Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m terrified to report that the Week in Review has grown into a wild and furious beast, and at this time I fear it’s too powerful to be contained. I mentioned last week how I’d watched too many dang movies, thus forcing me to shuffle some of my writeups over to this week – well, as it turned out, I kept watching movies this week, and now the situation’s even more out of control. I can’t just keep foisting extra reviews onto the next week’s article ad infinitum, so I’m declaring that the buck stops here, and I just keep writing until I’ve powered my way through every outstanding film. You with me? Let’s do this. It’s time for the Week in Review!
We’ll start off with this week’s addition to the found footage catalogue, the carefully constructed Savageland. Savageland is framed as a sort of true crime piece of investigative journalism, exploring the mysterious circumstances behind an Arizona border town whose population was erased in one night of violence. The sole survivor is an immigrant worker found later on a nearby highway, which ignites a firestorm of racist backlash – but as the film continues, it becomes clear that no single man could have caused this kind of devastation.
Savageland’s documentary conceit allows it to explore issues of race and class in a natural way, illustrating the lopsided realities of life on the border with frankness and enough spooky spice to keep its lessons energized. Rather than offering us scattered clips of mayhem from the night of the event, all of our first-hand evidence comes from a camera roll shot by the survivor, which allows the film to reveal one drip of horrifying revelation at a time, as the camera’s journey takes us through the survivor’s panicked flight. The film’s specific manner of beasties is also one of my favorites – dark and ancient creatures who roam the American southwest, picking off stragglers or towns too lost and lonely to defend themselves. My favorite example of this subgenre is probably “The Skins of the Fathers” by Clive Barker, but Savageland offers another fine take on the format, and though I wasn’t really scared by the film, I was thoroughly entertained.
For a film experience just a tad more scary, but significantly less accomplished, I also watched Willow Creek. It’s not hard to explain this one: Willow Creek is The Blair Witch Project, except instead of a witch, our foolishly intrepid main couple are out on the hunt for a sasquatch. The film includes the requisite amount of interviewing locals and tramping around in the woods, but its clear highlight is the couple’s first night in the woods, when a series of noises outside the tent escalate over twenty straight minutes of one held shot. That scene might be worth the price of entry alone if you’re looking for more found footage adventures, but otherwise, you can just imagine a less inspired but hairier Blair Witch, and you’ve basically got Willow Creek down.
Veering into film classics, I also watched Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, wherein he plays an old and bitter American cop who winds up in a ferocious rivalry with a young Mexican counterpart (played by a decidedly un-Mexican Charlton Heston), as they attempt to resolve a bombing that touches on both sides of their border town.
The film is famous for its opening tracking shot, which follows the bomb in question as it’s placed inside a car’s trunk, takes a winding, ten minute journey across the busy border passage, and ultimately explodes just past Heston and his wife. That scene alone could serve as a beautiful, perfectly paced thriller, as the audience waits for the inevitable punchline – but in the context of the overall film, that shot is just one in a dazzling array of visual setpieces, as Welles uses light, staging, and reflections to masterful effect, creating a claustrophobic noir landscape within his sprawling desert fields.
Even just the blocking of characters within the film’s investigation scenes betrays Welles’ stage theater roots, as well as his careful balance of visual objects within the frame. He consistently abuses a long depth of field in order to create multiple layers of conflict within his compositions: Welles sinking into himself at a bar seat as his conspirator cackles in the rear view, Janet Leigh sighing at the state of her motel room as a figure ominously approaches in the distance, etcetera. Welles is a man who clearly understands that his scenes are not settings, but canvases, and each new canvas is painted with delicate geometry and careful attention to lighting. Though the film’s ultimate scheme is a little too convoluted to feel diabolical, that itself feels appropriate for Welles’ decaying character, and the film on the whole is so visually generous that I had an extremely satisfying time.
Moving on to something much lighter, my house also hosted a late-night viewing of Clue, an adaptation that embraces the inherent silliness of adapting a board game to film, and revels in the chemistry of its stacked cast and whip-fast dialogue. The film is directed by Jonathan Lynn, who’d go on to direct the equally smart and funny My Cousin Vinny, and co-written by him and John Landis, whose directorial catalogue includes The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Three Amigos, and Coming to America.
