|
Beau Is Afraid 2023 ★★★★
This certainly was a very trippy experience.
We encounter Beau Wasserman, a man living in... well... he could be in group therapy with Carrie White and she would ask “Are YOU okay?”.
Beau is the kind of mousy voiced character that always somehow manages to get himself in (deeper) trouble. Or at least deeper than before. Either in spite of his good intentions or without even having to do anything at all. Like that accident after which he is out cold or in coma and then somehow ends up with a psychotic version of mister Feeny (with a little bit of Annie Wilkes thrown in for good measure).
And from there, it keeps getting weirder and weirder. Just the people in that house alone. There's a couple with Misery-levels of warmth and pleasantness that only have you wonder about what lurks beneath the surface. Also because the director is Ari Aster, the (uncrowned) king of unheimlichkeit. Jeeves – an army veteran with PTSD out the wazoo – can snap and go on a killing spree at pretty much any given moment. And the daughter... well... first, she hates Beau, then she makes him smoke what I hope is weed before she takes her life in an unexplicable way and the only thing you need to know that everybody somehow ends up thinking that it's all his fault.
He then ends up with a bohemian theater community and then it gets really weird, with fashbacks and flashforwards, with Beau reuniting with his childhood crush, having sex with her and then somehow ending up killing her in the process (again, through no fault of his own).
And, as contradictory as this may sound... the more I was confused, the more I was fascinated. I wanted to know what came next, create some order in the chaos and you know what? I just wanted everything to end well for the poor bastard.
This movie is not for everyone. It might make you uncomfortable to the point where you want it to end of turn it off. But that level of discomfort is what it had in mind as a goal. So you know what you are getting into when you watch an Ari Aster flick. Also, when the end seemingly comes out of nowhere, I could not help but think “that's it? I want to know more”.
If any of this has swayed your confidence in the slightest, then you might to give this one a skip. But if you are touched by it, it will be profoundly.
Bayi Ajaib 2023 ★★★½
Amateur sales pitch: this movie opens with a pregnant woman being raped by what can only be described as Father Christmas in pyjamas. Just the right amount of what the hell to get you as a viewer intrigued.
The general is nothing special. Life in exchange for wealth and prosperity and all the trouble that come with that. Add a conventional twist ending and you are done.
What comes in between can best be described as an Indonesian knock off of The Omen with some good effects (with the possessed child looking like a better version of Threefinger) and decently worked out dread. Not to mention the father, whose moustache and sometimes jovial and sometimes ruthless demeanor kind of reminded me of Daniel Day Lewis' character in Gangs of NewYork.
For fans of religious or non-English spoken horror.
Deathly 2015 ★★★
An entertaining short with a nice jump scare and a well worked out revenge theme.
I'm glad the makers got Alan Ruck to star in this one. Not just because it's nice to be able to recognize people in the cast. Also because he looks innocent and sympathetic enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, longer than one perhaps should.
That said, the last shot seems a bit redundant. Perhaps better to end on the family photo.
__________________
|