The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

How do you take something universally regarded as one of the most foundational, terrifying, and iconic cultural productions of all time and, several decades later, attempt to generate a fresh, direct sequel as the start of a new trilogy? There's no simple answer, but David Gordon Green seems determined to make legacy sequels his thing. He did it with Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends, a trilogy I dearly love and look forward to revisiting in a few weeks (it's also notable that Halloween II and H20 are also excellent parts of the series, and that I have no intention of ever watching any of the other installments or iterations again). And now he's doing something similar with The Exorcist, now in its 50th anniversary year, launching Believer as the start of a new legacy trilogy that ignores all of the other sequels. And while the infamous first sequel is not one I enjoy, there are significant and fascinating points to be made for The Exorcist III, Exorcist: The Beginning, and Dominion. I also strongly recommend the two-season series of The Exorcist, which aired on FOX from 2016-2018; a sort of legacy sequel in its own right, its brilliance and technical acumen makes it one of my favorite horror series and I very much hope that, at some point during Green's trilogy, he pays homage to it. Because it's great.

But so far, Green seems to be doing his own thing, for better or worse. This film, written seemingly by committee, tries to do a whole heck of a lot, and most of it makes for a fun time at the cinema. During the first half, which mostly serves to set up the premise and raise its own stakes, I was totally enraptured. Its slow pace and emotional introductions to characters reminded me more than a bit of Friedkin's original, to say nothing of the editing and sound editing and even some cinematography, all of which feel true to form from the original. Clearly these filmmakers have done their homework and are trying to make a spiritual and aesthetic sister-film to the 1973 classic.

I don't want to focus too much on plot, but it bears mentioning that the film starts off without clear ties to demons or possession at all, much like the original. There is a disturbing opening event in a distant country again, but that doesn't really add much to the mythos. The first half sets itself up as more of a mystery than anything else, and I quite liked that, though I'd have preferred something more along the lines of Prisoners or Picnic at Hanging Rock if we were going that route. During these scenes, the film's use of silence and negative space make for occasionally eerie moments that force us to wonder if there is already evil at work in the lives of our main characters.

As far as characters go, nothing can really match the Chris and Regan MacNeil dynamic (nor that of Merrin and Karras, for that matter), but there are some intriguing faces. Victor (Leslie Odom, Jr.) is the protagonist, whose past haunts him: his pregnant wife was killed during an earthquake on vacation in Haiti, though her child was saved. In the present, Victor is a great father to Angela (Lydia Jewett), though flashbacks and an eventual climactic revelation will throw it all into dramatic levels we didn't quite expect. Their relationship is pretty great; everyone else in the film feels shoved in, cobbled together, and largely forgettable, sadly. The young teenager Angela and her best friend Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) go on a "study break" after school, when they sneak into the woods and attempt to communicate with a spirit (presumably Angela's mother). When they disappear, Victor and the other girl's Catholic parents (Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz) collide as they attempt to mount search parties and support each other.

I got excited when more characters were introduced who are not Catholic. Given the uptick in possession films in non-Catholic contexts, which has been lovely, it makes sense for an Exorcist in this day and age to be more interfaith. To that end, there's a nice fine line drawn between what this movie is setting out to do as opposed to other Catholic exorcism movies of late that seem to opt for the Grand Guignol approach to theatricality (think of The Nun and The Pope's Exorcist). Here, Green and his team seem more interested in the psychological and spiritual approach to the story and characters, resulting in a climax of interfaith religious leaders working together to fight the demonic force possessing the young girls. Over the course of the film, we see a female priest, a former nun (an underused Ann Dowd), a fearful padre, and even a witch doctor of sorts (Okwui Okpokwasili), all of whom join up to fight Pazuzu on multiple theological fronts. Multiple, that is, until the end of the climax, when it all boils down to pretty clearly Christian language. I had hoped for more and better, so let's hope the writers come up with something a little different next time.

Then there's Chris MacNeil, played again by Ellen Burstyn, who is utterly wasted in this film. She's brought in oddly as a sort of legacy aid, by virtue of her having published a book on her experience decades ago. As fallout from that, her daughter Regan has gone into hiding and cut off communication. But Chris seems willing enough to help Victor and Angela, so she leaves her oceanside retreat to engage with the devil yet again. When she arrives, she's treated like Father Merrin reincarnated, as if she's a spiritually battle-hardened champion ready to cast out her nemesis. It makes little to no sense, and the frail old woman is quickly subdued by the demon. One wonders how she'll be used moving forward, because this was pretty pathetic, and I'd say fairly insulting to a character (and actor) we all so dearly love.

