‘Ammonite’ Review: Love on the Rocks

November 10, 2020

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Ammonite (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw, Gemma Jones, James McArdle

Director: Francis Lee

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Quite Graphic Bedroom Scenes

Release Date: November 13, 2020 (Theaters)/December 4, 2020 (On Demand)

Man, if you’re into rocks AND forbidden love stories, you’re gonna love Ammonite. Me personally, I can certainly enjoy the latter, though they can be heart-wrenchingly bittersweet. As for the former, rocks definitely serve their purpose here on Earth, but I’m not particularly inclined to spend an entire day studying them. Nor am I particularly inclined to watch a movie that dedicates a good portion of itself to people doing just that. But I always aim to be open-minded, so I decided to give Ammonite a chance to see if it could win me over. Ultimately, it all went about exactly as I would have expected, with the paleontology scenes making me go, “Wow, Kate Winslet sure does enjoy studying fossils a lot more than I ever would” and the romance scenes making me go, “Wow, Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan sure do trust each other enough to get really, really explicit.”

It’s the 1840s on the Southern English coast. Winslet plays Mary Anning, who is now officially the most passionate paleontologist I’ve ever heard of. She supports herself and her mother by selling fossils to tourists, and one of those folks, geologist Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), offers her something rather unique. His wife Charlotte (Ronan) is suffering from one of those vague 19th century illnesses that result in general exhaustion, and he’s entrusted Mary to caring after her. Mary and Charlotte proceed to spend plenty of time alone, thus awakening passions that are generally not spoken about in polite British society.

Like most other recent period queer love stories I’ve encountered, the affair between Mary and Charlotte is able to thrive in a little pocket of the larger world. There’s even a hint that it could last indefinitely. So I’m fascinated that the ultimate roadblock for these two is less about society frowning upon them and more about the struggle to bridge the gap between their very different lives. Mary is so married to her work that she cannot imagine uprooting herself in any way (there’s also the matter of supporting her mother). With Ammonite so firmly foregrounded in the literal ground, it comes off as rather quotidian and even dispassionate (though certainly not shy). So in conclusion, I haven’t suddenly been inspired to start studying fossils myself, but I am still heartbroken when two star-crossed souls can’t quite make it work.

Ammonite is Recommended If You Like: Fossils, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Rocks on the beach, Walks on the beach

Grade: 3 out of 5 Rocks

‘Come Play,’ Says the Leggy Monster on a Tablet

October 28, 2020

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Come Play (CREDIT: Jasper Savage/Amblin Partners/Focus Features)

Starring: Azhy Robertson, Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr.

Director: Jacob Chase

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Spooks and Terror

Release Date: October 30, 2020

Did The Babadook fully sate our appetites for creepy bedtime story characters breaking out into the real world to spook a little boy and his mom? Come Play sure hopes that there’s room for one more! But it’s going to be very hard for it to avoid being referred to as “The Babadook, but the dad’s alive.” There’s even a moment when Gillian Jacobs echoes Essie Davis almost exactly when she shouts, “Can you just be normal for one second?!” There are some elements about Come Play that are worth recommending, although while I was watching them, I wondered if I was enjoying them mainly because of residual positive feelings for The Babadook. That’s far from the worst thing in the world, though. It’s at least better than resenting it for its resemblance.

The vibe of the game in Come Play is disconnection. Sarah (Jacobs) and her husband Marty (John Gallagher Jr.) have been struggling to communicate with their non-verbal autistic son Oliver (Azhy Robertson) his whole life. Really, though, it’s Mom who’s bearing the brunt of the struggle. It comes down to the typical split of household labor. Marty is mostly fine with the way Oliver currently talks, which is by pushing word buttons on a cell phone that vocalizes for him, but Sarah is constantly frustrated, partly because she spends a lot more time at home. Into this angst-filled situation crawls Oliver, a long-limbed creature on a tablet who would like his tale told to the end so that he can become a real monster who can be friends with Oliver forever and ever.

