Terry Chen – Podcasting Them Softly

People really love to rag on Neil Blomkamp don’t they.. do you think it’s super fun being that miserable? Anyway he has a new horror film out this year called Demonic, his first feature since 2015’s Chappie. People are kind of tearing it apart in reviews, unreasonably so in my opinion because I had an absolute blast with it and one of the most fun time with a horror so far this year. It’s like this sort of odd, multi-genre amalgamation of different tones and ideas, so much so that one can’t really get a proper idea of it from trailers, posters or even word of mouth alone, which means you’re onto something already. It stars the excellent Carly Pope as a troubled woman who is dealing with residual pain of a mother who committed really, really horrible crimes when she was just a kid, and has been institutionalized in a coma ever since. She’s trying her best to forget, until two mysterious sleep tech researchers from a clandestine organization ask her help with a very strange experiment: be put under into REM sleep, enter the unconscious mind of her mother and establish communication within the dream world of both of their subconscious minds, linked via technology that feels simultaneously futuristic and sleek yet retro, analog and VHS themed as well. What are these researchers looking for, you may ask? Well that’s the fun, and that’s all I’ll say about the plot here, it’s a diabolically twisty game of horrors that spill out from the dream world into real life and this girl discovers much, much more about her mother’s state of mind, and whatever else may be in there with her. The film is not only shot but actually (for real this time, not just me stubbornly insisting so) set in and around Vancouver, with some of the story taking place near Kelowna on Lake Okanagan. I’m pretty sure that Blomkamp has seen Panos Cosmatos’s Beyond The Black Rainbow because one of the researchers is played by Vancouver actor Michael Rogers, who was the terrifying antagonist Dr. Barry Nyle in that and there are shades to his performance here that feel directly referential, which was a really nice touch. The film covers a LOT of ground in only 90 minutes, in terms of genre, and maybe it felt too rushed or hectic for some people but I just can’t wrap my head around the negative responses to it. It’s absolutely horrifying in some scenes, incredibly imaginative in an almost tongue in cheek way and stylistically so damn cool, it has the feel of a balls out, conceptually audacious type of horror SciFi flick you’d see in the 90’s. Picture something like The Cell meets The Exorcist meets Virtuosity meets Ghostbusters but still it’s own fiercely original creation. Great film, don’t listen to the haters, see it for yourself and form you own honest opinion. Mine is that it fucking rocks.

-Nate Hill

I love to see it when a cherished and talented actor makes their debut as a director, especially if they absolutely nail it, and Viggo Mortensen’s Falling is an astonishingly terrific first time effort behind the camera, in front of it and collaborating with one of cinema’s most prolific and underrated character actors, the mighty Lance Henriksen. Mortensen paints a deeply personal and seemingly autobiographical portrait of a stormy father son relationship here, a dynamic put to the absolute test in its twilight years as dementia throws a curveball. Henriksen is Willis Petersen, a conservative, sexist, crass, bigoted, bitter, flint-edged old goat whose emotional problems and inability to properly communicate made life extra tough on his wife and two kids growing up on a farm in chilly upstate New York. He is now a snowy haired senior citizen who can barely remember what day it is, and journeys with his grown up son John (Mortensen; patient, restrained, meticulously pensive until the breaking point) to live with him, his husband (Terry Chen) and their young daughter (Gabby Velis) in sunniest California. Willis is utterly and completely out of his element in this setting, while John, his family and the rest of the city do their best to ignore, endear and diplomatically deflect his brittle onslaught of angry, bigoted, rude and altogether inappropriate behaviour. Willis is a tough cookie to love or care for, especially in this golden age of hyper-tolerance, but Henriksen, in an absolute career best tour de force, makes him not just another angry old man but a human being who is so scared of dying, losing his memories of life and slipping away from the life affirming groove of his routine that he’s lashing out at basically everyone around him. Except for his young granddaughter, his relationship with her is perhaps the only genuinely warm-hearted and easygoing interaction he allows himself to inhabit. Mortensen masterfully edits together their present day life in Cali with picturesque, auburn laced and earthen flashbacks to Upstate NY where we see a young Willis (Sverrir Gudnason) raise John and his sister, struggle to be there for them without letting his flaws run amok and navigate through two marriages, one to the children’s sensitive mother (Hannah Gross) and later to another (Bracken Burns). Laura Linney gives a reliably focused and mesmerizing turn as Willis’s grown up daughter, who does everything she can not to get emotionally compromised by her father’s issues, and there’s a sly cameo from Viggo’s longtime pal David Cronenberg as a stoic butt doctor whose scene with Willis highlights some of the films coarse black humour, often at the expense of his son’s homosexuality as John himself looks on in almost unfathomable patience. It’s easy to condemn and dismiss a difficult character like Willis, but Mortensen’s complex direction and Henriksen’s volcanic yet finely shaded nuance refuse the viewer in drawing such hasty, narrow conclusions. Mortensen’s surreal editing, fluidly washed transitions, the wonder of the natural world and the magic of music to remind us that human beings are never just one thing and that a seemingly lost, scared and downright mean old man is still capable of compassion, patience and a modicum of self reflection, even in the eleventh hour. This is an astonishing film and a staggering debut for any filmmaker of any background with a central performance by Lance that anoints his entire epic career with that one last minute entry to crown it all, he and the film overall are truly magnificent.

-Nate Hill