'80s weirdness and three Blumhouse productions.
SMOOTH TALK (1985)
There were a lot of teen coming-of-age movies made in the '80s, and director Joyce Chopra's Smooth Talk stands out as one of the strangest ones. Written by Tom Cole and based on a Joyce Carol Oates short story called Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, the film stars Laura Dern as Connie Wyatt, a 15 year old who has a crappy home life and seems very anxious to grow up.
Mary Kay Place plays Connie's overworked mother Katherine, who has a severe distaste for her daughter that she makes zero effort to conceal. Connie struggles to keep the peace with her mom, but all she gets for her trouble is a constant barrage of mean comments. Levon Helm is Connie's ineffectual father Harry, who obviously doesn't realize how hard his wife has to work at their home while he's off doing his job. Elizabeth Berridge is her "perfect" older sister June, the daughter Katherine actually likes.
When the movie isn't showing us scenes of Connie's painfully awkward interactions with her family, we see scenes of Connie going out on the town with her friends, making herself up and dressing to look older than she is, acting like she's ready for "what guys want", then proving that she's not when opportunities present themselves - and drawing the attention of creeps while she's out. 22 minutes in, we get our first glimpse of one of those creeps, an older guy who pulls his convertible into the lot at the "older kid" hangout, Frank's, a hot dog joint that serves beer. Connie starts dressing provocatively and going to Frank's to see what it's like soon after, and we see that guy watching her as ominous music plays on the soundtrack. As she leaves Frank's one night, the guy tells her, "I'm watching you."
The guy is Treat Williams as Arnold Friend, and when Friend shows up at Connie's house 57 minutes in, at a time when Connie is the only one who stayed home while the rest of her family went to a cookout, Smooth Talk becomes something even darker and more uncomfortable than it had already been. This is also when it goes from being an interesting oddity to being something unforgettable and captivating. Basically, it becomes a horror movie for a 26 minute stretch, and most of that time consists solely of Friend talking to Connie. Dropping some of that "smooth talk" the title refers to.
Arnold Friend is not a good guy. He's trying to talk Connie into going for a ride with him, and it's clear that he has bad intentions. He even has a buddy riding shotgun, Geoff Hoyle as Ellie Oscar, and Ellie doesn't say much of anything aside from suggestions that they should cut the phone line and take Connie by force. But Friend insists on using his words to calmly lure Connie into his convertible. Connie plays along with Friend at first, until she realizes he's a total creeper, but within minutes she's terrified and crying, while Williams' performance and the dialogue Cole wrote for him make this sequence fascinating.
That 26 minute interaction between Friend and Connie makes Smooth Talk something to see, especially for viewers who can appreciate extended dialogue scenes. It's worth experiencing the first 56 minutes to watch Williams bring Friend to unnerving life.
INTO THE DARK: DELIVERED (2020)
Tina Majorino has acting credits on over thirty projects, but I haven't seen most of them, so the way I primarily remember her is from the acting she did as a child in the early '90s, in movies like Waterworld. I thought it was cool when she showed up in Napoleon Dynamite nine years after Waterworld, but I hadn't seen her in a single thing since then, even though she has been on some very popular TV shows in the last sixteen years. Now I finally saw Majorino again, in the Mother's Day 2020 entry in Hulu and Blumhouse's holiday-themed horror anthology series Into the Dark - and in this movie, Majorino shows that the little kid from Waterworld / the girl from Napoleon Dynamite is capable of turning in a chilling performance as a character who is a total maniac.
Majorino's character in Delivered, which was directed by Emma Tami and written by Dirk Blackman, is named Jenny, and when we first meet her she seems to be a really nice single mother-to-be. She says she has always loved kids, that's why she's a nurse in pediatrician's office, and has wanted to have a baby since she was a kid herself. She seems so sweet, it's understandable that Valerie (Natalie Paul), who is also pregnant and just three weeks from her due date, and Valerie's husband Tom (Michael Cassidy) accept her invitation to have dinner at her isolated farm house. Accepting that invitation was a bad mistake, though. Jenny kills Tom and locks Valerie up, intending to keep her captive until she goes into labor and then deliver the baby herself so she can raise it as her own. Jenny isn't really pregnant, she can't get pregnant herself, and this is her insane way of getting a child anyway.
Majorino is great as Jenny, and Paul also did solid work as our heroine Valerie, who is the opposite of her captor when it comes to the idea of childbirth. She doesn't seem that enthusiastic about having a kid, she even has nightmares about the baby inside her. But when Jenny puts her through this horrific experience, Valerie steps up to do whatever it takes to protect herself and her child.
Delivered is a good, involving horror-thriller that's somewhat reminiscent, in basic concept, of the awesome 2007 French film Inside (and its not-so-awesome 2016 remake). It's not nearly as brutal and depressing, though.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT (2020)
Twenty-one years ago, writer/director David Koepp teamed up with star Kevin Bacon for Stir of Echoes, a film I'm surprised doesn't get referenced very often, as I felt it was one of the best horror movies of that era. Now Koepp and Bacon have reunited for another horror project, You Should Have Left, and... well, I won't be surprised if people aren't talking about this one in the future, but it's still interesting enough to warrant a viewing or two.
