"Where you go, I go, Born-in-Fire. Even if it's to the gates of Valhalla."
...
It was fine.
World-building, fine.
Characters, fine.
Plot, fine.
Plot twists, fine.
(Totally saw it coming, though)
But Danielle L. Jensen's take on the Norse gods' half-human progeny and the fates their mercurial parents have in store for them never makes it past that dreaded descriptor. If I was to liken this story to anything, it would be a bowl of melted ice cream: it still has all the same ingredients, the same flavour, but its lack of structural integrity has left the experience of eating it rather... lacklustre. No longer can you hold a spoonful in your mouth and feel the joy of it thawing slowly on your tongue, one plot-molecule at a time, instead drinking it down with little to no reverence.
And what's worse? It feels like reading a story you've read multiple times before, and not half as good. Every character in the book is infuriatingly predictable: Freya - the beautiful chosen one who's a sobbing mess half the time, and a horny, berserker badass the rest; Bjorn - a hot body and not much else, who lets Freya get away with endless amounts of shit because she's the embodiment of pretty privilege; the power hungry jarls who possess the ability to smarm or bark, and that's it; the bitch stepmother who's probably not really a bitch but holds the position as easy scapegoat because she dares to think Freya's a bit of a shithead (she is); Freya's shitty family (except dearest, dead daddy) that have no other narrative purpose except to make it okay for Freya to act like a brat; and the numerous red herring characters that couldn't be more obvious if they tried. And they act so infuriatingly dull towards each other. Sure, there's high emotion and harrowing experiences, but simply putting an exclamation mark at the end of dialogue doesn't instantly evoke passion. If anything, it just puts this image in my head of all the characters being toddler-sized and throwing their toys at each other's heads. Which, arguably, would be fucking adorable because they're big tough vikings who raid and pillage, so making them axe-wielding, knee-height Muppet Babies essentially would be fucking delightful. And honestly, I'd rather have read that than endless chapters of Freya getting a lady boner for Bjorn when he scratches an elbow or, I dunno, breathes in her general direction.
This is something that has increasingly started to bother me about Romantasy, a genre I love and have been reading for years, but the sheer number of too stupid to live main characters who can do nothing other than get the horn for their love interest, even in the midst of bloody, corpse-littered battle, is fucking infuriating. I know this is a genre built on romance in fantasy settings, I know the courtship of the MC is central to the plot, I know there will be fighting and fucking, I actually demand those things be present, but I'm exhausted by them overriding basic storytelling sense. Scratch that, I'm sick of them overriding the story. Give me all the romance you want, it's a genre I read like I'm getting paid to do it (I wish), but for the love of Frigg, please, I beg of all writers, don't let it make you deaf to what else if going on in your story. Don't forget to make your supposed badass heroines capable of reasoned thought instead of hormone-addled nymphs with weapons in their hands (unless that's on purpose!). If you're going to get them all riled up while they're chopping off heads and licking the blood clean from their fingers, at least make that kink a part of their character, because otherwise I'm just going to spend the entire time wondering how such a sexed up airhead survived past the first page. Because Freya? She wouldn't last a minute up against some of the greatest female fantasy characters, and that really pisses me off.
This books pisses me off.
More than I thought so, apparently, and it's solely because it's a wasted opportunity. You've got vikings, gods, curses, trials, Norns, fates, battles, forbidden romance, and it was all so underwhelming when it could've been an absolute blast.
Maybe watching the tv show Vikings ruined me for all other Scandinavian historicals (Lagertha would eat Freya for breakfast and spit our her bones like the queen she is) because this simply does not measure up.
...
I'll read the second half, though, because I'm a completist, a masochist, and an absolute nightmare..
Let's prey to Hel it's better than its predecessor, otherwise I'll be back here bitching my face off once again, and I'm not sure anybody really wants that.
One thousand percent accurate, totally spot on, not an untrue word uttered, and yet I fucking love this horny-eyed - somehow dry as fuck, teen-brat Wattpad fanfic "adaptation" that has no business associating itself with Emily Brontë's work of toxic genius.
