Movies: Leave the World Behind

I can’t remember the last time I reacted this negatively to a film’s ending. The premise: A vacationing family led by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke find themselves in an unraveling world — a ship barrels ashore while they are luxuriating on a beach; then cell phones and internet quit working (the ultimate horror). It goes further downhill from there in a what’s-going-on puzzle that continually teases the viewer with vague clues such as mysterious animal behavior. Meanwhile, another couple arrives to add cultural and political tension to the mix (groans). 

The movie strongly reminded me of M. Night Shyamalan’s notorious The Happening (with less wind) and, to a lesser extent, Stephen King’s novel Cell. At its best, Leave the World Behind weaves several tense threads together in thrilling fashion and achieves a compounding sense of dread, but the film then simply ends as things appear on the verge of greater calamity without providing any resolution apart from the daughter's quest to see the final episode of Friends. I know that sometimes a filmmaker wants us to be left with a puzzle to ponder, but it just doesn’t work here. It’s an infuriating ending, and, while I do not condone violence, it left me wanting to throw large objects at director Sam Esmail.

Now streaming on Netflix  //  2 hours 21 minutes  //  2.5 stars out of 5

Netflix's Midnight Mass is a revelation

I've taken note of the name Mike Flanagan. 

I've not seen much of his previous work. I liked Doctor Sleep (2019), the sequel to The Shining. A few years back, I panned his Ouija: Origin of Evil but noted some inspired flourishes; and, more recently, I bailed out on his The Haunting of Hill House series after one episode (we're going to give it another shot). But watching the seven-episode Midnight Mass proved to be a religious experience of the sort I haven't felt since the first couple of seasons of True Blood and, in movies, since the stunning twist of The Sixth Sense.

There aren't many new ideas in horror, and that's where Midnight Mass really delivers, taking the concept of the vampire to a place that some might find blasphemous, but I found its melding of vampire lore and Christianity brilliant and exciting. In terms of good and evil, it turns the concept of the vampire inside out. And it does so at a leisurely pace across seven hours; it takes a bit to fully realize what's going on here as the story establishes its territory with the return home of Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford), a troubled young man, and the arrival of Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), a young man of the cloth who … well, to say much more would enter spoiler territory.

There are no jump scares; it doesn't need them. The music, which often consists of gorgeous choir renditions of sacred hymns, and the sparingly used, something-creepy-is-about-to-happen parts, is outstanding. There are enormous passages of fascinating, hypnotic dialog, often delivered by Linklater, who was good as the brother on sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine and is Emmy-worthy here. Another cast standout is Samantha Sloyan as Beverly Keane, an overly pious clergywoman whose intentions are always suspect.

At times, Midnight Mass becomes a profoundly philosophical meditation on existence, life and death. We immediately watched it a second time — something we never do — to revel in the nuance and the slow-burn dread. We're still haunted by it, still dissecting and discussing the details. As lifetime horror fans, we think it's an important work in the genre. I don't remember for certain if I've ever bestowed a divine 5 out of 5 rating to any piece of entertainment on this blog before, but here one is.

Netflix's Black Summer

It’s like someone looked at The Walking Dead and said: What if we took out all the boring parts? Rather than concocting an elaborate new villian every time the crew moves to a new fracked up town, as The Walking Dead does (at least up to the point that I bailed out, which I think was season 4), what if it’s mostly just about getting from point A to point B? Also, change the zombies from lumberingly slow to super fast. Thus far, it’s a winning formula for Netflix’s Black Summer, a relentless exercise in zombie fight-or-flight tension. It’s best not to get attached to any particular character, because (spoiler) a lot of them don’t make it.

The story does not always unfold in a linear fashion, and I like how they’ve done it, going back to give us a bit of back story on something that just happened. Some have criticized the show for lacking character development, but I think Rose’s character is progressing just fine every time she blows away another non-zombie who’s gotten on her wrong side.

This show is derived from Z Nation, and the good news is that this is far better than that, based on the little bit of Z Nation I’ve seen. I’m not particularly a fan of the zombie genre and am perplexed by its enduring popularity — it seems a daunting task to bring anything new to its apocalyptic storylines — yet I tore through the two eight-episode seasons (season 2 just recently arrived) and was left wanting more when I came to the end. It’s pretty rare that I say that about a new show these days.

Score: Considered merely as escapist fare, it's a solid 4 out of 5.

Movies: The Car (1977)

 Just how much menace and dread can be extracted from the revving engine of a tricked-out Lincoln Continental Mark III with illegally tinted windows? That's explored at length in 1977 horror-thriller The Car, renowned among some as a so-bad-it's-good chestnut; critics had fun describing it as "a total wreck." My grandmother drove a Lincoln Continental back in the early '80s, and I remember it as an incredibly long vehicle with those little panels that would come down and hide the headlights when not in use. I was fascinated by those.

Starring Josh Brolin as the sheriff, The Car followed in the recent dust of highway thrillers like Duel, and its poster is simply fantastic with the car's angry face and the windswept lettering.  I remember it as one of the first movies that scared me as a kid when it was on TV, probably as a "movie of the week" on one of the big three networks back in the days when they aired theatrical releases as Event Programming. The titular auto zips around a desert town terrorizing its residents, seemingly without anyone behind the wheel, and it all looks pretty great in HD. Hammy dialog aside, the threatening face of that rampaging vehicle stirs dread every time it appears. Though the plot may be thin, it has its effective moments; the best one gives new meaning to the phrase "drive-thru" in a harrowing scene involving one of the leading damsels. It all builds to a sudden, fiery conclusion, with the movie never signaling what drove the car to its murderous rampage, literally or figuratively. As with so many things, the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

The Car is currently streaming on Netflix.

Notes for the new Unsolved Mysteries

It's great to have you back, Unsolved Mysteries. I'm still working my way through rewatching the entirety of the Robert Stack episodes and am currently on season 6 (sadly, it's no longer free on Prime Video at the moment, although it’s free with ads via imdb). The new Netflix series started strong — the two opening episodes about truly mysterious deaths are very good — but it steadily nosedived from there. As a superfan of the show, I have a few suggestions and general observations:

• We don't want to read Unsolved Mysteries. I don't care how great the mystery is — we don't want to read subtitles for 45 minutes. This is comfort food TV, not a stuffy foreign film. The offending episode, "House of Terror," about the murder of a French family, is, indeed, a fascinating case, but we don't want to read it.

• Keep things moving. One of the good things about subscription television is the emergence of sophisticated documentary programming without the constraints of the network television format. It's also a potential pitfall … all of that room to breathe and expound can lead to glacially slow programming. The old Unsolved Mysteries rarely gave the viewer an opportunity to lose interest; each mystery almost always wrapped up before the next commercial break. The storytelling was tight and incisive. Please keep it that way — this model of only one mystery filling out the entire show is fatiguing.

• The UFO episode was simply terrible. Not even a grainy Polaroid or out-of-focus home movie footage? Just people talking about what they saw? I love a good UFO yarn, but this was really weak.

• Consider a host. Robert Stack obviously can't be replaced, but it feels odd without the narration to help set the scene.

Six more new episodes arrive on October 19.

Also see // Streaming Unsolved Mysteries