Recommend – Scene by Green

Smile 2 (2024)

Parker Finn | 2hr 12min

There is always the risk when turning a standalone horror film into a series that the core concept quickly wears thin, especially when such a firm narrative template has already been set. Smile 2 does not quite diverge from its predecessor’s steady, downward slide into tortured psychosis, and yet Parker Finn’s ambition has nevertheless grown, pushing his demonic metaphor for trauma into the realm of substance abuse and celebrity.

Pop star Skye Riley is the target of the smile curse this time around, suffering horrific visions throughout the week leading up to her comeback tour, which she rests her hopes for public redemption upon. It has been one year since her struggle with drugs led to the death of her boyfriend in a violent car accident, and although she has been on a path to recovery, bad habits are reemerging in the form of painkiller dependency and compulsive hair-pulling. It is initially easy to brush off her drug dealer Lewis’ erratic behaviour as a bad trip too, but after witnessing his bloody suicide via a gym weight to the face, it gradually becomes clear that the entity which haunted him is now threatening to send her reeling back into the dark, terrifying recesses of her mind.

We can see from the outset that Finn is swinging even harder stylistically here, as an 8-minute long take tracking police officer Joel’s attempt to deal with the curse picks up where the first film ended. We are hitched entirely to his distorted perspective, briefly passing by a hallucination of Rose’s burning body before entering a drug den where he intends to pass off the affliction. Every blunder here is heightened by the urgency of Finn’s camerawork, and when we finally make the leap to Skye’s point-of-view in the main storyline, these uneasy visual stylings barely let up. Close-ups narrow in tightly on Naomi Scott’s panicked expressions and flashbacks slice through in sharp cutaways, though even more chilling are their hallucinatory ingresses into Skye’s everyday life, stalking her wherever she goes with those stretched, sinister smiles.

This sequel’s shift to New York as the setting only adds to the malaise as well, flooding moody interiors with ambient lighting and turning the iconic cityscape into the subject of recurring, upside-down tracking shots. Although Skye is surrounded by people here, Finn is constantly emphasising her loneliness among crowds, leaving very few people she can turn to who don’t brush off her meltdowns as delusional relapses. Clearly the supernatural parasite knows how to play on this emotional isolation to feed on her suffering, taking the form of an obsessive fan severely overstepping boundaries, and later a troupe of grotesque, twisted dancers crawling in sync through her apartment.

Being the second film in the series, Smile 2 is also more liberated from the need for exposition, keeping the lore to a minimum while moving this story along through visual inferences and discomforting ambiguity. As Skye’s mental state rapidly declines, we begin to see the dysfunctional version of her that not only hit rock bottom a year ago, but which also claims a special place in her nightmares. That the smile entity chooses this as its most hostile form speaks deeply to her self-loathing, and perhaps at the root of her torment, it is this which keeps her from breaking free of its ruinous cycles.

Very gradually, reality slips from between Skye’s fingers, and Finn thrillingly paves the way to an apocalyptic finale which raises the stakes for a promising sequel. To relive one’s deep-rooted, psychological trauma is a frightening prospect on its own, and in Smile 2, he once again proves his ability to immerse us in that disorientating, self-sabotaging mindset. For it to be trivialised and gawked at on the world stage, however – that may be enough to shatter even the most ascendant of celebrities.

Smile 2 is currently playing in theatres.

Disclaimer (2024)

Alfonso Cuarón | 7 episodes (45 – 55 minutes)

When journalist Catherine Ravenscroft first receives a mysterious novel called The Perfect Stranger in the mail, she is struck by the disclaimer – “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.” The deeper she delves into the pages too, the clearer these resemblances become, and the revelations are deeply mortifying. Secrets she believed were buried deep in her past have been immortalised in ink for the world to see, and she immediately understands the threat it poses to every aspect of her stable, successful life.

This is only the start of widower Stephen Brigstocke’s plans for revenge though. The Perfect Stranger was written by his late wife Nancy, inspired by the grief she and Stephen both felt over the passing of their son Jonathan twenty years ago while he was travelling in Italy. They do not have a lot of information to go off, but after discovering erotic photographs of Catherine taken the night before his death, it doesn’t take long for them to reconstruct their version of events. To distil them into literary form, some truths may need to be twisted a little – but what good storyteller doesn’t smooth over such trivialities for the sake of a greater point?

Alfonso Cuarón’s unravels these layers with great patience in Disclaimer, keeping us from the reality of Jonathan and Catherine’s relationship until the final episode, yet the subjectivity of such accounts is woven into the series’ structure from the start. Two duelling voiceovers are established here – Jonathan’s speaking in first person, suggesting an inability to move on through its past tense reflections, and Catherine’s running an internal monologue via an omniscient, second person narrator. It lays bare the deepest thoughts of everyone in her family, but its direct, reproachful tone refers to her alone as “you”, as if framing her at the centre of a novel – which of course she very much is.

