Director: Vivian Kerr
Writer: Vivian Kerr
Stars: Scottie Thompson, Connor Paolo, Jilon Vanover, Vivian Kerr

Synopsis: In 1892 California, a Victorian woman contemplating adultery is forced to take refuge from a storm at the home of her first husband and his unstable wife, who claims to be haunted by their dead child.

Many horror films have misnomers. What the film is about is actually something else entirely. The Wicker Man is not actually about that gigantic figure, but rather about belief and the dangerous lengths people can travel. The Silence of the Lambs takes its name from one scene that, yes, tells us a lot about the characters, but is not completely integral to the plot. The list goes on and on. And the list continues with Vivian Kerr’s second feature length film, Séance. Given the title, you might think that this film is purely about contacting someone from beyond the grave. And while that may be a plot point, focusing on this misses the point entirely.

In Séance, we are first introduced to important characters, though we do not know it yet. The stylized introduction shows the drowning of a young girl, while being watched by her mother at the beach. As it slowly transitions, we are shown new characters at the same beach. Emma Strand (Scottie Thompson) is seated on a blanket with her husband, Albert (Connor Paolo). Thanks to a winning script from Kerr, a great deal of information is transmitted in a simple scene. Emma is a published (and popular novelist) and her husband is a struggling artist. He is a bit meek and timid, and she wants intimacy, closeness, and clearly, a child. There is an awkwardness in this interchange played by both Thompson and Paulo that is almost painful to watch for anyone who has been in a mismatched relationship. The couple soon encounters George Ford (Jilon Vanover) and his wife, Lillian (Vivian Kerr). The twist here is that George is Emma’s first husband and Lillian is the woman featured at the beginning who lost her child. And despite her best efforts, the sparks definitely fly between Emma and George. Quickly, they travel to George and Lillian’s home and almost immediately get trapped in a storm. 

At this point, despite the titular séance not occurring yet, it becomes clear what the film is actually about: marriage. And if you have ever experienced a bad one (or seen your parents go through it), it is completely understandable as to why. Now sure, in older times, marriage was directly tied to land acquisition and downright ownership of women, so that’s already terrifying. This is why, from a writing perspective, it is so important that Emma is a more modern woman who clearly has desires and a lucrative career. Thompson’s performance is really the lynchpin of the entire film and she never disappoints. You feel her struggles, her temptations, and her desires without it ever seeming overwrought.

As we are reintroduced to Lillian, despite her odd and sometimes overtly aggressive behavior, there is an empathy engendered (partially from the script and partially from Thompson) that leads us to go along with whatever comes next. And what comes next are the horror stylings from Kerr and her truly gifted cinematographer, Johanna Coelho. Once the film moves from the bright, sunny beach to a mansion on a dark and stormy night, Séance truly opens up in incredible ways. For those of us that were raised on old horror movies, this is like catnip. Nearly the rest of the film feels filmed solely by candlelight, with shadows and surprises hiding around every corner. Even if the surprises and jump scares are slightly derivative for fans of horror, they are nonetheless effective. The mood that Séance creates is impeccable and pushes the story forward as much as creepy dolls, sounds you can’t quite tell are real, and possible evil spirits called by, you guessed it, a séance.

But again, this movie focuses on the horrors of binding yourself to one person for life. Are they right for you? And even if they are, is it worth it? What terrifying truths await you after you walk down the aisle? But maybe the most important issue it dissects is finding out if love is enough. The choice that Emma has between a well-meaning kind man and one she still has lingering passion for is a difficult one. Vivian Kerr, paired with her lead actress, Scottie Thompson, manage to craft a portrait of imperfection that seems to beg for analysis. All of the horror elements work well enough, but her examination of the difficulties of true commitment is perhaps the scariest of all.

Grade: B

Director: Simon Stone
Writers: Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse, Simon Stone
Stars: Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce, Kaya Scodelario

Synopsis: A travel writer stumbles upon a gruesome secret while traveling aboard a luxury cruise ship.

