THE SUBSTANCE

*SPOILERS*

It’s no mystery that this movie was influenced by David Cronenberg. I’ll even go so far as to say the influence is slightly deeper than just surface-level visuals. Most filmmakers that claim to be influenced by Cronenberg have this naive understanding of his movies that’s kind of embarrassing. Much like how a shot of a dark road at night or something “weird” doesn’t automatically equate “Lynchian” or a tense shot of a doorknob slowly turning doesn’t equate “Hitchcockian”, something “gross” or gory doesn’t automatically mean it’s Cronenberg-ian. The Substance straddles the line. On one hand you cant deny the filmmaker’s own words and inspirations:

One of the filmmakers that really impacted me as a teen was David Cronenberg, all those relationships to the flesh and to transforming the body and how that changes how you can be seen, Coralie Fargeat, Film School Rejects

Videodrome / The Substance

Videodrome / The Substance

a movie like THE FLY is a perfect example of this. And movies like eXistenZ, which had a very weird way of dealing with the body, with sexuality and with violence - Coralie Fargeat, Film School Rejects

The Fly / The Substance

The Fly / The Substance

The Fly / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

eXistenZ / The Substance

Cronenberg who opened the door for me to do weirder stuff - Coralie Fargeat, James Whale Blake

Naked Lunch / The Substance

Scanners / The Substance

Shivers / The Substance

Rabid / The Substance

Naked Lunch / The Substance

Shivers / The Substance

Crash / The Substance

And not to contradict what I said earlier but there is an understandable surface-level amount of David Lynch in The Substance as well. I think it’s wrong to label Joseph Merrick as a “monster” (that would mean you completely missed the point of Elephant Man) but the visual similarities are there…

The Elephant Man was a very strong representation of a monstrous figure, especially because the film was based on someone who existed – Coarlie Fargeat, rogerebert.com

Elephant Man / The Substance

Eraserhead / The Substance

Kubrick

The Shining / The Substance

Carpenter

The Thing / The Substance

But at the same time – the comparison is also kind of lazy. David Cronenberg didn’t invent “body horror”. He might be the greatest at conveying it on the big screen but he certainly doesn’t own it. If anything, The Substance should fit in more with films like Freaked, Parents, Society, Tetsuo The Ironman, The Dark Backward, etc. Horror comedies don’t take themselves seriously…

Freaked / The Substance

The Dark Backward / The Substance

Tetsuo The Ironman / The Substance

I can’t stress how much this film really reminded me of Brian Yuzna’s work (Society)…

Society / The Substance

I’d also throw Stuart Gordon’s work in there also. 

From Beyond / The Substance

I guess that’s my only other grip with this movie. The Substance should be a dark horror comedy that doesn’t take itself seriously but unfortunately it does. You don’t need me to tell you what it’s about. Anyone that’s seen the trailer or just read a synopsis knows this is a movie about the ugly side of aging in Hollywood mixed with Jekyll & Hyde. The commentary is so on the nose that it should’ve been a completely silly goofball comedy. The director's vision of America is also very intentionally cartoon-ish. Why not just stay in that pocket for the whole movie? Unfortunately I’m pretty sure the director thinks she’s expressing some new revolutionary message when she isn’t. The packaging and presentation might be new-ish, but the basic tale is as old as time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the movie stars two veteran A-list actors (Demi Moore & Denis Quaid) with quite a bit of real life plastic surgery. This isn’t a judgement towards either of them. You do what you have to do to keep working. It’s just the surgery they’ve had done is very obvious to someone like myself that grew up watching them over the years. Demi Moore is certainly the star of the film and it’s told from a women’s perspective but it would be foolish to not mention Denis Quaid and his obvious plastic surgery.

So much of Demi Moore’s career has revolved around her looks and her age. I really couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the lead in this movie. That’s actually one of the most interesting things about The Substance - before the movie goes off the deep end, the close up shots of all the aging plastic surgery faces comes off just as visceral as the intense body horror elements in the second half.

No matter what criticisms I may have about this film, Coarlie Fargeat still swung for the fences and caught a nice piece of the ball. I have the upmost respect for that. No matter how important this movie thinks it is, it's definitely different from anything else out right now.