There is a third perspective here too, though one which takes the form of flashbacks rather than narration. This account belongs to the book itself, and by extension Nancy, who in her grief has desperately tried to make sense of her son’s profoundly unfair death. Cuarón wields excellent control over his non-linear storytelling to build intrigue here, particularly when it comes to the younger Catherine’s seduction of a stammering Jonathan and the provocative development of their holiday fling. With her husband Robert away on business, leaving her to care for their 5-year-old son Nicholas alone, this younger, unexperienced man seems like the perfect opportunity to escape the confines of marriage and motherhood.

At least, this is the version of Catherine that Nancy would like her readers to believe. As if to position us as observers looking through a peephole, Disclaimer uses iris transitions to formally bookend these flashbacks, effectively sectioning off this subjective rendering of events within their own idyllic bubble. In true Cuarón style, the camera romantically floats around Catherine and Jonathan’s interactions with tantalising intrigue, and grows particularly intimate when she finally ensnares him in her hotel room. Conversely, the cold detachment of his lingering shots in the present-day scenes underscore Stephen’s schemes and Catherine’s torment with a nervous tension, grimly witnessing the emotional isolation they have caused each other.

That Disclaimer possesses a greater command of cinematic language than most television series does not mean that it lives up to Cuarón’s own established standard though. It is far from the towering visual accomplishments that are Roma or Children of Men, and that it was shot by two of our greatest working cinematographers, Bruno Delbonnel and Emmanuel Lubezki, makes this all the more disappointing. Formal inconsistencies are infrequently scattered about, with episode 1 introducing flashes of lilac lighting that never appear again, and the final episode erratically falling into a zoom-heavy documentary style for a single scene.

Perhaps these flaws comes down to the challenge of sustaining such ambition over seven hours, though this then prompts the question of whether a series was even the right format for Cuarón’s story, particularly given the lagging pace of episodes 5 and 6. From there, the final stages of Stephen’s devilish sabotage and Catherine’s desperate attempts to salvage some dignity take the spotlight, carefully setting up the climactic collision of both characters in the finale.

Kevin Kline and Cate Blanchett’s performances are no doubt the highlight here, respectively capturing the roguish nihilism of a grieving misanthrope and the gut-wrenching trauma of a woman escaping his torment, though truthfully there is barely a weak link in Cuarón’s cast. Sacha Baron Cohen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Leila George are all given their moments to shine, while Lesley Manville in particular works wonders with her limited screen time as Nancy, subtly hinting at a bitter jealousy that transcends mere vindictiveness. As we follow the tangled threads of perspectives, not only are we led to challenge her biased presentation of Catherine and Jonathan’s characters, but Stephen too must question the foundation of his retribution – the conviction that his seemingly happy family held no responsibility for its own destruction.

After all, were those erotic photographs not just incomplete fragments of reality? And what is The Perfect Stranger if not Nancy’s disingenuous attempt to piece them together, assembling whatever pattern affirms her own assumptions? When Catherine finally gets a chance to speak about the events leading up to Jonathan’s death, her recollection is astonishing in its uncomfortably vivid detail, seeping through the flashback’s muffled sound design and visceral camerawork. Perhaps even more importantly though, it is also a complete shock to the beliefs we hold about virtually every single character, especially seeing Catherine’s implicating narrator latch on to another as they similarly face the inconceivability of their own redemption.

“Nothing can purify you. Nothing can absolve you. Ahead of you there’s nothing.”

What Cuarón leaves us with is more than just a lesson on the confounding subjectivity of storytelling. Disclaimer is a testament to the influential power of words themselves, granting us the ability to win sympathies, destroy lives, and even rewrite our own memories. There is little that can take them back once they have been put down in ink. Just as troubling as the guilt for what we have done is the shame over what we have said – and perhaps for those claiming to be passive witnesses in the matter, who we believed.

Disclaimer is currently streaming on Apple TV Plus.

Rebel Ridge (2024)

Jeremy Saulnier | 2hr 11min

When Marine Corps veteran Terry returns to the Louisiana police station where the $36,000 intended for his cousin’s bail has been confiscated, Chief Sandy Burnne and his colleagues are not prepared for the hell about to be unleashed on them. Jeremy Saulnier’s narrative has barely raised the heat past a gentle simmer up until now, matching Aaron Pierre’s cool performance with an equally composed pacing, though it is only matter of time before that patience wears thin. The police officers’ assumption that he lacks combat experience simply because he never served overseas during his military career is a dire mistake. Like so many action heroes of cinema history, Terry proves himself more than capable, using his unique set of skills and tactical wits to take down an entire squad.

Still, vengeance does not arrive through bloody carnage for this veteran. Violence is merely a non-lethal means to an ends, and so despite its proliferation in Rebel Ridge, the total fatalities remain remarkably low. Terry never killed a man during his service, and he is not going to start a John Wick-style rampage now, mowing down leagues of enemies before reaching a final boss. Institutional corruption must be dealt with at its source, and through his unlikely alliance with law student Summer, he begins to embrace a new fight for justice.

