Film Review: Await Further Instructions (2018)

Screened at The Walter Reade Theater at Film Society of Lincoln Center, 8pm showtime. Movie Theater Snacks: a bottle of water. Is that considered a snack?

My favorite film festival has returned: Scary Movies XI at Film Society. Brand new horror films from around the world making their North American debut. I love it! I’ve seen some of my favorite movies here for the first time.

I was drawn to this movie because of its synopsis: a dysfunctional family wakes up Christmas morning to discover their entire house is surrounded by a black substance with no way out, and their only connection to the outside world are the words on the television “Await Further Instructions.”

It’s a unique premise, and despite it’s extremely rushed set-up, the film settles into it’s Thing (John Carpenter joke… ha… ha…) rather quickly. Paranoia is high and no one is to be trusted. I liked everything the movie did, but each scene just left me wishing it had gone even further. It’s crazy, tense, and funny, but not crazy, tense, or funny enough. I wish it had gone to 11. Spinal Tap joke… ha… ha…

With that said though, the ending of the film is truly insane and I loved it. But just as before, I wish it had gotten insane sooner, so the filmmakers could have spent more time in the Cronenberg grossness of it all and explored the ideas it brings up.

Await Further Instructions is a really enjoyable ride. The ending is wonderful, even if it does take a little while to get there. It doesn’t do anything astounding in the genre, but it’s a welcome addition. I had plenty of fun with it and I highly recommend you check it out.

Film Review: The Exorcist (1973)

Screened in the comfort of my own home, 9pm showtime. Movie Theater Snacks: Nothing. This was a serious viewing, as you’ll soon find out why…

Watching The Exorcist for the first time was extremely important to me, I feel like my entire life built up to this Halloween night.

The mangled face of possessed Regan is something that has haunted me for years and has scared me for as long as I can remember. When I saw her face for the first time (I was so young, I don’t actually remember where or why. A commercial maybe? I have no clue) but it terrified me.

Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, my parents and everyone around me always labeled this as the worst movie imaginable. Foul, crude, and disrespectful, saying it went completely against God’s good word. On top of that, my parents were just plain strict with everything entertainment-wise. Without them even realizing, they were building this movie up in my head as being untouchable, and I wanted to watch it even more.

I told my good friend all about this “journey” towards watching it. Then, three years ago he bought it for me for my birthday (that really fancy 40th anniversary blu-ray set hell yeah). Why I didn’t watch it until now, I don’t remember. Who cares. But I’m very, very happy I watched it at this point in my life. Three years ago, or even sooner than that, my childhood JW-guilt would have crept in, and I would potentially, most-likely, maybe, possibly, felt differently. That is, to the point that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

Tonight, I felt a Christian mindset come back into my thinking for the first time in years. Of course Father Karras and Father Merrin are the good guys. Regan brought the Devil into herself by playing with a demonic toy (again, my parents warned me if I ever THOUGHT about using a ouija board, demons would come into our home). She was guilty, but also needed to be saved. It was extremely weird, but it felt it. A Christian fear, something I didn’t think I’d ever feel or worry about again. I’m happy I watched this film now. Far off enough that I could watch it and genuinely enjoy it, but still close enough to my old life that the voice of my parents were in my head, shaming me for toying with demons and Satan’s entertainment.

On this devilish Halloween night, I just watched a new favorite movie.

Film Review: Suspiria (2018)

Screened at Regal in Union Square, 2:40pm showtime. Movie Theater Snacks: Small Diet Coke and some Peanut M&M’s, which is very unlike me. I never drink soda.

One Suspiriorum, Two Italian directors, Three Mothers, and a Dozen Witches.

I had no previous feelings towards this new remake of Suspiria. On one hand, I adore Dario Argento’s original 1977 film, but knowing that an equally impressive filmmaker Luca Guadagnino was directing this new film, I had no fear that he wouldn’t do a good job.

The story is the same: a young American aspiring dancer dreams of being part of a world renowned dance company based in Berlin. While she is accepted, happy and ready to begin learning, there is a mysterious foundation holding up this famous dance company that she, nor anyone, is prepared for. The 2018 remake is nothing like the original film, and thats a great thing.

