THE BIKERIDERS

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

The Bikeriders has an odd, very unusual thing working against it—which is Austin Butler. And not because he’s bad, but because well, frankly, he’s too beautiful. It becomes a liability to suspension of disbelief. This is a story about a Chicago motorcycle gang in the sixties, and with Butler’s pretty face taking up so much of the screen space, it doesn’t feel that far from a biker gang in which one of them is a beauty queen.

It’s probably safe to assume Austin Butler himself would not be pleased to hear this. He has already made a name for himself in which he fully immerses himself into wildly divergent roles, from Elvis to Dune Part Two—so much so that, indeed, I have actually taken to seeing him in movies solely for the chance to see him act. Indeed, it’s the sole reason I decided to see The Bikeriders at all: because I love Austin Butler as an actor. It’s ironic that it should be his beauty that becomes the movie’s greatest liability.

I mean, Butler himself and director Jeff Nichols seem to think that the way to make his Benny character more “rugged” is just to give him some facial scruff. Well, he’s got piercing blue eyes, perfectly quaffed hair, and most incongruously, perfectly straight and shiny-white teeth. He’s also a 6-foot tall, perfectly lean, 32-year-old man. How is a little scruff going to combat any of this to make him fit in with all these other scruffy bike riders who look like they haven’t showered in a week?

So here’s the other thing about The Bikeriders, which, as a story, is fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, and honestly the distraction of Austin Butler’s appearance is the only thing that qualifies as a real liability—others might argue the same of either Jodie Comer’s or Tom Hardy’s accents, but on those points, I disagree. The performances, across the board, are actually phenomenal. It’s a level of talent that seems wasted on a story this unremarkable.

The narrative point of view comes from Comer’s character, Kathy, who winds up marrying Benny. She undergoes several interviews with a photo journalist played by Mike Faist (previously seen as Riff in the wonderful 2021 Spielberg adaptation of West Side Story), thus becoming the film’s voiceover narration. The Bikeriders is “inspired by” a book of the same name, and Comer’s vocal performance, with a very distinctive Midwestern accent not used by anyone else in the film, is reportedly uncannily similar to that of the real Kathy the character is based on. Some people are distracted by it; for me, it works.

The leader of The Vandals, the motorcycle club Benny is an eternally stoic member of, is named Johnny and played by Tom Hardy, an actor with similarly immersive methods. His vocal performance is also a pointed choice, giving Johnny a very working-class Chicago accent that is pitched at a slightly higher register. These three characters form a sort of love triangle that is mostly lacking in animosity, the struggle mostly being between Johnny and Kathy vying for Benny’s time and loyalty.

I won’t go so far as to say The Bikeriders bored me, but there were times when it got close. I’d love to see performances this great, from these specific people, perhaps even together as they do have chemistry, in a better story. I just didn’t care that much about the fate of this motorcycle club, the dark arc of which has already long been a matter of public record and told many times, if not about this specific club. It’s a strange thing, for there to be so many great things about a movie, but if the script isn’t quite there, the rest of it doesn’t make as much of a difference as you’d hope. Ultimately The Bikeriders is a film showcasing a ton of talent, but is definitively less than the sum of its parts.

He’s pretty to look at: which was all I could think about.

Overall: B

GHOSTLIGHT

Directing: A
Acting: A+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A

Ghostlight is the kind of movie whose excellence comes at you gradually. In the beginning, it’s just a small family, two middle-aged parents dealing with the exasperating antics of a teenager, who is facing expulsion from school for her behavior, but if some cards are played right she might get only suspension.

The great thing about it is what seems at first to be so unremarkable about them all. Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is not the precociously eloquent teenager seen in most films like this. She’s clearly genuinely smart, but the ways she acts out, the things she says, are meant only to disrupt, and since that takes little actual effort to do, what actually comes out of her mouth is often just plain dumb. She punctuates her mouthiness with annoyingly unnecessary profanity.

