Breathing Happy (2022)

A film about addiction, a film about loss and regret, a film about that first Christmas you may be nervously spending alone, Breathing Happy is a strange and surreal film that creeps up on you and lands an eye-watering gut-punch on viewers by the time the third act starts to fully unfold.

I have to admit that I was wary when I saw it was written and directed by the lead actor, Shane Brady. That doesn’t always go well. Thankfully, there was no need to worry.

Shane plays Dylan, a man who is spending Christmas Eve trying to stick to his guns and stay one year sober. It’s tough though. That pull of his addiction is given extra strength as he also feels himself being tied up in a burlap sack of grief and thrown into a dark pool of misery. His memories and feverish imagination create what could be viewed as, well, spirits of Christmas past, present, and future. Will Dylan make it to his big sober anniversary date, or will he succumb to temptation? Will viewers care?

The answer to that last question is a resounding yes. Brady has been careful to present a character who isn’t a bitterly unsympathetic, which is no small feat when portraying an addict. Addiction is selfish, it breaks the hearts of loved ones who want you to stick around and be present, and it’s frustrating and infuriating to want to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. It’s also a sickness, and showing Dylan attempting to hang on to his sobriety allows Brady to show his Herculean effort, as well as his growing realisation of the pain he has caused others, and the pain he has caused himself while missing out on so many lovely moments with his family.

Although he is front and centre for almost every scene, Brady also helps himself by filling out his cast with great talent. You get great voice work from Sarah Bolger, Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead (two of them voicing magic doors . . . yes, magic doors), and there are excellent performances from Katelyn Nacon, Brittney Escalante, Angie Duke, and June Carryl. Each woman has at least one standout moment, and each presents a slightly different level of patience and understanding, with all of their input working together to eventually present Dylan with the full realisation that might lead to him finding the strength to survive this pivotal Christmas Eve. Oh, and I apologise for almost forgetting to praise Brady some more, he’s easily up to the task of carrying the movie with his powerful lead turn.

There are some flaws here, but they’re quite minor. I would have appreciated a slightly better score, and some of the fragmented memories don’t resonate as much as they could. These are quibbles though, and easy to forget about as you start to feel a lump forming in your throat and some dust aggravating your eyes. Which you should do, because Brady is, both behind and in front of the camera, a master manipulator. In the best possible way.

8/10

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Synchronic (2019)

I was going to start this review by mentioning the fact that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (once again both sharing directing duties on a script from Benson) have shown less and less interest over the years in the horror genre. That's not true. They never really set their stall within the genre, and that's not a bad thing. Without being constrained by the expectations of the genre, Benson and Moorhead have managed to consistently entertain fans with intelligent movies that usually explore the concept of time (Resolution has moments showing how an addict fails to keep track of time, Spring has the idea of potential immortality, maybe, and The Endless has lots of time trickery in there). And they've done this while also not having to shy away from moments that show madness, monstrosity, or excessive bodily harm.

Synchronic, their latest movie, is both their most ambitious, and yet also their most simplistic, work to date. It seems to benefit from a decent step up in terms of budget, it has room for some great set-pieces as it develops the plot naturally in a way that draws you all the way in with ease, and it's another one of their films with a very strong heartbeat at the centre of it all.

Plot-wise, Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan are two paramedics who are seeing all kinds of new and mind-boggling traumas on their rounds. It all seems to be linked with a drug named Synchronic. Synchronic seems to take people slightly out of time. And if you're a younger user then you could end up disappearing completely. This ends up happening to a fairly important character, which leads to Mackie figuring out exactly what Synchronic does, and how he can make use of it to rescue the missing party.

Starting off with a number of impressive individual moments, the opening act of Synchronic may put some off slightly if you don't have faith in Benson and Moorhead to start drawing the strings together and providing something that will entertain while it remains thought-provoking. Although they like to set up a lot of questions, a lot of points for viewers to ponder, Benson and Moorhead rarely leave you without the main answers. Sure, you have a lot of things that may remain slightly puzzling as you play catch up and continue to ingest everything else being fed to you, but none of their movies are impenetrable or deliberately obfuscating for viewers who pay attention.

