Tag: Horror

Finally, Something Regarding The Lighthouse

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It’s been known for a while now that Robert Eggers, director of The Witch, was going to release a movie shot on 35 mm and filmed in black and white. It was also stated early on that it would star Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson stranded on a mysterious New England island in the late 19th Century. Other than that,  very little about the film was leaked. This week, however, the trailer finally dropped.

 

 

After watching this, I have many thoughts. First, the sirens and foreboding music that shortly follow the A24 opening credit are nerve-rattling, and after that, we get a little bit of the plot when Dafoe’s character asks Pattinson’s character what, exactly, would drive him to such an island. From the rest of the trailer, it’s clear that Pattinson’s character masks some kind of secret. We see him digging a hole shortly after Defoe’s character implies that he’s on the run from something. Did he commit a crime? Did he murder someone? We’ll have to see.

It’s also clear that this is going to be a film about descent into madness. We see the men hugging, drinking, dancing, shouting at each other, gripping each other’s throats, and losing all sense of time.  One of them even chases the other in pounding rain with an axe! At one point, Defoe’s character asks, “How long have we been on this rock?” When he asks that, the camera pans to Pattinson, who looks pale, wide-eyed, and dazed. Other brief flashes of various scenes appear to be hallucinations, maybe?

Additionally, the film looks just as atmospheric and brooding as The Witch, and like Eggers’ previous film, nature’s not apt to be kind to the humans .In The Witch, the crops rot, thus causing the 17th Century Puritan family to blame it on witchcraft and the oldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya-Taylor Joy). In this film, it’s clear the sea is just as harsh, busting through the windows of the lighthouse, while thunder and lightening crack outside. Furthermore, that sense of isolation that the Puritan family faces, due to the fact they were exiled from their community, only deepens the eventual madness and unraveling. It appears isolation has a similar effect here.

The film is scheduled for wide release on Oct. 18.

Even MORE Halloween news

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After it was announced recently that Halloween (2018) is getting not one, but TWO sequels, “Halloween Kills” and “Halloween Ends,” more news has been trickling out. We already know that Jamie Lee Curtis will reprise her iconic role as Laurie Strode. Now it’s been reported that the original Shape, Nick Castle, will  also return. Castle was in a brief scene in the last film, but an important one, the moment when Strode first sees Myers, thus confirming her worst fears that he’s still alive. Additionally, it’s been reported that James Jude Courtney will return as the Shape, most likely for the duration of both films. This is positive news, as fans seemed to have enjoyed his performance.

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Nick Castle playing the Shape again in Halloween 2018

Even more interesting are the rumblings that the character of Tommy Doyle will return for “Halloween Kills.” Doyle was the little boy that Strode babysat in the first film. He returned as an adult in Halloween 6, played by Paul Rudd, but since Halloween 2018 ignores all of the other films, other than the original, it’s best to forget that movie.

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Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Tommy (Brian Andrews)

If Tommy Doyle is being written into the script, it raises a lot of questions.

  • How is this narrative actually going to work? Ignoring all of the sequels, and focusing on this timeline, it has to be acknowledged that Laurie and Tommy have not seen each other in over 40 years. How and why would they actually reconnect?
  • Will their meeting be organic? Let’s hope David Gordon Green and his screenwriting team don’t just thrust this character into the script for the sake of merely adding him and trying to please fans.
  • Will Tommy’s story focus on trauma? Halloween 2018 was about Laurie’s trauma and confronting/overcoming her past. Is it possible that a similar theme will be explored with Tommy’s character? How did that night in 1978 affect him?
  • Will Lindsey show up? Whatever happened to the other kid that Laurie babysat that same night, Lindsey, the one who had a crush on Tommy? Is she going to make an appearance?
  • Who will actually play Tommy? If the character is indeed part of the next chapter, who’s going to be cast? A few articles noted that Paul Rudd was approached but declined, due to a conflicting filming schedule.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Feel free to share your thoughts about the rumors that Tommy Doyle may in fact be part of the next Halloween sequel. How/why could it possibly work?

 

Some Questions Regarding Those Halloween Sequels

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Since Blumhouse’s reboot of Halloween earned over $250 million at the box office last year, it’s no surprise that the production company is bringing Michael back to the big screen for not one but TWO sequels.It was announced last week that Halloween Kills will be released in 2020 and Halloween Ends will be released in 2021. Jamie Lee Curtis will reprise her role as Laurie Strode, and writers Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, who also directed Halloween 2018, are also returning.  John Carpenter is staying involved, too, most likely to score both films.