Because I'm a gremlin.
A trash gremlin who dines on gothic, dark fairytale aesthetics and gives nary a fuck for sense, reason, or logic. I simply opened my ravening maw and happily let whatever the fuck this movie was be shovelled liberally, happily, covetously inside.
And I have no excuse for loving this absolute shit-show, especially as a die hard stan of the novel, but I do. I can't help it. It's just so damn pretty, I can't help myself.
When the kids started running, all I could think was:
Pokopia Ditto's and their Naruto runs have ruined me, but all the kudos to the creators of Weapons for taking a chance in the horror movie genre and delivering something quirky as fuck.
I'm no stranger to horror films, I don't actively seek them out but I love watching them when they pique my interest, and the trailer for Weapons certainly did that. And then proceeded to fulfil its promise of a termagant fairy tale that's not easy to forget with its different POVs weaving an intricate story of the occult; dark and biting humour (accidental bouts of the guffaws whilst watching horror always makes me happy); and the brazen outing of the villain fairly early on (not the standard choice in the genre) in a delightfully shocking yet endearing fashion (such a great villain, haven't seen one this brilliant and surprising in years).
There isn't a moment of this movie where I wasn't thinking "What the actual fuck is going to go down next?" or "Did that really just happen? And am I meant to be giggling like a toddler who's tasted citric acid for the first time about it?"
Which, straight away, elevates Weapons above a significant number of its horror brethren because it's brave, and weird, and isn't afraid to make its audience work for it. No hand feeding, no breadcrumbs, just a series of bizarre events that culminate in one hell of an ending.
I kind of wish I'd found it genuinely scary, though. This is exactly how I felt after watching Hereditary, an arguably very freaky and beautifully done horror movie, but one I came away feeling noticeably blasé over. Sure, it was pretty and everyone was fantastic in it, and the story was cool, but my shock-inured ass couldn't muster a shudder. I'm very hard to frighten with supernatural horror (psychological's a whole different ballgame), I don't think I've ever been truly freaked out by crusty creatures and their snacky impulses towards human flesh, and I'd really like to be, y'know? That scaredy cat kid I used to be is crying out for a good huddle under the duvet to hide from the creepy film monsters, peeping through fingers for quickdraw glimpses, and not sleeping for a week afterwards. I need my horror-flavoured dopamine banks topped up, dammit, and I'd hoped Weapons would be the one to do it.
As an homage to F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, it's kind of masterful; from the blue-grey hue used throughout to reflect the blue-tinted film stock in the original, to the extremely mannered and at times overwrought acting style of the contemporary actors, and again to Bill Skarsgård's almost comical Count Orlok and Willem Dafoe's giddy for a good staking Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, it comes together as an exceptionally beautiful and reverential love letter to its gothic parentage.
(The last few scenes were a particular triumph, showing a modern take on the classic shadowed and spiked hand creeping towards Ellen Hutter and her ultimate fate)
There were moments throughout where I was struck dumb by it's beauty, a particular scene where an uncloaked and malformed Orlock is crouched astride Nicholas Hoult's character, Thomas Hutter, taking long, drugging pulls directly from his chest as a fire crackles beside them. It's a scene that's both visually gorgeous and fascinatingly grotesque, but also incredibly sexually charged, which should be the foundation for any good vampire story. They are inherently baser creatures who either use seduction to lure their prey in, or violence when that fails to yield bared throats; and Robert Eggers manages to nail this symbiosis of fear and sex, whilst also embracing the appeal of the abhorrent instead of shying away from it or trying to pretty it up - Teratophilia at its finest. There's no other reason for anyone with an ounce of reason and good sense to fall prey to a creature such as Orlok unless there's some serious magic roofieing going on, or they're just really into crusty, emaciated, incel weirdos. Which, y'know, each to their own, but I really think this is the first time I've watched a Dracula/Orlok story and thought, "Okay, I get it, there's actual chemistry and perversion between these two freaks, and I'm kind of shipping it." And that's kind of amazing? Staggering? Fucking wonderful? I can't say I've ever been a big fan of the Dracula myth, finding it unforgivingly bleak and stilted in its storytelling, and I can't say I'm in love with Eggers' take on it either, but damn, it really gave a damn good shot and came out the other side as an inarguably beautiful ode to the unsightly unseen.