THE SHROUDS

I enjoyed this movie for the most part but I also know it’s very weak by Cronenberg standards. That’s a very contradictory thing to say but hear me out.  Is The Shrouds better than Maps To the Stars? Yeah. Should it be mentioned in the same breath as something like Dead Ringers? Absolutely not. I know this movie is pretty flawed, kind of uneven and takes forever to end. The performances & chemistry between the actors leaves a lot to be desired at times as well (I guess Viggo Mortensen was busy?). The basic premise, about a unique cutting edge way to grieve & obsess over deceased loved ones is certainly interesting but it’s hardly the most intriguing thing about the movie. It’s only been a day since I’ve watched this so my opinions are super fresh and could change over time but right now I feel like this is nothing more than a very interesting idea executed by someone that’s bored. The emphasis on things like A.I. & voyeurism felt 15 years too late (is David Cronenberg turning in to our slightly out of touch uncle posting out of date memes on Facebook??). The most common early criticism of The Shrouds is that it’s Cronenberg simply going through the motions and just “playing the hits”. I’ll be the first to admit that the director does borrow heavily from his previous films. At times The Shrouds plays out like Dead Ringers & eXistenZ with some new seasoning (even the sex scenes are right out of Crash). But after decades of countless filmmakers stealing & heavily borrowing from Cronenberg on the most surface level - I think he’s allowed to reference himself. At least he understands his work and his own style. I can’t say that about most filmmakers that namedrop the body horror icon as an influence (Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution is really the only semi-recent film worthy of a Cronenberg comparison).

Outside of the similarities to his other films, the movie is incredibly meta. Not only does Vincent Cassel play a former industrial filmmaker, but his character kind of looks like Cronenberg. There’s even a line in The Shrouds where someone says to Cassel/“Cronenberg”: you’ve made a career out of bodies. David Cronenberg is a complex & layered guy that shouldn’t be defined by one thing, but anyone familiar with him knows that “body horror” is his most common descriptor. It’s the safest thing to say about him and his work. This is clearly a personal film for him. Part of the story involves a mysterious entity stealing the main character’s data. Could part of The Shrouds be David Cronenberg throwing a shot at folks stealing his ideas for the last 50 years? 

Vincent Cassel as David Cronenberg

There’s two movies playing in theaters right now (Cuckoo & The Substance) that everyone is calling Cronenberg-esque when in reality they just come off as movies made by people that think David Cronenberg’s only claim to fame is gore. Look - I get it. I understand why things that are gross & visceral are compared to his work but most of the time they’re more Brian Yuzna/Stuart Gordon knock-offs than they are David Cronenberg knock-offs (It should be noted that he is a fan of recent stuff like Titane & The Substance which probably wouldn't exist without his work)…

Videodrome/ The Substance

The Fly / The Substance

Scanners / The Substance

Society / The Substance

From Beyond / The Substance

Personally, my favorite thing about this movie is the humor. The dry, awkward perfectly timed humor is The Shroud’s saving grace. David Cronenberg is no stranger to comedic moments even in his most dramatic films. But his latest felt like a full-on dark comedy.

And I don’t know how intentional this was (and I could be completely off in my assessment) but Cronenberg captured a lot of great modern architecture in the background without presenting it as something bad or evil. At this point I don’t think it can be denied that modern architecture gets a bad rap in film. Whenever anything is presented as bad or evil or cold, directors always make it a point to show a modern building under shitty lighting at unflattering angles. All modern architecture isn’t bad but you wouldn’t know that watching most modern movies. I don’t know about you all but I’d love to live in Vincent Cassel’s home in the film over some dusty Brooklyn brownstone. But that’s just me (an architecture graduate with 20 years of design experience).  

This sounds shitty but if you go in to The Shrouds with low expectations you’ll probably end up enjoying it. Just don’t expect vintage Cronenberg.

A FEW MORE WORDS ON EARWIG (2022)

Hotel Monterey / Earwig

After repeated viewings over the last year I can say that Earwig has grown on me quite a bit. To be clear – I always liked the film but I didn’t consider it a "masterpiece" or anything like that. The bar was already set at “good” or “solid”. Just not great I guess. A lot of that has to do with its predecessor Evolution (2015). That film made such a huge instant impact on me that I put unfair expectations on the follow-up. But Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s latest is the definition of a rewarding slow burn, right down to some of it's slow burn influences (not every Earwig reference point is slow but she's always made it clear that Chantal’s slower paced films were an influence).