As Larry makes his presence more and more known, he spreads to Oliver’s parents and friends as a sort of supernatural infection. He’s like the Entity in It Follows or the certainty of death in She Dies Tomorrow: once you’ve been exposed, you cannot deny his existence. Voices of reason try to insist that this is just a case of powerful empathy with Oliver, which almost seems to be playing out as a sort of shared delusion. Of course, we know it’s not that, because the terms of the genre that we as audience have agreed to assure us that Larry is as real as any monster can be. But the emotional tethers that Oliver is attached to and the terror transported along them are quite telling. Larry represents and draws upon loneliness. Anyone lacking connection or fighting so hard to maintain an emotional bond is vulnerable. He can sting your heart, and that’s what really makes him memorable.

Come Play is Recommended If You Like: Horror Movies That Remind You of Other, Better Horror Movies But Still Have Enough to Say on Their Own

Grade: 3 out of 5 Legs

I Have One Important Thing to Say About ‘The Witches’ (2020)

October 26, 2020

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The Witches 2020 (CREDIT: Warner Bros./YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Octavia Spencer, Anne Hathaway, Jahzir Kadeem Bruno, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock, Codie Lei-Eastick, Kristen Chenoweth

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG

Release Date: October 22, 2020 (HBO Max)

There’s one thing I really want to mention about the 2020 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. It’s something that caught me by surprise, and I was happy to have it. It wouldn’t have surprised me if I had seen the trailer ahead of time, but I still would have been delighted by it nonetheless. I’m talking about Chris Rock’s narration! I had no idea he was playing the older version of our hero (who’s named Hero). But oh yeah, I totally approve of the flavor that he added to the mix. And at the end when we got a glimpse of him in the flesh, I was thrilled to see what he’s up to now. The rest of the movie is mostly more-or-less standard kids adventure fare. I would have hoped for something a little weirder from Bob Zemeckis taking on Roald Dahl. Maybe I missed some hidden weirdness!

Grade: 5 Giant Chickens Out of 3 Mice

Sacha Baron Cohen Can Still Clown Us Like No Other in ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’

October 21, 2020

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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (CREDIT: Amazon Studios)

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova

Director: Jason Woliner

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R for No-Holds-Barred Outrageousness

Release Date: October 23, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)

About four and a half minutes into Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev says “My wife,” and when I heard it, all felt right in the world. The first Borat flick came out on November 3, 2006, and on November 4, 2006, the world became overrun with hacky Borat impressions. In the fourteen years hence, his catchphrases have gone through a cycle of sincere to ironic to post-ironic and back again about 14 times (or maybe 1400 times). Somehow, though, Baron Cohen is now able to slide back into his famous creation without suffering one bit under the weight of his legacy. Borat’s reputation is primarily about his ability to hold up a mirror to society, but he’s also a fascinating character in his own right, layered with so many levels of absurd details. Joining that absurd litany is his daughter Tutar, brought to dementedly go-for-broke life by Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova.

A new Borat film is enough justification for a chaotic imp like myself to pepper all my conversations with outbursts of “wah wah wee wah” and “very nice,” but will everyone else be speaking the same language, as they were back in 2006? My gut says no, because it’s nearly impossible to recreate a phenomenon like that, but also because this sequel won’t have the benefit of huge crowds enjoying it together in packed theaters. Of course, that formula is a bit different in the midst of a pandemic, so there’s a chance that Subsequent Moviefilm actually could hit the zeitgeist pretty hard as a straight-to-streaming release. But ultimately, to my mind anyway, that shouldn’t be the main goal of this endeavor. The most important question to ask ourselves should be (and I cannot reiterate this enough): after watching this film, does saying “my wife!” feel funnier than it did before? In my case, the answer is “absolutely.”

As much of a big deal as I’m making of the “my wife” of it all, it should be noted that that gag is a relatively small portion of the running time. Ostensibly, Baron Cohen’s goal is to once again expose the dark, bigoted underbelly lurking within America. But if you’ve lived in this country for the past few years, you might have noticed that there’s not that much left that needs exposing. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still revelations to be had. The MAGA types that Borat encounters along the way behave pretty much as you expect them to. But once he tells them stories about the backwards traditions of his fictional Kazakhstan, it starts to get interesting. Some people play along, perhaps just to be polite, while others double down on their prejudiced impulses. But then there are those moments when the most knee-jerk conspiratorial thoughtfully disagree with him, laying bare the sort of pretzel logic that is perhaps quite commonplace in human society.

