Popcorn Frights 2019's second weekend gauntlet was another doozy, packed with a diverse lineup of films that included a war thriller, torture porn, zombies, Satanic horror-comedy, and supernatural horror.
First up, it's Red Dawn, Swedish style.
The Unthinkable (Den blomstertid nu kommer) (2018)
Not rated
Score: 4 out of 5
The Unthinkable is a rare sight at Popcorn Frights: a film that isn't a horror movie, at least not in a traditional sense. While it's set in Sweden during the midsummer celebrations, that is the only thing this has in common with Midsommar. No, this is a war movie, albeit one that's very much not in a traditional action movie mold, instead playing out like a thriller where the enemy soldiers are not the greatest threat to the protagonists' survival. It is a very modern kind of war movie, too, one reflective of modern fears about how wars are fought and who gets caught in the crossfire. And all of it is wrapped up in the gripping story of a man who's forced to deal with a past that he left behind, delivering some great characters who don't fit into the usual archetypes of a movie of this kind, all building to a knockout of an ending. It's a haunting and beautiful film that had me feeling angry, drained, frightened, pumped, and heartbroken, a slow burn that handles its subject matter very differently from similar American movies and mostly pulls it off.
A lot of the details of the attack don't make a whole lot of sense from the perspective of actual military planning, but they do work great as metaphor. In short, the Russians in this movie aren't the crew from Red Dawn who just line up a million troops at the border and roll in guns blazing. No, they're trickier -- and meaner -- than that. The terrorist attack was just the start; the Houses of Parliament are bombed to decapitate the government. Special ops teams embedded in the country bring down the grid. And that's not even getting into their truly vicious chemical weapon, the exact nature of which is a twist but which not only offers a good explanation for some of the more bizarre things that happen, but also very quickly laces every outdoor scene in the second half of the film with an atmosphere of dread as suddenly, the environment itself can turn against you. The weapon in question is pure sci-fi, with only a handwave about how the Israelis were working on something like it -- but while it doesn't resemble anything in the arsenal of any military (that we know of), and I do have some questions about when certain characters were first exposed to it, it does serve as a great representation of the non-military tactics with which Russian intelligence has sought to sow chaos in the West, turning our internet against us and displaying perhaps a better understanding of social media than its own creators and operators (blinded as they are by the fixations of the tech culture that birthed Silicon Valley). It is here where the film is far closer to the tradition of Red Dawn: a message of deep skepticism of Russian intentions and their involvement with the West, even if it never comes out and directly says who was behind the attack. Björn's co-workers at the power station insist that the problem with Swedish society today is immigrants and those newfangled computers and that Björn's fixation on the Russians is just his paranoia speaking, ignoring all the signs that seem obvious in hindsight. And when all is said and done, it's Vladimir Putin who's the clear winner.
A pure political polemic by itself, however, would've wound up just toothless propaganda, and it's here where the characters come in. While Alex is the one at the center of the story, the film is an ensemble piece about the people in his life, most notably his father Björn and his old flame Anna, as well as those connected to them, even tangentially. When Alex realizes that Sweden is under attack, his first thought is to go to the power station his father works at, located as it is in a bunker -- a move that forces all the feelings he has about his father up to the surface, as these two men with a lot of bad blood between them are forced to put it all aside for the greater good. Anna, meanwhile, was separated from her daughter, and has no clue where her mother is. Said mother, the last surviving member of the government and now the acting prime minister, is forced to lead the country from a secret, remote bunker, and must make the decision, upon finding out about the nature of the chemical weapons being used, of whether or not to send out an emergency warning that would save countless lives -- and potentially give away their location to the enemy. Through all of these stories, we get to see every side of what is happening -- the government to lend scope to the overarching narrative, and the perspective of the civilians down on the ground, who wind up profoundly touched and changed by the war in some deeply traumatizing ways.
The slow-burn nature of the invasion -- if you can even call it that -- winds up producing a slow-burn film, and here, it shines in its buildup to something terrifying. For the first hour or so, we see the signs constantly building up that there is something wrong: first the declining relations with Russia, then the terrorist attacks, then the realization of just how much planning the attacks took (in other words, it wasn't some lone-wolf jihadist) and that they were designed to sabotage critical infrastructure, then all the weird things with the power grid, the phone lines, the strange men Björn encounters, and more that indicate that, whoever was behind the attack, they're not done. And when the shit does hit the fan, the bad guys won't give you the satisfaction of an open, one-on-one encounter. The enemy soldiers are treated almost like horror movie monsters, stalking the shadows and mostly seen only in brief flashes as the light of their gunfire, and the motion detectors in the power station, give the only indication of where they are. It's a war where you can't see the enemy and don't know where they are except for the general direction that their gunfire is coming from, and once the invasion kicks in, it deftly shifts from a feel akin to an espionage thriller to an action thriller. The big action scenes are few in number, but I was surprised at how good they all looked, from a massive vehicular pileup on a bridge to a clash between a Cessna light plane and a Hind helicopter that demonstrated some serious guts on the part of the guy piloting the former. This movie had me on the edge of my seat, and my investment in the characters left me wondering which of them, if any, would make it.
