Throughout the first two acts of Monkey Man, the only manifestations of the Kid’s childhood trauma come through splintered flashbacks, aggressively piercing the mental barrier he has placed between the past and present. They are just as disorientating as they are potent, triggering intense feelings of rage and grief at the sight of a familiar ring, or otherwise overcoming him with peace as he recalls the stories of Hindu gods his mother once read. Dev Patel’s handheld camerawork leans heavily into close-ups in these interludes, hazily singling out key details that have ingrained themselves in the Kid’s psyche, and yet which he must keep some emotional distance from if he is to exact clean vengeance against those responsible for his physical and psychological scars.
The fine control that Patel exerts over the non-linear structure of Monkey Man is an impressive feat for any first-time filmmaker, though the time he has spent acting under great directors such as Danny Boyle and David Lowery has no doubted imparted valuable lessons. Repeated images of corrupt police chief Rana Singh silhouetted against a burning village irrevocably binds the Kid to his fearsome nemesis, just as the recurring image of Hanuman the Monkey God is linked to the Kid himself, setting him on a spiritual journey from bloodthirsty retribution towards cathartic enlightenment.
Fragments of the past aggressively pierce the Kid’s psyche, binding him to feelings of fear, anger, and grief through sheer formal repetition.Flashbacks often play out in extreme close-ups, offering both intimacy and a hazy disorientation.
The gorilla mask that the Kid wears as an underground fighter in the Tiger’s Temple may be the clearest representation of this, though when he opens a rift in his chest during a hallucinatory, spiritual awakening, Patel even more specifically evokes the iconography of Hanuman revealing his heartfelt devotion to gods Rama and Sita. Patel is wise to choose this moment as the reveal of the Kid’s full backstory, transcending mere exposition by marking it as a crucial turning point in his arc, and thus allowing him to stare his trauma in its face rather than let its intrusive fragments domineer him. All those shards of stray memories thus congeal into a pitiful portrait of corruption in modern-day India, recognising the Kid as a nameless avenger of not just his own family, but an entire caste of society that has been crushed by political oppressors.
Incredibly creative use of Hanuman the Monkey God as a symbol of the Kid’s journey, calling upon the imagery of him tearing open his chest.For what is essentially a Hollywood action film, Patel’s work is extraordinarily spiritual, and in deep conversation with Hinduism’s core tenets.
The towering brothel that the Kid infiltrates to reach Rana becomes a magnificent metaphor for this ascension too, with each floor signifying distinct levels in a rigidly segmented social hierarchy, and respectively bringing our hero closer to shattering the fascistic branch of Hindu nationalism his archenemy serves. This movement is not to be confused with Hinduism as a religion, Patel is careful to illustrate, especially when the Kid aligns himself with a deeply spiritual community of Hijra – a third gender originating in India thousands of years ago, encompassing individuals who may be transgender, intersex, or eunuchs. Hinduism is an intricate belief system interlocked with an equally complex political landscape, and so it is a testament to Patel’s visual storytelling that both are weaved with such nuance into Monkey Man’s vibrantly textured setting, offering tangible stakes to the Kid’s brutal conquest of evil.
Endless creativity in the action set pieces much like John Wick, using a leaky aquarium as an obstacle that both combatants must contend with in a bathroom fight.The camera often rotates in overhead shots, taking a gods-eye view of the Kid’s retribution and enlightenment.
Of course, a great deal of this also comes down to the sheer creativity and practicality of the visuals, destabilising the Kid’s world with overhead shots, canted angles, and slow-motion sequences. The settings are often as dynamically engaged with the action as the actors themselves, imposing obstacles such as a large aquarium slowly flooding a bathroom, and offering an array of improvised weapons in a kitchen where stoves, microwaves, and knives are wielded with gruesome resourcefulness. While Patel keeps up an expeditious pace in his editing throughout Monkey Man, he also knows when to let his camera hold on longer takes and let his hand-to-hand fight choreography shine through, made all the more impressive by his dedication to performing his own stunts.
The Tiger’s Temple makes for a magnificent visual set piece, filtering a dirty golden light through the thick, humid air and often playing out the action in slow-motion.The strip club inside the tower is defined by its soft purple tones, stylistically elevated above the lower-class levels below.Emergency lights flood the elevator with red, heralding a climactic finale.
Patel’s direction continues to shine in his lighting’s vivid distinction of each location too, separating the humid, yellow atmosphere of the Tiger’s Temple from the dim purple ambience of a high-end strip club, and eventually even drenching the Kid in crimson as the tower elevator takes him to the end of his journey. There at the top, Diwali fireworks and an earthy red painting of Hanuman reigning over a battlefield become auspicious backdrops to his final confrontation, effectively rendering the Kid as a modern avatar of the Monkey God meeting his destiny. It is a rare thing to witness a first-time director meld such handsomely stylised visuals with mystical symbolism, yet by its marvellous conclusion Monkey Man has thoroughly proven Patel to be just as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it, crafting a Hindu allegory that envisions the righteous delivery of divine, cosmic justice upon India’s corrupt political landscape.
Hanuman makes one last appearance in the final scene, bringing the Kid’s journey full circle back to the Hindu myths that once inspired him.
From the bottom of a chasm residing on the outskirts of Rose Glass’ rustic Southern town, a rotten stench is bleeding out. Dark secrets have been decaying down there for years, eating away at those who either willingly or reluctantly shroud them in silence, as well as those who tragically fall into their orbit. For vagrant body builder Jackie, fate seems especially intent on pulling her into these shady circles, both through her burgeoning relationship with local gym manager Lou as well as the casual job she incidentally picks up at the shooting range owned by her father, Lou Sr. As she pursues physical perfection in anticipation of an upcoming bodybuilding contest, Lou is right by her side supplying performance-enhancing steroids, unknowingly feeding an addiction that soon uncontrollably careens into a seedy underworld of treachery and murder.
Much like Glass’ debut, Love Lies Bleeding does not shy away from the eerie dread and murky morality of its female characters, though this erotic thriller sprawls much further out than Saint Maud’s introspective character study. Gone are the formal notes of Roman Polanski and Paul Schrader, here replaced with the rural noir influence of the Coen Brothers as bodies stack up in the sordid backwaters of America, and amateurs clumsily try to cover up their tracks. Gyms and streets alike are dimly lit with a grimy green ambience, suffusing this 80s landscape of spandex, baggy shirts, and shaggy hairstyles with an air of suburban decrepitude. There are few options in life for queer locals like Lou who dwell far outside the mainstream, but with a violent, paternalistic chauvinism rearing its ugly head, even those who seek the stability of traditional marriage are destined to be severely disappointed.
