my cage has many rooms (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosedamask) wrote2023-01-07 08:14 pm
rosedamask) wrote2023-01-07 08:14 pm
Entry tags:
January Talking Meme: Horror Films of 2022
Belatedly, here is my year in review of all the (new release) horror films I watched in 2022, sorted in roughly ascending order.
Dashcam, The Black Phone, Smile: Losers for me this year were Dashcam, The Black Phone, and Smile. I actually didn't mind the "our protagonist is basically a cockroach" angle of Dashcam, but it didn't quite have the uncomfortable, cramped realness of Host, and Annie's livestreams didn't work for me as an outsider perspective on the whole parasite cult worship... plot... situation? I liked the conceit of the phone itself and all the other supernatural elements in The Black Phone but it annoyed me that Ethan Hawke's character was such a ten-car pile-up of creepypasta tropes that went nowhere (he's a child abductor! he's a man with a spooky van! he's an evil magician! he wears a mask and has a split personality! he's tormented because he can hear ghosts!). If I was doing a script doctor, I'd scrap at least half of that and also have more scenes with the cocaine brother, because he entertained me. Maybe he could team up with the main kid's scrappy little sister. Smile also felt like an under-edited creepypasta, although I did find it interesting to think about how that kind of constantly shapeshifting entity conveys the idea of relentless evil a lot more effectively to me than an entity with any kind of stable identity of its own. 2/5
Blonde: More of a slow burn disappointment was Blonde, which I'll put on the list because I went into it with the hope that it would be a shitty biography but a good horror film. It's certainly beautiful to look at, particularly the black and white scenes: they can float up from the dark like cold, dreamy little champagne bubbles (like the Gemini scene) or they can look painfully stark. I also liked the scenes between Marilyn and Whitey, her makeup artist: they're funny and warm and fucked up and have a kind of light and shade that's missing from most of the film. But it's so let down by not actually having all that much regard for Marilyn as its protagonist. Blonde wants so badly to be Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me for Marilyn Monroe, but it doesn't have the curiosity about Marilyn Monroe that David Lynch had for Laura Palmer. It spends so much time suggesting that (its construct of) Marilyn Monroe is so damaged by not having a father in her life that she never becomes a fully-formed person in her own right, and it has only the most cursory interest in what she thinks or feels at any given moment in the film outside of pushing this really trite, half-digested Freudian psychoanalysis. There were a few scenes that I was interested in as horror setpieces, namely the lead-in to the JFK abortion, filmed like an alien abduction, and the mirror scene where Marilyn prays for "her" to come. Both of them feel like they could have been from a more meta version of Blonde that focused on the persona of "Marilyn Monroe" as a terrifying cultural fantasy that exists beyond the efforts of any one actress herself, but then Blonde ultimately keeps circling back to its position of "ze woman, she is incomplete without ze fäther," and I can't be doing with that. 2/5
Bodies Bodies Bodies, Barbarian, The Menu: I liked Bodies Bodies Bodies, Barbarian and The Menu but don't have that much to say about any them. Although as a sidebar for The Menu, it did remind me how much I want a new Jeeves adaptation where Nicholas Hoult plays Bertie. 3/5
Orphan: First Kill, Terrifier 2: This year also had two sequels that I liked better than the originals, Orphan: First Kill and Terrifier 2. The Orphan franchise works so much better now that Isabelle Fuhrman is an adult, imo: when I saw the first Orphan, I couldn't get past the cognitive dissonance of seeing a child actor play a character who is villainized for not being a child, but Orphan: First Kill hits its stride as a "good for her" film where Esther gets to smoke and drink wine and be convincingly grown up while she's scamming her way through nuclear families. I also was put off by the "what if your child was actually an EVIL DWARF" disability politics of the first Orphan and while Orphan: First Kill is still a hot mess from that perspective, it's also much more fun to roll with the premise in a film that's essentially from Esther's perspective and leans into her as a delightfully weird kind of antiheroine. I loathed everything about the first Terrifier aside from David Howard Thornton's impeccable physicality, but Terrifier 2 is really elevated by the cinematography and by the joys of seeing an incredibly lovable final girl in a film that clearly loves her as much as I do. Lauren LaVera is just so luminous and watchable, and I particularly like that her character is introduced working on a cosplay outfit: I feel like slasher films run on a love of character design and practical effects, so this was a really pleasing trait to see in a final girl. I would subscribe to a Sienne Makes Stuff YouTube channel. Also, there's evil carnivals and pastiches of creepy kids' food commercials, I can't argue with that. 3/5
