Month: February 2023

Black Female Horror Directors – Part II

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Last week, given February being Black History Month in the States and having also been until recently Women in Horror Month, I started seeking out horror films directed by Black women. I will say though, there are slim pickings – really very few to choose from, and though I’ve appreciated all that I’ve watched, there has consistently been a certain distance from the horror genre. Still, it has been an interesting project for me to target films thus and probably end up sampling some things I may not have otherwise chosen.

So, let’s keep moving forward and check out another two films this week. Again, these are first time watches and I don’t know how much there will be to say about them, so these may be shorter reviews and I will endeavor to avoid spoiling anything.

Nanny (2022)

As with the two films covered last week, this is also a feature debut for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, and I think it is a lovely movie – warm, deeply felt, utterly culturally and personally specific, and really quite moving. However, given that this is a horror blog, I must say I don’t think it’s much of a “Horror” movie and I suspect it is ill served by the label. Still, on Prime (where it streams exclusively), it is listed as “horror-drama-suspense” and IMDB lists it as Drama – Horror, so we will dig into it here. I myself would have labeled it a Folklore Infused Magical Realist Drama (as if that’s a common genre on a streamer like Prime), and I think it is quite a good one. However, I fear that being marketed as a Horror film, from Blumhouse Studios no less (which releases a wide slate of popular horror every year), means that it will mostly be clicked on by people looking for, you know, a horror movie, who may be very disappointed, while an audience that could be more appreciative might not come across it. But hey, I found it this way, and if it hadn’t been listed as “Horror” I wouldn’t have watched it, so maybe I’m wrong.

We follow Aisha, a young woman from Senegal, working in New York City as a Nanny for a well-to-do couple. The work relationship initially feels good – respectful, warm, and considerate, but it isn’t long before they are expecting more from her than is reasonable, the husband is hitting on her, and on top of it all, they are stiffing her on her pay (and threatening her with legal trouble – given her undocumented status – when she complains). Somehow this clearly wealthy family (she is some kind of corporate executive who complains of how unfair her work situation is in the ‘boy’s club’ of the company to the Nanny she’s underpaying and he is a globe-trotting photographer who spends a lot of time in Africa and seems initially quite supportive, but there is a strong whiff of exploitation to his photos of African revolt, hardship, and poverty) is having what they perceive as hard times financially and are cutting corners where they know they can get away with it.  But these are all minor irritations she’s willing to put up with if she can actually get her salary, send it home, and finally buy a ticket for her son (whom she hasn’t seen in a year) to join her in the States.

Aisha is wracked by emotions – guilt for having left her own child behind and instead giving so much attention to this rich couple’s little girl, discomfort with having so displaced herself and apprehension about doing the same to her son, hope that she’s actually building the two of them a better future, and the constant stress of trying to hold it all together. Mostly, she just keeps her nose down and pushes ahead, choosing rock solid self-confidence out of pure necessity, but you can see how it all wears on her, eating away at her resolve.

Perhaps this stress and guilt metastasizes into disturbing hallucinatory visions. Perhaps she is haunted by the folkloric spirits of Western Africa for her abandonment of her cultural home. Perhaps her strength of emotions have summoned these forces to help her. Perhaps she externalizes her inner turmoil through these folkloric figures of her childhood. Either way, strange things begin to happen while she’s at work. The shower seems to keep turning itself on. At the child’s swimming lesson, she’s pulled under by a kind of mermaid, Mami Wata. Sleeping in the room allotted for her, shadows of spider legs climb the walls and it’s implied that Anansi the Spider is involved in some wicked child-endangerment trickery. Her reflection is not her own. Many of these sequences could have existed inside a horror film (and I suppose on the strength of them, it is marketed as one), and I must admit that it did earn two genuine gasps from me (much to the entertainment of my wife who was working on the other side of the room while I watched this with my headphones on). But at the end of the day, I think they exist totally in service to the larger drama – which primarily feels tender and sad and gentle – more than adding up to a larger horrific feeling (though by the film’s conclusion, there are tragic revelations).

With heavy reliance on CGI effects, these sequences don’t always look their best, but the film in general is often beautifully filmed. Its particular color palette and saturation is striking and effective – often contrasting the warm, rich colors of Aisha’s wardrobe, home, and neighborhood, with the grey, modern sterility of the upscale apartment she works in. The film is very textural, building a story out of glass and stone and skin and fabric. And the sound design and scoring is rich and watery and fascinating – sometimes bringing an ominous sense to scenes in which nothing bad seems to have happened – yet – and keeping me watching the credits to the very end because I appreciated dwelling a bit longer in this space and letting the feelings of the film wash over me.

And there is a lot of feeling and a lot of nuance. There are so many small, well-observed moments: Aisha at a friend’s kid’s birthday party, struggling to relax and enjoy herself and flashing on visions of her own child having his next birthday without her, moments of kindness and loving solidarity with the woman at the money transfer office who’s so invested in her role in helping Aisha bring her son over, the hesitance with which Aisha allows herself to open up to Malik, the handsome and charming doorman at the building where she works, but also how uncomfortable she is about opening up in any way at all – like she can’t afford to relax, even for a moment – and if she does, if she lets herself be happy, maybe it feels like a betrayal of her son – leaving him behind to enjoy a new life without him. Many of these moments are small – it is a film that best thrives in the little, lived-in details – but as a whole, the film is rich in them, as it is also rich in its folkloric influences, drawing on figures like Anansi or Mami Wata without feeling the need to excessively explain them – they can just be there. Or not. Nothing is certain and the film isn’t interested in resolving those questions.

As with last week’s features, I feel that while anyone could have told this story with this nuance and this care, possibly no one else would have chosen to, and searching out films by a particular population has brought me characters and situations I wouldn’t have otherwise met. To be fair, Jusu is not an undocumented immigrant and this is not her story – she’s from Atlanta, though I’ve read her parents are from Sierra Leone. I don’t know what her childhood was or how it may or may not have informed this work, but I imagine her background feeds into it more than, for example, mine would have.

I really did like this film. I just wouldn’t generally call it “Horror.” But casting the widest possible net, “Horror” sometimes comes to include any contemporarily set story that features the supernatural, psychological turmoil, and/or the tragic, and something I love about the genre is that it can make room for such things that don’t really have another genre home, so I should probably stop harping on its classification and just be happy that such an interesting little picture has a place in the world.

Atlantics (2019)

So when I set out on this project last week, I hadn’t realized one other element that would tie together the films I’m watching. The fourth in a row now, this is another first time feature of a writer-director, and it is a confident, patient, unique little masterpiece. Again, I wouldn’t exactly call it a Horror film, but it does feature horror elements (ghosts, possession, something akin to zombies), and at least in this case, it isn’t actually marketed as one so much as a supernatural-romance-drama. But it first came on my radar praised by Elric Kane of the Colors of the Dark horror podcast, and based on that glowing recommendation, I feel justified including it here.

