Shudder Saturday: A Desert (2024)

The feature directorial debut from Joshua Erkman, who also co-wrote the film with Bossi Baker, A Desert is an intriguing blend of neo-noir, horror, and something that should appeal to fans of Rob Zombie (specifically his work showcasing the Firefly family).

Kai Lennox is Alex, a photographer who ends up staying at a motel where he encounters Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith). Things don't go well, which leads to Alex's wife, Sam (Sarah Lind), hires a private investigator, Harold Palladino (David Yow), to retrace his steps and find him.

Interspersed with moments of surrealism, a nightmare atmosphere that keeps the firm with one foot planted in the horror genre while the rest of it stays firmly in thriller territory, A Desert may not be entirely successful with what it's trying to do, but that's only because it's never as focused as it could be. Characters are given some time and space, but still don't get enough. We get to know a bit about Alex, not much though. We get to find out the real faces behind the everyday (thin) masks worn by Renny and Susie Q, but only a glimpse. We feel Sam's worry and frustration in relation to the situation, but she is mostly defined just by that. The closest we get to someone fully fleshed-out is Harold, a mix of past failures and present weaknesses, but somehow still doing the job he was paid for when he gets away from any distractions.

The cast is a very mixed bag, which doesn't help. Sherman and Smith are so good that they show up those who can't match them, which is particularly obvious in the scenes they have with Lennox. Lind isn't given as much to do, although she does okay, and Yow is a bit too low-energy when the third act needs him to work in line with the heightened energy of things spiralling towards a climax. He's not bad though, just never seeming ready to act with any real haste.

For all the faults of the film, in terms of the varied performances, the scenes that seem to bulk out the 103-minute runtime unnecessarily, and the disappointingly vague nature of some key moments, it's a strong enough debut from Erkman to make him someone worth keeping an eye on. He shows a good ability to heighten the darkness and horror of what could have easily been a pedestrian and tame thriller premise, and there's something impressively Lynchian about the details he chooses to focus, as well as the atmosphere he creates in the moments that are building up to a sudden outburst of violence.

It's hard to recommend this to others, it is unlikely to fully satisfy thriller fans or horror fans, but it should definitely work for some people as it worked for me. And I'll be very interested in whatever comes next from Erkman, even if he uses this feature as a connection to some other tale in similar territory. 

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: WolfCop (2014)

I remember hearing mixed things about Wolfcop when it first came on the scene. I have subsequently heard that the sequel was an improvement, but I am not the sort of person who would be able to watch any sequel without having watched the first film first. I am not a lunatic.

Written and directed by Lowell Dean, this is a fairly simple tale of a cop (Lou Garou, played by Leo Fafard) who seems to be very close to losing his job. He would much rather spend his time getting drunk than solving crimes, but things change when he ends up involved in some black magic ritual one night. That gives him the "gift" of lycanthropy, which turns him into the titular wolfcop. The bad news is all the extra fangs and hair. The good news is that he actually seems to become better at his job.

Although it's hampered by some of the acting, as well as the moments that feel planned more around the low budget than the set-pieces, there's a lot to enjoy here. The mix of tired tropes used to define our main character and his situation are mined well to show the full transformation, and everything plays nicely into a finale that is both clever and entertainingly cute.

Fafard may not be the best lead ever, but he leans into an amplified set of behaviours that play into the ridiculousness and comedy of the premise. Amy Matsio does a bit better as his partner, Tina, Sarah Lind gets to play her character, Jessica, as a sultry riff on Little Red Riding Hood, Aidan Devine is pretty good as the Chief Officer, Corinne Conley has good fun in her role, and Jonathan Cherry, arguably the most familiar face, also seems to be having a good time with the material.

Dean may not be able to smooth off all of the rough edges, but that just adds to the appeal of the whole thing. And while it's mostly a bit technically crude and visually ugly, all the stops are pulled out for a couple of fantastic highlights. The actual werewolf transformation sequence is up there with the best of them, a genuine contender that should appear on any ranked list of "best movie werewolf transformations of all time", and there are some brilliant gore gags that focus on spray and splatter ahead of realism.

I think I fall in line with many other horror movie fans who wanted this film to live up to the full potential of the premise. It's slightly disappointing, particularly in the first half, but the best parts of it easily make up for the lesser moments. If the sequel is the improvement that everyone says it is then I am pretty much guaranteed to have a great time with that. In the meantime, I won't rush to rewatch this one, but I am glad to have finally made time for it. It may not have had me howling with laughter, but it kept me fairly amused, and it tried to deliver at least one or two moments that felt quite unique. It also has one of the best taglines ever.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: A Wounded Fawn (2022)

It can be tricky when you decide to rave about a new horror movie, because there are times when it seems that a rave-worthy entry in the genre seems to come along every few weeks. We horror fans are often spoiled, despite how people may view different years and decades as particularly fertile or fallow ground, and there's often the danger of hyperbole to navigate around.