Of course, this is all purely tactical for Terry. Right from the opening scene when he is rammed off his bicycle by officers Marston and Lann, it is clear his identity as a Black man factors deeply into his careful interactions with the police. He is not going to pick any fights that he knows he is going to lose, and he is certainly not going to aggravate anyone looking for an excuse to detain or shoot him. In response to their extreme brutality, he responds with the least amount of force necessary, ironically demonstrating the ideal behaviour they should be modelling. Where Saulnier’s 2015 film Green Room veers far more heavily into gore and horror, Rebel Ridge makes for a far more sobering thriller, understanding the nuanced stakes that lie in this conflict beyond life and death.

Unfortunately, the dedication to murky, ambient lighting which gave Green Room such a distinctive visual character is largely absent here, leaving Rebel Ridge struggling to aesthetically set itself apart from the fray of modern action movies. At least beyond the remarkable fight choreography creatively tailored to Terry’s no-killing principle, Saulnier delivers a small handful of locations that play to his stylistic strengths, illuminating the police evidence room with a subtle blue wash and later piercing the darkness of the courtroom basement with green and orange light sources. Scenes like these do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to imbuing the setting with a sense of peril, hinting at the insidious exploitation lurking beneath the police force’s veneer of law-abiding respectability.

After all, the prejudice that Terry experiences is not an isolated incident. What starts as a quest to free his cousin inevitably gets wrapped up in a much larger conspiracy at play, raising suspicions when an unidentified whistleblower points Summer towards a strange anomaly in police records – over the past two years, many people who committed misdemeanours were held in jail for exactly 90 days before being released. The exposition which peels back the mystery here drags a little, though the payoff in Terry’s final confrontation with Burnne and his lackeys is certainly worth it, ultimately revealing where individual loyalties truly lie. Our veteran hero only may be alive due to his combat expertise, though physical conflict alone is never going to heal a broken system. Patience, discernment, and cunning are virtues embodied in his pursuit of justice, and superbly carried through in Saulnier’s tense, brooding storytelling.

Rebel Ridge is currently streaming on Netflix.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Jane Schoenbrun | 1hr 40min

The television shows of our childhoods hold a special place in our memories. Quality is entirely irrelevant – to innocent minds, these flickering images are tactile, complex worlds inhabited by vibrant characters we subconsciously mould ourselves after. This is a common experience shared by millennials, and from within it I Saw the TV Glow extracts an unsettling horror, casting a Lynchian surrealism over the lives of two teenagers bonding over the same 90s young adult show.

The Pink Opaque is not for kids, Maddy defiantly claims, and Owen quietly bristles against his father’s passing insult that it is for girls. It feels “more real than real life,” allowing an escape from the insecurities of adolescence and the resulting malaise. They can see themselves vividly within the show’s telepathic characters and glimpse representations of their nightmares in its monsters, each manifesting as grotesque, Eraserhead-style abominations trapped behind a thin mask of lo-fi video grain. It is not the malformed Ice Cream Man or the bearded, lumpy-faced creep that poses the greatest threat though, but rather the largely unseen Mr. Melancholy, who warps time and reality with his mystical powers.

Beyond the titular glow of the screen that softly casts fluorescent magentas, greens, and teals across Maddy and Owen’s faces, Jane Schoenbrun weaves a psychedelic luminescence through their home and school, colouring in this world with shades of their favourite show. Along with the dissolve transitions and elliptical pacing that skip through years at a time, this lighting palette infuses I Saw the TV Glow with an eerie, dreamy quality, whimsically obscuring the boundaries between reality and fiction. Like our two leads, the source of our discomfort remains difficult to pinpoint for some time, until Schoenbrun gradually turns our focus to the truth of their identities.

For Maddy, this is first touched on when she explicitly states she likes girls and reveals her intention to run away from home. When she probes Owen on the matter of his own sexuality, he can’t quite pinpoint the word to describe his specific brand of dysphoria – nor does he seem to want to. Admitting that he feels out of place in his body and the world at large would be to accept that his entire life thus far has been a lie. While Maddy seeks to expose the mind-bending conspiracy behind The Pink Opaque, he shies away in fear of what its implications might be, despite understanding on a deep, intuitive level the exact feeling of imprisonment and disorientation that she is describing.

From there, Schoenbrun’s allegory for the trans experience flourishes, teasing out the horrifying effects of self-denial which keeps Owen from embracing the confidence and spirit of his actual self. His suffering is figuratively akin to being buried alive, forcing wheezing breaths from his chest that might easily be dismissed as asthma, and eroding his physical being into a pale, emaciated shell of his younger self. It is a poignantly clever use of voiceover that appears here too, granting Owen some subconscious awareness that he exists in a fictional world as he speaks to us through the fourth wall, even as he resists fully crossing that barrier.

