And The Exorcism of Saint Patrick isn’t. Although it does contain the requisite expulsion of green puke, blame falls not to satanic possession, but a glass of ipecac syrup.
But try telling that to the fiercely religious parents of Patrick (newcomer Michael J. Cline), an obese, socially awkward teenager. Wanting to rid their son of his homosexuality, they send him to a secluded cabin for “conversion therapy” — aka abuse in the name of Jeeeee-zus — with a pastor (Steve Pinder, channeling the dapper smarminess of Justin Kirk). Really bad shit happens.
It’s like Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased redressed as a microbudget indie with a third-act jaunt into experimental horror. Before then, the horrors are real-world, and Quinn Armstrong’s work as the film’s writer and director feels deeply, disturbingly personal. Its turn to the ambiguous and allegorical is likely to frustrate viewers invested in the story, however spare. Be warned that about-face is preceded by snippets of hardcore gay porn as the conversion therapy becomes aversion therapy, bringing the aforementioned emetic into play.
I enjoyed Armstrong’s first feature, the bizarro cop comedy Survival Skills. While it wasn’t entirely successful, its subversive streak and VHS aesthetic felt original in the throes of COVID-19. The most creative piece of Saint Patrick is that it kicks off a trilogy Armstrong has branded under a Fresh HellPresents banner, with the interconnected Wolves Against the World and Dead Teenagersfollowing this first tale to VOD with one-week gaps between each. Whether the entire experience delivers a payoff that this one-off viewing cannot, we’ll know soon enough. —Rod Lott
Who is Agatha Black and why is a chef’s dozen of tracks trying to frighten her? As appealingly (albeit a bit stiltedly) played by Bridie Marie Corbett, Agatha is practically a recluse — or “ree-cloose,” as a family member drawls — who barely gets out of the house she shares with her sickly aunt.
Make that shared, past tense, as Aggy is healing from the horror of a recent break-in that ended with her aunt murdered. To cope, she absorbs herself with a beloved childhood curio: a stack of ghost story LPs her late father gifted her.
As she revisits the stories, which get progressively more grisly and adult, elements from the slabs of vinyl bleed into real life, like a neighboring couple fatally hammered beyond recognition. As they say in Dallas, where this was shot, just what in the Sam Hill is going on here?
13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black is a perfect title. I admire not only its rhyming structure, but also how it sounds like the names adorning so many of the spooky albums that entertained kids in the 1960s and ’70s. I should know; I was one of them (for the ’70s half, at least). Before we were allowed to see horror movies or read horror comics, we could listen to horror story records. They were a gateway. As such, I hold reverence for them, even if I never want to hear them with middle-aged ears, preferring to leave that spell unbroken.
Whatever writer/director Bradley Steele Harding’s relationship is with 33 1/3 rpm novelties, his idea for 13 Tracks is ambitious, but also kinda brilliant! Other first-time filmmakers should be as lucky. Each time the needle drops on another tale, the fuzz on the soundtrack is so, so satisfying.
However, I almost didn’t watch it past the opening credits (narrated by cult legend Udo Kier, incidentally) because the dialogue-free prologue depicting Agatha as a child is off-puttingly overacted with motions befitting a mime’s routine. To be bluntly honest, I abandoned the movie twice across two years’ time before finally ceding my full attention, encouraged by a rave review in David John Koenig’s Lowest Common Denominator review guide. I’m glad I did.
While not “sure to give you the whim-whams” — a Monster a Go-Goreference, I assume — Harding’s movie bears enough ingenious touches for a rainy afternoon’s entertainment. I’d love to see his idea fleshed out with real financial weight behind it. Additionally, I look forward to his sophomore feature, Occult Canvas, which appears to mine another object of 1970s nostalgia: Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. —Rod Lott
Depressed to a point of paralysis over his wife’s premature passing, the grief-stricken Ben (The Royal Tenenbaums’ Grant Rosenmeyer) follows an internet rabbit hole to a mysterious man offering an escape — not suicide, but the power to fly. Not of sound mind, Ben spends $5,400 on the shady self-help course.
Soon, the would-be guru appears at Ben’s door with a litany of tasks as highly unorthodox as his name: Mealworm. The ravings of a lunatic? The work of a prophet? Or perhaps all in Ben’s imagination? The answer awaits in The Secret Art of Human Flight, an ambitious fantasy from director H.P. Mendoza (I Am a Ghost) and first-time screenwriter/America Ninja Warrior contestant Jesse Orenshein.
When venturing into magical realism, some amounts of quirk and whimsy are expected — if not required — to pull things off. But leaning too heavily upsets the balance, sending viewers tumbling into the twee. That’s what happens here, following a promising start.
As Mealworm, Paul Raci (rightly Oscar-nommed for the powerful Sound of Metal) is excellent. In the moments Secret Art delights, it’s no coincidence Raci is onscreen. And when he’s not, the film often frustrates; Rosenmeyer’s character is simply not likable. A deep funk is a fine establishing point, but as the story progresses, and Ben is revealed to be even more of an asshole, cheering him on is too large an ask.