Her parents, construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) and teacher Sharon (Tara Mallen), actually aren’t that much different. They don’t resort to profanity, but resort to other things that are just as unhealthy, such as Dan’s violent outbursts or Sharon barely managing to communicate with either of them. The script, by Kelly O'Sullivan, takes some time to reveal exactly what this family’s damage is, and since the story unfolds this way I won’t spoil it here. Suffice it to say that they suffered a horrible tragedy, and they are actively engaged in a lawsuit against another family in response to it. This would qualify as another unhealthy approach to dealing with their trauma.

The real hook of the story here is Dan’s random invitation to join a local community theater troupe, which is putting on a production of Romeo & Juliet. He meets an ex-professional actor who is around his age, Rita (Dolly de Leon) when first she asks him to try keeping the noise down with his construction work. But later, after she witnesses one of his outbursts, she explains to him that “You looked like someone who might like to be someone else. For a while.”

Dan’s organic integration into this play, in which they are forced into the backward yet somehow charming representation of teenage leads played by middle-aged actors, proves to be a way for him to process his deeply repressed emotions.

It only occurred to me just now to consider how often Shakespeare’s work featured a “play within a play,” and eventually we see a fair amount of this Romeo & Juliet in production in this film: another play within a play. Clearly a concept that dates back four hundred years, but here co-directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson do something very different with it: we see the performance of this play acting in real time as a visceral metaphor for the grief the actors themselves are going through. To see the nuance performed in this context, particularly on the part of Keith Kupferer, is breathtaking. Shakespeare’s writing alone is moving enough, and on top of that we see Dan finally acknowledging his own grief in his delivery of it.

In another person’s hands, the performance of Romeo and Juliet by older actors might come off as corny or cheap. Here, it’s deeply moving. So, yes, Ghostlight is in its way a tearjerker, but it has plenty of levity as well. I got several good laughs out of this movie. But whether it’s comical or tragic, there’s an unusually grounded representation of these characters, all of whom look, and act, like regular people. No one in this film looks like a movie star, and that is as it should be; if they did, it wouldn’t work. This especially applies to the rest of the characters rounding out the cast of the Romeo & Juliet production, most of them older people pursuing theater as a hobby. There’s a couple of younger men too, because when it comes to community theater, it takes all kinds. But without a younger woman, Rita gets the part of Juliet, simply because she gave the best read at her audition.

Ghostlight is secretly one of the best films of the year, because it feels like a “small movie” and yet it’s so much bigger once you wade into its gentle waves of emotional resonance. It exists in a cocoon of fondness for its own characters, no matter how flawed they are, and it’s impossible not to feel warmed by it.

A genuinely new take on Romeo & Juliet is an impressive achievement indeed.

Overall: A

THELMA

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

The marketing for Thelma would have you believe that it’s “The Beekeeper with senior citizens.” Both movies are about the seeking of retribution for criminals scamming an old lady out of her money. The key difference is that although Thelma features the old lady herself setting off to get her money back (as opposed to outright revenge, another critical clarification), it’s also firmly grounded in reality. Viewers might be surprised to find the degree to which Thelma leans into the challenges of getting really old.

It’s also genuinely funny, and incredibly sweet, something very much enhanced by the casting of real, genuinely old people rather than younger actors playing old. June Squibb, a revelation at age 83 when she was featured in the 2012 Alexander Payne film Nebraska, is now 94. That she can so successfully carry a film at this age is an inspiration, something that made me think of Rita Moreno, who is now 92. Those two should star in something together—they’re much closer in age than Moreno was to her costars in 80 or Brady.

There are multiple other elderly actors in Thelma, but the most notable of them is Richard Roundtree, who died last fall at the age of 81. There’s something bittersweet about these great roles that occasionally come along for older actors, that are about the perils of aging, and then they die shortly after production. Roundtree’s character, Ben, is an old friend of Thelma’s with whom she has not been in touch since he made the wise choice to move into assisted living—something Thelma is obstinately refusing to do because she can’t let go of her independence.

