Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve got an unusually timely selection of films for you all, having checked out some of the latest streaming releases alongside the usual grab bag of older films. I’ve also been slowly preparing myself to actually watch some currently-airing anime next season; stepping back from the grind has been lovely, but I imagine that Mob Psycho and Chainsaw Man will be appointment viewing, with Do It Yourself also looking to be a potentially impressive production. I’m not super excited by the Jujutsu Kaisen-style visual sheen of Chainsaw Man’s trailers, but even a Chainsaw Man that’s been homogenized into anime’s current “action prestige aesthetic” should still be a fun time. In the meanwhile, my housemate’s been powering through Naruto at a truly alarming pace, which hasn’t exactly been the revelatory experience of One Piece, but has at least introduced me to terrific highlights like the 3rd Hokage’s big fight, or Sakura’s faceoff with the Akatsuki. It’s feeling easier all the time to appreciate the distinctive strengths of specific animators, which is in turn helping me embrace a more holistic approach to anime analysis. But let’s set aside the sakuga grind for a moment, and explore a fresh selection of films. It’s time for the goddamn Week in Review!
Our first screening of the week was Men, the latest film by writer/director Alex Garland, who’d previously directed Ex Machina and Annihilation. Like both of those films, Men is creepy, suffocating, and suffused with wild thematic ambition. The film stars Jessie Buckley (the dynamite star of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, here demonstrating that she actually faked that film’s pitch-perfect American accent), who decides to take a vacation in the countryside after the death of her husband. There she is threatened by a string of inexplicable assailants, while receiving no help from the village’s bizarrely similar-looking men.
The first half of Men is pretty close to perfect, using the alternately enchanting and ominous backdrop of the countryside to present an increasingly urgent portrait of gendered violence. Buckley and Garland work in perfect synergy, the rise and fall of Buckley’s emotions echoed by Garland’s photography and excellent sound design. Given the often clinical tone of Garland’s previous films, I’d wondered if the fantastical realm of folk horror would really work for him; as it turns out, Garland seems just as home rustling through the backwoods and finding inexplicable horrors as he does detailing the far terrors of science fiction.
The “monster” of Men is more of a collective entity than a single creature, represented through the greater and smaller acts of misogyny that permeate society. Even the most sympathetic of Buckley’s male acquaintances frame her as helpless and prone to flights of hysteria, while others range from directly insulting to implying she’s responsible for the death of her husband. The film’s most striking touch is the casting of Rory Kinnear, a man whose face is attached to every man she meets in the village. His inescapable presence represents a clear and gripping threat: the collective disregard for female agency shared by all of this culture’s participants, gaslighting Buckley into truly believing her abusive, manipulative husband was anything but the cause of his own demise.
The film’s ultimate explosion into body horror and folk ritual isn’t nearly as effective as its first half, though certainly arresting in its own way. Garland just can’t quite stick the landing on this one, with the film’s social commentary and fantastical devices never quite congealing in the manner of Ex Machina or Annihilation’s conclusions. It’s his messiest film, undoubtedly, but also fascinating and full of wonders, the work of a highly talented director who refuses to contain his ambitions. Issues aside, I was riveted by the film, and can’t wait to see what he creates next – even in his stumbles, Garland is more interesting than almost any director working today.
Next up was Black Water, an Australian film about three travelers who run afoul of a remarkably persistent crocodile while exploring some mangrove swamps. The film’s setting is essentially its entire reason for existence: the mangrove swamps encompass endless spindly trees half-submerged in the titular waters, offering an irregular net of safety stretched too thinly over the crocodile’s domain. The dynamic of the mangrove waters sets Black Water somewhere between creature feature and wilderness survival, with time and thirst presenting as much of a threat as those big crocodile jaws.
Black Water exploits its dramatic variables with care and success, presenting a natural series of escalating challenges as our heroes seek an escape route. The crocodile is also used well, with his rare appearances in the first half making the swamp seem all the more ominous. Minimalist creature features like this are all about tightening the stakes and clarifying the battlefield – with proper setup, thirty feet of open water can be transformed into an impossible span of distance. Black Water nails its setup, pays off generously with its follow through, and on the whole stands as a high quality creature feature.
