Disgrace Invaders

A few years ago, I wrote about how much it hurt to lose the ability to go to movie theaters and how it felt like it isolated me from both a social experience that I really enjoyed and a solitary one that felt like stolen time.  For me, going to the movies alone was like taking time back from everyone and everything else that demanded it from me.  It was two hours or so where I could turn my ringer off, put my phone in my pocket, and train my eyes on something other than the crushing weight of endless connectivity.  I praised trash TV like Tiger King for its ability to help us cope with the outside world that kept us on edge and, at the time, in fear of spreading a deadly disease to our friends and loved ones.  In times like that (and times like these), I still find merit in watching something with no real artistic value, something that doesn’t make you feel…anything, really.

And now I’ve found something else to replace that Tiger King feeling at a time when reality no longer makes sense to me.  If you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know that I am a gamer.  I hesitate to call myself that because it’s become a loaded term these days, but I enjoy TTRPGs, board games, chess, and, especially, video games.  Video game media kind of sucks, though.  Until Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, game-based media was pretty poor.  What tends to be worse than video game-based movies are movies about gaming and gamers.  Sure, Grandma’s Boy had its moments here and there and was generally watchable, and Max Reload and the Nether Blasters had its own sort of low budget charm, but a lot of is very bad.  Leave aside films like Wreck-It Ralph and WarGames, which are quite good; that’s a different feel altogether than the kinds of films I’m talking about.  Record stores and movie rental places certainly drew the longer straw in that particular game.

So that brings me to the trash I’m talking about today: Pixels, a rightly forgotten film from 2015 with a robust 18% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% audience score.  Now, mind you, I’m not here to defend this movie as a misunderstood film that should actually be well regarded, like Be Kind Rewind or 2 Fast 2 Furious, because Pixels is truly, truly bad.  From the uninspired Suicide Squad-esque soundtrack (substituting 80s pop for the schizophrenic classic rock radio station that scored that film) to the by the numbers plot, pretty much everything about Pixels is bad storytelling.  And I knew this going in, after all, it is an Adam Sandler movie, which has been a hallmark for really terrible films for the past couple of decades now.  Sandler on the movie poster generally equals a bad movie.

And yet, somehow, this movie made an impression on me.  A world in which Kevin James is the President and Adam Sandler and Josh Gad are the only hopes for humanity against an alien invasion that modeled itself after an arcade tournament from 1982 that NASA sent to space for some reason manages to make more sense than the one we live in now.  And for that reason alone, it became some comforting piece of fast food that leaves you feeling a little sick afterwards, but still, satisfied, in a strange and inexplicable way.  The amount of talent in this film that doesn’t show is truly stupefying.  Josh Gad, we know is a multitalented individual who can act, sing, and voice almost unbearably sweet cartoon characters; yet here, he’s a one dimensional stereotype that makes the characters in The Big Bang Theory seem deep.  Michelle Monaghan plays the obligatory romantic interest for Sandler, with the predictable lack of chemistry not keeping them from getting together for no reason at all other than the fact they’re both there, and I believe I’ve made it clear that I hold her in the highest regard.  She’s one of my favorite actresses of all time and one of the most talented, in my opinion.  But, that doesn’t really matter in a movie like this.  Peter Dinklage, at the time still riding high on the success of Game of Thrones, comes in with a fairly bog standard jerk character that really doesn’t strain his acting abilities.  Brian Cox, years before he dominated the screen in Succession, plays one of the Joint Chiefs whose main role is to insult Adam Sandler (which, well, I’d take that job too).  Sean Bean, Boromir himself, has a small part, but I guess after Fellowship, he has nothing left to prove, so why not get the paycheck?  Even Dan Akroyd, comedy royalty, has a neat little cameo.  But none of that really matters, by design.  It’s a bad movie and was always meant to be.