Critiquing the first part in a planned trilogy is difficult, especially one meant to cater to fans of an original fifty years prior, because we simply don't know the big picture yet. But for what it is, Believer is a lot of fun on its own terms. I'd say it's a refreshingly solid -- grounded -- entry in the genre, one that prefers realism to gonzo spectacle. There are about two moments of CGI that prove paranormal activity, and I fundamentally disagreed with their inclusion in this film, but for the most part it's all pretty reasonable. Better use of legacy characters will be crucial moving forward, but at least Linda Blair might be back for that. And I hope that the next two movies more fully develop their thematic concerns, whether about various faith approaches to possession and exorcism or about how emotional connections to each other can help us resist evil and heal from trauma. Obviously two incredibly well-meaning priests saved Regan but weren't strong enough to defeat Pazuzu before; we'll need something better this time around.

Frankly, I wish this series would have more in common with the short-lived television series, whether by including those characters, continuing those plotlines, or adopting those themes and aesthetic. It's unlikely, but it might stop my head from spinning and squirting pea soup.

Bones and All (2022)

Score: 2 / 5

It begins with a typical coming-of-age scenario: '80s teenager Maren sneaks out of her Virginia home to a sleepover with friends. Well, "friends," as we're not entirely sure she's got close friends. This might be more of a charity case, as the other girls seem a bit more popular and of a higher economic class. While there, Maren and one of the nicer girls chat intimately under a coffee table until Maren erotically bites the girl's finger. Erotically, that is, until it isn't: blood pours out and the girl starts screaming. Maren flees into the night back to her single father's house, where he immediately begins packing and tells her they are relocating. He's done this before.

Bones and All is a curious film, something akin to a road movie (think Bonnie and Clyde or Thelma & Louise, or the recent Queen & Slim) with a fascination of impoverished rural America. After her eighteenth birthday, Maren's father abandons her, leaving only some money, her birth certificate, and a taped recording of his voice recounting the ways he can't be her father. Essentially, she's a cannibal -- apparently by natural instinct -- and she's eaten several people. Her mother had abandoned her as an infant, but Maren decides to try and find her for some answers and possibly some love. Taylor Russell plays Maren with no small amount of grit and determination, though her angst and general downcast demeanor leaves some nuance and depth to be desired.

On her own, she soon meets Sully (a typically magnificent Mark Rylance), from whom she learns much more about her condition. They call themselves "eaters," these cannibals, whose hunger is an innate imperative. They can identify each other through scent, apparently, and have established some general guidelines for behavior, like keeping their crimes secret of course and not eating certain kinds of people (namely, other eaters). Sully is an eccentric drifter, but he seems lonely and a little too clingy on this naive young girl he's discovered. Shortly after they feast on an elderly woman together, Maren flees him. He's not happy about it.

As with road movies -- or odysseys, as some might call them, though most don't lead the protagonists back home -- this one divides itself neatly by location, usually introducing episodes with onscreen state abbreviations. Soon after fleeing Sully, she meets Lee, a young male eater whose dispassionate killing is a bit hard to stomach for Maren. He's meant to be a heartthrob for her (and us), but as played by an equally dispassionate Timothée Chalamet, he's surly and lanky and dull. He puts forth minimal effort in being a vaguely tortured young man finding his own way and failing, and the character never leaves the realm of cheap young adult dark fantasy. It's almost embarrassing to watch him perform in this; then again, the character isn't particularly interesting either, so perhaps there's blame to share.

They meet up with his sister briefly in Kentucky, who doesn't know about his condition or lifestyle and berates him. They intersect with two traveling eaters (played by Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green), whose seemingly amorous and amoral characters are utterly chilling. They even discover the whereabouts of Maren's mother from her grandmother and Maren meets her, though the mother (Chloe Sevigny in a delicious little cameo) is utterly mad and incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. She's also a cannibal -- indeed, cannibalized her own hands -- and her only meaningful interaction with her daughter is to attack her, convinced as she is that it's better to be dead than live like this.

