With apologies to the Tamaki Makaurau peeps, who’ve been holding down the front line for the nation, it was a rough blow on a personal level when Northland plunged back into level three lockdown a couple weeks back. No need to get into the whats and whys. Vax up is all there is to say – it’s the only way out of this thing (double-vaxxed right here, son!).

When you’ve suddenly got a lot more time at home than you preferred, you’ve gotta fill that time somehow. A year and a half ago I wrote a thing recommending a bunch of movies I’d watched and enjoyed during the OG national lockdown and lately I’ve been burning through a movie most nights. So I figured, damn, might as well make like the movie industry itself and dish up a sequel.

That last piece was cool not only because it’s a type of article I don’t normally write but also because we got people all up in the comments and DMs recommending their own related favourite films. Love that. Get amongst it. Might even make this more of a regular thing if it gets a bubbly reception. Also, sorry in advance if you’re not keen on horror films but I am and it’s October and yeah there’s definitely a theme going on here. I’ve tried to mix it up... but this is a mostly spontaneous article so I wasn’t aware of my viewing patterns until I started working backwards.

Coming Home In The Dark (2021)

Let’s kick this off with a serving from Aotearoa. The debut feature from James Ashcroft (who has already been tapped up to direct a big budget Hollywood adaptation of Max Brooks’ Devolution – the dude who wrote World War Z) and starring familiar local faces like Daniel Gillies, Miriama McDowell, and Erik Thomson. I really don’t wanna give any spoilers out so I’ll keep it to the blurb that google serves up: Ruthless drifters take a school teacher and his family on a nightmarish road trip that forces the man to confront his past self. Yeah that’s all you need to know plot-wise.

As for the rest of it, know that this is not a film for the faint of heart. It’s borderline sadistic in places and never lets the viewer off the hook. Gillies is terrifying as the lead villain and hearing kiwi accents throughout definitely added a layer of realism to the tale for myself. Ashcroft also does remarkable things with that distinctive Aotearoa landscape to create a sense of isolation and menace. I can guarantee there’ll be walkouts after the first ten minutes and it’s not a film that offers easy answers. But if you can stick with the grind then it’s well worth it – CHITD is still haunting me, definitely gonna read the Owen Marshall story it’s based on. A mature, assured effort from a first-time local director. Get in.

The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935)

Widely considered one of the great sequels of all time, The Bride of Frankenstein is a funky sort of film. It starts with a fun but baffling scene where Lord Byron explains the details of the story to its author Mary Shelley – including bits that were changed from the novel for the 1931 film. Basically it’s a creative way to do the ‘Previously On...’ thing, although there is one great twist from that scene as the actress who plays Shelley also later plays The Bride. Then the film goes into some weirder areas with an emphasis on wacky townsfolk comedy and a completely silly sequence with a second mad scientist, Doctor Frankenstein’s old mentor, showing off his own artificially created lifeforms (he just hasn’t got the size right yet!).

Many of the themes of the 1931 version are still there. Boris Karloff’s performance as The Monster is as fantastic as ever, representing the character’s violence and vulnerability at once. James Whale’s directing is top notch (and groundbreaking for its era). But it is a film that feels more disjointed than I expected it to be from its reputation. However the ending is awesome, well worth the wait in a breezy 75 minute film, and there’s one scene which reaches unquestionable levels of greatness and that’s the hermit scene. That sequence alone makes this film legendary, no kidding.

The Velvet Underground (2021)

Todd Haynes made a film about glam rock a couple decades ago called Velvet Goldmine. I’ve never seen it. I think I’ll have to now but that’s one for next time. But I mention that to point out that Haynes is pretty well qualified to dish up a Velvet Underground doco and here we go. Haynes forms the narrative progression of the doco with talking head bits with surviving members and hangers-on, as well as some archival bits with Lou Reed in particular, but in all honesty they don’t really illuminate a whole lot. The yarns about Reed’s belligerence, about the band’s high influence/low recognition existence, the genius of the tunes that they made... those have all been told before.

Where this one goes well beyond the regular music documentary is with the director’s use of old footage and his artistic flair. Part of that is by necessity because there’s bugger all footage of the band actually playing music... but there’s heaps of footage from the whole Andy Warhol/Factory scene and Haynes makes some gorgeous creative decisions there. He uses split screens a lot. He uses colour (and lack thereof) really well. It becomes an expressionistic experience which, instead of joining all the chronological dots, chooses to capture the essence of the band instead. If you dig the tunes then you’ll dig the film for sure.

Hush (2016)

If Mike Flanagan’s name is on it then it’s worth your time. That’s a general rule at this point. Flanagan’s particular brand of humanist horror with its recurring themes of addiction and redemption, of grief and love, heavy on the metaphors but with deep and resounding characterisation... there’s nobody else working in this realm quite like him (although gotta shout out his massive Stephen King influence, which extends to a couple King adaptations – the magnificent Gerald’s Game and the overlong but often brilliant Doctor Sleep).

Hush was a bit of a breakthrough for him, made a couple years before his Netflix series came along (Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, and the recent Midnight Mass – weeks later I still can’t get Midnight Mass out of my head, it’s astounding). The story goes that a deaf author living out in the woods one night gets terrorised by a random psycho and she’s suddenly fighting for survival. Simple premise, expertly done. The first ten minutes sets up the rest of the film so perfectly and it manages to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. It’s inventive and tense. Plus it’s part of an unfolding masterful filmography which opens up so many spinoff viewings.

Free Guy (2021)

This is one of those movies you get the feeling was built upon one great idea. Ryan Reynolds plays a guy called Guy, a friendly and optimistic bank teller who slowly becomes dissatisfied with the routine mundanity of his life... for good reason because it turns out he’s actually a non-playing character in a video game where ‘real-life’ users log in as their avatars and do all sorts of GTA-inspired damage. Then one day his eye is drawn to a player who seems to offer him hope of something different (Jodie Comer from Killing Eve who should be in everything). It’s like The Truman Show crossed with The Matrix crossed with a Twitch stream.