While the improvised interactions with civilians are frequently poignant, it’s the scripted moments that I found most hilarious. The plot is driven by Borat’s mission to deliver to Vice President Mike Pence (“America’s most famous ladies man”) a gift of Johnny the Monkey, Kazakhstan’s most popular primate porn star. But when that goes awry, the plan changes to him offering the teenage Tutar as a new wife for Pence (or whomever in Donald Trump’s orbit will take her). Baron Cohen is famed for his clown training, and Bakalova matches (and often tops) him in her willingness to transform into the most comical possible version of herself.

As outrageous as their antics mostly are, there’s also a sweet, beating heart at the core of their interactions. He wants her to sleep in the biggest, most comfortable cage in the world, and she loves him for his efforts to do so, but she eventually starts to wonder if maybe the fairy tales she’s heard about women not being able to do pretty much anything aren’t as true as she once thought. (The revolution she endures when confronted with the truth actually reminds me of the fight scene in They Live, with its similar underscoring of the disruption inherent to having your eyes opened.) So while Borat’s cries of “my wife” have been delightfully echoing in our ears for quite some time, maybe now they’ll also be paired with proud proclamations of “my daughter.”

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is Recommended If You Like: Hearty Belly Laughs, Fractured Fairy Tales, Cultural Icons That Endure Much Longer Than Expected

Grade: 4 out of 5 Hrams

‘American Utopia’ Doesn’t Lose Any of Its Power in Its Trip From the Stage to HBO

October 14, 2020

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American Utopia (CREDIT: David Lee)

Starring: David Byrne, Chris Giarmo, Tendayi Kuumba, Bobby Wooten III, Karl Mansfield, Gustavo Di Dalva, Jacquelene Acevedo, Angie Swan, Mauro Refosco, Daniel Freedman, Stephane San Juan

Director: Spike Lee

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Release Date: October 17, 2020 (HBO)

Stop Making Sense is one of the best, if not The Best, concert documentaries ever made. I don’t know anyone who’s seen it who doesn’t share that opinion. Can lightning strike twice? Probably not, but something very similar to (but not exactly the same as) lightning can strike (or do something similar to striking) after that initial lightning strike. And that’s what we have in the case of American Utopia, which features Talking Heads frontman David Byrne with a group of musicians who are not Talking Heads members performing a set that includes some Talking Heads songs as well as other prime selections. It started as an album of originals released in 2018, made its way to Broadway in 2019, and now one of those performances has been recorded for a concert film directed by Spike Lee. If you know Byrne and his singular penchant for showmanship, then it goes without saying there’s no reason to think that that could ever be a formula for dilution.

“Once in a Lifetime” is one of the most iconic songs in rock music history. It was retooled for the stage show, and I first saw that version when Byrne was the musical guest on SNL back in February of this year. Despite my thorough familiarity with the song, I got chills once again while watching the latest filmed performance as if I were witnessing the birth of a new classic. That is the power of what has been assembled here. Byrne and his crew strip everything down to basics and reintroduce to us what we thought we already knew thoroughly. It is as if for an hour and 45 minutes we forget that there was ever any music before American Utopia.

We also get a refresher course on philosophy, as Byrne muses in between songs about the wonders of human perception. At one point, he asks why it is that we find looking at other people inherently more interesting than looking at anything else. If anyone is looking for any evidence as to why that is the case, American Utopia provides plenty of examples.

David Byrne, Spike Lee (CREDIT: David Lee)

If you’re wondering what attracted Spike Lee to direct, there won’t be any confusion once the credits are rolling. I’m not terribly familiar with his musical tastes, but he and Byrne clearly share many concerns over the state of the world, which is most obvious during the performance of “Hell You Talmbout,” a cover of a 2015 Janelle Monáe protest song that invokes the names of people of color who have been killed by police. When Byrne asked Monáe what she would think of a white man of a certain age performing it, she responded that she loved the idea and declared that the song is “for everybody.” This segment takes the fullest advantage of the journey from stage to screen, with relatives holding up memorial images of the deceased. American Utopia is a call to change for a better country and a better world. Can we ever meet the promise of that title? It’s a daunting task, but the wonder that this show inspires can’t hurt.