The world could always use a little more Michael Myers, but there are some serious questions to ponder in the meantime:

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  • How is Michael still alive? Okay, okay, I know that Michael has survived many times before. Heck, at the end of the first film, he’s shot by Dr. Loomis before falling off of a balcony. Cue the famous end shot where he’s GONE. That said, Halloween 2018,  like the original, made Michael fairly human again. The last time we saw him, he was engulfed in flames in the Strode basement.

 

  • How does Michael reconnect with the Strodes? Like the original film, Halloween 2018 made it clear that Michael has no specific connection to Laurie. He is merely a ubiquitous presence and agent of evil. Laurie just happened to cross his path in 1978 and became an iconic Final Girl. The new film ignores all the sequels, especially Halloween II, that made them brother and sister. So in that regard, Michael really has no need to go after her or her daughter and granddaughter who featured prominently in the last film. It is possible and maybe likely that she hunts him, since that’s the role she assumed in the last film.

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  • What role will the other Strode women play? We know Jamie Lee Curtis is coming back, but what about Judy Greer, who played Laurie’s daughter, Karen, and Andi Matichak who played granddaughter Allyson? These three together on screen, especially in the closing 20 minutes, were a real highlight of the last film and there is SO much untapped story potential there. The ending of the film was poignant in so many ways. It featured the ladies working together to defeat the boogeyman, but it also had an interesting and ambiguous ending, featuring the women riding in the back of a vehicle, blood-soaked, after defeating Michael, with Allyson clenching the butcher knife. The last shot is a nice reference to both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween 4, but that’s for another day. Let’s hope all three ladies will be together again to kick ass.

 

  • Will the sequels resonate? Halloween 2018 is really Laurie Stode’s story and how she’s processed what happened to her 40 years earlier. The film is rooted in trauma. What happens to the Final Girl after all of her friends are dead? The last film hit at the right time during the #MeToo Movement and only a few short months after the powerful testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during the tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings. Will the sequels also resonate? We’ll have to see. Sometimes, headlines make a film all the more powerful.

 

  • Who is going to play Michael/The Shape? The original Shape, Nick Castle, returned to the role just for a scene or two in 2018, but the Shape was mostly played by James Jude Courtney. No word yet on whether or not he’s returning.

 

Blumhouse is taking a risk launching two Halloween sequels, while also rebooting the Universal Monsters, with the first being an updated version of The Invisible Man. Halloween 2018 proved, however, that these iconic horror figures can still bring in the big bucks. Feel free to share your thoughts on the Halloween sequels and where you’d like the franchise to go from here.

 

 

 

Crawl: A Summer Favorite

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This has been a busy summer season for horror films, with the releases of Brightburn, Child’s Play, Midsommar, and now, Crawl, the new film by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D). Some of these films address broader issues, like AI and technology (Child’s Play), or female trauma (Midsommar), but Crawl is simply a creature feature that knows what it wants to be with a lot of nods to Jaws thrown into the mix. It’s one of the best times I’ve had at the movies this summer. For my full review, check out Horror Homeroom.

Additionally, I highly recommend this article from Bloody Disgusting about Aja’s career, the French extremity movement he was initially part of, and the impact of his early films, especially High Tension. It’s a great read.

Midsommar: A Stylish, Hellish Folk Horror Gem

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Ari Aster’s Hereditary was the breakout horror film of 2018, bolstered by the stellar performance of Toni Collette as Annie, a grief-stricken parent dealing with the unraveling of her family as tragedy after tragedy unfolds. With Hereditary, Aster flirted with some elements of folk horror, namely occultism and the use of landscape. Midsommar, however, showcases the folk horror influences far more directly, namely the original Wicker Man and the extensive research on midsummer traditions that Aster did.  In some ways, Aster’s second film is more ambitious and unrestrained, especially in its cinematography. For months, the film has been hyped, to the point that director/writer Jordan Peele called it “atrociously disturbing” and a “masterpiece” in a conversation with Aster for Fangoria magazine. So, the question is, does Midsommar live up to the hype? The short answer is yes and no. At 2.5 hours long, Midsommar is a lot to unpack. It is a film that warrants repeat viewings for those who have the patience, and, like Hereditary, it is a film rooted in female trauma.