Glass’ dingy lighting contributes enormously to this decrepit setting, calling back to Coen Brothers films like Blood Simple with the rural noir aesthetic.The chasm is an eerie metaphor for dark secrets lying just outside town, as its use passes from the hands of one generation to the next.
Sporting a greasy mullet and gaunt cheekbones, Kristen Stewart’s brooding screen persona is an ideal match for Glass’ shabby town, taking on its muted bleakness even as she fights its corruptive influence. Amusingly enough, this internal battle is frequently distilled down to her ironic habit of smoking while she actively listens to anti-smoking audiobooks, revealing a weakness for addiction that she will inevitably pass on to her new girlfriend. Very gradually, we witness Lou’s steroids taking fearsome effect on Jackie, eroding her impulse control and mounting a rage in her that can only be contained for so long.
Two powerful leading female performances from Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien, bearing the physical and mental strain of the crimes they have been caught up in.
On a physical level, Jackie’s metamorphosis is rendered as visceral body horror akin to Requiem for a Dream, acutely observing needles pierce bare skin and muscles ripple, bulge, and stretch in grotesque formal cutaways. Given Glass’ team-up with Darren Aronofsky’s regular composer Clint Mansell, it is a fitting creative choice too, as the synth-heavy score pounds and reverberates throughout the film with ominous trepidation of what may come from Jackie’s monstrous transformation. From there, Glass oversees a descent into drug-fuelled hallucinations that only aggravate her insecurities, yet also push her to inhuman limits.
O’Brien’s ripped physique is astounding, especially in those body horror cutaways that see her muscles bulge and morph beneath her skin.
As for Lou, there is no denying the creature she has accidentally created, especially since it has partially arisen from the demons she has been fighting for years. Red-drenched dreams of her past haunt her in menacing cutaways, surfacing memories of Lou Sr’s illegal schemes that she was once shamefully complicit in. Even outside these visions, Glass continues to rupture the green and yellow ambience of this town with hints of crimson lighting, in one scene harshly bouncing it off Lou Sr’s face from a nearby vending machine and snapping Lou’s nightmare into vivid reality. Although both father and daughter are mirrors of each other in this battle of wits and violence, it is clear to see who is purely driven by self-preservation, and who is fighting for love. While Lou Sr’s crimes have been ambiguously responsible for the unexplained disappearance of his wife, Lou is determined to keep Jackie from slipping away, and instead actively endeavours to pull her back from the brink of destruction.
Nightmares drenched in red, visualising Lou’s PTSD with an unsettling aggression.Glass’ overhead shots bring a sense of eerie surveillance to her lonely rural town, tracing the movements of cars through dark streets.
True to her Coen Brothers influence, the dark humour which underlies Glass’ chaotic sequence of events colours in the setting with a wry cynicism, seeing fellow lesbian and comic relief Daisy threaten to derail Lou’s plans. Beneath her naïve optimism is a childish penchant for manipulation, seeking little more than her own self-satisfaction while remaining wilfully ignorant to the danger quietly gathering around her.
When Love Lies Bleeding approaches its climactic ending, Glass finally ratchets the absurdity up one last time to the point of inhuman surrealism, formally uniting Jackie’s physical and emotional transformation through a colossal symbol of feminine power. Much like the last scene of Saint Maud, this daring resolution fully departs from the material world and lifts us into the distorted psyche of Glass’ characters, albeit through freakish imagery that is far more likely to provoke laughs of disbelief than chills. The brief epilogue which follows doesn’t quite maintain the same brilliance, yet still can’t take entirely away from the grand culmination of Love Lies Bleeding’s collision of narrative arcs. Only through selfless acts of faith and sacrifice can Lou and Jackie uncover hidden reserves of strength that have laid dormant through years of loneliness, nourishing an unconventional love that seeks to rise above the miserable, moral degradation of a society that never truly cared for them.
Love Lies Bleeding is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon, and Google Play.
It isn’t that Japanese toilet cleaner Hiriyama is discontent with his janitorial duties in Perfect Days, nor that his lowly status at the bottom of Tokyo’s working class is eroding his spirit. If anything, his methodical repetition of the same procedures from day-to-day is a soothing meditation, finding fulfilment in the conscientious act itself rather than the end goal. It is fortunate too that this motivation is so self-sustaining, given that these toilets are almost immediately soiled by the public the moment they are cleaned. There is little external gratification to be found in this line of work, and thus Hiriyama’s Zen-like mindset breeds an appreciation for its small, unassuming details, from his car playlist of classic rock to the trees he photographs in his lunch break.
Still, there is something missing here, gradually revealing itself as time stretches on without him speaking a single word. Hiriyama may be the loneliest man in Tokyo, only ever interacting with his capricious younger colleague who talks enough for them both, and the regulars at the public bath and restaurant that he visits at the end of each workday. He is a man comfortably bound by tradition, yet mildly perturbed by those unpredictable disruptions which throw off his perfectly balanced schedule. At least by minimising the influence of external factors, he can maintain that peaceful equilibrium in his life, even if it means never truly understanding the happiness that comes through sharing it with others.
Formal rigour in the construction of Hiriyama’s routine – spraying his pot plants each morning, photographing trees on lunch breaks, visiting the bathhouse after work, reading before bed – each detail revealing a bit more about his intricate character.
It has been some time since Wim Wenders has directed a film that has emerged from Cannes Film Festival with such high acclaim, and while Perfect Days does not quite reach the cinematic heights of his work in the 80s, it is compellingly consistent with his pensive elevations of mundanity. Where Wings of Desire flitted between stream-of-consciousness voiceovers from the minds of ordinary people though, Perfect Days denies us any verbal entry into Hiriyama’s inner world, leaving us only to gage his character through Kōji Yakusho’s largely silent performance and Wenders’ rigorous narrative structure.
Hiriyama dwells at the bottom of society in a rundown apartment block, and wears a uniform emblazoned with the company title ‘The Tokyo Toilet,’ though he does not find humiliation or degradation in his status. This lifestyle suits him perfectly.