These are not new themes, of course, but in the hands of writer-director Josh Margolin, who reveals in the end credits the real Thelma who clearly inspired this film, we get a genuinely fresh take. Not a whole lot actually happens in Thelma because it takes so long for them to get accomplished: Thelma retrieves the address where she was tricked into sending $10,000 by someone impersonating her grandson on the phone, and makes it her mission to go there and get it back. She no longer drives, and so she attempts to steal the scooter owned by Ben. Ben attempts to thwart her, but cannot stop her, and so they ride on it together across town.

All the while, they successfully avoid the family looking for her: most notably her young adult grandson, Daniel. And I really must shout out 24-year-old actor Fred Hechinger, who gives an astonishingly authentic performance as a uniquely anxious young man who deeply loves his grandma. I have never seen him before, but would still say he was superbly cast in this part—as were Parker Posey and Clark Gregg as his hovering parents, giving a clue as to how Daniel grew up like this. Only Thelma treats Daniel like she takes it for granted that he’s going to be fine, and he’s too young to worry about whether or not he will be.

To be fair to Daniel’s parents, they clearly love him dearly, just as they do Thelma, who plays Posey’s mother. Thelma convinces Daniel to drive her to the assisted living facility where Ben lives, and when Thelma and Ben disappear, Daniel beats himself up for losing her. There’s a key scene where Daniel is angry with himself about this, calling himself a “stupid little bitch,” and Hechinger’s performance is so nuanced and vulnerable, it’s genuinely heartbreaking.

To be clear, Thelma moves in and out of such heavy tones, alternating with genuinely lighthearted, almost always incredibly sweet, and occasionally hilarious moments. Most of the time spent with Daniel and Thelma together, Daniel is just sweetly worrying that Thelma is safe. But then, of course, she and Ben speed off out of the assisted living home on Ben’s scooter, turning Thelma into a sort of road movie.

After a few requisite plot turns, they do make it to a point where they can confront the person who scammed her out of her money—and it’s another elderly man, played by Malcolm McDowell. He also has a young man cohort, and there is a moment during the confrontation where Thelma sort of opens the young man’s eyes in a way that’s far too easy and contrived. It was the one time in the entire film when something happened and I immediately thought: well, that was dumb. Few movies are perfect, I guess.

That said, few comedies are as beautifully shot as Thelma is, here by cinematographer David Bolen. In a way, Thelma is greater than the sum of its parts, as so few films with a premise like this would place such quality on elements of filmmaking that others could get away with phoning in. The script is far deeper and more layered than you might realize even until considering it in retrospect, it looks fantastic, and the performances are great. Thelma is a bittersweet experience that leans into the sweet part, in all the best ways.

You’ll want to keep your eye on these two.

Overall: A-

TUESDAY

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

It can be astonishing when something comes along that is utterly original, unlike anything you have ever seen before—sometimes, to the point that it comes close to inexplicable. Since when does Death manifest itself as a deep, scratchy-throated parrot, anyway? Ever since Daina Oniunas-Pusic thought to write and direct Tuesday, I guess.

Maybe it’s just that the black cloaked figure with a scythe has long since played out. Tuesday offers no explanation whatsoever as to the use of a parrot instead, but rather, presents him as a character with challenges and internal struggles like anyone else. Not even that is a particularly novel approach, but how it gets contextualized here certainly is.

Death can be tiny, and he can grow to a giant size, a detail that becomes a surprising plot point later on in the film. When we first see him, he is so tiny he is nestled into the corner of a man’s eye, something we don’t even realize for the few seconds it takes the camera to pan out. This is part of an opening montage that makes it quite unclear what the tone of the film is going to be, in which we see Death release random people around the world from their pain, waving his wing over them.

I had a peculiar experience with this film on a number of fronts. I never saw a trailer for Tuesday, and chose to go see it based on a fairly high MetaCritic score of 70, and a brief synopsis I found both odd and compelling: a mother and teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of a talking bird. That honestly sounds a bit whimsical, possibly bordering on corny, but late-career Julia Louis-Dreyfus has made some very interesting choices, tending to be in movie projects that are both a bit off the beaten path and reliably entertaining.