The Bottom Line
A very different kind of war movie, The Unthinkable stands out thanks to its more deliberate pace and its focus on the drama of its civilian characters, offering a harrowing look at how a modern war might upend society. It isn't perfect, but by and large, it truly is a Red Dawn for our times.
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Next up, a punk-rock torture porn flick that... okay, I'm gonna be up front here, this one was a snore.
Artik (2019)
Not yet rated
Score: 1 out of 5
Artik was ninety minutes of ugly, pointless brutality that went nowhere, and didn't even offer many solid thrills in the balance. The Dare is lucky, in that it is no longer the worst film of Popcorn Frights 2019; it at least had a villain with some motivation who made sense, and was well-shot enough that I could forget about its wretched writing for stretches. Artik, though, is a collection of worn-out torture porn cliches from ten years ago sprinkled with a poor man's Rob Zombie and reheated in the microwave, the kind of film that feels like every negative stereotype of torture movies from back then and a symbol of why you don't usually see the genre these days. Worst of all, outside of one scene, it's not even that brutal. There's not a whole lot of actual gore shown on screen, just people screaming, and every character was so one-note that I didn't care about any of them.
The title character, Artik, is a backwoods serial killer who kidnaps people and tortures them in his dungeon, then buries their corpses from the head down on his farm. He also seems to have a group of feral children locked up in the barn, for whatever reason. His wife Flin and his son, referred to as "Boy Adam", both know about what he does; she stands by his side and helps out, and he is being raised and groomed to follow in his father's footsteps. Oh, and Artik and Boy Adam draw comic books based on the murders that he commits. That's pretty much it when it comes to their character development. We get no insight on just who this guy is, let alone why he's killing people, and given that we spend so much time with him, I was left wondering why I should give a shit. Artik is nothing more than a retread of half the slasher/torture porn villain archetypes in the book, all thrown into a blender together: a hulking, bearded redneck who is also, in his own twisted way, a family man, with nothing to break from the boilerplate nature of it all. I didn't care much about Boy Adam, either, with how little real characterization he gets beyond "raised by a serial killer", which is a whole slew of other cliches. Flin was barely a character at all. What is going on here, beyond just some guy killing people?
The film does eventually give us a genuine protagonist in Holton, a straight-edge punk who goes to AA meetings, but it doesn't find anything to do with him either. He's drawn in near the start of the film when he encounters Boy Adam when he's off the farm, noticing immediately that there is something wrong with the kid who's unaccompanied and drawing detailed images of a very large man brutally murdering somebody. Outside of his surface trappings, Holton is more or less a cipher, a blank slate for the audience to project themselves onto rather than a fleshed-out character in his own right. Artik decides at one point to torture him by force-feeding him liquor, but that's about the only time his straight-edge proclivities come up once he starts getting into the horror; it's all for show. Just as Artik is as generic as the killer in a torture movie can get, Holton is as generic as the lead in such a movie can get, there simply to survive and fight his way out of the farm and take Boy Adam with him. And since I never bought into Boy Adam as a character, the film mistaking creepy comic book drawings for character development, I was left with nothing to grab onto as I watched the violence that unfolded.
And it's not even good violence. The film may have a grimy-looking atmosphere, but that's about it, with only one early kill involving a fork and somebody's chin looking all that gruesome; it feels like they spent whatever meager budget they had on that scene. The camera usually cuts away just before the blood actually starts flowing, and while the looks of agony on the victims' faces say a lot, they only say so much. For a graphic torture movie that seemed to be riding entirely on mood what with everything else being lacking, it can't even really stick the landing in that regard.
The Bottom Line
Boring me just to write about, Artik is a pointless slog with very little to offer even for fans of these sort of torture movies, and a reminder of why movies like this aren't made very often anymore.
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We go international once again, this time to Venezuela, a country where surviving a zombie outbreak would probably be just another day for much of the populace.
Infection (Infección) (2019)
Not yet rated
Score: 4 out of 5
I wasn't just being glib with that comment up there; the idea was clearly on the mind of writer/director Flavio Pedota. Infection is a movie about the zombie apocalypse happening in a country that is, for all intents and purposes, already on the edge of collapse. While it does dip into a bit too many zombie movie cliches for its own good, the unique perspective and subtext offered by setting the film in Venezuela lends it a sort of righteous anger and social commentary of the sort often associated with Romero, but which tends to be lacking in many recent examples of the genre. Even after years of oversaturation of the zombie genre, this was still worth a watch.