Torn Hearts: One more under-the-radar film that I'm really glad I saw was Torn Hearts, a kind of unlikely all-female Sunset Boulevard where a struggling a two-girl country music duo turn up on the doorstep of Harper Dutch, a reclusive Nashville legend who has spent years holed up in a dilapidated mansion after the death of her sister and bandmate, Hope. This was more of a slow burn, but as soon as Katey Sagal appears as Harper, she taps into just the right whiskey-soaked gravitas to take it into "delightfully unhinged" territory, and the whole aesthetic of this film makes me want Nashville Gothic to take off as a subgenre of Southern Gothic. There's satin and rhinestone stage costumes and smashed guitars and SEVERED FINGERS and the overall effect is fabulous. It also has some deliciously twisted female relationships and I'm so annoyed I forgot to nominate Harper/Hope and Harper/Leigh for Candy Hearts this year. 3/5
Fresh, Men: On rewatch this week, I feel like Fresh makes an interesting companion piece to Men in that both of them are heavily metaphorical explorations of gender politics, but Fresh uses its metaphor for "do I exist for male consumption?" as breezily as possible and Men is much more interested in the process of abstraction itself, and makes it the whole point of the film. I did think Men was a little ponderous, but not in a bad way, and I feel like Acolytes of Horror's video essay on Men puts its finger on what makes it compelling. There's a knottiness and stickiness to some of its imagery, and the Rory Kinnear pussy-popping extravaganza at the end was particularly, um, memorable? Fresh is a much zestier film, but that's not to say that it's shallow at all, and there's a real deftness to the way it teases out the frustration and vulnerability of Daisy Edgar-Jones' character, Noa. I love a good riff on Little Red Riding Hood, and this delivered in spades. (Also, I loved the soul-and-shoegaze combo of the soundtrack.) 3/5 for Men, 4/5 for Fresh.
X, Pearl: Really liked X and Pearl, especially Pearl. X is like a perfect rusty nail of a film, with its fuzzy 1970s cinematography and its sharp script. On my last rewatch, I especially liked the contrast between female desire as it's presented in the porno story-within-the-story and the weird, nebulous, unsatisfied ambitions of Maxine and Pearl. It was Pearl that really worked for me as a character study, though. I feel like Ti West's horror films have always had an incredible sense of characterization, but this was the first time it felt like this payed off on a thematic level? In contrast to Blonde, Pearl's obsession with fame as a way to be part of the world beyond her parents' farm felt well-defined and tragic to me, and the high point for me was the scene where Pearl screams and begs for help as she's being dragged away from the dance audition, just like Misty does later, and it's treated with the same gravity. When Pearl says "but... I'm a star," it feels like she means it in an almost mystical "every man and every woman is a star" kind of way, and it brings out all the existential horror that got lost in Blonde. Anyway, stan Pearl. 4/5
Skinamarink: I thought Pearl was going to be my favourite horror film of the year, but then I saw Skinamarink a few weeks ago and, well. At twenty minutes in, I thought, "this is the most scared I've been since Babadook," and it didn't let up from there. It's not the kind of film that will work for everyone, but I was so impressed (and terrified) by the way it takes the scenario of "kids are stuck in a house with a strange, malevolent entity"--a scenario that could be really trivial in a more conventional film (like Sinister, say)--and uses an immersive, almost first-person perspective to make you feel as vulnerable as the kids. Approaching a parent's bedside feels like putting yourself at the mercy of something unfathomable, and a loved one telling you to close your eyes is as terrible and inexplicable as seeing a Barbie dragged up the ceiling by its hair. It reminded me of the gameplay of (the incredible, showstopping, spectacular) Anatomy in the best way possible. Would recommend if you like analogue horror or would like to experience 90 minutes of unalleviated "going to see the man behind the Winky's in Mulholland Drive" levels of dread. 5/5
So yeah, that was 2022 for me! Other horror films from this year that I missed but want to check out soon are Crimes of the Future, Incantation, Resurrection (YES REBECCA HALL), and Candy Land. Tell me your favourites, tell me your recs!