American Utopia is Recommended If You Like: Stop Making Sense, the Black Lives Matter movement

Grade: 4 out of 5 Gray Suits

We Need Some Candy on October 31. Do We Also Need ‘Hubie Halloween’?

October 12, 2020

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Hubie Halloween (CREDIT: Netflix)

Starring: Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, June Squibb, Kevin James, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Maya Rudolph, Tim Meadows, Kenan Thompson, Rob Schneider, Michael Chiklis, Karan Brar, Noah Schnapp, Paris Berelc, Sadie Sandler, Sunny Sandler, George Wallace, Colin Quinn, Kym Whitley, Mikey Day

Director: Steven Brill

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Release Date: October 7, 2020 (Netflix)

I decided that I simply must have something to say about Hubie Halloween, since I hold so dearly Adam Sandler’s last-minute Halloween costume ideas on Weekend Update from back in the day. So the big question is: did this tale of Salem’s official Halloween monitor give me those same warm, sugary feelings?

The Sandman has busted that old Shabadoo-voice, so that certainly helps. But what’s up with all the kids in town (and some adults) pelting him with candy whatever chance they get? Hubie wants you to have a happy Halloween! It’s hard to do that when you’re sacrificing your own candy! Furthermore, in addition to all the mischief, there’s several attempted felonies, a fair degree of mental instability, and pretty much no attempt to reconcile that darkness with the purely comical tone.

Ultimately, in a weird way this is all in keeping with the spirit of last-minute costume ideas. Hubie Halloween feels like a last-minute movie that was quickly cobbled together from a bunch of silly Halloween-related ideas bouncing around in Sandler’s head. In conclusion, I found myself in a good mood after watching, and I’m happy to declare, once again, “Now give me some candy!”

Grade: 3 out of 5 Crazy Protractor Beards

Organ Harvesting in a Hospital Makes for a Black Comedy Caper in ’12 Hour Shift’

September 30, 2020

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12 Hour Shift (CREDIT: Matt Glass/Magnet Releasing)

Starring: Angela Bettis, Chloe Farnworth, Nikea Gamby-Turner, Kit Williamson, David Arquette, Mick Foley

Director: Brea Grant

Running Time: 86 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (with Some R-Level Gore and Profanity, and a Few Bits of Nudity)

Release Date: October 2, 2020 (Theaters and On Demand)

There’s been plenty of ink spilled over bottle episodes, but what about the bottle movie? Outings of TV that take place in only one location naturally call attention to themselves, as they tend to break the typical mold of any given show. Whereas when a film keeps its setting confined, it doesn’t exactly feel out of the ordinary, since it’s normal for that particular movie. But it’s nevertheless worth examining when it does happen, as in the one-crazy-night black comedy 12 Hour Shift. When people are stuck in one place for an extended period, secrets and extreme parts of people’s personalities tend to be revealed, and oh boy is that the case here.

Besides a quick trip in the beginning, all of 12 Hour Shift takes place in and around a hospital in Arkansas in 1999 (that turn-of-the-millennium setting eventually pays off with a sly little Y2K joke). Mandy (Angela Bettis) is a nurse on probation who’s really pushing her luck by procuring organs from dying patients for a black market scheme. Her ditzy cousin-by-marriage Regina (Chloe Farnworth) bungles a kidney delivery and returns to the facility to harvest a replacement. Trouble is, there’s no obvious candidate to quickly pull off this transaction. So under the threat of possibly having to give up her own kidney, Regina quickly decides that she is willing to do just about anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) to procure some stranger’s organ.

