Horror

Presence: Phantom Dread

Jeremy BeckReviews
Callina Liang in Presence

As auteurs go, Steven Soderbergh is relatively humble. His closing credits never use the phrase “a film by,” and while he typically shoots and edits his movies himself—not since 2011’s Contagion has anyone else fulfilled either of those roles in one of his features—he also deploys pseudonyms (Peter Andrews for cinematography, Mary Ann Bernard for editing), as if to minimize the fastidious control he exerts over his own productions. That’s especially noteworthy in the case of Presence, given that its star is, well, Steven Soderbergh—or rather, his camera.

To be sure, there are actors in this movie, which centers on a white-collar nuclear family that’s just moved into an appealing new home in suburban New Jersey; Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan play the parents, respectively named Rebekah and Chris, while their disaffected teenage children are Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). But the heart of Presence is its titular entity, an invisible being that roams about the house in a state of persistent curiosity, and whose field of vision doubles as the audience’s point of view. Read More

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Nosferatu: What Dreams May Succumb

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lily Rose Depp in Nosferatu

Bathed in ghostly white moonlight, a man stands in the center of a black roadway lined with forest-green pines. In the distance, he spots the faint outline of a moving object, which he gradually perceives to be a horse-drawn carriage. As the animals gather velocity and momentum, he realizes that he’s about to be trampled. He shuts his eyes and braces for impact, only to realize that the vehicle has magically stopped and angled itself perpendicular to him, its door thrown open, beckoning him into the waiting darkness. And then the coachman calls out, “Did you order an Uber?”

I made that last part up. The vampire mythos, with its lustful symbolism and its gargled accents, is easily vulnerable to ridicule. And there are certainly times when Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’ sumptuous remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 touchstone, dances up to the cliff’s edge of parody. But what rescues it—what turns your stifled laughter into shrieks of horror and gapes of wonder—is that it approaches its material with absolute sincerity, and without a shred of irony or detachment. Eggers, undertaking the perilous task of updating a 102-year-old classic, has of course renovated the silent black-and-white original, imprinting it with intoxicating sound and color. Yet he has not sacrificed any of its elemental power, forgoing the temptation for winking archness and instead operating with brazen, old-fashioned conviction. Read More

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Y2K: Millennium Ugh

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, and Julian Dennison in Y2K

Being unpopular in high school can feel like the end of the world. Your parents are embarrassing. Your best friend is a loser. The cool kids either bully you or ignore you. The girl you have a crush on barely knows you exist. And sentient computers have hatched a conspiracy to enslave the human race.

That the last of these items feels concordant with its predecessors is the central joke of Y2K, Kyle Mooney’s occasionally inspired, ultimately tedious new horror comedy. For Eli (Jaeden Martell, one of those anodyne actors who seems destined to play teenagers into his 30s), every day feels like its own miniature apocalypse—a perpetual ritual of awkwardness and humiliation. That’s an exaggeration, of course; his parents (Alicia Silverstone and Tim Heidecker) are sweet and supportive (how mortifying!), and he has plenty of fun playing videogames and goofing around with his closest pal, Danny (a solid Julian Dennison). But Eli still feels anxious and unfulfilled, especially because Laura (Rachel Zegler), the hot brainiac whom he sweatily flirts with online, seems more interested in older, more muscular dudes. So when his humdrum Friday night turns into a chaotic free-for-all full of death and dismemberment, he’s more than ready to save the day and get the girl. Read More

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Heretic: Creeping the Faith

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hugh Grant in Heretic

The girls aren’t stupid. They know that something is off—that the house is too small, the man too odd, the light too dim. They don’t behave like stereotypical female victims in a horror movie, even as they gradually realize they’re very much starring in one.

Their names are Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), and they are Mormon missionaries crisscrossing their way through the mountain west. We first meet them sitting on a homey park bench, as Paxton is regaling Barnes with the story of how she first witnessed the existence of God in, of all things, a piece of amateur pornography. When Barnes doesn’t reciprocate with her own tale of almighty discovery, Paxton isn’t deterred. “But you know God is real,” she says sunnily, less of a leading question than a warm affirmation. That Barnes doesn’t reply speaks volumes about the temperamental differences between these two parishioners, as does the flicker of disquiet that flashes across Thatcher’s face. Read More

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Smile 2: Grin and Scare It

Jeremy BeckReviews
Naomi Scott in Smile 2

The law of the sequel demands more, and Smile 2 obeys with feverish verve. Louder screams, nastier villains, gnarlier arterial sprays, bigger rictus grins—Parker Finn’s maximalist follow-up to his 2022 horror hit exhibits no interest in half-measures. Its opening set piece concludes with a car crash, a mutilated body, and a trail of blood that stretches the length of the Hudson. From there, things only grow more extreme.

If this description makes Smile 2 sound like a creature of demented excess, well, yes and no. In one sense the movie is wild and manic, delivering countless freak-outs and supplying stomach-churning levels of gore. Yet it is also the product of careful and estimable craft, confirming Finn’s talent for fluid camerawork and creepy imagery. (The returning cinematographer is Charlie Sarroff.) That cold open may be a hectic and hyper-violent sequence of murder and mayhem, but it’s captured in a silky take that draws you in and heightens the desperation, infusing the chaos with clarity as well as intensity. Read More

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