Dashcam, The Black Phone, Smile: Losers for me this year were Dashcam, The Black Phone, and Smile. I actually didn't mind the "our protagonist is basically a cockroach" angle of Dashcam, but it didn't quite have the uncomfortable, cramped realness of Host, and Annie's livestreams didn't work for me as an outsider perspective on the whole parasite cult worship... plot... situation? I liked the conceit of the phone itself and all the other supernatural elements in The Black Phone but it annoyed me that Ethan Hawke's character was such a ten-car pile-up of creepypasta tropes that went nowhere (he's a child abductor! he's a man with a spooky van! he's an evil magician! he wears a mask and has a split personality! he's tormented because he can hear ghosts!). If I was doing a script doctor, I'd scrap at least half of that and also have more scenes with the cocaine brother, because he entertained me. Maybe he could team up with the main kid's scrappy little sister. Smile also felt like an under-edited creepypasta, although I did find it interesting to think about how that kind of constantly shapeshifting entity conveys the idea of relentless evil a lot more effectively to me than an entity with any kind of stable identity of its own. 2/5
Blonde: More of a slow burn disappointment was Blonde, which I'll put on the list because I went into it with the hope that it would be a shitty biography but a good horror film. It's certainly beautiful to look at, particularly the black and white scenes: they can float up from the dark like cold, dreamy little champagne bubbles (like the Gemini scene) or they can look painfully stark. I also liked the scenes between Marilyn and Whitey, her makeup artist: they're funny and warm and fucked up and have a kind of light and shade that's missing from most of the film. But it's so let down by not actually having all that much regard for Marilyn as its protagonist. Blonde wants so badly to be Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me for Marilyn Monroe, but it doesn't have the curiosity about Marilyn Monroe that David Lynch had for Laura Palmer. It spends so much time suggesting that (its construct of) Marilyn Monroe is so damaged by not having a father in her life that she never becomes a fully-formed person in her own right, and it has only the most cursory interest in what she thinks or feels at any given moment in the film outside of pushing this really trite, half-digested Freudian psychoanalysis. There were a few scenes that I was interested in as horror setpieces, namely the lead-in to the JFK abortion, filmed like an alien abduction, and the mirror scene where Marilyn prays for "her" to come. Both of them feel like they could have been from a more meta version of Blonde that focused on the persona of "Marilyn Monroe" as a terrifying cultural fantasy that exists beyond the efforts of any one actress herself, but then Blonde ultimately keeps circling back to its position of "ze woman, she is incomplete without ze fäther," and I can't be doing with that. 2/5
Bodies Bodies Bodies, Barbarian, The Menu: I liked Bodies Bodies Bodies, Barbarian and The Menu but don't have that much to say about any them. Although as a sidebar for The Menu, it did remind me how much I want a new Jeeves adaptation where Nicholas Hoult plays Bertie. 3/5
Orphan: First Kill, Terrifier 2: This year also had two sequels that I liked better than the originals, Orphan: First Kill and Terrifier 2. The Orphan franchise works so much better now that Isabelle Fuhrman is an adult, imo: when I saw the first Orphan, I couldn't get past the cognitive dissonance of seeing a child actor play a character who is villainized for not being a child, but Orphan: First Kill hits its stride as a "good for her" film where Esther gets to smoke and drink wine and be convincingly grown up while she's scamming her way through nuclear families. I also was put off by the "what if your child was actually an EVIL DWARF" disability politics of the first Orphan and while Orphan: First Kill is still a hot mess from that perspective, it's also much more fun to roll with the premise in a film that's essentially from Esther's perspective and leans into her as a delightfully weird kind of antiheroine. I loathed everything about the first Terrifier aside from David Howard Thornton's impeccable physicality, but Terrifier 2 is really elevated by the cinematography and by the joys of seeing an incredibly lovable final girl in a film that clearly loves her as much as I do. Lauren LaVera is just so luminous and watchable, and I particularly like that her character is introduced working on a cosplay outfit: I feel like slasher films run on a love of character design and practical effects, so this was a really pleasing trait to see in a final girl. I would subscribe to a Sienne Makes Stuff YouTube channel. Also, there's evil carnivals and pastiches of creepy kids' food commercials, I can't argue with that. 3/5
