The Covenant (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Another year, another war movie, although it's been a while since we had a solid one set during the late War in Afghanistan. In The Covenant, which came out earlier this year, we're introduced to Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal, who continues to be un-typecast-able) in an opening scene that seems ripped from The Hurt Locker. His team specializes in recovery of explosives and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction; in conducting yet another routine roadside inspection of local vehicles, a bomb detonates and kills Kinley's translator and two other soldiers. It's sad, of course, but not the most tragic or even unusual thing to happen to soldiers in this region. It's, chillingly, part of the job.

Shortly after, Kinley takes on a new translator named Ahmed (Dar Salim in a wonderful performance), who hammers home in his "interview" the rote, almost mercenary nature of the job. The two men work well together, and while Kinley is arguably the protagonist, Ahmed wields the dramatic focus and intrigue of the first half of the film. He's mysterious and vaguely threatening, at least to his white teammates, but he does his job well if stoically. During negotiations and interrogations, he is comfortable and eager to go "off script," and when answering to Kinley he holds his own and is unafraid to speak up on his own behalf. Early on, Ahmed proves his mettle in saving his team, and Kinley admires and trusts him in the equally stoic way of hardened soldiers.

When another Taliban attack kills their entire team, Kinley and Ahmed escape on foot through the desert mountains; Kinley becomes wounded and Ahmed kills their pursuers before tending to Kinley and single-handedly pulling him through the wilderness to safety. Seven weeks later, Kinley, at home in California, knows Ahmed saved him but doesn't know how or even really why. Thus the title's significance comes into full effect, as Kinley desperately tries to procure visas for Ahmed and his family, who were forced into hiding after their exploits. Kinley then embarks on a return journey -- through the heart of darkness, you might say, to locate and rescue his savior and his family. 

It's a war story of brotherhood forged in battle, an unlikely pair who share a life debt together. Kinley's agony at the thought that he owes Ahmed his life yet can't get the help he needs in the form of visas is the kind of thing Gyllenhaal does best, and his return journey is a terribly evocative and satisfying climax. Eventually, Ahmed's hatred of the Taliban is revealed as much deeper than first supposed, and indeed his hiring into this position is more than just a paycheck to him. The two men make for a fascinating dynamic on screen, and if you like this kind of story, you'll be eminently satisfied.

While the title is annoyingly identified properly as "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant," it doesn't really feel like a Ritchie film. For the most part, it's very restrained and tuned in to nuanced, quieter moments away from the battlefield. Except for a few cinematographic and effects-riddled moments, it could be a Clint Eastwood film from back in his less-problematic years. Well, that, and its booming score by Christopher Benstead, although I actually like a war or adventure movie with an overpowering score; it just adds to the operatic intensity of everything else.

But I'm just not sure what the point of it all is, apart from the story of this commitment between the two men. Kinley's attempts at procuring visas reveal the failure of American bureaucracy to fulfill its promises to Afghan allies. I hoped Ritchie and his writers would lean into this aspect, critiquing American exceptionalism for its lies and emptiness, and establishing one of the first films of its kind to be really honest about the US failures in the Middle East. And how timely would that be, considering what happened two years ago (the film takes place in 2018, so the connection is clear) when America withdrew our troops from Afghanistan and many allies were executed by the Taliban. But instead of exploring these ideas with any active interest or even anger, Ritchie redirects his film towards sentiment, the bonds of brotherhood, and the thrill of wartime action. And that's how we're reminded it's a Ritchie movie, unfortunately.

Vesper (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Opening text tells us the state of the world, sometime in the future, when humanity's efforts to stop ecological crisis backfired, destroying the world's edible plants and devastating the human and animal populations. In this new Dark Age, oligarchs rule "citadels," closed and protected cities, while the outside world starves and scavenges what it can. The citadels trade goods, including seeds for produce that only yield one harvest. To help with the work, scientists have also developed Jugs, androids meant to be laboring slaves.

With this thick science fiction setting, I had no idea what to expect from Vesper, a European indie genre flick that arrived in the States with almost no fanfare. I'm not really of the opinion that "science fiction" is a genre so much as an aesthetic, but this film is generically a coming-of-age story for its title character, a young teenaged girl who lives in the forest with her paralyzed father Darius. In the dystopian, post-apocalyptic world, even the forest around her home is dangerous, so as she daily goes out to scrounge for seeds and food, as well as scavenge for power sources and materials to keep her house running and her father alive, we see her resourcefulness and determination shine through. She may be young, but she's already a hardened survivor. But she also wants love, and knows she needs companionship and care, as she clearly misses her mother, who left some time ago to join a group of "Pilgrims," though we are not told exactly what that means. Based on the feudal system of society, we can guess they are searching for life elsewhere more sustainable and free.