Having said that, A Wounded Fawn is absolutely superb. I would easily rank it as one of my favourite films from this year, and that means that director Travis Stevens is now three for three with the feature films he has directed (before this one we had the enjoyable Jakob's Wife and, his feature debut, Girl On The Third Floor).

Sarah Lind plays Meredith, a young woman who has decided to go away for a weekend with Bruce (played by Josh Ruben). The two will be staying in a cabin in the woods, standard middle of nowhere kinda location, and a nice time will hopefully be had by the both of them. But things start feeling off from the start, and it isn't long until Meredith suspects that she may be in mortal danger. In a strange twist, however, it isn't long until Bruce also feels the same way.

Co-written by Stevens and Nathan Faudree, this is a film that delivers some weird and wild imagery within a template that could have easily just been a dark and entertaining serial killer movie. I'm still undecided about what everything means, particularly in the very last scenes, but I know that I loved every moment, whether it was a burst of surprising bloody violence or a languid "waking dream" showing us the mythical figures who were encouraging or castigating a confused killer.

It helps that both Lind and Ruben are genuinely excellent in their roles. The former is the kind of lead who emanates so much screen presence that she can play natural without ever seeming dull, the latter is great at being just a little bit "off" until the real danger of the movie is revealed. Although mostly just a two-hander, there's also a supporting role for Malin Barr that allows her to have a bit more screentime than you might expect, and allows her to portray a character who is more than just a potential random victim.

Dialogue may be minimal for a good 2/3 of the runtime, but Faudree and Stevens do a great job of filling the film with enough to observe and dissect throughout. There are many small details that end up becoming more important as they start to recur, and viewers start to realise the value that certain characters have placed upon them, and the whole thing is an obtuse puzzle that never becomes too frustrating while we all wait to be shown the ultimate reveal/solution.

From the audio work to the practical FX moments that will make you wince, A Wounded Fawn very rarely puts a foot wrong. It's held back from being perfect by the smallest of margins, and I couldn't even put my finger on anything I viewed as a proper negative aspect. I may even adjust my rating upwards whenever I make time to rewatch it.

9/10

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Shudder Saturday: Jakob's Wife (2021)

Barbara Crampton plays Anne Fedder, a woman who is married to Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden). Their marriage seems a bit stale, I think it's fair to say, and Anne has settled into a role that leaves her a bit (or a lot?) less satisfied than she should be. But that changes when she is bitten by a creature (Bonnie Aarons, working under a very impressive make up job). Anne may need to drink blood from others now, but she also has a confidence and aura that has been missing for many years. That changes her marriage, and not necessarily all for the worse.

Directed by Travis Stevens (who also helmed the very enjoyable The Girl On The Third Floor), and co-written by Stevens with Kathy Charles and Mark Steensland, Jakob's Wife is yet another fun film in a sub-genre that everyone assumes is dead until a fresh approach is presented. There are numerous elements and moments here that feel lifted from past vampire movies (e.g. how often have we seen someone be bitten and then try to satisfy their new urges with raw meat/blood from a butcher shop?), but the material is given a nice twist when the focus shifts to the state of the marriage between Anne and Jakob, using the bite itself as a metaphor for any big change made by a spouse that reinvigorates their mind and spirit.

It helps that the leads here are Crampton and Fessenden, with the former a particular boost to the production, considering I have been convinced for some time now that she has at least one bath full of blood a week to maintain her victory over the passage of time affecting us all. Crampton is fine while playing the more timid version of Anne, but she gets to have way more fun as her character blossoms. Fessenden is excellent, his character putting the pieces of a puzzle together while he wrestles with his conscience over the best way to move forward. Aarons gets to be the Nosferatu of this tale, and her physical presence is genuinely spooky and impressive. Nyisha Bell is a young woman who goes AWOL early on, and she does well in her role, and there's decent support from Sarah Lind and Mark Kelly, as well as a fun small turn from Robert Rusler.

Although never a film you would mistake for a mainstream studio horror movie, and I am not noting that here as any negative, Jakob's Wife is very well made throughout, from the visuals to the unintrusive score, by Tara Busch. There may be nothing here that stands out as being absolutely brilliant, aside from the core cast, but the script and direction are full of nice little touches, the pacing is pretty perfect, and the ending is deliciously dark and satisfying. What you have here is a good film that manages, thanks to the way it never once drops in quality, to become ever so slightly great. It's also interesting and fun enough to warrant more than one viewing, and I can easily see it becoming a film that some horror movie fans will choose to champion for the next few years. If it doesn't get the attention it deserves. So you can get ahead of the curve by giving it that attention now.

8/10

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