Aster has described Midsommar as a break-up movie that unravels into a folk horror nightmare. When trying to assess the film, that’s a good starting point. We’re essentially aligned with psychology grad student Dani (Florence Pugh) from the get-go, as she frantically emails her bi-polar sister and begs her to respond, fearing the worst. Early on, we’re also introduced to her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), whose friends encourage him to break up with Dani and accuse her of “abusing” him by demanding so much of his time. Not long after, Dani is orphaned in a visually jarring and disturbing scene that is one of many throughout the film. This narrative serves as the core plot line. Essentially, this is Dani’s story, and though there are other narrative threads and many pagans in white robes, the protagonist’s trauma is the real anchor. We’re with her each and every time she’s about to have a panic attack, be it in a cramped restroom on a plane or when she and Christian’s friends take mushrooms shortly after they arrive at a Swedish commune for midsummer celebrations.

In commenting on the relationship between Dani and Christian, Aster told The Hollywood Reporter that he aimed to “present a dynamic in which neither party is awful to the other one, but they’re absolutely wrong for each other. By virtue of the fact that we’re aligned very clearly with one character in the film, the other is immediately reduced to an antagonist.” It is true that Christian never specifically does anything horrible to Dani. He is callous and often distant, but he can’t really be accused of ill-intent. They are simply wrong for each and floundering in a stagnant relationship.

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Dani (Florence Pugh)

It’s unclear why Dani stays with Christian, but after losing her family, he’s all that she has left. The pagans sense this, specifically fellow student Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who leads the graduate students to the rural Swedish town where the nightmare unfolds. Pelle sees the pagans as a real family. He tells Dani that no one takes anything for themselves and they share everything.  In this context, he specifically is talking about Dani, especially since he’s sitting with her on a bed while his hand moves to her thigh. He tries to disrupt the monogamous relationship that she has with Christian and offers an alternative lifestyle.

In that sense, the film presents two very different lifestyles that are destined to clash. There is the lifestyle of Pelle’s ancestral cult the Hårga and the lifestyle of the Americans. One of the white-robed Hårga tells the grad students that what matters most is being in harmony with nature. The Hårga also do everything together, from raising babies to eating. In fact, some of the eeriest scenes involve everyone seated at long wooden tables, staring at each other, waiting and watching for one of the elders to unfold their napkin before everyone else does the same in harmony. The penetrating gazes of the Hårga are unnerving.

On the other hand, there is the lifestyle of the Americans, best exemplified by Mark (Will Poulter), who serves as comic relief but also exemplifies the worst aspects of western culture. He is rude and dismissive of the Hårga’s ancient traditions. At one point, he relieves himself on a massive tree viewed by the Hårga as  physical manifestation of their deceased ancestors. Additionally, the other friends, even Josh (William Harper Jackson), a grad student writing a thesis on midsummer traditions and history, are constantly pulling out their phones to snap photos.  Eventually, Christian, whose graduate work is rudderless, decides he too is going to write on the Hårga. However, he does this for his own benefit and doesn’t have the deep respect for the traditions that Josh has. That said, even Josh can’t put his phone away  and takes photos of sacred books, despite being told no by the elders. This conflict between modernity/western sensibilities and ancient ritual is one of the undercurrents of the film and folk horror in general.

Midsommar also contains interesting commentary on suicide and death. In one of the most gut-punching scenes, the friends witness the suicides of two elders, but the Hårga explain that it’s better to give back to the life cycle and not allow both the spirit and body to break down in old age. To the westerners, however, this concept is unfathomable. Suicide is always bad.

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The Hårga

Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski deserves major props for bringing Aster’s nightmare vision to life. Simply put, the visual are stunning, be it the sprawling mountainside or the blinding brightness of the constant daylight. At times, the film is disorienting to the viewer, especially in the way that it bends time, specifically when the friends are tripping and images blur together. Grass grows on Dani’s feet and hands, for instance. The film is worth seeing for the visuals alone, especially on the big screen.

It’s too soon yet to declare Midsommar a masterpiece of the genre, as Peele has already done. There needs to be some time and distance before any work of art can and should be given such a title. Aster’s sophomore release is wildly ambitious, and at times, as existential as Hereditary, while including a nice dash of dark humor.  At its core, though, it’s a film about two people who simply shouldn’t be together. This, coupled with Dani’s trauma and her desire to find a family, are what really drive the film. The visuals are a memorizing and fairy tale-like addition to the narrative.

