Barbarian: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but smart and original horror movie that keeps you on your toes. If you like horror, you’ll love this.

I must confess that I don’t consider myself to be much of a horror movie afficionado. That’s not to say that I dislike horror movies, just that a horror movie has to be very good movie for me to enjoy it. I know people who just adore the genre and watch every horror movie and love it just because it’s a horror movie, but that’s not me.

My taste in horror is pretty specific, I love supernatural horror movies like The Shining, The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, and I also like classic horror films. For example, this year on the week of Halloween I watched George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as well as the Universal Monster Movie classics Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and thoroughly enjoyed them all for their originality, craftsmanship and artistry.

In contrast, I didn’t watch the most recent and allegedly last movie in the seemingly endless Halloween franchise, Halloween Ends. I loved the original Halloween (and most John Carpenter films) but I just don’t see the need to ever watch another Halloween movie.

In the wake of Halloween, the holiday not the movie, I did sit down and watch a new horror movie that has generated some buzz recently and which is now streaming on HBO Max. That movie is Barbarian, which is written and directed by Zach Cregger, and stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgaard and Justin Long.

Barbarian was released in theatres in September and despite having the most minimal of marketing budgets, it generated an impressive box office of $43.5 million against a $4.5 million budget.

I knew nothing about Barbarian prior to seeing it and the HBO description simply says that it tells the story of a woman who gets stuck sharing an AirBnB with a strange guy. Red flags immediately went up for me when I read that description as I assumed the movie was going to be just another flaccid #MeToo-men-are-monsters movie. As a devout kidnapping enthusiast who over the years has kept a multitude of women captive in my incredibly creepy basement, the last thing I want to watch is another scolding “men are awful” movie, thank you very much.

Fortunately, Barbarian masterfully plays with that expectation, and while it most certainly is a meta-textual meditation on #MeToo and the menace of men, which at times gets a bit too heavy-handed, it’s also a sophisticated sub-textual criticism and fascinating deconstruction of the #MeToo archetype.

I will not even begin to delve into the plot of Barbarian in order to avoid any semblance of spoilers, but will only say that, thankfully, the movie is so deftly directed and written by Zach Cregger that it’s never what you expect it to be. In fact, the film uses viewer’s preconceived notions, assumptions and cultural conditioning against them to always keep them off-balance. The film keeps its audience on its toes and is always one step ahead.

The film is structured in three acts with each successive act luring viewers deeper and deeper into the disorienting maze that is Barbarian.

The first act, starring Campbell and Skarsgaard, is so well-done as to be astonishing. Cregger plants various notions into the audience’s mind as to what type of film this is going to be…a Detroit-based Amityville Horror? A mixed-race The Sixth Sense or a mixed gender Single White Female? A straight-forward rip-off of Saw? Or is it an homage to all of the above and more?

Just when you think you know what’s going on in Barbarian, Cregger nudges you in a different direction and leads you by your nose down into a very dark and disorienting path.

Act two features the criminally under-appreciated Justin Long in a fantastically Long-ian role that spotlights his likeability and immense talent. Once again, I will not get into specifics of plot, but the jump from act one to act two is so jarring as to be cinematically glorious.

I admit that act three is the weakest of the three, and I found it to be considerably less engaging, intelligent and challenging, but, once again without giving anything away, I think that has to do with the type of horror movie that act three is paying homage to…which is my least favorite type of horror.

The thing I enjoyed the most about Barbarian is that while it’s certainly a #MeToo movie, it never panders and or signals its socio-political virtue too much. It tackles that complex topic with a nuance and complexity that is shocking for a low budget horror film.

Also tantalizing is how Cregger turns the film into a profound statement not just on the predatory nature of men but also on the apocalyptic results of Reaganism on America and the dehumanizing nature of poverty.