If nothing else, The Secret Art of Human Flight is worth watching for its end credits song, a slice of such pop jubilance that I would’ve sworn under testimony as the work of The Polyphonic Spree. Instead, it’s Mendoza, Raci and Rosenmeyer. If only the film the tune supports were as uplifting and transportive. —Rod Lott
Almost 50 years removed from Ridley Scott’s Alien, H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon’s multimouthed space monster remains timeless. That’s not to say almost every sequel, prequel and whatever Alien vs. Predator is didn’t at least slightly chip away at the Xenomorph’s mystique. But those films didn’t completely diffuse what makes them iconic and terrifying, either. With Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) in the pilot’s seat of Alien: Romulus, however, it’s not a stretch to think this entry marks a true return to form for the “perfect organism.” So, is it?
Absolutely not. Not for a lack of trying, but more so for a lack of identity. Of course, it’s unfair to expect any Alien entry to ignite the same feelings of curiosity and terror as the first. The moment we saw, we were desensitized. That’s the tragic downside of iconic franchises: If your take is too similar, it’s derivative. And if it’s too different, it’ll be tonally alienating. Romulus, surprisingly, manages to do both.
Set some 20 years after the original, Alien: Romulus follows Rain (Cailee Spaeny, Civil War) and Andy (David Jonsson, HBO’s Industry), a miner and her adoptive robo-brother. Desperate to escape their colony’s harsh way of life, Rain humors her ex’s pleas to join him on a short flight to a nearby planet, where the titular space station promises a heaping helping of long-lasting cryo-sleep chambers. (It’s a little muddy in the first act, but these pods will ensure Rain and company can survive a multiyear flight to a more ideal colony.)
Still, they also need Andy, whose similarities to Weyland-Yutani droids should let him interface with the Romulus’ tech. Spoiler: It works a little too well, as Andy doesn’t just open doors, but accidentally awakens a hoard of everyone’s favorite parasitic horseshoe crabs, too.
Romulus’ first act oozes with potential. We get a real glimpse of life on the colonies, something absent from — though alluded to in — Alien and Aliens. This harsh reality makes it easy to attach to Rain and Andy’s plight, and even breathes life into the auxiliary alien fodder, though not to the same effect as the Nostromo’s crew.
As soon as they board the Romulus craft, it gets even better. Alvarez, a master in close-quarter horror settings, takes us into the bowels of a bleak and apathetic vessel lit by flickering consoles and weak fluorescent lights. To top it off, he relies primarily on animatronics, which gives his creatures significantly more weight than what we got in 2017’s Alien: Covenant.
Craftsmanship really is this movie’s saving grace. Because as soon as the plot starts to take off, it’s quickly suffocated by a mouse-shaped facehugger. Ian Holm’s likeness is reused in the form of Rook, an effective carbon copy of the late actor’s character, Ash, from the first film. Ethical questions aside, Rook sabotages and assimilates what could be a compelling character arc for Andy for the sake of hollow nostalgia.
The film then starts to recreate portions of other Alien flicks at such a rapid pace that it could’ve been alternatively titled Now That’s What I Call Xenomorphs Vol. 7. A pack of Xenos get mowed down à la Aliens. Another tries to lick Rain’s face like in Alien 3. We even get a callback (albeit way creepier and effective) to Alien Resurrection in the final sequence. Not everyone will digest this approach as soulless, but it feels like it almost aggressively strips away Romulus’ originality for cheap pandering. It also wouldn’t be so egregious if Alvarez hadn’t proved over a decade ago (in 2013’s Evil Dead) that he can operate in an established universe without needless allusions.
Alien: Romulus is unique — at least for this franchise — in how unoriginal it is. It’s fun and thrilling, sure, and those who aren’t immediately familiar with the rest of the Alien canon may hardly notice this sequel’s many seams. We who expected something with staying power, on the other hand, may wish to steer clear of this specimen’s acid blood. —Daniel Bokemper
From director Peter Brophy and co-writer Rod Bishop comes Body Melt, a goofy, goopy Australian body-horror splatter fest that plays like the unholy love child of Peter Jackson’s Dead Aliveand David Cronenberg’s Rabid, with some Lynchian weirdness and a throbbing techno score thrown in for good measure.
It follows the citizens of Pebbles Court in Homesville, Melbourne, who all fall victim to an experimental body-enhancing vitamin sent to them in the mail by an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company. The filmmakers are concerned less with character and plot and more worried about grossing the audience out, which they achieve in spades. True to its title, the film is a smorgasbord of nasty death scenes as hilarious as they are disgusting.
There’s not a single protagonist in Body Melt. Rather, the film is comprised of several characters who almost all meet gnarly ends. There’s a detergent-guzzling man whose throat opens to sprout tentacle-like growths. Another resident of the quaint Pebbles Court suffers hallucinations from the drug until his face melts away, leaving only his bloody skull. A family vacationing at the very health spa that produced the vitamin suffers all matter of slimy, mucus-dripping indignities, while one of the spa’s workers — an oversexed muscle man — gets an erection so turgid his penis explodes. But perhaps the most vomit-inducing scene involves a pregnant woman, whose fate is best left for sick viewers to see for themselves.
In addition to all the madness listed above, Body Melt features a clan of possibly inbred service-station workers who torment two teen boys from the court, a clear nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. To say that the film is bonkers is an understatement. It can be a bit tricky at first to follow all the seemingly disparate storylines, but then again, the stories aren’t exactly the point. The practical effects are the true star here, and they are every bit as convincing now as they were in 1993.
Body Melt is a perfect midnight movie — just be sure to watch it on an empty stomach. —Christopher Shultz