Some resources on folk horror:

Mark Gatis’ History of Horror

Folkhorror.com

Hereditary as Folk Horror by Alexandra Hauke, published by Horror Homeroom

 

NEPA Horror Film Festival Needs Your Help

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Typically, I don’t post any type of call for money on my blog, but in the spirit of this horror blog, community, and independent film making, I want to note that the NEPA Horror Film Festival needs to raise the necessary funds to make the event possible this October.

There are a few different ways that you can help. You can make a donation here, buy tickets here, or purchase a sponsorship package here. The festival will be held at the Circle Drive-in Theater on Sunday Oct. 13 at 7 pm. Along with showcasing short films from national and international filmmakers, the event will feature vendors and special guests, including Felissa Rose (Angela from Sleepaway Camp), Kevin Van Hentenryck (Kevin from Basket Case), and Frank Henenlotter (director/writer of Basket Case).

For a closer look at the festival, check out this NEPA Scene podcast from last year featuring the event’s organizer/founder Bobby Keller.

Please consider supporting this event!

Review: Child’s Play (2019)

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As hard as it may be, it’s best to view the new Child’s Play without any expectation that the film relates at all to the long-running franchise. Other than the doll’s red hair, infamous striped shirt, and fondness for a kitchen knife, the remake has little to do with Don Mancini’s original creation and its many sequels. There are some nods to the first film, but other than that, Child’s Play stands on its own and is a surprisingly decent remake, one that  revamps the killer doll story and makes it relevant  for 2019 by focusing on AI.

Director Lars Klevberg’s film features an especially strong performance by Gabriel Bateman as Andy Barclay, an angst-ridden teen who scoffs when his mom (Aubrey Plaza) brings home the Buddi doll as a gag gift after someone returns it to Zed Mart where she slaves away, working doubles as a single mom. When the trailer first dropped, I kept wondering why a teen would want anything to do with a doll and why they made Andy so much older than the original version of the character. Yet, as an outcast, Andy eventually bonds with the doll, whose AI capabilities make it a better-suited companion for a lonely teen than the original incarnation of Chucky.  That said, there are some initial plot points that are a stretch. When Andy fires up the doll and it asks to be named, he says Han Solo, but the doll repeats Chucky, which sounds nothing like what Andy said. Perhaps the point here is to illustrate that the AI is going to make its own decisions, but more likely, this scene shows how the remake is beholden to the Child’s Play name and because of that, it has to reach at times to stay within the lines.

Andy’s loneliness, meanwhile, is compounded by the fact he has a hearing disability and has to wear an outdated hearing aid. He spends his time hanging out by himself, slumped in the hallway, playing games on his phone, too timid to chat with other kids in the apartment building. It’s hard not to feel bad for Andy and his mom, who essentially begs him to make friends while she works at a retail job she despises just to pay the bills. Because of this core plot line, Mark Hamill’s version of Chucky is a totally different take compared to Brad Dourif’s voice work. Hamill’s version adds pathos to the character, who just wants to be Andy’s friend to the point that he’s eventually willing to kill anyone who harms Andy or threatens their friendship. To a lonely kid, having a doll who listens and doesn’t judge him is initially positive, until, of course, the doll starts murdering people in creative fashion, first with a kitchen knife and then by unleashing its full AI capabilities. By the end of the film, Hamill rages and grows closer to the foul-mouthed Chucky that Dourif made famous.

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Gabriel Bateman as Andy and Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill

At first, the Buddi doll is a blank slate, but ultimately it misconstrues human emotions, which leads to a killing spree.  In one of the best scenes, the doll watches Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 with Andy and a few friends from down the hall. As Chucky watches the splatters of blood on TV and observes the friends reacting with laughter, he assumes that pain and bloodshed bring them pleasure. In another scene, when Andy says he wishes his mother’s boyfriend would go away, Chucky takes the words literally. Generally, the film is heavy in its messaging regarding the dangers of AI, especially the point that AI will never be able to fully comprehend the complexities and nuances of human emotions. This take on a well-known character is a solid upgrade.

As for the kills, the film features a few gory scenes, including one early butchering that involves a lawnmower and Christmas lights.  Overall, though, there is some general restraint, moments when the camera pulls away just as Chucky raises his knife in the air and plunges it into a victim multiple times. The gore is certainly not excessive, no where near Texas Chainsaw 2 levels, especially for a slasher flick. The AI capabilities of the doll make for some unique kills, however.