All that said, when Tuesday opened on a shot of Earth from outer space and the ominous sounds of countless people longing for death, shifting between voices like the movement of a radio dial, for a minute I wondered if I had gone into the wrong theater. Is this a horror movie? Not quite. Is it a comedy? Definitely not, even though it has a through line of irreverence that gives it several genuinely funny moments. Is it ultimately a tear jerker? Definitely yes, but still in a way that leaves Tuesday a movie that defies categorization. It’s sort of a sad mood piece with a surprising amount of humor. You don’t see that every day.

“Tuesday” is actually the title character, the terminally ill teenage girl played by Lola Petticrew, who Death (voiced by Arinzé Kene) is summoned to visit by the sounds of her wheezing, evidently indicating that tonight is her time. But rather than freaking out when the bird appears on the table in her backyard, Tuesday suddenly launches into a joke, an earnestly cute one that involves penguins in the back of a car and actually made me laugh. (I did wonder how that would play on rewatch, when the punch line is already known.)

Death is disarmed by this, which causes him to hesitate, and then agree to wait until Zora, Tuesday’s mother, gets home.

This is where Julia Louis-Dreyfus comes in, as she is perfectly cast in the role, which becomes more significant as the story plays out. She is more than anything what makes Tuesday worth seeing. Ultimately, Tuesday is a movie about accepting the inevitability and ubiquity of death. It just uses a wild premise and some very odd turns to get us there, a journey you might have mixed feelings about on the way but in the end you’ll be glad you went on.

Given how low the budget for Tuesday clearly was, Daina Oniunas-Pusic does a lot with very little, focusing most of the movie on all of two characters, with one supporting character, an in-house nurse (Leah Harvey) as a third who comes and goes. Oniunas-Pusic manages to use subtle cues and sparingly used special effects to render the apocalyptic consequences when Death is taken out of commission for a while—thanks to some jarringly inventive tactics on the part of Zora, who cannot cope. In a way, Tuesday is a demonstration that our very universe does not work if death does not happen in it.

As is often the case, it’s the terminally ill person who accepts their fate, and the people who love them who cannot. When Zora meets Death, she isn’t freaked out by a magical bird so much as the knowledge that he is there to take her daughter away. Zora then quite understandably acts out of desperation, ultimately only prolonging the inevitable.

As odd as this movie is, I can see it being deeply moving to anyone who lost a loved one, particularly one gone before it should have been their time. It has far more depth and far more nuance than its simple premise might suggest. And Louis-Dreyfus gives a magnificent performance, by turns funny and heartbreaking. It may be a challenge to open your mind to it at first, but if you can manage it, you’ll be glad you did.

No, this isn’t a family comedy: it’s an exploration of our emotional connection to Death (which is also a bird).

INSIDE OUT 2

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Animation: B+

Here is the most important thing you need to know about Inside Out 2, a very fun movie: absolutely do not rewatch the original Inside Out from 2015 soon before going. The original was such a spectacular film, holding up astoundingly well on rewatch even nearly a decade later, having that film fresh in your mind will only taint your experience of watching the sequel.

There is an inescapable, inherent flaw in revisiting a universe that was so wildly imaginative and inventive. The wildness and inventiveness is already established, so it cannot wow you in the same way. It’s impossible, because you are not visiting any place new. On the contrary, you are simply returning to something familiar, if (in my case, anyway) beloved. It’s a comforting and warm journey, to be sure, but it still suffers from the trappings of even the best of sequels.

To be fair, it is possible to top an original film with a sequel—Pixar did it in 2010 with Toy Story 3, after all. But for that to happen, to overcome the issue of returning to a world that cannot be fully fresh, you have to have an amazing script. In the case of Toy Story, it also improved upon the computer animation technology. That film had both as major advantages, largely because its iconic toy characters were brought to an entirely new environment.

