Thriller Archives - Page 12 of 27

Old: Time Isn’t On Their Lakeside

July 30, 2021July 30, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

The great twist of M. Night Shyamalan’s career is that his movies aren’t really about twists. Sure, a number of his films indulge in third-act rug-pulls that invariably induce gasps, hoots, or groans. But the thing about endings is that, while they tend to stick in our brains, they rarely make or break a picture. The Sixth Sense features one of the most memorable reveals of all time, but it wouldn’t be nearly as meaningful (or as memorable, for that matter) if it weren’t preceded by a delicate story that unfolds with such elegance and detail. And even if you scoffed at the conclusion of The Village, your momentary derision shouldn’t invalidate its haunting, excruciatingly suspenseful depiction of a frightened young woman attempting to navigate the world. So when I tell you that the ending of Old, Shyamalan’s latest feature-length puzzle box, doesn’t really matter, I’m not implying that it doesn’t carry any element of surprise; I’m simply expressing a judgment that this movie’s soft, not-entirely-unpredictable destination is less important than its silky, enveloping journey.

I’d still encourage you to go into Old as cold as possible, not only as a matter of principle but also because its very premise essentially constitutes a spoiler. Even here, though, foreknowledge can’t tarnish the pleasure in how Shyamalan gradually unveils his brain-teasing conceit. To wit: Roughly half an hour into the film, two vacationing children—six-year-old Trent (Nolan River) and 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton)—find themselves conversing pleasantly with fellow travelers, a married couple named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Jarin (Ken Leung). The camera, operated by the invaluable Mike Gioulakis, is fixed solely on the adults, with the kids sitting behind the frame. The mood is cheerful, but as Jarin plays the friendly game of guessing the youths’ ages (“I’m pretty good at this”), an invisible tension begins to grip the screen, an unspoken frisson of strangeness. Jarin turns his eyes to Maddox, still off screen, and appraises her figure: “I’d say you’re about 15,” he estimates, as Trevor Gureckis’ score starts to quietly throb. We hear giggles from the still-unseen youngsters, who promptly inform Jarin that they are, in fact, 6 and 11. As Jarin’s expression slips from amusement to bafflement, the camera finally (finally!) rotates back toward Maddox and Trent, and we see that they’re now a good five years older than they’d been a few minutes ago, and are being played by entirely different actors. Read More

Zola: All That Twitters, Newly Told

July 9, 2021July 9, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Almost Famous may have immortalized the trope of passengers giddily belting out a classic pop song, but Zola, the indecently entertaining new film from Janicza Bravo, revives the conceit and reinvests it with a distinctly modern sensibility. In an early scene that finds four strivers cruising south from Detroit to Tampa, a young man cues up Migos’ “Hannah Montana” and starts enthusiastically bobbing along to the beat. At first he seems foolish (in no small part because he’s played by Nicholas Braun, aka Cousin Greg from Succession), but before long his gusto infects his fellow travelers, who join him in a rambunctious display of lip-synching and tongue-wagging. The mood is jubilant but also performative, the gesticulators constantly posing for pics and racking up the likes on Instagram. It’s a celebration that’s simultaneously authentic and synthetic.

This preoccupation with digital gratification—a mingling of heedless joy and self-conscious artistry—doesn’t belong exclusively to the characters; it’s embedded in the movie’s very DNA. Zola was born from Twitter, specifically a viral 148-tweet thread from A’Ziah “Zola” King, who in October 2015 tapped out on her phone an emoji-laced saga of vice, mayhem, and betrayal. (The reporter David Kushner quickly turned it into an article for Rolling Stone.) A sprawling collection of 140-character missives may seem like bare bones for a feature film, but one of the lessons of the technological age is that art can come from anywhere. And Zola, as brought to the screen by Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris, is a proudly contemporary picture that also draws from classic cinematic influences. As the saying goes, all you need to make a movie is a girl, a gun, and a smartphone to orchestrate your illicit prostitution scheme. Read More

