Jonny Numb

MadS (2024)

The most important thing about making a movie centered around drugs: is the viewer in on the trip? Regardless of whether the protagonist cleans up their act in time for the swell of strings over the closing credits, you gotta feel the rush a junkie gets when they swallow, snort, or inject their drug of choice. Think of the iconic aesthetics of Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream; or the neon-soaked rave of Gaspar Noe’s Climax. In the realm of sci-fi horror, Jeff Lieberman’s Blue Sunshine remains an unmatched, unsettling weirdo experience with the haunting tag line: “Have you ever heard the words ‘Blue Sunshine’? Your life may depend on it!”

Now, following in this fine tradition, we have MadS, a French production that starts rather simply: on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, rich kid Romain (Milton Riche) snorts a couple lines of a mysterious new drug from his dealer; shortly after leaving, he encounters a frantic woman by the roadside. In clear need of help, the woman becomes increasingly violent and finally stabs herself to death. Left to rationalize the horrors of his predicament, Romain heads back home (his father’s away on business), but is quickly compelled to a party by a group of friends, including ostensible girlfriend Julia (Lucille Guillaume).

MadS benefits from a key aesthetic conceit: it is shot in one (allegedly) unbroken take, lending a sense of urgency as the emotional and even geographical stakes of the plot spiral out of control. Writer-director David Moreau is smart in how he moves the camera, following the characters around as chaos and violence begin to erupt with unwavering nastiness. This effect never comes across as showy or drawing too much attention to itself; rather, we begin to feel as stuck as the characters in a situation where hope becomes an increasingly precious commodity.

The performances are uniformly excellent, though the characters feel somewhat Bret Easton Ellis-ish in their hedonism and superficiality; some viewers may not sympathize with their predicament. But Moreau – who did a similarly good job of building tension with 2006’s Them – is masterful at creating discomfort and apocalyptic consequences over the course of one hellish night. In many ways, MadS reminded me of Quarantine, wherein an innocuous beginning is simply the Gates of Hell opening, beckoning us to enter and experience a type of fear that’s refreshingly bracing and unique. One of 2024’s best – and certainly most immersive – horrors.

4 out of 5 stars

Oddity (2024)

Not to be the huge ugly golem made outta wood in the room, but folks…seriously?

Oddity is an Irish horror that came packaged in a bow as one of the “must-see” genre offerings of 2024, shellacked with the usual hyperbolic pull quotes from the usual hyperbolic sources (yawn). I don’t buy into a movie based on hype, but said hype will certainly make me dust off my Shudder account and give it a look-see.

Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) is the blind, bottle-blonde owner of a local antique shop where every item is cursed…or haunted…or something. She’s psychically linked to her sister Dani (Bracken)…or something…and suspects foul play on the part of her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), the head doctor at a local asylum, and his new love interest, Yana (Caroline Menton). Ingratiating herself to Ted and Yana (with the aforementioned ugly golem made outta wood), Darcy decides to conduct a metaphysical investigation to get to the bottom of Dani’s death.

So begins a somewhat promising premise that incorporates some unsettling imagery (a masked assailant reminiscent of the killer in Four Flies on Grey Velvet). The film has a flair for moody production design, lighting, and costuming; it often feels like a descendant of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in its aesthetics.

Why, then, did Oddity leave me so frustrated and annoyed as its story unraveled? In creating a several-character chamber piece, writer-director Damian McCarthy has achieved something like the inverse of Olivier Assayas’ superior Personal Shopper, which brought a sense of intelligence and wonder to its metaphysical themes of life, death, and the liminal space in-between. Scripts that lack that sort of curiosity leave only functionality (sometimes not even that), which puts a film in a precarious position even the most skilled directors would have trouble salvaging.

Needless to say, McCarthy leaves the viewer mired in a bland guessing game with only a handful of possible outcomes. The mystery isn’t engaging because none of the performances seem committed to it, with acting tuned to apathy interspersed with random flashes of animation or passion. As a result, it’s hard to care about – but relatively easy to guess – the culprit in this situation, simply because the plot is so basic, leaving little room for intrigue outside of jump-scares scored to harsh orchestral stingers. By the end, I felt aggravated and impatient and more than a little gypped by the whole enterprise – to quote Public Enemy: “don’t believe the hype.”

1.5 out of 5 stars

V/H/S/Beyond (2024)

The V/H/S/ series has become my annual exercise in horror masochism…a series whose sustained popularity never ceases to baffle me (I guess it’s all the ‘80s retro-fetishism we’ve been mired in since the advent of Stranger Things?)…but whose sustained popularity also never ceases to compel me to watch the latest installment.

Why, you might ask? Why, when there are so many other movies out there (including many widely-regarded classics I still haven’t seen)? Why, when I don’t even like the series’ central gimmick – the cruddy tape-grade visuals and sound – and find it unappealing on a purely aesthetic level?

Well, the reason is simple: maybe the tide will turn and I’ll be caught off-guard by actually liking one of these movies. And with V/H/S/Beyond – the seventh installment in the series – the unthinkable finally happened! Some of this is due to the liberties with the format – the creative team seems just as tired of the washed-out tape aesthetic as I am, and most sequences are shot in HD, resulting in a more appealing look and a cleaner flow to the action (that said, the final tale utilizes old-school video in a highly effective manner).

The writing, acting, and directing is a cut above the previous entries – at the very least, V/H/S/Beyond finds consistency in building most of the stories around an “alien invasion” theme.

The wraparound takes the form of a faux-documentary of talking heads attempting to validate a man’s encounter with an extraterrestrial. The first tale has a squad of rogue cops storming a mansion that’s become home to zombies controlled by a crashed meteor, and a nursery of kidnapped babies being used for more sinister ends. It’s first-person-shooter through and through, but keeps the viewer guessing what’s around every corner, and scores points for some nastily inspired gore. The third segment follows a group of young thrill-seekers celebrating their friend’s 30^th birthday by going on a skydiving trip; but the festivities are cut short by an unexpected alien invasion, followed by death and destruction in an orchard. I like how this one takes the claustrophobic fear of being confined to a small passenger plane (with probably too many people aboard) and then flips it in its final half, where a wide-open, maze-like space becomes the source of fear. The fourth segment has some young animal-rights activists infiltrating a seemingly innocuous doggy daycare with an overly cheerful proprietor harboring a dark secret – as written and directed by Christian and Justin Long, the latter obviously looked to his time spent on the set of Tusk for inspiration. The final segment has a young woman venturing out to the desert to follow the source of an extraterrestrial phenomenon for a documentary. With shades of the similarly-themed Phoenix Forgotten, this benefits greatly from a sincere approach to the nature of belief and the character’s purity (no surprise, it was written by Mike Flanagan, who has brought a genuineness to his numerous Stephen King adaptations), the sense of the viewer discovering things alongside the character, and usage of analog camcorder tech that heightens the experience instead of detracting from it; an auspicious directorial debut from actress Kate Siegel.

The only story that truly falls flat is an unfocused jaunt into Bollywood territory where two paparazzi seeking photos of a beautiful starlet find she’s not at all what she appears to be (though what she actually is is really anybody’s guess, since it’s so badly conveyed). But if five out of these six stories are worthwhile, I’m going to chalk that up as a win for a series that’s grappled with such a history of inconsistency.

Abduction/Adduction (wraparound): 3.5 out of 5

Stork: 3.5 out of 5

Dream Girl: 1 out of 5

Live and Let Die: 3.5 out of 5

Fur Babies: 3 out of 5

Stowaway: 3.5 out of 5

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars