Dave Franco's directorial debut, TV thrills, and more sharks.
THE RENTAL (2020)
I can't say I've paid a lot of attention to the career of Dave Franco. Although I have seen him in several movies - the 2011 version of Fright Night, 21 Jump Street, Now You See Me, Nerve, among others - I still primarily think of him as "James Franco's brother". But now, my interest in Dave Franco's career has been given a substantial boost because he decided to make his feature directorial debut with the kind of film that appeals to me more than any other: he made a slasher movie.
Written by Franco and mumblecore filmmaker / You're Next cast member Joe Swanberg (from a story they crafted with Mike Demski), Franco's film The Rental centers on two couples - Charlie (Dan Stevens), his wife Michelle (Alison Brie), his brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White), and Josh's girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand), who also happens to be Charlie's partner in a major creative endeavor. To celebrate a success that Charlie and Mina have had, these couples have decided to spend the weekend at a remote house that rests on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The couples don't expect to have any company other than an adorable little dog named Reggie (played by Chunk), but there's also property caretaker Taylor (Toby Huss), who lives nearby and comes around more than they're comfortable with.
The film takes its time building up to the slashing. The first half is basically a relationship drama, as the couples try to deal with the fact that Charlie and Mina spend more time with each other than they do with their significant others, and they seem to be a lot closer to each other than they are to Michelle and Josh. But it's clear that this isn't just the quirky mumblecore movie you might expect from Franco and Swanberg; Taylor is off-putting and creepy, and this movie really started to win my heart when Franco first cut away to a point-of-view shot of someone watching the characters from a distance, the sound of the mysterious person's heavy breathing filling the soundtrack.
Eventually the characters come to realize that there are cameras hidden in the house, and soon after that discovery is made the film officially shifts into slasher movie mode, complete with a mask-wearing madman and a body count. It's not a huge body count and the kills don't involve much in the way of special effects, but the events of the film were interesting and involving enough that I was left impressed by Franco's horror-making skills.
I thoroughly enjoyed sitting through The Rental's 88 minutes. While I don't expect Franco to become a genre regular after this, I'm very glad that he decided to start his directing career with a slasher movie. I look forward to seeing what he'll do next, and I hope there will be more horror in his future.
INTO THE DARK: THE CURRENT OCCUPANT (2020)
The second season of the Hulu / Blumhouse anthology series Into the Dark was supposed to consist of twelve feature films that would be released on a monthly basis from October through September, just like the first season. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit in the middle of the season and made it so that the August and September entries wouldn't be ready for release - so apparently the July film, director Julius Ramsay's The Current Occupant, is the premature season finale.
Written by the director's brother Alston Ramsay, who used to work as a political speechwriter in Washington, D.C., The Current Occupant is built around the cliché of a person in a psychiatric ward believing that they're the President of the United States... but in this case, the person may not be delusional, they might really be the President. This character is Henry Cameron (Barry Watson), who is recuperating from gunshot wounds and suffering from amnesia when we first meet him. Soon he has started believing that he's the President and that there's something strange going on in the hospital he's being kept in. Well, there's no question that this place is strange, the "treatments" Dr. Larson (Sonita Henry) puts Henry through certainly aren't normal, nor is the fact that the outside world can't be seen through the hospital's glowing windows. We just have to find out if Henry has had a mental breakdown, or if he's the President and being kept captive in a bunker under the White House as part of a conspiracy masterminded by the Vice President.
The Ramsays don't make Henry's struggle to get answers any easier to watch than it is for Henry to endure. Their goal with this was to make this a befuddling, 86 minute mind scrambler, and they were successful at that. Problem is, the movie was way too successful at being strange and befuddling. Is Henry the President or not? The movie has it both ways multiple times, going back and forth between both possibilities, and it took so long to land on the truth (viewers may still be left debating after the final minute of the film) that I just stopped caring. Barry Watson was giving it his all, but I couldn't remain invested.
Some viewers may love having The Current Occupant mess with their heads (and Henry's) for the duration, but this is not my sort of movie at all. It's a shame that this season of Into the Dark came to an early end with a movie that is my least favorite entry in the entire series.
DEEP BLUE SEA 3 (2020)
The fact that Deep Blue Sea 3 has to follow in the footsteps of Deep Blue Sea 2 could be both a benefit and a hindrance. The second film in this franchise was basically just the first movie all over again, made on a substantially lower budget and not nearly as entertaining. Because of that movie, viewers may go into the third with lowered expectations, only to find that it is a major step up from its predecessor. On the other hand, Part 2 was so poorly crafted that it may turn some viewers away from even giving Part 3 a chance - which would be a shame, because Deep Blue Sea 3 is actually a fun shark thriller / adventure film. It's not on the level of the original Deep Blue Sea, of course, but it's a solid movie in its own right.