A Quiet Place Part II: Hush Growing Children, Don’t Lose Your Nerve

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

The traffic light works. That’s how we know, even before the appearance of a freighted title card (“Day 1”), that the opening scene takes place during the era has become colloquially known, during our collective struggle with COVID-19, as the Before Times. (Remember, even movies that were made before the pandemic are totally still about the pandemic.) So even though the small town’s main square seems oddly deserted, the signal’s automatic flickering from green to yellow to red instantly communicates an attitude of relative safety. Yet at the same time, the introduction’s formal composition—the smoothness of the camera, the emptiness of the streets, the chaotic footage glimpsed on a news broadcast—articulates an undeniable sense of Damoclean danger. The apocalypse may not have arrived yet, but it’s surely on the way.

This expertly staged opening sequence, which builds from needling anxiety to clammy tension before erupting into all-out mayhem, confirms John Krasinski’s considerable skill as a director. He’s only made a handful of features, but here he again evinces a talent for conveying information and atmosphere through canny visual details. When he supplies a simple shot of a timid boy wincing in panic as a fastball buzzes past him during a Little League game, he isn’t watching a sport; he’s defining a character. Read More

Wrath of Man: No Wisecracks, Just Cracked Skulls

May 14, 2021May 14, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham: match made in tough-guy heaven, or secretly awkward fit? Historically, it’s hard to argue with the results; Statham received his first two roles in Ritchie’s first two films—the frenetic crime caper Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and the even more frenzied crime caper Snatch—which launched the bald Brit to stardom while also granting their director a measure of name recognition. But while both artists have since enjoyed successful careers (Statham more so than Ritchie), they thrive in different modes. Statham is a natural glowerer; his strength as an action hero stems less from his athleticism than his single-minded tenacity. But Ritchie, for all his pretensions of alpha-male seriousness, works best when deploying a light touch; The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was charming precisely because it felt frivolous rather than strenuous. If their pairing isn’t oil and water, it’s something like fists and finesse.

Wrath of Man is Ritchie and Statham’s first movie together following a 14-year separation (their third collaboration was 2007’s ill-regarded Revolver), and it takes all of 20 seconds before it declares its governing tone. As Christopher Benstead’s doomy score thunders with Zimmer-like braaams, the camera slowly pushes in on a smoggy Los Angeles, eventually locating an armored car snaking its way out of a gated facility. Within moments, the boxy car is being held up, though we never see the perpetrators; instead, the camera remains inside the vehicle, watching sparks fly as a sinister device carves its way through the side door’s thick steel. You don’t see much of what happens next, but you hear all of it—the blasts of explosives, the screams of the guards, the rip-rip-rip of gunfire—and the intensity is palpable. Most of Ritchie’s films, even the ones that traffic in extreme violence and moral depravity, are coated with a sheen of playfulness. This one wants to hurt you. Read More

Stowaway: Unauthorized Admission to Mars

April 30, 2021April 13, 2022 Jeremy BeckReviews

The minimalist space movie seems like a contradiction, but it’s actually an elegant solution to a familiar problem. The cosmos is so incomprehensibly vast, it’s impossible for cinema to convey its full breadth on screen; that’s doubly true for films released by Netflix, where said screen is attached to a television rather than a multiplex auditorium. And so Stowaway, the streaming giant’s new sci-fi feature, conceives of interstellar travel not as the launching pad for an epic adventure, but as the vehicle for a taut and constrained thriller. It’s a horror movie without a boogeyman; the inky enormity of outer space is plenty scary enough.

This particular vintage of stargazing picture has experienced a relative boom of late; recent examples include Geore Clooney’s The Midnight Sky, Claire Denis’ High Life, and Morten Tyldum’s unduly maligned Passengers. In terms of scale, Stowaway is smaller than all of those; it only features four characters, and its unnamed vessel is unremarkable, except maybe for being so cramped (the better to underline the setting’s claustrophobia). And while its final act includes its share of perilous derring-do in zero gravity, its main preoccupations are moral and philosophical rather than dynamic or kinetic. Read More