Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m doing my best to beat this grotesque summer humidity, while also recovering from the fatigue of running my first D&D session in a month. Scheduling hiccups resulted in an unfortunately extended gap between sessions, which then led directly into me running the party through the action-packed finale of my campaign’s second act. This oversized return to form had me so tired that when I collapsed into bed, I experienced a succession of two dreams that were each also focused on me collapsing into bed, something I didn’t think was actually possible. How can you have a dream about being asleep? Well, regardless of the specifics, my decaying frame was fortunately still able to conjure some reflections on the week’s film adventures. Let’s break down a fresh collection of features in the Week in Review!
Encouraged by the generous excess of its predecessor, we first screened Extraction 2, which tasked Chris Hemsworth with extracting a whole new family’s worth of innocents from a separatist-run Georgian prison. Faced with the problem of following up a movie designed to offer at least one action setpiece every forty-five seconds, director Sam Hargrave made the obvious choice of going bigger in basically every direction.
The first film featured a totally hostile city? Well, this one is set in a hostile nation, with a private army nipping at Hemsworth’s heels. The first film had a car chase? This one has a train being chased by an attack helicopter, resulting (of course) in Hemsworth himself squaring off with it The Rock-style, minigun in hand. The first film had a nine minute continuous shot? Well, this film’s prison break sequence runs for twenty-one minutes without clearly cutting, making use of a few cheats to fudge it, but nonetheless offering a preposterously well-choreographed ballet of simultaneous action. The centerpiece of that cut is a prison yard brawl that calls to mind the chaotic intensity of The Raid 2’s similar prison fight, and if your action film is earning comparisons to The Raid, you know you’re in a good spot.
So yeah, Extraction 2. Bigger, bolder, and more explodey, while also delving into Hemsworth’s character in a more meaningful capacity than the first. With the franchise clearly consolidating its secondary characters into a stable Hemsworth Crew, it’s more than apparent they’re hoping to establish a Wickian dynasty – and as long as the action stays this good, I’m absolutely there for it.
I then checked out Alice, Sweet Alice, one of the few proto-slashers left on my checklist. Centered on a troubled young girl who is suspected of stabbing her own sister, the film offers a mix of psychological and procedural drama, all of it layered in a thick film of resentment and grime. As Alice, Paula Sheppard is able to switch between Babadook-tier tantrums and cold, simmering hatred with ease, while the world around her seems perpetually collapsing, her single mother unable to handle the strain, only the certainty of punishment (whether at Christ’s hands or the state) offering stability in her world.
It’s a doozy, is what I’m saying. Between Alice’s own behavior and the seedy characters who populate the fringes of her world, there’s never a sense of safety here; we feel much like Alice’s mother, unmoored first by divorce and then by death, uncertain of who we can really trust. Given the film’s thematic drive for a lost nuclear-family certainty and its killer’s employment of a bright yellow raincoat, it’s clear Alice is drawing deliberately and effectively on Don’t Look Now, evoking a similar haze of grief and ambiguity in its characters’ panic to ground themselves, to rebuild a family out of lost hopes. It is obvious from the start that no such salvation is awaiting them; the film’s inescapable Catholic iconography offers only judgment, statues and rituals condemning Alice even before the first blow is struck. An effectively uncomfortable psychological horror film, cribbing smartly from its predecessors to offer a unique take on family breakdown and religious mania.
We followed that up with a gleefully sleazy production, the ‘89 slasher Intruder. Intruder’s claims to fame are slight yet several in number: its unique supermarket setting, its association with the broader Raimi clan (Sam, Ted, and Bruce Campbell all make appearances), and its reputation for uniquely brutal kill sequences. All of these assets were indeed verified by our viewing, but the film is frankly amateurish in both its photography and performances, meaning I’d only recommend it to true slasher die-hards. If that describes you, congratulations: I am sure you will love the inventively horrible things this film accomplishes with a metal press and electric carving knife.
Last up this week was Princess Arete, an ‘01 anime film written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi. The film’s titular princess is a curious and inquisitive young woman who yearns to find her own unique place in the world, but who is forced to wait in a high tower in order to remain pure and removed from the world, awaiting the suitor who will be her prince. Eventually, Arete’s refusal to accept this fate results in her being claimed by a secretive wizard, who uses his magic to reshape her form and identity into a perfect, quiet, perpetually accommodating princess. Trapped in this wizard’s dungeon, the now-subservient Arete waits for her prince to come, while her true personality struggles to be reborn.
Princess Arete is a rich and unique production, offering me several avenues of approach. Firstly, I should probably describe this film’s novel and enchanting tone, its unique approach to fantastical storytelling and worldbuilding. Rather than delighting in great marvels of magical engineering or exciting action-packed quests, the film’s fascinations match that of its heroine: the mundane yet consistently unique challenges of everyday life, the complexity of our emotional lives, and the true “magic” that is diligently studying and practicing a craft, such that you are able to understand and shape the world by your own hands.
With its heroine spending a great portion of this film locked in a tower, Arete also possesses a far more melancholy tone and measured pacing than most fantasy narratives. It frequently calls to mind the morose castle-bound sequence from the excellent Last Unicorn, wherein our heroine has nothing to do but lament her confinement, while cold gray stones look out over a land that has altogether lost its magical luster. Watching this girl once defined by her inquisitive spirit reduced to waiting for a fairy tale’s fruition is heartbreaking, all the more for how she either stoically or obliviously accepts her fate.
The film is obviously a parable about feminine potential in a male-oriented world, but it goes beyond the obvious (if true and well-worth stating) points regarding how bright lights are frequently snuffed out by such injustice, and into a realm of novel meditation on what fantasies are truly for. Though Arete’s jailor mocks her for seeking a prince that will never come, he is no different; as a would-be wizard abandoned by his people, he too waits for the return of his destined companions, for the storybook ending that will make sense of his life. In contrast, Arete observes, considers, and executes – even within the brief time frame of this film, she proves herself a superior “wizard” to her captor, simply because she is curious and willing to learn.
Through this alliance of goals and contrast of methods, Princess Arete offers an ambiguous reflection on how fairy tales often aren’t inspiring – how they can also lull us into inaction, and assure us we were never meant to take control of our own lives. The same types of stories that position Arete as a perpetual object in other people’s adventures also condition this wizard into complacency, causing him to turn away from the mundane yet actionable concerns of his own life in favor of whimsical, paradoxically limiting fantasies. While the dulled, complacent Arete dreams of princes and dragons, it is only when she tells a story that she can relate to, a story of ordinary circumstances and emotions, that she regains her true personality. And when offered the chance to seek a golden eagle on a mountain’s peak, she insteads turns to the barren floodplains she’s come to know, seeing more worth seeking in the struggles of ordinary people than the fanciful dreams of quest-bound knights.
The film is so thematically rich that I’m still unpacking how its various layers intersect, and so endearing that I already want to return to its uniquely grounded, melancholy world. Every one of its characters glimmers with their own unique fragments of humanity, each clinging a unique hope to their chest; and through this generosity of writing, Arete’s own respect for the sanctity of ordinary lives is proven the highest of virtues, matched only by her humility in braving new realms of understanding. An altogether wonderful, highly recommended film.