There is some novelty to seeing Pac-Man marauding down the streets like some giant yellow menace and I’m sure if I ever actually played Caterpillar, I would have had an opinion on how faithfully it was rendered on screen as an alien attack, but that was before even my time.  The production value of the film is quite good, certainly befitting of its $88 million budget.  But other than the fact that it looks good in HD there isn’t a whole lot to praise here. I mean, I guess I enjoyed it more than Ready Player One, which is a bar set so low an actual caterpillar could hurdle it.

However, it did something for me that I sorely needed at the time; it allowed me to turn my brain off.  And I mean all the way off.  Everything about it that was stupid, for some reason, didn’t bother me and its failure to engage my emotions in any way was a welcome reprieve from the world at large.  So now, in a way that I cannot possibly explain, I have a strange level of affection for a movie that is bad, that I know is bad, and that I couldn’t defend in just about any way.  I could say that I got three genuine laughs during its rather unnecessarily long 1 hour, 46 minute run time (the first 40 minutes or so really drag, with way too much setup), which is a better hit rate than some sitcoms.  It’s three more laughs than I got in the entire 16 episode first season of the Night Court reboot, but that’s not what matters to me when it comes to Pixels (also, don’t watch the Night Court reboot, it’s bad in a way that’s not good at all; I suffered through that so you don’t have to).

This isn’t really a review of Pixels, I couldn’t in good conscience tell you to watch it just because I found some comfort in it.  It’s more of a song of praise for finding the right kind of trash in the moment you need it.  And, dear readers, you know I try to be honest with you; I tell you when things make me cry, I tell you when they make me laugh, when they make me question my own existence, and when a guilty pleasure shouldn’t be guilty at all.  Because we are all so hard on ourselves in a world that’s really hard on us too, so if you like something that’s bad, or even if you don’t like it and it makes you feel good or even just feel nothing at all, that deserves to celebrated and you don’t deserve to feel bad about it.  So, I leave you with this final thought: remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and if you can, watch Be Kind Rewind; it’s really a hidden gem.

Satanic Panic at the Disco

As Halloween season comes to a close, I want to give you one last look at the spooky stuff I’ve been watching in case you’re like me and your ideal Halloween night is spent with the lights off, hiding from trick-or-treaters, and watching something on your iPad with your headphones in.  But hey, I at least put a bowl out with some candy.  Well, I put a bowl out with a sign that says “Please take one” and everyone just assumes some kid dumped it into their sack before they got there.  It’s not very sporting, but what can you do? (I don’t actually do this; don’t do this, it’s not nice)

This probably won’t shock you, but I watch a lot of TV and movies, of all sorts of genres, and throughout the history of the medium. It’s to the point that, like rappers who can tell what their freestyle opponents are going to say before they finish their lines, I can usually tell what’s coming next.  I know the punchlines to jokes before they’re delivered, I usually have a good idea what the twists are going to be, so sometimes things just feel rote and predictable.  I value being surprised—which is different from being tricked, but that’s a topic for a different day.

The new Peacock original series Hysteria! is one of those surprising shows.  I settled in thinking it would be a fairly entertaining horror-comedy, something to akin to Totally Killer, Amazon’s retro time travel slasher comedy flick from 2023, in which Julie Bowen also stars.  But Hysteria! threw me for a loop.  I mean, it has Bruce Campbell in it, and four episodes in (halfway through the season), he seems to be the only character keeping his head on straight, which is not what you expect from a Bruce Campbell character.  I really appreciate that he’s playing against type here, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  The cast here is really good, with the more notable names like Campbell and Bowen giving way to the young actors and letting them showcase their performances.  But, I have to give a special shoutout to Nolan North as Bowen’s husband, the voice of Nathan Drake himself, the main character of my all time favorite video game series Uncharted and Allison Scagliotti, who played Claudia in Warehouse 13, a positively delightful sci-fi show whose time was, like many, far too short.