The other surprising through line I’ve stumbled into is Senegal. In Nanny, Aisha has emigrated from Senegal, leaving behind her son. In Atlantics, French-Senegalesewriter-director Mati Diop focuses on a group of women in Dakar, Senegal left behind when their boyfriends leave on a small boat, attempting to emigrate to Spain (also, just a few weeks ago, I wrote about Saloum, a Senegalese co-production – Senegal is apparently having a moment on this blog). I think it’s interesting how these are both tales of emigration (about the leaving) more than immigration (so typical in the American context), but whereas in Nanny, the one who left is haunted by who she’s left behind, in Atlantics, it is those left behind who find themselves haunted by the loss of these young men.

Specifically, we follow a young woman, Ada, whose lover, Souleiman, is among the group of guys who take the perilous ocean voyage after giving up on ever getting paid for a fancy hotel construction job (their boss owes them four months back wages and you don’t have the impression that he ever intends to pay). Working in the shadow of a modern skyscraper, these young men inhabit a totally different world. It feels crushingly unfair, but there is also a kind of solidarity between them as they demand their wages together, as they cram into the back of a pickup, singing songs on the road home to see their families and loved ones. Souleiman seems so weighed down, defeated, no song in his heart, and it is lovely seeing his friends patting him, rubbing his head, trying to lift him up into the group spirit. Not having seen each other for days because he’s been working, the two lovers meet up for an afternoon rendezvous by the sea, but Souleiman seems distracted, his eyes drawn to the waves. There’s a plan to meet up later that night, but when Ada and all of her girlfriends get to the club, they discover that all of the boys have left, and the bottom just drops out. The music is turned off as the young women process their grief.

This leaves Ada with little recourse but to follow through on her appointed marriage to an affluent man whom she does not love, Omar. Diop’s film never explains how she got connected to Omar, but it is clear that there is no love between them, and though her friends are all impressed with the wealth he offers, Ada keeps him at a distance. It feels like she had always been assuming she would be able to get out of it and make a life with Souleiman, but now that he’s gone, she’s stuck, and at her lively, colorful wedding ceremony, she seems to be going through the motions in a kind of a daze. At least until her marriage bed is mysteriously set ablaze, kicking off the more ghostly portion of the film.

Without going into too much detail, it does seem that the spirits of the boys have returned with a vengeance – to hound their former boss into handing over back pay to their families, and in Ada’s case, to sabotage this supposedly (but not really) joyful occasion and, to whatever degree it is possible, be with her again. In this, there are nice elements of ghostliness, of the mysterious. It isn’t filmed in a way to ‘be scary,’ but there is an emotional, unsettling quality to it all – it is literally ‘haunting’. When the boss is confronted in his home by a pack of white eyed women, all ridden by their former lovers to demand their due, it is threatening and uncanny. They are direct. They are unyielding. If horror involves the revelation of unbearable truth, this man’s responsibility for their loss surely qualifies. And their anger is all the more powerful for being so quiet, yet constant.

A detail I loved in the performance of Mama Beneta Sane (who plays Ada) is how steady and almost detached she is from her whole familial obligation to Omar. There is a sense in the film of the really unpleasant socio-political situation these women inhabit. Omar has a proprietary attitude towards her, and I doubt that’s uncommon. But she just doesn’t care. Not even a little bit. Her mother and grandmother criticize her for not speaking more sweetly to him, for not giving him a smile and keeping him happy, but she was out of this marriage before it ever happened. If she needs to just walk away, leave him, leave her family, get a job, crash with a friend, she will. And it’s all without drama, totally lacking in histrionics, because none of it matters. The one thing that she had loved is gone, and the degree to which she no longer gives a damn makes her surprisingly free, strong, independent. For a film that is so sad, she ends on a surprisingly liberated note.

Relatedly, the film strikes an interesting balance of tones and feelings. I will say, this is no action movie. You might even call it slow. There are no horror jump scares on offer. Not much happens and the dominant mood is one of waiting. We are waiting with the characters. Living on this coast, in a dusty world of unpaid salaries, unloving marriages, a police force that protects a rich developer but turns a blind eye to how he rips off his workers, and shiny new buildings to be inhabited by total strangers, they wait: for money they’ve earned, for the boys to come home from work (or to ever come home from sea), to sneak out of the house and go be young for an evening, and possibly to leave and not come back. And washing over it all is the static-like roar of the ocean. There are few moments in the film when we don’t hear it. At once that ocean feels like a way to the wide open world out there beyond all this, but also like a wall holding them where they are – impenetrable, dangerous, swallowing up their young men who attempt a life abroad. Only once, for a brief moment at the end, after a taste of romantic resolution, does it feel like a natural force that gives and supports life.

Living in Europe, the last ten years have featured plenty of discussion of ‘the Migrant Crisis,’ as so many, particularly from Northern Africa and the Middle East have been taking their lives into their hands and boarding small crafts, such as the one the boys take here, hoping to find better lives in a new context. There have been a lot of responses to this, some more welcoming than others (and some quite cold and racist); but even the most open and supportive generally frame this as a problem for European countries to deal with. Insofar as I’ve chosen these films to encounter different perspectives, it is refreshing to see people presented as individuals, not problems to be solved, and to have a glimpse of what they are leaving, why they would do so, and how those left behind are affected. And still, this is not just a social realist drama, presenting a difficult real-world situation. It is more than that. Mythic, tragic, languorous, romantic, and rich in ambivalence, Diop’s film is a deeply personal and therefore universal meditation on love and hope and loss and resilience. If you’re reading this blog looking for scary movies, it isn’t that. But if you’re looking for something really haunting and special, I do recommend this one – it’s currently streaming on Netflix.

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So this was another interesting pairing: both award winning films (Nanny at Sundance and Atlantics at Cannes) from first time writer-directors (both Black women with African parents) and both dealing with emigration in a very personal and emotional fashion. Both films draw on elements of folk belief and intimations of the supernatural, but neither really feels quite like horror. Rather, I would say that both feel more like a kind of Magical Realism – supernatural things happen – there are ghosts, or possessions, or spirits, or gods, and it can threaten, but it feels natural. It feels of the world of the characters, not merely an element of allegory to heighten the emotion of their stories, and certainly not there to terrify the viewer. And both films were very moving for me in different ways.