While there were certainly some flaws in Zach Cregger’s directing, most notably in a scene shot in dim light that fumbles perspective (to avoid spoilers I won’t say anything more than that) and act three’s many mis-steps, he’s obviously a filmmaker with some interesting ideas. One can only hope that Barbarian is a stepping stone for Cregger to make even better things.

The bottom-line regarding Barbarian is that if you are a horror afficionado you’ll love this movie as it operates from a deeply well-informed position in the genre. If you are, like me, a rather fair-weather horror fan, or are less-inclined to enjoy the genre, Barbarian is good enough to be worthwhile even though it sort of loses its way in act three.

The reality is that 2022 has thus far been an utterly abysmal year for cinema, so Barbarian, despite its glaring act three flaws, stands out because it’s a well-crafted, original piece of work, and that is reason enough for me to recommend it.  

©2022

Werewolf by Night: A TV Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. It’s not great. It’s not terrible. It just is.

I love Halloween. Due to my being a rather weird, Irish-Catholic, existentially-obsessed, netherwordly-adjacent, ethereal Jungian shadow-magnet-at-heart, it has always been my favorite holiday. The problem with Halloween though is the same problem with many horror movies or Halloween-themed series or shows…they’re much better in theory than in practice.

As much as I love Halloween it was always a letdown as a kid because no matter how demonically cool MY costume, growing up in the Northeast, my parents always forced me to wear a coat over it because it was cold and parents always ruin everything fun. Such is life.

That said, every Halloween I still get fired up and filled with hope for some profoundly spooky connection…either in the real world or the less apparent one.

Which brings us to Werewolf by Night, which is the first “Marvel Studios Special Presentation” currently streaming on Disney Plus. The hour-long Halloween special stars Gael Garcia Bernal and is written by Heather Quinn and directed by Michael Giacchino.

The show is based upon the comic of the same name and tells the tale of a group of monster hunters who, in the wake of the death of master monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, compete to kill a monster and become possessor of the powerful talisman the Bloodstone.

There are elements of Werewolf by Night which I really liked. For example, it’s very clever that the special is filmed in black and white and consciously recreates the aesthetic of the Universal Monster Movies from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Universal Monster Movies are classics and I love them even if they are not quite as horrifying to modern eyes as they were back in the day, so I appreciated the aesthetic choice.

I also thought the casting of Gael Garcia Bernal, a terrific actor and pleasing screen presence, as the lead Jack Russell, was a wise decision, as was casting the always excellent Harriet Samson Harris, who nearly steals the show as the supporting character, Verussa Bloodstone.

I saw Harris on-stage in Chicago nearly twenty-five years ago in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Her performance was sublime but the play was inferior…such is life in the theatre. Here as Verussa Bloodstone she is gloriously weird and unnerving as a grieving widow and conniving step-mother.

And finally, there’s some top-notch CGI on display in the special in the form of the monster Man-Thing, a pleasant change from Marvel’s recent run of dismal special effects in both tv and film projects.

That said, the special also has some issues.

For instance, the Universal Monster Movie aesthetic is great but it’s undermined by the curious decision to insert somewhat graphic violence and explicit language – two things which were anathema back in the Universal heyday. To be clear, I’m definitely not someone fucking asshole opposed to violence and bad language in a tv show or movie! But the insertion of both things into Werewolf by Night is at cross-purposes with the throw-back atmospherics and ultimately ends up being a distraction and mood breaker.

Another issue is, as much as I agreed with Gael Garcia Bernal as the lead, the problem with Werewolf by Night is that it under-uses him, and instead focuses more of its attention and effort upon Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone. Donnelly is a less-than-compelling actress and Elsa a less-than-compelling character (at least in this special). Donnelly is like an acting vampire as every second she is on-screen she drains the life out of the show.

Thirdly, as good as the Man-Thing CGI is, the werewolf make-up/CGI is dreadful. If you’re going to update the Universal Monster Movies for the modern age, it’s the make-up CGI that has to do it, not inserting gratuitous violence and salty language.

