Serial killers, superheroes, sperm donors, and DILFs.

Longlegs

The most impressive thing I’ve seen all year was the marketing campaign for Longlegs. From the way the trailers were edited to merely tease the narrative to inventive marketing stunts like having The Seattle Times post a fake encrypted letter from Longlegs, the fictional serial killer within the film played by incomparable Nicolas Cage, the folks at Neon got everyone excited to see this movie. My favorite bit of marketing was a social media video measuring lead actress Maika Monroe‘s elevated heartbeat the first time she saw Cage in full-face prosthetics while never revealing to us, the viewers, what he actually looked like. Guess you have to buy a ticket to find out! The hype was insane and people were calling this one of the scariest and most unnerving films they’ve ever seen. While this made for a tremendous marketing campaign and guaranteed Longlegs an impressive box office yield for an R-rated horror movie, it raised our expectations too high for a film that ultimately couldn’t deliver on most of its promises.

Owing a great deal to The Silence of the Lambs in narrative and Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining in overall visual look, Longlegs takes place in the early 1990s. Rookie FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is working on a case to catch a mysterious serial killer named Longlegs. She was assigned to this case partly because she’s mildly telekinetic. You see, Longlegs has a very unique way of killing. He influences dads to murder their entire families and then kill themselves. How does he do this? Is Longlegs a magical being himself, or is he just like Charles Manson on steroids? Aiding in the investigation is Harker’s boss/partner, Agent Carter played in a welcome return by underrated character actor Blair Underwood. Eventually, Longlegs sets his sights on Agent Harker and begins trying to get into her mind. Alicia Witt who you may remember as the lead in 1998’s Urban Legend or the “fucking D-Girl” from The Sopranos, plays Harker’s who is oddly connected to the case.

The main issue with Longlegs is that for its mystery narrative to work and properly frighten us, some part of the story had to be tethered in reality. This is not to say that there couldn’t be supernatural elements within the film, just that we had to have some grounded element as a reference point. This should be the character of Lee Harker, but she’s such a bizarre character and not developed enough to be an audience surrogate. Her telekinesis also gets straight-up dropped halfway through the movie. The other part of this story that doesn’t work is the entire third act, where elements that seemed promising completely fall apart in service of a hokey, overly complicated explanation as to how Longlegs is killing people. It’s also derivative of other horror movies, in fact, an entire subgenre of horror. The film’s final line made me chortle out loud in mockery and disbelief.

What’s ultimately frustrating is that for as big of a mess as it ends up being there is so much in Longlegs to admire. The visual feel of the movie is gorgeous, and writer/director Osgood Perkins (Anthony‘s boy) proves once again he’s a fierce talent behind the camera. So many of his shot setups, evocative of true genre masterpieces like The Shining, are glorious to behold and effectively instill a sense of dread in the viewer. He’s great at slowly building a mood and sustaining it as demonstrated in his previous film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, an excellent little horror indie art film with flashes of Lynchian dream logic. Here, it feels like he tried to make a serial killer procedural that functions like an ambiguous art film, and the combination just doesn’t work. Perkins is also far more adept at directing than he is at writing, as evidenced in the cloyingly overwritten dialogue. The acting here is fairly seamless with Monroe, Witt, and Underwood all delivering good work, but the standout is undeniably Nicolas Cage. He’s having the fucking time of his life squealing and laughing in Mrs. Doubtfire pancake makeup. It’s not always frightening per se, but it’s always entertaining.

Hype is a dangerous thing because while it will certainly get people to your movie it raises expectations to a point where it’s almost impossible to deliver. I imagine Longlegs would have been disappointing even if it didn’t completely diarrhea the bed in the third act, but as it stands this has to be the biggest letdown of the year for me. I’m still excited for Perkins‘ next project and I hope this is a learning experience going forward for him. Grade: C+ (In Theaters)

The Boys Season 4

I don’t want to waste time on this review talking about the alienated proud boy fan base who just now realized the show, which I should mention has all the nuance of a 747 crashing head first into a pumpkin pie eating contest, was poking fun at their politics. I also don’t want to waste time talking about how social media is a dumpster echo chamber of one-dimensional hot takes where people either love or hate something with no room for mixed feelings. Yes, Season 4 of The Boys is the weakest season the show has had to date. It doesn’t have the novelty of Season 1, the sheer daring of Season 2, or the cohesive, end-to-end polish of Season 3. It’s messy as hell and some of the subplots are either half-baked or flat out don’t work. That being said, there are so many great moments in this season and it ends on a high and uncomfortably prescient note that perfectly sets up a final season.

