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Posted Film Reviews

Summerland

“Trust yourself. You’ll find your connection.”

Three teenagers hop into their RV and set out on the road headed to Summerland, a Coachella-like concert in the desert. What starts as a typical road trip quickly gets sidetracked as each of the friends finds themselves at a crossroads in their lives. Bray (Chris Ball) is coming to terms with his sexuality. He’s made a connection with Shawn (Dylan Playfair) online and the two plan to meet up at Summerland. Problem is, Shawn thinks Bray is a girl. Bray has been masquerading as Veronica using pictures of Stacey (Maddie Phillips), his friend Oliver’s (Rory J. Saper) girlfriend. When Oliver and Stacey agree to join Bray on the trip to Summerland, Bray thinks he has the perfect set-up to meet Shawn. However, Oliver and Stacey bring their own baggage. Stacey wants a deeper connection with Oliver who seems emotionally distant. Little does she know that Oliver is harboring a big secret.

Directed by Lankyboy (a pseudonym for the directing team Kurtis David Harder and Noah Kentis), Summerland is a hormone-fueled coming-of-age story with all the hallmarks of your typical road trip comedy but with an added layer of meaning. The first act is shallow and self-indulgent but as the film enters its second act we see the characters, especially Bray, start to explore what it means to be true to oneself. There are times when the viewer must suspend their disbelief as there are plenty of chance encounters that don’t seem at all realistic. However they work for the film and situations more grounded in realism would have been more tiresome. The female lead played by Maddie Phillips is being manipulated throughout both by her friend Bray and her boyfriend Oliver. I love how she finds her agency and takes charge of her journey. It’s an empowering moment in an otherwise male-driven story.

More than just your run-of-the-mill road trip movie, Summerland offers a youthful exploration of meaningful connections and self discovery.

Summerland is available to stream on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play and Vudu.

Posted Film Reviews

Spiral

Review by Ally Russell

When same-sex couple Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) and Aaron (Ari Cohen) move to a small suburban town with their 16-year-old daughter Kayla (Jennifer Laporte), they hope the new home will give them a chance to relax and resolve some underlying family drama. However, their dreams of a quiet life spiral downward as the family is plunged into a toxic and paranoia-inducing environment that is rife with homophobia and the occult.

We follow the story through Malik’s eyes—a character with whom we immediately empathize as flashbacks reveal that he was the victim of a hate crime. This crime has left Malik vulnerable and on a daily diet of medication, but it doesn’t define him. He is also the peacekeeper in his home, and instead of the tired evil step-parent trope, we’re treated to a warm stepfather-stepdaughter relationship between Malik and Kayla, whom he affectionately calls Booger. However, as the short winter days turn to long nights in a cold and unfamiliar landscape, Malik’s sanity is compromised and his sense of time warped.

Whenever a film presents sinister neighbors as villains, I immediately think of Rosemary’s Baby—a film that expertly explores the theme of living and being at home amongst people who make you uncomfortable. Spiral (directed by Kurtis David Harder) may not dissect the subject of strange neighbors with as much precision, but the same way that Rosemary’s Baby made viewers want to abandon urban apartment buildings, Spiral will make viewers question the safety of the suburbs.

For viewers looking for that Get Out (2017) ambiance, Spiral mostly delivers on that mood. In addition to the microaggressions that Black characters are often forced to silently endure, Malik has the added weight of tackling homophobia in his new community and in his home. This Get Out atmosphere is most prominently felt when we are confronted with Malik’s work as a ghost writer—a job that requires him to listen to a doctor espouse hateful views about gay conversion therapy and the importance of the “traditional family unit” via grainy VHS tapes. While these scenes effectively convey homophobia as a driver for the horror elements in the film, I do wonder if the LGBTQIAA community is exhausted with watching this kind of trauma unfold on screen.

The film is compelling and creepy, but it’s not perfect. Additional details about the significance of the occult symbols and ritual practices would have yielded a more complete story and left me with fewer questions. However, the film does an excellent job of adeptly highlighting one unequivocal fact: humans will always find something to fear.

Spiral is a dark and brooding horror film that requires multiple viewings to fully appreciate some of its more subtle storytelling, but with each watch, viewers will unearth information that they may not have noticed before.

Spiral is available on Shudder.

AllyRussellAbout the writer: Ally Russell has a ghastly passion for horror writing. She has created podcasts episodes and written content for the Horror Writers Association’s Young Adult & Middle Grade blog, Scary Out There, and has written for Night Worms and reviewed horror films for Out of the Past and QuelleMovies.com. She also hosts the FlashFrights podcast, which can be found on Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. Ally holds an MFA in writing for children from Simmons University. When her childhood dreams of becoming a full-time witch didn’t work out, she settled for a career in publishing. She lives in Boston but hails from Pittsburgh—ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. She can be found on Instagram at @OneDarkAlly.