It is especially in the latter that this minimalist meditation attains impressive formal rigour, thoroughly setting up Hiriyama’s routine on the first day that we spend with him, and then repeating it with minor variations. By the time the second day arrives, we can virtually predict each beat with reliable accuracy – the way he folds up his floor mattress, his spraying of his pot plants each morning, and even his daily purchase of coffee from the same vending machine outside his rundown flat. The restrooms that he visits daily become his domains, each standing out in ordinary parks as architectural marvels, such as one brutalist structure made up of harsh angles and another with colourfully transparent walls that turn opaque when locked. Though Hiriyama can see straight through when it is unoccupied, he nevertheless knocks on its doors before entering, if for no other reason than to carry out his habitual duty.
Wenders clearly relished location scouting, picking out some of the most architecturally unique public toilets in Tokyo.
Over time, the patterns which emerge in these recurring actions, location, and shots imbue Perfect Days with a formal precision evoking Yasujirō Ozu’s sensitive domestic dramas. Unfortunately, Ozu’s dedication to carefully arranging the frame does not quite carry through in the same way here – an unusual oversight for Wenders whose previous films have featured the sort of austere photography that would have strengthened Perfect Days’ exacting focus. Perhaps the greatest flashes of style here arrive in the hazy, greyscale dreams which structurally divide one day from the next, weaving in abstract visions of Hiriyama’s waking life through a series of long dissolves. Trees, shadows, wheels, and pedestrians call upon recent memories with gentle repose, while very occasionally we catch glimpses of familiar faces that have taken root deep in his subconscious.
Wenders continues to weave his fantastic form through the hazy, greyscale dreams that visit Hiriyama each night, dividing one day from the next. These are surreal, visual breaks from the naturalism of the piece, peering deeper into his mind.
Quite prominent among these illusory nighttime visitors is Hiryama’s niece Niko, who unexpectedly turns up at his apartment building one evening to stay with him. Whatever trouble has been unfolding at home is none of his business, especially given the clearly estranged relationship he has with his upper-middle class sister, Keiko. Hiriyama desperately tries to maintain a semblance of routine through her passive disruptions, yet her insistence on joining him at work forces him to share his meditation with someone else for the first time, and very gradually we witness a wondrous evolution take place in this relationship. Not only does Hiriyama speak, but through this connection he even relishes his usual habits even more – photographing the trees on his old film camera while Niko does so own her phone for instance, and riding bikes on the weekend through the streets of Tokyo.
Niko comes as an unexpected but necessary saving grace, revealing the joy that can be found in sharing quiet meditations with others.
When the time comes for Keiko to take her back home, Hiriyama is quietly distraught. Perhaps not only due to the tender relationship that has been snatched from him, but Keiko’s visit has also instigated a confrontation with his own selfish habit of isolating himself from others. From this perspective, Hiriyama’s meditative lifestyle may be little more than an escape from the pressures of a complicated world, which when faced head-on send him falling back on unhealthy habits.
Still, journeying outside one’s comfort zone is an adventure that inevitably entails stumbles and bounding leaps, both equally disturbing the precarious routine that Hiriyama has carefully cultivated. With the decision to boldly initiate social contact comes a spiritual rejuvenation that work alone cannot fulfil, no matter how relaxing its gentle rhythms and cadences may be. That Wenders weaves these so smoothly into the rigorous narrative structure of Perfect Days is not only a testament to his own formal attentiveness, but also consolidates communality and introspection with prudent devotion, inviting audiences into a deep reverie of collective contemplation.
The marriage between flighty romantic Wanda and the overly practical Ivan was never going to be an easy one, though at least the wild romp across Rome that emerges from their odd mismatch of values brings both newlyweds down to earth – and the light amusement it offers to those looking in from the outside doesn’t hurt either. While Ivan has planned their honeymoon down to the exact minute, Wanda’s eyes have turned to handsome celebrity Fernando Rivoli, star of the soap opera photo strip ‘The White Sheik’. Surely it won’t be too much of an issue if she disappears for a few hours to see him, she presumes, thereby leaving Ivan alone to meet with his relatives, devise a string of excuses for her disappearance, and track her down before their imminent appointment with the Pope.
The White Sheik may be a minor effort from Federico Fellini in his early career, but to those acquainted with the Italian director’s later work, this romantic comedy also holds the key to his artistic development. In his eyes, modern day Rome is a city of glorious contradictions, infused with an air of classical romanticism that runs counter to the lies and pretensions of its morally ambiguous citizens. His filmmaking here is not true neorealism, and at this point he does not yet possess the impressive stylistic command of his mentors, but his roots in the movement are nonetheless evident in his location shooting around Rome’s streets and architectural landmarks. He evidently knows how to wield this setting in key moments, at one point cutting through a brief montage of the city’s angel statues around Wanda after having her heart broken, and yet denying any immediate salvation as they turn their backs to both her and the camera.
In this moment, it feels as if the comforting, open arms of Christianity are closed, leaving Wanda to wallow in her misery. Fellini would later interrogate the shallow pretensions of modern-day theology with greater formal acuity in La Dolce Vita, further exploring Rome as a morally broken cesspool of hypocrites, and yet beyond this scene The White Sheik also lays out that groundwork through the cultural intertwining of religion and celebrity. In this city, God is constantly displaced by whatever new, substanceless attraction seduces fans with their dazzling looks, with the hottest star at this point in time being handsome photo strip star Rivoli.
Even the very name that this deceptively charming actor adopts as his heroic character is meaningless in its cultural contradiction, with the ‘White Sheik’ applying an artificial Western lens to Middle Eastern culture for no good reason other than the exotic appeal. Of course, Wanda can’t resist – she is ready to impulsively sail away with him for an ocean adventure, and eat up his tall tale of being brainwashed into an unhappy marriage through a love potion. Only when his actual wife arrives and exposes his lies does the blinding façade fall away to reveal a pathetic, empty man desperately trying to live up to his legend, thereby ending Wanda’s romantic dreams.
Meanwhile, Ivan’s ordeal back at the hotel realising his wife has run away pushes him far outside his comfort zone to do something he has never done before – improvise. For better and worse, Fellini clearly delights in the broad comedy of this storyline more than the other, straining Ivan’s ability to keep his cool demeanour under extreme duress. He can only cover for Wanda’s absence so much before his inquisitive relatives begin to see through the lies about her apparent sickness, and eventually his mental exhaustion begins to spill out into slapstick when he is comically caught up in a marching band that almost runs him over. Unfortunately, Leopoldo Trieste’s constant mugging of the camera with a stunned gaze does not play out so well comedically, and he is even outdone by Giulietta Masina cameoing as the same character she would later play in Nights of Cabiria.