They may not exactly be “Horror,” but I wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been seeking out “Horror” films from Black Female directors, and thus, I’m happy to call this little project a success. In these last two weeks, I watched things I wouldn’t have otherwise. I got to look through some different eyes. I saw four very interesting and worthwhile films that at least bear some relationship to my chosen genre even if they are far from textbook examples of it. I really appreciate how Horror, in its unique way, can help open up perspectives like this.

But it all does lead to an intriguing question of why there is so little to choose from (beyond the fact that there are comparatively few films directed by Black women in general – which seems obviously rooted in certain socioeconomic inequities). Few horror films at all, and so many of them low on the “horror.” To be fair, I didn’t give any attention to Nia DaCosta’s Candyman sequel/reboot (which is absolutely a horror film, though one that clearly has things to say about race in America) – to some extent because I’d already seen it and I wanted to focus on first time watches, and to some extent because I feel it’s so tied up in a nexus of elements besides the self-expression of the filmmaker – commercial pressures of being a sequel/reboot, deep love for the original film, and a kind of meta-commentary inherent in reclaiming a “Black” narrative which had originally been put on screen by a White British guy (whose idea it had been to move it to a Black American neighborhood in the first place – in the original short story, Candyman was White, it took place in London, and it dealt rather with British class issues). But maybe that all deserves its own post someday. For now, I’m quite satisfied with the four Horror-adjacent films that I got.

Still, next week, I’m gonna try to find something scary. 🙂

Black Female Horror Directors – Part I

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Representation is important, in front of and behind the camera. While I’m not one to say that films should never be made about certain communities by those who are not from those communities (a White, British guy can make a great movie centered on an African American neighborhood – see Candyman (1992)), I do think it is important that people be given the opportunity to tell their own stories. This isn’t only a matter of parity, of the fairness of self-representation; it’s good for the art. When members of under-represented groups tell their own tales, there may be different points of focus, new perspectives, the camera may be pointed in places someone from without may not have thought to point it, and we all benefit from a wider range of life experience being committed to film.

With that in mind, February is “Black History Month” (at least in America, where I’m from) and until quite recently, it was also “Women in Horror Month” (though as of 2022, the organizers have opted for a more year-long approach). Therefore, I thought it might be a good project to try some horror films, all new for me, made by Black female directors. I will say though, as sometimes occurs when seeking to fill a representational gap, an initial search has not turned up so many to choose from (echoes of the other week when I had trouble finding a “Lesbian Vampire film” made by an LGBT+, female identifying director, or a vampire for that matter). But I have found some, so let’s check a couple out.

As I haven’t seen these before and don’t know how much there will be to discuss, it’s possible that these will be shorter reviews and therefore, I’ll endeavor to keep them spoiler free.

Eve’s Bayou (1997)

Right off the bat, before any reader objects – ok, I do have some trouble counting this as a horror film. It’s got rich, steamy Louisiana atmosphere. It’s got some death. Psychic elements. Maybe ghosts. Hoodoo death curses. But the mood is overwhelmingly that of a period drama rather than horror – it feels like an adaptation of some worthy historical novel. Still, it was listed as “horror” on IMDB and I remember it being discussed in the excellent Horror Noir (2019) documentary, detailing Black representation in Horror films, so here it is; and I do think it has value worth discussing, even if it’s a stretch to include it in the genre.

While her feature directorial debut may only tangentially relate to horror, as an actor, Kasi Lemmons had already held key roles in the genre (fulfilling the trope of Black best friend to the White female lead in Silence of the Lambs and Candyman). Just a few years later, she wrote and directed this deeply personal film which Roger Ebert (not always a friend to Horror) named the best of the year (it was also the most profitable independent film of 1997).

A 60s period piece set in the small town of Eve’s Bayou, outside of New Orleans, the film centers on a ten year old girl named Eve, whom we know from the opening narration by the end of the summer will kill her father, that threat of violence hanging over the rest of the proceedings. Eve’s father is a successful doctor and their family is local royalty of sorts, descended from a Famous French general and the freed slave woman to whom he’d dedicated the town. Her father, Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson), is also a notorious philanderer and this is the source of no small amount of family drama. Jackson brings so much easy charm to the role, and you can see how women would be drawn to him, as well as how easily he could manipulate his wife and family. It’s refreshing to see him play a character with so little bluster, so much warmth, and such deep dysfunction under the surface. It’s no wonder that he came on the project as a producer – it’s a great part.

Eve’s aunt (Louis’s sister) has psychic premonitions, which it seems Eve shares, and works as a kind of spiritual therapist, assisting townspeople with their own traumas, while suffering greatly herself, cursed as she is to always outlive her husbands (so far, she’s been through three). And rounding out the spiritual cast, there is the local Hoodoo woman who tells fortunes that aren’t always so nice and has no qualms about dealing with darker magics if the price is right. Otherwise, the film focuses on the relationships between Eve, her mother, her older sister, and her younger brother, as they navigate the personal betrayals, the hazy visions of something tragic looming in their future, and the crazy-making emotions and impulses of childhood and adolescence. Much of the film is borne by the young performers and while they may not hit every beat, they do an admirable job of carrying a great deal of emotional weight.

I can’t say that I was totally captivated at every turn by the story (though there were surely strong moments and elements), but I did appreciate the representational project. Inspired by family trips to Louisiana in her childhood, Lemmons gives so much attention to small details of this community, its people, its spirituality and superstitions, and its aspirations – and it is noteworthy that this is a different kind of small, rural, southern Black populace than is usually portrayed on film. This is a fairly well-to-do middle class society, in which the Batistes stand out for their money and position. This isn’t a story about poverty, the ghosts of slavery, or the struggle for Civil Rights – this is a thriving population full of its own characters and stories and dramas, with no need to look further afield for greater significance. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be a single White person in the cast (plenty of films might feature an all-White cast without drawing notice). The story is self-contained – about Eve and her family and their troubles – we look through their eyes and not those of some outside perspective intended to purportedly help a mainstream White audience connect.

By the end of the film, her father is indeed dead – but did she actually kill him? That is in doubt. There have been dark revelations, but those revelations have also been cast into doubt. All is subjective and nothing is very certain. To paraphrase the closing narration, the past and the future can both be seen, but both change depending on the light. Lemmons succeeded in bringing a similarly personal emotionality to it all, focusing her lens on a time and a place, on nuances of character and society that another filmmaker might not have been so drawn to. I still have trouble calling it “Horror” per se, but it is a work of value and I’m glad to have given it a chance.

Master (2022)

Mariama Diallo’s directorial feature debut, which she also wrote, does clearly situate itself more firmly in the genre, though by the end it’s thrown into question whether anything has actually been supernatural or if this has all really been more of a psycho-social, allegorical drama. Regardless, it does feel like a horror movie, particularly through its first two acts, and that’s enough for me. Past that, it is a very different piece than the preceding film. Whereas Eve’s Bayou stood out for its focus on the nuances of life within its geographically and culturally specific Louisiana Black community, Master directly sets its crosshairs on the current experience of being Black in America writ large, particularly when navigating contexts historically dominated by rich White people, in this case, Academia.

