The Watchers (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

After assisting her father with his two most recent films and coming into her own on their (excellent) jointly-created series Servant, Ishana Night Shyamalan comes into her own with her feature-length film directorial debut. It's not entirely her own, produced as it is by her father and adapted from an effectively spooky novel by A.M Shine (which I also softly recommend). The material seems like something her father would have dreamt up, and between its folkloric conceits and its numerous twists before a major twist ending, it's the kind of story that has become synonymous with the Shyamalan name. For some, that will be a turn off. For me, it means a deliciously stylized foray into psychological fantasy horror with an emphasis on solidly PG-13 scares. And this fits the bill.

I won't recount the plot here. Partly because the marketing shared more than was necessary already, partly because the plot's unraveling is part of the fun. Please note, then, that I won't be tiptoeing around any spoilers moving forward.

Shyamalan's screenplay capably adapts the source material here, which will land well for some audiences but not all. Anyone who gets easily irritated or frustrated by plot holes and unrealistic logistics should steer clear of this material, both in literary and cinematic forms. It doesn't make sense that the forest or its titular inhabitants haven't been found, being on apparently an easily accessible route between Galway and Belfast; it doesn't make sense that nobody has followed up there, considering the plentiful missing persons posts en route (not to mention the numerous workers who were sent there to build a bunker and never returned). It doesn't make sense that, despite having been in the bunker for many months, its inhabitants aren't starving or ill or even emaciated or mentally unstable. It doesn't make sense that the "points of no return" encircling their bunker are so elaborately and deviously decorated (a la Blair Witch). It doesn't make sense that the professor's office is perfectly dusted yet completely untouched after his absence of what seems to be several terms.

Audiences eager to critique (here meaning criticize and condemn) movies for this won't be able to see the forest for the trees. But anyone who prefers cerebral meditations to generic conventions -- anyone eager to critique (here meaning analyze lines of artistic curiosity) movies for more than plot -- should enjoy this trip into the darkest woods. Shyamalan films, once you allow yourself to slip into their frequencies, have a hypnotic power that emphasizes their own internal logic. Even when that logic isn't necessarily obvious. For example, here we almost never see the characters eat, and when we do, it's the crows or whatever they are able to catch; so what does the golden conyer parakeet thing with them eat? Is it a cannibal? But in context, this isn't a survival horror story; it's a fantasy horror story, and the bird is less a cause for concern than a small, almost angelic force of nature.

After all, the film is drowning in its own color palette. Shyamalan and her cinematographer use heavy color grading to make everything very blue in hue, and it carries into production design as well, as when we see protagonist Mina, wearing blue, driving her blue Jeep into the blue-green wilderness, stopped in a shadowed blue copse as bluish wisps of fog curl up around her. Key points of contrast include the salvific sunlight, always a bright yellow, the amber lights of the bunker's secret basement that will point their way forward and out, and of course the yellow shock of the caged bird that eventually guides them out of the forest. Color theory, some might call it, is in full force here, as if a grad student was behind the visual dynamics of this film.

More importantly, the titular creatures themselves are wonderfully realized and terrifyingly rendered. Really, and with only few exceptions, this film is a pleasure to behold. It's been a long time since I've been impressed by fantasy horror (and precious few new titles even approach that subgenre), though here, as with its source material, I find something like The Hallow or even Lady in the Water important points of reference to understand what The Watchers is up to. While, having recently read the novel, I was annoyed at the different architecture of the bunker, the hurried chronology of events, and the overly sentimental finale, I found myself tensing at all the proper (mostly predictable) moments and riding the roller coaster for all its fun, silly contrivances, which is exactly what we're meant to do.

What else is there to say? Lots. Forgive the rambling, but here we go.

Shyamalan's strengths, beyond atmosphere and tone, are rooted in fantasy and plain-faced horror more than in suspense, tension, or drama. Her screenplay hamstrings earned character development, cheating her actors out of grounded stakes or opportunities for variation. And the performances are all pretty flat here, though Olwen Fouere manages to be effectively creepy. Georgina Campbell is a mess because her character should be a mess but isn't at all, instead being weirdly mothering and also determined to dance in a nonsensical manner for her unseen audience. Dakota Fanning is actually annoying and seems to think that leaving her mouth open is an acting choice. Granted, they're not done any favors by the dialogue, which dumps exposition in every scene like that's its job.

