Heretic (2024)

There's been an interesting trend in recent years for some horror movies to base themselves around the idea of social awkwardness/embarrassment. Maybe it was always there, to some degree anyway, but we've had recent films giving us horror that stems from two separate people accidentally being booked in to the same Airbnb, holiday friends who astoundingly take up the offer of an invite to spend more time together when the reality should have been to immediately lose contact once they were back in their respective homes, and now, and maybe worst of all, answering your door to people who are aiming to educate you on their religion.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are, respectively, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, two young Mormon  women who end up knocking on the door of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). Mr. Reed welcomes them inside and is delighted to have a conversation with them, but it's not long until the women suspect that all is not quite right. They want to leave as soon as possible, which goes against their usual mindset. Mr. Reed has plenty that he wants to discuss though, and maybe even one or two sights to show them.

Co-written and co-directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic was one of a number of horror movies to receive no small amount of praise from people in 2024. While I'm happy to see it so praised, and while a number of aspects deserve it, I have to say that I'm a bit puzzled by the amount of people who seemed to recommend it without a couple of important caveats.

So here are a couple of important caveats. Heretic really has to work hard to maintain any sense of plausibility as the central characters remain in one location for most of the runtime. It doesn't quite succeed, but that only becomes a problem until things take a more serious, arguably more genre-leaning, turn. Then everything gets quite interesting and fun again, right up until we have to endure a final 10 minutes that almost undoes all of the previous good work. Almost.

When it comes to the conversation between the three main characters in the first half of the movie, this is fantastic. Grant gets to relish every sentence and carefully-chosen word, moving from harmless and lonely old man to someone who seems more dangerous and predatory with every subsequent chess move against people who believe they are playing chequers, and both Thatcher and East eventually work hard on their rebuttals to the arguments that he makes. Then comes the motivation though, which is where the film falls down, and then you have to watch one apparently far-fetched incident after another, with writers Beck and Woods happy to throw in coincidences and ridiculousness in whatever way best serves themselves in their directorial capacity.

The performances are the saving grace. Thatcher and East do really well in their roles, fighting hard to present themselves as more than just paper-thin caricatures. Grant is given the best seat at the table though, and starts chomping his way through every scene as if he's just been served a huge platter of all of his favourite foods. I have always been a big fan of Grant, even when he was making his millions as the floppy-haired rom-com charmer, but it's undeniable that he's been doing some great work, and clearly having much more fun, in the past decade than when he first shot to stardom. His turn here is another in a steady stream of absolutely brilliant and entertaining performances that have made him a scene-stealing highlight in the films that have made use of him lately. There aren't really any other people worth mentioning, aside from Topher Grace (who has just one or two minutes of screentime), but that's no big loss when the three leads are so good.

I really enjoyed Heretic, despite what my criticisms here may have led you to believe, but I really enjoyed it because of the first half and the work of the leads. I was disappointed by the ending, but at least it tried to do something interesting. I'd still highly recommend the whole thing though, but with caveats.

7/10

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The Boogeyman (2023)

Urgh. That's the best way to start this review. Director Rob Savage made such a great impression on horror fans when he released Host, arguably the best use of Zoom ever, with the exception of that one short clip of the man who accidentally made himself look like a cat (check it out if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's hilarious). Unfortunately, it is starting to look more and more like Host was an exception, with Savage following that up with the horrible Dashcam and now this. The Boogeyman isn't as bad as Dashcam, but it's a surprisingly lazy and inept movie that delivers a polished package of everything that exemplifies the worst of modern mainstream horror.

Springboarding from a short story by Stephen King, and that's more worthy of your time than this is, the very simple plot summary for this is that it looks at a family terrorised by a boogeyman. Still grieving the death of their mother, there's teenager Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher) and younger sister, Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair). They both live with their father, Will (Chris Messina), a therapist struggling to help his children through this difficult time. Anyway, once the boogeyman enters their home, and once they start figuring out exactly what is going on, people are warned not to spend too much time alone in the dark . . . and they then spend most of the movie wandering about alone in the bloody dark.