It’s also very funny. Taika Waititi has a wonderful turn as the bad guy of the piece, the hipster developer who runs the company that produces ‘Free City’, the game in question, and Reynolds’ non-ironic naivety is always good for a laugh. The film plays with the video game reality really smartly and although it’s not a major theme it certainly does touch upon quite deep philosophical ideas about artificial intelligence. Plus it’s also a romantic comedy in disguise which is a clever twist that comes back around on you. I found it a really enjoyable watch.

Con Air (1997)

Look, mate. Is this a good movie? Not at all. It’s big and dumb and full of holes. In fact it might even be a bad movie... but it’s perfect. The premise, for those unaware, is that the bunch of the worst and most violent criminals in America are all being transported to some new maximum security facility but they hijack the plane and it’s up to a prime time Nic Cage doing a weird southern accent (“put the bunny back in the box”) to stop them while a slick John Cusack federale hunts the scent. It’s like they wrote a big dumb action movie and then multiplied every factor by three. This is what popcorn movies are supposed to be.

Island Of Lost Souls (1932)

Based on the HG Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau – where a mad scientist figures out how to turn animals into humans with a bucket-load of moral implications quickly following – this was a movie that took me completely by surprise. For one thing it’s pre-code so they got away with the panther woman slinking about pretty much half naked the whole film. But also because it does so much in only 71 minutes. The way they slowly reveal the animal-people is fascinating. The set pieces are so well done. It is, I will say, a wee bit racist (in keeping with its era) though maybe that was intended as allegory, hard to say. But Charles Laughton is a delightfully vile bad guy while old mate Bela Lugosi has a small but crucial role as one of the animal-people. It’s so well written too (“what is the law?”). Knew very little about this movie going in but I absolutely loved it.

Model Shop (1969)

Watched this one because I read that it was a major influence on Quentin Tarantino’s late-60s Los Angeles setting for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and... yeah that’s no lie. This is a movie that’s instantly distinctive for its place and time. Jacques Demy directing. It’s basically a 48-hours-in-the-life-of style narrative in which a 26 year old (who looks forty but some things never change with Hollywood) unemployed architect with minimal prospects (other than his impending draft to Vietnam) tries to stump up some cash so his car doesn’t get repossessed and in the process falls in love with a mysterious French woman. This isn’t a romance though. At least not in that way. There are places where it has more in common with noir... but I don’t wanna spoil much. It’s that setting which stands out most – perfect fodder for retro-inspired interior decorators, fashion designers, and auteur filmmakers with the intials QT.

Halloween (2018)

This was a rewatch in light of the sequel that’s out this month. I think I’m a bigger fan of the Rob Zombie remakes than most but this here reboot, picking up from the original John Carpenter classic in real time forty years later, is the real deal. Made with Carpenter’s approval (and killer score) and adding to the Michael Myers mythology with plenty of savage knife-and-mask work. Excuse the pun but it’s all killer no filler. They don’t even fully explain how he escaped... we just know the bus crashed somehow. Did Myers cause the crash? Doesn’t matter. Plus they do some cool things with society’s fascination with crime/horror, both from the Laurie Strode survivalist stuff and then most enjoyably with the true crime podcasters who get savaged in a petrol station bathroom. Good job. Those shows always strike me as so exploitative. I watched Halloween II a few months back too, the original sequel. It got decidedly mixed reviews within the company I watched it in but I really dug it.

Black Sunday (1960)

Mario Bava’s first film. It’s somewhere between a vampire movie and a witchcraft movie, where an evil woman and her paramour are accidentally resurrected and swiftly resume their reign of terror. Definitely got a lot in common with Hammer Horror and Roger Corman flicks from the same era (including the occasional bits of clunkiness) but also you can see the elements of the next two decades of Italian horror in there too – sadistic violence, eroticism, artistic cinematography, dubbed actors, etc. Barbara Steele steals the show in a dual role. There’s a chilly gothic setting. No fancy philosophical ideas at play here, just an old fashioned good versus evil yarn that’s a whole lot more gruesome than you expect it to be.

Roadgames (1981)

Stacy Keach plays a verbose loner truck driver working in rural Australia who seems to have stumbled onto the identity of a serial killer who’s been killing women up and down the motorway. When he takes a liking to a diplomat’s daughter hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis – still running away from murderers a few years after Halloween) and worries that she’s in line to be the killer’s next victim, well naturally he takes it upon himself to catch the bastard. There are some sloppy bits, Roadgames tanked when it came out (though is a bit of a cult fave these days), but the two American leads are great and the ending is awesome and there are plenty of weird folksy locals along the way which is always fun. Also Keach has a pet dingo in the movie. Very decent Australian thriller here.

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Righto mate let’s take it all the way back. Victor Sjöström’s silent Swedish classic is a Christmas Carol style yarn in which an old wino dies (while boozing in a graveyard) on the very brink of New Year’s Eve and as a result, being the last man to die that year, he is compelled to drive Death’s wagon for the next year collecting souls as they pass away. Heavy on the melodrama in that old-timey way but also revolutionary in some of its techniques with the ghostly translucent carriage and rider an instantly memorable vision. Mostly a morality tale but with hints of horror and fantasy in there. Plus the cool thing about old silent movies, and the thing that led me to this film in the first place, is that most of them are so old that they’re in the public domain now meaning there are HD versions on YouTube to geeze at. Already burned out this one and some Harold Lloyd (highly recommend Safety Last), next up is Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. The version I watched on YT has disabled embedding but click here to have a peek.

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