That is a key difference with Inside Out 2, which has neither a better script (because how could you improve on perfection) nor a new environment—we are still visiting the inside of young Riley’s head, the one key difference being that now she is hitting puberty. The headquarters of her brain are demolished by a wrecking crew, and the one truly new element are the new emotions brought in as new characters: Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and by far most significantly, Anxiety (Maya Hawke).

And this is to say: Inside Out 2 definitely still has its clever conceits, such as when the original five emotion characters are banished to the back of Riley’s mind, thus becoming “suppressed emotions” who then have to go on a long journey, both to retrieve Riley’s fragile sense of self, and to bring it back to Headquarters. The primary characters of Joy, Sadness and Anger are still voiced by Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith and Lewis Black respectively, but Fear and Disgust are now voiced by Tony Hale and Liza Lapira. Honestly, the loss of Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling isn’t that big a deal; these are just animated characters, after all, and these voices in particular are not distinctive enough to make the characters seem all that different.

What is different is the pacing, where Inside Out 2 rushes through enough of its plot points and packs in enough new characters that, even though at 96 minutes it’s actually a minute longer than the original, it feels shorter. In the first act of the film, I felt like it wasn’t quite giving us enough space to breathe in the story chugging along—although, to be fair, that’s kind of how it feels to be a young teenager, with changes coming hard and fast and without warning.

Another particularly new element in Inside Out 2, which I have mixed feelings about, is the far greater time sitting in the deep awkwardness that comes with a 13-year-old trying to make new friends while lacking the sophistication to realize she’s hurting the friends she’s leaving behind. Most of the film takes place over a stay at hockey camp, where Riley encounters an older player she worships, and yearns to make the team as a Freshman the next school year. She makes some very bad decisions, mostly at the behest of misguided Anxiety while her initial, core emotions struggle to make their way back out of the back of her mind.

I do love the structure of how all of this plays out, and it should be stressed that, while the first half of the film is both solidly entertaining and a variation on familiar themes, it eventually finds its way into a uniquely profound emotional space. I cried a lot more than I expected to at the end of this movie, not because it was sad (as many Pixar films infamously are) but simply because it was so moving, as we watch Riley become a complex, nuanced person.

And that brings us around to this point: the original Inside Out was thematically inaccessible to very young children, and Inside Out 2 is even more so. Both will likely entertain young children regardless, just because of its colorful and sometimes wacky characters, but the sophistication of the storytelling will only register to adult viewers, and possibly some teenage ones. There’s a gag in this film about a character named Nostalgia, rendered as a sweet old lady, who keeps coming out before any of the other emotions want them to. There may be some unintentional symbolism there in terms of the life of Pixar itself, which has now lasted far beyond its glory days, with a record in the past decade or so that’s far spottier than would have seemed possible in the first 15 years of its history.

What this means is, Inside Out 2 is a high quality film for “late-stage Pixar,” but pales in comparison to the vast heights of its early years. Pixar was far ahead of the curve for ages, the only studio consistently churning out reliably excellent content, but now the rest of the industry has caught up with them, both with writers and with impressive animation. The very existence of this film is an invitation to feel nostalgic for a better time, but it was still an invitation I was happy to accept.

Mind the button that brings a nuclear level of change … in a movie that isn’t that different.

Overall: B+

HIT MAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

It’s been a dismal June so far for theatrical wide releases, and I’ll have to include the end of May in that: May 31 had no major movie releases at all, less because of the inevitable shift of moviegoing habits in a post-covid world—although that’s certainly part of it—than because of countless postponements after last year’s writer and actor strikes. And for the record: any movie studio crying about the sad state of box office returns so far this year has only themselves to blame, as they could have accepted the unions’ quite reasonable demands from the start instead of digging in their heels for months in 2023.