Raquel’s thoughts: Get Out meets Rosemary’s Baby, Spiral demonstrates the horrors of othering in a way that is both modern and classic.

Posted Documentaries

The Way I See It

“I look at myself as a historian with a camera.”

Pete Souza

Director Dawn Porter (John Lewis: Good Trouble) delivers again with another political documentary wrought with emotion. Inspired by the best-selling book, The Way I See It tells the story of Pete Souza, former photographer for the Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama administrations.

On that fateful day in January 2017 when Donald Trump was sworn in as president and Obama left the White House, Souza sensed  that the country had lost something substantial. Having spent four years photographing Obama in moments both historic and intimate, Souza thought he was ready to retire. But he just couldn’t keep quiet as he saw the rapidly changing political climate. He started an Instagram account to share some of his photos and it quickly turned into his form of resistance.

In an age when we are exposed to a constant stream of video content, we forget how powerful a still photograph can be. Souza’s photographs capture a mood, an emotion and offer insight and context. Fleeting moments frozen in time. With his Instagram, Souza delivers biting political commentary with posts that are perfectly timed to respond to whatever is happening in the news. He uses the past throw shade at the present.

The Way I See It may be the most important documentary you’ll see this year. It is heartbreaking and emotional in its nostalgia of an era that is quickly slipping away from our collective memory. Porter offers us not only a biography of a photographer but also of his most captivating subject: Barack Obama. While there is also attention paid to Souza’s work in the Reagan administration, this film is more pointedly political and will appeal more to viewers with liberal points of view rather than conservative ones. Souza’s story will awaken your empathy, no matter how dormant, and will empower you to get out and VOTE.

The Way I See It is available in select cinemas. Visit the Focus Features website for more information.

Posted 3 Comments on The Con Documentaries

The Con

Inspired by producer Patrick Lovell’s own personal experience with fraudulent mortgage lenders, The Con is a five-part docuseries that explores the intricacies of the 2008 financial crisis and how greed led the powers at be to steal from the poor to give to the rich. The financial crisis, the stock market crash and the subsequent days of the Great Recession didn’t just materialize out of thin air. It was the direct result of a banking and mortgage industry that was rife with corruption and allowed to spiral out of control. Predatory lending practices, deregulation, criminal bankers and banks that became too big to fail caused catastrophic economic damage. And it was the average Americans who bore the brunt of it. Homes foreclosed all over the country and some Americans, who were misled the financial institutions they trusted, were left in dire straits. 

Directed and written by Eric S. Vaughan, The Con unpacks all of these details and examines the integrated system of fraud and all of the key figures who made this happen. This docuseries is frighteningly revelatory and offers viewers a warning of the future: this can and will happen again if we don’t recognize that greed is in fact bad.

The docuseries interviews whistleblowers, journalists and financial experts to get at the truth of what really happen. I don’t pretend to understand all of the particulars, and you don’t need to in order to grasp the concepts. The Con offers case studies of real people who were adversely affected by these predatory practices. 

Visit the official website for more information and to watch the first episode.

Posted Film Festivals

Fantasia Festival: The Block Island Sound

Birds are falling from the sky. Fish are floating dead in the water. Electronic devices suddenly stop working. And local fisherman Tom (Neville Archambault)  is having regular blackouts. What is this mysterious force that is causing chaos on Block Island?

Tom’s son Harry (Chris Sheffield) and daughter Audry (Michaela McManus) try to help their dad whose drinking and hallucinations are getting increasingly out of control. Harry’s friend Dale (Jim Cummings) thinks it’s all a government conspiracy and everyone else just thinks Tom has a drinking problem. As Audry begins to investigate, Harry is slowly being taken over by this force and the ghost of his dad guides him further into danger.

Written, co-produced and directed by Kevin and Matthew McManus , The Block Island Sound is a seaside thriller that offers viewers plenty of mystery and a satisfyingly slow build. I wasn’t sure where the story was taking me but I was definitely along for the ride. This film reminded me a little of the seaside horror genre film The Beach House which I reviewed recently but I found The Block Island Sound even more riveting. I appreciate that the film doesn’t offer any answers but does question the role of electronic devices in our lives and how they affect not only our minds but our bodies.

The Block Island Sound premiered at the virtual 2020 Fantasia Film Festival.

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