Infested is a flick on Shudder that got me. Of course it is the French to do so, i miss the French New Wave of horror of the 00s. This here gets under your skin cause it is creepy & crawly. As someone that has a phobia of spiders this film really spoke to me.....or more so didn't speak to me haha. Very effective!
Yorgos Lanthimos is an odd director for me to pinpoint. I have admired all his films but really loved none other than Poor Things. With Kinds of Kindness he almost brings in his PT Anderson entree and kind of nails it. The film is perverse, subversive and provocative and had tremendous acting. The first segment feels the most Yargos, the second segment just feels random, the third is the tightest but maybe the weakest? It is a hard film to talk about because i don't really have an opinion, like most of his work it is well crafted yet tedious. Only film of his i have seen twice is Poor Things, this probably will not join that.
Longlegs is one of the most unnerving films in some time. In the film we follow Maika Monroe, as usual putting on a great performance, but here she is a more sheltered character and she nails it, as she tracks down serial killer Longlegs, Nicholas Cage giving possibly his best performance. The film itself is uneasy much like Silence of the Lambs or Se7en, but Cage ups it by being the creepiest of the creepy. The film is low key and very tight with glimpses of experimentation. Still wrapping my mind around the twist of why/how this killings happen but it adds another great horror film to 2024. This will find an audience with the true crime pod crowd i feel, and it deserves its birthday cake.
I loved the ideas in You'll Never Find Me, it is well acted and shot very well it just once again has the Shudder effect......it's dull and once something happens at the end, it feels too late. I wish i could say more about this but it just confirms that Shudder originals outside of a few, just feel lackluster.
I went months without Shudder, but after Late Night With the Devil i felt i needed it.....then after Nature of Violence i felt i didn't......but here we are, History of Evil, your typical boring Shudder fare. I am sure i will check out more of their 2024 films but this one here started off on a bad note. It looks good, and is well acted, just the plot felt like it wanted to go to some surreal places that is never went and ultimately wound up being a snoozer.
Maxxxine was my most anticipated film of the year and after viewing it, might be my favorite of the year too. Ti West gave us a gritty 70s slasher homage that felt authentic in X, he paid tribute to technical musicals in Pearl but here he gives us a film that feels very DePalma or Argento, a love letter to giallo cinema. It oozes the 80s blue aesthetic and is drenched as much neon as it is blood. I feel the ending will be divisive but please be kind and rewind.
