Shudder

I am single-minded.  It's a blessing and a curse.  If something I should be doing isn't what I want to be doing, and that thing isn't tied to a paycheque?  I'm not doing it, regardless of how objectively beneficial it may be for me. 

If I want to do something that will cause me irreparable harm, or will take years, or people think is impossible, but it remains what I really honestly wanna' do, nothing on Earth will stop me.  

Which is why I'm currently subscribed to the 30-day free trial for Shudder.  

I hate horror movies, as a rule.  I like some horror movies, which I insist are just good movies that happen to take place within a horror framework, or with horror tropes.  I loathe torture porn or gore for its own sake (Hostel), but done well I can absolutely love it, for example, when Kimiko grabbed that Russian gangster on last week's episode of The Boys, turned him around so he was kneeling and looking at his gangster buddies, put her hand up next to his ear and slowly and seemingly without emotion, peeled his face off.  T'was awesome, I tell you - even though I will insist I don't like horror movies, as a rule.  So why am I currently subscribed to Shudder, which is, as far as I know, the only example of a Netflix for Horror?

I had read, years ago, a glowing and spoiler-free review of a movie called The Autopsy of Jane Doe.  I'd mentally bookmarked it, but forgotten about it until my younger brother gave it another hearty recommendation, and resolved to check it out.  I looked high and I looked low.  I looked on YouTube and Netflix, on PSN and my cable provider's streaming options.  No joy.  I checked Amazon Prime. 

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is currently only available, in Canada at least, via streaming on Shudder.  And via Prime, the one-month trial was free, so why the fuck not?  

And holy flirking snit.  The Autopsy of Jane Doe is one original, interesting, entertaining, scary and fun fucking movie and I don't want to spoil anything for you beyond the cast and the basic set-up: 

The excellent Brian Cox is an undertaker running a family business, and the familiar and capable Emile Hirsch is his kid.  Brian's trying to teach Emile to never jump to conclusions and permit the corpse's evidence only to suggest causes of death, and Emile just wants to get outta' here and go on a date with his girl.  Then, a corpse is discovered under very mysterious circumstances and the Sheriff needs a cause of death by tomorrow morning - so they've gotta' look into it.  

It's fucking amazing.  It basically takes place in one room, and it's shockingly good. 

I'm going to recommend you several movies across this post, and almost all of them share one thing in common - a steady, intelligent and meticulous structure that really, beautifully allows tension to yo-yo back and forth as information is revealed and shocking truths are laid bare.  

Was The Autopsy of Jane Doe worth signing up for a free trial for?  Abso-fucking-lutely.  Four out of four stars.   But that's not all... 

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil is pure slapstick comedy with a nice, wholesome message about how it's what's inside that counts.  Honestly.  It's not a horror movie, it's just a comedy with horror movie iconography, and it's pretty darned fun.  Three out of four stars. 

I said on the podcast a few weeks ago that I would not be continuing with Shudder, specifically because I was getting it through the Amazon Prime app on my PS4, and Amazon Prime's subtitles are fucked.  They're always out of sync, so when I noticed that a foreign movie I've wanted to see for years is on Shudder, I was momentarily thrilled before being immediately crushed.  

I would not get to watch A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night - an Iranian vampire flick directed by a lady.   I refused to subject myself to subtitles that show 30 seconds after the character's spoken.  Fuck that. 

I flipped through Shudder's pages and pages of 80s horror movies.  I could watch Leprechaun on here.  Young Jennifer Aniston?  I had no idea.  

Here's one called Revenge, with a poster of a woman covered in blood but lookin' fierce.  What's this?  

"Jen is enjoying a getaway with her boyfriend when it is disrupted by his sleazy friends.  Their intrusion leads to a shocking act that leaves Jen near death.  Unfortunately for her assailants, Jen reemerges with a wrathful intent: revenge." -the (terrible) write-up for the movie on the app itself. 

Oh.  Ugh.  It's one of those I Spit On Your Grave movies where a woman's assaulted by men, and then takes bloody revenge against the men, but it's really mostly about the male gaze and a 40-minute rape scene, or something.   No way am I watching that, or the various sequels and spin-offs to I Spit On Your Grave that are, of course, also available on Shudder. 

Then, a day later, I see a trailer for a movie that looks kind of awesome, and turns out to be the very same.  So I google it.  "Revenge."  No, not just the concept.  "Revenge Movie." Okay "Revenge Shudder."  

There we go.  Oh. 

Huh.  Well alright then, let's check this out and aw shit they're talkin' French.  For some of it.  But the subtitles are never out of sync, somehow, for some reason.  I assume it's something Shudder's done, specifically, because The Subtitle Problem remains present on other movies watched through Amazon's app.   Huh.  Anyway, there's this movie called Revenge on Shudder and... yeah it is frickin' amazing, and with it I wondered if I might actually love Shudder, because this is a fantastic thriller / action movie.  

I complained recently on the podcast about the godawful action of Bloodshot - specifically a chase sequence in which a bunch of shots of people driving were spliced together, actually communicating and signifying nothing - when what I want is intelligent, well-communicated action sequences that are as deft and thrilling as any of Loony Toons' or Jackie Chan's best.  Enter Revenge. 

