Sunset On The River Styx (2021)

Vampires. Vampires are always a very useful horror archetype. They can be used to explore sex. They can be used to explore age. They can be used to explore almost every human experience, but in an amplified way, from love to grief, pleasure to pain. Not all vampire movies are interested in delivering scares and/or bloodshed, but they're still often very much vampire movies. Sunset On The River Styx may disappoint those seeking some easy thrills, but it should please those after a new vampire movie.

Phillip Andre Botello plays Will, a bus driver who seems to be in a bit of a funk. That funk could be alleviated by an encounter with Ashe (Jakki Jandrell). Ashe tries to encourage Will to start acting on some of his impulses, which include more confrontational ways of dealing with the occasional troublesome passenger. Ashe also ends up encouraging Will to try something else though, something that drags him into the orbit of Wreck (Cory Vaughn).

Written and directed by Aaron Pagniano, this is another interesting and effective use of vampirism to explore relationships and sexuality. There's a love and respect that develops between the main characters, but there's also some manipulation that makes things a lot more complicated when they look to possibly move forward to whatever the next stage of their relationship might be.

Botello and Jandrell are both great in their roles, and both work really well alongside one another. It's fascinating to watch how different they become around Vaughn's character, but it should be noted that Vaughn is easily on a par with them when it comes to the acting talent. This is a single person becoming part of a duo, and then being shown that there are many more connections they may want to consider, for better or worse, and everyone onscreen does well to show that development in status.

It's a bit slight, more concerned with being a character study than a full rumination on the potential and pitfalls of vampirism, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth your time. Everything looks and sounds good enough, with Pagniano clearly having assembled a team he could trust to get his vision onscreen, and there are some definite highlights scattered here and there throughout the 94-minute runtime.

I may well forget this by the end of the year, and I doubt it will shoot straight to the top of any favourite movie list, but this review can serve as a reminder to others to check it out. It deserves to find an audience, and there will be at least one or two others who enjoy it even more than I did. I would happily rewatch it though, and maybe next time around I will appreciate even more of what it has to offer. 

7/10

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Pledge (2018)

As we all know, how you react to movies can depend on many different factors. Your own personal life experiences, what other movies you have seen (that may have influenced, or been influenced by, whatever you're watching), and even just what mood you are in on that particular day. Pledge is a horror film based around the fact that some young men are so desperate to get into an exclusive fraternity that they will let the experienced frat members put them through hell.

I hated this movie, and I can pinpoint why I hated it. I am, for better or for worse, one of those people who agrees with the motto that "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member". Fraternities, and the act of pledging to them, embody that notion arguably more than anything else I can think of. It's such a major thing for so many American students, and I am not saying that if I was a young American that I would be able to avoid the peer pressure, but I've always been majorly averse to the idea. That doesn't mean I cannot enjoy that rite of passage being used in movies, from the MANY enjoyable comedies that make use of it, to the silliness of something like The Skulls (remember that movie about the secret society that had a building with their insignia high up on their building for all to see?). But a horror movie showing people trying to stay happy while they're abused and tortured, all because they want accepted into such a shitty little "club"? No thanks.

I don't need to summarise the plot, I've basically done that already. So let's just cut to the chase, which is the part where I complain about nothing else in the movie doing anything to lift the material.

Writer Zack Weiner, who also gives himself a lead role, seems to have done no more than come up with what he thought was a great idea, and then made sure he had a place for himself in it. The characterisations are thin, nobody is believable, the plotting is so silly that it makes it impossible to suspend your disbelief for more than a few minutes at a time (I almost lasted a whole five minutes without questioning everything happening onscreen, but it turned out I was almost dozing off, so I had to rewind the film and watch parts of it again).

This is the third feature from Daniel Robbins, and nothing here makes me want to see anything else from him. That may be a mistake, however, as the summary for his previous film, Uncaged, doesn't sound too bad (I am sure some of my friends can give me a yay or nay on that one). Perhaps he found his hands bound too tightly by the script, or perhaps he just thought, like Weiner, that the central concept was strong enough to make up for the many failings. Both of them were very wrong.

I'll mention Zachery Byrd, playing Justin, as a bit of a highlight, but I don't even want to bother namechecking the others. Those trying to pledge are shown as whiny weaklings, while the posh "kids" have all the power and enjoy abusing it throughout most of the runtime. Nobody is necessarily terrible, but nobody is given any shading to their character, despite moments that look to be heading that way.

Unless I am misremembering something, this is probably the worst mainstream horror movie I have seen in the last few years. And that includes The Nun.

2/10

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