The origin of the zombie virus here is a Russian junkie in Venezuela who was infected with rabies when he shot up a drug called krokodil, which in real life already has a nasty reputation for combining the worst of meth and opioids into one poisonous package. Here, the krokodil interacts with the rabies in the junkie's bloodstream to mutate the virus into a zombie virus, of the 28 Days Later variety: technically living, but itching to take a bite out of any human nearby. From here, we get three stories: that of a rural doctor named Adam who has to manage the rural patients around him whose loved ones bring them in with bite marks on their arms, that of Adam's son Miguel who has been sent to a remote country home to be with his grandparents upon news of the "rioting" in the cities, and that of Adam's friend Carlos, a government scientist searching for the cure for the zombie plague.
All of this is dressing for what turns out to be, for the most part, a damn good zombie movie. There isn't much gore, but there are a lot of undead people running around, eyes bloodshot and jaws snapping. The shots of the highways, towns, and countryside either abandoned or in chaos were conveyed with a scope that was surprising given the undoubtedly tiny budget the filmmakers had here, especially given that, according to Pedota in the Q&A, everything was shot in just one town. It truly felt like a world falling apart. I enjoyed the story as well, even if I found that Pedota rested a bit too much on zombie movie cliches for the supporting characters. Adam was a likable lead, and Johnny a good sidekick to him, but the people they encounter are mostly not all that interesting, from the soldiers at the field hospital where Carlos is working to the cannibal couple traveling the highway searching for "fresh meat". Many characters existed only to die, without even so much as one sentence of real development. It didn't drag the film down, but it did keep it from really going above and beyond.
The Bottom Line
Infection tells a pretty timeworn zombie tale, but the way it uses its Venezuelan setting gives it added layers that many similar films lack. It reminded me of The Dead in a lot of ways, even if I found that film superior, in how it made a uniquely "Third World" zombie movie that took the usual iconography of the genre and used it quite differently.
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The second to last movie lightens things up a bit...
Satanic Panic (2019)
Not yet rated
Score: 4 out of 5
Satanic Panic is the movie that Porno, which they showed last night, wanted to be and should've been: an over-the-top horror-comedy battle with the forces of demonic evil that's willing to get as sick and ridiculous as it needs to be. It mixes a lightweight, fun-loving tone, exemplified by villains who combine a Satanic coven with all the toxicity of social life in a rich suburb, with all the gore and sex you'd expect from a movie titled Satanic Panic. It may have been a very insubstantial and kinda dumb film, but I still fell in love with its characters and their fight for their souls, and overall, I had a really good time.
The film starts with Samantha, or Sam, a 22-year-old who just took a job as a pizza delivery driver and is already getting sick of being stiffed by people who won't tip. She eagerly takes a delivery job in a rich neighborhood, hoping to get some actual money, only for the rich dude in the mansion she just delivered five pizzas to once again leave her with nothing. With her Vespa out of gas, she decides that this is the last straw and enters the mansion hoping to ask for a tip. Unfortunately, these aren't your ordinary rich assholes; no, these are Satanists up to some Eyes Wide Shut shit. What's more, their leader Danica had been hoping to present her daughter as a virgin sacrifice to bring Baphomet into the world, only to catch her in flagrante with a boy who she then had to kill. This delivery girl Sam, though? This total dweeb who sings really corny songs on YouTube? An obvious virgin.
That right there pretty much sums it up, and it stays the course from there. We get Danica and her neighbors getting into cattiness straight out of Desperate Housewives over who should be leading the coven as Sam constantly stays one step ahead of them, fleeing into a neighborhood where it turns out everybody owes their success to the Dark Lord. We get Sam teaming up with a girl named Judi, another virgin who was going to be subjected to a more minor sacrifice by her best friend who was wearing a three-foot drill-dildo; apparently, the school's Chastity Club has a more sinister purpose. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot, we see that Danica appears to have a spell for "financial panic". The gleaming kitchen of a Dallas McMansion is used for spells, with a man's soul literally cooked in the oven. YouTube star Hannah Stocking plays the babysitter from hell. All of this is against the backdrop of a modest "slobs versus snobs" tone, as the working girl Sam fights to survive against every stereotype of snobbish suburbia you can think of. When I saw Grady Hendrix credited as the writer, I was not surprised at all; this movie is right up his alley with its mix of demonic horror and suburban kitsch. There's nothing really cutting here beyond making fun of rich country club assholes, but I believed in those assholes thanks to a slew of great performers by a mix of cult actors like Jordan Ladd and Jerry O'Connell, all led by Rebecca Romijn as a great "rich bitch" villain in a red robe that's equal parts Rosemary's Baby and the mom on Gossip Girl. And on the side of the good guys, newcomer Hayley Griffith is somebody I see as having a lot of opportunities in front of her going by this film. Between her charm, her snark, and her shock at the goings-on, all helped by writing that gives her some deeper layers to work with, I loved her as Sam, the character reminding me of a number of people I knew growing up in high school.