But if it doesn't also happen to be one hell of a dirge.
Just two hours of misery, laborious dialogue, and Skarsgård doing an amusingly ridiculous accent that I can't actually figure out whether was meant to be so silly as a hark back to Klaus Kinski's Orlok in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre. Either way, it was incredibly snigger-worthy and distracting, much like his slutty little moustache, which I know was meant to be era-specific and Bram Stoker actually wrote his Count with a large, white moustache that's routinely excluded from adaptations, but come on! I can't take Nosferatu serious when he's rocking the handlebars and tee-heeing around with his throaty, Slavic drawl. I can't do it!
Not to mention everyone else's performances, which were... well, it depends on whether they knew this movie was meant to be an homage and not a parody, because unfortunately they acted in the latter, not the former (I'm really starting to wonder if Aaron Taylor-Johnson can, in fact, act). Except for Lily-Rose Depp, who is not an actress I've seen in anything before and had unfairly dismissed because of her nepo baby privilege, but kind of blew me away in this. She manages to embody and radiate out the nature of the gothic horror genre, acting as both host and virus as she unwittingly invites Orlok in, whilst trying to hold him at bay as he twists and violates her mind, body, soul. It's not an inviting acting performance, it's unapologetically not pretty, even repulsive at times, but because of Depp's demeanour and delivery, you can't actually look away. Not when she's sunken-eyed and melancholy, not when she's raving and ravening, and especially not when she's beckoning her undead darling to her breast to suckle to his scorched demise.
She is fascinating and ugly and wonderful.
Which, in three words, sums up Nosferatu. Not a perfect something, not even a likeable something, but definitely something.
And I can't help but admire it for that, especially in the current state of risk-averse Hollywood, glutting itself on legacy movies nobody wants.
It does make me worry, quite a lot, that this is the director making the Labyrinth sequel, because I simply cannot line them up with one another. It's just doesn't make sense.
THIS. THIS IS HOW YOU DO KINK AND ROMANCE AND POWER IMBALANCES, AND ALL THE MESSY FUCKERY INBETWEEN!
THIS IS IT!
...
I'm not calm about Pillion at all. Like, at all. I'd say that's concerning but that would require me to give two fucks? Which, quite frankly, I do not, cannot, and will never. Not when a movie like this exists, not with performances from Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling drawing breath out in the world (fucking outstanding, their chemistry is insane). It's too good, they're too good, and I've never seen a movie about kink quite like this: so unapologetically mundane but inexplicably other, brave and uncompromising whilst delving deep into a culture the uninitiated will rarely witness. But what struck me the hardest, really slapped me in the sternum and didn't apologise afterwards, was the issue of kink compatibility and its connection to love compatibility. You could read Pillion as a story about a newbie submissive (Melling) who's first dom (Skarsgård) mistreats him, who lays down strict rules but forgets the vital part of gaining implicit consent from his sub - something that's dangerous both physically and mentally - and the unavoidable fallout as those boundaries are flouted and feelings are felt. You could read it that way, because, well, it is that, but it's also a complex love story between a naive man who finds his place within the kink community (and himself), and the dominant man he fell in love with who, in my reading, loved him back just as fiercely but didn't have the emotional capabilities to deal with that. Pillion is inarguably a love story, it's just not one that ends with a happy ever after. In the traditional sense. And normally that would piss me off due to my die hard support of HEAs in the romance genre, but in certain cases, like this one, there is a better ending for the protagonists out there than with each other. Better someones; kinkmates, if you will.
And right at the end, we're giving a glimpse of just that.
So good.
So fucking good.
Ps. Whoever styled Alexander Skarsgård for this movie needs a medal because the man has never looked more like a fallen, viking god.
That's the resounding thought echoing though my head after finishing this movie. Actually, it was the thought reverberating inside my brain whilst watching the movie because... WOAH. Truly and sincerely, the woahiest of woahs.