Luca Guadagnino directs this adaptation by David Kajganich (The Invasion, Blood Creek, AMC's The Terror), with whom he collaborated on A Bigger Splash and Suspiria. They work hard to make real art out of the source material which, admittedly, I haven't read, but just can't be worthwhile if this is the result from such talented filmmakers. It seems they took what must be a young adult dark romance and tried to make it an arthouse exploration of young desire. Or something. Even apart from its embrace of the overpopulated and tired genre of road movies, Bones and All tries to visually mimic the works of Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven) and David Lowery (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, The Old Man and the Gun). Gorgeous rural landscapes and pastoral atmosphere makes for an earthy, transcendent love story, right?

Guadagnino pulls a lot of attention to Maren's father's voice recording (played by Andre Holland) as well as to photographs, suggesting perhaps humanity's fleeting existence, or the importance (and danger) of capturing images and moments in time, or even perhaps the intimacy implied by engaging with someone's likeness when they are not present. It's intriguing, but never really explored beyond casual interest. By the final act, the movie relies so heavily on flashbacks that I didn't much care what was really happening. There's a great final confrontation with Sully, easily the most interesting and scary scene of the film, but then the film concludes with a sickly sweet denouement that is over-explained by dialogue and neatly tied up by the wrong thematic conceit: love. In a movie that could have gone so many ways, the message is that there is always someone who has experienced your struggle and can help or hurt you. Who cares? Maybe that's a fault of the source material more than the film, but the filmmakers could have made it more interesting by far.

Halloween Ends (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

It's all over. Forty years after the original masterpiece, David Gordon Green revealed his revamped vision of what happens to the archetypal Final Girl after a lifetime of dealing with her trauma. And while designing a trilogy isn't groundbreaking these days, his approach to this franchise was certainly different than the onslaught of reboots, remakes, and requels of classic slasher horror that has dominated the genre for the last decade or so. As a planned trilogy, he could plan out exactly his brilliant steps: first, to fashion a Halloween that ensnared fans of the original due to proper character development and a straightforward and highly effective plot, and second, to then push the franchise to the edge of the possible and completely shock everyone with awe (and gore). And then, finally, to end it all. But how? Surely going into this film I wondered if it would be an all-out, balls-out brawl between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. But certainly that isn't sustainable for a feature film, not least because the characters are much older than most horror protagonists. So what to do?

In what I think is a genius turn, here the writers continue their spin outward from Michael. First, we saw his evil firsthand and its impact on one woman and her family in a tightly wound exploration of generational trauma. Then, in Halloween Kills, we got the consummate slasher film about Michael, in which his evil is at its peak and radiates throughout Haddonfield, infecting others and leading them to mob violence and chaos. No doubt partly due to the pandemic, the final installment feels detached. While it would have been nice to have all three taking place on the same night, or even having this one take place on November 1, I'm okay with the bit of a break because it allows the characters to actually demonstrate growth and development. So this film picks up four years later as Laurie and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are fully settled into their new life together. But instead of just making yet another slasher in which Michael escapes, arrives, hunts, and disappears, here the filmmakers decide to pull the most unexpected and -- crucially -- realistic ending for these characters they possibly could have.

If Michael is pure evil, as several characters in the franchise have exclaimed over the years, then it stands to reason that he cannot die, try as Tommy and his mob did to prove otherwise in the previous film. You can't just have another installment where they fight and maybe finally Laurie figures out a surefire way to kill him. I mean, in some ways, that does indeed happen in Halloween Ends, and their final fight is pretty brutal to watch. But the bulk of this film, by far, is about the nature of evil and how something like Michael happened in the first place. Thankfully, they didn't go back in time and try to create an origin story for him or try to explain his motivations, his methodology, or even his uncanny ability to bounce back from deadly injuries.

Instead, we're introduced to a new character, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who in the first scene is babysitting on Halloween night in Haddonfield. The year is 2019, a full year after Haddonfield's cozy neighborhood streets ran red with blood, and the town has not recovered. Fears of "the boogeyman" are more gripping than ever, yet the parents Corey is sitting for are unwinding a different way, heading to a party nearby. Corey's charge is a spoiled little brat who wants to watch inappropriately scary movies and play practical jokes; when one goes terribly awry, the kid accidentally falls to his death and Corey is immediately suspected of murder. This simple and chilling opening scene sets up what could be an annoying way to continue the franchise with a new baddie, as many pessimistic viewers will surely roll eyes about, but it works damn well as a reminder that this is kind of how the first one started back in 1978.

