A Haunting In Venice (2023) - Movie Review

After the release limbo and subsequent inundation of cast controversies that wound up plaguing Death On The Nile, it is somewhat relieving that Kenneth Branagh’s latest dive into the works of Agatha Christie hasn’t run into any such unpleasantness just on the surface. And yet, right from its horror-tinged trailer, I admit to being sceptical about how much I would like this one. Honestly, my first impression was that this was going to be yet another attempt to cross-promote with the Conjuring supernatural aesthetic, which has been steadily shrinking in my favour over the course of 2023. But hey, this wouldn’t exactly be the first time I went into a film with weird and arguably unfair expectations, much as I try to avoid such things. And it’s ultimately a moot point anyway since, again like Death On The Nile, I quite enjoyed this.

The Nun II (2023) - Movie Review

Well, shit. After gradually warming up to the Conjuring Universe, the official threequel The Devil Made Me Do It and the more recent atrocious copycats like The Unholy, The Exorcism Of God, and The Pope’s Exorcist have made me seriously reconsider that position. As much as I have good memories of at least half of these films, the underlying dogma of this entire sub-genre is starting to wear thin on my sensibilities, and the quality of the films themselves isn’t really picking up the slack. Still, I am nothing if not open to being surprised, and the first Nun is still a film I quite liked when I first saw it, so I’m willing to give this one a chance.

The Pale Blue Eye (2022) - Movie Review

Scott Cooper knows a good idea when he sees it. As much as I’ve been pretty lukewarm on the films of his I’ve reviewed in Black Mass and Antlers, they’re both built on sturdy foundations. With the former, it was a different take on the standard crime drama that must’ve clung to Joel Edgerton’s brain since then, seeing as his recent turn in The Stranger turned out quite similar in purpose and thematic drive. And with the latter, it was a creature feature that used a wendigo as a monster metaphor for parental abuse and the trauma associated with it; a properly fascinating direction to take such things. And with his latest, he’s found another potential gold mine in the 2003 Louis Bayard novel The Pale Blue Eye, a detective story set on the American frontier and co-starring Edgar Allen Poe, serving as much a tribute to his style of American Gothic horror as it is to his lineage as the godfather of detective fiction at large.

Of course, this also brings in the main problem I keep running into with Scott Cooper as a filmmaker: He can recognise good story ideas, but isn’t necessarily well-equipped to make the most out of them on the screen. Black Mass, in better hands, could’ve been the gangster answer to Citizen Kane with its storytelling, but Cooper kept settling for more bog-standard tropes within the genre. And in Antlers, he kept burying the best aspects of the story underneath everything else he wanted to get into, watering down the potent ideas at its core. And unfortunately, the same is true of this, which shows Cooper once again losing track of the story’s strong point in favour of… well, just more of the usual.

The Invitation (2022) - Movie Review

Under normal circumstances, writing about a film like this that hinges on a plot twist would be difficult. As much as I gush over the films I like, and trash the ones I don’t, I try and be careful not to get too specific about what happens in the story. The last thing I want is to ruin the experience for someone else, even if it’s with a film I personally don’t care for. However. Seeing as this film has been marketed so poorly that both its trailer, and the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page (not even the plot synopsis, but the full page), give it clean away, I don’t particularly feel like putting in more effort than the people responsible for bringing this to the public. Although, as we’ll get into, that will be a familiar sensation throughout this review regardless.

The Nun (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: At a monastery in Romania, a nun has been found dead from an apparent suicide. Wanting to find out what exactly happened, and to make sure that this incident has defiled the sacred ground of the monastery, the Vatican sends Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and novitiate Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) to investigate. As they search the monastery and the surrounding area for clues, with the help of local farmer Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), they discover something truly evil hiding within.