Yet More Horror: BFTW 10/17/25

In Dangerous Animals, a shark-obsessed serial killer on the Gold Coast picks the wrong late-night surfer as chum. I’m a big fan of thrillers where every character is playing to the top of their intelligence, and Animals is a terrific example. Hassie Harrison’s Zephyr is the first “final girl” I’ve seen who seems both painfully aware of how pathetic and contemptible self-perceived “apex predators” are, and unafraid to express it. Jai Courtney, as the superficially genial tour boat captain not used to being told how psychologically and physically torturing innocent people isn’t really comparable to oceanic carnivores at all, is both enamored of and irritated by her refusal to cower, their battles rarely requiring one to fuck up more illogically than necessary. Josh Heuston, playing an enraptured real estate agent trying to overcome Zephyr’s defenses for more tender-hearted reasons, is similarly resourceful without being superhuman. 

A meet-cute turned soul-baring hook-up is exactly the kind of charming romantic sequence many critics would resent as the prelude for a slasher movie (see Roger Ebert bemoaning the Mansonites interrupting Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler’s emotional dilemma in The Strangers). But writer Nick Lepard and director Sean Byrne (whose The Devil’s Candy I should watch already) atypically manage to provide both romantic optimism and gory wounds. IFC may have missed out on a bigger theatrical haul by not pushing this as a date movie. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

While Cloud is the fourth film I’ve seen by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, I don’t feel comfortable suggesting a firm grasp on any auteurist sensibility, as Cure, Pulse and Creepy are just three of the twenty-odd movies he’s made over the last forty years. If someone only had seen Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Casino before Wolf Of Wall Street, would you want to hear their take on Martin Scorsese? But if I dared to take a swing, I’d note that Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) suggested unearthly evil creeping into our world, while Creepy (2016), though no less doom-laden, made it clear a person doesn’t need supernatural help to be a menace to those around them. 

Cloud, from last year, follows a less lethal, but no less myopic creep, as he burns every bridge around him in a vain attempt to make a living re-selling crap of varying quality online. Initially grounded in modern financial reality, the situation turns increasingly farcical, downright Coen-esque, in its suggestion of a criminal underworld that’s far more neurotic than noir. I found the climax rather limp and protracted, though. Even if I missed a cultural irony among the reveals and surprising team-ups, the various gunfights and Mexican stand-offs could have either been shorter or more memorable. But for much of the film, I loved how Masaki Suda’s Yoshii was casually indifferent to not just the desires of those around him, but an audience’s, never feigning universality or poignancy while on his dull, shallow grind. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

I was rather shocked to discover, looking at my phone late into the 2020 remake of Children Of The Corn, that it was directed by Kurt Wimmer. While Wimmer has had a hand in plenty of action scripts since, his last directorial efforts were 2002’s Equilibrium and 2006’s Ultraviolet, films primarily recalled for “gun-kata,” Wimmer’s vision of kung-fu with machine guns. Though not without grotesque appeal, none of the violence in Corn is nearly as memorably unhinged. You can’t blame Stephen King for this either, as Wimmer’s film has almost nothing to do with the original short story. Instead of following a pair of adult reporters, the hero is now Boleyn, a high school senior who believes her small farming town should invest in green tech instead of accepting government subsidies after their corn haul has been ruined by invasive pesticides and corporate disinterest. 

The ecological debates are rather irrelevant to the primary issue, which is that there’s a demon in the corn inspiring the children to kill the grown-ups. But Boleyn, played by Elena Kampouris, responds to every problem the same way - with aggrieved shouting. Whether a farmer is dismissing her desire for the children to be considered, or a child is dismissing her desire to see a farmer not skewered, all Boleyn can do is quiver and demand they stop. Wee Kate Moyer has more fun as the little girl with the corn demon’s ear (no pun intended!), frowning or skipping with glee depending on whether someone is being buried alive or avoiding such a fate. It’s a silly husk of a movie (no pun intended!), but I want to watch all those straight-to-video sequels to the original now. At least until they reveal they’re worse. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

With a dad (Joel Kinnaman) comforting his son about the impending birth of a sibling in the opening scene, I worried Sympathy For The Devil would have too much child endangerment for me to handle. Thankfully, dad drops the kid off with fam before Nicolas Cage slides into the back seat, pulls out a gun, and demands the fretful father watch him act for the next 90 minutes. The description on Hulu was wrong to call this as a “cat-and-mouse” situation, as Cage and Kinnaman spend the entire movie together, Cage demanding Kinnaman admit he’s acting too, while Kinnaman swears up and down that he’s truly a guy worried about his pregnant wife and young family. Anyone else who enters Cage’s mis-en-scene winds up regretting it, too. It’s no great shakes, but Devil at least delivers the My Dinner With Angry that Cage enthusiasts would hope for. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

I wish I liked Somewhere Quiet, as Jennifer Kim and Kentucker Audley have a nonchalant, mumblecore energy as a couple trying to decompress in the woods and avoid publicity after the wife escaped a violent kidnapping. Marin Ireland soon shows up as the husband’s obsequious, obnoxious cousin, leading the wife to question whether a protester’s sign was right, and that “it’s always the husband.” Unfortunately, director Olivia West Lloyd doesn’t make it visually or narratively worth figuring out what’s really happening and what’s a PTSD hallucination, and what’s just being dragged out to annoy us. It’s one of those movies where someone asks a direct question and another person responds ambiguously for no motive other than that the movie depends on ambiguity. Can you imagine responding to “did you kidnap me?” with “I refuse to engage with this” instead of “hell, no!” if you weren’t the kidnapper? THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I was pleasantly surprised by Toolbox Murders, a 2004 Tobe Hooper movie now on Criterion. I find Hooper movies very hit-or-miss, either kinkily inspired (1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) or just kind of dull and ugly (most of the movies he did before 1986’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). But Toolbox, concerning the quirky residents of a dilapidated former hotel in LA, manages to recreate the crude, psychotic whimsy of his more memorable work. Angela Bettis, Juliet Landau and Marco Rodriguez are among the actors Hooper lets bounce off each other, the rather nonsensical slaughter (why is this decades-old evil only getting its bludgeon on now?) merely heightening the manic misery of a chaotic apartment complex. One of Hooper’s best gifts is making a gruesome death look eerily embarrassing for its victim, and sometimes the assailant. If you know what I’m talking about, and don’t flinch in disgust at the thought, you’ll want to make sure you’ve seen this one. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN. 

My popcorn ratings are explained here. I already have some streaming plans for the tail end of spooky season, but lord knows I'll be watching screamworthy stuff in November, too! So if you have any suggestions, send them along to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.