Unfriended review

          One of the reasons I am continually interested in horror films, despite its poorly skewed attempt-to-success ratio, is that it’s a genre that's always encouraged to experiment and can do so in way that is fun and poppy. Sixteen years ago mainstream audiences were caught off guard by “The Blair Witch Project” because of its rough production and the then-untitled ‘found footage’ conceit. Today--five "Paranormal Activities" later--what was once considered risky and forward thinking now feels pretty standard and taken for granted. With“Unfriended,” director Levan Gabriadze takes an even more minimal approach in making a feature film that plays in real-time, entirely on an active computer screen.

        The majority of the movie is from the perspective of teenager Blair Lily (Shelley Hennig). As she clicks through her multiple browsers and computer aps, she soon joins a group Skype call with her high school boyfriend Mitch (Moses Storm) and a handful of other classmates (Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Renee Olstead). They spend the first few minutes of their digital hangout discussing regular teenage gossip until a mysterious source, claiming to be an old friend of theirs named Laura who videoed her own suicide the year before. This source then begins to post embarrassing pictures to Facebook accounts, airing-out group secrets and systematically persuading the friends to casually off themselves.

       The set-up of a betrayed friend from the past coming back to haunt a group of narcissistic teenagers is nothing new to the genre but it's also something that doesn't have to feel old. In the internet age, where the past is literally never forgotten, now that everything always digitally documented, the film’s symbolism about old decisions coming back to haunt you later is undoubtedly relevant. Unfortunately these ideas play more incidentally than intentional and are never fully explored or mined in way that’s particularly scary.

       The idea to confine the entire film to the visible actions of a computer screen, never allowing for a cut-away or any other kind of cheat to open up the scene, is a lofty experimental goal and I commend Gabriadze for sticking to his guns and staying committed to the gimmick all the way through. To the film's credit, it’s surprising how much character definition we are able to access by viewing the way our protagonist frantically googles, fact-checks or chats, but this minimal POV also keeps us from really learning anything useful about the other characters that we're only seeing through the tiny windows of the movie's open Skype call. The performances by the mostly-unknown young cast are convincing enough but are these actors are given almost no breathing room to develop their characters beyond the base-reactions they have to sell to punctuate each plot point. What results is an 83 minute viewing experience that feels a lot longer than it is. 

                 As a horror movie it's not scary enough and every jump-scare is lazily provided by a sudden shriek or thud. Visually the movie fails to work as basic cinema. In fact, I’m not even sure if we can really call “Unfriended” a movie, in the most technical sense of the word. I suppose it uses a video element to tell a narrative but there’s no actual film language to speak of. A part of me appreciates this anti-aesthetic as something potentially interesting and modern, while another part of me thinks it’s reductive the point of formal disintegration. Regardless, the movie, if that’s what we choose to call it, isn't very good and its idiosyncratic presentation both overwhelms and undersells the story.

Grade: D+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2015

Furious 7 review

                 Longtime collaborator, Justin Lin, who has been directing the “Fast and the Furious” films since cult-favorite “Tokyo Drift” back in 2006, has stepped aside to let “The Conjuring” and “Insidious” director James Wan take the wheel, and what’s both impressive and disappointing about this sequel is that, given the tonal disparity between these directors, the transition is pretty seamless.  Considering Lin’s success in reviving this once dwindling franchise, Wan locks in-step with Lin’s previous vision and continues to up the visual and conceptual ante.

                 If you stuck around after the credits of “Fast & Furious 6” you would have known that action-schlock extraordinaire Jason Statham would play heavily in this installment. Remember the villain of the last film, or maybe the one before that? It’s okay, nobody does. All you need to know is that Jason Statham plays his brother Deckard Shaw, and he’s pissed. After hospitalizing detective Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) he then goes after Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew (Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris). In the middle of this personal battle, the FBI, headed by a smarmy Kurt Russell, drops in to make sure Shaw doesn’t access a super-Snowden NSA chip called the Gods-eye. Also, Toretto’s gal Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is having some existential issues, having once been brainwashed and memory wiped through at least two sequels.

                These movies have become so dumb and so transparently disinterested in emotional or physical reality that they have now transcended middling action-camp and settled into post-ironic sincere spectacle. Besides some distracting product placement, there isn’t an overwhelming sense of cynicism or muffled shame in doing exactly what it advertises to do, which is execute extended and elaborate set-pieces that could never take place in any universe we live in by actual human beings. Thank god cinema exists so that I can see a scene where cars are dropped from airplanes and parachuted directly into a high-speed vehicular shootout. “Furious 7” also blesses us with a scene where Vin Diesel crashes through the windows of the three separate Eithad Towers in Abu Dhabi, catching roughly two hundred feet of air between them.

