Dear friend,
a shorter edition for this week because I had to focus on the first-worldiest of problems, that is, what to do with my summer holidays.
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Time Trap , directed by Ben Foster & Mark Dennis, written by Mark Dennis, US, 2017
They say, and I’m sure it’s true, that it’s a miracle that any film gets finished at all. I have never written one, directed one, or even remotely worked on one. So who am I to judge films at all? Nevertheless, here I am, judging the output of what certainly is a lot of work, by people who - at least is my impression - put a lot of passion and goodwill into it. And maybe I’m wrong, but I feel a bit sorry to say this film is not good. It feels like there was a good and maybe even coherent story in this script, but it would have required rewriting and polishing by expert hands, and the end result feels amateurish. The characters are annoying, the dialogue is so ’natural’ that feels thrown away (and makes a bad performer out of Andrew Wilson, who worked along with his younger brothers in Wes Anderson’s early films), the overall story could have been intriguing but it feels meaningless instead. And explicitly mentioning The Goonies is a reminder of the huge distance between what the directors were aiming to achieve, and what they delivered. ⭐️⭐️
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Incantation/咒 , directed by Kevin Ko, written with Zhang Zhe Wai, Taiwan, 2022
I tried watching this film months ago but stopped after ten-fifteen minutes because I was feeling too tense. Then a recent Evolution of Horror’s Patreon-only episode about ‘found footage’ films mentioned it quite positively, so I decided to try again. Weirdly, those first scenes that had (honestly) scared me so much the first time were still very intense, but everything felt more relaxed afterwards. This is sort of a weird thing to say because this is really one of the few films that kept me on the edge for its whole running time, by presenting a new variation on creepiness every few scenes. It’s true, its ‘found footage’ doesn’t fully hold up to scrutiny, but I am willing to forgive that because the technique is also explained narratively in a very satisfying way. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Truth or Dare , directed by Jeff Wadlow, written with Jillian Jacobs, Christopher Roach and Michael Reisz, US, 2018
A rewatch of a film I didn’t like the first time around, just because it was too late at night to start scrolling through Netflix’s list of stuff I’ve already seen or I never want to see. Plus, this was tagged as the ’extended director’s cut’, so, who knows, maybe it will be better. It turns out, this is extended by a whopping thirty seconds, and the differences are mostly scenes of people drinking. Oh well.
The film of course stays the same, with some vaguely promising or acceptable first part, freak accidents à la Final Destination, over-acting, a second half where it falls apart, and an ending that’s only slightly less disappointing because I already knew it. But another film I’ve seen recently does the same thing, in a much more way. ⭐️⭐️ (up from my 2022 first watch: ⭐️½) -
MaXXXine , written and directed by Ti West , US, 2024
Once the effect of Mia Goth’s title character majestically walking into an audition vanishes and you finally stop thinking about the very nasty stomping scene that follows, what is left is a narratively unfocused thriller channelling the early ’80s Brian De Palma, going back and forth through the Universal backlot, featuring Kevin Bacon cosplaying for Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, and so on. The lead character is extremely focused on making her name known to the world and has to deal with the consequences of X, so she feels very uninterested in anything else until she absolutely has to deal with it. Not a bad film, but quite disappointing. ⭐️⭐️½
In summary: only 4 films this week
- a sci-fi film, a thriller and two horrors
- three first watches, one rewatch
- three US films and a Taiwanese movie
- three original films, one sequel
- all released within the last 7 years