so i watched some things
May. 4th, 2024 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hexmixit's always a struggle for me to sit down and watch anything, even youtube vids, but jimmy's been bullying me into going to the theater more (literally the only time i'll sit there and watch something) so i have actually managed to see a few films recently. also caught (most of) another one he had on at home. figured i'd do little mini-reviews of those bc after all, why not, etc.
Southern Comfort, dir. Walter Hill (1981):
this is the one i've only seen most of. it's an exploitation film (in the vein of Deliverance) set in Louisiana during the Vietnam War and follows a squad of National Guard soldiers as they immediately fail at a simple "walk to the other side of the swamp" mission. it's pretty blatantly critical of the National Guard (immediate reference to Kent State and state-sanctioned brutality against black americans) and like every single character is a piece of shit, from Fred Ward's hyper-violent rambo-wannabe Reece to Powers Boothe's pragmatic-to-a-fault cynic Hardin. spent a good deal of the movie rooting for most of the characters to die (most of them do, don't worry).
the plot is a pretty simple "National Guard idiots antagonize the locals and subsequently Surprise Pikachu when the locals start killing them." the film can technically be categorized as horror; saw someone say Southern Gothic and i vehemently disagree with that categorization but yeah it's def horror. for 99% of the movie you never actually see the men attacking the soldiers; there's a real nice escalation of paranoia that this leads to at the end of the film, but even throughout there's this creeping sense of foreboding due to never knowing when an attack might come or where it might come from. which is additionally exacerbated when the soldiers start turning on each other.
it's an engaging watch tbh. the setting is a real bonus (i do love me a swamp) and the performances are great overall (surprise Brion James!). was pleasantly surprised by how anti-military it was (towards the end you get this major conflict between one of the soldiers trying desperately to stick to protocol while everyone else goes full lord of the flies around him, and the picture you're still given is just a bunch of assholes dying uselessly in a swamp bc they failed to see the locals as people & repeatedly treat casual violence as a joke.) the very final few minutes are also just...weird. the framing (significantly slowed down shot; distorted diegetic sound and real foreboding non-diegetic soundtrack) and final freeze frame kind of give a "the horror is not yet over" effect, even though we're shown a situation that should be a positive for the remaining characters. it's such an interesting choice and i'm really not entirely sure what to make of it tbh.
would rec this one overall though. it's very violent, all the main characters are unpleasant, there's also some casual racism (mostly at the beginning; used in the film's critique of the National Guard), and i also have to unfortunately warn for on-screen actual animal death (they do actually kill a pair of pigs while filming; this was during the part that i missed so i can't speak to how graphic it is), so like heads up if you do watch it.
my one major gripe is that there are no alligators. missed opportunity tbh.
Abigail, dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (2024):
so this one was a lot of fun. i almost don't want to say a damn thing about it bc i imagine it would be such an experience to go into this one blind with no knowledge of what it's about. so, that being said, the rest of this mini-review going behind the cut in case anyone would like to try just that.
very big fan of the premise of this one (spoilers ahead!) and i think it's a neat take on the vampire genre: group of criminals kidnap what they think is a little girl and find out she's a vampire. hunter-becomes-the-hunted scenario.
there's a little bit of plot complication regarding HOW the criminals end up in this situation, a tiny little "mystery" is presented surrounding it, but most of the film is pure action/horror. it's incredibly gory (blood explosions, decapitations, dismemberments, etc) and there are some genuinely spooky bits, but the film does a real good job of just being enjoyable to watch. the characters are also all interesting characters! you've got some that are genuinely shitty, some you feel sympathetic for, and some you like just bc they're funny.
there's a lot of little details that i also just enjoyed seeing bc it meant someone was sitting down to think about the scenario, as ridic as it is (mr. capcom could take notes *cough*). don't want to spoil too much, but as vague as i can make it: smoke wafting up off the skin of a character turning into a vampire in very dim sunlight; that same character struggling to speak and warn another that they're being controlled. like even just the consistency in the lore the film decided on being maintained...god resident evil has lowered my standards so much lmao.
nah, it's such a fun film tho, genuinely. it's not very deep, but it is an enjoyable action/horror flick with a cast of characters that are all interesting with an ending that i personally liked a heck of a lot. would absolutely rec this one!
