Shudder Saturday: Deadwax (2018)

Something a bit different for Shudder Saturday this week, I was reminded to check Deadwax out while listening to the hosts . . . "wax lyrical" about it on the Strong Language & Violent Scenes podcast some time ago. And after listening to writer-director Graham Reznick give his best defence of the woeful Poltergeist III I knew that I had to check out his work.

Split into eight different episodes (or tracks, if you like), ranging in length from about 10 minutes to about 15 minutes, Deadwax is the tale of a powerful vinyl record that cam kill those who hear it. It was allegedly recorded by someone who died during the process, the sound of his "transition" captured, but isn't the only powerful record they recorded. There are also three key records, to be listened to simultaneously, that provide sounds never before heard by the living. These records, and those who have the misfortune to stumble upon them, also bring together a police officer (Len, played by Evan Gamble) and someone who specialises in finding rare records for her client (Etta, played by Hanna Gross).

Although the plot revolves around a very familiar horror trope (the powerful and evil work of art that can drive humans to madness and/or death, here it is in the form of vinyl albums, but it has previously been in the form of paintings, books, and movies), Deadwax has enough care taken with it to make it quite the treat for genre fans.

Reznick is quite the audiophile, something that resonates (no pun intended) throughout every chapter of this tale. That seems obvious, of course, in a story with this plot but it's not just sequences involving the featured records that place emphasis on the sound work. This feels very much like an audio piece, first and foremost, something that has been built up, layer by layer, until Reznick is finally content to then position the dialogue and visuals over the top of everything. Thanks to the contributions of everyone involved, it feels like he has made the album he always wanted to make. In visual form.

The cast all do fine, with Gamble and Gross being decent, if unspectacular, leads. Kirk Bovill is better, although only in one episode, as a young DJ who ends up providing a lot of backstory, building up the legend, there are fun turns from Yuki Sakamoto and Ted Raimi as two people who know more than most about the record, and Tracy Perez does well in her main supporting role (as Lana, the partner of Etta).

An enjoyable experience, overall, and one that totals up to the average runtime of a movie, Deadwax would benefit from some more moments of creepiness, or even just a few extra cheap scares here and there, but is an admirable attempt to take old ingredients and make something a bit fresh. I'll be interested to see what direction it goes in if a second season is developed, although this first run feels nicely self-contained.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Bushwick (2017)

I've seen a lot of love in recent months for Bushwick, a film that throws together two characters (played by Brittany Snow and Dave Bautista) and shows part of America heading to civil war hell in a handbasket around them. Co-written by Nick Damici and Graham Reznick (the former having been a vital component in the filmography of Jim Mickle over the past dozen years), it's an interesting "what if?" scenario.

Snow plays Lucy, a young woman who starts the movie about to get on a train with her boyfriend. Moments, and at least one explosion, later, her boyfriend is dead and Lucy has to find shelter while wondering just what is going on. Circumstances lead her into the home of a war veteran named Stupe (Bautista) and that's when the two begin to get a clearer picture, as hard as it may be to believe. It seems that a small military force has decided to help a number of states secede from the rest of the USA, and that will be a turbulent, painful, process.

Directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, Bushwick may be far removed from their previous work (Cooties) in content but it's similarly problematic when it comes to the execution of the script. This is a film that wants to be serious and sombre throughout most of the runtime, yet it very quickly piles on one wildly implausible moment after another. I'm not going to pretend to know how things would pan out if a new civil wore ever broke out in America but even I would be surprised if it led to such quick and sudden complete anarchy, and individuals so devastated by the fighting around them that they would rather commit suicide.

Snow and Bautista are both excellent in their main roles, believable as, respectively, the naive youngster quickly out of her depth and the professional ex-soldier who knows how is prepared for the worst and keeps clear aims in mind. It's easy to imagine Mickle in Bautista's role, and I wonder whether he deliberately decided to just stick to the writing this time around or whether Bautista's name helped in terms of funding and ensuring that the film was made. Angelic Zambrana and Jeremie Harris are two of the main supporting players, and do just fine, with many other faces just appearing for one or two scenes in between skirmishes.

Bushwick is not a bad film. It's just a film that doesn't ever seem to be sure of how it wants to put things across. If you want something based in a grim reality then it has moments of that, yet it also has far too moments of nonsense that feels like they've been pulled from a book entitled "101 Classic Doomsday Scenario Moments". And the ending doesn't help. It just feels like a sucker punch, and undermines a lot of what came before it.

6/10

You can buy the disc here.
Americans can buy it here.