They give themselves bonus points here with the central casting. Dornan and Mackie work really well together, and I mean REALLY well, and Mackie is at his absolute best in a middle section that shows him dealing with a lot of personal pain, exploring the world of Synchronic, and ultimately deciding on a course of action that he knows his friend won't necessarily understand, but also knows that he needs. Going through a full range of emotions, Mackie is the heart and soul of the film, and I hope his name draws his fans here to see how good he can be. Which isn't to detract from Dornan's work, giving a performance that is just as impressive without having the more memorable moments given to Mackie. Elsewhere, Katie Aselton does well in the role of Dornan's wife, and Ally Ioannides is very good as his 18-year-old moody daughter. You also get a small, but memorable, turn from the ever-dependable Bill Oberst Jr, in a role that I like to think of as a small call back to Resolution (there are also some red flowers/seeds mentioned in passing that I am taking as a deliberate reference, and if I am wrong on these points then I'll always be right to me).

Making excellent use of every tool at their disposal, Benson and Moorhead continue to push themselves, in terms of realising concepts and delivering more and more beautiful works of cinema. There are a number of shots here that are genuinely stunning, accompanied by a wonderful score by Jimmy LaValle. This is a film happy to take you through the highs and lows of, well, just what the universe around us has to offer. Time is a gift. It doesn't matter if it's linear, looped, squiggly, or available in different chunks. Every moment is a gift. And this film is another gift from two men who keep giving fans unexpected and wonderful entertainment every time they get their vision onscreen.

You'll kick yourself if you don't make some time for Synchronic.

8/10

Me and my new BFFs (L-R: Aaron Moorhead, me, Justin Benson) 

After Midnight (2019)

I've fallen behind in my appreciation of the work of Jeremy Gardner, who wrote this movie and co-directed it with his long-time collaborator Christian Stella. Okay, he's only actually directed three full features right now, and I am only missing out on one of them (Tex Montana Will Survive!, also co-directed with Stella, and one I have been meaning to see since finding out about it due to their novel approach to covering costs and then distributing it in various places for free), but his acting performances, and presence within the horror community, means that me even falling slightly behind feels like I am not doing enough to support someone who really deserves it. And Gardner certainly deserves your support.

After Midnight is the tale of a man, Hank (Gardner), left by the woman he loves (Abby, played by Brea Grant). While Abby is away from their home, Hank starts to be visited every night, after midnight, by a monster. It tries to get into his home, tries to attack him, and nobody will believe him. It's a strange tale, after all, and perhaps much easier to accept that this is a call for attention from a man who no longer knows just how his life is going to pan out.

If you enjoyed the fact that The Battery was a zombie film without too many zombies populating it, you should love the fact that After Midnight is a monster movie that uses the monster sparingly, and actually plays out for the most part with viewers unsure if the monster even exists. We see what Hank sees, but what is it that Hank is really seeing? What's easier to believe? That a monster comes along every night to terrorise him while he is alone and fragile, or that his mind wants to give him some strange challenge to distract from his heartache?

Gardner has always done well in the acting department, and has just managed to get better and better over the years. He knows his range, the kind of characters he likes to play don't seem to verge too wildly from a certain type, but he does very well in that sweet spot. Grant is very good in her role, although the plot requires her to make more of an impact with her absence than with her time onscreen. Justin Benson (who also produced with Aaron Moorhead, and it's clear to see why this appealed to them) does well in a supporting role, as does Henry Zebrowski.

If you want something easy and obvious then After Midnight is not for you. It's a film that gives you a monster and then teases you with the fact that it may or may not be real. It's more concerned with what it takes to push the central character on to the next stage of his life, for better or for worse. These kinds of movies are what horror fans should be seeking out, movies that make the most of their resources to craft a story that doesn't rely on the jumps and easy box-ticking that a lot of mainstream horror movies utilise. This is thoughtful, interesting, fare. Sadly, that will put some people off, but those who give it their time and patience will be rewarded, not least by an ending that delivers quite the cathartic experience.

8/10

After Midnight is available to watch now on VOD.

The Endless (2017)

Reason to watch a movie #8 - being about to attend a movie festival featuring the work of someone you admire and realising that you STILL haven't caught up on their last feature. That's what led me to finally watching The Endless (after a rewatch of Resolution, a film which has only gone up in my estimation since my first viewing of it). I'd heard this has connections to the earlier film. It has. Strong connections. I am glad I rewatched that one before I put this one on, and advise others to do the same, if enough time has passed for you to forget the details of Resolution.

