Thriller

Drop, Warfare, and Putting Viewers in the Shit

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Meghann Fahy in Drop

Roger Ebert famously said that the movies are a machine that generates empathy, but that same machine can also manufacture terror. Cinema is an art of forced perspective—we adopt the point of view of a film’s main characters, figuratively if rarely literally—and directors often use the medium to churn our stomachs, to make us experience anxiety and fear. Two of last weekend’s new releases, while occupying different genres and deploying different styles, share the goal of distressing their audience by thrusting you inside their heroes’ nerve-racking headspace. They may ask you to empathize, but they really want you to sweat and shudder.

Of the two, Drop is both the more conventional and the more outrageous. Directed by Christopher Landon from a script by Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach, it belongs to an emerging breed of subgenre: the technophobic thriller. Cells phones were supposed to ruin horror movies—why would the final girl cower in fright when she could just call 911?—but filmmakers have adapted, turning tools of salvation into instruments of torment. We spend an increasing percentage of our time interacting with screens; turns out, in addition to distracting us with cute memes, those displays can besiege us with images of our worst nightmares. Read More

Read more

Black Bag: Sex, Spies, and Videotape

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett in Black Bag

Multiple dinner parties take place in Black Bag, and you, perceptive viewer and honored guest, are expected to bring a number of things to the soiree. Don’t worry about the wine or the hors d’oeuvres; your host, director Steven Soderbergh, has all manner of luxury covered. Your job is to arm yourself with more sensory gifts: a sharp set of eyes, the better to peer through the low digital lighting; an engaged and discerning mind, crucial to navigating David Koepp’s labyrinthine script; and a healthy appreciation of classical glamour, incarnated here by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender.

That last ask is hardly a tall order. Blanchett and Fassbender are capable of getting dirty—she melted down memorably in Tár, he went feral in 12 Years a Slave—but they’re best associated as ambassadors of crisp, patrician elegance. Here they play Kathryn St. Jean and George Woodhouse, and if those names don’t tip you off as to their nationalities, their accents and wardrobe surely will. One of the first times we see George, he’s prepping a roast, decked out in a striped apron, his features accentuated by a neat haircut and severe black spectacles; after a dollop of sauce stains his shirt cuff, he insists on changing before the company arrives. Quite a few crimes are committed in Black Bag—theft, murder, unauthorized government surveillance, bleeding on a new rug—but the one offense that unifies the characters is that of aggravated Britishness. Read More

Read more

Companion: Beauty Is in the AI of the Beholder

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher in Companion

She’s the perfect girlfriend. She’s smart but not intimidating. She’s pretty but doesn’t draw too much attention to herself. She’s a good listener but doesn’t dominate the conversation. She’s good in bed but doesn’t demand her own gratification. She’s everything a man could want, and nothing he can’t handle.

The chief satirical insight of Companion, the slick and engaging new thriller from Drew Hancock, is that the preceding paragraph’s negative phrases—emphasizing a woman’s passivity, her lack of desire or independence—function as positive attributes. For the men in this movie, the platonic ideal of romantic partnership isn’t equality but compliance. They aren’t interested in being challenged or enriched; they just want to be admired and obeyed. Read More

Read more

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

Read more

Babygirl: Breaking the Crass Ceiling

Jeremy BeckReviews
Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman in Babygirl

Screw delayed gratification: Babygirl opens with the sound of a woman moaning in apparent pleasure before its vanity card even appears. (I get it, I like A24 movies too.) Then its first frame shows her enthusiastically riding her husband before they collapse onto the sheets and embrace, whispering sweet nothings, having been mutually satisfied… or at least that’s what he thinks. As her partner falls asleep, the woman discreetly slinks into the adjoining room, fires up her laptop, and masturbates to pornography, muffling her own gasps to avoid waking anyone. The implication is obvious: Whatever she’s getting in bed ain’t cutting it. She needs more.

That sense of need—of pure, bottomless craving—is what animates Babygirl, Halina Reijn’s strange, messy, intriguing new psychodrama. It’s a movie about the paralyzing quality of desire—how coveting something forbidden can upend even the most carefully cultivated lives. The body may want what it wants, but the brain knows that our wants can get us into trouble. Read More

Read more