The first ten minutes of Revenge is that skeevy sexy opener of a lot of horror movies - we get a lot of shots of our heroine's perfect butt as she walks around in her undies for her tall, handsome boyfriend, and they have sexy times and as soon as his two creepy hunter buddies show up a pit forms in our stomach that just doesn't go away.  We know she's gonna' get hurt and we're kind of desperate not to see it, and director Coralie Fargeat somehow shoots it so we see nothing but feel everything.  We see a window pane, vibrating with repeated impact, and the shuddering world in its reflection.  Then she's thrown off a cliff and left for dead. 

The guys decide they'll finish their hunting trip and "clean it up" on the way back. 

Of course, Jen literally rises from the ashes like a phoenix - a recurring symbol in the movie - and begins hunting down the three men for the sake of her life.  She's a scrawny kid with no experience in guns, no experience in weapons, no experience in any of this - but by God, she'll learn, and each mistake is a terrifying thrill, each victorious discovery a gasp of air. 

This is one of those movies where every shot has a purpose, and each new scene just crackles as Jen and her pursuers understand each other better and better, and the stakes for the men become more and more desperate.  The first quarter of it is a squirming anxiety as you wait for the shoe to drop - the final three quarters are some of the purest, most gripping action sequences I've seen in years. 

They're shot slow.  Long, long, long shots uninterrupted by cuts, like in Children of Men, that seize the part of your brain that knows a cut means it's not real and leaves it shaken.  These are action sequences that swing back and forth like that duel between Jack Sparrow and whatever his name is in the first Pirates of the Caribbean.  With all the grace and wit of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon, and all the grit and tangible, desperate humanity of the most low-down dirty indie.  

And then, it's shot against this colossal desert. 

While I dig the need for revenge - more on that later - the entire movie, I felt like it was a bad title.  Jen needs to kill these guys in order to survive.  None of her deadly encounters with them suggested to me that she was doing this to punish them or get revenge - it felt, to me, entirely that it was in order to ensure they didn't kill her.  

Maybe it's called that because it takes the classic structure of the rape-revenge movie and serves it up in ways that provide very different satisfactions, and is having a very different conversation with the audience.  There aren't many movies I'll watch twice, nowadays, but both Revenge and Autopsy are on that list.  Four out of four stars. 

But again - there's a movie I've wanted to watch for ages, an Iranian vampire flick - that's on Shudder.  And Shudder's subtitles fucking work.  So I was finally able to watch A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. 

I can't say I'm going to "treasure A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night endlessly," but it's also fuckin' neat in a lot of ways.  There's curiosity about what a film set in Iran, made by an Iranian filmmaker might look like - and Bad City is distressingly like a lot of shitty north American towns.  A town of industry making distant people rich as regular folks struggle to get by, preyed upon by pimps and drug dealers.  What is an Iranian vampire like?

Enter the nameless Girl, creepily following the gutter-people in her striped shirt and long scarf and cloak.  She entertains herself by mirroring their movements.  

But it's not really a horror movie.  It's not even a thriller.  It's more a little drama - a romance, even - that is, much like its heroine, more than willing to take its time, say very little and exchange a lot of long, meaningful glances.  Three out of four stars, I'm a sucker for young love.  

Which reminds me - I'd totally forgotten - The Love Witch is also on Shudder. 

Shot using shitty old film to make it look like a shitty old sexploitation movie, The Love Witch is yet another feminist piece that takes the tropes of a genre - in this case, a woman who's internalized a lot of problematic things about her own value, and a man's - and turns it on its head in almost every conceivable way, consciously and often via dialogue that makes it absolutely literal.  

Elaine arrives, new in town, fleeing the end of a bad relationship.  Of course it ended much worse for him - can you believe they thought Elaine had something to do with it? - but she quickly sets her sights on finding a new man.  As she does, though, Elaine remains Elaine, and each man she seduces with her witchy ways soon ends up dead via heart attack or suicide, driven mad with desire for her.  

There is something kind of immortal about The Love Witch's incredible sense of 60s style (and something very impressive that the cast managed to nail the cadence of the era's dialogue), and while the movie kills off a lot of men, one never gets the sense that Elaine herself is given a moral pass.  Her weaknesses - her insecurities, desire and madness - are the spine of the movie, and the cause of all her suffering.   Two out of four stars for just being less entertaining than most of the other movies listed here, but by gosh it's interesting. 

Finally, y'ever seen The Babadook?  Me neither.  It's on there, and I am going to watch it, because the director of The Badabook also directed a movie I've wanted to see for a while called The Nightingale. 

Which is not a horror movie in any capacity.  One could argue it's a thriller, but it's more just a story about right and wrong, colonialism, innocence and justice.  But it's also on Shudder so I've wanted to see it for years and here we go!

Set in Tasmania in 1825, Claire is a convict from Ireland whose sentence was up months ago, but the commander of the English garrison she's assigned to refuses to sign her papers.  Shit goes bad - real bad - and Claire hires a local aboriginal man to guide her to track down the commander and his men and see justice done upon them.  

Beautifully shot and taking place almost entirely in the Tasmanian wilderness, this is a revenge thriller that is more than willing to take its time and say something meaningful, and from the heart.  Four out of four stars.  

So there's... definitely some stuff worth watchin' on Shudder.  The fact that so much of it isn't explicitly horror is kind of a revelation, to me, and I guess I didn't realize how much I enjoy revenge flicks, when done well.  

Oh, y'know what wasn't all that great?  The Shed. 

The Shed was just fucking dumb.  And not like The Babysitter dumb where it's dumb, but that's fine because it's fun.  It was mostly just dumb.  At least The Babysitter's got Samara Weaving. 

Turns out?  Hugo's niece.  Had no idea.