 I will say, before going into full detail, that the film is really rich in ideas, lived experiences, and an entirely unsettling, oppressive sense of dread and discomfort. That said, sometimes there is just so much going on in terms of a possible ghost story, the echoes of a witch hanging, the specter of slavery and/or Black servitude, and the contemporary ‘micro-aggressions’ and mendacity both encountered and perpetrated by our protagonists that I have difficulty pulling the threads together. Are these the failings of an over-ambitiously messy first feature, or is the intention to make an evocative, disturbing mélange of a film rather than telling a totally straightforward story? If the former, it is still such an overall success that it’s easy to forgive the ways it doesn’t quite gel by the end. If the latter, it is quite effective in its goal, though it does suffer somewhat for having created initial expectations of, let’s say, typical genre-based narrative coherence which it seems to lose interest in during the final stretch.

We follow two Black women at a prestigious New England University which is notably homogeneous. Jasmine, a freshman housed in a dorm room which may be haunted, in which the school’s first Black student had hanged herself years ago, is one of perhaps 8 or 9 Black students on campus. Gail is one of the only Black members of the faculty, and has just been made the “Master” of the students’ house that Jasmine lives in. Being a Master is prestigious and Gail is the first Black professor to hold such a position. Almost immediately, both of them begin to experience spooky stuff. Portraits of the school’s founder suddenly appear skeletal, maggots seem to spontaneously generate in surprising places, dreams are haunted by ghostly premonitions, spindly clawed hands reach out from beneath beds, and mysterious cloaked figures loom in the night.

All of these typical Horror trappings are seamlessly interwoven with similarly discomforting socio-racial dynamics. Jasmine sees an older Black cafeteria worker warmly coddling all of the White students only to get the cold shoulder when she approaches. Gail finds countless racist artifacts in her new “Master” chambers, such as a “Mammy” cookie jar or remnants of Black servants’ quarters. Jasmine tries to fit in with her roommate’s rich friends, but they all (barely) subtly treat her more like the help than like a peer. Gail suspects that her rise in status is thanks more to optics than respect, and that her colleagues mainly want her in the position to clean up the school’s historical image. And most dramatically, Jasmine suffers direct harassment, with racist images and nooses hung on her dorm room door.

It is the primary strength of the film that all of these elements seem to carry equal weight as the intimations of supernatural threat. I think this is mutually beneficial – the horror movie tropes are given greater emotional weight by being linked with the real world issues and the examination of socio-racial discomfort benefits from being accurately framed as “horror.” All of it is dreadful. All of it is scary. All of it communicates the message that “you are not welcome here – you are not wanted – leave while you can,” and at the same time, both women are justified in wanting to stick it out, to not give up, to not let it all get to them. They want to be stronger than that and not be defeated by this ugliness. Ultimately though, the ugly, the danger, the ghosts of the past are really quite a force to be reckoned with.

The clawed figure that haunts Jasmine’s dreams and pushes her towards the window from which past students have jumped is scary, but is it scarier than when she finds herself the only Black person at a party, surrounded by White students aggressively shouting along to a rap song, gleefully screaming the N-word at her and making gorilla sounds? This is filmed as a horror scene, and rightly so. Gail is largely aware of what Jasmine is going through, having been there before herself, but she can’t look through her eyes, can’t always be there to push back against the social weight. And she is pulled in other directions, navigating her own issues in the school, particularly the racial overtones surrounding the possible advancement of the school’s only other Black, female professor. There’s only so much she can do.

By the end, the supernatural element fades to the background or is even consciously abandoned – either it was always metaphoric, or it just can’t compete with the human social forces that make life for the two of them at this school, which they’ve both worked so hard to get to, so very unbearable. Shortly before this, perhaps putting a cap on the possible ghost story, Gail tells Jasmine, “It’s not ghosts. It’s not supernatural. It’s America, and it’s everywhere.” It’s a bleak turn – it would be so much easier if there was just a scary ghost to appease, or even if that weren’t possible, to know that it could only haunt so many, only hurt so many. But nope – Gail knows that what Jasmine’s experiencing can’t be run away from; it is just the world that they inhabit.

In the end, though, both characters do leave the university in their ways, but as Gail walks off campus for the last time (after being stopped by campus security and asked to show her faculty ID), we see the night alive with service workers – garbage men, landscapers – all of them Black, just doing their jobs – maintaining a beautiful environment for (primarily) privileged White kids. She may leave, but nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing will change. And really, where is there to go? As I said, it’s a dark ending.

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From one angle, these are two totally disparate films – one only tangentially connected to the supernatural and one steeped in horror conventions – one entirely set within a Black community and one focused on the tension of being Black in a “White space” – one a cohesive family drama and one a thematically broad hodgepodge of racism, literal hauntings, and social anxiety. However, the similarities are just as striking. Both were first feature films written and directed by a Black woman, and both clearly shed light on specific experiences of being a Black woman in America in a concrete time and place – these are not generalizations, but feel distinct and individualized. What a pleasure and what a value.

Sadly however, these will be the only films considered for now. This is a busy week for me outside of the blog, so this is as far as I’m going today. But February isn’t over yet and I plan to continue in this vein next time.

A Lot to Love in My Bloody Valentine

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When something like Valentine’s Day rolls around, it just feels like it sets the agenda. Sometimes I have trouble deciding what to write about on a given week, but in this case, it’s simple – just do something for the holiday (as with, for example, Christmas). But then what to do? Of course, there is the most obvious route, but maybe I should instead focus on some other romantic horror movie – like Return of the Living Dead Part III. I mean, if I discuss that most obvious choice, what new do I have to add? It’s a classic for a reason, and it’s not like no one’s ever written about it before. But sometimes, I can go easy on myself and do the obvious thing, right? And I sure do love My Bloody Valentine, so even if it’s already been much written about, in honor of this holiday all about love, let’s get into how much there is to love in this gory early-80s slasher classic.

I’ll avoid spoiling the big reveal at the end, but if you’ve never seen it before and have a soft spot for slashers, maybe just go check it out. It seems readily available on many streamers (though I’m not sure which version you’ll find).