I really don’t want to spend too much time discussing this, it annoyed me so much for almost every minute of the runtime (although the opening sequence is impressively dark and disturbing, which makes the sharp slide downhill all the more disappointing). It might be a bit more polished than the 2005 movie that covered some similar ground, but I would struggle to say this is better. It’s so carelessly thrown together, but has a couple of elements in the story that are supposed to give it some weight it never maintains, and I blame Savage and the writers, Scott Beck, Mark Heyman, and Bryan Woods. Having read the original short story, one of the many little gems written by Stephen King, I assumed that everyone involved was drawn to the material because of a twisted ending that could be expanded into a feature full of paranoia and constant unease, but it appears that they just wanted the title so they could then deliver a few jump scares and mediocre scenes we have seen hundreds of times before. 

The cast aren’t bad, with Thatcher and Blair capably carrying the whole thing on their young shoulders. Messina is sidelined for a lot of the movie, of course, but does perfectly fine work in his role, and David Dastmalchian is sorely underused in what amounts to little more than a cameo. Having said that, at least he doesn’t suffer the fate of Marin Ireland, stuck playing the standard grizzled survivor who thinks she knows how to finally kill the boogeyman and drags Thatcher’s character into her scheme. LisaGay Hamilton is enjoyable in the role of Dr. Weller, another therapist, but suffers from the fact that her screentime alludes more to the aforementioned short story ending in a way that fails to then deliver any decent pay-off.

I saw a lot of love for this when it was in cinemas, which meant I was keen to see it as soon as it hit home media, but I am glad I didn’t rush along to see this on the big screen. I don’t know what others saw in this, and maybe a fair few people left cinemas disappointed after being hoodwinked into buying a ticket, but there was nothing here that worked for me in terms of the horror content. I might have even preferred a straightforward drama showing the main characters dealing with their grief. Or, and here’s a radical idea, a creepy horror film that actually felt in line with the source material.

3/10

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65 (2023)

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have worked together for a number of years now. They share the directing and writing duties on this sci-fi action movie that pits Adam Driver against a bunch of dinosaurs, and they have to share the blame for such an underwhelming end result. Because 65 isn't very good, and it had the potential to be a lot of fun.

Driver plays Mills, a man who ends up on a space expedition in the hope of earning enough money to cure his daughter (Chloe Coleman) of an illness that has been slowly getting worse for a while now. One asteroid-related incident later, Mills is on a strange planet with a young girl, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), he cannot understand. The strange planet is actually Earth, but it's the Earth of 65 million years ago. When dinosaurs were at the top of the food chain. Mills and Koa need to make their way to another crashed part of the spaceship if they stand any chance of getting back off the planet. They have limited tools and weaponry to help them, that communication barrier creating another obstacle, and the fact that we can assume they haven't seen even just one of the Jurassic Park movies means they are woefully unprepared for the danger of their environment.

I like Adam Driver. A lot. He's not the best person for the lead role here, but he's not terrible either. Greenblatt holds her own alongside him, and their relationship at the heart of the story is the best thing about the movie. In fact, it's probably the only thing worthwhile about the movie, and the fact that the film-makers at least managed to cast two not-inconsiderable talents in the lead roles is a stroke of luck for them, because nothing else works.

Okay, there's one more plus. This clocks in at around the 90-minute mark. That's a rare treat nowadays. It's just a shame that the runtime feels like a bit more than that, mainly due to the sluggish nature of the film in between the infrequent, and far too brief, set-pieces.

It's as if Beck and Woods had the core idea first ("what if we make a sci-fi movie about a guy fending off aliens . . . but the aliens are dinosaurs . . . and the guy is actually on Earth?") and then didn't know how to really make the most of it. Even the structure of the thing, with viewers being given the set-up during the opening titles, is a misfire. This should have been a fun film that kept viewers entertained, threw around plenty of wild creature design, and then capped everything off at the very end with a sign to indicate "oh, by the way, the adventure you just enjoyed was all taking place on . . . Earth, boooooooom". While not without a handful of decent moments, they are too few and far between. And I defy most people to actually care about the fate of the main characters as things move into the third act.

The visual style is horrible and dull, the special effects suffer in comparison to many superior dinosaur movies we've seen over the past few decades (including the first Jurassic Park movie, which holds up brilliantly to this day), and even the music is immediately forgettable and unable to feel like a good enough fit for the whole experience.

This didn't make me angry enough to want it wiped out by an Extinction Level Event, but I definitely won't be rushing to rewatch it. And I would recommend that most people just give it a miss. It's really not worth your time, and it's certainly not worth the talents of Driver and Greenblatt.