At the end of last season, the titular Boys, a rag-tag team of vigilantes keeping the world safe from the dangerous egos of vain superheroes, worked together with Homelander (the brilliant Antony Starr) to defeat Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) losing Queen Maeve (Dominque McElligiot) along the way. Now they continue their quest to bring down Homelander who has since gone full paranoid dictator and has basically made his organization into a fascist regime. He’s killing everyone and wanting to create a holocaust for non-superhero folks. Will the boys be able to stop Homelander and thus save humanity from extinction? From the way things are going, I’d say we’re pretty fucked.

The best and most complex character on this show is Homelander, perfectly rendered by New Zealand actor Antony Starr. The best episode this season sees him visiting the lab where he was created and confronting/seeking approval from the labcoats who tortured him. Every storyline involving him is rock solid this season as are most storylines involving any of the villains, who remain the most compelling and amusing characters on the show. There’s Firecracker (Valorie Curry), an alt-right Southern Belle crippled by the bullying she experienced on the child pageant circuit. Sage (Susan Heyward), a hero whose power is being the smartest person in the world, who still has a hard time navigating Homelander’s army because she’s in the body of a 30-something black woman. There’s Ashley, (the hilarious Colby Minifie) your typical corporate publicist turned company CEO cause every other human around her has been murdered by Homelander. My favorite is perhaps The Deep (Chace Crawford), easily the stupidest and most benign character on the show, a hero whose power is having gills and talking to fish and also fucking an octopus voiced by none other than Oscar winner Tilda Swinton. Whenever the story shifts to these villains interacting with each other, the show is on fire.

Less successful, this season anyway, is the exploration of the good guys. Despite an emotional episode in a hospital, Hughie (Jack Quaid) doesn’t get much to do this season. Even more shaky is the storyline of Butcher (Karl Urban) dying from recreational V use and becoming more and more bitter. This storyline was painfully predictable all season long and seemed to be hitting the same emotional beats for the character over and over and over again. Perhaps the worst storyline is between Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) who embarks on a very underdeveloped storyline that exists only to bring him back to the same place he started at the beginning of the season. Talk about a trip to nowhere. On the other hand, Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) get the best arcs out of the good guys this season.

The wheels turn slowly in Season 4 but eventually, we are left with a season finale that really does some heavy lifting and perfectly sets us up for a final season. Season 4 surely isn’t the pile of dog shit assholes on X would have you believe, but it’s also not great either. It’s merely good. Grade: B (Amazon Prime)

Deadly DILF

You find yourself wide awake at 2:00 am, thunderously intoxicated with Taco Bell stacker sauce dangling from your mouth. Your ass is planted firmly on your couch, while your eyes flutter open and shut. Your hand erratically jerks forward, reaching for the AppleTV remote while accidentally knocking over a tall can of sticky liquid. Drank goes all over your coffee table art books. Shit. You contemplate going to the kitchen for some paper towels but get caught up in aimlessly scrolling through a home menu, desperately deciding what app to open. Netflix for some Seinfeld episode you’ve seen a hundred times? Hulu for a new episode of The Bear you’re sure to remember none of the next morning? Ooh, Max just released that 3-part documentary about conservative parents sending their goth kids to behavioral torture camps in the South. Ehh, too depressing…The Bear, I mean.

You need something dumb and salacious to match your sloptastic mood. After all, it’s been an hour scrolling through the menu and your $100 art books are unequivocally ruined by now. Do you even have paper towels? You got that big guy from Target, remember? The roll that’s actually three rolls worth of quilted quicker picker-upper in one fatty tube? You’re a mess. Netflix and the rest of the premiere streamers don’t want your ass, so there’s really only one place left to go. A place where no one judges you, a place where they accept anyone and any movie, no matter how poorly made or problematic the politics. A place where a movie titled Trump vs. the Illuminati, featuring an animated Donald Trump in a space suit beating Martians in an intergalactic dance-off on Jupiter in a bid to save humanity, lays undisturbed, waiting to be played. I’m talking about a little place called Tubi.

Tubi is home to hundreds, maybe millions of movies you never knew existed. Sure, they got stuff like Carol or The Fugitive, but you should watch those classics on a streamer that doesn’t interrupt you every 15-20 minutes with the same Pampers ad. Here you’ll find movies you’ll ~~want~~ need a reprieve from every 15-20 minutes. Although Tubi has acquired decades worth of low-budget crap, they still make their own original movies! Think Lifetime but cruder and often with much more diverse casts. Such is the case with Deadly DILF, a movie that requires little to no cognitive thought and acts as a parable about keeping your hand out of the proverbial cookie jar.