Once again co-directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and once again written by Benson, this also stars the two men in the main roles, playing brothers imaginatively named Aaron and Justin (I think you can guess who plays who). Justin is the older brother, and he's the one who pulled Aaron safely out of what is best described as a strange death cult. After they receive a video about the current state of the cult, Justin thinks it may do them good to return to visit the cult, to show Aaron what he escaped and to draw a line in the sand. But it turns out that returning just allows the men to see with adult eyes things that they found a lot easier to accept as youngsters. It also places them in close proximity to areas where time seems to run very oddly, to put it mildly.

More sci-fi and fantasy than outright horror, The Endless continues the winning streak from Benson and Moorhead that has them delivering quality content for adults without resorting to the usual bag of tricks we see in so many other horror movies. They consistently deliver thoughtful and relatable moments that just happen to take place in an environment that also contains elements of the supernatural and monstrous. Resolution was about friendship, Spring was about love (and grief), and The Endless is about the bond between siblings, the protective role of the older brother, and those timey wimey shenanigans.

I'm not going to say that I was able to keep track of this throughout, it's a slippery bugger, sometimes seeming more interested in providing interesting moments to mess with your mind than giving you a puzzle that fits together smoothly and completely, but enough markers are dotted throughout the script to keep things intriguing as we move through a plot that becomes more and more urgent on the way to a grand finale that you just know could prove heartbreaking and deadly.

When it comes to the acting, the two film-makers don't do a bad job. They have a good chemistry in their lead roles, and the writing helps them to feel realistically like brothers. Tate Ellington is excellent as Hal, the sorta-nominated leader of the cult, Callie Hernandez and Kira Powell are both decent as Anna and Lizzy, with the latter clueing viewers in to the initial links to Resolution, and both Shane Brady and Lew Temple look slightly suspicious for almost every moment they are onscreen, while James Jordan plays someone understandable angry as he remains aware of the strange time trickery going on in the area.

Nicely constructed, both in terms of the main storyline and how things dovetail nicely with the events we already saw in Resolution, The Endless may well be the best yet from Benson and Moorhead. I'll need to give it a rewatch soon, but it's a film I will enjoy revisiting. Much like every other film they've worked on together to give us so far.

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: Spring (2014)

Life and love, sometimes it feels like you can't have one without the other, and both are arguably only most appreciated when you have an idea of what their loss really means. If you went through life without any idea of death coming along for you one day then how would you do things? And if you loved every time with the intensity of your first true love then it's hard to say whether that would improve your life, or make it a lot worse. It all depends on whether or not that feeling is reciprocated.

Spring was the second feature film to be co-directed by the winning combination of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and it shows them to be consistently mature and thoughtful creators, utilising horror movie ideas in a way that places them in situations viewers can easily identify with.

Lou Taylor Pucci is Evan, a young American man who finds himself in a bit of a spiral after the death of his mother. Thankfully, he meets a beautiful young woman, Louise (Nadia Hilker), while in Italy. But there's something different about Louise. Something she wants to keep hidden away from Evan, and something that could define the short-term nature of their relationship. Is the potential for their love worth what either of these two people could end up having to give up?

In a similar way to their previous feature, Resolution, Spring is an imperfect film in a way that makes it all the more endearing and enjoyable. It has gone up in my estimation since I first watched it a few years ago, and may rise further after future rewatches.

Although Pucci isn't the best person I could envision in the role of Evan, he does give off a nice mix of vulnerability and the sense of searching for a lifeline. He's lost, floating off a cliff edge, even during the moments in which he thinks he has everything in place and settled. Hilker is better in her role, but it's one that allows her to chop and change her personality as viewers sense something making her subject to something outwith her control. But beyond their individual performances, Pucci and Hilker do work very well together, and that is arguably the most important thing.

While Benson and Moorhead explore love, what it takes to be with the one you feel such a strong connection to, they also take the space and time to thoughtfully look at processing grief, being at a stage in your life when you're liable to make one mistake that can lead to another, and another, and another, and also how people can set on a certain path acting like a tourist and gradually become something better as they take in their surroundings more and start to appreciate them.

The kind of rich and rewarding horror film not designed to appeal to those just looking for a bodycount or load of gore (not that those films are automatically less worthy under the wonderful, pitch-black, umbrella of the genre), Spring is best described as an impressively insightful drama that just happens to have some monstrous moments. As well as some well-placed humour that feels in keeping with the central characters.

I bought this disc.

