Marc Mancheca – Podcasting Them Softly

No One Gets Out Alive is a hell of a title for a horror movie and the movie therein better live up to it, which in this case it sure damn does. This is a sensational film, one that has ghosts, body horror, Aztec lore, demonology, leering psychopaths, social commentary and some of the most chilling, effective scares I’ve seen of late. The story tells of young Mexican girl Ambar (Christina Rodlo) living illegally in the US and working for cash at a depressing sweatshop, trying to save up for a forged American visa. She rents a room in a spooky old converted mansion ran by weary, creepy Red, played by Mark Menchaca who seems to be carving out a nice little niche for himself these days in playing memorable horror antagonists. Something is very, very wrong in this house and no sooner has she unpacked her bags she’s seeing phantasms behind every corner, hearing weird noises all over the place and having terrifying waking nightmares. Is it haunted? Or something far worse? The film takes the already unfortunate and desperate situation of a woman of colour living alone and off the record in the USA, the danger of deportation always an element, and then whisks her right out of the frying pan into the fires of a dangerous supernatural predicament and the result is, intense to say the least. I won’t spoil what’s really going on in the house but I will say that the film offers up one of the most visually staggering, indescribably bizarre, nightmarishly breathtaking movie monsters I’ve ever seen in horror. Seriously, if you think that weird deer demigod thing in The Ritual was odd, just wait til you see this one, it’s truly imaginative nightmare fuel and took me right off guard. Director Santiago Menghini has his feature debut here and it’s one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. Spatially aware camera movements, optical tricks and careful layers of light, darkness and colour make this an unnerving haunted house to get lost in. The gore is truly shocking, the characters are well drawn and realistic and like I said, that monster is simply one for the books, in this case the Guinness Book of Coolest Horror Movie Monsters Ever. Great film.

-Nate Hill

The internet is a dangerous place, and the issues arising from it make for some pretty provocative, challenging films. Sarah Pirozek’s #Like tries desperately to be one of these films and falls frustratingly, maddeningly short of being effective with a narrative that starts out incredibly promising and just nosedives so hard it disheartens the viewer. It tells the depressing story of a teenage girl (Sarah Rich) who is dealing with the grief of losing her younger sister one year prior, after a cruel and vicious cyber bullying incident ended in her taking her own life. The forum user responsible for the despicable act was never found or charged, and now, a year later, she thinks she might have a lead on them based on old chats from her sister’s computer. She brings this information to a police detective (Jeff Wincott) who is too busy and too tied up in red tape protocol to be of any help, so she attempts to track this person down on her own and deliver what she believes to be justice. She does end up finding someone with coincidental ties to the event, a middle aged construction contractor (Marc Mancheca) who she promptly lures to her shed and imprisons indefinitely. From there the film falls into sadistic doldrums as she tries to make him own up to what he maybe did, and here is where it all just goes bananas. The problem is, she was never one hundred percent sure that this is the right guy, and you have to be sure in situations like this, so my sympathy meter quickly ran dry for this girl as she subjects the man to all kinds of torment and it becomes steadily clear that he’s most definitely not who she’s looking for. It’s a cruel, misguided narrative stunt to pull that leaves a bad taste and an aura of extreme malaise in the air, which I’m sure is deliberately meant to mirror her confusion, lack of resolution and anger over losing her sister and never having anyone to properly blame, but it just felt like a weird storytelling choice to me. The actors are all terrific, no complaints there, the cinematography and locations have this lived-in, upstate burnished quality to them that sets atmosphere nicely and the first act of the film really does draw you in… until it loses itself hopelessly to a tone deaf basement captivity routine that just numbed my bones and stalls any narrative progression fatally. Twice during the film there’s a soundtrack choice with the repeated lyrics “Do I make you uncomfortable?” Well if that’s a question the filmmakers are asking then my answer is yes, you did make me uncomfortable with your film, but not in a constructive, illuminating or thematically effective way, just in an icky, ill advised way. A film needs more than that to get any kind of message across intact, and this one sadly drops the ball.

-Nate Hill