With Wanda recognising the emptiness of her dreams and Sven learning the value of flexibility, Fellini effectively reunites the newlywedded couple under their original plan to visit St Peter’s Basilica and see the Pope. His allegory for marriage’s holy union is transparent but well-earned, seeing both spouses overcome their flaws, and ultimately grow closer to God in this finale. Rome may be a city of famous icons and worldly distractions in The White Sheik, and yet there is still divine redemption to be found by those who seek it out in the right places.
The White Sheik is currently available to purchase as a DVD or Blu-ray on Amazon.
There is something growing in the apartment where Anna resides with her son, Bob, and it is plain to see that it isn’t quite human. The first time we meet the creature, it is a grotesque, writhing mass of tentacles, pulsing with life in her bathroom. “He’s very tired. He made love to me all night,” she tells the private investigator hired by her estranged husband Mark to watch her movements, before beating him to death a broken bottle. When we meet it again, it has since sprouted an elongated head with two beady eyes, and again later Mark witnesses it making love to his wife in the kitchen.
Whatever this Cronenbergian body horror may be, its arrival has coincided with a cataclysmic crisis in Anna and Mark’s marriage. Too long have they been living in a household of abuse, pushing Anna to seek out romance with drug dealer Heinrich while Mark disappears into his job as a West Berlin spy. Now as they stand on the precipice of divorce, a simmering mixture of revulsion, self-loathing, and perverted affection boils over into public displays of madness and cruelty, exposing the inhuman, mutated hearts torn apart by mutual disgust.
Cronenbergian body horror a few years before David Cronenberg would perfect it himself. Anna’s creature grows and mutates throughout the film, becoming her lover and child.
Though its title might suggest otherwise, Possession eludes attempts to nail its maddening course of events down to conventional explanations of ghosts or demons. Even that unholy aberration which Anna nurtures in her home cannot take responsibility for the strange trance that compels her and Mark to dispassionately cut into their skin with an electric knife, or the fact that their son’s teacher Helen bears an unsettling resemblance to her. If we are to identify a single catalyst for this absurd state of affairs, then it comes from within the souls breaking the holy matrimony that they are sworn under, transgressing laws of nature, morality, and social convention to act on their ugliest impulses.
Cod, dispassionate scenes of self-harm, resulting from Anna and Mark’s psychological breakdowns.Hard lines and boxes drawn in the mise-en-scène, staging Anna and Mark on either side of these divides.
From a stylistic perspective, Andrzej Żuławski uses every cinematic tool at his disposal to attack the sanity keeping Anna and Mark tethered to reality. The camera’s restless momentum is the first thing to be noticed from the outset, drifting forward, backward, and around the couple’s public argument at a consistently steady pace like an active observer. It is a bold creative choice that formally resonates all throughout Possession, conveying a perpetual instability during Mark’s work meetings in vast, empty offices and later as he maniacally lights Anna’s apartment on fire. The creeping paranoia that it imbues in urban spaces points to Roman Polanski’s Apartment trilogy as a key influence here, and one which Żuławski continues to reflect in his tremendous blocking that frequently use hard lines and tiny frames in the mise-en-scène to split this divided couple.
Żuławski’s camera is constantly agitated, tracking through scenes in all directions, moving between wide and mid-shots.This restless camerawork is key to the unsettling horror of Possession, bringing even greater form to these mirrored scenes set outside Anna’s apartment building – the breakup in the opening minutes, and Mark’s return to light her flat on fire.
Even Possession’s setting right by the Berlin Wall in the early 80s offers great symbolic significance of a city cleaved right down the middle, with both halves co-existing in a state of unresolved tension. Although Mark works as a spy for West Berlin, Żuławski is largely using the era’s politics as a backdrop to this story of two sides vying for control of each other, and even going so far as to seek out their idealised doppelgangers. For Anna, this looks like a calmer version of Mark who loyally grows under her guidance, while for Mark, he need look no further than Helen. Similarly played by Isabelle Adjani, her cool, composed demeanour and soft features appear in stark contrast to Anna’s incredible volatility, and she also proves to be a stronger maternal presence for Bob.
The setting right beside the Berlin Wall brings a historical backdrop to Possession, reflecting this divorce in a larger division standing on the precipice of all-out war.Doubles in Żuławski’s casting, creating a perfect, soulless facsimile of Mark, and reflecting a stable, maternal version of Anna in Helen.
To call Adjani’s performance anything less than a landmark of film acting would be an understatement. Where Sam Neill frequently pushes for artificial swings of emotion, Adjani’s twitchy, erratic physicality seems to emanate from a primal subconscious, and yet she also demonstrates tremendous control when reigning herself in. Her outward expression of Anna’s mental state varies wildly between tumultuous breakdowns, disconnecting from the world at her quietest so that she doesn’t even notice a homeless man steal her groceries, and physically torturing one of her ballet students at her most sadistic. Żuławski’s close-ups wield enormous power in moments like these, catching her haunted, wide-eyed gaze that frequently drifts off into the distance, and elsewhere pierces the fourth wall with a malicious, demonic grin.
Żuławski’s fourth-wall breaking, shallow focus close-ups are perfectly matched to one of the greatest performances of all time, as Isabelle Adjani’s facial expressions reveal a warped, tortured soul.
So ferociously uninhibited is Anna’s psychological disintegration that it is often hard to believe there is an actor inside that body. Comparisons to Gena Rowland’s harrowing depiction of mental illness in A Woman Under the Influence are well-earned as she tears at her hands and breaks out into panicked sweats, though Adjani’s physical performance takes up far more space in the frame, pairing especially well with Żuławski’s agitated tracking shots. We can’t quite tell at first what triggers her sudden unravelling in an empty subway station, though this is the scene that bears most resemblance to traditional possessions in horror movies, watching her scream in terror and violently throw her body around. She aggressively dashes her grocery bags against the wall until milk comes spilling out, yet still Żuławski’s camera continues orbiting her as deep, guttural gasps are forced from her throat. White fluids and blood pour from every orifice as she kneels on the ground, and it is finally at this point that we might start to recognise this as a truly hellish rendering of a miscarriage.
Adjani aggressively dashes her grocery bags against the wall until milk comes spilling out, yet still Żuławski’s camera continues orbiting her as deep, guttural gasps are forced from her throat. White fluids and blood pour from every orifice as she kneels on the ground, and it is finally at this point that we might start to recognise this as a truly hellish rendering of a miscarriage.