The film, written and directed by duo Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Sampler, is not your typical sci-fi experience. While it features more than its share of clunky dialogue, an unwelcome amount of genre lingo, and contrived plot points to push the whole thing forward while offering exposition, it also does some unexpected things. For such a young heroine in Vesper, the film works to emotionally and psychologically mature her before our eyes, underscoring the harsh truth that life can't be fully planned or controlled and that her struggles will be a part of her life in perpetuity. The playing field is far from level and almost never fair. As such, the film eschews token empowerment for its characters (though its heroes are notably young and female while its antagonists are mostly older men) and works hard to avoid much sense of hope or validation. Indeed, all of Vesper's actions are based on her own observations and scientific experiments on seeds, and we're never really given the option to entertain the fact that she is right. She is very possibly misguided or simply wrong, but it's her determined pursuit of hope that wins us over. It's really not until the very end -- I mean about the last three minutes or so -- that a tiny glimmer of hope shines into the film. And even then, it's only after the very worst has occurred to everyone Vesper cares about.

Which isn't to say many people. The bulk of the film is a series of unfortunate events that involve Vesper's predatory and violent uncle Jonas (Eddie Marsan), a crashed scientist's ship, invading citadel soldiers, and experiments to "unlock" seeds for more harvests. The actors are all fine, though acting is clearly not the point of this movie (nor is the dialogue). Vesper is best experienced as a surrealist fantasy, a visual trip through Cronenbergian production design replete with tendrils and mucus and membranes and organic fluids and violent bugs; warning for anyone with trypophobic aversions, this movie's textures are weirdly and disturbingly specific.

I don't want to spoil the specifics of the plot, but Marsan's character is clearly an amalgamation of what lengths desperate white men will go to for survival in positions of power, and his threat is at once mortal, material, sexual, and spiritual. Vesper won't be entirely alone in her tribulations, as she rescues a mysterious citadel refugee named Camellia (Rosy McEwan), whose partnership with Vesper is cleverly written and acted to avoid sentimental romantic or familial pitfalls. Their relationship is fairly unique in the genre, and it's beautiful to behold. The film's other strengths are primarily visual, with arresting design from props and set dressing to costumes and restrained use of digital effects. But it won its way into my head by virtue of not force-feeding us the typical YA dystopian journey to heroism; Vesper makes us survive alongside a young person who tries hard to succeed through hypotheses and experiments all on her own, while fearing that every step she takes could prove disastrous.

No One Will Save You (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

Brynn's life seems pretty perfect. She lives in a house that's a little too picturesque, nestled away from any nearby neighbors. She spends her days sewing and building her miniature town, cooking and cleaning, and dancing alone; it's her best impression of what Rapunzel sang about in Tangled. As Kaitlyn Dever plays her, she's a bit anxious about connecting with others, and there's a hint of desperation to hold onto this life. After all, why is she alone? Who is the person named Maude she writes letters to? And what is she going to do when her house is invaded one night by a monster?

Writer and director Brian Duffield (who also wrote Underwater and The Babysitter) wastes absolutely no time getting into the horror of things, and I love that. This is a lean, mean survival movie, and that the home invasion starts so early is just the first of many tricks in his arsenal to ratchet up the tension. During that first encounter, she discovers her nighttime visitor is an alien -- the Grey alien type -- with powers of telekinesis. After a chase and some stalking, all of which is taut and raw in cinematography and editing, she is able to kill it. It's a surprisingly graphic moment for our young leading lady to outright stab her assailant, and it very much sets the tone of the film moving forward. This won't be the last monster in her house, and it won't be her final test.

Afterward, noticing that electronic devices aren't working now, Brynn heads into town past other ransacked houses and vehicles. Clearly her encounter wasn't unique. Her journey into town starts to reveal to us -- and possibly to Brynn, who may or may not be living in a private fantasy world -- the reasons for her self-imposed isolation and what happened between her and Maude. Once she gets back home, after being attacked by several other citizens who seem to be under the influence of malevolent parasites, she prepares for another round of invaders. They do indeed come, after a UFO seems to park above Brynn's house. 