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

First off, it should be said (because I expect much of this text may seem to contradict this) that George Mihalka really made a solid horror film.  I don’t remember if I found it scary per se on first viewing (and now I’ve seen it enough that scares are hard to come by), but it maintains a great spooky atmosphere both in and out of the mines, it features a lot of creatively conceived and brilliantly executed kill scenes as a killer in a miner outfit hunts down and murders loads of horny young people (among others), and it successfully taps into a great scary campfire tale/old murder ballad vibe that is just such a cool horror mood in which to dwell. It had the misfortune of being released amidst a backlash against violent movies and many of its grisliest moments were left on the cutting room floor, but over the years, much of that footage has been restored and it really is so well done – shocking and gross and just brutal. But really, even the most edited version I’ve seen still feels rough and mean when it comes to the killing. All in all, it is a really well-made, by-the-numbers slasher.

But that isn’t why I like it as much as I do. What raises it above so much of its competition is how much heart it has (in addition to how many hearts it rips out). I believe in the life of this small town of Valentine Bluffs. And I believe in and kinda love its residents. The work of the mine is hard and dark and dirty, and the world surrounding it is grey, dingy, smoggy, and run down. There is a natural impulse to rebel against this, to try to escape; and that is what one of the main characters, T.J., has tried to do. A Bruce Springsteen song made flesh, he’d had big dreams in some mythical ‘out west,’ and had escaped from his provincial hometown where he knew he was doomed to follow his father into the mining business and live a life of quiet desperation. But having escaped, he just failed hard and has come crawling back – to the town, to the mine, to Sarah, the girl he’d left behind. Of course, callously dropped by him when he ran away, chasing after something better, she’s moved on with T.J.’s buddy, Axel. You can’t go home again.

I will say that I have trouble caring much about this central love triangle, but I appreciate it in counterpoint to the relationships we see among so many of the other denizens of Valentine Bluffs. Sure, there are a few others who hope to one day blow town (such as the kid who gets drowned in boiling hotdog water before getting decapitated and having his heart boiled with the wieners – it is still a slasher flick), but so many of the other people we meet here have found something to hold onto in this small town life. And for a movie that features a head shoved onto a shower spigot till the water runs bloody out of the mouth, a pickaxe slammed up through someone’s chin till it knocks out an eyeball, and a nail gun being repeatedly discharged into someone’s cranium, the feeling I overwhelmingly take away from it all is just sweetness.  

We meet a number of other couples, or potential couples, and they seem genuinely happy. Early on, after finishing a hard day in the mines and goofing around in the showers, all of the guys race out to the parking lot like giddy schoolboys, not even fully dressed, their jeans around their ankles, tearing into town, so desperate to see their girlfriends and plan what they’re going to do for the upcoming Valentine’s Day dance at the union hall. When they burst in, six-packs in hand, there is a spark of joy. I believe how happy Hollis and Patty are to see each other, how excited Silvia and John are to be close, to touch, to get some private time together. Somehow, in this mean little slasher, I believe, and I actually like the romances of these secondary characters more than in most films that would actually be labeled ‘romantic.’

Relatedly, I really appreciate the film’s tactile sensuality. Though there is no nudity (a woman is in her bra at one point and the guys are all in the shower together, but they’re filmed from the waist up), there is often a sense of intimacy between characters that rings true as physical, as chemical. The film even opens with a surprisingly kinky moment as the killer has snuck a woman into the mine shafts. I don’t read this as premeditated murder – they seem like two young people who have spirited away here for some hard to find privacy (or just because it would be sexy to do it in the mine).

After taking off her coveralls, and eventually her gas mask, she goes to remove his, but he doesn’t want her to. So she strokes the mask and breathing tube, softly, tenderly, more sexually than what might be seen in another 80s slasher where girls are always taking off their tops. They’re just both really into the mask. Sadly, he then becomes aware of the heart tattoo on her breast and, hands trembling, impales her on a pick axe. But for all that it ends in murder, first there is a real feeling of (fairly fetishistic) sexuality and desire between them.

And it’s not just the young. Probably the sweetest relationship in the film is the tentative, shy, middle-aged flirtation between Police Chief Newby and Mabel, the proprietor of the local laundromat, thanks to whose decorating efforts, the town will hold its first Valentine’s Dance since the bloody unpleasantness twenty years earlier, and the whole otherwise depressed locale is covered head to toe in pink crepe paper and hearts. The state of their relationship is never quite defined, but I feel there’s more than affection and it’s not yet been acted on. I really feel for the poor guy when he finds her, heart ripped out, tumbling in one of her dryers.  

And that is something else that the film takes time for, which I always appreciate in my horror. There is actual grief – sometimes totally debilitating grief, which feels more realistic than many slashers where death comes cheap and the main feeling is the thrill of suspense. Chief Newby is so clearly hurt, but he has to do his job, and isn’t allowed to break down. However, some of the young lovers aren’t so steady. I just love how when John finds his girlfriend Silvia murdered in the mine’s showers, he just seems to totally snap. He doesn’t scream at first; nor does he cry. He just stops, and something inside him dies.

Later, he is useless – a blubbering mess of snot and sobs who has to be held up. It feels like this poor young man will never recover. And isn’t that what horror is supposed to be? Shouldn’t it be that devastating? Similarly, when the lovable Patty finds her even more endearing big teddy bear of a boyfriend, Hollis with nails sticking out of his face, she doesn’t have it in her to ‘be strong,’ to ‘be a survivor.’ She doesn’t want to leave his body behind, and she becomes a huge liability for the others – and I love it. Shouldn’t this be what death is like? It matters. Hollis mattered.

The murder scenes are all bravura sequences of filmic terror and really excellent practical effects, but the reactions to all of the murders are really heartbreaking, especially in light of the warm feelings that had preceded them. And somehow these two extremes support and reinforce each other in counterpoint rather than cancelling each other out.

Early on, the mayor is given a surprise box of Valentine’s chocolates, and he is so tickled. He wants to know who left the box for him and everyone is so coy in denying involvement. Soon after, in Chief Newby’s car, he giddily unwraps the box, saying, “if there’s one thing I like better than Christmas candy, it’s Valentine’s candy!” and it could be so silly, so cheesy, but he is really, really ecstatic about these sweets, and it just makes my heart grow. Of course then he gets it open and finds a bloody human heart inside along with a rhymed couplet warning him not to allow the dance to go on, and after his childlike excitement, his shock, revulsion, and sinking dread are all the more profound – it’s happening again.

Which brings us to the campfire tale. Like the story actually told by firelight at the start of The Fog, or Crazy Ralph’s ravings in Friday the 13th, here we have a local legend, based on historical fact, but which has grown in stature and weight over the years. As recounted by Happy, the grumpy old bartender who has to be one of the best ‘harbinger’ characters of horror cinema, the town of Valentine Bluffs used to have an annual Valentine’s dance and it was the biggest event of the year – something that the local residents could really look forward to and take pride in.