So explosive is Adjani’s embodiment of visceral suffering in Possession that it takes a little more straining to see the ruined world around her, mutating into an absurdist hellscape surrounding Anna and Mark’s bubble of hatred and co-dependency. Żuławski largely paints it out in drab, muted colours, only to rupture the monotony every now and again with a vibrant orange telephone or red train carriage, while the dissonant sounds of scratching, squeezing, and tapping infuse the heavily synthesised music score with an eerie practical quality. The murders that Anna commits barely go noticed for a long time, though given the strange behaviour of strangers who randomly chase people on the street and others who commit suicide with little warning, it would appear that such brutal insanity isn’t so out of place.
Vivid piercings of colour rupture the drab palette of Possession’s desaturated, dystopian hellscape.
Whether through geopolitical, personal, or supernatural conflict, this world is ripping apart at the seams, yet still Mark and Anna try to force their arbitrary images of marital happiness through to the very end. Shot down by police and dying on a stairwell, their blood-soaked faces passionately kiss, while their apparently flawless doubles take their places as Bob’s new parents – though clearly not for long. Whether through murder, self-destruction, or the arrival of nuclear apocalypse, death eventually comes for all in Possession. In the end, Żuławski’s warring spouses only drive themselves mad with broken vows and hearts, feverishly seeking out a love that can’t even begin to thrive within such depraved, vile souls.
Mark and Anna try to force their arbitrary images of marital happiness through to the very end, finding blood-soaked intimacy in death.Nuclear apocalypse arrives for a marriage that might finally seem functional on the most superficial level of social appearances.
Possession is currently available to purchase on Blu-ray and DVD on Amazon.
How many times must impresario Checco fall for a young lady, throw away his life for her career, and find himself abandoned before he learns his lesson? It seems that some romantics are simply incapable of such self-cognisance, as even after the precious Liliana departs his troupe to be a showgirl in a larger company, another woman similarly catches his eye and sets off the cycle all over again. Meanwhile, Checco’s faithful mistress Melina is always there to catch his fall, constantly letting her heart be broken in the hope that one day it won’t all be in vain. The bare bones of Variety Lights’ narrative make up a fable that Josef von Sternberg had previously given extraordinary cinematic life in has masterpiece The Blue Angel, and yet the light neorealist edge that Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada offer here alternatively ingrains it within the bohemian landscapes of Italy’s travelling troupes with effortless style.
For Fellini especially, Variety Lights marks a significant milestone as his directorial debut, having spent the past few years working as a screenwriter for Roberto Rossellini. His love of theatre’s longstanding traditions would take on even greater symbolic meaning in later films like La Strada and 8 ½, but they emerge quite directly here as the setting of his narrative, fuelling the drama between its flighty characters. So too does he initiate two of his greatest collaborations in this film, not only with cinematographer Otello Martelli whose keen sense of blocking and depth of field would later be put to tremendous use in La Dolce Vita, but also with Fellini’s own wife Giulietta Masina who steals every scene she is in as Melina.
Carla Del Poggio may not be quite up to Masina’s level as Liliana, but even so her transformation from awkward wannabe to glamourous showgirl is well-earned. Much like the sly usurper of All About Eve, Liliana works her way into the inner circle of powerful players with a sincere naivety, winning the viewer’s trust as a reliable heroine. Her first attempt at ingratiating herself with Checco by showing him her model photos is blunt, but it isn’t until she hires a carriage to rescue his stranded troupe that she is brought into their fold. Her apparent clumsiness onstage apparently doesn’t deter male spectators from cheering on her performance, and so she officially becomes the hot new attraction, growing audience numbers by the night and drawing invitations for the group to dine with wealthy patrons.
Seeing an opportunity to make more money and keep Liliana by his side, Checco resolves for the pair of them to strike out on their own and start a new acting troupe. The following struggle for funds that sees him crawling back to Melina briefly blows Variety Lights out into melodrama, and yet not enough to detract from Fellini’s naturalism. Taking inspiration from his neorealist mentors, he chooses to shoot on location all through urban and rural Italy, composing handsome shots from cobbled stone streets, narrow alleyways, and long, dusty roads lines with trees.
This is not the groundbreaking filmmaking that would later establish Fellini as a master of the art form, but it is nonetheless an admirable starting point, absolutely fitting for this fable of luckless artists. For better or for worse, Checco will always have Melina there to foolishly take him back when other women abandon him for more lavish opportunities, leaving him broke in both love and money. It might be easy to assume that only those blinded by dreamy passion lose themselves in eternal loops of self-degradation, and yet as is evident through Variety Lights’ hapless impresario, such complete failure also takes a self-centred ego and a certain lack of wits.
Variety Lights is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.
Ever since young mother Giuliana was caught in a car collision that left her with lingering trauma, the world hasn’t seemed quite right. The industrial Italian town where she lives with her husband Ugo and son is an inhuman landscape of bizarre, alien structures, twisting steel beams and pipes around engines that never seem to stop churning, and chimneys that spit out blasts of fire. There is nothing vaguely hospitable about the harsh angles they impose on their environment, and neither is there any warmth to be found in strange beeps and clangs that constantly echo through polluted open spaces.
Still, under Michelangelo Antonioni’s dreamy direction we are left to question – how much of Red Desert is simply the perception of an unstable psyche, and how much is the real degradation of modern society? It is often difficult to discern where the cold, metallic sound design ends and where the synthesised score begins, ringing electronic wavelengths through the atmosphere to maddening effect. Few others who live here seem as disturbed by the ravaging of nature as Giuliana, who wanders its greasy factories and contaminated estuaries in a state of lonely discontent. She desperately desires the company of others, but even more than that she yearns for them to protect her from the sickness of the world, blocking it out like a barrier of empathy rather than steel or cement.
“I don’t know myself. I never get enough. Why must I always need other people? I must be an idiot. That’s why I can’t seem to manage. You know what I’d like? I’d like everyone who’s ever cared about me… here around me now, like a wall.”
A marvel of location shooting following in neorealist tradition, as Antonioni sets his psychological drama around the petrochemical plants and rustic docks of rural Italy.Steel pipes and machines hem Giuliana into tight spaces – harsh, unwelcoming, and austere mise-en-scène.Formal rigour in the repeated patterns of industrial structures, dominating Giuliana with sheer mass and multitude.