Overnight shift work, particularly in a hospital, strikes me as a formula for hallucination. So when the shenanigans start ramping up, they’re understandably met with little more than shrugs. When patients see a fight breaking out in their room, they’re liable to think “Is this really happening?” and opt to go back to sleep. (That is, unless they’re dragged into the fight.) Meanwhile, the nurses have such a seen-it-all attitude that even the ones taking their duties really seriously are inclined to greet potential disasters with a “let’s just get through the night” response. The trouble is, that doesn’t really work when you have someone like Regina making mess after mess while unleashing her inner monster to cover her own ass. The pressure and farce in this flick heighten gradually, but soon enough, there’s no denying that this is a 12 Hour Shift for the ages.

12 Hour Shift is Recommended If You Like: Raising Arizona, Gory comedies, Imagining that a wacky murder mystery is going to play out while you’re working a graveyard shift

Grade: 3 out of 5 Kidneys

‘Possessor’ Review: The Cronenbergian Energy is Strong with This One

September 29, 2020

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Possessor (CREDIT: Neon)

Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, Rossif Sutherland

Director: Brandon Cronenberg

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (with R-Level Gore, Sex, and Disturbia)

Release Date: October 2, 2020 (Select Theaters and Drive-Ins)

Human beings are not meant to house two brains in one head. We’ve seen it attempted in various sci-fi movies, and it never works out peacefully. In Possessor, the result is about as rancorous as it’s ever been. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a brilliant assassin, and like a lot of brilliant assassins, her days are numbered. In her case, that’s because she infiltrates other people’s bodies while committing the deeds and her latest host, corporate drone Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), is violently resisting her presence. If you’re in the mood for some internal body horror, you’ve come to the right place.

Possessor was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of body horror master David Cronenberg, and the maxim “like father, like son” certainly applies here. A sex scene is intercut with a stabbing, while a murder sequence features close-ups of an eyeball and teeth getting poked out with a fire poker. You can imagine that this is the kind of movie that the senior Cronenberg would have been making had he come of age during a more digitized era. Which is all to say, Brandon is proudly carrying on the family tradition. With Possessor, he paints us a picture of how violent and blood-splattered it can get when a host fights off a virus. It’s disturbing physically, psychologically, and ethically, but all presented so wonderfully baroquely that you can’t help but be entranced.

Possessor is most satisfying with its aesthetic accomplishments. Various sequences are presented in a monochromatic palette, and a varying monochrome at that. Some mustard yellow here, some blood red there, all contributing to a beautifully distorted sense of reality. One eternally unforgettable image is the mask of Tasya (as seen on the poster) that Colin is attempting to rid himself of, thus conveying a slippery lack of separation between the physical and the mental. The plot is a little harder to parse, but it has enough suspenseful intrigue to keep you engaged. There’s some dialogue that’s difficult to make out, especially from the mumble-prone Abbott, but I imagine that that may be intentional. Possessor feels like exactly the sort of movie that wants you to lean in for you to hear it only to then throw the next highly shocking image right in your face. To which I say, keep leaning in.

Possessor is Recommended If You Like: Devs, Videodrome, The bathhouse fight in Eastern Promises

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Assassinations

‘The Glorias’ Shows Off Some Good and Some Bad Habits of Biopic Filmmaking

September 29, 2020

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Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Lulu Wilson, Alicia Vikander, Julianne Moore, Gloria Steinem, and Director Julie Taymor behind the scenes of “The Glorias” (CREDIT: Dan McFadden/LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions)

Starring: Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Lulu Wilson, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Timothy Hutton, Janelle Monáe, Bella Abzug, Lorraine Toussaint, Enid Graham, Kimberly Guerrero, Monica Sanchez, Margo Moorer

Director: Julie Taymor

Running Time: 139 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Language and a Nude Image

Release Date: September 30, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)

I’m of the mind that biopics – that most staid of movie genres – ought to be a little bit wacky. Or A LOT wacky. And the Julia Taymor-directed The Glorias is undoubtedly wacky. Or maybe, it’s exactly as it should be, and it’s everything else that’s askew. The subject is Gloria Steinem, one of the most famous activists in American history, so I’m sure she can appreciate an approach that breaks the mold. Taymor ditches a strictly chronological approach by having all four of the actors playing Gloria frequently interact with each other. Ryan Kiera Armstrong (young Gloria), Lulu Wilson (teen Gloria), Alicia Vikander (young adult Gloria), and Julianne Moore (older adult Gloria) are all presented as passengers on a ride heading to the promise of Steinem’s life’s work. It’s a journey that’s still ongoing as conversations between the past and present remain passionate and relevant.