I don’t want to repeat myself too much (click here to read my initial thoughts). I Just wanted to share some additional influences I never posted in my original review and let folks know that what I once considered a “solid” film I now consider to be a great one…

One was JEANNE DIELMAN (1975), the Chantal Akerman film, because of all these ordinary actions that Delphine Seyrig carries out in the film and that our protagonist, Albert, also carries out - Lucile Hadžihalilović, BFI

Jeanne Dielman... / Earwig

Jeanne Dielman... / Earwig

Jeanne Dielman... / Earwig

Jeanne Dielman... / Earwig

Jeanne Dielman... / Earwig

A few more (non-Jeanne Dielman) Akerman-esque moments from Earwig...

Hotel Monterey / Earwig

Hotel Monterey / Earwig

Hotel Monterey / Earwig

The other one was The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966) by Koji Wakamatsu. It’s a Japanese film from the 60s about a man who kidnaps a woman and keeps her in an empty apartment with no furniture - Lucile Hadžihalilović, BFI

The Embryo Hunts In Secret / Earwig

The Embryo Hunts In Secret / Earwig

I was influenced by Cronenberg - David Cronenberg, film comment

Dead Ringers / Earwig

Dead Ringers / Earwig

The Fly / Earwig

Another nod to Don't Look Now?

Don't Look Now / Earwig

UNCLE JOHN

 This was originally published for cutprintfilm.com back in March of 2015. But since the site/publication has apparently vanished - I'm posting it here with a few updates and to honor the career of the last John Ashton. Enjoy...

Uncle John doesn’t waste any time getting started. Less than three minutes in we’re thrown in to the aftermath/cover-up of a murder, and, in my opinion, it works thanks to the eerie score. Before we go any further I have to say that the minimalist droning score, courtesy of composers Adam Robl & Shawn Sutta, is both inspiring and a key element to this film. Not to overshadow or take anything away from the performances but without the music I personally feel Uncle John would be an entirely different film (not necessarily a worse off film, but certainly not as intriguing). And what’s even more of a success with Uncle John is that director Steven Piet knows when to use music and when not to use any music. Film scores are important but they can sometimes be a distraction depending on how they’re used. Piet understands the genre he’s working within. Uncle John is a noir/murder-mystery so it requires a bit of silence from time to time in order to build tension and set the right ambiance.

After the mild anxiety-inducing opening sequence where we see our protagonist, “John” (John Ashton), trying to get rid of the nameless body, the film’s tone drastically shifts out of nowhere and we follow a young graphic designer (“Ben”) in a seemingly separate/unrelated story centered around him and his co-worker/love interest “Kate”. Naturally the two stories connect in the final act (as do the reasons for the murder at the very beginning) but for the most part it’s like we’re watching two completely different movies for the first two thirds of the movie (we eventually come to learn there’s a strong family connection that binds the two stories together).

Uncle John is bound to be compared to something like Blue Ruin (both films are “young-spirited” indie noirs that take place in small towns) but in my opinion it falls somewhere in between Clay Pigeons (without the humor), Shotgun Stories, Blood Simple, Night Moves (2014) and a (good) mumblecore film like Cold Water (in terms of style & cinematography, Uncle John also shares some of the same DNA as Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner – another solid straightforward American indie that floated under the radar). But all comparisons & similarities aside, this is very much its own movie. It’s easy to take a directorial debut and compare it to a million other titles but Steven Piet crafted a solid debut. Uncle John’s strongest quality is that the story is simple yet, as I stated earlier, it pulls you in. Piet doesn’t rely too much on “cool” Tarantino-esque time shifting or forced “innovative” camera work. Piet seems to have a somewhat of an old soul as he’s drawn to simplicity & minimalism instead of “bells & whistles” (I don’t mean to discredit today’s young filmmakers but it is pretty rare to find a film like this from someone Piet’s age). With Uncle John we get a lot of hints & implications rather than things spelled out for us which is something I appreciate.