In terms of planning and design, this is an expertly crafted film. The whole thing features one -- count it, one -- spoken line of dialogue, and it's a gut punch in context. The rest of the movie is nevertheless beautifully recorded in terms of diegetic sounds of Brynn's environment as well as Dever's relentless breathing, gasping, etc. Watched with attention and a good sound system, this film is terrifying and will creep under your skin right from the off. A primary reason for engagement, though, is Brynn's notable intelligence in fighting her assailants. Despite her silence -- and the clear fact she's not a seasoned fighter or ever been in this kind of situation before -- she's fierce and resourceful, smartly moving through her house without unnecessary noise or panic, finding weapons and using them to appropriate effect. There was maybe once where I groaned at what she chose to do, but the rest of the time I was fully rooting for her.

And even when the film's climax tries to do a little too much -- the repeated capture-and-release scenes pile up a little too quickly, to say nothing of the unearned sentimentality of the "big reveal" -- it's a breathless kinetic rush of ingenuity in presentational style and technical design in all aspects. Even the design of the aliens is cool and weird enough to be really interesting. While the ending left a little to be desired for me, as I'm frankly not sure what we're supposed to "get" from it (the need for some interpretation is fine and dandy unless we aren't given proper context in order to glean meaning), the rest of the tense, violent, and beautiful film more than makes up for it.

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

If you had told me I'd ever be grateful for Kenneth Branagh's Poirot series, I'd have called you unkind names. His characterization of the iconic detective is, to say the least, not my favorite version -- nor is it my favorite of his performances in general -- and it leaves a lot to be desired for longtime fans. His directorial efforts, too, tend toward the superficially spectacular, imbuing what should be "locked room" whodunnits with endless CGI effects, dizzying camerawork, thin dialogue, tepid attempts at social commentary, and inane action sequences. While these observations are all, in my opinion, manifest evidence in his (so far) three titles -- Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile being the first two, the former I cringe to recall but the latter I thoroughly praise -- they also do not account for the sense of escapism, exotic splendor, and raw beauty he brings to the table while hopefully introducing new generations to Agatha Christie's important and significant body of work.

Now comes A Haunting in Venice -- familiar to fans as Hallowe'en Party -- a title (and setting) change from the source material I fully support, if only for aesthetic reasons. The original, published in 1969 and set in England, is not one I've read before, but I'm aware that this film adaptation -- the only one I know of, apart from the BBC Poirot series starring David Suchet -- takes place over twenty years prior to that, in a postwar Venice with a bunch of British expats making up its cast of characters. It's set, fittingly, in a crumbling palazzo, far too large for its inhabitants but suitably spooky for their Halloween party, filled with orphaned children celebrating (wartime orphans, both from the violence and the occupation). Once the children leave, though (at least, the living ones), the adults remain for a séance requested by the palazzo owner, former opera star Rowena Drake (a magnificent Kelly Reilly). Drake is in mourning over the apparent suicide of her daughter Alicia -- it's suggested she threw herself into the canal after her fiancé chef Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen) ended their engagement -- who has seemingly been haunting the palazzo since.

The suitably Gothic setting, complete with spectacular thunderstorm and ghostly children running about, perfectly frames a truly scary story. Perhaps it's so chilling because it's one of Christie's less-familiar ones, so the element of unfamiliarity pervades each scene. But there's even some surprising violence (thankfully less "action," as Poirot would never!) that makes its PG-13 rating a bit hairy. The story isn't really anything new, just a reliable whodunnit murder mystery that ramps up as more bodies fall. Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green still work very well to modernize and pare down Christie's detailed and sometimes sprawling cases into more concise, direct, and thrilling escapades on screen, and I admire that they're bringing big budgets and A-list casts into a type of classic old film we just don't see anymore. Moreover, they yet again elicit a surprising theme from one of Christie's mysteries, this time about the futility of the violence of war: Branagh starts this story in early retirement, tired of death both personally and in terms of the second world war, dealing with broken psyches and weighing what had been won with its cost. The sinking city on the brink of rot is a perfect setting for this thematic conceit.

Enter celebrity medium Joyce Reynolds (a brilliant and chilling Michelle Yeoh), who plans to communicate with Alicia and maybe help her spirit rest. Poirot has been invited by Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey as an Agatha Christie stand-in crime novelist) whose sales aren't great and who desperately needs a big hit. Oliver is hoping to either discredit Reynolds or otherwise learn some secrets that will make for a profitable story. It helps that the assembled guests make for suspicious and eccentric characters: the Drake family's housekeeper Olga (Camille Cottin) who sees everything; PTSD-riddled war surgeon Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his charmingly precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill, Belfast) who seems able to see ghosts while caring for his father; the medium's assistants Desdemona and Nicholas Holland (Emma Laird and Ali Khan), war refugees and half-siblings; and of course and angry and mourning Maxime, just to make things spicy.

I'm curious now to read the book, because, much like Branagh's previous two films, I suspect much has been invented for this one, beyond the setting. Green, after all, is very good at writing inventive new stories based on beloved material to popular success (he wrote the previous two Branagh Poirot films, of course, but also Blade Runner 2049, Logan, Alien: Covenant, Jungle Cruise, and the series American Gods). Green imbues Poirot with a nihilistic sensibility I found perfectly suited to Branagh's interpretation and presentation of the character as he atheistically mocks the idea of consulting the dead while musing on the increasing cruelty and violence in humankind, perspectives not dissimilar from Christie's own near the end of her life. He's surrounded here by characters desperate for money and purpose, shell shocked from war and away from their homes without the means to either stake a new claim or return to the life they once had.

A final note, and one I'm admittedly unprepared to fully explore: Branagh's grandiose style has always been a bit "too much," and not just in this franchise. But this is one of the first times I really understand why he's been compared so often to Orson Welles -- apart from his Shakespeare adaptations -- and the influence here is palpable. His attitude toward Venice mirrors Welles's Othello, and he works with master cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos again to create a sumptuous world nevertheless in the expressionistic visual style of everything from Citizen Kane to The Third Man, including lots of Dutch angles, fisheye lenses, extreme high and low angles, extreme closeups, and excessive use of framing to isolate and block the frame. These shots are often edited to shocking and even humorous effect, making the whole experience a bit of a trippy "should I laugh or shudder" haunted house experience. Which, given the reworking of the source material, is exactly what we all hoped for and wanted. Bravo!

The Nun II (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

The Conjuring and its subsequent franchise are important, there's no doubt about that. But why the brilliant likes of James Wan & Co. would entrust their series to an incompetent artist like Michael Chaves is beyond me. Unlike the Saw franchise, which Wan and Whannell long since wrote off and disowned after their iconic first installment, they keep actively producing entries in this haunted-house-meets-possession series (along with Insidious), and I for one enjoy all of them so far. But Chaves's films -- starting with The Curse of La Llorona, then The Devil Made Me Do It, and now this -- are easily my least favorite of the bunch. His aesthetic style is almost nonexistent, his storytelling ability negligible, and his films dull between only occasionally effective jump scares.

And this from someone who really enjoys Valak, the "demon nun," who has become the primary antagonist of this franchise. She first appeared in The Conjuring 2, in some of its most terrifying moments, as a vengeful force determined to haunt Lorraine Warren. Valak has since made appearances in Annabelle: Creation -- which implies her involvement with the Annabelle demon Malthus -- and in her own spin-off The Nun. That film, a magnificent exercise in excess, notably attempted a new flavor of Grand Guignol camp in the genre that is rare (one that surely informed the aesthetic of this year's The Pope's Exorcist). And with something like a toothy, yellow-faced nun haunting cloistered abbeys, that approach was brilliant.

I had hoped that a sequel to that film would double down on this aesthetic, legitimizing it and continuing the titular nun's legacy as a spooky Halloween staple. But Chaves and his team, in slowing the pace, trivializing the story, and sapping the film of excitement and ingenuity, makes the film a miserable low point in the franchise while ensuring another film must be made. Granted, it's possible that the greenlit The Conjuring: Last Rites will wrap everything up, but either way, The Nun II proves itself a redundant and superfluous entry that adds fluff where it is neither needed nor wanted.

It begins five years after the first film, with Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) befriending novitiate Debra at a convent in Italy (Storm Reid) as they are tasked to investigate a string of deaths across Europe. Each murder, gruesome and violent like the immolation that opens this film, is enacted on religious leaders such as priests and are being attributed to the influence of a demon. Irene already has her suspicions that it's the one that got away. So to speak. On their travels, they learn a bit about Valak's demonic origins and learn that everyone being murdered is in some way related to St Lucy, patron saint of the blind whose eyes were kept as holy relics. Irene is also subjected to visions of Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), which lead her to France.