For now though, all that surrounds Giuliana is the industrial “architecture of anxiety” as critic Andrew Sarris labels it, physically dominating her slight frame at every angle. Red Desert is visually distinct from Antonioni’s previous works as his first film shot in colour, but it is also very much a thematic continuation of his ‘Alienation’ trilogy, using the shapes and patterns of modern infrastructure to lose his characters in confusing, inhospitable environments. Rather than islands or cities though, Red Desert is primarily shot on location around the petrochemical plants and rustic docks of rural Italy, uncovering an awe-inspiring beauty in those manufactured structures that were not designed with aesthetics in mind. Instead, it is the purely functionality of these formations that Antonioni relishes, framing their spatial symmetries, parallel lines, and geometric configurations with rigorous precision in his astounding long shots, and carefully blocking his tiny human subjects among them.
Not content with limiting himself to the landscape’s natural colours though, Antonioni pushes his visuals even further with tints of vibrant artifice that break through the monotonous, desaturated greys. Proclaiming his desire to “paint the film as one paints the canvas,” the Italian filmmaker took to his mise-en-scène with literal cans of paint, subtly accentuating the scenery’s neutral tones while aggressively splashing lively reds across the frame.
A thorough dedication to every detail in his mise-en-scène, painting the fruit, cart, wagon, and wall slight variations of a dull, grey palette.Antonioni aggressively interrupts the noxious grey scenery with jarring flashes of red.Excellent formal consistency in Red Desert’s aesthetic, delivering an array of astounding compositions throughout minimalist interiors and industrial exteriors.
The strongest use of this palette comes in the radio telescope set piece, stretching an enormous length of crimson scaffolding far into the distance while workers climb its triangular trusses. Given its alien appearance, the structure’s purpose is not immediately obvious, though the explanation that it allows humans to “listen to the stars” makes sense. This is a culture with its eyes turned upwards rather than inwards, paying far more attention to the undiscovered ceiling of human progress than the quality of day-to-day living. While impressive leaps are made in astronomy and energy technologies, the Earth and its inhabitants waste away in silence, struck by physical and psychological illnesses that all originate from the same place.
The radio telescope set piece is an extraordinary highlight, stretching an enormous length of crimson scaffolding far into the distance while workers climb its triangular trusses. This is a culture with its eyes turned upwards rather than inwards, paying far more attention to the undiscovered ceiling of human progress than the quality of day-to-day living.
As a result, the settings that Antonioni captures in Red Desert often border on apocalyptic. Piles of corroded debris obstruct shots of Giuliana’s aimless roaming in junkyards, and a brief retreat into a riverside shack with friends offers only temporary respite from the dense fog gathering outside. Antonioni’s blocking of bodies remains impressive even in medium shots here, tangling them around each other in lounging positions that look none too comfortable, and continuing to weave in his red palette through the tarnished wooden walls.
Frame obstructions in the vein of Josef von Sternberg, crowding out the foreground while those in the background are visually subjugated.Bodies twist around each other in uncomfortable positions – there is intimacy to be found in this dying landscape, but it is forced and unpleasant.
The moment a ship carrying diseased passengers drifts into shot through a window though, the brief comfort that Giuliana that found here immediately dissipates, and she reverts to the hysterical state that her nightmares have often brought on. Not only did she attempt suicide shortly after her car accident, but her following experience being hospitalised left her with a harrowing fear of “Streets, factories, colours, people,” and of course any illness that might once again render her helpless. The silhouetted figures of her friends staggered through the mist outside are more ominous than they are comforting under these circumstances, agitating her to the point that she tries to escape in a panic and nearly drives off the end of the wharf. The visual metaphor that Antonioni composes here of Giuliana’s car ready to tip over the edge of the world is devastatingly bleak, with the tall, unlit beacon tower diminishing her presence and the grey negative space eerily beckoning her into the void.
Physical and psychological sickness docks outside the cabin, dissipating Giuliana’s brief comfort as she reverts to her hysterical state brought on by nightmares.An ominous staggering of bodies throughout the frame in the heavy, suffocating fog, using three different depths of field.Antonioni’s visual metaphor is devastatingly bleak, with the tall, unlit beacon tower diminishing Giuliana’s presence and the grey negative space eerily beckoning her into the void.
When Antonioni isn’t trapping Giuliana within wide open expanses and behind architectural obstructions, it is his shallow focus which softly detaches her from these surroundings, envisioning her subconscious defence mechanism. It is an unusual device for a filmmaker so attached to his crisp depth of field, and yet its formal introduction in the out-of-focus opening credits and emphasis on Monica Vitti’s subtly expressive face in close-ups is wielded with exceptional care, isolating her marvellous performance against red, liquefied backdrops. She is filled with an aching hunger to simply connect with another being, and yet the more she reaches out, the more lost she becomes. When she finally makes love to a man, Antonioni’s disjointed editing keeps their passion at a cold distance, and her attempt to communicate with a German sailor by the dockyard is painfully hindered by the language barrier between them.
The shallow focus of the opening credits is often brought back through close-ups on Giuliana, placing us in her detached head space.
Unfortunately, the emotion that Vitti pours into this role is not always reciprocated by Richard Harris as Corrado, her husband’s business associate and the one man she connects with on a personal level. Neither does the magical realist bedtime story interlude that whisks us away to a distant island paradise formally integrate so well with the rest of Red Desert’s grim naturalism. Still, Antonioni’s stark cinematic ambition cannot ultimately be overshadowed by these flaws as he works his obsession with rich pigments into Vitti’s capricious character.
Though she erratically claims to be scared of colour, she also dreams of filling her unopened ceramics shop with it, opting for light blues and greens in a subconscious reaction against the angry red steel of her outside environment. Whether it is the pink walls of her bedroom of the green décor of Corrado’s tidy living room, Antonioni often uses the soft palettes of his interiors to offset the vibrancy of his landscapes, though visually these amount to little against the sheer mass of the world’s barren greyness.
Various interiors briefly diverge from Antonioni’s monotonous palette, offering fleeting respite from the world’s barren greyness.
If our humanity is to break through at all, it is not in acts of individual expression, but the giant displays of human industry mounted on arid plains, spewing yellow smoke into the dirty air. Passing birds know not to fly there, Giuliana poignantly explains to her son, though it is a sad state of affairs to begin with that such innocent creatures must be taught to navigate manmade danger in a world that no longer has a place for them. At this point, there are no easy solutions to reverse society’s reckless pursuit of progress and profit, Antonioni realises. To live is to merely survive, and yet in though slow deterioration of Red Desert’s earth, air, and water, even that is dangerously at risk.