I still hate that Laurie's daughter Karen (Judy Greer) got killed off so unceremoniously and violently. I don't really understand how Laurie went from a paranoid survivalist to a thriving suburban house mom (house grandmother, I guess) in only four years during a pandemic and while Michael is clearly still out and about. I don't really understand how Michael survived four years in the sewers without getting caught or leaving or finishing what he started. But these points aside, I found the shifting focus onto Corey to be refreshing and terrifying, not unlike what we've seen in other sympathize-with-the-devil films lately like Joker. A bad thing happened to Corey -- who may or may not be slightly predisposed to some behavioral problems, as early scenes arguably suggest in vague, veiled ways -- and as a result, Haddonfield created a new monster. Michael's slaughter of no fewer than 31 people the previous year made everyone primed to see monsters; now they picked one, and between the hurting, angry parents and the anxious, angry bullies at school, they work in sync to vilify a lone boy who doesn't really fit in and can't quite catch a break.

So when an injured and scared Corey stumbles across the boogeyman in a drainpipe, it's not without some fascination that we see Michael Myers tolerate his presence and even coordinate attacks with him. In a twisted mentorship situation, Michael shows Corey his M.O. and encourages the young man to satisfy his violent urges in cruel and vicious ways. Meanwhile, Corey continues to date Allyson, whose own teenage rebellion lets her finally get to be a bit of a "bad girl" after living in her mother's perfect house and now her grandmother's overwrought attempts at cookie-cutter normalcy. It's not a very believable romance, and the two actors leave quite a bit to be desired, but it's a solid storytelling device.

I found this film, compared with the previous two, to be less focused dramatically but perhaps more focused thematically. I also found its editing and cinematography to be less effective and even occasionally lazy; one wonders if larger portions of this film fell to the cutting room floor during production, or if the writers had too many ideas and didn't prune properly. As a Halloween film, it's not really up to par with the others. But thank goodness for that, because another rote flick in the franchise would have killed it in a bad way. And it does have a badass fight between Jamie Lee Curtis and The Shape, so there's always that lovely inclusion. As a horror thriller about the creation of a new villain, it's really quite wonderful and unexpected. And I think that's the most satisfying way to end the franchise: something fresh and interesting that reinforces the series' concept of evil. It is impossible and unknowable and unpredictable, and most importantly, it is very catching. 

Halloween Kills (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Here it is. Perhaps my most-anticipated movie of the year, and it's killer. Literally. Halloween Kills takes its title and runs with it in graphic, gory glory. The original 1978 film scared the shit out of us (and still does), and in the years since, Michael Myers has become something of a joke. The closer he got to the camera, the less scary he seemed; the more people tried to explain him -- in the movies, as Laurie's brother, or about the movies, almost always psychosexually -- the less mysterious and potent his terror. When David Gordon Green rescued the franchise from Rob Zombie's flaccid grip, retconning all the other films but the first, we were all a little nervous. But Halloween (2018) allayed my anxieties in that respect, even as it tied my constitution into knots. And now, in the continuation of Green's planned trilogy, we get the bloodbath that is the middle installment.

Much like the previous film, this one features Green's amazing ability to at once channel John Carpenter and make his own, new product. While he felt a little shackled in the first, like he was working to re-introduce old fans to his new vision through homage after homage, here Green is breaking free and playing his own twisted game. The story picks up immediately after the first one ended, with Laurie's house in flames and Michael trapped in its basement. A group of firefighters hurries to the house -- ignoring Laurie's screams to "Let it burn!" -- and are subsequently slaughtered. It's an interesting pseudo-homage to My Bloody Valentine, much as the previous film did with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which suggests to me that Green is making consummate works of horror art with these flicks. One can only imagine with gleeful anticipation what he'll do with his upcoming Exorcist reboot.

But so begins this chapter, which sees the diabolic Michael yet again stalking the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night (actually, the clocks show that it is after midnight for most of this movie, but November First would be a terrible new title). Once Karen (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichak), Laurie's daughter and granddaughter, learn that he survived, they alert the hospital and go into lockdown, certain that he's coming for his original Final Girl (Jamie Lee Curtis, of course). I wondered how much of this movie would feel like a reboot of Halloween II, in which Michael indeed follows her and butchers all the night staff at the local medical center. Not so much here, but the lockdown sequence begins easily the most surprising and shocking -- and realistic -- turn of events in this movie. Panic. Utter chaos as people get up in arms, angry about the bloodshed and renewed horrors of their past. The pot proverbially boils over, and many people are hurt and even die without Michael so much as coming anywhere near the building.