We start off as B horror movie as you can get.  It’s a small town called Happy Hollow in 1989 and two teens are getting hot and heavy while her mom is away and it does not take long before tragedy strikes.  Odd noises, an impending sense of doom; at first just, it was just that they were going to be caught by the girl’s pious mother, but then real fear sets in.  Two men in cloaks and masks burst through the door and drag the teens away.  Smash cut to the awkward Dylan at school, pining after the pretty, popular girl Judith, all the while ignored by everyone but his heavy metal bandmates.  Set firmly in the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, Dylan decides to take advantage of the tragedy to create a hook for his band, because it’s all anyone can talk about now—you see, the missing boy, captain of the football team, of course, had a pentagram painted in red on his house.  So, he crafts new personas for himself and the band and leans into it.  Word of the concert spreads, the pretty, popular girl seems interested, and Dylan unwittingly puts himself at the center of mass panic.

And this is where things get precarious.  The first episode set up a fair amount of expectation for what was to come next, but I wasn’t hooked quite yet; I’d enjoyed what I’d seen, I had a few questions that needed answers—and you know how I love a mystery—so I was willing to stick around.  After all, shows need some time to gain their footing and while patience is much thinner these days than it used to be, I usually like to give a show three episodes if I think it has a chance of being good.  The pilot is a long one that does drag a little bit towards the end, as you blow past the usual 42 minute runtime of an hour long drama and to the full hour mark, there were many scenes that felt like the end of the episode, but then it kept going.  I wasn’t convinced yet, not fully, but I really wanted to know why all the news coverage was about the missing boy and not the missing girl and why the pentagram was painted on the boy’s house when they were taken from the girl’s home.  These are some of the questions that had me eager to watch the next episode.

The tone and focus change in the second episode, sort of eviscerating the expectations of it being a horror spoof, and while it still brings a few moments of levity and comic relief, the darkness at the center of the story starts to unfold.  I was so pleasantly surprised by how the show subtly diverted into a slightly more serious tone and started to thread its way through the different interconnected stories.  But what could easily feel like a JJ Abrams-esque mystery box that is going to present a great number of questions only to ignore or hand wave them away, Hysteria!, despite the comical punctuation in its name, presents itself as a serious show.  And by serious, I mean well-made, well thought out, and frankly, interestingly put together.  Rather than relying on big, dramatic reveals, Hysteria! metes out the information little by little, leaving you often learning something new about the mystery gripping the town and leaving you in the dark enough to remain in anticipation for what’s going to come next.  After four episodes, I’m pretty well hooked on this and I can’t wait to see if they can pull it off.

While Hysteria! doesn’t appear to have the depth or scares of Stranger Things, it’s hard not to draw parallels, especially with the fourth season, which relies heavily on Satanic Panic to scapegoat heavy metal fan Eddie Munson as the cause of the mysterious deaths in Hawkins.  Much like Eddie, Dylan becomes a bit of a pariah, but also a bit of a folk hero to the kids at school who have otherwise felt ignored—and that includes a surprisingly diverse cross section of the social scale.  However, Hysteria! doesn’t feel quite like it’s trying to be big, dumb fun, nor does it feel like it’s trying to be Stranger Things either.  It’s almost unfair to compare the two despite the surface level similarities, but it is inevitable.  Halfway in, the scares haven’t really ramped up—there are creepy rituals, a lot of metal music, a lot of makeup, and a lot of impassioned speeches about the lack of god in schools and community, given by Anna Camp’s suspicious-in-more-ways-than-one Tracy (you may remember her from Pitch Perfect, but to me she’ll always be Pam Beesly’s sister), but it doesn’t feel invested in making you jump out of your seat, which may disappoint diehard horror fans, but is just fine by me.  It feels like Hysteria! is building to something, perhaps a tale about the dangers of false narratives spreading like a virus, but it’s impossible to say just yet.  Because at the moment, it’s keeping me guessing as to where it’s going to go next.

Whether what’s happening in Happy Hollow is truly supernatural and demonic or just unreasonable fear gripping a panicked populace is yet to be seen.  But I’m definitely on board to see how it all pans out.