And if you want blood, you've got it here. This film doesn't skimp on anything in that regard, with people reaching into others' open wounds, getting their guts pulled out through their mouth, and sometimes, just keeping it simple and stabbing each other in the head. During the climax, we get the requisite giant Satanic orgy that you'd expect from a horror movie about a Satanic coven. This is what I meant by how this film is the one that Porno should've been; while it may not be setting out to push any buttons and be the edgiest thing around, it still knows exactly what kind of movie it is and is supposed to be, and goes out of its way to deliver on all of that. And since it ain't going for the genuinely creepy tone that, say, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is going for, it decides that "bloody hilarious" works just as well, as the bloodbaths all come with a fairly light touch courtesy of the dangerous, but ridiculous, suburban Satanists carrying them out.
The Bottom Line
I have to say I was impressed. Satanic Panic didn't knock my socks off, but I got what I came for, and that was a funny and gory horror-comedy that worked on almost every level.
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And finally, an old-fashioned supernatural spook show.
Z (2019)
Not yet rated
Score: 3 out of 5
Z is a film that really wants to be The Babadook or Hereditary, and I'm not sure that it stuck the landing. Like those films I just name-dropped, this one is about a malevolent supernatural force that is haunting a child in a suburban family, one that shines a light on his mother's struggles to raise him and the very real, non-supernatural influences that are wrecking her life. Unlike those films, however, this one doesn't really have a greater point behind it that it's trying to make. I shouldn't knock a film for just being a kinda entertaining ghost story that does work on some level, especially when it comes to its scares and its technical qualities, but given how Z goes out of its way to remind the viewer of those other films, the end result just feels like a "greatest hits" of plot points and scary moments from any number of domestic supernatural horror movies in the past few years. That said, I call it a "greatest hits" for a reason: this movie is still damn scary at points, and I was truly creeped out by its monster.
The plot retreads ground seen in any number of recent horror films about families. Beth and Kevin are raising a troubled boy named Josh, who's started talking to an "imaginary" friend named Z who compels him to do terrible things, from acting out in school to throwing another boy down a flight of stairs during a playdate. Needless to say, Z is not so imaginary -- and what's more, we later find out that Beth also had an imaginary friend named Z as a child, one who she only repressed with the help of a psychiatrist. Beyond just The Babadook and Hereditary, there are also allusions to The Taking of Deborah Logan with Beth caring for her ill mother, who passes away shortly into the film, a subplot that isn't really built on in any way. The plot never felt like a cohesive whole, especially after Z starts turning its attention away from Josh and towards Beth, suddenly shifting gears in a way that didn't really feel natural as important characters fade into the background while minor ones become important. Brandon Christensen (who also directed) and Colin Minihan should've gone over the screenplay here a few more times, because as it stands, this is a film with an identity crisis. Nothing in it feels original in any way, with most of its components lifted from similar movies that often did them better, lending them a depth that this film often lacks.
So why, if this film is such a pale-faced ripoff, am I giving it a 3 out of 5? Because it still hung together well enough that the ride I had was worth it. Christensen shoots the hell out of the scary moments, and it's here where the film's imitation game hurts it a lot less. When it comes to scares, there really aren't a whole lot of new ones in the book, so if you're gonna steal, steal from the best. Z itself was the best thing about this movie by a long shot; even though he's invisible and only fully appears in a few great scenes, he is no less a terrifying presence for it, always hanging over the proceedings and making you wonder what he's up to. Christensen is also a special effects artist, and he shows a great understanding of how to make a monster work on a limited budget; when we do get to see Z, he does not look like something I'd care to encounter in my room at night. I liked the cast, too, even if the characters they were all playing weren't really all that deep or interesting. Keegan Connor Tracy especially gets a lot to do as Beth, starting out as the usual "horror mom" but whose arc displays most of the really original ideas and flashes of inspiration that the film has to offer once she has to actively deal with Z, and she kept things interesting even though I didn't buy some of the plot turns on a logical level.
The Bottom Line
There's barely a new idea in this film, and the few it does present don't really work, but even so, this film's technical qualities allowed it to remain enjoyable. I'd like to see Christensen get some jobs directing bigger horror movies going forward -- maybe with somebody else's script, though.
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