Torn Hearts: One more under-the-radar film that I'm really glad I saw was Torn Hearts, a kind of unlikely all-female Sunset Boulevard where a struggling a two-girl country music duo turn up on the doorstep of Harper Dutch, a reclusive Nashville legend who has spent years holed up in a dilapidated mansion after the death of her sister and bandmate, Hope. This was more of a slow burn, but as soon as Katey Sagal appears as Harper, she taps into just the right whiskey-soaked gravitas to take it into "delightfully unhinged" territory, and the whole aesthetic of this film makes me want Nashville Gothic to take off as a subgenre of Southern Gothic. There's satin and rhinestone stage costumes and smashed guitars and SEVERED FINGERS and the overall effect is fabulous. It also has some deliciously twisted female relationships and I'm so annoyed I forgot to nominate Harper/Hope and Harper/Leigh for Candy Hearts this year. 3/5
Fresh, Men: On rewatch this week, I feel like Fresh makes an interesting companion piece to Men in that both of them are heavily metaphorical explorations of gender politics, but Fresh uses its metaphor for "do I exist for male consumption?" as breezily as possible and Men is much more interested in the process of abstraction itself, and makes it the whole point of the film. I did think Men was a little ponderous, but not in a bad way, and I feel like Acolytes of Horror's video essay on Men puts its finger on what makes it compelling. There's a knottiness and stickiness to some of its imagery, and the Rory Kinnear pussy-popping extravaganza at the end was particularly, um, memorable? Fresh is a much zestier film, but that's not to say that it's shallow at all, and there's a real deftness to the way it teases out the frustration and vulnerability of Daisy Edgar-Jones' character, Noa. I love a good riff on Little Red Riding Hood, and this delivered in spades. (Also, I loved the soul-and-shoegaze combo of the soundtrack.) 3/5 for Men, 4/5 for Fresh.
X, Pearl: Really liked X and Pearl, especially Pearl. X is like a perfect rusty nail of a film, with its fuzzy 1970s cinematography and its sharp script. On my last rewatch, I especially liked the contrast between female desire as it's presented in the porno story-within-the-story and the weird, nebulous, unsatisfied ambitions of Maxine and Pearl. It was Pearl that really worked for me as a character study, though. I feel like Ti West's horror films have always had an incredible sense of characterization, but this was the first time it felt like this payed off on a thematic level? In contrast to Blonde, Pearl's obsession with fame as a way to be part of the world beyond her parents' farm felt well-defined and tragic to me, and the high point for me was the scene where Pearl screams and begs for help as she's being dragged away from the dance audition, just like Misty does later, and it's treated with the same gravity. When Pearl says "but... I'm a star," it feels like she means it in an almost mystical "every man and every woman is a star" kind of way, and it brings out all the existential horror that got lost in Blonde. Anyway, stan Pearl. 4/5
Skinamarink: I thought Pearl was going to be my favourite horror film of the year, but then I saw Skinamarink a few weeks ago and, well. At twenty minutes in, I thought, "this is the most scared I've been since Babadook," and it didn't let up from there. It's not the kind of film that will work for everyone, but I was so impressed (and terrified) by the way it takes the scenario of "kids are stuck in a house with a strange, malevolent entity"--a scenario that could be really trivial in a more conventional film (like Sinister, say)--and uses an immersive, almost first-person perspective to make you feel as vulnerable as the kids. Approaching a parent's bedside feels like putting yourself at the mercy of something unfathomable, and a loved one telling you to close your eyes is as terrible and inexplicable as seeing a Barbie dragged up the ceiling by its hair. It reminded me of the gameplay of (the incredible, showstopping, spectacular) Anatomy in the best way possible. Would recommend if you like analogue horror or would like to experience 90 minutes of unalleviated "going to see the man behind the Winky's in Mulholland Drive" levels of dread. 5/5
So yeah, that was 2022 for me! Other horror films from this year that I missed but want to check out soon are Crimes of the Future, Incantation, Resurrection (YES REBECCA HALL), and Candy Land. Tell me your favourites, tell me your recs!
no subject
Torn Hearts sounds right up my street, adding that to my watchlist.
no subject