Where the Wachowskis once called this simulated reality the Matrix, Schoenbrun labels it the Midnight Realm, both essentially representing the same false construct of identity within their respective genres. It is clear that I Saw the TV Glow prioritises its otherworldly atmosphere above all else, though perhaps Schoenbrun could have taken a few more lessons from Lynch in this respect, developing their overarching metaphor to completion while lingering in its ambiguous, wearying anxiety. Nevertheless, the psychological horror that is crafted here from distorted 90s nostalgia makes for an intoxicating examination of those artificial personas thrust upon society’s most vulnerable, and the insidious illusions of self-autonomy that maintain them.

I Saw the TV Glow is currently playing in theatres.

Intervista (1987)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 45min

At Cinecittà Studios where Federico Fellini shot his most famous films, the ageing Italian director is preparing for his next endeavour. This is to be his adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘Amerika’, though on the outer, self-aware layer of Intervista which recognises this whole enterprise as fiction, the substance of the source material barely matters. While buxom actresses desperately compete for the coveted role of Brunelda, Fellini entreats a Japanese television crew looking to report back home on his production, and old friends unexpectedly reunite to reminisce on their glory days. There is work to be done in this bustling film studio, but over the decades it has also become a second home for him to relax and play in, like “a fortress, or perhaps an alibi” he slyly remarks.

Just as Fellini inserts himself as the main character, so too are the soundstages and backlots of Cinecittà depicted authentically for perhaps the first time in its long history. Intervista careens almost directly into documentary territory here, pulling the curtain back even further than 8 ½ or Roma, only to intermittently expose the surrealism which has bled from his art into his life. These blurred lines are where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker, though as Fellini’s illustrious career begins to wind down into more modest projects, it is clear that his once-tight grasp on cinematic and narrative chaos has slackened.

There is not a whole let of sense to the structure of this piece, gliding aimlessly between scenes of movie productions and reconstructed memories without great formal purpose. Echoes of 8 ½ manifest in dreams of flying above the studio, but Intervista is far more compelling when it is paving new ground, casting actor Sergio Rubini as a vague blend of himself and a younger Fellini first coming to the studio in 1940. The pink dressing room where he interviews matinee idol Katya is a stunningly uniform set piece of roses, drapes, and chaise lounges, though he is far more entranced by the chaos of the studio itself, watching giant sets roll through showers of white petals and sparkling dancers take centre stage in a gaudy historical epic. Suddenly, a trunk falls off the head of a fake elephant, sending the director into a hysterical argument with his crew who begin toppling all the other cut-outs – until the older Fellini cuts them off. “You were supposed to knock over the first elephant, not the third,” he proclaims, revealing this entire sequence to be yet another layer of fiction within a film he is making about his first visit to Cinecittà.

It is a seamless transition he conducts here, not so much forcing us to question where the line is between Fellini’s life and stories than to accept them as one. Especially when Marcello Mastroianni drops in with a dramatic entrance as Mandrake the Magician, Fellini pays sentimental tribute to the cherished relationships he has built over the years through film, gathering up his old collaborator and Rubini into a car to visit Anita Ekberg at her mansion.

The Swedish actress only ever featured in one Fellini film, but as shown here, the impact that her famous Trevi Fountain scene with Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita has had on their lives may be equal to its high standing in Italian culture. When Mastroianni magically summons a white sheet at her house party, the two wistfully recreate their old dance as shadows against its surface, accompanied by Nino Rota’s instantly recognisable score. Afterwards, their eyes turn to a projection of the original Trevi Fountain scene itself, smiling and tearing up with unspoken nostalgia. All at once, we bear witness to the chemistry they shared as attractive young film stars, and how it has strengthened through years of mutual respect and adoration.

That this is the moment from Fellini’s career which he chooses to directly evoke in Intervista doesn’t just speak to his pride in its artistic brilliance. Above all else, the relationships that formed behind the scenes hold a timeless value to these artists, justifying all the pains and struggles that come with their profession. It is dismaying to see modern apartments buildings encroach on this studio lot that once hosted the grand sets of Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, yet the sad state of the industry does little to dampen the spirits of cast and crew who band together for the sake of entertainment.

This is the true joy of filmmaking, Fellini posits, and it is on full display in the absurd final scenes of Intervista when Amerika finally enters production. Out in a muddy backlot of scaffolding and cardboard cutouts, an actress complains about her cemetery scene being cut, while a crewmember sheepishly gathers up the lightweight gravestones. Suddenly, mounted stage lights begin to explode from the drizzling rain, which soon escalates into a storm and sends everyone running beneath a small tarp shelter. As a jazz band in the back of a truck plays cheery tunes into the night, cast and crew entertain themselves with games, songs, and conversation, before falling asleep in cramped, uncomfortable positions.

Unbeknownst to them, standing atop a nearby hill the next morning is a tribe of Native Americans on horseback, carrying television antennae as weapons. Their attack on the makeshift shelter suddenly transforms the scene into a Western, only to be halted by Fellini’s call to cut. “We’re wrapped it!” the crew yells. “The film’s over!”