The werewolf metamorphosis scene (of which I’ll give no relevant information regarding the characters involved so as to avoid spoilers) is good…until it isn’t. It starts off with the human to beast transition taking place in shadow on a wall behind a character as they watch in horror as it occurs in front of them. This works because its old-fashioned movie making where through camera placement and lighting, we see the transformation in shadow and the reaction to it in light. But then the camera slowly moves in for a close up of the reacting character’s face, and in so doing obscures the werewolf shadow until it is completely diminished. This is such directorial malpractice as to be criminal. The shot , if it moves at all, should’ve moved slightly in and down, putting the reacting face at the bottom of the screen and the werewolf shadow looming over it at the top, so viewers can see both simultaneously until the scene’s conclusion.

After that botched metamorphosis sequence, the werewolf comes into clear view and the make-up/CGI is so bad as to be laughable. This isn’t Teen Wolf level bad, this is I Was a Teenage Werewolf level bad.

As much as I like the Universal Monster Movies and admire the attempt to pay homage to them, I found director Michael Giacchino and the makers of this special lacked the skill and craft of their monster movie forefathers. They also certainly never earned the Wizard of Oz nod they gave themselves at the end of the special, which felt less like homage than blatant disrespect fueled by mis-placed ego indulgence.

I’ve not read the Werewolf by Night comics, so I have nothing invested in the success or failure of this Marvel special, but I couldn’t help feeling that it could have and should have been considerably better.

Ultimately, Werewolf by Night isn’t great and it isn’t terrible, it just is. And what it is - is an atmospheric, visually limited, narratively stunted, dramatically benign, rather slight, somewhat disappointing production devoid of horror.

I guess I’ll have to make a pilgrimage back to the original Universal Monster Movies again this Halloween to get my horror fix.

©2022

2020 Election: The Horror Show Meets the Decadent Death Spiral

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

Here are some random dispatches from the shitshow that is 2020 and the turd sandwich that is the election…

SPOOKY SEASON

Halloween, my favorite holiday, has sadly come and gone with barely a whimper due to coronavirus restrictions here in the City of Angels, where Mayor Nepotism furiously banned trick or treating but shrugs when it comes to “protesting”…i.e. rioting and looting. Unfortunately, spooky season isn’t in the rear view mirror just yet though because the real horror show is on Tuesday - Election Day.

THE MONSTER MASH

This election is between two creatures. First there is Biden - Frankenstein’s monster, built in a lab in Washington over the course of a dismal forty-plus year career. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Biden hides in a basement, can’t really speak, has a malfunctioning brain and touches little girls inappropriately. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, Biden won’t turn on his creator - Washington and Wall St., because he is as corrupt as the day is long.

I DON’T DRINK WHINE

The other creature is Trump, who is a vampire of the highest degree. Like a vampire, Trump is all about satiating his immediate desires and impulses. Like Dracula, Trump acts like low-class royalty with a crumbling real-estate empire (Carfax Abbey was a shithole - and so was Dracula’s dilapidated Castle!) and has an army of Renfieldian sycophantic minions who slavishly do his bidding. And also like Dracula, he feeds on humans…except in Trump’s case it is on human attention. Trump gorges himself on attention and has transformed the public, friend and foe alike, into slaves who react to his every act or utterance - no matter how absurd, thus injecting attention - his lifeblood, into his veins.

What is so striking to me about our current time is how thoroughly the populace has been inducted into this Vampyric Cult of Trump….and it isn’t his supporters I am talking about. The anti-Trump people…be they butt-hurt establishment Republicans or absolutely anyone on the left, are the ones who are totally under the sway of the monster they love to loathe.

It is utterly astonishing how obsessed Trump’s foes are with him. Every liberal and moderate Republican I know hates him with the fury of a thousand suns…but they never stop thinking or talking about him. Trump dominates American consciousness like no other person, president or otherwise, before him.

