Netflix And Chill: The Machine (2023)

A star vehicle for Bert "The Machine" Kreischer, this comedy may be appreciated more by people who were aware of Kreischer's existence before watching it. I am not one of those people. To be fair, an opening sequence sets up both the character and the details that will set the main events in motion, but your reaction to it will still mainly depend on your reaction to Kreischer, who plays a fictional version of himself onscreen.

Having some problems with his family, largely stemming from a night when he got his daughter into some big trouble and live-streamed the whole thing, Bert is at a point when he knows that he needs to calm things down a bit. He needs to leave his past fully behind him, which makes the timing all the worse when his past, in the shape of a dangerous Russian named Irina (Iva Babic), comes to bite him on the ass. Whisked away, with his ever-critical father (Albert, played by Mark Hamill) also caught up in the mess, Bert has to delve into some hazy memories to find a way to make things up to some people he wronged twenty years ago. Are they right to feel wronged though, or has Bert just been exaggerating and lying about some of his drunken exploits for the sake of entertaining the crowds who enjoy his comedy?

I'm not sure how much faint praise I can keep laying on this before it collapses under the weight of it all, but The Machine was perfectly fine. It was better than I expected it to be, but I also know that I'll have forgotten all about it by the time the year ends. It works best when putting Bert and his father in serious trouble (there's a pretty great gag about an accidental gunshot that takes out numerous enemies), but it fails to maintain any consistent momentum, and 112 minutes is far too long for something built on so slight a conceit.

Director Peter Atencio has some great stuff tucked away in his body of work, and he's done action comedy material before with a great bias towards the comedy, but it seems as if everyone here is slightly hampered by having to keep everything on-brand for Kreischer. There's also attempts to have moments that are slightly more serious and heart-felt, which is all well-intentioned stuff, but doesn't work as it unbalances the movie even further away from the lighter tone it should have throughout. Writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes pack in a lot of unnecessary extra flashbacks (at least allowing Jimmy Tatro to have fun as a younger incarnation of Bert), but these mis-steps would have been easier to forgive if there had just been more big laughs.

Kreischer is fine in the main role, shoe-horning his persona into something made to accommodate him, and Hamill has a few really good moments, although they are too few and far between, but it's Babic and Robert Maaser, as well as Martyn Ford, who end up being more memorable. They're enjoyably ridiculous villains written in a way that feels amusingly old-fashioned and over the top, as if we're being told this story, yet again, from someone who is keen to exaggerate the details and turn it from something major into something epic. Tatro is someone I like seeing appear in anything (I've been a big fan since his turn in American Vandal) and his inclusion here, despite being part of the extraneous scenes that strip away the ambiguity of just what happened on that big drunken night, is another plus point. Stephanie Kurtzuba does a good eye-roll as the long-suffering partner, LeeAnn, and Jess Gabor follows suit as the older daughter, Sasha, who has had her life negatively impacted by the antics of her father.

Fitfully amusing, helped by the fact that Kreischer is self-aware to know what people like about his persona, and what can be twisted as he moves towards some kind of redemption, The Machine will never be a top viewing choice for anyone, but I am sure there are some fans out there who will enjoy it a hell of a lot more than I did. The rest of us can forget all about it and focus on the many better comedies available to take up 90-120 minutes of our time.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: Deadcon (2019)

If you're going to create a horror movie set at an event alleging to bring together some of the biggest social media influencers in the world (mainly YouTube and Instagram stars) then you should do your best to avoid making the main characters as annoying as viewers will, rightly or wrongly, expect them to be, or you can ramp up the nastiness in a way to make it all more satisfying.

Deadcon does neither of these things.

Lauren Elizabeth is Ashley, a young woman who ends up in a haunted hotel room after an overbooking situation. Claudia Sulewski is Megan, and her big problem for the weekend is trying to get some private time with the young man she is secretly dating. He's Dave (Keith Machekanyanga), and he's not happy when given such limited time, especially when Megan hasn't completely broken up with her boyfriend yet. All of these things are revealed after a prologue that shows a man on a computer speaking to a spirit named Bobby. The years may have passed by, but Bobby (Judah Mackey) has stuck around.

Although he seems to have a background in comedy material, writer Scotty Landes ended up with his name on both this and Ma in the same year. Having now seen this, I shall reserve judgement on his value as a contributor to the horror genre until I see Ma. Because I think it might be a bit harsh to dismiss him immediately, based on this alone, especially when there are moments that show him doing some decent work in between the weaker scenes.

Director Caryn Waechter has a bit more experience with darker material, although most of her previous work consists of short films in the run up to her debut feature, The Sisterhood Of Night, and she tries to do what she can with what is essentially a supernatural curse movie revolving around characters who are social media stars (just typing that out made me want to throw up in my mouth slightly). It's a shame that the budget didn't stretch enough to make the onscreen environment feel more real - background noise feels like it's pulled from a generic "crowd noise" selection, and there are scenes in which a dozen heads/hands holding phones up are supposed to give the illusion of a big crowd . . . it never works - but Waechter makes up for these moments with some of the teen-friendly scares. The brief runtime, just under 80 minutes, also helps.

Elizabeth and Sulewski are both fine in their roles, with the former particularly nailing how entitled and out of touch you expect these young, new breed of celebrities to be. Machekanyanga does enough to make his character likeable enough, despite having at least one major doucehbag moment, and Mackey does a lot better as the silent and spooky did than he did in his "normal" role in Anderson Falls. Carl Gilliard is the one person who believes he knows what is going on, and he does well in his thankless role, while everyone else is either eminently forgettable or just annoying enough for you to want them to disappear ASAP.

Although nobody, from the director and writer to the various cast members, can quite do enough to make up for the inherent pointlessness of the whole thing (and I mean that in relation to the main characters and also the main paranormal activity), Deadcon almost rises up to the level of average because of a number of people trying to do the best with what they've got. It doesn't manage it, but I was impressed that it almost did.

4/10