But twenty years ago, that all ended when the mine supervisors left some miners to go enjoy the party and the inevitable collapse doomed the only survivor, Harry Warden to madness and cannibalism, before he returned the next year to take his bloody revenge. But years go by, history becomes legend, and finally there are plans to bring the tradition back. Harry Warden’s been in an insane asylum for years – what could go wrong?

When people start having their hearts ripped out, it kicks off a thread of investigation and whodunit. Is Warden still locked up? Is he even still alive? Does anyone keep any kinds of records? Is he actually behind these slayings or has someone else taken up his mantle? The film plays with maintaining the possibility that any number of characters could be the killer and there is a solid red herring pretty close to the end. However, sadly, I will say that when the truth is finally revealed, I find it pretty underwhelming and the reason for it all feels more than a bit arbitrary. Whenever I have enough time between viewings, I always forget who the killer is because it just seems unjustified and inconsequential – but I suppose that means the suspense of wondering who it is will always be there… But more significantly, I feel the film just isn’t that interested in the killer’s story. It loves the folk tale, the murder ballad that looms over this small community. And it loves its characters, these people who have found life and love in this dismal setting, and who are murdered for it.

And that is one more way that this works as a Valentine’s Day movie. On one side, it is peopled with young (and old) lovers – and their attraction and the enjoyment they take in one another is palpable. But then there is a killer, whoever he is – whether a product of folklore or just some bitter guy – who, like many a lonely soul this time of year, just hates Valentine’s Day. When you don’t feel wanted, it is pretty harsh to be surrounded with such public displays of love and affection. How many single people counter program this occasion with horror marathons? And in the miner/killer, we have an embodiment of this sentiment – a person who is so triggered by a heart tattoo that he has to kill the girl he was about to have sex with, a person who is driven to madness by all the genuinely loving behavior around him, a person who even has to kill poor sweet Mabel, who just wanted to put on a nice dance, and maybe have a moment alone with the chief. The bitterness has metastasized and created a monster. It doesn’t matter who it is, or why, or how facile his reasons are. And in this I appreciate how the film doesn’t trade in the typical Reagan-era morality of sex = death. People aren’t punished for wanting sex – they are killed because some bitter person can’t abide to see their happiness.

And then the credits roll over an original folk song written for the film, the haunting “The Ballad of Harry Warden.” And as it plays, I already start forgetting who the killer was and I just linger a few minutes longer in the dark folk tale of it all. I look back on poor Mabel and Hollis and Patty and Silvia and John. I remember that this sad little town has a store called “OK Ladies Wear” – not ‘good,’ mind you, but ‘ok.’ I am struck by how lovely it was that a Valentine’s dance could be so important to these people and that for a brief, beautiful moment, before they were killed for it, there was love in this darkness.

Catching Up With Shudder – International Voices

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As is true of many people, I carry more subscriptions than are probably necessary. Summing it all up, it doesn’t break the bank and I don’t exactly feel like I’m wasting my money, but how on earth could I ever watch all of the stuff on all of these different services? But each has something I want and that keeps me paying every month. One that I never regret is my subscription to Shudder, a streamer specializing in Horror (and thrillers – there’s a great collection of Gialli). I know that there are other ways to have access to a great amount of content (Tubi is free with commercials, for example), but I just feel some kind of loyalty to this one – it feels smaller; it doesn’t have an endless selection, and sometimes they can’t afford the biggest films, but it is curated by people rather than algorithms and I like that personal touch. And they do release a lot of exclusive films – some of which they produce and some of which they simply distribute.

But as I’ve often written, I have trouble keeping up with new stuff, so this week, as I’m a teacher and it’s winter holiday where I live (so I have some extra time), I’d like to catch up on some Shudder originals from last year, particularly some international releases and/or films bringing a different cultural perspective. Sometimes I see fans complain about how Hollywood has run out of ideas and is just endlessly milking properties that should have been allowed to die gracefully (but, to be fair, this is Horror – no one dies gracefully), but in recent years, streaming has really opened up the international market, and I feel that there are so many fresh voices worth exploring. So that’s the plan. Let’s see how much I can get through by the end of the week.

These will be shorter reviews – just giving some first impressions – and I’ll try to keep these spoiler free…

Saloum (2022) (Senegal)

A Senegalese genre mash-up, written and directed by Jean Luc Herbulot from Congo, this is a wild, entertaining ride, steeped in cultural references and recent history that I respectively had no previous connection to and was woefully ignorant of. Set in 2003, directly after a coup in Guinea-Bissau, the movie blends elements of a Dirty Dozen-esque Western, a slick Guy Ritchie crime flick, and African Folk Horror, while also digging into very real and raw emotional territory growing out the hellish conditions of child soldiers, the constant specter of colonialism, and cycles of abuse – personal, economic, sexual, and political. But for all of the weight of those themes, it is chiefly just a lot of fun.

We follow a trio of legendary mercenaries on an adventure as they escort a Mexican cartel member out of the coup, along with a great deal of stolen gold. After crash landing in the remote region of Sine-Saloum (in Senegal), they find their way to a kind of liminal outpost where apparently good works are done and volunteers live in communal harmony, but in fact, dark secrets run deep, the sand is soaked with blood, personal ghosts await vengeance, and literal spirits haunt the blasted land.

I enjoyed all of the characters and loved how varied they were allowed to be. Our trio of outlaws seem initially so hard, so dangerous – they can easily be read as militaristic thugs. But as we get to know them, they are so worldly and cultured. They speak many languages (including sign, which will become important). They may be “very bad men” (and they probably are) but they may also be “mythic heroes.” They are even surprisingly well-versed in spiritual matters, with one of them being some kind of cleric who can help navigate the magical threat they’ll face. Though they begin as a blend of archetypes, we come to know them as quite specific and anything but typical.

I will say that the Western and Crime elements landed better for me than the Horror. When something supernatural does turn up, even though there’s plenty of threat and blood and death, it somehow doesn’t fully tap into a horror vibe. However, the supernatural storyline is still fascinating, especially as it’s so tied to what I assume must be local folk beliefs, superstitions, and stories. The fact that I don’t know anything about this folklore made it all feel so rich and intriguing – and I appreciate that the film doesn’t seem to feel the need to really slow down and make sure that we’ve all got it all – it flies by at a clip and if you don’t immediately get something, I feel Herbulot assumes you’ve caught enough to work with, and keeps the story moving.

And beyond the action, it is also quite emotional. Balancing real world horrors and genre thrills, characters are given room to breathe and feel and change, and their personal histories come to bear in sometimes surprising, even tragic ways. This was a fascinating, high-paced, rewarding watch and while the “scary” parts weren’t very scary, the way it grounds the characters’ experiences in realistic trauma carries weight and brings the horror in a different way.

