Hereditary

First Hit: A rather complex or complicated horror film that worked reasonably well.

This is a dark film and attempts, in its own way, to pose question about evil being hereditary. The story revolves around the horrible death of Charlie (Milly Shapiro). She is killed in an accident (or is it) when her brother Peter (Alex Wolff) is driving her to the hospital.

Although this scene is early in the film, the strangeness of the family and their dynamics are shown because Annie (Toni Collette), the mother, makes models of the house and other things in her work studio. Charlie sleeps outside in a tree house that's very cold. The main house itself is way out in the country and is given the feeling of being a bit dark. Peter is shown to be somewhat ambivalent about life, school, and spends a lot of time high on pot.

We learn later that this Annie’s accurate models are her art and livelihood. Her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is rather stoic about the family’s oddness and acts as the solid foundation of the family.

After Charlie’s death Peter and Annie have fights blaming each other for Charlie’s death while Steve tries to referee these fights.

Annie meets Joan (Ann Dowd) who speaks with her about losing a child and quickly becomes Annie’s confidant. But things become more bizarre and sinister when Joan teaches Annie about how to conjure up the spirit of her deceased Charlie.

From here the film takes some bizarre turns and outside of the strong performances, the story is not believable or, in the end, horrifying.

Collette is amazingly and bizarrely strong in this role. She’s required to portray a wide range of feelings and emotions and she does this very well. Wolff is the other prime role and his lack of outward rage was either script driven, or he didn’t have the ability to share this. His actions after the accident didn’t seem to fit the event and that was disconcerting to me. Byrne was OK as the stoic father who rarely ventured out of this role’s comfort zone. Shapiro was good in her short-lived part. Dowd was excellent as the friendly helpful person who also had a dark side. Ari Aster wrote and directed this film. I trust he got what he wanted but for me, the horror in the film was the shocking accident that killed Charlie, the rest was just oddly bizarre.

Overall: This film was unique in its storytelling that had strong performances.

Bad Samaritan

First Hit: Although the title was a turn-off, this film is suspenseful and reasonably well done.

I had a lot of reluctance going to see this because the title sounded as if it would be a poorly made film.

I’m glad I went because it was much better than the title. The title reflects how poorly Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) reacted to finding Katie (Kerry Gordon) masochistically bound to a chair in the house he was robbing. As a samaritan helping his fellow man, he failed by not freeing her nor did he do enough to bring in others to help her obtain her freedom.

Katie was being held in a home owned by a very rich Cale Erendreich (David Tennant). Cale, it seems, had some childhood crush on an older horse trainer and when she spurned him, he killed her horse. Cale was and is into control of people and the things around him.

You can tell early on, he’s done this to a woman before and in one scene we see the tools he probably uses to dismember his victims when they don’t act the way he wants them to.

Sean isn’t a horrible young man, but he’s taken to petty theft with Derek Sandoval (Carlito Olivero) to keep his photography dreams alive. He and Derek run a car valet business in front of Nino’s restaurant. With certain rich folks, they take that person’s car to the owner’s home use the keys to open the home and steal what they can. Bringing the car back in-time for the owners to use when they leave the restaurant.

This is how Sean runs across Katie, searching a home to steal something.

Sean also has a girlfriend Helen Leyton (Lisa Brenner) who has been fooled by Sean and ultimately, he ends up owning this and his behaviors to Helen.

The film being shot in Portland was fun, as Portland is a city I like visiting. The story is not necessarily new; however I liked the way it was told because Sean’s character of really being a good guy does come through.

Sheehan was very good as Sean. I thought his facial expressions and expressions of fear and determination really worked and made the character one I could believe. Tennant was excellent as the psychotically pushed person. His behaviors were right in line with an excessive control freak. I liked the moment when Sean tricks him to look at a phone and Sean takes a picture. Brenner was sweet as Sean’s girlfriend. Olivero was strong as Sean’s sidekick and fellow petty theft buddy. Condon was excellent as the captured bounded woman of Cale’s attention. I loved the end when she says, “it’s not enough.” Brandon Boyce wrote a strong screenplay which was effectively directed by Dean Devlin.

Overall: Film is sufficiently creepy and scary to keep your attention through to the end.

A Quiet Place

First Hit: Well done film and the silence of the actors made all the difference in the world.

The film takes out all the drama of how these aliens arrived and take over the planet by starting at day 89.

We surmise through captions of their sign language, that the Abbott family is one of just a few families surviving the alien invasion. Husband Lee (John Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe), and Beau (Cade Woodward) are introduced scavaging through an empty store, in a vacant town, for food and supplies.

The aliens cannot see but have a highly-developed sense of hearing. They hunt for their food by listening and attacking. Therefore no one talks and uses sign language. Due to a child’s curiosity and desire to play with a toy, he turns on one of the toys they get from the store and the noise elicits a swift response and killing of Beau early in the film.

This was an effective way for the audience to become anxious of any noise the characters make during the scenes. When Evelyn becomes pregnant with a child, I sat their shocked because I know how much noise a baby makes let alone the noise the mother may make giving birth.

The film moves along in time by showing a graphic of how many days have gone by; we assume that it’s the number of days after the alien invasion.

We learn that there are other survivors because in the evening Lee lights a fire on top of a tower and as he looks around the valley and hills we see other fires.

The careful laying of sand on the paths they walk show a thoughtful detail that enhances the films successfulness. Adding to this is a family drama of Regan thinking her dad doesn’t love her because she assisted her youngest in getting the toy that caused his demise. She’s also deaf which did two things: Created a way for the family to be very adept at sign language and for Lee to find ways to help her daughter by experimenting with hearing aids that also sent signals to directly through her skull.

