Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week saw me once again consumed by the seemingly impossible task of finding an affordable apartment, while generally attempting to come to peace with the vast, foreboding uncertainties that seem so unavoidable of late. Twitter being consumed by Musk, Crunchyroll being consumed by Sony, my house being consumed by fire; lately it’s seeming like everything I build is erected on a bedrock of sand, making it tough to feel like I’m actually moving forward. I suppose all I can really measure my time in is pride in the work I complete, and I’m certainly proud to still be maintaining my essay-per-week pledge in the midst of all this chaos. And in spite of still lacking stable lodging, my crew’s movie screenings have at last regained their prior regularity, offering a welcome jolt of stability in these difficult times. I’m hoping I’ll have positive housing news to report next week, but for now, let’s break down some fresh feature films!
With Tubi providing a near endless supply of low quality film features, my viewing party’s desire for bargain bin slasher features was next sated by Pledge Night, a largely nondescript C-movie possessing neither competent actors nor professional cinematography. The film nonetheless has two noteworthy features: its soundtrack, provided by thrash metal stalwarts Anthrax, and its preposterous script, which veers from a predictable revenge format into a supernatural slaughterfest about three quarters of the way through.
After seeding a deeply unwell fraternity brother as the killer for the majority of its runtime, that would-be killer has the actual killer pop out of him like some kind of chestburster phantasm, leading to a gooey and largely nonsensical final act. In spite of that playfully ludicrous twist, the film’s overall focus on pledge week torment makes it too mean-spirited to recommend as a piece of late-slasher fluff. I don’t know how you’d even come across this film without an equally thorough search of Tubi’s darker recesses, but you should still know it’s an easy skip.
Jumping from the depths of late first-wave slashers to the winking excesses of modern slasher-comedies, we then checked out Slotherhouse, a film about a sorority-slashing killer sloth. It’s no surprise that frats and sororities are such enduring slasher venues; they come ready-prepped with a bunch of young adults who don’t even necessarily like each other, and their central house venue offers both the labyrinthian corridors slashers crave and the budget-friendly excuse for a single location that warms producers’ hearts. Unfortunately, Slotherhouse is not exactly Black Christmas, or even Hell Night; it is a horror-comedy built on precisely two jokes, and seems to almost take pride in wearing out those jokes’ welcome.
It’s a common issue with horror-comedies that they spend basically all of their energy on the comedy, and neglect to even bother with any sort of genuine horror. It feels like such films are starting from a position of unconsidered contempt for horror staples; but not only is that contempt generally off-putting to audiences who actually like these genres, it also means such films fail to understand what makes their genres engaging in the first place, resulting in a frustratingly dry viewing experience. So it goes for Slotherhouse, which has precisely two ideas: “wouldn’t it be funny if a sloth were a slasher killer” and “kids and their social media these days, am I right?”
The film follows Emily (Lisa Ambalavanar), a would-be sorority queen who’s banking on her new sloth companion to secure the votes of her fellow sisters. Alongside brief, goofy sequences of our sloth Alpha stabbing or choking or otherwise ending the lives of sorority girls, Slotherhouse mostly concerns itself with the one-dimensional rivalries between its principle players, the tides of which are realized through regular check-ins on their instagram followings. There are scattered moments throughout where the absurdity of Alpha’s malevolent intelligence (he steals a car to drive to a hospital to take a selfie before killing one girl) or the director’s understanding of physical comedy (the film has one of the better “and then a car hits you” non-sequiturs I’ve witnessed) offers a satisfying payoff, but the film is neither creative nor genuinely frightening in any of its kills, leaving a hole that no amount of sarcastically intoned zoomer slang can fill. Great horror-comedies like Leslie Vernon or Cabin in the Woods come from a place of love and understanding; Slotherhouse comes from one “wouldn’t it be funny if” weed-dream conceit, and fails to meaningfully embellish on that conceit in any way.
We then checked out Singin’ in the Rain, which follows acclaimed silent film actor Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and his costar Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) through the tumultuous transition to talkies. A chance encounter between Lockwood and aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) causes him to doubt his talent, and when Lamont’s genuine lack of talent results in a disastrous first stab at a talking feature, Lockwood and Selden hatch a plan to save the picture and their careers.
Singin’ in the Rain is funny, sentimental, and lavishly furnished; basically all the things you’d expect from a mid-century musical, elevated through the clear chemistry shared by Kelly and Reynolds. Additionally, the film’s period setting offers a fascinating glimpse into one of the great transition moments in Hollywood history, with the cast’s entrenchment within that universe allowing for plenty of the fun “how the sausage is made” insights that make movies about the movies so fun. Frankly, I felt like the weakest element of this film was actually its songs – aside from the title track, the other tracks are largely defined by the actors’ physicality, rather than the actual melodies. Nonetheless, it’s always a pleasure seeing great actors celebrate the magic of the movies.
Last up for the week was High Life, a science fiction feature by Claire Denis starring Robert Pattinson as Monte, one of a group of prisoners who volunteer for a space mission intended to explore the consequences of life in the periphery of a black hole, and Juliette Binoche as Dr. Dibs, a ship doctor obsessed with exploring the relationship between space flight and fertility. Over the course of starkly intimate and often violent vignettes, we come to understand the slow dissolution of the crew’s theoretical mission, culminating in Monte alone with his infant daughter aboard a cold and vacant ship.
High Life’s nonlinear structure serves to emphasize its purpose: this is not a film about evolving relationships, coherent societal breakdown, or the course of Dr. Dibs’ alleged mission, but one both literally and metaphorically about bodies in space, isolated from any social order and forced to seek meaning while divorced from the past and robbed of the future. With no external goalposts to guide them save the inevitability of death, their thoughts become insular and concerns physical; some busy themselves with masturbation via the ship’s mysterious “Box,” while others interrogate the motives that led them to sell themselves to scientific inquiry.
Unconcerned with either dramatic structure or convenient thematic payoffs, Denis prioritizes visual moments and personal interactions with alternately transcendent and uncertain results. High Life contains many arresting images, and its evolving portrait of Pattinson’s character is conveyed subtlety yet with great richness and clarity. The significance of his companions is less certain; Binoche puts in a triumphantly wounded performance, but her character feels more like a device than a person, and relationships that feel like they’re leading to profound results often dwindle into shocking but trite acts of violence. Nonetheless, the film creates an atmosphere of human ambiguity rich enough to invite interpretation and revisiting, while its formal beauty ensures it at least looks as majestic as it hopes to feel. Secretive yet brimming with sharpness and wonder; not an easy watch, but an intensely interesting film.