So, here we are. This weekend, there actually are theatrical wide releases—a couple of them—it’s just just that I don’t personally have any interest in them. If you thought you might come here for my take on Bad Boys Ride or Die, you were mistaken. (I don’t flatter myself that any of you particularly did, mind you. Still, I’d have to be actually getting paid for it to write a review of that movie, in which I would likely write much about my undampened distaste for Will Smith. And even if Smith had never slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, I’d have little faith that his new film was any good, given 2020’s Bad Boys for Life certainly wasn’t.) The other is The Watchers, by Ishana Shyamalan, which is clearly “M. Night Lite,” and: no thank you.

What to do in the absence of anything worth seeing in theaters, then? Something I haven’t done in five months: turn to a streamer—specifically, Netflix—for a significant release to watch and review. And releases like this going to streamers instead of theaters, at least some of the time, is clearly here to stay. There is no question that five years ago, a film starring Glen Powell, cowritten by Glen Powell and Richard Linklater, and directed by Richard Linklater—this is the guy who gave us Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, School of Rock, and Boyhood—would have gotten wide release in theaters. It was indeed five years ago when his last live action narrative feature got a wide release, and that one wasn’t even particularly good.

Admittedly I found something immediate to get past about Hit Man—which was originally set to be released around the same time as The Killer (also on Netflix!), ostensibly similarly themed but a very, very different movie. The visual vibe of the movie, I can’t quite put my finger on it precisely, except to say that it feels a little . . . low-rent. A bit like a “TV movie,” to be honest. And yet, as the story unfolds, it somehow fits: both as a Richard Linklater film in particular, and as part of the film’s knowingly yet deeply subtle cornball tone.

Unlike The Killer, and hundreds of other films before it, Hit Man openly acknowledges that “hit men” as we think of them in pop culture are a myth: “Hit men don’t really exist,” says Powell’s title character, Gary Johnson. But Gary has been hired by the New Orleans police department to pose as the “hit men” would-be murderers expect to see, in sting operations to arrest them before the kill can actually happen. And this is a side gig: Gary’s day job is as a psychology and philosophy professor, scenes of which provide fertile ground for scenes exploring the nature of identity, which fall just short of metatextual.

It takes a while for the real crux of the story to take hold: after helping arrest several would-be criminals, Gary, in one of the many disguises he’s thrown himself into with this job (many of which are subtly but very effectively funny), comes across a young woman who is meeting him about killing her asshole husband. But this time, seeing a young, beautiful, and seemingly very vulnerable woman named Madison (all of it expertly played by Adria Arjona; hopefully with a great career ahead of her), Gary—as “Ron”—convinces her to change her mind, much to the consternation of the NOPD.

There are too many fantastic plot turns that ensue from there, so I won’t spoil them. Just do yourself a favor and watch the movie on Netflix. Viewers should be forewarned about one thing, though: I truly don’t know why anyone is listing this movie under “action” as a genre. Crime and comedy, sure; but action—there is none to speak of in this movie. If you have any familiarity with Richard Linklater whatsoever, you’d know not to expect it, as his films are all constructed around dialogue. We see a literal gun onscreen maybe once, and in neither case does it even get fired.

And yet: people do get killed in this movie. This is the genius of Richard Linklater, if you know how to appreciate his specific brand of art. Hit Man has some uniquely clever story turns, if not outright plot twists, and they are quite satisfying. He has an impressive knack for economy of storytelling, particularly on a budget: consider the police officer Jasper (Austin Amelio), a thorn in the NOPD’s side due to his suspension after violent excessive force on some teenagers, an incident that was caught on tape. This information is only ever revealed through well-written dialogue you barely even register as expositional, and (thankfully) we never see the video footage—although the Police Chief does hold up his phone at one point while talking about it, while his phone isn’t even on.

Jasper inevitably becomes a crucial plot point himself, worming his way in between Gary and Madison. Jasper is a deeply annoying douchebag of a man, which is a credit to how Austin Amelio plays him, which makes his fate by the end of the film, thematically complex as it is, deeply satisfying. Just about all the performances are great in Hit Man, but none are as great as Glen Powell’s, an undeniably handsome man who manages to be believably dorky as a professor and then convincingly hot as “Ron,” who is the guy Madison is into. Still, the montage of character disguises Gary takes on is great fun.