I rarely say this, but this film should have been at least half an hour longer, if only to spread out the exposition (because, truly, the material by definition requires a LOT of world-building). That would allow for interpersonal drama between the characters as well as belief in their starvation and loneliness. Shyamalan does, however, turn her focus toward the more artistic pursuits of intangibles: this movie isn't about the scares, the survival, or even the material reality of what she's built. It's about watching. Voyeurism and mirroring and duplication are the themes at work here, in almost every scene, from Mina and her twin sister Lucy (though those literary names are more distracting than illuminating) to the near-constant shots in reflective surfaces, from the mimicking bird that isn't supposed to be talking to the watchers themselves -- revealed to be shape-shifting fae -- everything is carefully calculated to impress on us the odd balance between individuality and conformity in a world meant for survival through adaptation. It's a whole thesis, and Shyamalan seems content to give us bullet points in rapid fire succession. Which is to say, it will make for a comfy, cozy spooky watch on streaming, and perhaps that's where it's best kept.

Tarot (2024)

Score: 1.5 / 5

A group of seven friends rent a mansion in the Catskills to celebrate a birthday and, while there, they discover a box of unique Tarot cards in the basement. Naturally, they use them to read their astrological horoscopes and soon after their readings start to come true in the worst ways possible. As their friends die in violent ways, the survivors race against time to learn the mystery of the deck and stop its curse from continuing.

There is nothing -- nothing -- original about this story, the latest example of the same plot used in horror films for well over fifty years now. Naughty, pretentious, vaguely self-aware teens (who inexplicably can afford a mansion as their weekend getaway) read the proverbial Latin and summon an evil force that preys on them one by one. That's what the film is and is meant to be, so perhaps a rote screenplay and familiar ground isn't the point? Sure, let's follow that line of thinking.

What, then, could Tarot offer a discerning audience? A masterful plot twist, or unexpectedly timely character arc? Sadly, no such luck. I hoped that perhaps the reader of the cards might have an ulterior motive, revealed in climactic fashion, or that the cards themselves might be sentient. Again we are disappointed. SPOILER ALERT: the cards formerly belonged to an 18th century astrologer whose daughter was unjustly murdered by a grieving baron, so she cursed the cards to kill anyone who used them in the future. Yet it's also very much the same astrologer who appears to possess the cards, manifesting as the various figures as she haunts and hunts her victims. So the internal logic of the central horror conceit doesn't quite line up.

Frustrating as that may be -- and indeed it is -- it is not the film's only nor greatest sin. First-time feature directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg have no clear sense of what exactly they are filming. Helped by an unfocused and droll screenplay, they are unable to determine which (if any) characters are worth investing in, leaving us adrift in an ensemble of actors who look and perform like they'd rather be doing anything else. The only interesting thing for us is to see when and how they will inevitably face their fates. Well, if it is fate; the "main" character, who recently went through a breakup, spends lots of time talking about fate but conveniently forgets her own words repeatedly. Worse still, the directors never engage with any tone for the proceedings, allowing one particularly annoying character (Jacob Batalon) to crank out obnoxious attempts at comedy and others to be simpering, shaken, or silly in their turn.

The kills are the only memorable parts of this film for me, and even most of them are lackluster in terms of editing technique, recalling as they do scary flicks from the early 2000s. The designs of the manifested cards -- mostly practical -- are pretty great, which is a boon. But they are featured so briefly, in such woefully dim lighting, and with such choppy cuts that they're hardly introduced before disappearing again. If this was meant to be a creature feature, why don't we see more of the goods? If it's meant to be a possession shockfest, where's the ingenuity and creativity with these nominally diverse bodies? If it's meant to be a warning against occultism (or, better yet, a satire on teens and New Age spirituality, which is absolutely the direction I'd have taken), where is its earnestness or conviction?

The irritatingly vaguely titled Tarot is apparently based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope, and while I'm curious about that material and hope it's more inventive than this dismal adaptation, I'm more curious why that fabulous title wasn't carried over. Perhaps the writers (also the directors, mind) took to heart the idea of being read to and so decided to read to us, over-explaining every single step of the plot in exposition that had me audibly groaning in the theater. Wasting its potential for novelty, the film relies on the worst kind of jump scares in the most predictable places, insulting the monster designer by poorly lighting and frantically jerking us away from the film's most interesting assets. It also insults its own production designer by starting us in a suitably creepy mansion (please ignore the unlikelihood of that, as a rule) and then tossing us into a shitty college campus for most of the movie. A movie that insults its own creative minds -- and the only ones with clear artistic effort here -- doesn't deserve to have a life of its own.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Requels are great until they're not, and we've had some great ones lately. Between Scream, Halloween, and Candyman, we're in a golden age of the fairly recent genre phenomenon. It was only a matter of time before one revamped its respective franchise without the respect or "legacy" aspect the requel format requires, being both a reboot and a sequel (usually to the original classic). I was partial to Evil Dead (2013) and Friday the 13th (2009) during the early 2010s, although some fans weren't, and I think those paved the way for the last few years of our renaissance. Unfortunately, the latest horror requel (at least, before David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy ends and his upcoming Exorcist requel is finished) misses its mark repeatedly.