Immaculate, dir. Michael Mohan (2024):
saw someone refer to this as a nunsploitation film and...yeah lmao. i decided to watch this one solely because i saw it'd pissed off conservatives and was like "well, why not." it's pretty clear from the trailer that it very much posits "pregnancy is the real horror" which is actually why i didn't care to see it bc...i agree lmao.
but: the film follows Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) as she joins a new Italian convent. she's american and can't speak Italian but she's earnest and devoted! the film opens with an ominous escape attempt from that exact same convent so the audience goes in knowing Shit's Not Right, and sure enough: Shit's Not Right.
there's some strange, almost-supernatural scares towards the beginning, and the movie does lean a little into that in terms of "what is going on here; is this the devil or what," though i will say that ultimately the movie is less interested in the supernatural than in the ways religion is used to do evil.
and BOY does the film excel where that's concerned: it becomes a pretty blatant analog to conservative christian attempts to politically control women's bodies (thru the repeal of roe v wade and increasingly draconian anti-abortion laws): Cecilia becomes pregnant (we're told through immaculate conception) and due to the conferred "holiness" through the pregnancy she loses complete control not only of anything regarding the pregnancy, but of her own body/health/self.
i had a little trouble buying Sweeney's performance towards the beginning (as naive, earnest Cecilia) but once doubt starts creeping in and she's increasingly haunted not just by the place she's slowly realizing she's trapped in but by her own body and the thing housed within it...this slow unwinding of her faith and docility is SO GOOD and Sweeney is really fucking fantastic here. like goddamn that last sequence? her screams? it's so incredibly powerful and such a believable performance.
the choices made for that final scene are also *chef's kiss* perfect. i'd rec the movie on that last little bit alone.
but, that aside, the movie absolutely shows the horror not only of pregnancy and loss of control of one's own body, but the twisted fanaticism of religion taken to extremes. and it is scary, i'll give it that. the second half of the film is more disturbing than anything, but there's a few good scares there at the beginning.
anyway this is another rec from me! following what turned out to be a trend in all three of these, it's also incredibly gory and violent, but there's this very satisfying cathartic stretch of violence at the end that literally had me pumping my fist in the theater lmao. it's a great little horror movie tho.
Abigail is a more enjoyable watch, i think, but of these three i think Immaculate is the one i'd most strongly recommend!
also, bonus movie: i went to see The Mummy in theaters this week for its 25th anniversary and like, sincerely: perfect movie, no notes. had a blast watching it in theaters tho! and the nice guy at concessions saved us some of the anniversary movie posters, which was INCREDIBLY rad of him.
gonna try to catch Mars Express next week bc it looks like it might be relevant to my dissertation (i mean it also just looks interesting in its own right, but that's the reason i'm using to justify going to the theaters again lol).
Southern Comfort, dir. Walter Hill (1981):
this is the one i've only seen most of. it's an exploitation film (in the vein of Deliverance) set in Louisiana during the Vietnam War and follows a squad of National Guard soldiers as they immediately fail at a simple "walk to the other side of the swamp" mission. it's pretty blatantly critical of the National Guard (immediate reference to Kent State and state-sanctioned brutality against black americans) and like every single character is a piece of shit, from Fred Ward's hyper-violent rambo-wannabe Reece to Powers Boothe's pragmatic-to-a-fault cynic Hardin. spent a good deal of the movie rooting for most of the characters to die (most of them do, don't worry).
the plot is a pretty simple "National Guard idiots antagonize the locals and subsequently Surprise Pikachu when the locals start killing them." the film can technically be categorized as horror; saw someone say Southern Gothic and i vehemently disagree with that categorization but yeah it's def horror. for 99% of the movie you never actually see the men attacking the soldiers; there's a real nice escalation of paranoia that this leads to at the end of the film, but even throughout there's this creeping sense of foreboding due to never knowing when an attack might come or where it might come from. which is additionally exacerbated when the soldiers start turning on each other.
it's an engaging watch tbh. the setting is a real bonus (i do love me a swamp) and the performances are great overall (surprise Brion James!). was pleasantly surprised by how anti-military it was (towards the end you get this major conflict between one of the soldiers trying desperately to stick to protocol while everyone else goes full lord of the flies around him, and the picture you're still given is just a bunch of assholes dying uselessly in a swamp bc they failed to see the locals as people & repeatedly treat casual violence as a joke.) the very final few minutes are also just...weird. the framing (significantly slowed down shot; distorted diegetic sound and real foreboding non-diegetic soundtrack) and final freeze frame kind of give a "the horror is not yet over" effect, even though we're shown a situation that should be a positive for the remaining characters. it's such an interesting choice and i'm really not entirely sure what to make of it tbh.
would rec this one overall though. it's very violent, all the main characters are unpleasant, there's also some casual racism (mostly at the beginning; used in the film's critique of the National Guard), and i also have to unfortunately warn for on-screen actual animal death (they do actually kill a pair of pigs while filming; this was during the part that i missed so i can't speak to how graphic it is), so like heads up if you do watch it.
my one major gripe is that there are no alligators. missed opportunity tbh.