If you were looking to be blown away by a Netflix mystery film with an incredible ensemble cast that isn’t part of the Knives Out franchise, think again. Simon Stone’s The Woman in Cabin 10, an adaptation of Ruth Ware’s novel of the same name, is one of the streamer’s most inept pieces of “content,” which is saying something because you have no idea the time I’ve wasted watching their films thinking they would be worth my time – and they weren’t. In this case, though, the star-studded list of actors attached to this project was too good for me to ignore it entirely. After all, when has Guy Pearce given a bad performance, especially coming off the heels of his Oscar-nominated, career-best turn in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist?

I guess it had to happen eventually, because The Woman in Cabin 10 contains the Australian actor’s first nearly-unwatchable portrayal of Richard Bullmer, who invites a group of people on his private yacht, sailing to a fundraising gala in Norway, where he and his terminally ill wife Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are set to launch a charitable foundation for cancer patients. Among the guests is Guardian investigative journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock (Keira Knightley), who convinces her editor (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, one of the many A-listers wasted on unimportant bit parts) that she is the right person to cover this event, despite the trauma she is still recovering from her last assignment. 

Everything seems to be smooth sailing (pun intended, of course) as Laura has a chance to meet Anne, who tells her of the speech she will be delivering at the gala, which she is keeping secret from her husband. However, upon the first evening, she encounters a mysterious woman (played by Gitte Witt) in Cabin 10, who is seemingly thrown overboard and killed a few hours later. Since everyone on the ship is accounted for, Richard leads Lo to believe that she is experiencing episodes of post-traumatic stress related to the murder of her last assignment’s source. Lo still feels something is wrong, and is quickly targeted by a member of the ship to stop investigating the woman’s whereabouts, and if she was truly thrown overboard, or if this was a figment of her trauma-riddled imagination. 

You’re rapidly going to figure out where this is going, and Stone is not a smart enough filmmaker to effectively subvert expectations, à la Rian Johnson (although this new Knives Out film coming out soon, which this critic saw at TIFF, is not very good). He makes the cardinal mistake of thinking that audiences will believe two people – who look nothing alike – look the same. As soon as this occurs, any suspension of disbelief is completely gone, and the rest of the mystery isn’t as interesting as its filmmaker thinks it is. It wouldn’t be this bad if the movie didn’t jump the shark and spell out who the antagonist is and what their motivations are not even halfway through the picture, but this is what it does, leading to a rushed conclusion that never develops anything it introduces beyond its introductory stage. 

Lo is riddled with trauma and the guilt of leading a source to her death. That’s it. We get a flashback to show how serious it is, but that’s as far as Stone goes. She had a romantic relationship with photographer Ben Morgan (David Ajala), who is also on the ship, and the two share some remaining feelings, but that’s also it. There’s no desire to make any of them stand out, and no reason for people like Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings (who were both incredible in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen series), Hannah Waddingham, Art Malik, and David Morrissey to be in this picture since all of their characters barely have anything to do with the story at hand. 

They exist – meaning they’re physically here and passively interact with Lo – but do virtually nothing in this 95-minute “thriller.” Even when “everyone” becomes a suspect, there’s no part where the director will raise suspicion effectively against one or many figures on the ship. Everyone is a suspect, like in any good thriller worthy of Agatha Christie, but none are fleshed out. We instead get shells of characters we’re supposed to care about, as it clumsily reaches a denouement that all of us see a mile away when its pieces are laid out. No suspense, no thrills, no sense of aesthetics, and no fun. It’s a gloomy affair that gets more ridiculous as Stone and his co-writers Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse create insane leaps in logic that no one with a brain will believe is possible. 