A Disquieted Place

Continuing on with my spooky season coverage, I watched Late Night with the Devil for you, and now we’re going to talk about it.  By now you know that horror is far from my favorite genre, but it definitely has its draw when it’s done really well and Late Night is done very well.

First, the vitals.  Coming in at a scant 93 minutes, Late Night is a refreshingly compact movie that doesn’t waste much time, nor much of anything else.  In an era of bloated 2+ hour everything, plus the inevitable 4 hour Snyder Cuts, seeing a movie that’s just over an hour and a half was such a welcome change.  I really appreciate the economizing of storytelling—not that I don’t love to have a show with 8 or 10 episode and getting really stuck into it, but having a story told well in the time it takes to watch two episodes of The X-Files is just so nice.  It’s not a movie that feels short though, if that makes sense.  It’s lean, not thin.  All the fat has been trimmed and it doesn’t feel like there’s a wasted word or wasted shot in it.  Everything there has a purpose and it draws you in and keeps you there.  It’s a variation on the found footage theme; what you’re witnessing is a moment lost to time, immortalized in film, but somehow forgotten, unearthed for your eyes.  The movie starts with a quick overview, an introduction to the film you’re about to watch.  David Dastmalchian (whom you may know as Kurt from Ant-Man or Polka-Dot Man from The Suicide Squad) plays Jack Delroy, host of the show Night Owls, a perennial also-ran against Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in the 1970s landscape of late night television.

The footage you’re about to see is disturbing, they warn you.  Well, I don’t know about that, but it’s definitely some pretty creepy stuff.  As the introductory exposition explains, Jack is coming back from a personal tragedy and wants desperately to shake off the stigma of always being the runner up to Carson.  This pushes Jack to make more and more controversial decisions for his show, culminating in this Halloween special episode—an episode in which he brings on a medium to cold read the audience and a young girl called Lilly, the sole survivor of a Heaven’s Gate-like, demon worshipping cult that, under the care of parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell.  The idea here is to have Lilly tell her story and, eventually, see if she can channel the demon Abraxas, which the cult worshipped.

As you can imagine, what happens next is a source of great distress to everyone involved.  As it builds to a crescendo, the night goes terribly awry, and things get severely out of hand.  But more than anything, this movie is not about demonic possession.  This is not The Exorcist with a twist.  It’s not even about charlatans and fakers, nor is it about skeptics or close-mindedness to the unexplained or unexplainable.

It’s about success.  It’s about fame.  It’s about the sacrifices that people will make, both real and imagined, physical and emotional, that take a toll on them as they push their way to the top, or at least, in the case of Jack Delroy, very close to it.  Despite the trappings of a 1977 live broadcast, the things the movie has to say about modern content creation are both cutting and palpable, especially in a world where paths to fame and success in the media space are more varied than ever.  I’m not sure that anyone in the 1970s or 1980s or even the 1990s could have imagined a society in which you could make millions of dollars by having people watch you play video games or do makeup tutorials or do whatever it is that people do on TikTok.  This isn’t a criticism of any of those things; I’m genuinely amazed and often in awe of content creators who not only push to the top of their field in an increasingly competitive and saturated, noisy marketplace of content, but also cross over into traditional media as well.  I often wonder, when I hear someone sing with a voice so beautiful it moves me or I see someone act so well they completely disappear into their characters and all but literally become another person and they don’t get fame and recognition for those talents what sets the people who do apart.  Hard work and talent of course play a part, but I think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of luck involved as well.  But Late Night asks some very poignant questions about what you’re willing to give up and the lengths to which you’ll go in order to bask in the warm glow of audience adulation and makes some clever observations about the toll it takes on not only those seeking fame, but on those around them as well.