That's because he's far too busy. Much will be made, critically, of Michael's titular kills, but I couldn't help feeling awe at his prowess. Other Halloween entries have been criticized for having lower body counts than other contemporary slasher films. Not so here, which I expect may very well have the highest body count of any slasher. I lost count around 17, and that was at least half an hour before the end of the film, which features yet another bloodbath. A few nasty shocks took place in the previous movie -- especially one scene in which Michael enters two or three houses in a row to stab away -- but this one really showcases his murderous creativity. This movie reminds us, much as Rogue One did with Darth Vader, that Michael isn't a joke; this movie makes him utterly terrifying as the most prolific (hmmm... anti-lific?) serial killer we've ever seen. Perhaps most disturbingly, this film takes its time with most of its deaths, showing the suffering victims as they gargle on pooling blood and struggle to take their last breaths; one scene in particular, involving an older interracial couple and a fluorescent light tube, forced me to look away from the screen for the first time in this franchise.

In a third focal point for this wide-ranging but remarkably coherent film, we get a fabulous re-introduction to legacy characters played by their original actors. A 48-ish-year-old Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), drinking at a bar in observance of 40 years of Michael's lockup, cheers with other survivors of that fateful night in 1978. We've got Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards), and even Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, who was not in the original film although the bullying character was) whose son is dating Allyson. Even Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), the former sheriff whose daughter Annie was murdered by Michael, returns to wearily and warily oversee the events of this Halloween anniversary. Once they hear about the firefighter massacre, they drunkenly get up in arms and rally together a mob to hunt down Michael Myers once and for all. In their journey across town, they stop at the hospital and police station where Tommy whips them into a furious frenzy. Monsters beget monsters, you might say, and Tommy is pretty terrifying in these scenes as he begins the (admittedly campy) "Evil dies tonight" chants.

Surprisingly, Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton) survived his attack by the evil psychiatrist in the previous movie, but that's about the only good news here. We're finally given some much-needed backstory on him in a brilliant and beautiful flashback scene right away in this movie: transporting us visually and stylistically to Carpenter's masterpiece, Green shows us a young Hawkins chasing Michael after he disappeared from the Doyle lawn at the end of the '78 film. His own trauma stems from this scene, which puts him in bed thematically with Laurie and the others; their present-day scenes together in the hospital suggest their romantic past as well, which may have blessed them with a daughter, Karen, whose badassery almost steals this movie as well as the previous one.

Green's endgame here is still unknown, and frankly its mystery has compounded exponentially. Very few questions are answered in this film, and it deliberately sets up a lot more. Without spoiling the finale of Halloween Kills, after which very few characters seem to be still alive, we have to wonder what will happen in next year's Halloween Ends. Moreover, the mythos of Michael Myers himself is now under the most scrutiny I think it's ever endured. Those answers will come -- or not -- in time, but what remains is easily one of the most nihilistic and downright cruel slashers I've ever seen. Much as Green knows the franchise has survived off audience cheering each new murder, here he dares us to do so; in fact, he seems intent on forcing us to eat the cake we so often demand from this genre. "You want more blood?" he seems to ask; "here it is, and all the pain that comes with it." Much as the mob created to kill Michael has trouble facing its own violence, Green seems to turn the camera on us in the final sequence, asking what exactly we want in the final chapter of this franchise, and if we have the courage to stomach it.

Halloween (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

FINALLY. A Halloween movie worthy of the title. Move aside, Rob Zombie, nobody wanted you around anyway.

Jamie Lee Curtis is back in a big way as Laurie Strode, her iconic heroine, forty years after her introductory role catapulted her to stardom. Laurie lives an isolated life, dealing with her PTSD by fortifying her lone home out in the countryside. Unfortunately, her efforts to prepare for Michael Myers's inevitable return have also cost her more than physical labor and thicker walls. After two failed marriages, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) was taken by child services, but not before Laurie worked to train her with weapons and combat. Karen, now an adult, still lives in Haddonfield but maintains a strained relationship with her mother, largely trying to keep Laurie away from her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).

The story itself begins and unfolds much as that of the 1978 film: Michael breaks out from his asylum during a transfer and goes on a murderous rampage. This time, however, he isn't so much an unpredictable stalker-killer as he is a walking bloodbath. The body count is bigger in his first scene here than it was in the entire original film. Each death is more visually stunning and creative than the last, and while that sounds desperate on the filmmakers' part, it's actually quite effective in making Michael more terrifying -- he isn't restricted to a kitchen knife anymore. He also isn't restricted in his choice of victims now. He will kill and kill and kill on this night, seemingly making up for all the lost time.