Knightley, too, isn’t very good as a trauma-riddled journalist who’s being gaslit at every turn, but it’s not necessarily her fault. Just like it’s not Pearce’s fault that he’s working with one of the year’s worst scripts that even the most outstanding actor on the planet will have difficulty selling. It’s even worse when Lo doesn’t have much agency to begin with, and has even less of it when the movie culminates in its ridiculously inert climax that’s essentially a low-rent, Uwe Boll-directed version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. There’s no subtlety to how the pieces are clumsily revealed in a shoddily captured and edited finale that raises far more questions than answers. 

The funniest part of The Woman in Cabin 10 is how Stone abruptly ends the movie, with no real sense of how the protagonist has evolved on this journey. Just a cut to black. Goodbye. Thanks for nothing. It’s honestly a perfect indication of how forgettable and mindlessly bland this tension-less thriller is, and is highly representative of just how worthless most of these Netflix originals are. Wasting such an excellent cast for non-roles is the biggest sin you can commit, but that’s Netflix for you, which will never beat the “fake movies that are money-laundering schemes” allegations. You, however, have a choice to seek out better – more artistically compelling – entertainment. I think I’m going to do the same.

Grade: F

Director: Ann Marie Allison
Writers: Ann Marie Allison, Jenna Milly
Stars: Marisa Tomei, Sherry Cola, Ciara Bravo

Synopsis: An outspoken psychologist rushes to Los Angeles with her best friend to stop her lovesick daughter’s wedding, fearing the groom is a narcissist.

Dating is very tough. Anyone who doesn’t think so is fooling or lying to themselves. Yet, we do it anyway for many reasons, the top two being that society tells us we have to and the other that we are looking for the one person we think can complete us. Even finding a person who you assume is the only person you ever want to be intimate and exclusive with is not without pitfalls because people lie, cheat, and steal. This is the more gentle way to express the themes of You’re Dating a Narcissist!.

The film feels like a self-help guide masquerading as a fiction. These ideas and archetypes feel like someone has gotten hurt by someone like this in the past. The self-help angle even hits much too hard and repeats over again when a new situation arises. The film takes on the verb that the characters use to describe when Judy (Marisa Tomei) gets herself worked up. The film often goes “All Judy” and not always in a good way. Especially the video Judy is drunkenly making for her daughter, Eva (Ciara Bravo), that is intercut with the action of the film. It’s a poor device that takes away from the story.

The film’s script isn’t completely a textbook, though. Writers Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly have good comedic chops and a dry sense of humor that shines in many characters. The story itself is not new, but is a good take on the single mother trying to keep her child safe in the face of all that the world could throw at her. Having Judy be the focal character also lends itself to the mystery of if her instincts are right. We see a few intimate scenes with Eva and Theo (Marco Pigossi), but sticking with Judy we think we have everything figured out when it’s much more complicated than that.

One of the best subplots of the film is the presence of Judy’s best friend and colleague Diane, played by one of the best supporting comedic actresses in the business, Sherry Cola. Diane is going through her own crisis with a woman she’s been dating who she finds out is married. Through trying to deal with her own relationship issues, we get to see that Diane realizes that Judy’s not a completely rabid academic about this issue. Diane’s story is an objective point of view that grounds some of the madness.

It also helps that Sherry Cola is very funny. There’s something about her smoky voice and the way she can side eye like an absolute professional that makes Cola so fun to watch. Her one liners are simply perfect and her asides in group scenes are laugh out loud funny. Yet, she can also do vulnerability well. She’s able to find the deep sadness within Diane about having been the other woman for her girlfriend’s relationship. It makes her a perfect foil for Marisa Tomei’s manic and affecting performance.

You’re Dating a Narcissist! is the kind of film that hits you when you don’t realize it. In the midst of the madcap escapades of Judy trying to expose Theo’s behavior to Eva, there is a contemplation about who Judy is as a person in the world. This point in the film when Judy is hit with a staggering truth bomb shifts the scene without words. Director Ann Marie Allison and cinematographer Martim Vian frame Judy in the middle of the screen as she looks at us and all around her the people are speeding up to a blur. It’s as if in this moment of revelation, Judy has finally slowed down to see how she’s been acting about this whole situation. It’s a good and unexpected effect.

