I’ll just say that lately, a lot of experiences are making big and interesting moral statements, to assorted effect and accuracy. Beyond that, just know that I have the perfect visual for the process that trying to talk about what’s going on in film and media entails, and I’m very grateful to this week’s viewing for helping me be able to put a visual to that process. As always, below are some recommendations of what to stream. Look back at past issues of the Scene for more.
The VelociPastor on Amazon Prime
As pleasant a surprise as one could hope for, this very low-budget supernatural kung fu spiritual crisis is short and sweet and perfectly capable of balancing its stupid and its smart. Doug Jones (Greg Cohan), a young priest driven into crisis by the tragic deaths of his parents, accidentally finds himself in the wrong place (China) at the wrong time (turf war/extermination) and ends up inadvertently able to transform into a dinosaur (technically, they’re "lizard warriors") when stressed-out or in heightened situations. At first he rejects this new self (and its occasional body count of robbers and rapists), but with the nurturing love of grad student/sex worker Carol (Alyssa Kempinski), he decides to become an avenging talon of The Lord. 2019's The VelociPastor is 75 minutes long and features dinosaur effects from Party City’s inflatable aisle, but it knows exactly how seriously to take the material (not very). Cohan is disarmingly charming, and the laughs and gore pop up regularly.
Brand New Cherry Flavor on Netflix
Catherine Keener as cat lady presiding over a cult of zombie motorcyclists who maintain a clandestine ring of passive witchy power over ’90s Los Angeles — that really should be enough to pique anyone’s interest, and when this eight-episode miniseries is firing on all cylinders, it’s a glorious grotesque about all forms of power and exploitation that delivers all kinds of thrills and grungy majesty. Alas, eight episodes of Brand New Cherry Flavor feels like it might be two or three episodes too many, as the kicky energy peters out, and by the end you’re just sort of wanting more and/or wishing you hadn’t succumbed to the voice of the binge. Lisa (Rosa Salazar, Alita Battle Angel herself) has come to L.A. in the earlyish 1990s to find a way to turn her short film "Lucy’s Eye" into something bigger, but the grand guignol she unleashes onto a world of corrupt producers, moneymen who don’t pay attention and the collateral family damage of all power structures has a body count more impressive than even the gutsiest of gutbucket slashers. I’ve not read Todd Grimson’s novel, but the first few episodes of this series deliver everything horror fans could want from sensual-bordering-on-sleazy movie-based transgressions, even if it doesn’t stick the landing. Co-creator Nick Antosca is also responsible for the four-season wonder Channel Zero over on Shudder, and we may have to talk about that sometime, because it delivers. Also, genital spider bite definitely goes on the list of fears, right next to the glory-hole meat grinder in Death Drop Gorgeous. Note: There’s some simulated animal harm throughout (which is not ideal), as well as a central metaphor for the creative process that is simultaneously insightful, grotesque and adorable. Your mileage may vary.
Malignant
Malignant in theaters and on HBO Max
Even when I haven’t been completely on board with James Wan’s previous films, I’ve always been impressed with how importantly he emphasizes the physical space that his films take place in. If you look at the first Conjuring, or even Dead Silence or Aquaman, it’s apparent how much care and pleasure he takes in the physical layout of his stories, so right from the beginning something feels off here. The pre-title sequence is messy both visually and narratively, and at no point do things recover from that sense of imbalance.
All opening weekend, with just a few exceptions, I saw rapturous swoons for this film from friends, colleagues and lovers whose opinions about horror I absolutely trust. And yet, I seriously fucking hated this film. It’s ridiculously gory (if compound fractures set you off, watch out), which is always appreciated in a mainstream release. It has a central house that oozes the most gloriously menacing West Carrollton, Ohio, energy in exterior shots. It has a body count like an Adam Green movie, which again is impressive for something released in actual theaters by a major studio.
I’ve read a lot of articles and social media scrawlings that proclaim this to be a giallo, which is something I would like to disabuse the public of: Just because a movie has a killer who wears gloves and a long black coat does not make it a giallo. Also — and I’m trying to tiptoe around spoilers, because there are some gonzo narrative choices that provide the only things approaching pleasure in the whole experience — but this film has really idiotic things to say about women’s bodies. Wan is working with two women (Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper) on the story, with Cooper having written the screenplay, and yet this feels like something one might see at a no-holds-barred church youth group lock-in. If X is the obscenely high number of women that this film kills in one scene, it immediately ramps up and kills 1.5X cops.
There are moments when you can see the other movie inside of here, with its narrative skeins sliced, diced and dumped haphazardly on the editing room floor. There’s a heavy debt to Dario Argento’s Trauma herein, but given several cases of off-brand energy drinks and zettabytes of CG blood, without exploring the grief and disorders at the heart of that maligned gem. I’ll give Malignant this — at no point does it feel bound or compromised, and I’m glad it’s bringing so many folks in the horror community so much joy. As for me? Well, if I hadn’t seen Glenn Danzig’s Death Rider in the House of Vampires during the week when it was in theaters, Malignant would easily have been the worst thing I saw so far in 2021.