All this comes through the lens of a film so convincingly authentic looking and feeling that it’s easy to get lost in the movie.  The use of highly talented actors and actresses who are not household names definitely adds to this feeling of authenticity.  David Dastmalchian is not generally seen as a headlining name, despite the fact that you’ll probably recognize him if you’ve seen even half as many movies as I have and despite the fact he showcases some incredibly acting talent in this film.  Which, honestly, shouldn’t surprise me, because I’ve seen him play so many different roles well, but always in the background.  Australian actress Ingrid Torelli absolutely nails the role of Lilly in a way that leaves you unsettled from the moment she comes on screen until the end credits roll.  She has an extremely peculiar way about her, staring into the camera and seemingly always knowing immediately which camera is on her, only breaking to speak to Jack or glower at the skeptic brought on to debunk the acts on the show.  That is, until she’s strapped to a chair and the events of the film are truly set into motion.  It’s easy to focus on the two of them as standout performances, but really no one isn’t carrying their weight in the film and they all do such a great job, I could spend the rest of my column inches just singing all their praises.

Doing a full analysis of this film seems warranted, but I don’t want to go any deeper into it because I can’t do that without spoiling the movie for you and this is something I want you to experience for yourself.  The attention to detail in every level of this movie is immensely impressive—it’s not just the acting that’s praiseworthy, every little thread in the movie can be followed to a satisfying end and the way every minor aspect of the film looks and feels like a great deal of thought and care went into it, from the moments in which tape betrays its age through dubious warps and glitches, to the placement and positioning of every single prop—Late Night with the Devil is a masterclass in minutiae, a practice in particulars, and a study in specifics.  Even the name of Jack’s late night talk show Night Owls feels like a carefully crafted reference not only to the idiomatic use of the term, but also to the owl iconography in alien and paranormal circles. It’s not just an entertaining and insightful film, it’s relevant in today’s media landscape.  When we look at the sounds that echo across cyberspace, they are often the outlandish, the ridiculous, the vitriolic, the venomous, and the insidious.  The ones banging the drums the loudest to get over the din of the billions of voices are sometimes the ones that will do and say anything to get their version of success, no matter the damage they do.  And we’re all part of the outrage cycle; this bitter, spiteful ouroboros that we participate in with our television ratings and social media accounts.  Late Night with the Devil asks hard questions about the cost of success when you’re willing to attain it with reckless abandon and the complicity of those who allow it to happen.  And they’re questions we really should think about before answering.  Late Night might not scare you in the way you think it will, but it should scare you.

Charley and the Hemoglobin Factory

We did it, team.  We made it to another spooky season.  So this is the point where I remind you that I’m really not a horror guy, but then I go on to tell you about something in the horror genre that I really enjoy.  It’s true, horror is far from my favorite, but when it’s done well, I really appreciate it.  And there is one offshoot of the horror genre that I actually do love: the horror-comedy.

On the surface, it seems like an incongruous set of ideas.  If horror films and series act as a stand-in for tribal rites of passage or act to satiate our evolutionary instincts that have taken a back burner because we don’t really have to worry about being eaten by wolves for the most part anymore, adding comedy to the mix doesn’t seem like a great idea.  But it really is.  They can vary from creepy with a side of comedy to being fully farcical parodies like the Scary Movie franchise, so horror-comedies have a lot to offer even true fans of horror and non-fans alike.

So let’s talk about the 2011 remake of Fright Night.  I say this without ever having seen the original 1985 film or its sequel that I didn’t know existed until two days ago, but I have to say, I genuinely and thoroughly enjoy this film and upon watching it for only the second time recently, I think I’ve got to confer unto it hidden gem status.  I’m fully aware of how it was received critically, with an RT score of 72% and just 64 on Metacritic; and I know how I normally feel about movies in the 70% range, but this is definitely one of the exceptions.  Fright Night is a surprisingly strong entry into the world of horror-comedy.