In addition to the piles of corpses, this movie does some fascinating work in both re-imagining the original film and in following up with it. It quickly and absolutely discounts the events of all other sequels in the franchise, making itself the one and only sequel that matters. Which it arguably is. I'll always consider the 1981 sequel canon, because it's just fabulous, and it continues the story from the original quickly and concisely (with the exception of the whole Laurie-and-Michael-are-siblings thing).

This picture maintains a high level of both drama and horror, with emotional outbursts from Laurie and her daughter and granddaughter interspersed with them each being badass. Of course, the rest of the film similarly balances comedy, character development, and -- already mentioned -- some surprisingly brutal violence. The visuals and editing are definitely more David Gordon Green than John Carpenter, but Carpenter's palpable influence permeates the picture through music and images (which is appropriate, as Carpenter is credited for music). Green clearly struggles to both isolate his own vision for the movie and honor Carpenter and his fans, though a few gorgeous moments eke their way onto the screen; when Michael returns to Haddonfield there's a long take of him walking amongst trick-or-treaters and entering houses to...well, you know.

And then there's the film's climax, when Michael assaults Laurie's house and all three generations of women. I gasped aloud when I realized, quickly, that the scene would play out as an ingenious reversal of the original's climax. Without spoiling too much, it's nice to see the victims not only turn the tables but to in fact use their apparent helplessness to their own advantage. In an era of #MeToo and accountability and both recognizing and overcoming trauma, Halloween isn't just a fun and spooky movie. It's an important one.

IMDb: Halloween

Stronger (2017)

Score: 4 / 5

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jeff Bauman, a real-life victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing who lost both his legs. The film Stronger, based on Bauman's book of the same name, would seemingly be about strength, perseverance, and the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality of a Clint Eastwood movie (and the racist baloney that comes with his pictures). And, to some extent, the film is all about a man's efforts to rehabilitate.

But Stronger is far more than that: It's a surprising look at a man broken long before the loss of his legs. First and foremost a character study, the film follows Jeff as an underachieving young man whose charm and sweet demeanor belie an apparent inability to commit to anything. He still lives at home with his alcoholic mother, he recently broke up with his girlfriend, and he's always running late. When he does, finally, "show up" to something, namely the finish line of the marathon, cheering on his ex, the street explodes. When he comes to, one of his first conscious thoughts is that he had seen the bomber. The police follow his lead, and before long, Jeff is championed as a hero.

That's where the other characters in this study come into play. Boston itself is a crucial character in the film, often depicted as a mass of people cheering on hockey games and baseball games, holding banners on bridges, and buying each other drinks at the bar. They love their city, and the cry of "Boston Strong" rings out in every other scene. They lionize Jeff, whose family also basks in the glory. The Baumans, numerous and rowdy as they may be, are a "disaster", according to Jeff, but endlessly lovable. Eccentric perhaps to a fault, they are lead by Miranda Richardson in one of her very best performances.

Parts of the film are hard to watch, as it's not until the very end that Jeff gets his act together and embraces his new life. Constant fights between him and his mother and his girlfriend (Tatiana Maslany in a thankless but impressive performance) are interrupted by scenes of Jeff breaking down, alone, in bathrooms and elevators, binge drinking with his immature buddies, and traumatic flashbacks to the bombing. What started as a film about a single man's journey to rehabilitation quickly becomes a complex odyssey of a man coming of age, accepting responsibility, and navigating a world of loving relationships he had previously squandered.

It's also a film about a city, a thriving, pulsing community more intimately connected than many I've seen on screen. It helps that the filmmakers shot most of it in Boston and with local actors and non-actors. Some of the main players are even the people who were present at the marathon that day, and first responders to the crisis. That augments the realism of the film, as does the magnificent cinematography, much of which consists of long takes and carefully constructed blocking. I'd say the screenplay is important here as well, but so many of the scenes include what appears to be improvised dialogue that I'd have to include praise for acting as well.

Though it's pretty straightforward -- and I think more could have been made of the story -- Stronger is a charming and heartfelt movie, one that keeps you interested even as it slaps you with clichés. But for a movie that staunchly refuses to turn its protagonist into a hero (while everyone else wants to do just that), it makes for a fascinating character study and inspirational afternoon viewing. Plus, Jake Gyllenhaal is just wonderful.

IMDb: Stronger