Hit Man on the whole is just a fun hang, an impressive achievement for a film in which little more than talking and plotting actually takes place onscreen. I suppose we could argue that’s what makes this perfect for a streamer release—there are no special effects and no action set pieces to make anyone insist it should be seen on the big screen. I would counter that there’s something to be said for seeing a fun movie of any sort with an audience, where there can be a sense of collective enjoyment. On the other hand, no theatrical release would have the breadth of reach that Netflix now does, and it does make me happy to think how many people will see, and likely enjoy, this movie.

This is the most action you’ll see in this movie—but it’s still really fun I swear!

Overall: B+

IN A VIOLENT NATURE

Directing: B
Acting: B-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

Here is a title that believes in truth in advertising: unlike the bemusing Evil Does Not Exist, which is not a horror movie, In a Violent Nature very much is. This is a title you can take literally, on multiple levels: it’s about a reanimated man with a “violent nature” (to say the least), and it’s a movie in which a ton of entertainingly grotesque violence happens exclusively in nature. To be more specific, the forest near Sault St. Marie, Ontario, which is about 300 miles northwest of Toronto, across the St. Marys River from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Sault St. Marie also happens to be where writer and director Chris Nash is from, and In a Violent Nature has a very “do it yourself” vibe to it. Whether that’s an asset or a liability depends on your point of view. On the one hand, this is arguably the prettiest cinematography ever seen in a slasher film—this was a big reason I even went to see it, as I normally don’t go see horror movies. I heard on a podcast that it was “like Friday the 13th shot by Terrence Malick”—an influence Nash openly admits to—and suddenly I thought: in that case, I’m interested!

It’s not often you see a slasher flick that is also a mood piece. I find myself wondering how audiences respond if they don’t know to expect this going in. I have a tendency to prefer being surprised by movies, but I was glad to have been armed with this knowledge beforehand: that nearly the entire film is told from the point of view of the monster killer; that there are long, unbroken shots from right behind him walking through the forest; that there is no film score in the film whatsoever. Instead, the soundtrack consists of the ambient noises, rustling of branches or sounds of animals and insects, in the forest. The couple of times you do hear music, it’s only because there happens to be a radio playing.

As such, it would be fun to watch someone else respond to this movie if they went in completely cold—not that it’s possible for you to do that now that you’re reading this review (sorry!). They might take some time to even register the genre of this film, as the first kill happens after several scenes of this giant man in torn clothing walking through the forest.

This is all fertile ground onto which to plant a premise. Nash directs it competently, clearly knowing what he wants. I’d love to have seen this movie directed by him, but written by someone else. The monster killer we follow through the forest comes upon a secluded house where we hear a father and grown son arguing; later he finds a cabin and camp fire where the requisite group of young men and women we know intuitively will mostly become victims. None of the dialogue between these characters ever quite flows naturally, like real people talking. There’s always something slightly off about it, and not in a way that feels deliberate.

Furthermore, we actually do get an explanation of sorts, for why this killer has re-emerged from his grave, as well as his connection to a “massacre” that occurred in the area ten years before. This is all pretty standard stuff for a movie so clearly inspired by Friday the 13th, but even within that context the contrivance gets stretched a little thin.

What this means, ultimately, is that In a Violent Nature falters in both its script and performances, but has a premise and overall execution that goes a long way toward making up for it. The kills themselves get increasingly creative—and, to me, funny. Admittedly I was the only person overtly laughing at this stuff, but then, I also had a great time watching last year’s Cocaine Bear, which qualified as a comedy only insofar as it had ridiculous violence in it. That and In a Violent Nature share a couple strands of the same DNA, although this movie leans much more toward a uniquely ambient tension. When the kills do occur, though, it’s all old-school practical effects; by all appearances, there’s not a single shot using CGI.