Yellow fumes spew from industrial chimneys, filling the air with poison that keeps the birds away.
Red Desert is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD or Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.
The classic tale of knights and beasts that opens Nimona is like many we have heard before, telling of the legendary heroine Gloreth who vanquished a Great Black Monster and built a fortified wall to protect the kingdom after her death. The series of illustrated tapestries depicting this conflict in the prologue effectively solidify it as historical fact within this fantasy world, offering the city a sense of identity, culture, and purpose, and further justifying the traditions that have persevered for one thousand years. As such, the futuristic, medieval kingdom where Nimona’s main storyline picks up is built on a foundation of distant mythology, and it is here where directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane playfully subvert the genre to consider the nature of prejudices unquestioningly passed from one generation to the next.
While Pixar has been struggling to deliver a certified hit ever since its success with Soul in 2020, other animation studios such as Sony Pictures and even Nickelodeon Movies have swept in with a partial return to 2D stylisations, though this alone has not compensated for the deficit in cinematic fables targeted at children. Nimona may be the closest any recent film has gotten to recapturing the magic of 2000s-era Pixar storytelling, revitalising familiar archetypes through the fresh, imaginative setting of a medieval kingdom located in the distant future. The clean geometric shapes drawn through sets and character designs effectively mimic the prologue’s tapestry style art, but are also imbued with a neo-futurist liveliness that thrusts the aesthetic forward in time, dynamically reflecting the anachronistic paradox of the clashing eras.
Of course, much of this energy comes down to the character of Nimona herself, a mysterious shapeshifter who has sought out fugitive Sir Ballister Boldheart. Mischievous, impulsive, and ready to pick a fight with anyone upholding the status quo, she believes she has found an ally in the knight framed for the murder of Queen Valerin, and quickly dubs herself his villainous sidekick. Her backstory is kept deliberately ambiguous, though Bruno and Quane relish animating pieces of it upon the tiled walls of a subway station, creatively developing their tapestry-style illustrations into a more modern, urban art.
Like Nimona, Ballister has previously been ostracised for his commoner background, despite proving his capability in serving the kingdom and joining the Institute for Elite Knights. Rather than lashing out in bitter revenge though, he is simply determined to uncover the identity of the Queen’s true killer and prove his innocence – even if Nimona’s troublemaking tactics tend to have the opposite effect. Rather than trying to counteract society’s negative, fear-driven opinions of her, she has chosen to become the terrifying monster they believe her to be, and sow chaos wherever she goes.
Given Ballister’s relationship with fellow knight Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, the queer subtext of Nimona only barely lingers beneath the surface, criticising the prejudice directed towards those who live outside heteronormative conventions. The myths passed down from ancestors to their descendants as cautionary tales are the same as those which reinforce outdated beliefs, and so only when their origins are challenged can society identify where its true corruption may lie.
Many of the twists in Nimona can be spotted from a mile off, and yet in true Pixar fashion they nevertheless go right for the heartstrings and tug on them with gentle sorrow, eventually uniting its well-earned emotional climax with apocalyptic medieval action. Despite sharing common ground as outsiders, Ballister and Nimona possess entirely different attitudes around dealing with their alienation, and it is in the equal, compassionate understanding of both that this film develops a surprising complexity. By undermining the very basis of archaic narrative traditions and demolishing the walls they build around our worldview, Nimona recognises the freedom that lies in open-minded acceptance, and reshapes them into a historic allegory for a new age.
It is not just the fantastical designs and living furniture which imbue the enchanted castle of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast with an air of otherworldly awe. Time inside this ethereal realm mystically warps in unexpected directions, stretching out in delicate slow-motion when the captive Belle runs down hallways of billowing white curtains, and flipping it around with reverse photography as a collection of loose pearls magically form a necklace. Given that its days and nights are completely out of sync with the village situated just a few miles away, it might as well exist in its own time zone too, consumed in darkness when the sun should be shining.
As a skilled technician of practical effects, Cocteau is fully dedicating his illusory craft to our complete disorientation, further manipulating our own suspended disbelief as spatial dimensions disappear altogether in feats of teleportation and clairvoyance. The Beast’s castle defies logic in more ways than just its eccentric mise-en-scène. The very system of logic it operates on exists entirely outside of our own, making for a world that is as inventively surreal as it is fearsome.
White, translucent curtains billow and slow-motion as Belle runs down the hallway, transporting her to an ethereal realm.Physical space is warped too in the Beast’s magic mirror, offering clairvoyant glimpses into other people’s lives.Distance means nothing through the magic teleportation of the tale too, realised with incredible practical effects as Belle seems to burst out from a blank wall.
Especially in contrast to Disney’s animated adaptation of the French fairy tale, Cocteau’s vision possesses a far more whimsical horror. When Belle’s father first enters the Beast’s domain after getting lost in the forest, he is welcome by arms protruding from stone walls and holding candelabras to light his way, while faces carved into the dining hall’s ornate fireplace quietly observe his movements. These are not humans transformed into objects, but rather embodiments of the castle’s own sentience, opening doors and whispering to its inhabitants as if possessed by ghosts.
Phantasmagoric mise-en-scène that works the human body into its production design, lighting the castle entry with arms holding candelabras.Faces surreally blend into the fireplace’s stonework, silently watching guests dine.
Where Georges Auric’s fabulously lush orchestrations build to grand crescendos outside this estate, the addition of a haunting choir within its dark chambers gives the eerie setting its own non-diegetic voice, effectively breathing life into that which is inanimate. Cocteau’s curious camera underscores the mystery even further too as it moves in dangerous anticipation of what we might find at the end of long corridors, while the cluttered Gothic décor obscures our clear view of what lies submerged in dark voids of negative space.
An obstruction of the frame to make Josef von Sternberg proud, crowding Belle’s father with intricate Gothic decor.Outside, simple silhouettes set against grey skies create stark, minimalist imagery that could come straight from Carl Theodor Dreyer.
From the doorways encased in ornamental carvings to the grand stone sculptures guarding the castle walls, Beauty and the Beast is a towering landmark of cinematic production design, constructing an architectural marvel as phantasmagorical as its cursed master. The Beast’s anthropomorphic design is beautifully detailed, marking an incredible accomplishment of prosthetic makeup in his realistic fur and fangs, while possessing a low, raspy voice and human eyes which reveal a deep sorrow. It isn’t just that he is ugly, but this Beast also confesses that he is hopelessly dim-witted, and feels that this dehumanises him in Belle’s eyes. “You stroke me like you stroke an animal,” he laments, though it is her thoughtless response that stings even more.