The Sadness (2021) (Taiwan)

A Taiwanese production with a Canadian director (who has lived there since 2008), The Sadness is gory, disturbing, intense, stressful, triggering, mean-spirited, and a pretty fun ride if you’re up for that sort of thing. Rob Jabbaz’s feature debut, filmed during the early days of the Covid pandemic (apparently Taiwan did pretty well at the beginning (8 deaths in 2020), so filming was actually possible), concerns a viral outbreak which transforms ‘normal’ people into vicious, sex-crazed sadists. I’d thought it was going to be a zombie movie, but is actually more akin to contagion films like Romero’s The Crazies (1973). Ostensibly, we follow a young couple as they try to find each other across a Taipei transformed in a matter of hours into a blood-soaked hell-scape filled with roaming bands of humans at their most monstrous. But I think that structure largely exists to allow Jabbaz to create scene after scene of mostly unrelated violence and depravity. But what violence and depravity! I spent probably 65% of this movie constantly cringing and recoiling at its sudden acts of extreme brutality.

It’s a really tense watch, but for all that it puts on display some truly awful stuff, it can also be a blast. It is a thrilling rollercoaster that raised my heartrate and put me on edge for the majority of its run time. And the practical effects work (from IF SFX Art Maker) is really extraordinary: fleshily realistic, but operatically explosive, they paint Taipei red by the end of the film. Faces are fried with hot oil and pulled apart, arterial geysers shoot up from torn necks, noses are bitten off, heads blow up, limbs are snapped, eyes are gouged, fingers are cleaved, and things are done which I’m not even going to put into words – it’s a lot, and it is all pulled off so well – disgusting, scary, and wild – and so creatively conceived of and masterfully executed.

At this point, I don’t know how much I need to watch a film about a viral pandemic – it can be a bit tiring. But this is such a high octane experience that it balances the weight of its metaphor, which is basically the classic zombie movie observation that disasters bring out the worst in us and that it takes so little for the thin veneer of society to be stripped away as we turn on each other. This is tackled in two ways: how the infected are portrayed and how we see everyone else respond. Of course, the infected are terrible, but the way they are terrible feels kind of novel.

These are not mindless zombies or rage filled marauders (ala 28 Days Later). They are fully cognizant of what they are doing and who they are – but the virus has amplified any of their inherent cruelty and crossed wires in their brains such that they derive overwhelming sexual pleasure from causing harm (and the wires cross the other way too, so  be warned that there’s sexual violence as well). They are crazy and dangerous, but they have the ability to be calculating; and they are as intelligent as they’d been before infection – it makes for a really unsettling situation – almost like a mass possession, ‘evil’ spreading through the population.

But it’s not only the infected. Of course, in classic fashion, we see healthy characters take immediate steps to protect themselves to the detriment of those around them. Doors are closed in people’s faces as they run from assailants, someone who could help a woman being assaulted, hides just feet away and does nothing, too concerned with his own safety, those who have yet to be exposed to a viral load lash out at each other. Typical for a genre like this, the film holds a dim view of humanity, but hey, after the last few years, it’s kinda hard not to.

Dark Glasses (2022) (Italy)

When I heard that Dario Argento had a new film coming out, his first since Dracula 3D (2012) (about which, the less said, the better), I was, let’s say, relieved. I can’t go so far as to say ‘excited’ as I didn’t want to get my hopes up – it had been a while since he’d made a film I had particularly liked, let alone loved as I did his work in the 70s and 80s. But it was a relief that no matter what this new film was, Dracula now wouldn’t be his swan song. Well, Shudder picked up his latest and released it back in October, so now I’ve finally checked it out and I can say…it is a film.

Honestly, I generally avoid negativity here, because really, what’s the point? (and the internet is so full of it) I mostly just want to focus on work that interests me, and not to criticize films that fall short, but I can’t find very much to praise in this case – which is depressing. It’s not terrible by any means. I’m not offended by it on some deep artistic level. It isn’t a total failure. But it also isn’t particularly noteworthy either – I think if Argento’s name weren’t attached, it would come and go, maybe end up on some streamer without any fanfare, and horror bloggers such as myself would probably never end up writing about it.

Essentially, it is a straightforward thriller: a serial killer has been targeting prostitutes in Rome. One such sex worker, Diana, is attacked, but survives, though in escaping her assailant, she has a car accident and loses her sight. Then, having befriended a young boy who was orphaned in the crash, the two of them are hunted by the tenacious killer until the final showdown and identity reveal. There are chase scenes and bloody murders (the gore seems to be practically executed and is quite well done), periodic jump scares (one effective bit with water snakes), and lots of screaming too loudly when one should be silently hiding. It’s…fine.

But where it is disappointing is that, though it is capably filmed, there’s no flash, and also little substance. It’s impossible not to compare this to Argento’s earlier work and imagine what a younger artist would have done with it. Blindness might be an artistic theme, a visual metaphor – it might resonate with some psychological trait of the killer or it might make visible something about the protagonist. Here, Diana simply can’t see and bumps into things and falls down – it’s a complication, but it doesn’t bear thematic fruit, and her experience doesn’t seem to especially change her. Similarly, the blindness isn’t used to create any particularly suspenseful set pieces, playing with who can watch and who is seen. As a sex worker who makes a living out of exploiting her visual appearance and interacting with clients in a sensory fashion, it feels like there is a lot of untapped potential here – playing with objectification, with being a subject and the power, and even violence, inherent in looking (ala Opera).

Finally, and crucially, there just not much style on display. Young Argento could be stylish to a fault, sometimes putting the narrative in service of creating an enrapturing look and a feel. In Dark Glasses, the camera never finds that perfect angle, the editing never makes the heart catch. The score is fine, but it is never paired with the imagery to make something indelible. At the end of the day, all of this criticism feels a bit unfair. This is its own film and Argento doesn’t owe me anything. As artists age, they shouldn’t feel behooved to constantly recreate the work of their youth. But when an artist has done such spectacular work early in their career, it’s hard not to compare.

Speak No Evil (2022) (Denmark)

I was actually hesitant to pull the trigger on this one. It made a splash when it came out last year (which meant that I saw loads of people praising it on social media and probably more complaining about it – that’s the internet for you), and my impression was that it would be really uncomfortable and heavy. And, to be fair, Christian Tafdrup’s film is indeed uncomfortable – a kind of social horror rooted in the deep and familiar awkwardness of feeling trapped in an interaction wherein you have to do things you don’t want to or risk coming off as some kind of rude jerk, but for all of that discomfort (and some pretty unpleasant places it goes once it turns to full-on horror), I wasn’t weighed down by it. Rather, I was mostly elated by just how very good it was.