An underlying feeling of dread and anxiety permeates the entire movie. Even when something normal or mundane were happening on screen, you just felt anxious as if something not quite right is going to happen. And guess what? It doesn’t. Fifty Shades of Gray star Dakota Johnson is absolutely wonderful in the film. Her basic and normal every-day-woman character is so blasé and average that she undermines your senses when her “time” to “shine” eventually comes to the screen. She’s the real star of the film, and you don’t even realize it until it’s too late.

But that’s not to say that Tilda Swinton isn’t the powerhouse she always is. Swinton plays not one, not two, but three characters in the film. The leader of the dance company Madame Blanc, who choreographs the “rituals” and routines. Josef Klempere, a psychotherapist who becomes interested in the dance company when one of his patients tells him it is run by witches. And finally Mater Suspiriorum herself, Mother Markos, the witch living beneath the academy in search of a new body. With Tilda Swinton’s sensational acting, on top of the incredible makeup used in the film, I truly didn’t know it was her playing all these characters. When the credits roll, they even fake these characters by putting fake actors names. The character of Doctor Josef Klempere is named in the credits as Lutz Ebersdorf. Very, very interesting.

My highest recommendations go to 2018’s Suspiria. It’s unlike anything Hollywood is making today. It’s horrifying, anxious, sad, and downright beautiful. It’s a piece of cinema that will be remembered for years to come.

Film Review: Caniba (2017)

Screened at The Museum of The Moving Image, 5pm showtime. Movie Theater Snacks: nothing but a nauseous stomach. You’re not going to want to eat for a while after this film.

This documentary is not what I thought it would be. It barely touches on the events that occurred in 1981, when Japanese man Issei Sagawa murdered and ate his classmate Renée Hartvelt. This film isn’t even an interview. Instead, we are watching a painter create images on a canvas. Who that painter is: Issei, his twin brother Jun, or the filmmakers Paravel & Castaing, is up to us to decide.

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Caniba is both an exercise in patience and in depravity. It’s extremely slow moving, with Issei speaking a few words, then pausing for an extended number of seconds, before finally finishing his very poetic thought. Whether this is a result of the stroke he suffered a few years ago is never disclosed, but possibly the thoughts of a man who now thinks before he speaks. His words are delivered as cryptic poetry, both fantastical and confessionary, in potentially the most intimate he’s ever been about his feelings.

Accompanying these words are his face and only that. The entire film is a close-up, morphing between crisp and out-of-focus. There is an extended sequence that seems to go on forever, when Issei lays down to sleep and his face is on screen staring directly back at us. I began to doze off, eventually closing my eyes for a moment. When I woke up, his face was still on screen and I still do not have any idea how long I was asleep, if I even fell asleep, or for how long that sequence went on for. It’s an incredibly interesting way to view him, that is unique and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. But the moment this scene ends, you are abruptly woken up by debauchery, as we get to witness one of Issei’s amateur porn videos, one of many he filmed through-out the 90’s, capitalizing on his new-found criminal fame.

This is only the beginning of the nausea.

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The other half of this film involves Issei’s twin brother Jun. Jun has dark secrets of his own that he has never shared with anyone, and within the film, we witness him firsthand telling his brother Issei about his secrets after 60 years of keeping silent. I was not prepared to feel physically ill, and I was not prepared to be staring at these images for as long as I was. But just as the filmmakers shot the faces of their subjects, we were forced to gaze at the violence in extreme close-up and for an extended period of time.

Caniba is unconventional in every way. It’s a moving piece that looks at, not a cannibal, but the guilt of a cannibal who has been living with this in his head for nearly 40 years. Then, stepping aside and looking at his brother who deals with his own demons. “Is the pain they feel and express genuine?” is the question you’ll be asking yourself for days.

The film ends with a miracle though, and we get to witness it ourselves: Issei Sagawa feeling happy. How he acquires this happiness though is just another twisted moment we have to voyeuristically endure.

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