One Cut of the Dead (2018)
Shinichiro Ueda
"Pom!"
I don't want to say much about One Cut of the Dead, because it's a movie that should be experienced for the first time with a totally clean slate, but here's the premise: while shooting a low-budget zombie movie, the cast and crew are attacked by zombies. That's all I'm going to say. You just need to watch it. Trust me.
REVIEW: Five conveniently placed axes out of five.
HOW I WATCHED IT: You can catch this one on Shudder. It's worth the headache of cancelling the free trial if you really don't want to pay the $6 for a month of Shudder, but there's lots of other great stuff on there too.
BEVERAGE: Revolution Brewing's NE IPA. Light, refreshing, and a little unexpected.
Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)
Issa Lopez
"I can't wish your mother back to life."
We watched Tigers Are Not Afraid after the madcap zaniness of One Cut of the Dead, and folks, let me tell you: not a great one-two punch. It was sort of like brushing your teeth with very minty toothpaste and then immediately tucking into a plate of citrus slices. The first 20 minutes or so were disorienting as I tried to get my head back in regular movie mode, so this is not going to be the best review.
Tigers Are Not Afraid is the story of a young girl and her gang of friends orphaned in the Mexican drug wars told with one foot in the genre of gritty, brutal realism, and the other in dark fairy tale. It reminded me a lot of something like Pan's Labyrinth, where a child experiences the trauma inflicted on her by the cruel adult world through fantastical creatures and lands.
Our young hero in Tigers Are Not Afraid receives three pieces of chalk from her teacher while cowering from a gang shootout near the school, and is told that she can make a wish on each one just like in a fairy tale. After her mother goes missing (likely abducted by the local cartel), she fearfully wishes that her mom would return. Evidently, they did not cover the story of the Monkey's Paw or the need to be judiciously specific when making wishes, because her mom does indeed return, but in a more vengeful, wraith-like way, rather than in her standard corporeal form.
There's a lot here about what it's like to grow up as a child in the midst of unrelenting violence, and the journey of the children through the blasted out landscape of their unnamed Mexican city is the most captivating parts of the whole film. I don't think I was in the right frame of mind to watch it, however. It's a bleak film, and any small moments of joy or comfort are quickly undercut by more trauma.
I'm sure it's a fine movie, but you have to be ready for the crippling sadness that's going to come along with the spooky stuff. I was not.
REVIEW: A hundred sad children painting a hundred sad pictures in a dilapidated orphanage
HOW I WATCHED IT: Shudder.
BEVERAGE: A Guinness straight out of the can. Do I really deserve anything more than that?
Revenge (2017)
Coralie Fargeat
"Women always have to put up a fucking fight."
There's a sub-genre of exploitation/grindhouse filmmaking that I've never gotten into called rape revenge, initially made famous by 1978's I Spit on Your Grave, the themes were explored by dozens of other grindhouse films looking to cash in. The storylines of these films are all generally the same: 1) a young woman is brutally assaulted, raped, and left for dead, 2) she rehabilitates herself in some way, 3) she exacts bloody and brutal revenge on the men who wronged her. And without spoiling too much, Revenge does not reinvent the wheel.
But that's not a bad thing! I'm extremely down for gritty and visceral grindhouse stuff, especially when it has someone with real talent behind the camera. Unlike most of the cheap shock-schlock that has come out in this seedy little genre, Revenge is downright beautiful when it's not trying to be disgusting, and it's clear Fargeat knows what she's doing. So while the basic story is no mystery, the little touches are lovely. I'm not going to rehash the whole thing, but there's something about watching rich white men die in bloody and awful ways that really warms my heart.
Like my friend Ryan, I didn't really see the whole "wildly inventive feminist twist" angle that the promotional stuff exclaimed about the movie, but it's certainly more updated than I Spit on Your Grave. I did appreciate that the rape scene was appropriately unpleasant but not explicit. A lot of disgusting movies (I'm looking at you Death Wish III) use rape as a cheap and convenient vehicle to get female nudity into the film, and, well, that's gross. If this genre is still going to be a thing (it does not need to still be a thing), it should be left in the hands of female filmmakers.
Overall, Revenge is a nice piece of modern grindhouse/exploitation for our post-Tarantino world. It's not as stylized or outlandish as Kill Bill or Mandy, but that makes Revenge refreshing. It still keeps its arthouse edges while winking toward the exploitation films of old.
So, if you're interested in watching white dudes get wasted, and you're not squeamish about gallons of blood, Revenge might just be what you're looking for. I can say with all honesty, Revenge is the Citizen Kane of disgusting exploitation rape revenge grindhouse movies.
REVIEW: A whole bloody pile of dead rapists
HOW I WATCHED IT: Shudder
BEVERAGE: Bell's Oktoberfest
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