The film is a bit of a self-help exercise at times, which can be trying on our patience. Overall, though, it’s a funny and thoughtful film. You’re Dating a Narcissist! finds an overused label and gives real, concrete advice about how to avoid people who fit that mold. It has a great cast and good performances. It’s a film that you can watch and then call your best friend to tell them you finally understand why that previous relationship was so awful.

Grade: C

Director: Geeta Gandbhir
Stars: Susan Lorincz, Ajike Owens, Franklin Baez-Colon

Synopsis: A minor disagreement between neighbors in Florida takes a lethal turn, with police body camera footage and interviews probing the aftermath of the state’s controversial “stand your ground” laws.

Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor is bound to ruffle a few feathers, considering the political climate. The film takes raw footage from police body-worn cameras and dash cams. Director Geeta Gandbhir uses them to draw a heartbreaking portrait of systemic and intergenerational racism—a toxic combination of socially inherited issues that is built into state (and soon, probably federal) law. In this case, the suspect, a woman named Susan Lorincz, an older adult Caucasian woman, used the police to enforce control over a friendly neighborhood community, swinging a hammer of fear.

Or, in this case, a pair of scratched-up rollerblades and a sharp, umbrella-like stick. Unfortunately, she pictured a handgun and bullets as the carrots.

The Netflix documentary film covers the case, showing Lorincz calling the police a dozen or so times because neighborhood children are yelling and screaming in the streets. Sometimes she claims they are on her property and tells the responding officers, “I’m the perfect neighbor.” She claims she is threatened almost every time, yet never thinks about putting up a surveillance camera to capture the supposed adolescent criminals. Nor does she seem to understand that her landlord has permitted the kids to play on the lot of land adjacent to her rental.

Yet somehow, Lorincz is not cited or arrested by the police for repeated accusations without proof, which is a misdemeanor involving the misuse of emergency services, false reporting, or even harassment. Though the officers do not have a problem calling her “psycho” under their breath as they walk away. Lorincz was almost arrested for trespassing and attempting to break down a gate on private property (the reasons for her presence were never fully explained). Even though she lied on camera and was about to be arrested, she avoided handcuffs with a sob story, appearing as though an officer went over to, we can only assume, work out an arrangement to avoid jail time.

The events that transpire afterward are ripped from the headlines, powerful and vital, making the hairs on your skin stand on end and anger rise from your heart. A crime documentary that plays out like a profound thriller, raw and heartbreaking, that is just as much about racial dynamics as it is about the deep fractures in a justice system that too often protects power over truth. Since the birth of the term “Karen” in that Central Park case, the weaponizing of the police by citizens in power has shone a light on macro-racism that can no longer be ignored.

There is no one playing for the camera in this documentary film, except for the suspect when lying to police about harmless or innocuous activities. In this case, Lorincz invokes the “Stand Your Ground” law, which has acquitted 17% of white defendants in deadly crimes and only 1% of those with a biological condition of higher melanin production due to genetic adaptation. Gandbhir’s documentary is a stunning, jaw-dropping example of biased exploitation and does what only the best narrative films do—not show a glimpse of an America you don’t want to see, but rather our reflection in the mirror.

The viewer may wonder if what transpired would have even made the papers without social media, cell phone recordings, or those pesky body-worn cameras. All of this is magnified almost viscerally through Alfredo De Lara’s cinematography, Viridiana Lieberman’s virtuosic editing, and Laura Heiniger’s haunting score. The Perfect Neighbor places you in the middle of an impossible-to-escape nightmare, using emotional manipulation to drop the viewer into the case and allow them to make their own judgments.

Which, I bet, will expose more racist attitudes lurking in the shadows than we could possibly know.

You can stream The Perfect Neighbor exclusively on Netflix!