Deep Blue Sea 2 ended with a small school of genetically engineered, super smart, ravenously hungry sharks getting loose in the ocean. Directed by John Pogue from a screenplay by Dirk Blackman, Deep Blue Sea 3 picks up from that ending to find that those sharks are now being pursued by a group of mercenaries - plus shark expert Richard Lowell (Nathaniel Buzolic) - who have been tasked with stopping them. The sharks are heading in the direction of a fishing village called Little Happy, which sits on a man-made island that was built on a coral reef in the Mozambique Channel.
Rising sea levels have forced most residents to abandon Little Happy; the place used to be home to 800 people, but now there are only two permanent residents, along with a group of environmentalists led by marine biologist / shark conservationist Doctor Emma Collins (Tania Raymonde), who happens to have a personal history with Richard, so we can get some personal drama mixed in with the shark hunting and people eating.
Little Happy is a cool setting for this kind of movie, entirely constructed by the crew and built so that parts of it could start to sink as the story plays out. It's quite impressive, even before structures get flooded and sharks start swimming through places. That sort of action comes after some underwater sequences that reminded me a bit of the Marine massacre in Aliens, with characters using a sonar system to observe the situation from afar, keeping track of the creatures moving around endangered divers.
Deep Blue Sea 3 gets more and more fun as it goes along, as the action gets bigger and more exciting. There's plenty of bloodshed, a bunch of explosions, and some likeable characters to carry us through. The actors playing Emma's associates all make positive impressions, while Raymonde does strong work handling the dramatic elements and brings intensity to the thrilling sequences. In the second half of the film, Richard's unscrupulous cohort Lucas (Bren Foster) steps up to become someone viewers will love to hate - and appreciate for bringing some physical altercations into the mix. A showdown between Lucas and Emma's pal Shaw (Emerson Brooks) is one of the highlights.
As most will probably expect, there are some dodgy effects on display in this film, but the situations around them are fun enough that any moments of underwhelming CGI didn't put me off. There are some great moments involving the sharks, including a hilarious character death and even an unnerving scene in which a shark is seen circling one of the most likeable characters.
Deep Blue Sea 3 provides 100 minutes of thrills, laughs, and action. It's much better than I thought it would be, and a more well made film than the movie that preceded it in this franchise. If you like shark thrillers but were disappointed by Deep Blue Sea 2, don't let that one put you off from checking this one out.
The Deep Blue Sea 3 review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
MR. MERCEDES: SEASON TWO (2018)
Stephen King called his 2014 novel Mr. Mercedes his "first hard-boiled detective book", and in 2017 David E. Kelley turned that book into an interesting season of television on the Audience Network. The story centered on retired Bridgton, Ohio detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson), who gets taunting messages from the unapprehended killer that drove a Mercedes into a crowd of people years earlier. That killer was Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), and in the end of the story Brady got his head bashed in by Hodges' friend Holly (Justine Lupe). King followed Mr. Mercedes with two sequels - and the trilogy capper, 2016's End of Watch, he brought Brady Hartsfield back.
I'm certainly in no position to tell King how to run his career, but I disagree with the approach he took to End of Watch. The trilogy started off with a straightforward detective book, but the third story adds in some of King's traditional supernatural elements, which just did not work for me as a continuation of the Bill Hodges / Brady Hartsfield story. The book went way over the top, giving Brady the ability to influence the minds and even take over the bodies of people who are entranced by a game on their electronic tablets. I understand producers and Audience Network wanting to jump straight to End of Watch for the second season of the Mr. Mercedes TV show so they could finish up the Brady story right away, but End of Watch was so nuts that there's no way a season based on it could have lived up to the first season. The second season of Mr. Mercedes is a step down from its predecessor, but at least the writers did their best to take the oddball source material and try to make something better out of it.
The show still gives Brady the ability to twist minds and infiltrate bodies, but in a much more low-key manner than in the book. The story begins with Brady in a coma and Doctor Felix Babineau (Jack Huston) secretly pumping him full of experimental drugs that his wife Cora (Tessa Ferrer) has provided. Cora has some associates in the Chinese pharmaceutical world that have been testing this drug on prisoners. Those tests didn't go so well, the subjects who were given the real drug were able to get into the minds of those who were given a placebo and drive them to suicide, but why not try it out on Brady anyway? They might be able to regenerate his brain tissue, get him conscious again, and then Assistant District Attorney Antonio Montez (Maximiliano Hernandez) can put him on trial for his crimes. The drug causes Brady to gain supernatural abilities, and soon he's taking over the bodies of people like the epileptic Nurse Sadie (Virginia Kull) and simple-minded hospital employee Al (Mike Starr) and causing them to do terrible things. Starr really makes us feel sorry for Al, it sucks to see him do the things Brady makes him do.