Once again, Intervista completely blindsides us with its invisible layers of metafiction, dwelling so long in what we assume to be reality that we fail to spot the illusion. At this point at least, Fellini is done hiding his intentions from us. “The film should end here,” his voiceover considers. “In fact, it’s over.” But not before reflecting on a criticism that he has often heard levelled at his stories.

“I hear the words of an old producer of mine. ‘What? Without the faintest hope or ray of sunshine? Give me at least a day of sunshine,’ he would beg when viewing my films. A ray of sunshine? Well, I don’t know. Let’s try.”

Fellini’s films were far from the bleakest of his contemporaries, especially with Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre in contention, though these ambiguous final words are justified to an extent. Just as he revelled in entertainment and spectacle, so too did their cynical hollowness often rise to the surface in his films. The ambiguity of this ending sees Intervista dissipate without much gravity, but within it there is at least a sense of hope. “Take one,” a clapper loader announces in the final shot, commencing a new project. Perhaps it is Fellini’s, finally delivering that ray of sunshine he never quite mustered, or perhaps it belongs to another director carrying on his legacy. Either way, the lively spirit of Cinecittà Studios and the Italian film industry it houses lives on, long past their historic, illustrious golden age.

Intervista is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Trap (2024)

M. Night Shyamalan | 1hr 45min

The premise of a pop concert being one enormous setup to catch a serial killer is inherently absurd, but M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not bold with his high-concept thrillers. Even more importantly, Trap strings together its set pieces with taut, suspenseful purpose, even overcoming some stilted dialogue and pacing issues with a refreshing creativity that his weakest films fail to properly develop. Here, the thrill isn’t just in navigating the narrative through the eyes of the murderer, now rendered a vulnerable target. It is that this man’s secret identity as a dorky, affable dad is so credible that we too find ourselves believing in the complete sincerity of the love he holds for his family.

Trap does not follow the template of multiple personalities like Psycho, and yet we fully believe that there are two minds who reside within one body, both working in unison. On one side we have Cooper Adams the father and firefighter, enthusiastically taking his teenage daughter Riley to a Lady Raven concert, cracking dad jokes, and defending her against bullies. On the other, there is the Butcher, a sadistic serial killer who imprisons his victims in the basements of empty houses and tortures them. It is eerie watching this sort of cognitive dissonance in play as Josh Harnett smoothly switches between both personas, forcing us to constantly question our own desire to see him either succeed or fail in his escape mission.

Following Shyamalan’s similar success last year with Knock at the Cabin, it appears that he is not only developing his skills as a writer, but also as a visual storyteller bearing closer resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian de Palma than ever before. Deep focus and split diopter lenses often divide the frame right down the middle, staging Hartnett in the distance as he eyes off the FBI profiler leading the manhunt, while the editing between his point-of-view and reaction shots silently key us into each plan unfolding in his mind.

Carrying over from Knock at the Cabin as well is his penchant for shallow focus close-ups – a technique too often abused by lazy filmmakers, yet which have enormous impact when wielded with the uncomfortable intimacy that Shyamalan does here. The fourth wall breaking stares are right out of the Jonathan Demme playbook, studying every worry line and strained smile that crosses Hartnett’s visage, while Shyamalan’s zooms and low angles alternately turn him into a warped, sinister figure. Most inventive of all though is the framing which slices his face right down the middle, displaying only half of it onscreen as a visual representation of his hidden dual identities.

Just as Trap is starting to grow stagnant, the unexpected perspective shift which moves to Lady Raven picks the pacing back up. Here, the Ariana Grande-inspired popstar starts earning Shyamalan’s close-ups instead, highlighting a fine film debut from his daughter Saleka whose enormous, expressive eyes dominate the screen. As she takes charge, our alliance begins to shift, and the walls finally begin to close in on Cooper – though we have learned by now he is not one to be underestimated. Even when he is cornered in the tightest of spaces, his ability to stealth his way out is equivalent to that of an escape artist, straining credulity by the final act.

It is during these last few scenes that Shyamalan shifts our perspective again to a third character, though one who enters the film far too late to earn its climactic payoff. This also coincides with the sudden disappearance of Lady Raven from the narrative – another significant formal misstep that denies her arc a proper resolution. That Shyamalan fumbles the landing is no great surprise, but it is nevertheless disappointing given the relative strength of his storytelling throughout the rest of the film. As much as its tantalising final seconds somewhat make up for this, Trap works best when it is drawing a captivating divide down the middle of Cooper Adams and the Butcher, grappling with the internal, antagonistic pairing of a father and murderer as unlikely partners in crime.

Trap is currently playing in cinemas.

