‘Bleeding’
Stream it on Screambox; Rent or buy it on major platforms.
Not since “The Outwaters” blew me away two years ago have I been as wowed by a debut horror feature as I was with the writer-director-actor Andrew Bell’s brutal new vampire film. If his muscular direction and compassionate script are any indication, Bell is going to be a name to watch.
The film takes place in a small suburb in the United States, only the setting is a dystopian future where blood is a drug. Eric (John R. Howley) and his cousin Sean (Jasper Jones) are surrounded by the consequences of addiction: Eric’s brother died of an overdose, and Sean’s alcoholic father kicks him out of the house after finding and destroying Sean’s stash. Unable to pay back his dealer, Sean convinces Eric to break into an empty house, where they discover that a former classmate, Sara (Tori Wong), has become a vampire whose blood is being harvested by unscrupulous.
Is this a vampire film? Yes. But like the very best of that genre — “The Addiction,” “My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To” — Bell’s movie is more than just an exercise in empty bloodsucking. It’s a mythic coming-of-age story, underscored by the opioid epidemic. It’s a cautionary tale, warning against making assumptions about what makes a monster. It’s a stark and foreboding cinematic experience, thanks to Daniel Cho’s sublime cinematography that makes evil out of shadows. This is full-throttle horror, and one of my favorite movies of the year.
‘Presence’
I fell hard for Steven Soderbergh’s heartbreaking and formally thrilling ghost story when it came out in January. I remember leaving the theater feeling unsettled but also deeply moved, almost to the point of tears, by how Soderbergh and the screenwriter David Koepp dealt with the aftermaths of loss.
The film has elements of a standard haunted house story: Mom and Dad (Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) move with their teenage kids (Eddy Maday and Callina Liang) into a beautiful home in a lovely neighborhood. But in an emotional twist, their story is told from the point of view of another, unseen character: a spirit who watches the goings-on of their new housemates, especially the young daughter. The spirit mostly minds their business until, in one of the year’s most sinister scenes, the ghost takes a break from the spirit world for a vengeful detour into the living one.
‘It’s Coming’
I watched Shannon Alexander’s movie because Tubi recommended it. I had no idea what it was, other than a documentary about a family and a ghost. What it turned out to be is an unnerving real-life study of parenting and the paranormal, delivered with the chills of found footage horror.
The film follows Ashley Roland-White, a mother of five who says she’s been seeing an entity (who looks like one of the Backstreet Boys) since she was a girl. Javier, her 7-year-old son, talks matter-of-factly about encountering a long-legged creature inside his family’s cramped Brooklyn apartment.
“I just see him looking at me,” Javier tells the camera, making my skin crawl, before adding: “Demons are the worst.” In one memorable shot, Javier’s hair sticks out sideways, as if being pulled by someone unseen.
Visits by exorcists and a self-described medium add to the mystery — or the hokum, depending on your tolerance for divination — of Roland-White’s fears. Is this a documentary about a family besieged by a naughty phantasm or a portrait of a family in psychological crisis? I’m still not sure, and that’s the scary part.
‘Frankie Freako’
The gonzo writer-director Steven Kostanski is back with another creature-feature comedy, and like his previous “Psycho Goreman,” this one is wildly imaginative and gloriously puerile.
Set in the 1980s, the film follows Conor (Conor Sweeney), an aspirational yuppie who’s desperate to not be as square as his boss and his sex-starved girlfriend think he is. To the rescue comes a late-night television commercial for a phone line that, for just $1.99 a minute, offers Conor a chance to learn how to party from Frankie Freako, a creepy, red-faced gremlin puppet. Conor’s call brings Frankie and his rowdy gang of fellow nasty-minded friends to his home, where crushed cans of Fart Cola are just one sign of the terrors to come.
With a barely cohesive plot, Kostanski leans on Coyote vs. Roadrunner-style violence, and it wears thin quickly. But he displays a deep appreciation of ’80s mini-monster horror comedies like “Gremlins” and “Critters,” but with a touch of “Bad Taste,” and I’m not mad. The puppets get a C+ for being lifelike — they basically just move from side to side — but an A for creative goblin conjuring.
‘The Surrender’
Anyone who has ever cared for a dying relative should brace themselves before watching the feature debut from the writer-director Julia Max.
Robert (Vaughn Armstrong) is dying in bed at his home, and his daughter, Megan (Colby Minifie), and wife, Barbara (Kate Burton), are at each other’s throats. Despite their bickering, mother and daughter care for each other deeply. But Barbara’s love for her husband goes beyond her marriage vows, and the grave: She’s convinced that with the help of a stranger with supernatural powers she can bring her husband back from the dead. She’s right. Almost.
As in “Bring Her Back,” Max’s film is a meditation on the horrifying lengths the living will go through to beat death. The drama lags at the beginning; Max has said that the early, claustrophobic scenes were inspired by Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” — an ambitious order she doesn’t fill. Still, a fantastic, Clive Barker-style finale, and Minifie and Burton’s devastating performances throughout, make up for the monotony.
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