So yes, this film’s key creators are extremely funny people, and given such actorly tools as peak Tim Curry playing The Butler and Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, they create a marvelous whirlwind of deadpan murders and nervous accusations, witty snipes bouncing back and forth in characteristically Vinny-like fashion. The cast lean into the absurdity with relish, and the script supports them with jokes clever and fast enough to test their rapid-fire comic energy. A perfect “let’s throw on something fun and breezy” sort of film, one that even invites the audience to make their own wild accusations.
Moving back to more recent films, I also checked out A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the debut feature of writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour. Though I found it on Shudder, the film is only tangentially a horror film – after all, it also has to make time for its western and romantic comedy influences, as it tells the story of a lonely vampire falling in love.
The film’s script is as stripped down as can be, leaving plenty of room for Amirpour’s vivid photography, be she cataloging the slow, regal turns of one of her dancing heroes, or the smoke rising off the town’s endless oil rigs. Using black and white photography and a diverse soundtrack, she creates an impressionistic wasteland populated by furtive lost souls, the film’s fantastical trappings coming through most clearly in its “Bad City” setting. And yet, in spite of many scenes often being set up seemingly just to facilitate some sensuous visual contrast, the romance between its lead pair is just so charmingly clumsy that I totally believed in it.
Sheila Vand’s performance as the titular girl is fantastic – she is utterly believable as a vampire who doesn’t really know how to be a vampire, with her attempts at intimidation coming off as awkward as often as they’re genuinely scary. The first meeting between her and future lover Arash is a particular highlight, as she keeps trying to scare him, but he’s just too hopped up on ecstasy to really understand what’s happening. The film might be a bit too slow for those seeking either genuine scares or plentiful narrative action, but as a visually arresting mood piece and awkwardly endearing romance, it’s an unqualified success.
And at last returning to anime, I also watched through Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1995 anthology, Memories. The anthology’s component parts are all very different films, but the first, Magnetic Rose, is the one that tends to receive the most acclaim. Having watched it, I can see why – with a script by Satoshi Kon, music by Yoko Kanno, and gorgeous animation throughout, it’s probably one of the best anime films period, and easily one of the most effective works of horror in animation.
Kon’s script serves as a preview for later films like Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, casting a skeptical eye on the mystique of stardom as a salvage crew investigates a mysterious ghost ship. Blending Victorian grandeur and gritty, Alien-reminiscent squalor to masterful effect, the film is as tightly scripted as it is beautifully realized, smartly employing its spectral intruders to explore the frustrating nature of grief, and delighting throughout with stunning backgrounds and carefully constructed layouts. Magnetic Rose is an anime film that requires no context or apology – it’s simply a great work of scifi fiction, demonstrating precisely what this medium can achieve when great artists get the opportunity to work on a story that’s actually worthy of their efforts.
Next up was Stink Bomb, whose title, combined with my understanding that it was a comedy, had me fearing we’d be veering back into anime’s usual oeuvre of fart jokes and slapstick. Fortunately, Stink Bomb is actually a very different kind of comedy – a lightly executed yet fundamentally cynical interrogation of Japan’s martial identity, exploring the same anxieties regarding the bomb and America’s stewardship that crop up in stories ranging from Patlabor to Terror in Resonance. Stink Bomb’s satire is blunt and effective, but its greatest accomplishment is its absurd buffet of mechanical and effects animation, as well as its gorgeous background art. Energetic, angry, and consistently beautiful, it’s a rewarding watch on the whole, though it can’t match the splendor of Magnetic Rose.
Finally, Memories’ third segment is… actually still waiting to be watched. Look, these are meaty short films, I’ve been taking my time with them! To be entirely honest, the real reason I haven’t gotten to it yet is that Slay the Spire has now consumed all my leisure hours, but breaking down that whole deal will have to wait until next week. Until then, I wish you all great fortune in your media adventures!