I’d have loved for any of the characters in this film to have even remotely dimensional personalities, but to be fair to Chris Nash, the nature of their expendability is very much the point. He’s taking a clear love of eighties and nineties slasher movies and giving it multiple twists. As to which of those twists really work, your mileage may vary. There’s an extended scene at the end, with a conversation between two women in a truck, that skirts of the edges of philosophical, but it feels slightly incongruous to the rest of the film and the philosophy doesn’t quite crystalize.

You could say that about In a Violent Nature overall: its philosophy never achieves clarity, but its premise is an undeniably compelling exercise.

On the upside, none of the people murdered are anyone you’re going to miss.

Overall: B

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

Evil Does Not Exist is an odd title for any movie. The word “evil” alone is evocative of horror, but the rest of this particular title negates that. Or is that ironic, in which case one might still assume it’s horror? Evil may not exist, but nihilism does! One of the many things about this film that are lost on me is the fact that it’s actually a very simple and straightforward drama.

Emphasis on simple, as opposed to drama. To call this a feature-length exercise in deadpan delivery would be an understatement. The most “dramatic” sequence would be several minutes covering a community meeting for “feedback” by townspeople concerned about the impending construction of a “glamping” site in a rural area outside of Tokyo.

This is the first time things get even remotely interesting in Evil Does Not Exist, and it felt like it was about 45 minutes in. Here’s something I have no idea about: was this just a reflection of Japanese cultural politeness, or was this scene muted by even Japanese standards? I would guess the latter, but it’s a wild, uneducated guess. All I know is that several townspeople bring up perfectly reasonable concerns, from potential pollution to their groundwater to the impact on their local economy, and the two hired hands there to listen largely deflect by saying things like “We’ll take your feedback under advisement.” The small crowd gets increasingly agitated, but I use the word “agitated” loosely: they each take a turn to deliver their concerns calmly, while everyone else in the room is dead silent. One young man in the front row finally says “What?” in response to being told not to get too emotional, and he ultimately stands up aggressively—only to have Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) force him back into his chair.

Takuma is the central character here, a guy referred to as “weird” even by others in this movie, a widowed, reclusive “odd job man” living in a cabin with his young daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). One of the odder aspects of this movie is how the two hired hands sent to the village by the company planning the “glamping site” refer to themselves as “talent agents” who work in “show business,” even though they’ve just been sent to convince this town that a glamping site in their midst is a good idea. Is this the Japanese equivalent of “paid crisis actors”?

Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) ulimately try courting Takuma to take the job of full-time caretaker, after being told that is something they will need in order to keep guests from the city in check, and it’s a bit of a fool’s errand. All of this runs parallel to Takuma’s live with Hana, where they walk through the forest and he teaches her the names of trees and how to identify them. The visitors keep hearing distant gunshots, told they are people hunting deer in the area. Eventually the point is made that deer are not dangerous to humans, unless they are been shot and are still alive and cornered. This becomes an apparently crucial plot point in the end, and I could not put together how it related to the story overall.

Evil Does Not Exist is getting extremely high praise by other critics, but I just could not connect with it. Its first half hour or so is particularly challenging, with truly glacial pacing—the opening shot alone is just a slow pan looking straight up at barren winter tree branches, for what seem like countless minutes. Then it cuts to Takuma outside his cabin, chopping wood, for another several minutes. Not a lot happens in most of the scenes in this movie, until the aforementioned community forum. Not much happens there either, but compared to the scenes that preceded it, it practically feels like an action movie.

And then, at the very end, things take a jarringly dark turn. Maybe there is something allegorical going on here, or something subtle regarding Japanese culture, that I just don’t have the wherewithal to grasp. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. All I know is that it took a herculean effort to get halfway toward connecting with this movie, which in the end I could only respect as something I assume exist on a level I can’t grasp.

Hey can we take turns, and you can watch me chop wood for five minutes?

Overall: B-