                The problem with throwing out naturalism and the laws of physics completely is that the stakes are lowered to the point of near-disinterest. When characters can jump out of twelve story buildings and land face up on the top of a car or drive off of and roll down jagged cliffs and walk away alive, the threshold for suspense is extended. Every character in this film should have died at least three times each and even as they tirelessly wale on each other, when brutally fist fighting, it doesn't seem to matter how hard they hit or where they on the body they take a shot.

                However, after all the exploding is done, the most human moment of the film comes in the last five minutes, when the cast gives Paul Walker, who died tragically during the filming of this production, a loving tribute and farewell to his character Brian O’Connor. Of course it was necessary to write him out in order continue the series without him, but it was also done from a place of real grief and warmth. I can’t say that outside of the knowledge of Walker’s real death this moment is entirely earned, but it’s touching nonetheless.

                Never mind how stupid or inane the ‘plot’ might be or how cheesy the dialogue is or how lazy some of these camera-winking performances occasionally are, these movies celebrate the pure joy cinema as a showcase for action mechanics. In a time where Comic Con culture seems rules the genre, it’s refreshing to see a franchise that recalls the testosterone driven films of 80s and 90s, now with a large, multi-ethnic cast, even as these films are becoming increasingly interchangeable.

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2015

It Follows review

               David Robert Mitchell’s supernatural stalker film “It Follows” evokes the tropes and trappings of many culturally recognizable horror movies, but does so in a way that showcases his unique filmic point of view and pays homage without succumbing to lazy fanboy pastiche. Not unlike recent independent horror films such as Ti West’s “House of the Devil” or Adam Winegard’s “You’re Next,” viewers of a certain age will be reminded of the babysitter slashers of the late 70s and early 80s--particularly John Carpenter’s genre-defining “Halloween”—but here, the message about teenage sexuality is treated with more complexity and compassion than the Reagan-era morality massacres.

               Jay Height (Maika Monrow) is a high-school girl secretly dating an older guy (Jake Weary), who after rushing them out of a movie theater seduces her into a passionate parked car encounter.  Their bliss quickly turns to dread once he informs her that their union will enact a curse in the form of a shapeshifting, immortal entity that will follow her until she either dies or passes it on to someone else. After the two making a run for it, Jay’s dropped off back home, still stunned from a complete sense of bodily betrayal and with the new emotional and psychological burden of convincing her younger sister (Lili Sepe) and her friends (Keir Gilchrest, Olivia Luccardi) of the ghostly presence that’s on its way to kill her.

                Clearly this movie wants us to think about the consequences of hasty hanky-panky, but to call it a simple condemnation or cautionary tale would also be underplaying the greater depth of this discussion. Jay as a young female protagonist is faced with a sexual reality that follows her after an encounter she was tricked into participating. The trauma of this event is so impossible to describe that she is left without many she can comfortably confide in besides her peer’s, two of whom volunteer themselves to relieve her of the curse. Once her body becomes a plot point her relation to every male character is loaded with difficult consequences and choices to make.  Many will probably read an STD metaphor in all of this and that’s a valid enough interpretation, but we should also consider the drastic differences in sexual power and vulnerability expressed in the gender dynamics of these teenage characters, especially given the noticeable and purposeful lack of parental or adult representation in the film.

                Beyond the layers of interesting subtext to sift through, this film also delivers the goods as an effective horror thriller. Mitchell manipulates the audience with lingering establishing shots and subverts the use of subjective camera with Hitchcockian delight. The artful lighting and blocking of each scene also keeps things stylish and moody without divorcing the film from a realistic and tangible atmosphere, but it isn’t so tethered to reality that it forgets to enjoy being a movie. This is best expressed in the synthy score by electronic artist Disasterpeice, who soaks each creeping build-up in horror movie nostalgia, bringing to mind the Casio background music of John Carpenter and the dreamy scores of Italian director Dario Argento’s band The Goblins.

                Occasionally, Mitchell feels the need to pay off the mystery and defuse the building tension with clumsy attack scenes. Minor special-effect moments don’t work quite as well as the film deserves and somewhat demystifies the overall ambiance. The potential for more disorientation and deeper scares are available but these elements are diluted by more character interactions and metaphorical allusions—a respectable, if somewhat lamentable creative choice.

              “It Follows” celebrates its throwback appeal to the teen-driven drive-in classics, but it also has something to say about its characters and its target demographic: Sex isn’t simple for anyone, especially teenagers, and it can’t be treated as a curse to hide from everyone or a game to play with just anyone. David Robert Mitchell does a wonderful job exploring the lasting effects our formative experiences have on the rest of our lives.

Grade: A-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2015