We then checked out the newly released Predator sequel Prey. Technically a prequel, I suppose, as this one takes place in 1719, but the Predator franchise has never been particularly big on continuity. The mechanics of any given Predator film are simple: a heavily equipped big game hunter from space arrives on earth, obliterates the strongest enemies he can find, and is ultimately overcome by an opponent who outwits and surpasses the predator’s inherent advantages. A predator film’s strength comes from how it embellishes and executes those fundamentals, and Prey does both very, very well.
The film centers on Naru, a young Comanche woman who is being trained as a healer, but dreams of being a warrior like her brother Taabe. Prey’s first and greatest strength is that Naru and her world are not an afterthought. Naru is a compelling and multifaceted lead, her relationship with her brother is nuanced and engaging, and the overall atmosphere of her world is illustrated with great attention to detail. Prey is compelling enough as an action-tinged coming of age story that the introduction of the predator almost comes as a welcome surprise, rather than a turn we’ve been impatiently awaiting.
And when the predator does arrive, Prey certainly doesn’t skimp on reveling in its horrible power. The fact that Naru and her compatriots are trained hunters in their own forest actually makes them better-equipped for this sort of battle than Arnie and his squad, complementing the film’s carnage with significantly more flourishes of strategizing and combat choreography. And if you’re looking for more traditional “the predator ruins absolutely everyone” moments, a party of French trappers with some seriously under-tuned self-preservation instincts are happy to provide. Pair all that with the films’ excellent cinematography, and you end up with what is easily the best Predator film since the original, and a must-watch for any sci-fi action fans.
Continuing with the recent features, we then viewed the just-released Netflix film Day Shift, starring Jamie Foxx as a down-on-his-luck vampire hunter who gets partnered with a pencil-pushing Dave Franco. Day Shift’s script is a familiar kind of lousy, evoking the teeth-grinding machismo of something like a Michael Bay film. Fortunately, first-time director and long-time stunt coordinator J.J. Perry brings all the weight of his expertise to the film’s plentiful action scenes, offering a generous array of brawls, chases, and shootouts from start to finish.
While Foxx and Franco are somewhat limited by the film’s tired buddy cop narrative, the film’s secondary cast all get to be delightfully exaggerated versions of themselves. Snoop Dogg is having altogether too much fun as a legendary vampire slayer, Peter Stormare is perfectly cast as a back-alley fang dealer, and Scott Adkins is afforded precisely one standout sequence of daring flips and explosive kicks. Adkins has been knocking out one incredible action film after another over the past few years (The Debt Collector, Triple Threat, Avengement), and is well overdue for a breakthrough at this point. If this and his role in the next John Wick can propel him beyond the direct-to-video market, it’ll be more than deserved.
Along with all the films, I’ve also snuck in another anime viewing over the past few months, steadily plugging away at Record of Lodoss War. Lodoss was one of those franchises that seemed venerable and ancient when I first started watching anime, with the enduring appeal of the show’s character designs giving it an air of anime canonicity. Having watched the franchise’s most esteemed segment, its thirteen episode OVA, I have realized the reason for its enduring reputation is actually quite different: Deedlit is really, really cute.
Yes, Deedlit is indeed cute, and her design embodies both the aesthetics of an era and also anime’s general take on Tolkien-style high fantasy. Lodoss War’s larger visual design is also excellent, with the series boasting impressively detailed characters, copious spindly linework, and plenty of evocative backgrounds. The production’s complexity of designs essentially necessitates a relative stillness of animation, but I didn’t really mind that; more disappointing was the fact that the OVA’s story just isn’t any good.
The series starts off well enough, following human warrior Parn, elf mage Deedlit, and their generally balanced cadre of allies as they investigate dungeons and square off with dragons. Unfortunately, after just a few episodes, the story veers into a continent-threatening war arc that abandons everything that’s fun about D&D storytelling, in favor of an utterly generic “dark forces are being resurrected” conflict. Lodoss War’s story feels more like a template than an actual narrative, lacking the specificity of drama or strength of character writing to provoke a sense of investment in its ongoing story. The show’s an interesting aesthetic object, but that’s about it; I’m glad to have more context on one of anime’s most enduring heroines, but I sure wish her story was a little more compelling.
