Thatcher in Companion

Companion (2025)

February 8, 2025Posted in2025, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri
written and directed by Drew Hancock

by Walter Chaw Drew Hancock’s feature debut Companion plays a lot like a cross between Peter Berg’s comedy of (bad) manners Very Bad Things and Alex Garland’s solemn Ex Machina. It is, in other words, extremely my jam. Depicting an escalating series of catastrophes like a Pierre Étaix movie with a body count, Companion is a house of cards composed of appalling behaviour and hidden agendas that mashes together tropes from the “Bad Dinner Party” subgenre of awkward horror movies and the sentience melodramas of android fiction. The script is fleet and smart, the cast is game, and damned if Companion isn’t prepared to follow through on the essential human awfulness of its premise. I worry that the inevitable rush of “peeved A.I.” thrillers will fail to offer a credible reckoning with the morality of making a thing 90% of its consumer base will attempt to fuck, if not outright purchase for that purpose. (Some, like flavour-of-the-moment M3GAN, don’t even acknowledge it as a likely possibility.) Consider Companion the corrective: here, the talking toasters are made to be fleshlights capable of having rudimentary conversations. A fun ride that wrestles with the controversies at the root of its concept? Don’t threaten me with a good time.

In the Shadow of Loss: Walter Chaw interviews Leigh Whannell

In the Shadow of Loss: FFC Interviews Leigh Whannell

February 4, 2025Posted in2025, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Interviews

by Walter Chaw I met Leigh Whannell through the miracle of social-media DMs a few months into the pandemic, when reaching out was all anyone had to do. His The Invisible Man reboot had landed just a couple of weeks before the first lockdown, and I was so floored by its prescience I had to let him know. We’ve kept in touch. The Invisible Man hit that enviable sweet spot for popular cinema: smart without being an asshole about it; thrilling without sacrificing its depth. I came to it from Upgrade, Whannell’s cautionary tale about artificial intelligence, and then worked my way backwards to Insidious: Chapter 3, his directorial debut, which, separated from franchise expectations, proved shockingly soulful and introspective.

Lucy Liu in Presence: Not just a subpar Led Zeppelin album anymore

Presence (2025)

January 24, 2025Posted in2025, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday
written by David Koepp
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw The subjective camera is nothing new, of course. 1947’s Lady in the Lake is a largely failed Raymond Chandler adaptation in which Philip Marlowe is the camera, while director RaMell Ross cannily attaches the technique to a critic-proof project in the current Nickel Boys. First-person shooter (FPS) video game enthusiasts are more than familiar with the concept, and purveyors of porn know that VR-ready stereoscopic smut has its own niche market. Everything “new” is ancient, in other words, and the experience of Steven Soderbergh’s Presence at times reminded me of playing the first-person, text-based INFOCOM games of my childhood: floating in and out of scenes; picking up bits and pieces of information and trying to cohere them into an unrevealed storyline. Horror aficionados will certainly have moments of déjà vu here, what with the camera being yoked to a predatory point-of-view. (Halloween, I’m looking at you.) Which is to say that Presence definitely pulls the odd pleasure-lever in my lizard brain, not that it’s good. Funny, because even Soderbergh himself has said he never thought a “POV” film could work because you don’t get to see the reaction of the protagonist–but then he goes ahead and makes Presence anyway…and cheats.

Blind man sitting with his daughter in a movie theatre as the lights go down in Demons

Demons (1985) + Demons 2 (1986) – 4K Ultra HD Discs

January 22, 2025Posted in1980s, 2025, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Dario Argento, Horror, Italy

Dèmoni
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Urbano Barberini, Natasha Hovey, Karl Zinny, Fiore Argento
screenplay by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Dardano Sacchetti, Franco Ferrini
directed by Lamberto Bava

