Movies
SXSW ’10: Complete Review Round-Up!
Over the past few weeks we’ve been keeping you updated on all of the films that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. You’ve seen tons of images, trailers, stills and enjoyed quite a few interviews. In the end it all comes down to the quality of films, which is why reviews are the most important aspect of any festival. Below you’ll find the full round-up with reviews for Suck, Loved Ones, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Wake, Amer, A Serbian Film, Red White & Blue, American Grindhouse, Outcast and Jimmy Tupper VS. The Goatman of Bowie. Click here for all of our SXSW coverage.
Click any title for the full review:
Jimmy Tupper VS. The Goatman of Bowie, “I’d venture to guess by the production quality that this was a feature film shot for well under the catering expenses on even a super-low budget film. For that I commend the filmmakers for fighting to get their vision across. I wanted to like Jimmy Tupper vs. The Goatman of Bowie but in the end it just left me wanting a better made film with a better told story.”
Outcast, “Perhaps not completely successful, Outcast is still an interesting experiment in bending a genre story to suite the needs of the characters at the center of it.”
American Grindhouse, “American Grindhouse is less exploration and more academic introduction to the history of this subsection of cinematic culture. Think of it as Exploitation 101.”
Red White & Blue, “Red, White & Blue is duplicitous in its design. By placing its horrors against a wide blue yonder of the infinite Texas sky Rumley purposed the bright sun shiny day as the ultimate juxtaposition to the grim realities of his characters fate. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling from a filmmaker on the rise.”
A Serbian Film, “Hyperbole that I couldn’t even argue as I sat in stunned silence with 250 other people as the credits closed.”
Amer, “In many ways it’s more arthouse than an actual horrorfilm, but whatever Amer goes for in a standalone sequence, more often than not it hits with impressive accuracy.”
Wake, “At moments Wake is stylish, creepy and downright bizarre (don’t miss the wonderful sequence in the 24/7 diner). Even though Wake falls short at the end, Feehan still puts on display his ability to craft a well-rounded film and will be on my radar from here on out.”
Tucker & Dale vs Evil, “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is s seriously one-note flick, but into that single solitary comedy of errors-set up is delivered every possible fulfilled promise. There are boatloads of bloodshed, but it’s almost all punctuated with a slapstick smack of silliness. The stunts that you can see coming are still hilarious and the ones you don’t anticipate detonate like a smart bomb against your funny bone.”
Suck, “ In the end, Suck just can’t completely overcome tone problems and it can’t seem to manage to bring the funny exactly where and when it needs to. The music is fine, the band is somewhat likeable and the journey is peppered with a few moments of hope But in the end, the parts that work pale in comparison to the ones that don’t. This one is late night cable fare at best. ”
The Loved Ones, “For all it’s derivation and homage, The Loved Ones still feels like a wholly original film. A sick and twisted fairy tale inhabited by real flesh and blood people. The film works on several levels, but the key success is in the filmmakers ability to make these people much more true to life than the usual meat puppets that play on the horror film stage.“
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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