As Brady mentally ventures away from his hospital bed, Bill Hodges starts to suspect that there's something strange going on with him. Thankfully, Hodges' side of the story is still very much down-to-earth, and his interactions with his pals Holly - who has started a private investigator business called Finders Keepers with him - and tech whiz Jerome (Jharrel Jerome) are still a lot of fun to watch. Hodges also has a great friendship with his neighbor Ida (Holland Taylor), and starts to rekindle his romance with his ex-wife Donna (Nancy Travis).
The show also gives viewers the chance to catch up with Brady's former co-worker Lou (Breeda Wool), who is still trying to recover from the fact that the guy stabbed her in the stomach.
Although the second season of Mr. Mercedes is entertaining overall, the supernatural aspect is a major hurdle to overcome, and I spent a lot of the season wishing King hadn't taken the story in this direction. The adaptation is better than the source material, but it still doesn't feel like this story should have been told with these characters.
As with the first season, most of the episodes of this season were directed by Jack Bender, whose credits include Child's Play 3 and many episodes of Lost. Bender only missed out on two of season 2's ten episodes, and he had a couple interesting replacements on those episodes. One was directed by Laura Innes, best known for playing Dr. Kerry Weaver on 249 episodes of ER, and the other was directed by RoboCop himself, Peter Weller. Weller has become quite a prolific director of television over the last twenty years, which is something I didn't even realize until I saw his credit on Mr. Mercedes.
Stephen King called his 2014 novel Mr. Mercedes his "first hard-boiled detective book", and in 2017 David E. Kelley turned that book into an interesting season of television on the Audience Network. The story centered on retired Bridgton, Ohio detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson), who gets taunting messages from the unapprehended killer that drove a Mercedes into a crowd of people years earlier. That killer was Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), and in the end of the story Brady got his head bashed in by Hodges' friend Holly (Justine Lupe). King followed Mr. Mercedes with two sequels - and the trilogy capper, 2016's End of Watch, he brought Brady Hartsfield back.
I'm certainly in no position to tell King how to run his career, but I disagree with the approach he took to End of Watch. The trilogy started off with a straightforward detective book, but the third story adds in some of King's traditional supernatural elements, which just did not work for me as a continuation of the Bill Hodges / Brady Hartsfield story. The book went way over the top, giving Brady the ability to influence the minds and even take over the bodies of people who are entranced by a game on their electronic tablets. I understand producers and Audience Network wanting to jump straight to End of Watch for the second season of the Mr. Mercedes TV show so they could finish up the Brady story right away, but End of Watch was so nuts that there's no way a season based on it could have lived up to the first season. The second season of Mr. Mercedes is a step down from its predecessor, but at least the writers did their best to take the oddball source material and try to make something better out of it.
The show still gives Brady the ability to twist minds and infiltrate bodies, but in a much more low-key manner than in the book. The story begins with Brady in a coma and Doctor Felix Babineau (Jack Huston) secretly pumping him full of experimental drugs that his wife Cora (Tessa Ferrer) has provided. Cora has some associates in the Chinese pharmaceutical world that have been testing this drug on prisoners. Those tests didn't go so well, the subjects who were given the real drug were able to get into the minds of those who were given a placebo and drive them to suicide, but why not try it out on Brady anyway? They might be able to regenerate his brain tissue, get him conscious again, and then Assistant District Attorney Antonio Montez (Maximiliano Hernandez) can put him on trial for his crimes. The drug causes Brady to gain supernatural abilities, and soon he's taking over the bodies of people like the epileptic Nurse Sadie (Virginia Kull) and simple-minded hospital employee Al (Mike Starr) and causing them to do terrible things. Starr really makes us feel sorry for Al, it sucks to see him do the things Brady makes him do.
As Brady mentally ventures away from his hospital bed, Bill Hodges starts to suspect that there's something strange going on with him. Thankfully, Hodges' side of the story is still very much down-to-earth, and his interactions with his pals Holly - who has started a private investigator business called Finders Keepers with him - and tech whiz Jerome (Jharrel Jerome) are still a lot of fun to watch. Hodges also has a great friendship with his neighbor Ida (Holland Taylor), and starts to rekindle his romance with his ex-wife Donna (Nancy Travis).
The show also gives viewers the chance to catch up with Brady's former co-worker Lou (Breeda Wool), who is still trying to recover from the fact that the guy stabbed her in the stomach.
Although the second season of Mr. Mercedes is entertaining overall, the supernatural aspect is a major hurdle to overcome, and I spent a lot of the season wishing King hadn't taken the story in this direction. The adaptation is better than the source material, but it still doesn't feel like this story should have been told with these characters.
As with the first season, most of the episodes of this season were directed by Jack Bender, whose credits include Child's Play 3 and many episodes of Lost. Bender only missed out on two of season 2's ten episodes, and he had a couple interesting replacements on those episodes. One was directed by Laura Innes, best known for playing Dr. Kerry Weaver on 249 episodes of ER, and the other was directed by RoboCop himself, Peter Weller. Weller has become quite a prolific director of television over the last twenty years, which is something I didn't even realize until I saw his credit on Mr. Mercedes.
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