I can't get my brain to work about this, and I need it to because this movie deserves a review worthy of its greatness; its cultural and racial significance; its music and its connection to good and evil (my gods, the music); its actors' performances (kickass women everywhere - marry me, Wunmi Mosaku, Michael B. Jordan being fucking seamless as identical twins - truly, where were the join marks because I couldn't see them, and Jack O'Connell vamping it up in both senses of the word - Cookie, forever; can't wait to see him in The Bone Temple); its respect for the vampire myth in speculative fiction (Near Dark, Preacher, The Lost Boys, From Dusk Till Dawn, Octane, Thirst, Blade, 30 Days of Night, and its brain-altering, genre-defining deviation from it; its gorgeous cinematography (the cotton fields broke my brain); and the way it brutally knows itself from bloody opening salvo to fiery denouement.
It deserves my brain to get its act together and form coherent thought, because I haven't been this excited about a vampire movie of this specific ilk (obvs can't include Let the Right One In or tv's ITWtV, totally different sub-genres) since Near Dark, and I watched that for the first time when I was a teenager - so, it's been a minute! But all I've got for you about Sinners, this movie that legit broke my brain with no goddamn remorse, is a sincere and abiding: Woah.
It's the highest compliment, really, to be struck dumb by filmic wonder and all was heard was a breathless, awed, "Woah".
It's queer True Romance tripping balls on a bunch of steroids.
...
I'm gonna say this with my whole ass chest:
FUCK. YES.
The moment Kristen Stewart fought back against Hollywood trying to put her in a neat, little hetero box and said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna make interesting shit, and no one can stop me" was honestly the best day. I love her so much, and Love Lies Bleeding truly slaps. It's weird, and carnal, and fun, and kind of bonkers, to be honest, which put all together trips you along on a gorgeously grimy, drug-soaked odyssey with a Thelma & Louise edge. Can you say perfection?
I was smiling the entire time, couldn't tear my eyes away (no double-screening, here), and I'm probably going to watch it all over again just so I can watch K-Stew and Katy O'Brian (new crush, holy shit) fall in murder-happy love again.
As someone who is yet to read Mary Shelley's genre-dawning novel, I can't really say whether this is a good adaptation or not, but as someone who loves gothic fiction - usually of the supernatural persuasion - I can tell you my thoughts and feelings on Guillermo del Toro's take on Victor Frankenstein and his ill-fated monster progeny.
In short? It was both a failure and success.
Three stars is not a rating you will often see me giving del Toro's work, simply because I adore his vision. Exactly twenty years ago, Pan's Labyrinth hit me fiercely and altered something fundamental inside, the same with The Devil's Backbone and Cronos, later with Crimson Peak, and later and greater still with The Shape of Water. There is something about his storytelling and his aestheticism that draws me in and refuses to let go. But as del Toro's success as a director/writer has steadily grown, I feel as though his focus has been pulled increasingly towards creating impossible, visual opulence and forgetting to imbue his stories with a real sense of depth and texture. A sense entirely compounded whilst watching Frankenstein, a movie that is inexplicably pretty with its saturated washes of reds and greens, clashing and melding together in some cabalistic diffusion; the detail in the majestic sets built to both overwhelm and sympathise with the deeds of deviltry Victor performs to defy God and make his own Adam; and also the performances that pay homage to their origins, whilst also marking a place for themselves in the unique - complimentary in some cases, slander in the other. But it does make for a very... flat watching experience. Yes, it inarguably captures the melancholy and the madness that's so inherently connected to the novel and its resulting filmic legacy, but what it fails to do is make you feel for it beyond its outward appearance. Far more longing glances are directed towards the hue and detail of Victor's wardrobe than to the expressions passing across his face as he realises the genius and the monstrousness of what he's done. And that doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel proper to spend minutes traversing the lines of the monster's stitched together form to dissect the intricacy of the special effects implemented instead of his violent progression from child to adult. It should be both. It should always be both, but for some reason, be it the above-mentioned hyper-focus on the scenery, or the casting of actors who weren't entirely up to the task, the movie never managed to coalesce.
