I’m not starting up full reviews until next week, but I figured I’d still do a month-end roundup for January. I didn’t do a lot of home-watching this month unless you want to read about my rewatch of Dracula, but I did get out to the theater for three different movies this past month. I’ll talk about them in the order I saw them. I’m warning you here now that there will be some spoilers ahead, so read at your own risk.
First up was Nosferatu. As a huge fan of classic horror and a fan of Robert Eggers, I was thrilled to hear that he was directing the remake. Plus the cast had my attention immediately.
Bill Skarsgard has shown himself to be a stellar monster actor in recent years and demonstrated this again as Count Orlok, the titular Nosferatu. Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, our damsel in distress turned sacrificial hero, was a surprising hit. I’ve never seen her in a central role before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Her on-screen chemistry with Nicholas Hoult as her husband Thomas was great, and it was nice to see him play a more serious role since he tends to lean more toward comedic acting. Lastly, we have Willem Dafoe as our peculiar and eclectic Professor von Franz. I have to be honest and say that it’s easy to get me to see a movie when he’s involved.
Normally, I try not to judge remakes against their predecessors. I usually fail, but I try. It was downright impossible to do here, but for all the best reasons. The story beats followed the original very closely and Eggers made purposeful references by taking some dialogue directly from the original. Stylistically, we were given Eggers’ usual astounding ability to take distance shots where he makes the scenery look like a painting. That and the utilization of a very desaturated palette gave the whole movie an extra layer of eerie darkness that’s very appropriate for a Nosferatu movie.
By now, most people have seen the final shot from the movie of a desiccated Orlok draped over a nude Ellen who used her own blood and body as a means to keep the vampire occupied until the sun could rise and the cock could crow and break his hold on the land for good. It’s beautifully composed and gives a striking ending to the film.
Unfortunately, the theater experience itself when I went to see it was probably one of the worst I’ve ever gone through. In spite of that, Nosferatu is going to be high up on my list for the year, sitting at a 4.5/5 for me.
I saw the trailer for Wolf Man when I went to see Nosferatu. My movie buddy and I are always up for werewolves, so we figured the worst case scenario was that we’d watch a comically bad werewolf movie. I don’t usually see Leigh Whannell’s movies, most known by me for his involvement in the Saw and Insidious series as an actor, writer, and producer.
Overall, the movie was okay. It was short and sweet at 1 hour, 43 minutes, didn’t overstay its welcome, and utilized practical effects which I’m a sucker for. Whannell’s use of a very small cast to tell his story is also something I love in movies. Not every movie needs to have a cast of fifteen core characters and an endless list of side characters. The story itself is pretty by the book. There wasn’t anything particularly surprising or especially different from most other werewolf movies, but still solid.
There were a few Chekov’s Gun elements that never followed through later on like I expected they would, and it was outside the realm of what I would call a red herring. One of my biggest pet peeves in movies is setting up something as though it needs to be remembered for later only to have it never be mentioned again.
Moving on to the cast, I felt it was well-chosen. Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, and Matilda Firth did an excellent job playing a dysfunctional family that still clearly wants to do better and put in an effort; loving each other while not being entirely sure how to make it known. It makes the ending hurt just a little more knowing they could have fixed things if events had unfolded differently.
Okay movie paired with a great cast earned this one a 3.5/5.
Last on the list is Presence. Lucy Liu is on the same list as Willem Dafoe where if you tell me they’re in a movie, it takes no effort at all to convince me to see it. This movie was Steven Soderbergh’s first foray into horror, and if this is what he gave us then I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next.
The whole movie is shot from the perspective of the ghost haunting the house purchased by Rebekah (Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) along with their son Tyler and daughter Chloe played by Eddy Maday and Callina Liang. To film, Soderbergh apparently manned the camera and moved throughout the house acting as the ghost in order to move the audience into place for each scene. These scenes were done in single takes with no editing which is incredibly impressive.
It’s difficult to discuss the movie without giving whole plot spoilers. The whole thing only ran 1 hour and 24 minutes, so there’s a lot of story packed into not a lot of time. You spend most of the movie really not liking Rebekah and Tyler. Or at least I did. You have a mother that clearly favors her son and a son that has let that go to his head.
Paired with your unlikeable family members is a traumatized daughter that lost two of her friends very recently to what the world at large thought were drug overdoses. We find out much closer to the end that this isn’t the case, but it’s meant to make you form an opinion on these teenaged girls from the jump.
In contrast to Wolf Man, Presence does a fairly good job of utilizing red herrings. The implication that the ghost was there due to Rebekah’s clearly shady dealings are dashed when the ghost is revealed at the end. I do wish we found out exactly what was going on in that area that was illegal to the point where her husband was presenting hypotheticals to a lawyer friend, but that’s mostly because I’m nosy and that sounds like drama. The twist involving Ryan was both what I expected and not at all what I thought it would be. I knew he was a skeeze, but wasn’t expecting it to go that far.
Great movie, amazing film techniques, interesting overall premise means Presence sits pretty at a 4/5.