Regarding tone, the film is much brighter than the initial 1988 film, which is awash in gray colors. Both films are set in Chicago, and the 2019 version features Andy and friends walking through seedy neighborhoods, but it doesn’t have the same bleakness. Even the doll, which is fairly CGI heavy and features an altered face with a bigger head and wider eyes, always looks new and clean, despite coming home to Andy in a battered box after a customer return. The brightness, however, fits the film, which stresses the point that we always desire the latest technology. Heck, before Andy even unwraps the Buddi doll from its package, Zed Mart is on the verge of stocking the shelves with newer and better Buddi 2 dolls, and in one of the first scenes featuring Andy and his mom on screen together, he complains that he needs a new phone.

Child’s Play is a surprisingly good mainstream horror film, bolstered by strong performances by Plaza, Hamill, and Bateman, despite all of the drama surrounding the remake and the fact that Mancini and Dourif plan to continue the original franchise as a TV show for the Syfy network. Maybe the 2019 film should have had a different title, but now that it’s out, perhaps both versions of Chucky can exist.  The 2019 film is an entertaining and updated take on a familiar story, one that’s funny at times and relevant for our Alexa, smart phone-obsessed culture.

Overall Score: B Plus

 

 

 

Time to Talk about Ma

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I have no doubt that Ma is going to be a polarizing film. When the trailer dropped a few months ago, Film School Rejects, The Hollywood Reporter, and other entertainment sites pointed out that though the film stars Octavia Spencer, the rest of the production, from the director, to the screenwriter, to the cast, are all white. So the question was posed how can Ma possibly be some type of biting racial commentary when it doesn’t feature people of color, other than its lead? It’s a fair question, especially when you consider that Blumhouse, one of the  biggest production companies in horror, has been criticized for having white men direct all of their movies. (To be fair, Blumhouse has promised to remedy this in the new future).

The trailer, however, doesn’t reveal very much about the film. It does provide the basic premise: Ma, aka Sue Ann (Spencer), befriends a group of teens, buys them booze, and invites them over to party. When they eventually find something off about her, she starts stalking them. The only one of the teens who really stands out is doe-eyed Maggie (Diana Silvers), a new girl in town who relocated after her mother, Erica (Juliette Lewis), divorced her father. It turns out that Erica relocated to her hometown from San Diego and faces humiliation when her former high school classmates catch her slinging cocktails at a casino in a skimpy outfit, but, as she tells Maggie, she has to pay the bills somehow.

The film at least touches upon class. Erica is a single mom doing what she has to do to get by, and Ma, who was bullied as a teen, hence her thirst for revenge,  relates to Erica and generally sympathizes with her, especially since she went from being popular in high school to an outcast when she found herself back in her rural hometown. Both single women have something in common, though this could have been explored more. The trailer also avoided revealing the torment that Ma faced as a teen, which triggers the revenge she enacts in the closing 20 minutes. Whether or not Ma’s backstory suffices is another question.

Perhaps more importantly, Ma confronts the mammy stereotype, which is fitting since the film is directed by Tate Taylor, director of The Help, the wildly successful film that made Spencer a household name but faced blow back because of its white savior trope and the way it depicted black women in subservient roles. Here, Spencer blazes her own trail, and damn, is she good. This is HER film. She does whatever she wants. At her job, she refuses to answer the phones. When Maggie’s friend Haley (McKaley Miller), tells her that she needs a man in her life, she just glares at her and plots revenge for that comment. Ma generally has her own agency, and if there are moments when she falls into the mammy stereotype, it’s simply as a means to achieve her goals. She plays the role at times only to get what she wants.

Ma is by no means a perfect film, but Spencer’s performance alone makes it worth viewing. It’s a film very much aware of the roles women are supposed to fit into, especially black women, and to its credit, it tries to challenge that.  There’s no doubt that the film will be polarizing, but, at the very least, it’s already starting a conversation, and it’s one of the horror genre’s most interesting mainstream offerings this year.

There are two commentaries on the film worth reading, both written by people of color.  The first review was published over at Graveyard Shift Sisters, and it goes into more detail about how Ma confronts and subverts the mammy stereotypes. The second article, written by black horror scholar Robin R. Means Coleman, makes an argument that we’re currently living through a black horror renaissance. Coleman writes, “The horror genre is maturing and becoming more imaginative and inclusive – in who can play hero and antihero, and who gets to be the monster and savior. The emergence of black horror films is just one chapter in a story that includes women taking on more prominent roles in horror films, too.”

That, at the very least, is worth celebrating.

