TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 (2018)

I wish somebody would give Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott a budget. Modern horror filmmakers like Mike Flanagan and David F. Sandberg have shown that a lot can be done with a little, but with Tales from the Hood 2 has a production value on the level of a basic cable movie. With a little bit more, it really could have been something

It's a shame, because Cundieff and Scott really do deserve better. They're returning for a sequel to one of the most underrated, socially relevant horror films of the 1990s: an anthology that's a melding of bite-size EC Comics-style fables with honest, complicated, and important themes of racial inequity and social justice. It confronted some facets of racism that are often ignored in pop culture, the most memorable being the segment featuring Corbin Bernsen as a racist southern Congressman whose apocryphal art comes to life and attacks him.

The sequel has some of that urgency, and isn't afraid to confront some uncomfortable topics. Cundieff and Scott take on the military-industrial complex, the rise of A.I., gentrification, cultural appropriation, and voter suppression, but their main target, as in the first one, is Black indifference. It's worth noting that in both films, many Black characters get their comeuppance as well as white ones: the original's first segment memorably skewered a complacent Black cop who stood by as his white partners murdered a social activist. The sequel's final segment, about a similarly complacent Black Mississippi Republican, takes the same aim: that the fight for equality requires the vigilance of all People of Color, and that there is no room for playing along with the oppressor.

The clever writing and earnest acting are almost enough to make up for a laughably amateurish-looking production. The opening credits sequence, a CGI animation worthy of a mid-'90s PC game, doesn't bode well; neither does the wraparound sequence, boasting Keith David as a sinister strategist hired by a government contractor to develop an A.I. law enforcement device. The wraparound has its funny moments, and its social message is relevant, but the connection to the stories is tenuous, and David may as well have shouted "Hey! I'm the Devil!" at his first appearance.

Except for the last one, the stories lean heavily on humor more than horror, where the first film was primarily macabre with dark humor around the edges. It unfortunately puts its two best segments first and its longest, most ponderous one last. The first story, about a clueless white girl who visits a "Museum of Negrosity" to steal a gollywog doll for her collection, is supremely nasty, with an especially wicked punchline. The second, about a couple of gang members who kidnap a TV psychic to find out where their dead rival hid some money, is silly but still enjoyable, anchored by a sublimely goofy performance from Bryan Batt as the semi-charlatan psychic.

The last two tackle issues that are more serious than the previous, but stumble in maintaining their comic-book narrative. The third, about a duo of date-rapists who get a surprise, starts interestingly but ends abruptly and predictably. The fourth, castigating a comfortable Black man whose money and vote go to a race-baiting politician, had the potential to be the movie's most captivating story, but instead it's only the most thuddingly self-important and preachy, portraying a post-Jim Crow South and a Colonel Sanders-like politician that are more cartoonish than haunting, and utilizing the specter of Emmett Till in a way that is, while respectful, more than a little contrived.

The triumph of the original Tales from the Hood was that it got the tone just right: it was both a spooky, rousing, entertaining comic book film in the vein of Tales from the Crypt and the old Amicus films of the '70s, and a serious exploration of racial injustice. I'm convinced that if Cundieff and Scott had been given a proper production, they could have emulated it again. All the pieces are in place otherwise.

** 1/2 out of ****

THE SNOWMAN (2017)

A young boy who lives with his mom in what appears to be the set for The Thing from Another World prepares for a history lesson from his Uncle Jonas, who comes to visit every week. Uncle Jonas drills the boy on key historical dates, then whenever the boy gets one wrong, Jonas hits his mom. It's what education professionals would call "20th-century learning," and what Betsy DeVos would call "proficiency." Then the boy finds Jonas and his mom in bed together. Mom tells Jonas, "He doesn't know you're his father." At least one more traumatic childhood event happens. The opening credits roll.

The boy grows up to be either the serial killer or the troubled detective; we don't know for sure until the end. Someone in Oslo has been murdering women and building snowmen, not necessarily in that order. Sometimes he builds the snowman first as a menacing portent (if the stings on Marco Beltrami's soundtrack are to be believed). Sometimes he builds them afterward to conceal severed heads and other body parts. He sends taunting letters to the authorities, ominously addressed to "Mister Police," which I assume sounded not-ridiculous in the original Norwegian. Posters for the film bear the tagline "You could have saved her I gave you all the clues," but it should not be presumed that there is a "her" to be saved or "clues" to be given.

