an hour longer than the original and while it is visually stunning it feels padded for length.
Not to say there aren’t memorable moments and ideas. A death-by-voo-doo-dance sequence is queasily beautiful and the film’s climax, a Grand Guignol freak-out, must be seen to be believed. It’s beautifully rendered, all grey skies and red rivers of blood, not nearly as lurid as Argento’s movie—except, perhaps for the exploding head sequence—but it is solemn when it should shock.
There blood, there’s bloody and then there’s the river of cinematic plasma that flows through the aptly named “Revenge” from first time French writer-director Coralie Fargeat. Gory and uncompromising, this is a violent vision for those with a love of Grand Guignol cat-and-mouse games and a strong stomach.
Set in a remote, desert bound luxury villa, “Revenge” is the unsettling story of three wealthy men, the arrogant Richard (Kevin Janssens) and pals Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) and one woman, Jen (Matilda Lutz). Jen is Richard’s mistress, seduced by his good looks and the perks his money offers, i.e. cocaine and private helicopters. The men are there for the good times and an annual hunting trip. What begins as a glamorous, sexy getaway turns foul when Stan sexually assaults Jen. When she tearfully tells Richard what happened he tells her to brush it off, not to worry about it. When she threatens to tell his wife about their affair unless he does something about Stan he turns nasty. And so does the movie. Chased out into the desert, Jen is pushed over a cliff, impaled on a sharp branch and left for dead.
Suffice to say that will not be the last bloodshed offered up in “Revenge’s” operatic tale of vengeance. With self-determination, a beer can and some self-surgery Jen survives with a new lease on life and vengeance in her heart.
“Revenge” is not a subtle movie. It is an exploitation flick that builds tension by taking its time between scenes of extremely graphic violence. Close-ups of fire ants swarming a rotted apple and Dimitri’s slo mo marshmallow mastication are add to the film’s disquieting atmosphere.
Clearly Fargeat has passed her days studying not only grindhouse gore but Michelangelo Antonioni films as well. The result is a blood-splattered art film that revels in its baseness.
As the title suggests “Revenge” is all about revenge but unlike most sex vengeance films this one is filtered through a female perspective. It is still hard to take but the transition from suffering to strength sets it apart from usual exploitation fare.
Christina Hendricks is thankful for a warm jacket. “I was shooting on a mountain only hours ago,” she says on the line from Calgary. “It is below zero but they are doing a great job of keeping me warm. Those parkas are no joke.”The Knoxville, Tenn., native hasn’t called to talk about the weather in Canada, however. She’s on the phone to discuss her new film, the creepy killer flick The Strangers: Prey at Night.
The former Mad Men star plays a mother who moves her family to a remote community in an effort to put some distance between her daughter and the bad influences of the city. There’s no one around except for three masked psycho killers, Dollface, Man in the Mask and Pin-Up Girl who emerge from the woods with knives, axes and bad intentions.
The creep-fest is a sequel of sorts to The Strangers, a 2008 home invasion film that saw the masked marauders attack an unsuspecting family. It’s also one of Hendricks’ favourite movies.
“I am a huge, huge fan,” she says. “I’ve talked about it for years. I think it is the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life and I reference it all the time. It was coincidental that they came to me. My manager said, ‘I don’t know if you are interested in doing a horror film about The Strangers.’ And I screamed, ‘The Strangers! Are you kidding me?’”
She says the villains of The Strangers: Prey at Night unsettle her more than Dracula, Frankenstein or anything that goes bump in the night because there’s nothing supernatural about them. But at the same time there’s nothing natural about the horrors the all-too-human monsters unleash on the newcomers.
“It’s my absolute worst nightmare,” she says, “people messing with you just because. It’s not a devil thing. It’s not a monster thing. It is not an apocalypse. It is just people coming to mess with you because they can.”
The film was shot in rural Kentucky. “It is beautiful during the day but when the sun goes down it is scary,” she says. “Everything is scarier in the dark.
“I thought, ‘Certainly I won’t be that scared. I know what’s going on,’ but I was actually scared. In the moments before we had to get ourselves worked up so Bailee (Madison, who plays her daughter) and I would go off to a different area and gear ourselves up before they yelled action. You can’t turn it on immediately. You have to get yourself in that state but in between we got along so well. We listened to music and had a laugh.”
She says she enjoyed everyone on set but didn’t hang out with the entire cast.
“They did keep a little bit more separate,” she says of the actors playing the masked killers.
“In the beginning we even said, ‘Can we not see them in their masks until the last moment?’ because they are so scary. It is kind of hard to be chatting and hanging out and having a snack with Dollface and the next thing you know she says, ‘I’m just going to go over here and kill you!’ ‘OK! I’ll see you in a minute.’ A little mystery helps.”
Movies like “The Strangers: Prey at Night” unsettle me more than stories featuring Dracula, Frankenstein or anything other thing that goes bump in the night because there’s nothing supernatural going on. At the same time there’s nothing natural about the horrors unleashed by the all-too-human monsters of this film.
The story gets underway when parents Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson) load their teens Kinsey (Bailee Madison) and Luke (Lewis Pullman) into the car, on the way to a new life. Leaving the city behind, they’re off to Gatlin Lake, a small community that empties out after Labour Day. The change is an attempt to separate Kinsey from the bad influences surrounding her in the city. You know Kinsey is a rebellious teen because she wears an off the shoulder Ramones T-shirt and smokes cigarettes.
Arriving at their new home, a deserted trailer park, the kids are immediately bored as the parents try and make the best of an uncomfortable situation. Things get lively when three masked psycho killers—Dollface (Emma Bellomy), Man in the Mask (Damian Maffei) and Pin-Up Girl (Lea Enslin)—emerge from the woods with knives, axes and bad intentions. From that point on this becomes a movie where people make terrible decisions and frequently scream, “Leave us alone!”
The spooky opening, complete with anxiety inducing music, a bit of murder and a title card claiming the tale you are about to see is “based on true events,” sets up the film’s uneasy atmosphere. However, the movie never gets to the point where it is actually scary. Instead, it is a queasy-making experience that stems from the idea of people doing awful things for no reason. It’s nihilism. Bad things just happen and that’s the creepy part. “Why are you doing this?” Kinsey shrieks. “Why not?” mumbles Dollface.
The jump scares are secondary to the notion of the ruthless faceless murderers. The family is generic, just victims waiting to be taken. The villains are the stars, even though their faces are covered and they barely speak. They’re not thrill killers. They don’t seem to take much pleasure in their work despite their penchant for listening to syrupy pop music and leaving a bloody happy face symbol at the scene of their crimes. They are primal evil, nothing more.
“The Strangers: Prey at Night” is one note. Summed up in one line it’s, “Unstoppable killers do dreadful things to wide-eyed victims.” Like the first film in this franchise—2008’s “The Strangers”—it’s tight, only 85 minutes long, and values suspense over gore but goes too heavy on the sadism.