 

Review: Brightburn (2019), A Dark and Gory Retelling of Superman

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Imagine if Superman was a sexually-frustrated, 12-year-old boy who, instead of using his powers for good, uses them to stalk a classmate he has a crush on, slaughter farm animals, and terrorize anyone who gets in his way. That is essentially the plot of the new James Gunn-produced film Brighburn, a gory retelling of the Superman story that is a blend of the comic book and horror genres. It’s nice to see Gunn return to his horror roots, if only as a producer. Director David Yarovesky, meanwhile, kicks off the summer in style with a decent addition to the creepy kid sub-genre of horror.

So much of the story functions as an inversion of the Superman narrative. In the opening scene, we’re introduced to Tori Breyer (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman), a loving husband and wife who can’t conceive a child on their own. After we witness them about to try again, BOOM!, a red, glowing meteorite crashes on their farm in rural Kansas. Of course, they decide to adopt the boy inside the spacecraft and don’t tell him his true story until about halfway through the film, which only exacerbates their problem and sends him into another fit of rage.

The film’s first 20 minutes or so spend time establishing Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) as a likable boy. He has a good relationship with his parents, shown, in part, through photo albums. We see him as a smiling toddler, and, for a moment at least, wonder how he could possibly kill anyone. He excels in school, to the point that he can rattle of random facts in class about the differences between bees and wasps, and he draws the affection and attention of fellow classmate Caityln (Emmie Hunter). The film would have been better served spending a little more time showing the innocent side of Brandon, before he starts butchering poor chickens and murdering people. He becomes a terrifying villain rather early in the movie, shortly after his 12th birthday, triggered by nightmares, weird chants, and visions of his spacecraft that crash-landed on Earth and that his parents keep hidden under a trap door in their barn.

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Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn)

The kills in the film are quite bloody and gruesome and may turn off comic book fans that aren’t used to a regular diet of horror films. One prolonged death scene features a shard of glass falling into the victim’s eye. The way she slowly pulls it out is reminiscent of something you’d see in a Lucio  Fulci or Dario Argento film. In another scene, one poor victim tries to escape in his pick-up truck, until the evil boy wonder raises it in mid air and drops it on the road, leaving the victim’s face split in half, with his jaw hanging loose. Brandon is rather sadistic, if nothing else.

That said, the first few kills in the film are generally characters we’re not that invested in, and many of the characters, other than Brandon and his parents, are fairly one-dimensional, mere fodder to be brutalized on screen. The deaths would have been more effective if the characters had added depth. Additionally, there’s just something uncomfortable about seeing a 12-year-old frequently invade Caitlyn’s bedroom.

The parents, however, are the best part of the film. Both Banks and Deman give solid performances. Having wanted a child for so long, Tori is the last to believe that her baby boy could be capable of evil, even when his powers ram his father against a kitchen wall. Kyle, though, is more suspecting of his son, especially once he starts disappearing late at night and lying about where he’s been. At one point, Kyle even says, “He’s not our son. He’s a thing we found in the woods.” Earlier in the film, there are a few scenes of genuine tenderness between Kyle and Brandon, before he starts killing people, of course. The film’s real strength is found not only in its special effects, but also in the dynamic between Brandon and his parents, especially Tori’s reluctance to blame him for anything because she’s always wanted a child, and she certainly doesn’t want to believe that her sweet, innocent baby boy could possibly crush a girl’s hand at school because she refused to return his affection.

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Tori Breyer (Elizabeth Banks)

Comic books have always had dark twists and turns, and they’ve certainly dabbled in the horror genre. However, no Marvel or DC movie has offered anything like Brightburn or really hit upon twisted story arcs. After years away from the genre, it’s nice to see Gunn return to horror. Brightburn is one of the more decent genre films this year, but with some heavy horror hitters on the near horizon, including a revamped Child’s Play and It: Chapter 2, as well as soon-to-be released features  by some of the genre’s most talented younger directors, including Ari Aster (Midsomar),  Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse), and  Alexandre Aja (Crawl), it has yet to be seen if Brightburn will be that memorable in the long run. For the time being, though, it’s a fun popcorn film to kick off summer, especially while awaiting some of the bigger horror hits dropping later this summer and heading into fall. It makes you wish that Gunn was still directing films like Slither and Dawn of the Dead (2004).

Oh, and for the true blue horror fans, make sure to stay as the credits start rolling for a really cool scene featuring horror icon Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Slither, “The Walking Dead”).

Final Grade: B