Intercut with these developments, we see Maurice working at a French boarding school as groundskeeper and maintenance man. He befriends a young Irish girl there, but we're shown several scenes of him speaking with an invisible force and acting, well, possessed. The girls play games in the attic that turn violent after they encounter a demonic goat that terrorizes them. Maurice's resistance crumbles until we become certain that Valak -- surprise! -- wasn't banished to hell at the end of the first film but instead, weakened, latched onto Maurice. Except this isn't a surprise to us, because we saw a sign of it on Maurice's neck at the end of the previous film. Another redundancy.

The incompetent screenplay by Ian B. Goldberg (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Eli, Fear the Walking Dead) doesn't stop there. After an early conversation between Irene and Debra (who are both wonderful and deserved a lot more to do) in which a doubting Debra asks about the miracle of the Eucharist and transubstantiation, I suspected we'd be treated to some miracle about that. After much ado, and Irene finally unmasks Valak -- again -- she needs the blood of Christ -- again -- to vanquish Valak -- again. But the precious vial of it from the first movie is gone, of course! What is she to do? Lo and behold, we're spoon-fed the explanation (in case you didn't see it coming) that Irene is in fact a descendant of St. Lucy, hence her visions and Valak's obsession with her, and so she uses the relic to stall Valak. Renewed with faith, Irene and Debra pray together and the wine (the school used to be a winery after it was also a convent?) spontaneously explodes into the blood of Christ and drowns Valak back to hell.

Except that Irene is still suspicious at film's end, we're not given any reason to think it didn't work this time. Which is infuriating, as we know that Maurice is yet to be exorcised by Lorraine Warren (who, played by Vera Farmiga, is also revealed to be a descendant of St. Lucy, which is a nice consummation of the sisterly casting choice). So somehow Valak will return in the timeline before The Conjuring, and it's just annoying to have this middling story in the meantime, forcing us to tread water before something exciting actually happens.

My biggest gripes so far have been the story, and that is fair. The performances are all solid, no question, and some of the effects are exciting. I personally really liked the demon goat, although its introduction feels more than a little like something out of The Da Vinci Code or Indiana Jones. I was annoyed at the prevalence and pedestrian quality of Valak's presence; while she's arguably more mysterious (read: shrouded in darkness to the point of incomprehensibility) here than in the previous film, there's no inventiveness to her appearance or behaviors here. She's just there, and we're desensitized to her frequent, obvious presence. I'd have preferred the Grand Guignol approach to her, but if not, then something more like in The Woman in Black. Besides Valak, the film wallows in its inability to produce earned fear, overutilizing slow pans and exaggerated sound effects to occasionally startle us rather than eke out any modicum of actual terror. It feels like the editors and producers called the shots with a stopwatch, every ten minutes or so requiring a loud bang or pop-out in order to continue.

Resurrection (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Rebecca Hall deserves so many more chances to headline elevated psychological horror, because between The Night House and now this, she's one of the best leading women in the genre. I sat down for Resurrection knowing nothing beyond its genre label, release date, and her name, and truthfully that's probably the best way to approach this film. It's a wild ride, one that is playing multiple games with itself and with us at the same time. While I won't necessarily recount the plot in my thoughts here, there will be spoilers -- because anything said about this movie is a "spoiler" -- so if you're at all interested in it, please stop reading and go watch it as soon as you can. 

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First things first: Rebecca Hall's Margaret is not a likable woman. We first meet her offscreen, as a young woman sits in her office telling her relationship woes to Margaret like to a confessor. When the camera cuts to her, she's seated uncomfortably perched on the edge of her desk in a pose straddling aggressively dismissive and forced casual. She tells the young woman -- a peer, colleague? An employee, assistant? Who knows! -- in striking, dominant terms that her boyfriend is a "sadist," using a tone of voice indicating that she knows all and there can be no alternative opinion. We all know someone like this, who is either too walled-off to properly relate to others or who is too wounded and hurt to have compassionate perspective. That doesn't stop Margaret from being immediately off-putting.

This translates outside of the workspace, where she has some illustrious job in biotechnology where she leads presentations on replacement therapy and the reorganization of cells. At home, she's a single mother of Abbie (Grace Kaufman), hovering and clinging and controlling as Abbie gets ready for college. Her household and her lifestyle are held prisoner by her sense of routine; for example, she takes a daily run that looks like boot camp (thanks to cold cinematography and icy editing), and in her house she's always either cleaning the spotless surfaces or lounging in a bathrobe while still dripping from her shower. She's kind of alone in this palatial existence -- beautiful production design subtly underscores her isolation and clinical minimalism -- and so she determinedly engages in a friends-with-benefits relationship with a married coworker. Well, "friends" with benefits, as she doesn't let down any emotional walls with him and only treats him like a transactional fuck-buddy despite his conflicted desires for her.