V/H/S: Viral (2014)

I really liked V/H/S. I also quite enjoyed V/H/S/2, despite not finding it quite as good as the first movie. So I guess it's only natural that I ended up disliking a lot of this third entry in the anthology horror series.

Things start off badly. The wraparound idea this time is the worst of the lot. It just feels too erratic and static-filled, despite the fact that it links everything together effectively enough. Just. Thankfully, things pick up with the first tale, "Dante The Great". It is, like many of the better V/H/S tales, an old idea given a bit of a modern makeover. Justin Welborn plays a magician who finds his act getting better and better when he takes possession of a cloak that used to belong to Houdini. The cloak can give him amazing powers, but it needs something in return. The next tale is "Parallel Monsters", all about a man (Alfonso, played by Gustavo Salmeron) who finally completes his invention, a machine that serves as a doorway to a possible parallel universe. He meets another version of himself and the two decide to swap universes for a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, there are some major differences that Alfonso didn't take into account. Last, and least, is "Bonestorm", a fast and loose piece of nonsense about some skateboarders who find themselves in the company of some nasty demon types. And everything ends with the climax of the wraparound tale, which I should have mentioned was all about a man tracking down his girlfriend in the middle of some crazy events.

The strange thing about V/H/S: Viral is that the more I think about it . . . . . . . the more I try to convince myself I liked it. That's because of how good the first main tale was, and of how many individual moments helped keep the thing from every feeling too weak and slow. But, putting my more rational head back on, it IS too weak and slow. As much as I enjoyed "Parallel Monsters", for example, it's a tale that could have been told in half the runtime without any detrimental effect on the impact of the scares/gags. And I wish I didn't feel the need to go on and on about how bad "Bonestorm" was (from the guys who gave us the fantastic Resolution) but I do. Because it's one of the worst anthology segments I've seen in years, with the exception of anything from Ti West.

I've already mentioned Welborn and Salmeron above, and with good reason. They're the two best performers in the movie, involved in most of the best scenes. Everyone else is either hampered by bad material or epileptic camerawork, or both (yes, I'm on about "Bonestorm" again).

As for the talent behind the camera, Gregg Bishop is the hero of the hour, for it is he who wrote and directed "Dante The Great". Nacho Vigalondo is the man who wrote and directed "Parallel Monsters", and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are the guys who have to take the blame for "Bonestorm". Marcel Sarmiento co-wrote and directed the wraparound tale, "Vicious Circles", which shows a huge step down from than some of his earlier work, and that covers all of the main names.

Would I still watch another instalment in this series? Yes, because when it works it works REALLY well. But I was looking forward to this movie, as I had looked forward to both of the previous films in the series. I won't be so optimistic for any future entries.

5/10

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Resolution (2012)

Resolution is a smart, effective, low-budget horror movie that showcases just what can be done when ideas and execution exceed budgetary limitations. Written by Justin Benson, who co-directed the movie with Aaron Moorhead, it's an impressive achievement that many horror fans have already discovered since it appeared on Netflix recently.

Peter Cilella plays Michael, a man who heads out to visit his friend, Chris (Vinny Curran). Chris has a drug problem and Michael wants to help him kick the habit and make his life better. Unfortunately, Chris doesn't actually want to clean up his act so Michael is forced to restrain his friend and put him through some unpleasant cold turkey. As if that wasn't a stressful enough situation, it turns out that Michael and Chris are, apparently, being watched and recorded by someone.

Although it's essentially a two-hander, Resolution does have a supporting cast of characters intruding on the lives of the two leads every now and again. The acting is very good from everyone involved, and I was very pleased to see a small role for the fine gentleman known as Bill Oberst Jr. Bill plays a character named Byron, someone who may know more about the local area than he lets on to Michael. Byron, however, isn't the only character who seems to know more than the two leads. Resolution is very much a film disproving the motto of "ignorance is bliss" while also reminding viewers that knowledge isn't always power. You need the right knowledge.

The script is pretty sparse, but there are enough good lines throughout to make it worth keeping your ears open. Despite the movie being about some bigger mystery, one conversation between Chris and Michael that lets them discuss another important aspect of the film, control, is as smart as it is truthful and even painful (for those who have been in a similiar situation).

The direction from Moorhead and Benson may be unspectacular, and everything about the film seems slightly subdued, but that's fine for the material. It doesn't need to shout or throw the camera around for added effect. It's happy enough, instead, to take the time required to make something quietly unsettling for horror movie fans after something that feels unique.

7/10

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