Which makes for a frustrating experience because there are moments of something truly fantastic, of a movie that could've taken Shelley's myth and done justice to it. You can see it in the lithe grace of Jacob Elordi's monster; the tender, blank innocence of a creature made not born, and the intensity of which he grows to love and hate, and discover wonder and despair. But it's lost in a too pretty package, a cologne model contrast to previous clunking beasts, which in itself is an interesting take but Elordi's presence isn't strong enough to be anything other than Tall.
The same can be said for Oscar Isaac's take on the literal God complex doctor, a performance that switches between classic ham (an ode to the OGs, I assume) and something a little wilder, infinitely crueler, but remaining too walled off to allow the audience in and discover any other version of this Victor. It leaves you expelled to the periphery, lonesome and peering over narrative walls for a glimpse of the inner, when you should already be invited implicitly in to his laboratory of grisly delights. Was this Isaac's fault? I'm not sure, because this man has broken my heart many times before with performances that are hard to shake off - he's a great actor, but his time in Mary Shelley's world felt more pantomime than ruthless god felled by his own hubris (I did appreciate that they didn't shy away from Victor being a canonically raging arsehole, though)
The only actor out of the three central performances that managed to move me in any way was Mia Goth as Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor's "love" and his brother's fiancée. I'm not always fond of Goth as an actress, failing to connect with her beyond her natural quirkiness, but as Elizabeth I found her quiet intelligence, inherent kindness, and inquisitiveness for the miraculous incredibly charming. In the midst of body parts and oversized egos, she's a beacon for goodness who sees the monster for the wonder that he is, the sublime force of nature she's been searching for, and treats him as such: with motherly goodwill and unfailing devotion. You can see it in her first encounter with the creature, where she exhibits no fear, only awe and something akin to finding your soulmate; and again when he gifts her one of the leaves he had been playing with beforehand. His very first act of love born from a revelatory, childlike act, bestowed on the rare human who loves him instinctively, and her response echoes it with paternal gratitude and affection. This scene is one of the triumphs in the movie because it directs the eye firmly towards the heart of the story: that every living creature, be it human or creature, born or made, beautiful or hideous, should be loved, and loved without condition. Elizabeth embodies that, and Mia Goth brings it to life with a deft and modest touch. Something quite missing from the rest of the story, which is where the real crux of the problem becomes apparent: I'm not entirely convinced del Toro is a movie maker made for such grand storytelling.
Hear me out, because del Toro has made a career on grand stories, Pan's Labyrinth being the finest example of this, but what Pan has and Frankenstein doesn't, is a grounding in reality, a firm hold on the tangible to balance the speculative, something I increasingly find necessary in fantasy. And Frankenstein is a tale that is fundamentally rooted in the earth, tethered to muscle and dirt and electricity, so it needs to feel as though this could actually happen; that somewhere in the wilds of Scotland lies a laboratory with a half-formed creation being sewn together and shocked into life by its maker. This movie doesn't have that, it's pure fantasy, and it hurts it elementally.
But this isn't a total shock, I've seen this before with Crimson Peak,del Toro'sHenry Jamesesque ode to the classic gothic ghost story, which delivered on premise, style and acting, but also lacked the heart that thumped so loudly through his earlier movies.
It's a shame, a damn shame, but I'll give my guy, Guillermo this, his films are never dull, always lush and gorgeous, filled to the brim with practical effects and fully built sets, and he - unlike most of Hollywood, now - still knows how to light a damn movie. Gotta give him credit for that alone, but maybe no more collabs with Netflix, they're the suckers of joy and I'd hate to lose him fully to the Industry.
But for the love and health of my eyes, can we collectively do something about these boys' hair in season two? The Fabio cuts are an actual hate crime, and none more so than this bleached atrocity:
Save him from peroxide prison, I beg of thee.
.............................................
Free Will Movies:
Sometimes I forget that I have autonomy and can watch my favourite comfort movies whenever I want.
Social Icons