The case, as it always tends to in movies like this, falls upon the biggest train wreck of a human being in the police department, a functioning alcoholic named Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender). I can attest that this name certainly sounds less ridiculous in the original Norwegian, since in Jo Nesbo's novel it's supposed to be pronounced "Hoo-leh." Yet the English-speaking cast pronounces it "Hole," like the thing in the ground. How this pronunciation made it through the production I cannot imagine. I know that the director, Tomas Alfredson, is Swedish, so I'm not counting out a Sweden/Norway rivalry.

Hole teams up with a younger detective named Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who admires his work (we have to take her word for it). They find that the killer may have ties to a wealthy businessman (J.K. Simmons) who's closely involved in the campaign for Oslo to host the World Cup, and whose obsession with younger women makes him one of the chaster characters in the film.

Meanwhile, Detective Hole reunites with his ex-girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her son Oleg (Michael Yates), who sees him as a father figure of sorts. You see, his alcoholism drove them apart, and he's trying to make amends. If you guessed that Hole's complicated paternal relationship with Oleg draws a parallel between him and the killer, then oh boy Mister Police, you really have gotten all the clues.

Mister Police would also certainly see the clues of a troubled production here, even without reading background information on the film. Alfredson, whose credits boast the excellent Let the Right One In and the convoluted but captivating Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, went on record to say that the film was rushed into shooting and that he failed to shoot 10-15% of the script. This would explain why certain sub-plots and supporting characters are dropped, like Chloe Sevigny's inexplicable appearance as two twins. I also got the sneaking suspicion that every time Thelma Schoonmaker (that's right) edited in a shot of a purportedly terrifying snowman, it was to cover up some gap in the footage.

The general malaise that pervades The Snowman does emphasize its few good qualities. I'm usually happy to see Val Kilmer anywhere, so his scenes--as yet another alcoholic cop in a parallel storyline--are somewhat redeeming. I read that he was recovering from throat cancer during filming, which explains why his voice is dubbed. It does not explain why the filmmakers seem to have dubbed his voice without looking at his lips, nor why they hired a Jeff Bridges soundalike to do it. It's also hard to be totally dissatisfied when J.K. Simmons is on screen; even when his character hits the heights of ridiculousness, he's never boring. And I have never before seen a movie so brazen as to try to use Hot Butter's "Popcorn" as a horror theme.

Aside from that, the movie only entertains through its awfulness, which includes but is not limited to a baffling scene in which Harry Hole subdues a character (not the killer, or even a rival) by jumping on them, Chris Farley-style. Fassbender does his damnedest but he cannot make Harry Hole not laughable, especially in a pathetic climax in which at least one character is tied to a chair, because dammit, when a screenwriter wants to tie a character to a chair, he does it.

The total belly-flop that is The Snowman is at the very least an abrupt reminder that detective thrillers, all the rage nowadays, are difficult to do right. A movie like Seven is a rarity, in that it maintains an uneasy balance between gruesome fascination and moral righteousness. So does The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, another Nordic franchise-starter with an American version that was a dud. I don't think we'll be seeing another Harry Hole adventure anytime soon.

* out of ****

Spoiler alert: Oslo gets the World Cup.

mother! (2017)

If the highest praise I can give mother! is that I wish more films like it got made by big studios nowadays, that shouldn't be taken as quite the endorsement it sounds like. It's a film that a studio (Paramount, in this case) would only permit a tested filmmaker to make, and only with bankable stars on a modest budget. In return, Aronofsky has delivered a vision: not always a good vision, mind you, but a vision of something nonetheless.

Critics have claimed, alternately in praise and in denouncement--that the movie is likely to make audiences angry. They're probably right, although it's hard to tell if they mean the graphic scenes of sudden violence or the unconventional storytelling. I suspect it's mostly the second. The previews seem to court horror audiences, or at least fans of the psycho-horror Aronofsky championed with his drug-addiction epic Requiem for a Dream and his tortured-artist drama Black Swan. Those who've experienced the brilliant gut-punch of a coda of Requiem for a Dream shouldn't find much to be truly shocked about here, though be forewarned: mother! features scenes of violence that aren't commonly seen in a big-studio film, or even an independent horror film.