Equipped with the subtlety of a 747 crash landing into an oil rig, Deadly DILF follows an 18-year-old college girl, Elysium, reeling from the trauma of witnessing her father get shot to death by a jogger with a .45 automatic. A year later, she’s living with her Auntie in the suburbs, right next door to a certified, 100% FDA-approved D.I.L.F. named Rio. Rio is trying to turn his life around for his little boy, his new wife, and himself. He had a mysterious troubled past but is now doing better. He’s taking courses at the local community college, where he strikes up a friendship with his classmate/neighbor, Elysium. She becomes his go-to babysitter and eventually, he crosses the line with her and they have very vanilla sex on the bed he shares with his wife. Elysium is a character that is set up as super grounded so when she becomes OBSESSED with Rio and starts exerting Glenn Close-type behavior, it feels forced. Very forced.

While Deadly DILF certainly has moments that generate laughs due to its general ineptness at filmmaking, it feels like two separate people wrote each half of the screenplay. They set key things in motion in the first act that the second and third acts fail to realize or even comment on. It’s also mis-titled because the DILF is the character you’re supposed to feel sympathy for, not the poor 18-year-old child he took advantage of. A more fitting title might be “Homewreckin’ Ho”, but the real problem here is we struggle to sympathize with a 35-year-old loser who took an 18-year-old’s virginity and then acts all surprised when she becomes attached. This movie feels tailor-made for guys who cheat in relationships, to try and teach them in the bluntest way possible that sleeping around has consequences. However, it does this while also treating their cheating as some sort of illness or addiction. Cheating isn’t a disease, it’s a choice. If your man is sleeping around, kick his ass out of the house and call a locksmith. You’d be surprised. Nothing turns a player around quite like a night out on the lawn, ok? Ok!

As dull as the majority of the film is, it takes some unexpected left turns. Much like stupid people, stupid movies are scary cause they’re hard to predict. Deadly DILF ends in a truly WTF conclusion because it’s both unexpected and also makes no sense. Grade: D (Tubi)

Spermworld

One of the best and most uncomfortable documentaries of the year is Lance Oppenheim‘s Spermworld, a human interest piece about incredibly sad people from the guy who brought us this year’s HBO docuseries, Ren Faire, another human interest piece about incredibly sad people. Spermworld explores the mundane and seedy, no pun intended, world of black market sperm donors. Mostly it’s desperate couples or women meeting weird dudes in motel rooms and waiting for them to gratify themselves into a test tube. Those hoping for cheap jizz jokes and kooky people to point and laugh at will be sorely disappointed. Spermworld is an exceptionally perceptive deep dive into the human condition and poses questions far beyond what you’d expect.

It follows the complicated and wildly different lives of three sperm donors and their recipients. Tyree Kelly is a married man living in Phoenix with his wife, Atasha, who is trying and failing to get pregnant. The problem is that Tyree is prioritizing his frequent “donations” over her ovulation schedule. Tyree mentions his father having an abundance of kids and you get the feeling he’s low-key competing with him. The second subject is Steve Walker, a 65-year-old divorcee who actually tries to date his recipient, Rachel, a single woman who wants to be a mom. The film follows their odd and oddly co-dependent relationship. At one point, he shows her Mulholland Drive and it’s painfully awkward. The third and final subject is the most ridiculous and easily the most tragic. Ari Nagel is a single man without a home who crashes at the houses of his hundreds (yes hundreds) of recipients. He has over 100 kids across several countries (Israel has already banned him) and frequently compares himself to King Solomon. Perhaps the most poignant scenes of Spermworld are the conversations he has with his very traditional Jewish mother who constantly berates him for his life choices. You start to see maybe why he’s so screwed up.

Spermworld would feel like little more than a freak show if it didn’t attempt to explore the root of these people’s misery. The emotional key to the film ends up being the first donor’s wife, Atasha, and her relationship with Tyree‘s oldest daughter, her stepdaughter. They are both equally put off by Tyree‘s need to fertilize the world, so to speak, and their bond illustrates that even if they never actually verbalize it to each other. Spermworld may not be perfect and the divorcee donor ends up feeling a bit underexplored, but for 83 minutes Oppenheim offers you a compelling look into the lives of the type of people you’d otherwise never think very deeply about. Grade: B+ (Hulu)