Grade: A

Director: David Michôd
Writers: Mirrah Foulkes, Katherine Fugate, David Michôd
Stars: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever

Synopsis: Tells the story of Christy Martin, the most successful female boxer of the 90s.

There are a few genres in American film that are so stable, so typical that they have turned stale. The biopic is certainly high on that particular list, but the sports film is right there alongside it. When you combine these two genres, there is a real opportunity to break new ground and take some actual risks. This is even more so when the subject of your biopic has a past that could be seen in a negative light. And let’s not forget that women’s boxing, especially in the 1990s was seen as more of a sideshow than a sport! And yet, despite all of these opportunities, Christy plays it completely safe at nearly every turn.

The film begins with Christy (Sydney Sweeney) as she figures out what “her thing” is, namely boxing. Much has been made of Sweeney’s transformation, and for good reason. No movie star can be truly unrecognizable, but she certainly gets close. But the physical side is not the only bit of change. Her performance here is a stunner, as she removes all signs of glamour and stereotypical beauty. This is replaced with a focus and desire to compete that would fit in with the best boxing films on record. The problem, really, is that she is given little to work with from the script, penned by Mirrah Foulkes, Katherine Fugate, and director David Michôd.

One of the glaring issues that the film has is predictability, and not solely because this reviewer lived through the time period covered. Given the fact that we know who Christy Martin is, when we are introduced to her trainer, James V. Martin (Ben Foster), even the dullest viewer will know that the two will end up married. However, Foster is so cartoonishly evil that we are also left grasping at straws for why she would agree to a relationship. There is some leaning towards the idea of compulsory heterosexuality as Christy is forced, mostly by her mother, Joyce Salters (a constantly whispering Merritt Wever), to give up her romantic relationships because of “how it would look.” 

The entire world seems to be against Christy finding even a modicum of happiness, and there is an interesting movie hidden in there somewhere. Unfortunately, Michôd bows to convention and takes us through Christy Martin’s career, bout by bout. The boxing sequences are entertaining enough to watch, but they certainly do not push the envelope in terms of style. Ryan Coogler and Maryse Alberti in Creed, this is not. Sweeney handles herself very well, as do her partners, including the great Katy O’Brian.

O’Brian plays Lisa Holewyne who is an opponent of Martin’s, and is attacked repeatedly by the titular character for her sexuality. This opens up a truly interesting dichotomy. Martin is a closeted woman, who begins to lash out at others who are living their truth. Now, this is not a radical or surprising development, but the way that Sweeney and O’Brian play it is nearly magical. In between curses and epithets, you can see that Martin is deeply wounded. And instead of meeting her in kind, Lisa sees her pain without ever putting a name to it. The gentle nature of O’Brian’s performance will come as no surprise to those of us who have seen Love Lies Bleeding, but her soft smile and understanding fills the screen between her and Sweeney. Sadly, O’Brian’s character is nowhere near the focus, and that is to the film’s detriment.

As the movie plods along, hitting all of the expected beats, it is easy to wonder why it is worth your time. In order not to spoil too much, vagueness is necessary. But every reason to watch this film occurs in the last 30-40 minutes of runtime. When James finally goes from bad to worse (everyone knew it was coming), Sweeney goes into overdrive. All of the rage and battle saved for the ring, is now unleashed into the real world. The fierceness of her gaze as she recovers and takes her place in her new world is truly something to behold. Now that the obstacles of thinly drawn characters have been removed, there is a time to shine. It is only a shame that, at this point, the film is winding down. Just when the viewer might be getting locked in, the credits and post script roll.

Working within a genre is always a challenge. There are moments that you have to hit, especially in a biopic about a person who is still alive. This doesn’t mean that there is no opportunity for risk. Christy offered so many of these chances, but the film chooses to travel straight down the middle and they are deeply lucky to have actresses like Sweeney and O’Brian who can carry this to a winning decision, even if just barely.

Grade: C