On an existential level, watching John Ashton give it his all in the lead (title) role felt like he was intentionally trying to shed the stigma of his Beverly Hills Cop notoriety. There’s certainly nothing wrong with being remembered as one of the key supporting characters in a successful Hollywood franchise but Ashton is a seasoned actor with decades of experience. I always felt his presence in films like Midnight Run & Gone Baby Gone were overlooked & underrated). Even though Uncle John won’t get the same audience as a studio feature, this is still a career-defining role for Ashton.

REBEL RIDGE

This was better than I expected it to be! When I saw the trailer a few weeks ago I was completely turned off. It looked like raceplay fanfiction. That is absolutely not my thing. I’ll never be a fan of directors using Black people to push some cringey nonsense. I’m also just not a big fan of Jeremy Sauliner’s films. Green Room was fine for what it was but I haven’t revisited it. Blue Ruin was “ok” but I never understood the hype/push behind it. I thought Hold The Dark was very bad. The ingredients were there for a potentially good movie but when everything was put together it was just a big nothing-burger. So it took a lot for me to watch Rebel Ridge. Yes - I absolutely prejudged this movie. That’s on me. But can you really blame me? It seems like now more than ever when a Black lead is cast in a film it’s done for some type of disingenuous political statement. Casting Black people in films simply to annoy people that already don’t like them is so empty & childish to me. I know this sounds like a broken record on this blog but I don’t like movies that look like they were made for cringey political twitter discourse: A lone stoic Black marine taking down a corrupt small town police system. At the end of the day that is essentially what Rebel Ridge is about, but Jeremy Saulnier managed to make it enjoyable & entertaining. Had this been in another young/young-ish director’s hands this would’ve been more of an insufferable political statement and less of a movie. This felt like a Craig Zahler movie made for people that don’t have the same political & social views as him (I do find his movies interesting but at the same if they didn’t exist it wouldn’t make any difference in my life). Rebel Ridge is so S. Craig Zahler-esque (on a surface level) that Jeremy Saulnier even casted one of Zahler’s regular actors (Don Johnson) in a very Zahler/modern-day Don Johnson-type role (evil redneck sheriff with an angry southern drawl).

Obviously, any & all comparisons to First Blood are fair (Rebel Ridge also comes from the same school as the Reacher series where the lone badass details every way he’s going to hurt every one around him before actually doing it, but it’s more First Blood than any thing else).

First Blood was in my lookbook – Jeremy Saulnier, GQ Magazine

First Blood / Rebel Ridge

The Billy Jack series is another major visual inspiration...

My production designer said, "Oh, this is like Billy Jack," and then I watched it. I was like, "Oh, fuck yeah." - Jeremy Saulnier, GQ Magazine

Billy Jack / Rebel Ridge

The Born Losers / Rebel Ridge

But the First Blood comparisons are deeper than surface visual similarities. *SPOILER ALERT* Like First Blood, Rebel Ridge has plenty of blood shed (I guess) but very little actual deaths. If I’m not mistaken, the only deaths in Rebel Ridge are either offscreen or non violent. This is where the Zahler comparisons stop. Had this been an S. Craig Zahler movie – the murders would have more than likely been very graphic (racial tension does obviously loom over the film but there isn’t any racist name-calling or anything like that). I imagine Saulnier & Netflix didn’t want to present a film where a large Black man is murdering white police officers. But there’s still a decent amount of violence in the movie with an emphasis on close hand-to-hand combat (strangely enough, this is one of his most non-violent films when compared to Green Room or Hold The Dark). There’s always a close-up or an emphasis on our lead character whenever he disarms someone and makes a point to empty the bullets out of whatever gun he gets a hold of...

The trailer (and the opening scene) might mislead some folks that are expecting nonstop action from start to finish. There isn’t. This movie plays off of tension more than anything else. The big action doesn’t even really take place until the very end. This might not be for everyone and I do think Saulnier played it safe in the end by redeeming one of the corrupt police officers and sort of kind of redeeming another one (making the lead character former military also makes it easier to digest the violence towards police instead of him just being some guy off the street). But at the end of the day I had very low expectations about this one and ended up being pleasantly surprised.