Abigail, dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (2024):
so this one was a lot of fun. i almost don't want to say a damn thing about it bc i imagine it would be such an experience to go into this one blind with no knowledge of what it's about. so, that being said, the rest of this mini-review going behind the cut in case anyone would like to try just that.
very big fan of the premise of this one (spoilers ahead!) and i think it's a neat take on the vampire genre: group of criminals kidnap what they think is a little girl and find out she's a vampire. hunter-becomes-the-hunted scenario.
there's a little bit of plot complication regarding HOW the criminals end up in this situation, a tiny little "mystery" is presented surrounding it, but most of the film is pure action/horror. it's incredibly gory (blood explosions, decapitations, dismemberments, etc) and there are some genuinely spooky bits, but the film does a real good job of just being enjoyable to watch. the characters are also all interesting characters! you've got some that are genuinely shitty, some you feel sympathetic for, and some you like just bc they're funny.
there's a lot of little details that i also just enjoyed seeing bc it meant someone was sitting down to think about the scenario, as ridic as it is (mr. capcom could take notes *cough*). don't want to spoil too much, but as vague as i can make it: smoke wafting up off the skin of a character turning into a vampire in very dim sunlight; that same character struggling to speak and warn another that they're being controlled. like even just the consistency in the lore the film decided on being maintained...god resident evil has lowered my standards so much lmao.
nah, it's such a fun film tho, genuinely. it's not very deep, but it is an enjoyable action/horror flick with a cast of characters that are all interesting with an ending that i personally liked a heck of a lot. would absolutely rec this one!
Immaculate, dir. Michael Mohan (2024):
saw someone refer to this as a nunsploitation film and...yeah lmao. i decided to watch this one solely because i saw it'd pissed off conservatives and was like "well, why not." it's pretty clear from the trailer that it very much posits "pregnancy is the real horror" which is actually why i didn't care to see it bc...i agree lmao.
but: the film follows Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) as she joins a new Italian convent. she's american and can't speak Italian but she's earnest and devoted! the film opens with an ominous escape attempt from that exact same convent so the audience goes in knowing Shit's Not Right, and sure enough: Shit's Not Right.
there's some strange, almost-supernatural scares towards the beginning, and the movie does lean a little into that in terms of "what is going on here; is this the devil or what," though i will say that ultimately the movie is less interested in the supernatural than in the ways religion is used to do evil.
and BOY does the film excel where that's concerned: it becomes a pretty blatant analog to conservative christian attempts to politically control women's bodies (thru the repeal of roe v wade and increasingly draconian anti-abortion laws): Cecilia becomes pregnant (we're told through immaculate conception) and due to the conferred "holiness" through the pregnancy she loses complete control not only of anything regarding the pregnancy, but of her own body/health/self.
i had a little trouble buying Sweeney's performance towards the beginning (as naive, earnest Cecilia) but once doubt starts creeping in and she's increasingly haunted not just by the place she's slowly realizing she's trapped in but by her own body and the thing housed within it...this slow unwinding of her faith and docility is SO GOOD and Sweeney is really fucking fantastic here. like goddamn that last sequence? her screams? it's so incredibly powerful and such a believable performance.
the choices made for that final scene are also *chef's kiss* perfect. i'd rec the movie on that last little bit alone.
but, that aside, the movie absolutely shows the horror not only of pregnancy and loss of control of one's own body, but the twisted fanaticism of religion taken to extremes. and it is scary, i'll give it that. the second half of the film is more disturbing than anything, but there's a few good scares there at the beginning.
anyway this is another rec from me! following what turned out to be a trend in all three of these, it's also incredibly gory and violent, but there's this very satisfying cathartic stretch of violence at the end that literally had me pumping my fist in the theater lmao. it's a great little horror movie tho.
Abigail is a more enjoyable watch, i think, but of these three i think Immaculate is the one i'd most strongly recommend!
also, bonus movie: i went to see The Mummy in theaters this week for its 25th anniversary and like, sincerely: perfect movie, no notes. had a blast watching it in theaters tho! and the nice guy at concessions saved us some of the anniversary movie posters, which was INCREDIBLY rad of him.
gonna try to catch Mars Express next week bc it looks like it might be relevant to my dissertation (i mean it also just looks interesting in its own right, but that's the reason i'm using to justify going to the theaters again lol).
