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I’ve been pretty excited for Until Dawn, but not for the reasons you might think. As I said in my review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, I’m not much of a gamer anymore, so I’ve never played any of the Until Dawn video games. I am, however, very familiar with the man who directed this film, and I love his work. He made the surprise 2016 horror gem Lights Out, he revitalized the Annabelle franchise with Annabelle: Creation, and he even dipped his toes into the superhero world with the two Shazam! movies. He’s one of the best genre filmmakers working today, so I couldn’t wait to see his latest project even though I had zero experience with the source material.
Until Dawn was directed by David F. Sandberg, and it stars Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A'zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, and Peter Stormare. In the film, a woman named Melanie went missing a year ago, and now, Melanie’s sister Clover and four of her friends–Nina, Max, Megan, and Abe–retrace her final steps looking for answers. The group ultimately find what they were looking for, but the truth comes at a steep price. They end up in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop where they come under attack by a different bloodthirsty monster every time, and if they can just survive until dawn (hence the name!), their nightmare will finally be over. As you can probably guess from that plot synopsis, Until Dawn doesn’t fit neatly into any one horror subgenre. Rather, each new iteration of this night brings a whole new brand of terror, so David F. Sandberg gets to try his hand at a few different types of scares. He gives us a lot of the typical cliches we associate with these various subgenres, but to the surprise of no one, he executes them so well you won’t mind the lack of originality. As usual, he excels at crafting creepy visuals, effective jump scares, and edge-of-your-seat suspense, so if you’re a big horror fan like me, you’ll get a real kick out of this whirlwind tour of the genre. The unpredictability of each new night also keeps us on our toes as we eagerly await the next deadly threat, so I can’t reveal the specific dangers our main characters have to face. It would spoil some of the fun, but I can tell you that they’re not always the typical horror villains you’re probably expecting. Sure, we get a few tried-and-true genre staples, but there are also a couple of surprises you won’t see coming. It’s a pretty nice cornucopia of terror for most of the film’s runtime, but at a certain point, it feels like the script just runs out of steam. See, while each new version of the night brings its own unique horrors, there’s also a lot of carryover. Monsters can pop up again numerous times, and by the end, Until Dawn starts to get repetitive. We begin seeing the same monsters around every corner, and that’s a real bummer because the creativity of the scares is the only thing this movie has going for it. The characters are decent at best, and the plot is little more than an excuse to showcase all these different horror subgenres. To be fair, there was quite a bit of potential here for genuine depth. Anybody who’s ever spent a lot of time with the same group of people knows that even the best of friends can eventually start to annoy one another, so it would be fascinating to see that dynamic play out in a horrific scenario like this one. There are so many rich possibilities inherent in this story, but unfortunately, Until Dawn almost completely ignores them. Instead, the film is content to feed us feel-good platitudes about refusing to escape the ordeal unless the entire group makes it out alive, and while I appreciate the pro-human-life sentiment, that kind of surface-level moralizing is no substitute for engaging storytelling. It’s a huge thematic disappointment, and at the end of the day, that’s the big problem with Until Dawn. There’s simply not much going on here beyond the fun horror, so once that began to get stale, the movie started to lose me. Don’t get me wrong, I never checked out entirely, so I don’t think this is a bad movie. It’s just not particularly good either. It’s fun to watch once, but when the credits begin to roll and you walk out of the theater, you’ll be ready to move on with your life and never think about this film again.
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Why do we love fantasy? I’m sure there are a million ways you can answer that question, but if you ask me, it’s because we were made for more than this world. As our faith tells us, we were made to desire things our earthly existence can never provide, and fantasy taps into that innate yearning for more. In that sense, the genre is almost like a tiny foretaste of heaven, so naturally, I was pretty excited for the new fantasy movie The Legend of Ochi. I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance, and I couldn’t wait to be transported to this new world and see what magical thrills it had in store.