Like Stir of Echoes was based on a novel by Richard Matheson, You Should Have Left is based on a novella by Daniel Kehlmann. Bacon plays Theo Conroy, a man who's on the run from his dark past and worries that people are going to recognize him when he goes out in public - so it's not clear exactly how he ended up in a relationship with high profile actress Susanna (Amanda Seyfried) while trying not to draw attention to himself. Unfortunately, Theo has discovered that marrying a woman who is decades younger than him has brought a whole new set of worries into his life, as now he's concerned that Susanna is going to stray because he can't satisfy her sexual needs. This guy has troubles, for sure.
Susanna is working on a production that will be filming in London soon, so the couple decides to rent a house in the Welsh countryside for Theo and their six-year-old daughter Ella (Avery Essex) to stay in while Susanna is at work. That turns out to be a bad idea, as the place they have found has labyrinthine hallways, hidden rooms, and doors that appear and disappear. It seems to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and sadly it's not a TARDIS. Theo loses hours performing the simple task of turning off lights, he finds that someone has scrawled the message "You should have left" in his journal, and he's plagued by horrific nightmares. Theo is so troubled that Koepp could have played up the idea that his sanity is crumbling, but there's never much question that what's going on in the house is worse than what's going on in Theo's head.
Even the locals know there's something wrong with the place, and they seem very wary of its mysterious owner, a man named Stetler. I think the identity of the actor playing Stetler is supposed to be a surprise, but it's another thing that's probably more obvious than was intended.
You Should Have Left isn't entirely effective, but it has some creepy moments and Koepp makes the weird occurrences in the house visually interesting. He also assembled a cast that makes the story more involving than it would have been otherwise. Theo isn't always the most likeable character, but Bacon is naturally captivating and is able to lead the viewer through scenes even when we're questioning his actions. Seyfried doesn't have as much to do as Susanna, but she does well with what she was given, and Essex proves to be an impressive child actress.
While I felt that the movie was decent enough overall, I was also left wondering if it might have had more of an impact if different choices were made. Maybe if we were able to question Theo's sanity more, or if the Conroys weren't such a mess of doubt and suspicion. Theo's past ensures that he will always have a dark cloud hanging over him, but it might have been more disturbing if these things were happening to a happier couple. There's something about You Should Have Left that makes it feel like the movie didn't reach its full potential.
As it is, it's a fine way to spend 93 minutes, even if you'll be shrugging about it later.
The review of You Should Have Left originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
THE BAY (2012)
In general, I am not into "found footage" style movies. It's rare for me to enjoy them, and sometimes even the better ones leave me thinking that I would have liked them better if they had been shot in a traditional style rather than being presented as found footage. There are exceptions, though, and director Barry Levinson's 2012 horror film The Bay is one of them. This is a movie that works better as found footage than it probably would have otherwise.
This one benefits from the fact that it's not just another movie about a group of people continuing to record themselves for no good reason while terrible things happen around them. That does happen here and there, but the events are shown through footage that was compiled from various sources. Fledgling reporter Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) has gained access to all of the footage that was confiscated by the government after a mysterious outbreak left hundreds of people dead in the Chesapeake Bay area on July 4th, 2009. Fourth of July festivities were disrupted when people caught some kind of affliction from the local water supply, an affliction that first covers their bodies with blisters, then appears to eat them alive. Everyone who gets sick with this dies within hours.
Donna was on the scene that day, being filmed by a news cameraman. Other footage comes from things like security cameras, Skype calls, Facetime calls, police dash cams, and of course the personal cameras some people were carrying around that day. Levinson documents this devastating outbreak in a fascinating way, and the way the situation is handled feels quite realistic. The basic explanation for why this is happening also makes sense - although this is ultimately a creature feature, the reason for it all is just the sort of thing that could cause a lot of trouble for humanity, and the sort of thing that happens all the time. The film was made even more harrowing by the fact that I watched it while we're in the middle of a real world pandemic.
The Bay is really good, and I was glad that Levinson told this story through found footage.
In general, I am not into "found footage" style movies. It's rare for me to enjoy them, and sometimes even the better ones leave me thinking that I would have liked them better if they had been shot in a traditional style rather than being presented as found footage. There are exceptions, though, and director Barry Levinson's 2012 horror film The Bay is one of them. This is a movie that works better as found footage than it probably would have otherwise.
This one benefits from the fact that it's not just another movie about a group of people continuing to record themselves for no good reason while terrible things happen around them. That does happen here and there, but the events are shown through footage that was compiled from various sources. Fledgling reporter Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) has gained access to all of the footage that was confiscated by the government after a mysterious outbreak left hundreds of people dead in the Chesapeake Bay area on July 4th, 2009. Fourth of July festivities were disrupted when people caught some kind of affliction from the local water supply, an affliction that first covers their bodies with blisters, then appears to eat them alive. Everyone who gets sick with this dies within hours.
Donna was on the scene that day, being filmed by a news cameraman. Other footage comes from things like security cameras, Skype calls, Facetime calls, police dash cams, and of course the personal cameras some people were carrying around that day. Levinson documents this devastating outbreak in a fascinating way, and the way the situation is handled feels quite realistic. The basic explanation for why this is happening also makes sense - although this is ultimately a creature feature, the reason for it all is just the sort of thing that could cause a lot of trouble for humanity, and the sort of thing that happens all the time. The film was made even more harrowing by the fact that I watched it while we're in the middle of a real world pandemic.
The Bay is really good, and I was glad that Levinson told this story through found footage.
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