Grade: C

Scream 7 review: The Ghostface and the Darkness

Jeremy BeckReviews
Neve Campbell in Scream 7

Remember when the Scream movies were about something? Wes Craven’s original horror classic was a playful deconstruction of the genre, though its meta wit didn’t prevent it from operating as a taut and suspenseful exercise. Its follow-ups were less engaging to various degrees, but they all at least purported to have something to say about the enduring conventions of the slasher picture. The up-the-ante imperative of sequels, the deadly stakes of trilogy cappers, the flexible laws of “requels” and franchises, the perils of fan service—these concepts weren’t always flawlessly executed, but they were ostensibly interesting ideas nonetheless.

Scream 7, directed by Kevin Williamson (who wrote the first film), is technically the latest entrant in the franchise. It has actors who reprise familiar roles, characters who are versed in the series’ canon, and a masked killer who taunts people over the phone in the voice of Roger L. Jackson. Yet it has remarkably little to say—about cinema, about horror, about itself. It’s a Scream movie that’s barely even about Scream movies. Read More

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Wicked: For Good review: Make Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in Wicked: For Good

Did you know that the Yellow Brick Road was paved with slave labor? That Munchkins were subjected to a despotic travel ban? That Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum can’t really sing? These revelations and more emerge in Wicked: For Good, the droopy, flabby conclusion to last year’s spirited introduction. Less a coherent second act than an endless culmination, this tepid musical makes sure to answer all of your burning questions about the lore of Oz, like how the Tin Man lost his heart or whether Dorothy was in fact a total brat.

The executives at Universal are surely not regretting their decision to split Wicked, the Broadway hit from Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman (adapting Gregory Maguire’s novel), into two parts—not when the first raked in over $750M worldwide and the second is already smashing bespoke box-office records. But the motivation behind this maneuver was always commercial rather than artistic, and even as For Good profits financially, it suffers a painful storytelling cost. Read More

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Queer: Another Gay in Paradise

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in Queer

Luca Guadagnino makes movies about lust. William S. Burroughs wrote books about pain. The obvious overlap between those two emotions might suggest a fruitful creative partnership—a provocative picture that marries the writer’s jagged prose with the director’s sensual style. Alas, Queer, Guadagnino’s adaptation of Burroughs’ second novel, is both obtuse and banal, defying comprehension while also courting boredom. It may traffic in addiction, but it isn’t stimulating. It just plunges you into a stupor.

Which might be the whole idea. Being poorly read, I’m only familiar with Burroughs’ work via reputation rather than experience, but I know that he deployed an experimental style designed to mirror his own challenges with substance abuse. To the extent Queer is intended to evoke the perpetual desolation of the junkie, well, mission accomplished I guess? The movie dabbles in purported forms of intrigue—sex, violence, blackmail, journeys in the jungle—but it’s mostly just one long bummer, a sludgy morass of misery. Read More

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Moana 2: Consider the Coconut, Consider It’s Twee

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene of Moana and Maui in Moana 2

Bracing herself for yet another hazardous journey, Moana insists to a village elder that “It’s not like last time.” Isn’t it, though? In Moana 2, a princess abandons the security of her homeland and embarks on a high-seas escapade, where she teams up with a vainglorious demigod and battles an existential threat. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s basically the logline for Moana, Disney’s heartfelt and winning 2016 animated feature. Rather than messing with success, Moana 2 strives to recapture its predecessor’s magic by faithfully adhering to its venerable blueprint.

That it fails is no great shame or surprise; any topographic survey of the modern cinematic landscape will uncover countless inferior sequels. What’s strange about Moana 2 isn’t that it’s a lesser movie but that it’s a work of lesser ambition. Most sequels are doomed by the obligation to provide more, invariably diluting their ancestor’s charms in a frenzy of self-defeating one-upmanship. Moana 2, by contrast, doesn’t try to do much of anything bigger or different or even interesting. It just sets sail and allows itself to be borne on the waves of its forerunner. Read More

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Venom, the Last Dance: Love at First Parasite

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hardy in Venom: The Last Dance

Midway through Venom: The Last Dance, the titular symbiote—it’s no longer considered a parasite, given that it’s reached a state of internal harmony with its host, Eddie Brock—gets existential. “Sometimes, I wonder if we could have had a different kind of life,” the personified mass of black goo muses, its guttural growl sounding oddly muted, even gentle. Eddie and Venom are passengers in a van belonging to a dorky nuclear family, and the decidedly quaint behavior they witness—a symphony of dad jokes, stale snacks, and off-key sing-alongs—activates in them a wistful jealousy. If they weren’t always embroiled in superhero shenanigans, might they have a shot at actual happiness?

This is a nice little moment in a movie that is neither nice nor little. As audience members dutifully shuffling into the multiplex for our periodic dose of franchise medicine, we have been primed to anticipate a loud and hectic blockbuster, replete with noisy action and arcane comic-book references and garish special effects. For this reason, Venom’s gesture of self-reflection is purely hypothetical—a temporary respite before we return to the obligatory clashing and crashing. Yet I can’t help fixating on Venom’s fleeting rumination, because I confess to wondering the same thing. Instead of operating as a de rigueur superhero flick, might The Last Dance have subsisted as, well, something else? Maybe a wayward buddy comedy, or a heist thriller, or a road-trip jaunt? Read More

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