MaXXXine (2024)

Ti West | 1hr 44min

Having rolled in the mud of 70s indie horror in X and the probed the underlying darkness of classical Hollywood in Pearl, Ti West suffuses the final part of his trilogy with sensationalist glamour, only barely masking the cutthroat violence of 1980s America. Here, the Satanic panic is rife among conservative Christians who believe the Devil has possessed their youth through modern entertainment, while those who lust for the lifestyle of the rich and famous delight in its hedonistic, consumerist culture. Stoking the flames of this division further are reports of the mysterious Night Stalker, who has infamously been targeting the young people of Los Angeles and branding their faces with occult symbols. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that so many of them have ties to B-grade porn star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx, though the police detectives who are on the case certainly don’t see it that way.

MaXXXine may be West’s take on the 80s slasher movie, but his cinematic homage also transcends that era of cheap kills and thrills. Vibrant lighting, black leather gloves, and the stretched mask worn by the Night Stalker directly call back to Italian Giallo films, while Psycho is held up as a paragon of horror filmmaking by industry professionals, worshipping Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy on their visits to Universal’s Bates Motel set.

The emulation of Brian de Palma’s pulpy, extravagant style from films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double shouldn’t come as surprise then either, given his own reverent adoration of the Master of Suspense. Split screen montages set the scene of Hollywood’s nightlife, teeming with costumed street performers, prostitutes, and vivid neon lights, while wipe transitions between scenes playfully indulge in the dynamic artifice. West’s editing is even sharper in scenes of mounting tension, cross-cutting between Maxine reviewing the screenplay for her debut horror movie and her friend’s brutal murder at the hands of the Night Stalker, while cutaways to gory practical effects revel in his visceral, grotesque torture.

Much like X and Pearl, the relationship between moviemaking and celebrity culture is at the core of MaXXXine, once again granting West the freedom to explore the American Dream through a satirical, metafictional lens. Mia Goth returns as the vessel through which this merciless ambition manifests as well, picking up Maxine’s story five years after her escape from Pearl’s bloody massacre in X, and now standing on the verge of stardom as she prepares for her debut screen performance in slasher sequel The Puritan II.

It is no coincidence that director’s goal of making a “B-movie with A-movie ideas” is also a self-comment on MaXXXine, nor that her description of the lead character as “a killer but not a villain” could just easily apply to Maxine herself. Though the young actress has been deeply traumatised, she is well-equipped to deal with all sorts of danger, as she proves in one violent confrontation with a Buster Keaton street performer in a murky alleyway. On some subconscious level, there is truth to the lurid narratives that the storytellers of Hollywood deliver to their audiences. Desensitised, self-serving cruelty is the only way to get ahead in this industry after all, sacrificing pieces of one’s humanity to stay in the game and beat the equally ruthless competition.

Goth’s acting here is anything but weak, but it is no coincidence that her best performances in this trilogy have been as the older and younger versions of Pearl, embodying a tragic derangement that is a little more diluted in Maxine. The hallucinatory presence of Pearl here only really serves to carry through the series’ formal comparison of their stories – one being of crushed dreams, and the other of dreams coming true at enormous cost – yet this is one of many narrative threads that fail to find its resolution in a messy final act.

By spending so much time on disconnected subplots, West doesn’t entirely earn his eventual subversion of the film’s Satanic horror, which he may have pulled off with greater setup. In true Hitchcockian fashion, his staging of the film’s climax beneath the Hollywood Sign stains an iconic landmark with seedy, bloody corruption, but even here the opportunity to end the story on a relatively strong note is missed with an unnecessary epilogue. Unlike X and Pearl, MaXXXine spreads itself a little too thinly across a large ensemble, setting, and narrative, yet there is nevertheless something amusingly ironic about a film that ambitiously falls prey to the same shortcomings as many of its influences. In spite of these missteps, West adeptly puts his own spin on the pulp and splatter of 80s horror, ending his three-part interrogation of the genre’s bloodstained history with intoxicating, gaudy spectacle.

MaXXXine is currently playing in cinemas.

Longlegs (2024)

Osgood Perkins | 1hr 41min

For a few eerie minutes in the prologue of Longlegs, Nicolas Cage’s grotesque visage only manifests through a handful of discomforting clues – strange cuckoo noises, a thin, reedy voice, and the bottom half of a partially-concealed face. When he suddenly descends into the frame, we cut away so quickly that we barely register his features, and yet a deep, discomforting terror lingers in its wake. The face of Satanic evil is not easily forgotten, leaving its psychological imprint on both us and the doggedly persistent Detective Lee Harker long after it has faded from view.

The mystery of Cage’s disturbing prosthetic transformation has been so strong in the leadup to Longlegs that it has taken a life of its own online, driving a guerilla marketing campaign inspired by the tactical success of The Blair Witch Project. The creative decision to keep him largely offscreen for roughly half the movie also abides by the found-footage film’s playbook, recognising that implicit horror is far scarier than explicit. As a crime procedural unravelling the mystery of an infamous serial killer though, the influence of David Fincher is far more present, methodically tracing Lee’s investigation on a granular level as she pieces together the patterns of Longlegs’ murders.

