Posts Tagged ‘Theodore Pellerin’

THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE: 2 ½ STARS. “old-school thrills, modern culture”

“There’s Someone Inside Your House,” now streaming on Netflix, throws a Halloween assortment of slasher movie standards together, like good looking teenagers with dark secrets and a masked killer, to tell a story that falls somewhere on the Creep-O-Meter between “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Based on the Stephanie Perkins young adult novel, the story focusses on Makani Young (Sydney Park), a Hawaiian teenager who moved to a small Nebraska town to live with her grandmother after a traumatic incident at her old school.

At Osbourne High she is just one of a large group of kids harbouring shady pasts. The bloody, brutal murder of football star Jackson (Markian Tarasiuk) rocks the school, revealing a masked killer on the loose who exposes his victim’s darkest moments before offing them. And get this, the killer wears a 3-D printed mask of his victim while they do the dirty deed.

Creepy, right?

As the bodies pile up, Makani and her pals—imagine a modern day “Breakfast Club” comprised of astrophysicist Darby (Jesse LaTourette), a pill-popping smart aleck (Anthony Timpano), Zach, the son of a local farming magnate (Dale Whibley), Makani’s ex (Théodore Pellerin) and the kind-hearted Alex (Asjha Cooper)—investigate, hoping to end the killing spree before the killer ends their lives.

“There’s Someone Inside Your House” starts strong with the gruesome killing of the football star. It establishes the movie’s “the bloodier the better” attitude but while the killings continue, director Patrick Brice is more interested in the shocking secrets of the characters than their deaths. Sure, there are horror movie settings like corn mazes and long, dimly lit corridors, but Brice wants us to see the darkness of the characters, which is often hidden just under well-manicured surfaces. A perky high-school student council president, for instance, is revealed to be a closeted racist in a rather spectacular manner.

But, despite the sociological look at the lives and deaths of its characters, the film may have worked better, however, if we cared more about the people on screen. There are reveals, but Brice doesn’t allow the teen relationships to blossom, or the characters to create individual personalities. We get to know about Makani and her life, but her friends are all out of Central Casting. “You have no idea who I am,” the killer says when revealed. “You don’t even know who you are.” And, unfortunately, neither does the audience.

Brice attempts to drag “There’s Someone Inside Your House’s” throwback genre into the present with a mix of old-school thrills, modern cultural norms and a killer who takes the term “cancel culture” a bit too seriously, but never quite gets there.

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS: 4 STARS. “riveting emotional honesty.”

“Never Really Sometimes Always” is being billed as an abortion drama but is really a story of class, gender and the bond between two young women.

When we first see 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) she is performing at a school talent show. As she nervously sings a song called “He Makes Me Do It” she is confronted by indifference from her step-father (Ryan Eggold) and heckles from her male classmates. What her parents and friends don’t know is that Autumn suspects she is pregnant. A visit to the crisis pregnancy center in her rural Pennsylvania town confirms her fears. “If it is positive is there any way it could be a negative?” she asks as the pregnancy test returns a result. Told she is ten weeks along, the nurse shows her a VHS tape that begins with a dramatic voiceover. “The horrible truth is that abortion is an act of violence against the baby.”

As Pennsylvania law requires women under 18 to receive parental permission before having an abortion, Autumn and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) hop a bus across state lines to a clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Alone in an unfamiliar city, the two must rely on one another as obstacles are placed in their way.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is a quiet, keenly observed movie that avoids the pitfalls of pathos to present a story on the topic of bodily autonomy. Stark and naturalistic, it relies on subtlety and nuance to comment on a topic that is frequently the subject of histrionics. Director Eliza Hittman allows Autumn’s anxiety to be the focus of the story, giving us a powerful, nonjudgement window into the inner workings of her decision.

The title is key to one of film’s most riveting scenes of emotional honesty. At the NYC clinic she is asked to answer a series of questions like, “Has anyone made her have sex against her will?” regarding her sexual history and partners. Each is answered with one word, never, rarely, sometimes or always. As the questionnaire continues the scene becomes fraught with meaning as each answer brings up a wellspring of feelings in Autumn.

If there is a downside here it’s that “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” relies so heavily on the unsaid. The unspoken nature of the relationship between Autumn and Skylar reveals the deep bond they share—they often communicate through looks and body language—but occasionally feels too spare in longer scenes. That being said, their relationship is a thing of beauty as they find strength in one another in good times and bad.

CANADIAN SCREEN AWARDS: RICHARD HOSTED THE PRESS ROOM AT THIS YEAR’S CSA’S!

Thanks to the Canadian Screen Awards for having Richard in again last night to host the Press Room. He interviewed the winners as they left the stage and chatted with Mary Walsh, Billy Campbell, Karine Vanasse, Jennifer Baichwal, Stephan James, Deepa Mehta, Theodore Pellerin, the cast of Un Colonie, Catherine O’Hara and the gang from Schitt’s Creek, Jasmin Mozaffari, the Kids in the Freakin’ Hall, AmyBeth McNulty, Kim Coates and many others. Thanks to Anna-Lea Boeki, Alexandra Staseson and Mr. Will Wong for the pictures!