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Movie Review: We Need To Do Something (2022) Director: Sean King O' Grady

 Remember the pandemic? This movie sure does, capturing the slow descent into insanity caused by being forced into a small room with family, and no exit. It's a pretty low-budget affair, consisting of one main set. Not a lot of gore here (what we do see is fairly minimal, but terrifying when it happens) but plenty of psychological torture.

The film opens with a family taking shelter in their bathroom during a vicious storm. Bobby, the know-it-all little brother remarks that this storm might contain tornados. His parents ignore this. Bobby, of course, is right, and the twister hits their house, killing the power and throwing an uprooted tree into their house, blocking the bathroom door, their only means of escape.

As they attempt to figure out how to exit the bathroom (dad stupidly lost the only working phone), the father, a chronic alcoholic, begins to mentally break from lack of booze. Mellissa, the pink-haired goth daughter, worries that her weird witch goth girlfriend cast a spell that backfired, and ended up cursing her family. Guess what? She's right!

Days pass and all attempts to leave have failed, until they hear voices that sound like they are in the house. The family shouts for rescue but before this happens they hear horrific noises and the sound of gunfire, then silence. Then things get even worse....

This movie works on the Blair Witch theory of horror, which is that it's better to never actually show the monster and to leave all the details of its existence vague, to make it scarier. If you like that style, you will dig this. Plus, how can you not like a movie that features Ozzy Osbourne (well, his voice anyway) as a mad dog? Leave the lights on when you watch this one. Out of 10: 7.8

Movie Review: Titane (2021) Director: Julia Ducournau

 It's rare that you find a movie that seems to actively despise you, the viewer. Some examples are the Human Centipede series, Gummo, A Serbian Film, etc. Now I can add another film to that list, the intensely original and utterly baffling Titane.

The movie opens with Alexia, a young girl riding in the back of a car with her father driving. She is completely annoying from the outset,and causes an accident resulting in a titanium plate being surgically implanted in her head, causing her to have an erotic fixation with automobiles.

Next we see her (ahem) having sex with (yes, with, not in) a Cadillac and becoming pregnant. This irritates her, so she starts murdering random people including her lover and parents. Then what seems to be developing as a crime thriller shifts gears and becomes an insane love story. 

Purposely changing her appearance by cutting her hair, binding her breasts and breaking her own nose, Alexia meets a fire captain mourning the loss of his son, who seems to think she is his son, or the reincarnation of his son, or something....it's confusing.

Then we get some dance sequences in the fire station that are straight out of that Simpsons episode ("Dad, why did you take me to a gay steel mill?") until ultimately our heroine gives birth to the monster car-baby thing, shattering her plate in the process and killing her. Movie over. The fire captain is happy, but the audience shakes its collective head in bewilderment.

It's audacious to present to an audience a movie without a single likeable character, but it's hard to care about what happens to anyone in this movie since everyone is loathsome to the max. The gore is less than you might think: after the murder sequences we just see Alexia oozing black fluid from various orifices (I guess that's supposed to be motor oil?)

There's a kind of hypnotic power to the random images we see in here, particularly in the first half. And I admire that I had no idea where this was headed. Ultimately though it heads nowhere, despite its efforts to the contrary. Worth a watch with lowered expectations. Out of 10: 6.7

 Poem for TH

Two months on from your wake,

and I see you more than I did when you were alive.

I see you in the dimly lit morning fog

and sense you in the grocery line,

Standing in the back shadows, smoking, grinning

and looking at the faceless crowd.

I felt guilty that I couldn't save you, couldn't stop

you from tumbling into the darkness,

Though nothing I could express would have helped,

or made you be a friend to yourself.

All I can do now is keep waiting until my time

expires, and we can meet again,

In the back of some spectral cafe you sit, patiently

smoking and waiting for your friends to arrive,

one by one.

Return of The Crafty Bear

 Hello you wonderful readers! Welcome to my brand-new blog. I had one a decade ago called I Don't Think I'm Ever Gonna Figure It Out (after the Elliott Smith song) but this is all-new stuff here. Look forward to fiction, short stories, poems, record and movie reviews, political comment- any and everything  I feel like writing about. I'm still in the early stages here, but soon this will be your new favorite site! Maybe!