Perhaps most intriguing of all is the fact that these homicides would easily be solved if Longlegs wasn’t specifically claiming credit with his calling cards. In each case stretching back thirty years, a seemingly ordinary father snaps and brutally massacres his entire family, usually on or around his daughter’s 9^th birthday. In some cases, they too commit suicide. In others, they survive long enough to be arrested. When the dust has cleared though and investigations have settled, there is nothing else to suggest that Longlegs has ever even met these victims, let alone been present to harm them. So how can one possibly catch a murderer whose guilt cannot be substantiated beyond his cruel taunts?

Perhaps it takes a police officer whose fate is already mystically intertwined with Longlegs’ to capture him, and particularly one such as Lee who exhibits signs of clairvoyance. Maika Monroe is our silent vessel for large portions of the film, fastidiously poring over occult symbols, algorithms, and Zodiac-like ciphers that link him directly to Satan, while seeking to escape his apparent omnipresence in her life. Disturbing visions and memories haunt her deeply, gradually becoming more aggressive in smash cuts that formally deviate from Osgood Perkins’ otherwise measured pacing and long dissolves, and each time returning us to a boxier aspect ratio that drastically narrows our field of vision.

The red tinting that is often attached to these hallucinations make for an admirable stylistic achievement for Perkins as well, echoing the infernal glow of Longlegs’ workshop where he handcrafts sinister, life-sized dolls. Outside of these instances though, he far more frequently returns to dim, yellow light sources that suffuse each setting with its own kind of dread, deepening the Fincher comparison. In Lee’s log cabin home, his camera follows her down warm, wooden corridors, suspensefully waiting for the uncanny presence she feels outside to reveal itself. Golden sunbeams similarly filter through windows of a darkened barn she later investigates with her colleague, while even the police station where she works is saturated with a murky ambience from fluorescent lights.

It is in the interrogation room of that final location where the much-anticipated meeting between Lee and Longlegs finally takes place, borrowing visual cues from The Silence of the Lambs as the camera forges an intimate connection with Cage. Perkins no longer obscures his face, but rather frames it peering right back at us in close-ups, unlocking the mystical connection which binds our protagonist and villain together in spiritual damnation. Evil may dwell in the dark corners of society, but as Longlegs carefully paints out, humanity’s greatest horrors can easily breach the sacred boundaries that we draw around own homes. Maybe it is a freak possession which will one day prompt our loved ones to suddenly destroy us, or perhaps that malice has always lurked under an innocent façade, justifying its existence through a hideous, corrupted sense of self-preservation.

Longlegs is currently playing in cinemas.

The Bikeriders (2023)

Jeff Nichols | 1hr 56min

Girl-next-door Kathy Bauer was simply not meant for a life of marriage to a gangster, and as one of the few voices of reason in The Bikeriders, it is apparent that she was never going to shed her outsider status. Still, her wide-eyed innocence is no match for Benny’s rugged good looks, cool swagger, and romantic persistence, seeing him patiently wait outside her house all night until her boyfriend packs up and leaves out of frustration. The peril that comes with his membership in the Vandals Motorcycle Club is inconsequential – he is the type of man she never believed she would date, yet who has somehow tapped into a deep, primal lust for danger.

At first glance, it appears that this is Jeff Nichols’ take on an S.E. Hinton novel, exploring the nuances of 1960s greaser subculture with equal parts sensitivity and scepticism. Theirs is a community that looks out for its own people, fostering a rare kind of male bonding that cannot be found in mainstream society, even as they put up tough facades. The framing device which keeps returning to photojournalist Danny Lyon’s interviews lends itself far more to distant rumination than immersion though, and covers a greater span of time than Hinton’s coming-of-age stories. These are not teenagers railing against a conservative older generation, but adults realising that their glory days are slowly seeping away, while younger gangsters emerging in the scene threaten to push them out.

If that wasn’t enough to separate The Bikeriders from Hinton’s work, then the busy Chicago setting takes this story far away from the small-town decay of Tulsa, Oklahoma, being notably marked by an array of glaring vocal transformations. While Austin Butler slips easily into a Midwestern dialect and Tom Hardy mumbles his way through a nasally Marlon Brando impression, Jodie Comer fully adopts a Fargo-style accent, imitating the real Kathy from the historic photobook upon which the film is based. Her role as narrator across eight years of a tumultuous marriage fully justifies this daring commitment – in those stretches where she is present only through voiceover, it is evident that she is a misfit among misfits.

It would take someone who has never seen Goodfellas to miss the endless allusions to Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic here, with this narration being just the first of many. When we are first introduced to Benny in a brawl, the freeze frame which lands half a second before a shovel strikes the back of his head heavily evokes our first meeting with Henry Hill, and our sudden launch into a pop-rock soundtrack and voiceover only confirms the parallel. Following a jump back to the early days of Kathy and Benny’s relationship, the camera floats around a hazy bar as she lists the names of his biker friends, before the narrative eventually catches back up to the opening scene and reveals its dangerous consequences.