I know scores of liberals who are literally physically repulsed by the sight and sound of Trump but still religiously and masochistically watch every one of his speeches, debates or rallies. It is the strangest sort of masturbatorial self-harming imaginable. And accompanying this Trump addiction is TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is the most fervent pandemic ravaging the country today. Trump Derangement Syndrome has real world consequences as it turns once rational people into emotionally unstable and logic impaired lunatics. If I had a nickle for every time Trump made some statement that liberal friends of mine actually agreed with, but because Trump said it they actually change their minds to embrace the polar opposite belief, I’d be a millionaire.

UNDEAD VS RE-ANIMATED

I have stayed as far away from this election and its media coverage as I could. I have not watched a single second of any of the conventions, debates, speeches or rallies. I have not watched a second of cable news, or any other news, since coronavirus broke in the Spring. I have basically stopped reading op-eds in all of the major newspapers I peruse everyday because they are so dreadfully predictable.

The only thing I have watched is political entertainment (although all politics is entertainment, but that is a discussion for another day) like the abysmal Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher and John Oliver - and I’ve only done that because I have to for my work.

Having been in this election coverage quarantine has given me a unique perspective that is devoid of Trump triggering and fueled not by animosity but genuine curiosity. This curiosity has led me to the most basic of questions…can the nefarious Nosferatu of Trump be destroyed by the Biden Frankenstein’s monster? In other words, can the undead be defeated by the re-animated?

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE JOKER

As long time readers know, I have a wave theory…the Isaiah-McCaffrey Wave Theory (IMWT) that uses social, cultural, economic and historical data points to measure trends in order to predict public behavior.

The IMWT accurately predicted the 2016 election. In trying to use it to predict the 2020 Democratic nomination, it was wrong - or more accurately…I was wrong in interpreting the timeline. The data in 2019 and early in 2020 clearly indicated two things…that there would be tremendous civil unrest and upheaval ahead, and that an outsider candidate would be successful in 2020.

The unrest certainly happened…the outsider candidate did not…at least not in the Democratic primary.

As for the unrest….in my October 7, 2019 review of Joker, I wrote, “Joker is unnerving to mainstream media critics because it shines the spotlight on the disaffected and dissatisfied in America, who are legion, growing in numbers and getting angrier by the hour. As I have witnessed in my own life, the rage, resentment and violent mental instability among the populace in America is like a hurricane out in the Atlantic, gaining more power and force as every day passes, and inevitably heading right toward landfall and a collision with highly populated urban centers that will inevitably result in a conflagration of epic proportions.”

I ended that review by writing “Joker is a mirror, and it reflects the degeneracy, depravity and sheer madness that is engulfing America. Joker is an extremely dark film, but that is because America is an extremely dark place at the moment.”

In the light of what has happened thus far in 2020, those observations from the Fall of 2019 seem prescient.

According to the IMWT, Joker was the most important film of 2019, as it was the only film to be in the top ten in domestic box office and nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Joker was despised by establishment critics, but that was because they hated the uncomfortable truth about what was brewing just beneath the surface of America.

Now of course, being victims of their own sub-conscious and the collective unconscious, these same elites cheer the rioting, looting and violence in the streets because they think it is righteous. The angry clowns burning down Gotham in Joker, which elite critics despised, felt the same way.

The second most important film from 2019 was Parasite. Parasite won a remarkable four Oscars, Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Parasite was the ultimate outsider. It is a Korean film, and, like Joker, directly addressed class dissatisfaction and violence as a result of that class divide.

On October 14, 2019, I wrote in my review of Parasite, “Parasite is a brilliant examination of the frustration and fury that accompanies being at the bottom of the social rung in a corrupt and rigged capitalist system. The only way to get ahead and get out of the prison of debt, and it is a prison, is to lie, scheme and cheat. If that means throwing other poor people under the bus, then so be it.”