The Legend of Ochi was written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, and it stars Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, and Willem Dafoe. In the film, Yuri is a girl who lives on a small, somewhat isolated island in the Black Sea, and on this island, there’s a species of furry, almost baboon-like animals called ochi. Yuri has been taught to hate these creatures for as long as she can remember, but she learns the truth about them when she comes across an injured baby ochi that’s been separated from its family. The girl takes the animal back home and patches it up a bit, and after she wins its trust, she heads into the wilderness to bring her new friend back to its own kind. The next morning, Yuri’s father finds her bedroom empty and realizes she’s gone, but he doesn’t know why. He thinks his daughter has been kidnapped, so he and the kids who hunt ochi with him drive out to the woods to find her. If you’re a big movie fan, that plot synopsis probably sounds a bit familiar. It’s a time-honored storytelling template we’ve seen numerous times before, most famously in the sci-fi classic E.T., and The Legend of Ochi doesn’t add anything terribly new to that basic blueprint. Sure, it has a few small details you might not see coming, but for the most part, the plot is exactly what you’d expect from a film like this. The Legend of Ochi tries to draw you in with the way it tells its familiar story, but unfortunately, it doesn't succeed. To be fair, this movie isn't all bad. The ochi themselves are always fun to watch, as they’re brought to life brilliantly by a blend of puppetry, animatronics, and actors in suits. Anybody with an appreciation for practical effects is going to enjoy every second of these creatures’ screentime, and when you see the baby ochi at the heart of this story, you’re going to love it even more. It’s not quite as cute as, say, Gizmo from Gremlins or Baby Yoda, but it’s pretty adorable in its own right. The beautiful world these animals inhabit and the camerawork that captures that world are also delightful, but visuals and inhuman creatures can only get you so far. The Legend of Ochi also needs to impress with its human characters, and that’s where the movie falls short. Let’s start with the lead. Helena Zengel plays Yuri, and the girl does a decent job with her facial expressions. But when she opens her mouth, her dialogue sounds stilted and unnatural. It took me out of the film almost every time I heard her speak, so I had a very hard time buying into her character. In contrast, the supporting performances in The Legend of Ochi are fine, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired. To take just one example, consider Finn Wolfhard’s character. He’s a teenager named Petro, and to call him one-dimensional is generous. The kid mostly just follows Yuri from a distance without actually doing anything until the final few minutes of the movie, so you get the impression that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor. You can’t help but feel like there should be more to this guy than simply being Yuri’s silent shadow, and that suspicion makes his lack of depth even more bothersome. I’m not going to bore you with the details of why everybody else in this film is similarly flat and uninteresting, but I will tell you that even when some of them experience a change of heart at the end, their development is completely unearned. It’s like they flip a switch and they’re suddenly completely different, and for me, that was the rotten cherry on top of this horrible sundae of a movie. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about any of these characters or their journeys, and that ruined the entire experience. Sure, The Legend of Ochi looks beautiful, but no amount of visual spectacle can make up for a lack of humanity. This film is a textbook example of all style and no substance, so unless you just have to see it for yourself, I suggest giving it a pass. For a lot of horror fans, seeing a great non-horror filmmaker take a stab at our favorite genre would be a dream come true. We want someone like Martin Scorcese or Christopher Nolan to make something genuinely horrific, and with Sinners, that dream has finally become a reality. This movie was made by Ryan Coogler, the guy behind Creed and Black Panther, so naturally, there’s been a ton of excitement for it. Sure, Coogler isn’t Nolan or Scorcese, but he’s a truly great filmmaker in his own right, and along with a lot of other horror fans, I couldn’t wait to see what he would do in the horror sandbox.
Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, and Delroy Lindo. The film is set in the 1930s Jim Crow South, and it follows two twins, Smoke and Stack, who’ve just returned to their hometown. The brothers buy an old building and start a blues club, but when opening night comes, they get a lot more than they bargained for. As the sun goes down, the club comes under attack by a group of vampires, and the twins and their friends have to do everything they can to survive until dawn. If you’re a hardcore horror aficionado, that plot synopsis might sound a bit familiar. It’s very reminiscent of the 1996 cult classic vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn, and much like that movie, Sinners also divides pretty evenly into two halves. For about the first half of its runtime, this film plays almost entirely like a drama, with only a couple of brief hints of the horrors to come. It’s basically just Smoke and Stack getting everything ready for their big night, and despite the lack of scares, this part of the story is riveting. For starters, writer/director Ryan Coogler does an amazing job of recreating the movie’s nearly century-old setting. Granted, I’m neither from the South nor 100 years old, but to my admittedly amateur eyes, it looked pitch-perfect. Everything from the clothes to the cars to the dialogue and accents just screams old-timey southern Black culture, and if that doesn’t transport you to this bygone era, the score is sure to do the trick. It’s all blues music, and even though that’s not my preferred genre, I still found myself tapping my toes to these soulful melodies. That unique combination of sights and sounds brings the 1930s Jim Crow South to life in a way few (if any!) horror films ever have, so the first half of Sinners is an immersive experience that’ll grab you right from the get-go. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a great filmmaker like Ryan Coogler, but it’s not the only thing this movie gets right. The cast is also top-notch, so I could probably write a whole review just praising all the excellent performances. But of course, there’s more to a film than just acting, so I’ll limit myself to the two standouts. First, I have to talk about Michael B. Jordan. He plays both of the twins, and he’s just as good as you’d expect. He trades in his typical acting style for a more Southern gangster vibe, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think this guy really was from the South (I looked it up, and he’s not). He’s that good, and to the surprise of no one, Jordan doesn’t lose an ounce of his signature charm. It’s just a great performance all around, so pretty much every time one (or both!) of his characters was on screen, I was a happy man. On the complete opposite end of the starpower spectrum, we have Miles Caton. Sinners is Caton’s feature debut, and despite acting alongside big names like Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, this guy just might steal the show. He impresses with his voice and guitar skills as well as his believable and likable performance, so I can’t wait to see where his career goes from here. All of those great elements carry Sinners for the first half of its runtime, and at around the midway point or so, the movie switches gears. Granted, the change is nowhere near as abrupt and dramatic as From Dusk Till Dawn, but it goes from leaning heavily towards straight-up drama to going all-in on the horror. And as I’m sure you can guess, that horror is fantastic. These aren’t the cool, sexy bloodsuckers we’ve gotten used to over the past two or three decades, and when the sun shines on them, they definitely don’t sparkle. They’re much closer to 30 Days of Night than Twilight, so if you like your vampires to be indisputably evil and soaked in blood, you’re not going to be disappointed. That being said, I do have to give one caveat. Like a lot of contemporary vampire fare, Sinners isn’t exactly scary. Sure, this film has a couple of genuinely hair-raising moments, but for the most part, it favors action, creepy visuals, and gore over outright frights. It’s a pretty good mix in my opinion, so if you’re a horror fan, I think you’re going to enjoy the cornucopia of terror Ryan Coogler has conjured up. Next, I want to say a few words about the themes of this film. Most obviously, Sinners deals with racism, but not in the way you might expect. See, the story doesn’t outright tell us that racism is wrong. Rather, it simply assumes racism is wrong, so you never feel like the movie is beating you over the head with a message everybody already agrees with. The way I see it, the real message of this film is about music. There’s a line that says certain people’s music can “conjure spirits from the past and the future” (it’s also in one of the trailers), and Sinners hammers that point home in some amazing ways. Most obviously, there are a couple of scenes that explicitly show music bringing together people of different cultures, places, and even times, and on a meta level, the movie as a whole does that as well. I already told you how great the score is, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the characters in Sinners are musicians, and when they show off their skills, you’d be hard-pressed not to get a big smile on your face. Sometimes it’s blues, and other times it’s traditional European tunes, but whatever the genre, the music these people play is truly beautiful. It’s sure to please the vast majority of people who see this film, regardless of their culture or age, so like I said, Sinners as a whole embodies its message about the power of music. On top of that, these two main themes of music and racism also intersect in a great way. The connection is very subtle throughout most of the movie, so if you leave when the credits begin to roll, you might not catch it. It only comes to the fore during the mid-credits stinger, so if you do give this film a watch, I highly recommend that you stay for that bonus scene. Granted, it doesn’t add much to the story, but on a thematic level, it enhances the experience quite a bit. Last but not least, I have to mention a few issues I had with Sinners. To begin, there are a couple of brief sex scenes that don’t serve much purpose. To be fair, they’re not terribly explicit, and they never last very long, so they don’t take too much away from the movie. But their gratuitous nature is a real bummer, so they did chip away at my enjoyment a tiny bit. More egregiously, the film’s treatment of Christianity is very typical of modern Hollywood. It never explicitly disparages the faith as a whole, but the few times it does mention Christianity, the connotations are largely negative. In particular, the only clearly committed Christian in this story is a pastor who thinks blues music is evil, and there’s at least one scene that highlights the way Christianity has at times been forced on unwilling converts. Admittedly, there are people who abuse and twist the faith in those (and similar) ways, so I don’t have an issue with those particular criticisms per se. The problem is the lack of balance. More to the point, it's the pervasive lack of balance in American cinema. It seems like Hollywood movies today intentionally highlight the bad in Christians while completely ignoring the good, and Sinners continues that frustrating trend. Thankfully though, those two problems aren’t nearly enough to ruin the entire film. On the whole, the good in Sinners far outweighs the bad, so this is hands down one of the best movies of the year so far. I don’t think it quite reaches the top spot on my list (that honor probably still belongs to There’s Still Tomorrow), but it’s at least number two. I could even see it becoming a genre classic in the not-too-distant future, so if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I highly recommend giving it a watch. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. Archives
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