I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the psychological drama “Heel,” the giant snake movie “Beware Boiúna” and the thriller “Verity.”
Watch ther whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:32)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the absurdist environmental dramedy “Digger,” the suburban gothic “Verity” and the psychological thriller “Heel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 13:15)
I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko to talk about the absurdist environmental dramedy “Digger,” the suburban gothic “Verity” and the psychological thriller “Heel.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green. Directed by Mike P. Nelson.
REVIEW: A mix of Amazonian folklore and giant snake movies like “Anaconda” and “Python,” “Beware Boiúna” sets nature against man in a movie that’ll make you root for the territorial snake.
The story begins with a medical team, including doctor Alli (Jessica Rothe) and mechanic Lena (Kiana Madeira), on a six-week humanitarian mission on the Amazon River to deliver aid.
Their presence, coupled with the disruptive surveyors led by Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), upsets the natural balance of the rainforest, they awaken a behemoth named Boiúna, a giant serpent known as the Mother of the Waters. “When there is balance, she rests,” says Lena. “Imbalance, she defends.”
Boiúna spends much of the film’s overlong 104 minutes slithering in the background, seen only in quick glimpses amid the murky cinematography and jungle foliage.
In a riff on “Jaws,” director Mike P. Nelson keeps the creature mostly out of sight, à la Spielberg in “Jaws,” to allow the viewer’s imaginations to do the heavy lifting. What you can’t see should be more terrifying than Nelson can show you. But with this boatload of uninteresting characters, who lose whatever motivations and traits they may have started with on page one of the script once the snake starts to feed, all you’re left with is a big bad you barely get a look at and human snake food running through the jungle.
“Jaws” was effective because while the shark’s relentlessness was scary, you cared about the characters.
The colonizing bad guys are straight out of Central Casting’s Evil Invader Department, while the humanitarians seem to leave chaos in their wake. That they behave erratically doesn’t matter, because once Boiúna shows up all characterization and logic goes out the window. The characters have names, but they may as well be known as Snake Snack # 1 through #10 given the impact they leave behind.
It adds up to a giant snake movie without the camp appeal of “Anaconda” or the scares of a creature feature like “Jaws.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” a new holiday slasher now playing in theatres, Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell) becomes a Killer Santa after seeing his parents murdered by a man dressed as Jolly Old St. Nick. Have yourself a creepy little Christmas.
CAST: Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, and Mark Acheson. Written and directed by Mike P. Nelson.
REVIEW: For those with murder and mayhem on their Christmas list, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” is a naughty seasonal treat.
A loose remake of the controversial 1984 cult movie of the same name, this version begins at Christmas with young Billy left an orphan after a man dressed as Santa kills his parents.
Scarred for life, Billy (Rohan Campbell) grows up to become a drifter, moving from town to town working odd jobs during the day, and checking names off his naughty list by night. Every Christmas season, dressed as Santa—wearing the suit, he says, “flips a switch for me.”—and guided by a voice in his head, he uses an axe to dispatch people he deems as naughty, saving their blood as a souvenir in a gory advent calendar. “Santa’s gonna slay.”
When he lands in a new town, and gets a job at the local Christmas Shoppe, he not only finds plenty of new victims, but a chance at love with Pamela (Ruby Modine), a store clerk with anger issues. “She always was a pipe bomb,” says her father.
There are some vast differences between the violent 1984 Christmas exploitation flick and the 2025 version. The basic back story is the same, but this time around the narrative owes a debt to vigilante serial killer Dexter Morgan of Showtime’s “Dexter.” The voice that guides Billy to chop down his victims like he’s cutting down a Christmas Tree is essentially his “dark passenger,” and anti-hero Billy only kills bad people. So, maybe not the freshest fruitcake under the tree, but it doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth.
In a throwback to the original film and other slashers of the 1980s, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” has loads of practical—i.e. non-CGI—kills that have a rough ‘n ready feel. Whether Billy is using an axe or a giant set of antlers to off his victims, the effects, often punctuated by the loud, dramatic score by Canadian trio Blitz//Berlin, hit the mark between gooey and occasionally goofy. For instance, Billy’s rampage through a neo-Nazi Christmas party—“I’m dreaming of a white power Christmas,” they say.—is violent, cathartic and yet also quite funny.
At a quick 95 gory minutes, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” is perhaps best suited for slasher fans or anyone who would pay to go see a movie called “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”
