Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s the beginning of a brand spanking new year, and though all signs point to a renewed slate of horrors bearing down on us, I’m determined to at least start the year with as much confidence and enthusiasm as possible. I mean, we’ve got… what, that Elden Ring multiplayer spinoff coming at some point, right? And I think Hades 2 will be coming out of early access? Plus One Piece will be coming off hiatus in a few months, and I imagine Toei will be pulling out all the stops for Egghead’s finale. Alright, so we’ve got some stuff to look forward to, that’s definitely a start. I’ll keep brainstorming new reasons for the season, and in the meantime, let’s ring in the new year with a fresh collection of films. On with the Week in Review!

First up this week was Traffic, Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling exploration of the drug trade and utterly ineffective War on Drugs. Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, and Don Cheadle lead a massive ensemble cast portraying three different storylines, as we watch the United States’ new drug czar (Douglas) struggle with his work and addict daughter, a Mexican police officer (Del Toro) find himself integrated into cartel-directed quasi-enforcement efforts, and a DEA officer (Cheadle) attempt to corner a Los Angeles kingpin. All three storylines wind their way to painful and ambiguous conclusions, demonstrating the intractable complexity and inevitability of drug trafficking.

By applying a distinct color grade to each of the three storylines, Soderbergh is able to maintain clarity of form while flipping between dozens of characters, a crucial trick in a film that’s ultimately as much a human story as a treatise on political failure. Soderbergh further amplifies the sense of intimacy through his reliance on hand cameras and generally naturalistic, unobtrusive camera work; this isn’t a work of theater, this is an episode of Cops, and we’re just riding along. Between these choices and the clarity of the script, Traffic is able to massively shorten the distance between drama and audience, making us feel as vulnerable and exposed as its many desperate stars.

The tale Soderbergh weaves is at this point a familiar one, though it stands as perhaps the definitive breakdown of the wrongheaded, ill-fated War on Drugs. As we see from practically every angle, a no tolerance policy towards drug enforcement will only lead to more violence and more people slipping through the cracks, as those who genuinely believe in the project swing hammers at shadows, and those who understand the true face of the problem make their own personal peace with failure. Strong performances across the board bring the moral and personal contradictions of drug enforcement to life, as characters are time and again asked to choose between policy and family, justice and country, honor and survival. A sobering testament to our government’s capacity for belligerent, pointless violence, released just in time to presage our next ephemeral, unwinnable Forever War.

Next up was The Outwaters, a recent found footage production written, directed, produced, edited by, and starring Robbie Banfitch, alongside a handful of presumed friends and his actual mother playing his character’s mother. Made for only fifteen thousand dollars, the film demonstrates just how far you can stretch a budget, particularly when you’re working in a genre as accommodating as found footage.

Banfitch and his companions play a quartet of youngsters filming a music video in the Mojave Desert, where they are beset by strange booming noises, flashing lights in the distance, and ultimately a hallucinatory attack by beings beyond our comprehension. Robbie is flung through glimmering portals and submerged in amniotic fluid, attacked by a blood-drenched stranger that might actually be himself, and subjected to all manner of reality-warping nightmares, as the film seeks to imply an experience that neither sounds nor visuals could fully express.

It mostly works, all told. The extended first act does a fine job of establishing our crew of victims, and the Mojave is a perfect venue for a story of otherworldly disorientation, a brutal backdrop offering little relief even when Robbie isn’t being assaulted by distant lights and noises. It’s clear that the never-quite-discernable nature of the actual threat was a product of budgetary limitations, but it also simply works; our vague and alarming collection of clues offers a reasonable portrait of cosmic horror, successfully implying a force so overwhelming and indifferent to humanity that Robbie can do nothing but be churned and shattered in its wake. If you’re looking for a more fully realized rendition of this conceit, try The Endless, but The Outwaters is still a fine enough watch.

We then checked out the recent Godzilla Minus One, set in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Would-be kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) returns home in the wake of fleeing his suicidal appointment, where he builds a family in the ashes of Tokyo alongside Noriko (Minami Hanabe) and their adopted daughter Akiko. Still plagued with guilt, he takes a job as a minesweeper clearing the waters surrounding Japan, only to be conscripted into an unusual new defense project when Godzilla comes to play.

I had a perfectly fine time with Godzilla Minus One, though I have to admit the Shin Godzilla-reminiscent praise likely had my expectations set out of whack. Shin Godzilla is close to a masterpiece, but Godzilla Minus One is simply a fine monster movie, featuring well-integrated effects work that called to mind Neill Blomkamp’s grounded approach to science fiction. Koichi’s story of coming to forgive himself and live for the future is somewhat clumsily integrated, which speaks to a general bluntness of form – the characters here are all archetypes, and there are none of the incidental, character-building conversations you’d need to turn them into textured, multifaceted people. But even with such strictly functional dialogue, the contours of life in post-war Japan are realized through lush CG and set design, and the actual confrontations with Godzilla are all winners. An easy film to recommend to any monster or disaster movie fan.

Last up for this week was The Bay, a mockumentary horror film about a small Maryland town that becomes afflicted by some kind of contamination in the local water, resulting in countless deaths across the course of their July 4th celebrations. The film is constructed as essentially a collage of all the different video footage that was shot over the day, with a young reporter who was on the scene serving as our guide. Across the course of family videos, footage shot by oceanographers, and skype conversations with CDC specialists, a harrowing portrait emerges of a contagion beyond reckoning, spread by just the kind of environmental malpractice basically every major food supplier engages in.

The Bay’s condemnation of environmental runoff is well-aimed and incendiary; in fact, the director was actually planning on making an actual documentary about the problems facing Chesapeake Bay, meaning both the arrogance of this situation’s architects and the indifference of the government in face of the crisis feel frustratingly realistic. But beyond its effectiveness as a piece of political messaging, The Bay is also simply a gripping, spine-tingling horror movie, featuring one of the most unsettling “monsters” imaginable, all the moreso because its behavior patterns are all ripped from creatures that genuinely exist. Seriously, you know I don’t scare easy, but a few scenes in this movie had me thinking “yep, that one’s going straight to my nightmares.” I thought I’d basically emptied film’s stock of high quality found footage, and I’m delighted to be proven wrong.