I concluded my review by writing, “My recommendation is to go as quickly as you can to the art house and see Parasite…it is that good. And after that, head to the cineplex to see Joker…again, and then when you get home watch Shoplifters (I see it is now available on the streaming service HULU)…because they are that good too. If you want to know what is coming for America and the world, and why, go watch those three movies.”

I stand by that review…and the one of Joker. It is worth noting that the titles of those two films, Joker and Parasite, would be a perfect starter set for a collage of buzzwords to describe Trump.

THE OUTSIDER WITH THE INSIDE TRACK

As for the 2020 election, what troubles me…and has troubled me since Biden’s selection as the Democratic nominee, is that, as the success of these two films, Parasite and Joker, clearly represent, the fundamentals of the IMWT haven’t changed much, if at all. They still point, very clearly, to an outsider winning the election. But while Biden is certainly out of office, he is the consummate Washington insider, and is selling himself as such

On the other hand, Trump’s greatest political accomplishment is that he has been president for four years and has still managed to maintain his status as an outsider. The political and Washington establishment hate him. The media hate him. The elites across the board hate him. Trump, despite his residence at the White House, is the archetypal outsider…and that should be disconcerting to those who want to see him lose.

I should disclose at this point that I will not be voting for either Biden or Trump. I have never voted for any Republican or Democratic candidate, and considering the shit show on the ballot, I am not going to start this year.

With that said…the signs in the IMWT do currently point to Trump winning re-election. I know this is aggressively contrary to conventional wisdom and the polls and the media coverage. But the theory says what it says even if it isn’t saying it nearly as strongly as it did in 2016.

Maybe the theory is wrong, that is certainly a possibility as this year has been an odd one in which there is a paucity of cultural data due to the film industry essentially being shut down due to the coronavirus. It is very difficult to measure movements in public sentiment through box office receipts when people can’t go to the movies.

That said, what little data we do have for 2020 does lean towards Trump. Without getting into the weeds on all of it, just consider that the number one film at the U.S. box office this year is Bad Boys for Life. That is such a pro-Trump title it could be his campaign slogan.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the IMWT just because it can be pretty tedious, but if Trump does win I will write a separate article detailing all of it. If Biden wins, I will eat my crow and go back to the drawing board.

ANECDOTAL

In early August I thought it was impossible for Trump to win. The pandemic was raging, the economy collapsing, the country awash in civil unrest. In addition, I knew absolutely no one who was voting for Trump, and like famed film critic Pauline Kael, I thought, how can Trump win if no one I know is voting for him?

Then I started making some calls and reaching out to people from across the country and most specifically in swing states. The anecdotal information I got from these discussions was eye-opening.

The word on the street…again entirely anecdotal…was that Trump had a large groundswell of support in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Surprisingly, I was also hearing a lot of anecdotes about Latinos being strong Trump supporters.

Of course, anecdotal evidence is not worth a damn, but I found it striking how vociferous the pro-Trump sentiment seemed to be. I definitely heard from people who were voting for Biden too, but none of them were voting FOR Biden, only against Trump - once again highlighting how Trump dominates the collective consciousness.

UNIMAGINABLE TRUMP

Trump currently being the center of the cultural universe has created a situation where it is impossible to imagine him winning while simultaneously impossible to imagine him off of center stage. This is Trump’s power and his greatest asset…he forces you to feel forcefully about him…be it love or hate. And by doing so, makes himself psychologically indispensable.

Everything that is said or done nowadays is said or done in response to Trump. He is the straw that stirs the drink, as well as the glass that contains it and the concoction within it.

Trump is like coronavirus…he is everywhere, so much so that it is impossible to remember a time before the disease descended upon us. Everyone yearns for the time before but few can remember it. The myopia brought about by both coronavirus and Trumpism (and TDS) brings with it a suffocating paranoia and ever increasing delirium.

