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Non-Review Review: Black Christmas (2019)

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Darren

Black Christmas is an interesting misfire.

There’s something inherently clever about using the familiar template of a slasher movie to engage with the idea of toxic masculinity and the horrors of campus culture. Sophia Takal and April Wolfe certainly have a lot to say, and producer Jason Blum deserves a great deal of credit for positioning a film like this as part of the larger “social thriller” milieu that includes films like The Invisible Man or Get Out or Us. There’s a lot bubbling through Black Christmas, and it’s great to see a slasher film dabbling in these ideas.

Take a bow.

The biggest problem with Black Christmas is that it simply doesn’t work as a horror film. In terms of basic narrative mechanics and pacing, Black Christmas is a mess. The film suffers from many of the same structural problems that haunt so many disposable horror movies; the characters are thinly sketched, the film’s slow build-up feels a little too slow and its climactic confrontations feel a little too rushed and its internal logic is close to non-existent. These problems are compounded by the fact that actually positioning this movie as a remake creates an extra level of extraction.

Black Christmas has good ideas, but is somewhat lacking in the execution.

Don’t choke.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: black christmas, cary elwes, film, Imogen Poots, jordan peterson, Movie, non-review review, review | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom

Posted on June 5, 2018 by Darren

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is an intriguing and compelling mess of a film. It is shrewd and clever, if never entirely human.

Director J.A. Bayona might be the first director since Spielberg to put his own unique slant on the Jurassic Park franchise, to move with just enough confidence and faith in his own stylistic sensibilities to escape the shadow of the legendary director who turned a pulpy novel into a beloved family classic. Bayona does that by allowing his own stylistic sensibilities to shine through, to embrace his own interest and to engage with the material on his own terms.

Dino escape.

Fallen Kindom walks a fine line. It is very much a creature grown in a laboratory to satisfy the demands of the larger franchise. There are elements here that exist purely because they are expected, because they are signifiers of what a “Jurassic Park movie” should look like, including both returning characters and new characters fashioned after familiar archetypes. At the same time, there is a coy and wry self-awareness to Fallen Kingdom that was sorely lacking from Jurassic World, a cynicism about its own nature that integrates rather neatly into its larger worldview.

Although it may be damning with faint praise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is easily the best Jurassic Park movie since Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the film in the franchise with which it shares most of its DNA.