At a work conference, Margaret sees a man and everything changes. We won't learn who he is for some time, but she becomes agitated and sweaty, hyperventilating before she gets home and all but forbids Abbie from doing anything. Abbie naturally chalks it up to Margaret's looming empty nest syndrome, but there's a lot more going on, and as Margaret learns about strange things Abbie's been experiencing, her paranoia worsens. Abbie found a tooth in her wallet; Abbie got in an accident while riding a bike under the influence; they go to the mall and the man appears again before Margaret forcibly flees with Abbie. I thought this movie was about to become a story about the ways past trauma affects mother-daughter relationships in a world of predatory patriarchy, something between Women Talking and Alice, Darling, and I was ready for it. After all, generational trauma and mental illness are very much in vogue in our era of "elevated horror."

Then Margaret, in a roughly seven-minute monologue to the young coworker from the opening scene, reveals what's happening. The man she saw at the conference and the mall was David (Tim Roth), her ex from twentysomething years earlier, who she met at 18 and moved in with. He quickly became controlling and abusive, forcing her to self-harm and humiliate herself in acts of "kindnesses" to be worthy of his love and resources. When she eventually had a son, Ben, David became jealous to the point of possibly (probably) murdering him. To escape her blame, he tells her a lie so insidious, so cruel, so absolutely batshit crazy that some bizarre, manipulated, pained part of her broken consciousness believes him. Margaret's dedicated use of "sadist" earlier is finally made clear.

At this point in the film, the audience is asked for a crucial choice. We're either meant to think she's on the brink and completely untrustworthy, or to think compassionately for her experience and suffer the delusional aftereffects of abuse with her. This isn't a normal story of abuse -- disgusting, isn't it, that there is a "normal" or socially accepted understanding of typical abuse patterns -- like we've seen before. This is unhinged, totally bonkers stuff, and it's only though the filmmakers' calculated approach and artistic integrity that Margaret's revelation doesn't derail the whole movie. And it's from this moment, whatever we choose to feel and think, that the film changes its approach and plot, spinning violently into a psychological spiral between Margaret and David in which we're never sure who is the cat and who is the mouse, who is scarier and more potentially evil. Of course he is a pure monster, one that Roth is all too gleefully malicious to bring to life, but she's on the threshold of losing touch with reality entirely, through absolutely no fault of her own. 

The second half of this movie is the kind of psychological horror I love but has become quite rare these days; now, psychological horror is all about trauma and mental illness and always (always) carries some metaphorical monster who is also very real. Movies like Silent House and Black Swan and The Silence of the Lambs where the horror starts and ends in the minds of the protagonist and their adventure through a broken world are few and far between, but this one fits in their vein without the timely trappings of hot topics. As such, Resurrection is not a pleasant viewing experience; there are no "gotcha!" jump scares, no gory excesses to giggle about, no stylized monsters or mythology to unravel. There is just cruelty and menace and realistic -- if insane -- abuse. This is not the story of an abused woman getting revenge on her abuser. Not really. By the end, we don't know to what extent we can trust her as things get hallucinatory and almost supernatural (think along the aesthetic lines of Villeneuve's Enemy and Aster's Beau is Afraid), and/or to what extent she is suffering a breakdown. Then again, has she been trustworthy the whole time, or even sane? We are forced to relate to her perspective by the screenplay, editing, and cinematography, and we certainly want to because it's Hall and she's amazing. And there's a moment near the end, as David discusses himself and their relationship, when anyone who's ever been in an abusive relationship will relate a little too closely to the terrifyingly accurate language and ideas being used.

There's a lot to like about this movie for anyone interested in these topics. But it won't be for everyone, both in terms of concepts and content. The end will surely polarize even interested viewers, both because of the depraved darkness to which this movie sends us and because it goes for the gusto in terms of unhinged insanity for its finale. But it sticks to its guns, refuses to comfort us, and pushes us into a mindset I haven't experienced in a film in ages. Daring and fresh, haunting and nasty, this movie is unique and brave and wild, and I respect the hell out of it. Even if I may never choose to watch it again.