This is another reason why I think Trump will win…and that is because the entirety of our media suffer from this Trump/coronavirus myopia, paranoia and delirium, and therefore have a totally distorted perspective on reality here in America.

The media hate Trump so much but they desperately need him. Trump is their lifeblood just like they are his.

NAME THAT COUP TUNE

I have noticed something very disconcerting in the months leading up to election day, and that is that the media have been amplifying voices and narratives that seem eerily familiar to me. The voices and narratives highlighted talk incessantly about Trump stealing the election, not leaving office if he loses, and doing all sorts of nefarious authoritarian things.

One of the most repeated claims I hear is that even if Trump wins on election night, he isn’t really the winner. That it will take weeks and maybe a month to figure out who won. This is accompanied by claims that Trump will declare himself the winner on election night as part of his plan to steal the election.

Why I find all this unnerving is because this is so blatantly taken from the CIA’s playbook when they run a coup in Latin America, South America or Eastern Europe. A brief perusal of the recent coup in Bolivia where Evo Morales was ousted is a prime example.

The intelligence community is gunning for Trump no less than they went after Kennedy, and I think they aim to steal the election from him. I know most readers, particularly the liberal ones, think the exact opposite, that Trump is going to steal the election, but that is also part of the CIA’s mind game.

The intelligence community’s fingerprints are all over multiple anti-Trump operations from the get-go…be it the farcical Russia-gate or Ukraine-gate or the multitude of other scandals plaguing this inept administration. This is not to say that Trump is some squeaky clean scapegoat, it is to say that the intelligence community is actively working to undermine and, in a 21st century way…politically assassinate/eliminate him.

I don’t like Trump…and in fact have despised him from way back in the 80’s when he first started selling his bullshit in public. But that doesn’t mean I will turn a blind eye when the intelligence community is running disinformation and destabilizing operations within its own country.

When stories driven by anonymous sources come to the forefront declaring that USPS mailboxes are being removed, and Russians are penetrating voter rolls and the winner on election night isn’t the winner, understand that this is CIA manipulation through and through.

Keep your eyes and ears open on election night and in the days and weeks following…the game is on and will be hiding in plain sight.

RIOT TIME

If Trump wins…this country will lose its mind and you can expect an unprecedented and massive amount of rioting, looting and violence in the streets of American cities both big and small. These riots will be epic and make the George Floyd riots seem like a church picnic.

If Biden wins, there will be only sporadic rioting…like after a team wins a championship. People will celebrate, it will get out of hand and shit will get looted. Whereas if Trump wins…expect volcanic and violent chaos for weeks and months on end. And expect the media and elites to endorse and support this violence and chaos just like they did over the summer.

As for Trump supporters rioting in the wake of an electoral defeat…I don’t think that will happen. Trump supporters are not in urban areas, for the most part, which makes it difficult to gather en masse to riot.

CONCLUSION

Biden is selling an image of America (and himself)…gentle, neighborly, soft-spoken…that is a lie. And ironically, Trump is selling the truth. Trump is the manifestation of the madness that has descended upon America. This is a narcissistic nation of bullies and blowhards, cowards and con-men. Trump is not what America hopes to be, or what it deludes itself into thinking it is…he is simply the embodiment of America’s reality. This is why he will win. And even if he loses, that won’t change the reality of America, only the power of its delusions.

And understand, Biden is not a “return to normal” as there is no “return to normal”…only getting used to the new normal. A Biden presidency will be America’s dementia made manifest. This election…even if Biden wins…will change absolutely nothing. The dye is cast…the worm has turned…the American experiment, the American Empire, and with it its house of cards economy…are disintegrating. This country is in a decadent death spiral and no election, and particularly not one between two elderly, mental defectives who even in their primes were sub-mediocrities, like Trump and Biden, will alter that trajectory.

This election - which like every election of my lifetime has been dubbed the most important election of all time, is nothing but a vacuous pissing contest between oblivious elites eager to see who gets to captain the Titanic.

©2020