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).
—
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.