Weekly visions - week 33, 2024

‎Night Swim , written and directed by Bryce McGuire, US, 2024 - ⭐️⭐️

This film plays like a ‘greatest hits’ of several well-known preexisting movies, adding more tropes until it reaches its mandated running time. The lead character is a swimming pool, sort of a grown-up version of Pennywise’s gutter, upgraded with a plastic boat instead of Georgie’s paper one. Usually great Kerry Condon plays next-generation-Naomi-Watts-brave-horror-mum, Wyatt Russell plays dad-in-new-unbelievably-priced-dream-house from, well, you can guess.
At some point you hope it’s going for a J-horror creepy and absurdist story; instead, it opts for monsters that wouldn’t be out of place in a theme park ride.

‎The House on Sorority Row , written and directed by Mark Rosman, US, 1983 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I haven’t watched a ‘silly’ ’80s slasher in a while, and this film delivered more than I expected. I loved the first half, where it does something more interesting than just setting up a place and a group of characters to slash through. The second part goes back to copy-paste characters and motivation from the better-known stories that came before it, but still, this didn’t ruin the film for me.

‎The Wicker Tree , written and directed by Robin Hardy, UK, 2011 - ⭐️⭐️

I know, I have only myself to blame. Still, I was curious to watch this ‘spiritual sequel’ to The Wicker Man, so, yes, mission accomplished. This film has very little to do with Hardy’s most celebrated movie: we have Christian lead characters, a two-minute appearance by Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle (according to Hardy)/not Lord Summerisle (according to Lee), the titular wicker structure burning at the end, and some light sex/nudity. But the tone is incredibly different: the mystery and dread of Sergeant Howie’s story are replaced by vaguely ominous references to folkloric celebrations and the Celtic goddess Sulis, and the frame is more akin to a (bad) romantic comedy. Like a straight-to-video, awkwardly-acted, weekday-afternoon film, except for a couple of very conventionally shot sex scenes, and a gory one. On the other hand, the shift in tone is intentional: But I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and decide it’s intentionally funny (how to justify, otherwise, a gramophone playing a song about the joys of eating people?), even if the directorial and narrative choices are sometime just puzzling. I have the impression that Midsommar owes this film at least as much as it owes The Wicker Man.

‎The Wailing/곡성 , written and directed by Na Hong-jin, South Korea, 2016 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ with reservations

Let’s get it out of the way: I know that there is a lot of resentment in Korea for Japan’s occupation in the first half of the 20th century, but this film feels decidedly xenophobic in the way it treats its only Japanese character. This is one of the reasons I wasn’t too sure about a 4-star rating; another one is that I’m not sure the plot fully holds. But I’m still a bit shaken by its very unsettling and tense second half, featuring a long and incredibly dramatic exorcism ceremony, much more striking than the usual holy water and ’the power of Christ’ rites Western cinema has been showing us for fifty years.

‎Alien: Romulus , directed by Fede Álvarez, co-written with Rodo Sayagues, US, 2024 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

The scariest Alien since the first film, arguably the best one since the original (sorry for the unpopular opinion, but I really don’t like Aliens). It includes some great set-pieces (including one involving a lift), and a degree of fan service the appreciation of which will vary depending on the viewer. I wasn’t bothered too much, or maybe I don’t remember the other films that well, so I might have missed lots of unnecessary nods. Except for that one thing that’s impossible to miss, adds nothing and is totally inconsequential. The xenomorph, this time, has clearly absorbed some Don’t Breathe DNA, but that also (mostly) works well in this context. I got a bit geographically lost halfway in (and I really didn’t appreciate a very convenient random event that happened more or less at the same time), plus I found the ending not too original or satisfying.

‎Thirst/박쥐 , directed by Park Chan-wook, co-written with Chung Seo-kyung, South Korea, 2009 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t know why I postponed watching Thirst for more than a decade. It turned out to be the usual very enjoyable, sexy, funny, wonderfully shot, over-the-top, occasionally morbid, twenty-minutes-too-long Park Chan-wook film. As usual with this director, my heart verges towards four stars, while my head would hold back a bit. But it features a quasi-Lennonian Song Kang-ho and a deliciously dynamic performance by Kim Ok-vin, so the heart wins this time.