4/10

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Prime Time: Haunt (2019)

There have been a number of horror movies over the past few years set in a large haunted house experience, or some even bigger interactive event for horror fans. It's easy to see the appeal. These things are set up to bombard fans with genre tropes and scares, and the idea of one being a cover for torture and death is as plausible as it is a bit silly.

Haunt may well be the best of these movies, in terms of the actual horror content. It sets everything up well enough within the first half hour, allowing for a second and third act that can really pile on the gore and violence. It's just a shame that it's let down by the selection of characters and an unmemorable cast.

What's the plot? I've already covered it, basically. A bunch of younglings end up at a haunted house experience in the middle of nowhere. There's nobody else there, aside from the "actors" playing the scary villains, but that doesn't stop them from wandering in anyway and acting oblivious to how strange the whole thing is, at least until someone dies.

Co-directed and co-written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (the men behind the central idea of A Quiet Place), Haunt is a film clearly created by people who know their stuff. It utilises the haunted house environment to create a deadly maze with puzzles throughout, not unlike an Escape Room challenge, and has creepy figures in clown masks looking on impassively as hapless victims find themselves in increasing amounts of pain.

The script is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it does okay in setting up the characters, I guess, and the general group dynamic. On the other hand, too many of the leads are just too similar, and it would have been handier to have some more identifiers to tag on to various individuals. It doesn't help that the cast are one homogenised mass of blandness. Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Lauryn Alisa McClain, Andrew Caldwell, Shazi Raja, Schuyler Helford, and Phillip Johnson Richardson may be the ones without the masks on, but I defy you to remember what any of them looked like once the end credits have rolled.

Thankfully, Beck and Woods do a better job with developing the nastiness as the reality of the situation becomes clear to all of the victims. Whether it's a cut arm or a foot being stamped down on a hand, all of the violence here begins with sensations you can identify with. And when the hammers start to come into play, well, that's a whole other level. Although not dwelling on the gore, things turn impressively brutal throughout the second half.

There's plenty here to please horror fans, plenty, and the fact remains that this isn't as lazy or slapdash as some other movies that have decided to use the same idea in a way that they think then requires no more effort with the actual craft of film-making. It's just a shame that there wasn't even more done to differentiate the characters, and perhaps make their main fears more integral to some of the set-pieces.

6/10

A Quiet Place (2018)

Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) and Lee Abbott (John Krasinski) try to live a simple life with their children, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe), and Beau (Cade Woodward). Regan is deaf, and so the whole family spend a lot of time communicating with one another using ASL. Their method of communication isn’t really a choice though, it’s all down to the fact that they are trying to survive in a dangerous environment that also contains deadly creatures drawn to sound.

Post-apocalyptic in tone, A Quiet Place is an interesting oddity that seemed to surpass many expectations with the level of success it attained in cinemas. It’s a horror film with heart, one that will appeal to anyone seeking some thrills and emotional turbulence to view in the company of loved ones. It may not appeal as much to people wanting better scares, or a decent amount of bloodshed, or a tight plot that doesn’t fall apart under closer scrutiny, but it definitely tries to please most of the people most of the time.

Directed by Krasinski, who also worked on the screenplay alongside story creators Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, A Quiet Place benefits from some very effective lead performances and a few moments of near-unbearable tension. It's just a shame that the level of care shown in those areas wasn't also shown when it came to crafting the backstory to the world we are shown, or even explaining the motivations behind certain behaviours displayed (characters being barefoot is one of the most obvious ones that seems to make sense until you think about it for more than five seconds).

But let's get back to praising those performances. Krasinski is solid in his role, but in some ways he is the least of the leads (not due to his lack of talent, simply due to the way he keeps the focus on the other characters). Blunt is excellent, remaining tough while she becomes more and more vulnerable, due to her state of pregnancy, and Simmonds and Jupe prove to be more than a match for their adult co-stars, and Woodward doing just fine in his smaller role.

It seems obvious to say that the sound design of the film is an essential component, but it's also strange to have to admit that it doesn't always seem to get this part right. This isn't anything to do with the actual technical side of things but is, once again, to do with a lack of care taken with the rules and backstory left underdeveloped in a way that leaves some seeming lapses in logic populating the screenplay like potholes in a fairly new road.

All in all, this is almost as good as many people will have already told you it is. While it's on, and while it's building the tension and taking you through a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. It's just not one that holds up as well as it could, once you start to think about the details more.

8/10

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