It’s a fairly breathless ride. The movie starts in media res, setting up the premise.  Bad things are happening and people are dying and it gets really bloody.  Vampires and all that, they seem to always forget their manners.  But then you cut to Charley Brewster (played by the very talented late Anton Yelchin) walking his dirt bike home and chatting with his pretty neighbor before his mom (played by the always excellent Toni Collette) gets on his case for leering.  Charley is a fairly typical teenager, trying to shed his nerd past in an effort to be perceived as cool and do all the things being a nerd can sort of lock you out of socially when you’re high schooler surrounded by high school-aged minds.  I remember these days well, back when nerd culture wasn’t mainstream and, though the memories are fading quickly, I also remember what it was like to be a teenager unsure of yourself, so I commiserate with his plight.  Some typical chauvinist teenage banter ensues, but it doesn’t last long before Charley’s nerd past rears its ugly head in the form of McLovin from Superbad (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who plays a variation on the roles you know and love from him, but with a neat twist).  He ambushes Charley after class and lays it on him—the empty seats and Bueller moments in the morning roll call aren’t kids skipping class; they’re being eaten by a vampire and that vampire turns out to be the sexy next door neighbor digging out the concrete under his house for some unknown reason.  See, Charley has this new popular girlfriend (played by Imogen Poots, who seemed to be Yelchin’s horror partner; she’s also great in the very good, but not very funny film Green Room with him) whom he is desperate to keep from finding out that his deep dark LARPing secrets, so when McLovin threatens him with exposure, he agrees to go with him on his recon mission.

And from there, the movie just flies.  In about 10 to 12 minutes, you’re in on everything and Charley has been brought up to speed.  Fright Night is not a movie that’s interested in keeping you waiting or keeping the main characters in the dark.  It doesn’t take long before you’re thrown into the deep end and so are they.  What results is a legitimately funny, action-packed locomotive ride to the end of movie, with very few stops along the way.  The inimitable David Tennant plays Peter Vincent, a Criss Angel-like illusionist who claims to have occult knowledge of things like vampires, and he absolutely crushes the role.  As someone who has never been a Doctor Who fan, I am quite the big fan of Tennant (his pandemic show Staged with Michael Sheen is a particular high point for me and he just seems like an all around good guy) and he does not disappoint in Fright Night.  If I had been on the fence about the movie until his appearance, his performance absolutely pushes me over into the solid like side.  Tennant plays the role of Peter Vincent with such aplomb and charm that, well, he doesn’t really need vampire mind control powers to get you in a trance.  He’s just that good.

After speaking to Peter Vincent, Charley gears up for the final showdown.  He does what any high school kid would do when faced with a supernatural monster—he heads to the local hardware store and loads up in a way that feels very familiar if you’ve seen Stranger Things before this.  I’m not certain that scene is a reference to Fright Night, but I really do like to think it is.  I know I’ve come across a fair few inquisitive cashiers in my time, so it’s probably a juxtaposition of a common occurrence into a fantastical setting, but, well, we humans are wired to find patterns and connections, so let me have this one.  It’s certainly more fun than when the cashier comments on my pint of Americone Dream, boxes of frozen White Castle, and takeaway container of store-made pasta salad (that counts as a vegetable, right?).  Why yes, I am having a party; I just happen to be the only one invited.  Anyway, it was always going to end in a final showdown (between Charley and Colin Farrell, not me and the cashier, I don’t get down like that) and the movie comes to a satisfying ending.  Horror-comedies that have tonally difficult endings are a problem that can muddle the whole experience, but no splash on this one.  It’s a solid conclusion.

And that’s really kind of it for the movie; without just recapping what goes on, since it moves at such a breakneck pace after a relatively short preamble, I can’t go much deeper into it without spoiling the film for you.  It’s 106 minutes of turn your brain off fun.  By comparison, 106 minutes into Jurassic World: Dominion—which definitely requires you to turn your brain off, but the fun part is a missing component—you probably still think the movie is about dinosaurs and not about giant bugs.  If you feel like you need something like that this season, in this particularly scary October, Fright Night might be the movie for you.  At the time of posting, Fright Night is available on Peacock and Hulu, as well as being on Tubi, which is free to use (without an account, if I recall correctly), with ads being the only inconvenience.  I think you should give it a try.