Suspense is high in this film and the noise level is low which made for a great combination.

Krasinski was wonderful as father, husband and champion of keeping his family alive and well. Loved the hike he took with Marcus to help him move through his fear. Blunt was fantastic. Her expressions of love and fear were remarkable. Having the baby in the circumstances the film sets up, was amazing. Simmonds was truly a gift in this film. She carried her struggle at being different, smart and independent in a sublime way. Jupe was excellent as the middle child who feared their circumstance the most, yet became heroic. Bryan Woods and Scott Beck wrote a wonderful screenplay that elicited curious suspense. Krasinski did an excellent job directing this story, wife and himself.

Overall: One of the better horror films I’ve seen in that loud noise wasn’t used to try to shock and scare me.

Winchester

First Hit:  This film needed to be taken out back and shot with a Winchester rifle.

I’ve been to the Winchester mansion in San Jose. It is a very interesting structure and although currently it is large, 4 stories in some sections, it was once much larger at seven stories high in places. But after the 1906 earthquake, also a plot device in the film, it got reduced in size.

The basic story about the house is that Sarah built this house to capture and confuse the ghosts resulting from people who died by her husband’s rifles. She was told by a medium, that she needed to amend for her husbands invention of the repeating rifle. This film takes the bent that because she owned a huge portion of her deceased husband's company, Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the board of directors thought she was crazy to be building this house, and wanted a negative evaluation of Sarah Winchester’s (Helen Mirren) mental capabilities to take back control of the company.

The directors hire Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) who’s imbibing Laudanum to ease the pain of losing his wife who killed herself with a Winchester Rifle after wounding him with the same rifle, to analyze Sarah and report back to the board.

They pressure him to determine that Sarah is crazy. He arrives at Winchester’s house and has dealings with staff, niece Marion Marriot (Sarah Snook), her son, and ghosts. Because Sarah is driven to house and appease all the ghosts, building rooms onto the house goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. People are always working on the house.

The film tries to make a compelling ghost and horror story about Sarah, Marion’s son, and Eric and how, together, they fight to kill one rambunctious ghost, Ben Block (Eamon Farren).

I cannot tell you anything I liked about this film. It was shot way to darkly (in color) and they showed very little of the peculiarities of the house itself. Winchester House is interesting and fascinating and this film does nothing with this, they just made a poorly constructed and contrived ghost story.

Mirren was OK in a role and script that didn’t become her abilities. Clarke was poor. His choices, as directed in the film’s script, were poorly done and not well thought out. The story of his demise felt contrived. Snook tired to be sincere but it was the role and script that failed her. Peter and Michael Spierig wrote and directed this mess. I’m not sure how they got funding for this, and my guess is that they will be hard pressed to get funding for a future project.

Overall:  This film is a waste of any money used to go see it, let alone make it.

mother!

First Hit:  It was not very interesting, was poorly scripted and had little to offer.

Director Darren Aronofsky probably had something to say by making this film, but I can only come up with snide thoughts like:  The battle between control and chaos is difficult. One needs to ask their partner before inviting people into the house. People like Him (Javier Bardem), need to have their ego stroked. Well-known artists, Him, would sacrifice his family for outside admiration. People will give the artists they admire leeway to act poorly. Life is a never-ending sequence of the same stuff over and over again. I could go on.

One troubling aspect about this film was that Darren had some great actors, but Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) seemed like she was saying lines and occasionally her actions were more engaging. Him seemed to take on the poor struggling artist role rather mediocrely. Together they were a shipwreck ready to happen throughout the entire film.

The story is that Mother has rebuilt a very large house because it burned down in a fire. It was Him’s family home. She’s doing this because she loves Him and the poems that he’s written in the past. However, he’s had writer's block since the fire burned down his family’s home.

One day, Man (Ed Harris), a chain smoking doctor, shows up at their home thinking it is a place where he can rent a room while doing research. Without asking Mother, Him tells Man that he can stay there as long as he wants. Feeling pushed aside, Mother reluctantly goes along with this.

Then the rest of Man’s family shows up. Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) is pushy and is very passive aggressive while Mother waits on her. All the while Him likes their company. Woman tells Mother that she needs to have a baby to really know what life is about.

During an argument, Him and Mother have make-up sex and she gets pregnant. Also, Woman and Man’s boys come to the house and start a big fight and one of the boys gets killed.

With Mother being pregnant and the killing of the boy, Him writes another poem that causes a national stir and now thousands of people come to the house to both grieve the dead boy and the celebration of this new poem. This makes Mother angry as she tries to kick everyone out because they are wrecking the house she built.

Then the film heads into over weird with rituals and demons and other stuff. Why? I cannot tell you why even if I knew. It is beyond my understanding of the point and purpose of this story and film.

Lawrence gives a uneven performance. It was both difficult and easy to understand her love and devotion based on whatever scene she was in. Bardem had an easier role of being egocentric and caring about himself more than the people for which he professed his love. Harris was OK as the initial interloper. Pfeiffer was interesting because her sarcasm and disdain towards Mother was well done. Aronofsky wrote a confusing and unclear script that came off as being overindulgent towards bizarre behavior. If the audience doesn’t get the point, why do a film like this? As director, the point was lost in the script, and therefore the acting wasn’t reflective of a cohesive story leaving the audience lost.

Overall:  This was self-indulgence at its finest and a waste of my time.