POMO

Chucky wouldn’t stand a chance against this girl. The little Terminatorette could shut him down with just a stare. But she’s more powerful than scary. And though M3GAN is classified as a horror movie, it’s not frightening. Nor does it build suspense or offer up a single scare. In terms of the dialogue and logic, however, it’s not ridiculous. And it’s technically well made. M3GAN is actually pretty, something like a criminally insane Barbie made by Tesla. Fans of robots will be pleased.

Ghostface takes Manhattan. The final revelation is again pulled out of the filmmaker’s ass and this time it’s also a bit ridiculous. But the setting in New York City is nicely refreshing. There are a few surprising scenes, e.g. the store (the killer brazenly carries out his attacks in the public space), scenes with great but insufficiently exploited potential (the subway) and more multiple stabs to the gut after which the characters continue to function as if nothing had happened. The successfully revitalized franchise is becoming a strong but not very clever ditto machine for teenage audiences that could run forever. Scream VI is half a star weaker than the preceding instalment. The coolest scene is after the closing credits.

The resurrection of Halloween made a fortune, so let’s try to resurrect Scream. This franchise is handicapped by the fact that it can make a killer out of anyone without any sophisticated motive, and that it is thus only a matter of a hiding place with would-be cool references to other horror movies and would-be sophisticated plays on genre clichés. The first one from 1996 was innovative in this respect. But the resurrection after 26 years without any progress in imagination is able to satisfy only with a decent number of slayings and the nostalgic return of the trio of original stars. Don’t expect effective scares and don’t be surprised if the characters continue to function relatively well after being stabbed in the gut with a big knife. Was there such silliness, delivered with a straight face, in the previous instalments?

The Volcano is a nice documentary, but unfortunately with few authentic shots from the scene of the event. It is therefore more powerful in the survivors’ accounts than in the horror felt as the was unfolding. To put things in perspective, the tragedy claimed 22 victims; the recent earthquake in Turkey claimed 49,580 victims.

Alex Garland is a master of horror suspense. The first scene with the naked man behind the window is an absolute treat. But Garland wouldn’t put himself in a genre pigeonhole even for the world. His Men is a fascinating hallucinogenic trip packed with contextual question marks emerging from a harmonious series of disturbing and even frightening scenes. The film is an acid trip in which the protagonist in unable to find her way, as she is convulsed by devastating remorse. She is shaken by a tragic event caused by an intimate conflict between a being from Venus and a being from Mars. And she suffers the mental anguish of not being able to understand something that cannot be understood. I would not have expected a guy to make a heavy psychological film on this subject, but as a lover of atmospheric, cinematically polished nightmares that don’t make it easy for the viewer, I’m damn glad that he did. Garland is from another planet.

Watching this when you’re at home fighting the flu is a treat par excellence. Antiviral is an unlikable movie in every way, with an apt satirical theme and sterile form. There is a lot of white, which adds emphasis to the coughed-up blood, injections with herpes viruses and eating of meat created from human cells in a laboratory. Actually, from the cells of admired celebrities. “Celebrities are not people. They’re group hallucinations.” Antiviral could entertain me if it had a sensible 80-minute runtime, but not like this. I otherwise like bizarre debuts by original filmmakers.

Eli is one of those horror movies that starts promisingly and ends as a bad joke. Or rather, its not that it doesn’t make a cool point, but a lot of the connections between the characters and details in their behavior are shaky, as if twenty important minutes had been left out of the film. Not to mention basic mistakes in continuity like the intact hairstyle of the boy who’d had part of his hair shaved off the day before so that they could drill into his skull. The long ghost-story part of the film is properly chilling, but we have seen it all a hundred times before when at least the characters weren’t talking through the insulating glass between the interior and exterior of a thoroughly sealed building. This film is even more lobotomised than its protagonist after the second surgery.

A punk junkie comedy with a cadence of humorous profanity and one-liners and a dramatic climax that gives it an element of seriousness. The film’s creative editing and the authentic form of its hectic handheld (iPhone) camerawork not only give it a solid sense of drive, but also make its otherwise sparse story entertaining, even though the shaky close-ups of faces are too much for the big screen. The depth of Mišík’s expressive acting in the final scene reveals the greatest trauma of his life, when as a child he wanted ice cream and didn’t get it. You will enjoy this film more if you aren’t familiar with the formalistically similar but, in terms of screenwriting, more sophisticated work of the Safdie brothers (especially Uncut Gems).

Banality with banal characters in a banal setting, but it’s very well cast and acted, and even touching in its gentle and precise depiction of the dramatic nuances in the conflict between two newly in-love people. This film has heart and, mainly, the fantastic actress Pavla Gajdošíková in the lead role. She elevates Mistakes to four stars.

Take the girl from It Follows, impressive forests and an average screenplay with hackneyed ideas, put it all together and you have genre pap for Paramount+ subscribers. It’s interesting for a moment but otherwise ridiculous, thoroughly bland and unnecessary.