Taymor fills The Glorias with occasional flights of fantastical whimsy that reminded me a fair bit of Rocketman, the most exuberant biopic in recent memory. These include a sexist interview that turns into an encounter with all four Glorias as witches, and a moment of frustration leading to Gloria running along a series of seemingly endless M.C. Escher-style roads. These moments are fascinating on their own, but they’re a bit too scattered throughout to really pack as powerful a punch as they possibly could.

The Glorias also has plenty of much more prosaic moments, and that mix of straightforward and roundabout results in a running time that clocks in thickly at nearly two and a half hours. Some of the episodes in the 1970s section, like the founding of Ms. Magazine, were also recently covered more excitingly in the FX on Hulu miniseries Mrs. America. Taymor has bitten off plenty (which is what happens when you try to cover the entire arc of someone who’s lived for nearly 90 years), and she chews as much of it as she can. When she manages to really dig in, it’s a fine fiesta to behold. You just have to deal with the messier edges if you want to find the fun.

The Glorias is Recommended If You Like: Filmmaking that’s plenty ambitious but also a little messy

Grade: 3 out of 5 Marches

‘Scare Me’ Just Lets a Couple of Horror Writers Improvise Some Spooky Stories at Each Other

September 28, 2020

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Scare Me (CREDIT: Shudder)

Starring: Aya Cash, Josh Ruben, Chris Redd, Rebecca Drysdale

Director: Josh Ruben

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: Unrated (with R-Level Language)

Release Date: October 1, 2020 (Shudder)

The power is out, and you’re stuck in a secluded cabin in the dead of winter! What would you do if this happened to you? Well, if you’re one of the two main characters in Scare Me, you would ride out the night with each other and attempt to respond to the titular command with some real good creepy stories. Gathering around the fire for that purpose is a tradition that can be quite fun, but does it work when you make an entire movie about that? That is the challenge that writer/director/star Josh Ruben has set for himself. He certainly made a smart decision to cast Aya Cash opposite himself, because she just bites into everything, matching his nasty energy tit-for-tat. It’s a good thing that the performances are as demented as they are, because this movie can be quite claustrophobic to a fault.

When a movie is about people telling stories, my instinct is that it would be best to cut away to those stories as they’re being narrated. If that doesn’t happen, then it puts a LOT of pressure on the actors. Even if they rise to the occasion, I’m still inclined to wonder what it would be like if their tales got spruced up with a whole new set design or a switch to another medium. For example, it’s always fun when animation butts into live action, after all. But that’s not the type of movie that Ruben has made. Instead, he wanted to really up our anxiety levels while we hunker down with frustrated novelist Fred (Ruben) and successful novelist Fanny (Cash). I was happy to go along for the ride, but too often I felt like my patience was being tested.

While we don’t see too much of the spooky imagination transformed into visual whimsy, there is nevertheless plenty of imagination on display, as werewolves, a creepy grandpa, and a dead dog all make appearances in the stories. One yarn is even referred to as “A Star is Born, but Satan,” which certainly makes me respond, “Tell me more!” On top of all that, Cash keeps throwing her voice in a way that makes me wonder if it’s being distorted in post. At one point Chris Redd pops in as a pizza delivery guy who then joins in on the storytelling. (Oh, to be a pizza guy who can just hang around like that while on the clock!)

There’s a lingering sense of resentment on Fred’s part towards Fanny that fuels much of the night. Beyond being not very likable, though, it’s hard to get a clear read on him. Is he a misogynist, or just going through a rough time? Is he a practical joker, or a psychopath? Or is he just bored with life? How does it make sense that all of these options seem like legitimate possibilities? I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. But what I can say with confidence is, if you’re stuck at home with nothing else to do, telling each other scary stories is a fine idea. But if you’re going to make an entire movie about that, you probably ought to bust out the bells and whistles.

Scare Me is Recommended If You Like: Being stuck with grody energy

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Power Outages

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