That The Bikeriders treads dangerously close to being derivative of a far greater influence is no reason to disregard what is otherwise an admirable film though, standing well on its own merits. Nichols shows flashes of visual inspiration around the motorcycles themselves, turning them into icons of liberation cruising along in slow-motion and piercing the darkness with bleary headlights, while the patterned period décor of Kathy’s home frequently grounds us in a far humbler, more ordinary life. The cast he gathers here including Michael Shannon and Norman Reedus also fills out the ensemble with magnetic personalities, building a lively community within the Vandals that will inevitably fall to its own recklessness.

For some members, the end arrives with a devastating motorcycle accident, while Kathy’s patience runs out after a harrowing sexual assault at a party. Most of all though, it is simply the nature of a culture that constantly renews itself that threatens to end the “golden age of motorcycles,” supplanting these middle-aged men with younger, cockier replacements. Beyond this fraternity at least, there is another type of freedom to be sought which tears away the stoic front of the strongest man, letting them finally express their stifled anguish and shame. Those who live fast and die young may be immortalised in The Bikeriders, but perhaps the true winners are those who live long enough to find their own peace, holding gratefully onto what little they have left.

The Bikeriders is currently playing in cinemas.

Hit Man (2023)

Richard Linklater | 1hr 55min

The concept of self is “a construct, an act, an illusion,” college professor Gary Johnson informs his students in the opening act of Hit Man. One could almost imagine this passage being spoken by any number of other Richard Linklater characters being carried away by their own intellectualism, though unlike those haughty young adults, Gary does not believe he has anything to prove. Instead, this lecture serves as meta-commentary, woven through a montage introducing the characters he adopts in his second job. As an undercover police contractor, Gary uses his extraordinary skills of deception to convince would-be criminals that he is an assassin for hire, before unleashing the full force of the law.

The attention to detail that Gary applies to these sting operations go beyond merely fulfilling his duty. He relishes the challenge of truly fooling others, tailoring fresh hitman personas to each client who comes his way. Patrick Bateman-style psychopaths in business suits, creepy Russian mobsters with crooked smiles, gun-toting rednecks lusting for violence – Linklater swiftly moves through every archetype in the book, studying the rapport that Gary builds with his clientele before cutting to their guilty mugshots. Each job is his chance to become someone else, constantly shedding his dweeby professor image until even he begins to question whether that is merely another act in his extensive repertoire.

It is a tough sell for Glen Powell to play so drastically against type, though like Gary, he is clearly having fun adopting the idiosyncrasies of each hitman character. Perhaps his ill fit in this role is also partially the point, as when he takes on the persona of suave hitman Ron to charm his newest client Madison, Powell immediately falls back into the charismatic leading man archetype that he has built his career upon thus far. His spur of the moment decision to sway Madison away from killing her abusive husband is the first small rebellion to foreshadow the rise of the aloof, rule-breaking Ron, who certainly at least feels a lot more in tune with Powell’s natural talents than Gary’s self-conscious mannerisms. The chemistry that Ron has with Madison is instant, and so it isn’t hard to see why Gary betrays his better instincts to pursue a dangerous romance with this woman who believes he is totally different person.

Hit Man is not so much a drift away from Linklater’s indie character dramas than it is a commercial diversion, joining his list of more straightforward comedies including School of Rock and Bernie. He revels in the black humour here, exposing Gary’s disturbingly intimate knowledge of how to dispose a body, as well as his playfully insensitive attitude towards matters of life and death. That much at least he has in common with Ron, leading to risky, even violent behaviour when his new relationship is complicated by Madison’s jealous husband Ray, as well as rival police contractor Jasper.

The name of Gary’s cats Id and Ego are no doubt a glaring clue to the psychological drama that lies beneath Linklater’s comedy, eventually rendered explicit in our protagonist’s class on Freudian psychoanalytic theory and its parallel editing with an impassioned sex scene. These lectures essentially become formal markers of Gary’s development, touching on some of history’s greatest thinkers until he inevitably arrives at the nihilistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. “The truth is created through the integration of different points of view, and there are no absolutes, either moral or epistemological,” he ponders aloud to his students.

“If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you, and you really can become a different and hopefully, better person.”

The question of where Gary ends and where Ron begins is essentially meaningless in Hit Man. There is freedom to be found in recognising the artifice of each persona one presents to the world, abandoning hope of true self-discovery, and thus adopting whatever identity allows a life of passion and abandon. Linklater is not blind to the darkness that lies in this existentialist outlook, sinking Gary/Ron ever further into an amoral void where good and evil are equally unrewarded and unpunished, yet Hit Man’s resolution would not be nearly as bleak if the dubious journey there weren’t also so recklessly enticing.

Hit Man is currently streaming on Netflix.