Much like Green's project, it feels that the producers of Texas Chainsaw Massacre decided to make a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper's original 1974 film and ignore the long series of sequels and remakes and prequels that have littered the franchise. I've actually quite enjoyed each installment since 2003 (I hate the original three sequels), and I was still excited for this new vision, despite its unceremonious debut as a Netflix original film. But the new one from director David Blue Garcia is a bit of a mess, and I don't mean that in a good way. What goes wrong? Let's dive into the blood bath.

As a standalone film, it's pretty mediocre. A group of young entrepreneurs travel to Harlow, all but abandoned, to auction off property and create a new town of young influencers deep in the heart of Texas. A bus of influencers is about to show up, so they need to check out downtown; they run into an isolated woman and what appears to be her son who refuse to leave their place in the middle of downtown. When they force her out, we know it's only a matter of time before her "son's" rampage begins. The supposedly cautionary tale about gentrification hits us pretty hard over the head, though it's never really explored beyond that, just punished in gleeful fashion. Similarly, the new protagonist is immediately established as a final girl when she reveals that she survived a school shooting. The problem with this is that the screenplay treats this a bit exploitatively rather than substantively, and it's annoyingly obvious (when she meets the trigger-happy open-carrying Man of the Town, who is admittedly a studly man) that she'll have to overcome her hatred of guns and use one by movie's end. It's very Chekhov. It's also weirdly pro-gun (I kept waiting for the "only a good man with a gun can stop a bad man" line, but this was never so simply verbalized), which doesn't fit current discourse in the genre or in real life. On the other hand -- much like the original film -- this movie is really quite beautiful to watch, and the colorful, inspired cinematography by Ricardo Diaz makes up for a lot of the film's shortcomings.

As a sequel, the film started with some promising tidbits. Its opening sequence with voiceover narration was effective in putting us back in the feel of the franchise. We meet the new young people who populate the film -- their names don't matter because they're all chainsaw fodder, and especially in this film they all make unforgivably stupid choices again and again -- and as they head into what appears to be western Texas, they stop at a convenience store filled with Leatherface tchotchkes. It's kind of cool, Scream style, to see the iconic killer as a pop star with t-shirts and corkscrews honoring his legacy. And then there's the gore, which is wonderfully disgusting. The violence itself is only occasionally brilliant (the film's first kill is sudden and shocking and definitely scream-inducing), mostly because the characters are insufferable and there is basically no tension, but the gore is thoroughly satisfying. In fact, I felt that this might be the first time in the franchise where we actually see the title's promise played out in a single scene. The "bus scene" will be surely talked about most in this film, as its terrified passengers film the onslaught with their phones as they drown in the ungodly massacre. It's a pretty great sequence.

As a legacy sequel, the film utterly fails. The whole point of legacy is to bring back the same characters and the same actors, right? Unless there's a major problem like untimely death, I suppose (thinking of our beloved Carrie Fisher in the Star Wars requel trilogy). But Marilyn Burns, who played the original survivor Sally Hardesty, passed away in 2014, and now the character is taken over by Olwen Fouéré, who looks the part well enough. The problem is that Sally was never a compelling character, nor even a true final girl (other than that she indeed survives); the aged Sally we meet now is too similar to Laurie Strode, a survivalist and veteran Texas Ranger always ready to hunt Leatherface and his family down. It doesn't ring true to the character, who we last saw driven to insanity and screaming from the back of a pickup truck. You've got to at least try and build off what came before. And then for the film -- SPOILER ALERT -- to kill her off after so little screen time made me angry. I mean, I was fine with her demise, but then why include her at all? The only hint is that she somehow survives long enough to shoot off another round into her foe before telling the new protagonist not to run "or he'll haunt you forever." Which I guess is a nice sentiment, but we've already had a more compelling feminist drama about overcoming trauma in a slasher movie, and it's not this.

As a reboot, I'd argue it fails on similar grounds. Gunnar Hansen, who played the original Leatherface, died in 2015, and is here replaced by Mark Burnham, who plays the character (perhaps we can't blame him so much as the producers and director) with far more intelligence than he should. This Leatherface has apparently been taken in by the town orphanage, though the story is conspicuously thin on details or exposition, and his bond with the current house owner Ginny (Alice Krige) is suggested to be important and possibly intimate but isn't explored at all. Moreover, this Leatherface doesn't feel like the psychologically challenged and/or mentally ill character we initially met in 1974, who screamed when intruders materialized in his house and changed his mannerisms drastically with each new mask. Instead, this one is almost superhumanly brutal -- the first kill involves a single-handed forearm break and a stabbing with the compound fracture -- and plans some of his creative kills in advance. Leatherface should be reactionary, not exploitative. Which is weird for a franchise built as grindhouse exploitation, but here we are.