Dèmoni 2… l’incubo ritorna
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring David Knight, Nancy Brilli, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, Virginia Bryant
written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, Dardano Sacchetti
directed by Lamberto Bava

by Walter Chaw It’s one of the best horror premises ever: A mysterious figure (legendary director Michele Soavi, doing double duty on screen and off as creep and AD, respectively) hands out invitations for a movie premiere to beautiful teens, pimps and their hookers, and other manifold riffraff in the Berlin Underground. The venue is a mysterious theatre, “Metropol,” that no one’s heard of before, and when the curtain goes up, it’s for the pleasure of a dozen or so cinephiles down for a show and maybe some sordid adventure. Then the demons come. Setting a horror movie in a cinema is nothing new, of course (the meta implications of it are too delicious to resist), but I like how the moviegoers in Lamberto Bava’s Demons–these marks, these fools–have been sucked into the freak tent without even having been mesmerized there by an able barker. Turns out, some of us don’t need a showman to pique our curiosity. Turns out, even though we should know better than to show up at a party we’re invited to by some guy in a metal mask on the subway, caution goes right out the window now and again. Maybe I can relate because, for as risk-averse as I am, this is the sort of provocation I could be vulnerable to under the right–which is to say wrong–circumstances. (“Sure thing, friend-o, I’ll watch your movie.” God knows I’ve agreed to worse.) Maybe this is the perfect metaphor for being a film critic in a festival setting: stuck in an auditorium with the creators and no easy way to escape if things go pear-shaped.

Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl: Don't use the stairs if Nomi's around, girl

The Last Showgirl (2024)

January 13, 2025Posted in2024, 2025, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Pamela Anderson, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Jamie Lee Curtis
written by Kate Gersten
directed by Gia Coppola

by Walter Chaw The distaff The Wrestler, Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a showcase for Pamela Anderson, reborn in middle age as a serious actor after a career spent being the butt of jokes, the object of desire, and the sufferer of violations to her privacy and dignity. Not to rob her of agency by painting her as strictly a victim–the fact is, Pamela Anderson and the choices she made in how she presented herself in the entertainment industry had everything to do with the dictates of our still-unresolved/perhaps unresolvable systemic, representational biases. Sure, her stolen sex tape was the first of its kind in the early days of so-called celebrity “leaks,” but she made the decision to star in the legendary beefcake-and-jiggle showcase “Baywatch”, didn’t she? To be the PLAYBOY cover girl not once, but 13 times? It’s complicated, and I confess that while I never thought poorly of her, I never thought much about her, period. That’s me, to my shame, being patronizing and lacking empathy and curiosity. Of late, Anderson has stopped wearing makeup in public appearances and redirected the focus to her love of gardening. (She has a show on HGTV.) She’s our Kim Novak: unfairly underestimated, even derided, for her appearance in her prime, finding a measure of redemption by not asking for it, making no apologies, and refusing anymore to fit herself into the molds created for her by the appetites and prejudices of others.

Jude Law aiming a gun in The Order: This time...Dickie came prepared.

The Order (2024)

January 12, 2025Posted in2024, 2025, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Marc Maron
screenplay by Zach Baylin, based on the book by Kevin Flynn & Gary Gerhardt
directed by Justin Kurzel

by Walter Chaw Justin Kurzel makes films about bad, broken men and the cultures that cultivate them, and he excels at this. His True History of the Kelly Gang is one of the great neo-westerns, while The Snowtown Murders is already a cult classic for true-crime reenactments of small-town atrocities. The only other person working so dedicatedly in this arena is S. Craig Zahler. The difference is that Zahler’s films leave me feeling filthy, disgusted with myself and everyone else. Unlike Kurzel, Zahler doesn’t deal in “based on real events” currency. Rather, his nihilism is founded on more uncomfortable insights into masculinity. Zahler’s films are about you and me; there’s no chance to separate ourselves from his loathsome and violent men. It’s that space in Kurzel’s films, the ability to say, “Sure, that happened once, but it’s over now,” that allows us to look at his subjects as apart from us. Kurzel’s films are gripping for sure, even powerful, professional and superlative technically, but not soul-sickening–not indictments of who we are and what we will allow. While he may pinion the Other with merciless clarity, he’s on the side of the angels. Society is restored in Kurzel’s films, one way or another. Zahler’s, on the other hand, offer us no good guys or a future worth living.

“The 50 Best Films of 2024,” by Walter Chaw

December 31, 2024Posted in2024, 2025, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog
The 50 Best Films of 2024 title graphic featuring Lea Seydoux against a greenscreen

by Walter Chaw I’ve spent decades predicting the fall, but when the fall came, I certainly didn’t feel like doing a victory lap. When the pandemic shut down everything for a while, I realized that my worst fears had come true, and then, for the first time in as long as I could remember, my depression quieted like a rash that’s lost its savagery. Respite, because my worst fears weren’t looming anymore–they’d finally arrived. All that was left to do was find a new way through. Is this why apocalyptic scenarios have been so seductive for us the last few years? It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.