No, I think what they mean is that audiences would be reluctant to follow the film once it veers off the traditional horror path and into truly surreal territory. It doesn't matter; Aronofsky drags you with him. The film starts safely in genre territory, then gradually removes the safety pins one by one until before we know it, we've tumbled into chaos. The move from home-endangerment horror to allegorical fantasy is almost not noticeable. Almost.

The two main characters, only known as Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) and Him (Javier Bardem) move into a quiet but gigantic manse seemingly in the middle of nowhere. He's a famous author with writer's block. She, about 20 years his junior, works tirelessly at rehabilitating the house while trying to cultivate his inspiration.

Then a stranger (Ed Harris) knocks on the door. Before Mother can put in a word, her husband has invited the man inside and to stay for the night. For an explanation, the husband only offers nonsequiturs that seem to make sense to him ("He's a doctor"). Then the stranger's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer, who's fantastic) arrives. Then more.

Aronofsky plays out these early scenes with unbending point-of-view terror. He establishes Mother as the keeper of the house, then slowly strips away her control and puts us in her shoes as he does it. The camera (with effective cinematography by frequent Aronofsky collaborator Matthew Libatique) stays tightly focused on Mother's face as it leads us to experience the limits of her ability to protect her house and herself.

There's something not right about the couple staying in their house. The Bardem character seems to invite their invasion unquestioningly. Mother can demand that they leave, but they don't. In these scenes Aronofsky's exploration of what happens when people just refuse to obey agreed-upon social rules recalls Michael Haneke's similarly surreal and violent Funny Games, which also features a couple set upon by two sociopaths who walk into their house, invited, and then refuse to leave. The invaders prey upon their hosts' politeness, knowing that they will not turn away someone in need.

This caretaking duty, of course, falls squarely upon Mother. In Lawrence's performance of a firm but helpless homemaker, as well as Bardem's flawless portrayal of a man completely oblivious to his wife's struggles, Aronofsky captures the catch-22 of the traditional woman's role: she's charged with taking care of everything, including her husband's ego, and takes the blame for everything that goes wrong. As more and more people come to the house, all of them expect her to conform to their wishes, many of them scoffing or excoriating her when she refuses or fails.

It's around this time that Aronofsky's intentions become clear and the movie charges head-on into its audacious, sometimes loony allegory. I won't reveal what it's an allegory for, though Aronofsky has been forthright in explaining it in interviews, and you don't have to squint to see the Biblical parallels at each step. This Mother becomes the perennial mother whose entire life is given over to pleasing thankless children; each guest is a child who asks for more, and more, and more, until the Mother is both literally and spiritually tapped.

It's somewhere toward the end that Aronofsky's allegory runs out of steam; admittedly, it would be difficult to sustain this intended atmosphere for the full third act of a two-hour movie. In early scenes, even though we can still see the metaphorical identity behind the characters, they remain unquestionably human and recognizable, which is why the early horror scenes work so well. Late in the film, Lawrence and Bardem vanish into the allegory and never quite make it back; once we know that the Mother is a symbol and not a person, it's hard to feel anything for her. Even one revolting act of violence, one that you've no doubt heard about by now, fails to make much of an impression, other than that Aronofsky has jumped the shock shark too early.

I still don't know if I'd recommend mother!. I want to praise it for being a film I haven't seen before, but what does that mean? Only that I've seen too many movies and am desperate for something new. I suppose people should see it for the early scenes and how they frighteningly depict the terror a quiet home invasion. And for the scenes in which Aronofsky casually drags the story off of the traditional tracks while maintaining the lead characters simultaneously as allegorical representations and as real characters.

I think I've described the film as accurately as possible; if it seems intriguing, you might want to see it. But I'll paraphrase what Michael Haneke said about his own Funny Games: if you walk out of the film before it's over, you probably don't need it. That might be true of mother! too.

** 1/2 out of ****

Note: There's a film that mother! reminded me of, which also tackles motherhood and the caretaker role and how it holds up amid a home invasion. It's a French film called Inside, it is even more violent than mother!, and it is terrifying.