What Is She Thinking?: BFTW 11/21/25

I get grumbly when movies withhold information for non-narrative reasons. A good example is Young Adult, an otherwise solid anti-heroic dramedy where the lead’s traumatic experience could have logically been detailed during several earlier scenes, but is instead is revealed dramatically to the audience at the film’s climax. Having characters and the camera go out of their way to obscure relevant information suggests a lack of confidence in the story’s ability to hold our attention. It can be fun, especially in genre work, but the device is a red flag in films that want credit for quality or resonance. It’s not that people don’t have secrets, but we should have better reasons to watch well-drawn characters emote than finding out what the secret is.

Red Rooms, about a young model in Montreal obsessively following a horrifying murder trial, was a real challenge to my perspective on this. Kelly-Anne, played by Juliette Gariepy, is not just religiously in the courtroom, but using her impressive internet sleuthing skills to investigate further. Is it because she’s obsessed with the killer? The crimes? Is she employed by dark web crypto-sadists? No one knows, except her, because she tells no one. She has no desire to. If she laid out her agenda, that scene would be forced. All we can do is watch her, wondering what’s happening internally and why, while her concrete actions, privately and publicly, are shared in thorough detail. 

Without spoiling anything, I can admit a slight letdown when her mission becomes transparent. This makes me wonder how engaging the story would be without the conceit, but the conceit itself is almost maddeningly thrilling. In terms of construction, director Pascal Plante does Haneke/Hitchcock-level work in Red Rooms. The courtroom scenes are shot calmly, simply, treating the grotesque circumstances and the legal proceedings around them with respect. Similarly, Clementine, a “groupie” of the defendant, as openly vulnerable as Kelly-Anne is guarded, is shown non-judgmentally. If not for Kelly-Anne, there would be no chaos, no tension, just a thoughtful tale of how society deals with unspeakable cruelty. To be so close to this x-factor, and yet so distant, provides a cinematic experience of “mystery” equally distressing and intoxicating. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

While I’m glad the Lucas Foundation and UCLA and others got together and preserved Charles Burnett’s 1999 film The Annihilation Of Fish, I can’t it’s a must-see on the level of To Sleep With Anger. James Earl Jones plays the titular Fish, a Jamaican immigrant recently booted from a mental institution, now living across from Lynn Redgrave’s Poinsettia (one step from landing in an a mental institution) in a boarding house run by an only slightly less batty widow (whom I didn’t even recognize being Margot Kidder). Burnett’s unique sense of episodic storytelling is still striking, and all involved bring nuance to a story Garry Marshall would reduce to treacle. But “love in a house of old kooks” is a story Garry Marshall would have been happy to reduce to treacle, the film’s treatment of mental illness remarkably cavalier in hindsight. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

I swear, I love John Carpenter. The Thing, Assault On Precinct 13, They Live…God bless this man. But when the Criterion description for Prince Of Darkness declared it evidence of a "master of horror," I suggested out loud he could “master my nuts,” before remembering such hot air isn’t his fault. My contempt for mindless auteurism wasn’t diminished by the movie, which I think I tried and failed to finish in the DVD days. Released between the infinitely more fun Big Trouble In Little China and They Live, Prince Of Darkness almost feels like intentional self-parody. As with The Thing, a gaggle of scientists are forced to stare into the face of surreal, otherworldly evil. Though in this case, it’s not by accident: a priest asked an ol’ quantum physicist buddy to check out a jar of Liquid Satan. And where you might get a little lost trying to put faces with names on your first viewing of The Thing, his career best, in Prince Of Darkness even the characters say “who?” when the absence of another mentioned. 

Almost nothing happens for the first half hour, even less than went down in The Fog. Though, as in that snooze, an uncharismatic man with a big mustache is quickly laid by a lady he just met (oh, John). Characters even ask what the hell they’re supposed to be doing. Dr. Loomis from Halloween and Egg Shen from Big Trouble portentously discuss the nature of evil, though without many concrete details or real ideas, considering the hilariously unattended vat of demonic goo in the basement (the lid’s not even closed!). Once things finally get underway, there are some great “practical effects,” and a real air of Lovecraftian dread. But, I swear to Christ, if anyone tries to tell me I don’t appreciate the genius here, I’m going to tie them down, make them watch the scene where Mr. Mustache jumps out of a window guarded of Alice Cooper & Satan’s Unhoused, only to climb back up when they slowly walk towards him, and have them tell me their definitions of “horror” and “mastery.” THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Jamie Lee Curtis wasn’t among the Carpenter repertory players stuck in Prince Of Darkness, partly thanks to proving her non-horror thespian skills in movies like Love Letters. It’s a surprising film, not the least because it’s from Roger Corman and the director of Slumber Party Massacre (ok, and later, Mystic Pizza). Curtis plays a young radio DJ who enters into an affair with a married architect. Though I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece of the female gaze (not with Corman’s nudity requirements), it’s still atypically centered on the perspective of the “other woman,” making clear how familial grief and career anxiety play into her choices, rather than romantic obsession with the unavailable man (James Keach, showing a fittingly frustrating mix of awareness and self-indulgence). Ironically, writer/director Amy Holden Jones was negatively inspired by the male-centric perspective of Shoot The Moon - a drama largely hailed for Diane Keaton’s performance as the wronged wife.  Little could she have known Fatal Attraction was on the way. Featuring Bud Cort as Jamie's work buddy! FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

(Fun fact! I apparently conflated Slumber Party Massacre and Sleepaway Camp. I’m also not sure I’m going to be able to finish either cheapo slasher of arguably subversive quality. The latter felt too unhinged and the former not enough.)

I mentioned liking Slither in my Superman review, and I’m happy to say this James Gunn directorial debut holds up great! Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion are in a small town love triangle of unusual tenderness and mutual sympathy when an alien tapeworm lands on Earth, looking to conquer, and makes Rooker patient zero. It’s an intentional B movie, and small ball compared to everything he's done since and likely everything to come. But it’s as inventive and fun as you’d expect, pretty mandatory viewing if he’s not on your shitlist for making studios happy. POPCORN CLASSIC.

My popcorn ratings are explained here. If you have a question, or if there's other feminist cult films and psycho slashers you'd like to see my two cents on, send those suggestions and such to anthonyisright at gmail dot com. I'll be flattered!