“But you are an animal.”
To further underscore his monstrosity, the curse which was placed on him as a child also causes his hands to smoke whenever he is driven by his primal instinct to slaughter a forest creature, betraying his barbarity and driving him deeper into shame around his civilised guest. Though this version of Beauty and the Beast is far more faithful to the classic fable than Disney, these small, cinematic inventions shape it into its own fantastical character study, examining the thin line that separates virtuous honour from depravity.
Shame is visually depicted in the Beast’s smoking hands whenever he takes a life – truly haunting imagery.Cocteau’s mise-en-scène is incredibly ornate and crowded, but his black voids of negative space also infuse the castle with an oppressive darkness.
The dual casting of Jean Marais as both the Beast and Belle’s vain suitor Avenant works brilliantly in this formal comparison too, especially as the Beast eventually finds himself becoming human, and Avenant respectively takes on his hideous form. “Love can turn a man into a beast. But love can also make an ugly man handsome,” the newly transformed Prince poetically expounds, before lifting into the air with Belle in a sudden gust of smoke and wind.
A miraculous, poetic reversal of fates as Avenant becomes a monster, and the Beast becomes human, made possible in Cocteau’s inspired dual casting of the roles.
Beyond this anti-hero and villain, Cocteau continues to lay out humanity’s shortcomings in Belle’s jealous sisters who manipulate her into turning down a more prosperous life, as well as her brother Ludovic who decides to help Avenant kill the Beast. Even Belle herself is forced to come to terms with her own selfishness when she realises her actions have led to the Beast’s impending demise, kneeling over his ailing body by a stream and tearfully confessing “I am the monster!”.
Indeed, moral virtue and corruption exist within each character to varying extents, though it is only through the filter of twisted dreamscapes that this sort of nuance becomes visible, allowing us to penetrate their deceptive facades of beauty and ugliness. Just as worlds of the conscious and subconscious collide in the love shared between Belle and the Beast, Cocteau also reconciles contradictions of the body and spirit with poetic justice, embracing a wishful ending that he recognises with whimsical poignancy may only ever exist in the boundless, imaginative possibilities of fairy tales.
Reverse photography and smoke make for a tremendous practical effect as the two lovers lift into the air, reconciling body and spirit.
Beauty and the Beast is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to purchase on Amazon.
The opening minutes of Evil Dead Rise may land us right in the middle of another ‘cabin in the woods’ horror story, complete with naïve college friends and a gruesome lakeside struggle, but director Lee Cronin veers wildly away from this classic setting once his prologue has wrapped. Instead, this reinvigoration of Sam Raimi’s franchise unexpectedly takes us to a Los Angeles apartment building, where families and neighbours unknowingly reside over an old, forgotten chamber. Only when an earthquake shakes its foundations is the entrance uncovered, inviting siblings Danny and Bridget to investigate the strange vinyl records and skinbound tome that contain frightening records of demonic possession. From there, the hellish Deadites which tormented Ash Williams through three movies and a television series are unleashed, mutilating the intimate bonds of a young, single-parent family.
So strong is Cronin’s standalone narrative in Evil Dead Rise that the bookends vaguely linking it back to the series’ roots are entirely redundant, holding little weight or relevance to the rest of the film. There are no Bruce Campbell appearances pandering to fan nostalgia, save for a voice cameo on one of the phonograph records, nor any attempts to recapture Raimi’s brand of comedy-horror slapstick. Cronin instead brings a refreshing creativity to the intellectual property, stripping back the camp humour and laying into the terror of seeing one’s mother transform into a hideous creature, unbound by maternal instincts of love and protection.
Therein lies the power of Cronin’s allegory in Evil Dead Rise, slowly twisting the image of a loving family into that of dysfunctional, abusive household. Ellie is the main drawcard here as the first to be turned, possessed by the grinning, deep-voiced Deadite who understands exactly what combination of gaslighting, love bombing, and guilt tripping gets under the children’s skins. She is the dark shadow of motherhood in demonic form, relishing her freedom from the “parasites” who drain her energy, while seeking to inflict a physical and psychological pain on them that will raise them in her malevolent likeness. Once that line is crossed, this Deadite effectively creates a family of her own, evolving into a Lovecraftian monster that manifests Cronin’s subtext as grotesque, disfigured body horror.
Outside of the possessed Ellie though, another mother figure begins to emerge as her direct inverse. Beth is her slightly more alternative sister whose job as a band roadie has kept her distant from family life, and yet who is now forced to reckon with her own maternal instincts upon discovering her unplanned pregnancy. With Danny, Bridget, and Kassie’s loving mother gone and their absent father firmly out of the picture, Beth recognises the void that has suddenly opened in their lives, and the part she must play in filling that as tensions rise. Evil Dead Rises is not subtle with its symbolism, but by the time it is representing Beth’s escape from a blood-filled elevator as an abortion and directly referencing The Shining, the expectation of restraint has long-gone. Even in Cronin’s capable hands, the Evil Dead series works best as an exercise in visual sensationalism, provoking a visceral disgust towards the breakdown of close relationships.
As a director of piercing cinematic style, it is tough to deny Cronin’s talents here too. Besides the ghastly makeup, gory practical effects, and point-of-view tracking shots which Raimi had already set a standard for, Cronin brings his own repertoire of techniques to the table, drawing inspiration from Roman Polanski’s Apartment trilogy by capitalising on the claustrophobic urban setting. In the dim, blue wash of a flickering emergency lights, the camera slowly dollies down a corridor of bloody bodies, and peephole shots break the fourth wall as Ellie’s pale face stares at us through fish-eye lenses.
Perhaps most inspired of all though is the array of split diopter shots where Brian de Palma’s influence can be felt, tightly framing crucial details such as Kassie’s doll or a set of keys on one side of the frame, while building suspense against the actors staged in canted angles behind. Cronin employs each with discerning purpose throughout Evil Dead Rise, turning homely, domestic spaces into battlefields of violent abuse and paranoid mistrust. Only when the mother’s place is restored can innocence finally be saved from the Deadites’ chaos, as Cronin shrewdly pivots the horror of Raimi’s extravagant creation into a hideous perversion of the family unit, threatening the foundations of a stable, nurturing society.
Evil Dead Rise is currently streaming on Netflix and Binge, is available to rent on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video, and the physical media available to purchase on Amazon.
Scene by Green 