In short, a Danish family (Bjørn and Louise, and their daughter Agnes), while on holiday in Italy, hit it off with Dutch family (Patrick and Karen, and their son Abel), who invite them to visit for a long weekend. Though they’d had such a good time together before, as soon as they arrive, the Danish family is immediately made to feel uncomfortable at every turn. Louise is a vegetarian, but Patrick insists she try the wild boar he’s prepared. The Dutch parents are much rougher with their son than Bjørn and Louise would ever be. When “invited” out to a restaurant (where again, they only order meat), Bjørn and Louise are first put off by Patrick and Karen grinding on the dance floor, before then being surprised that they are expected to cover the full cost of the rather expensive meal.

Time after time, Patrick and Karen do things (sometimes small irritations and sometimes quite significant violations of privacy) that seem to push Bjørn and Louise into accepting uncomfortable situations. But at the same time, it often just feels like a case of cultural or family difference. I don’t know enough about social mores in Holland and Denmark, but I can assume there are some different assumptions about “appropriate” behavior when it comes to issues of personal space, money, directness, private life, and risk aversion, among other things. And beyond national habits, each family can simply be different.

Time after time, Bjørn and Louise almost take their daughter and go, but one thing or another holds them back until they find themselves in the embarrassing position of having insulted their hosts, who are always quite open and charming, and when Bjørn and Louise try to explain what upset them, it always sounds unreasonable (even though while watching these things take place, red flags go off for the viewer non-stop). Tafdrup crafts an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension and dread and maintains it for over an hour (of a film that’s just a bit over 1 ½ hours long) before anything happens that feels like a horror movie per se. Of course though, when the penny finally drops, it’s clear that everything we’ve seen has been deliberate. Also, while for that first hour, nothing clues in the Danish family to the fact that this other couple is anything worse than unpleasantly inappropriate, this is a horror film from start to finish. The work of the camera and especially the soundtrack is just so doom-laden that it couldn’t be anything else.

Now, I will say that once some revelations were made, while still generally well handled, I wasn’t quite as thrilled with the final act. I think that I had just been so enjoying the ominous awkwardness, and had been so keyed-up, wanting the Danish couple to just get the hell out of there, that once the masks came off, the film lost some sparkle. It still follows through on the promise of its threats, but I wasn’t quite as spellbound as I had been. But never mind the destination – the journey was one of the best I’ve gone on in a good while. And while the filmmaking is strong, so much of this comes down to the performances. A Horror of Manners, this is an actor’s piece and everyone is spectacular. I particularly enjoyed Morten Burian (who plays Bjørn) – seduced by this open, wild couple who are so unlike him and his wife, stifled by the burden of polite behavior, he is finally pushed into a corner where his moral sense is challenged and he needs to break through his own socialization to try to do the right thing. It’s an emotional tightrope. And that’s before he discovers anything at all scary.  I really liked this one.

Slash/Back (2022) (Canadian Inuit)

Her feature debut, Nyla Innuksuk’s teen horror/sci-fi adventure is a unique and worthy effort even if it isn’t totally successful as a genre piece. Wearing its influences on its sleeve (early on, one character recounts the whole story of John Carpenter’s The Thing to her friends), the film charms more for how it spotlights an underrepresented population than for the novelty of its plot.

In short, a small group of teen Inuit girls in the tiny hamlet of Pangnirtung (about 30 miles south of the Arctic Circle, pop. approx. 1,500) discover and alone fend off an invasion of weird, shape shifting, body wearing, identity stealing aliens, saving their home town, and by extension, the planet. Along the way, they navigate their own interpersonal teenage conflicts (boys and school and parents who just don’t understand) and their own relationships to their home and culture. Innuksuk filmed on location in “Pang” (as the protagonists call it) and cast the film almost entirely with local, indigenous inhabitants, few if any of whom had worked before as actors.

Thus, there is an amateur quality to the performances; but in a way, that’s actually a strength of the film. I can’t say that the young leads manage particularly realistic performances (that’s hard), but the extent to which their own personalities shine through is honestly lovely. There is a precocious, brash quality to their portrayals which is essential to the project. Past the acting, much of the film is gorgeous, the local landscape offering overwhelming vistas to explore, and Innuksuk makes good use of them, while also digging into aspects of local small town life. The film is full of specific local details and character. And the periodic inclusion of the Inuk throat singing of Tanya Tagaq (who, like Innuksuk, is also from the region) adds such a cool, characteristic drive to it all. As for the scary horror/sci-fi alien invasion movie, it’s…fine. There’s some cool creature design and the CGI and practical effects do a solid job while obviously working within a budget, but the film never quite kicks into gear when it comes to the action or tension. Still, I think it’s so important that this is a genre piece. While it may not be amazing Sci-Fi or Horror, the sci-fi and horror give Innuksuk a rich space in which to tell a significant, meaningful story.

At its heart, we have 4 young girls torn between cultures. They have grown up in this hamlet and there is a degree of local, cultural pride (for some more than others), but for the rest, the world beyond holds so much more allure and they can’t wait to escape, to get out of this little village they view as poor or embarrassing, to go to some big city (one girl dreams of Winnipeg). In responding to this invasion, which so directly threatens their homes, families, and environment, they all tap into the cultural knowledge that has been instilled in them – the traditional tools of hunting and trapping their parents have passed on, and as they triumph over this colonizing presence, they repair their relationship to where they are from. It’s hard not to cheer when they rip what have come to be decorative, traditional gear off the walls, apply what I read as a kind of war paint (plus, one girl puts on a jacket with the slogan, “No Justice on Stolen Land” – which crystalizes the metaphor for anyone who hadn’t gotten it yet) and march off to hunt down the invading force, pushed on by the rallying cry of, “you don’t fuck with the girls from Pang!” I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to tearing up.

The aliens are kinda creepy and have a cool design – tendrils writhing beneath loosely worn, stolen flesh, but the scares never really come. However, I really think that’s ok. This ‘kids on bikes’ movie, full of real people who are participating in telling a story of their land, their civilization, their struggles, all through the lens of this monster movie is really stirring in its own right. It might not be much of a “horror movie,” but it is a valuable film, while also being just a fun Kids vs Monsters flick. I’m glad it has a chance to be seen (at least by the pretty niche audience of Shudder viewers).

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And so there we have a little international sampling of Shudder in 2022. There was a good deal more, but I only have so many hours to work with here. Someday, I’ll catch up on the rest. I will say that it’s refreshing to take in such a wide range of work in one week. I generally don’t know enough about these countries to judge how accurately Senegalese, Taiwanese, Italian, Danish, Dutch, or Inuit cultural concerns have been presented, but I feel it’s been so worth taking the time to at least get a taste.