Several indie-thrillers have slipped through the cracks this year, until now…
Cop Car…Technically, this film came out in 2015 but it’s theaterical release is a small fraction of the people who’ll watch this at home and perhaps years later. It’s about two boys who run away from home only to stumble upon a (seemingly) abandoned cop car. Unknown to them is that a crooked sheriff (Kevin Bacon) has put a body in the trunk and is desperate to find them before anyone else can. Camryn Manheim and Shea Whigham have jolting, hilarious supporting roles not much bigger than cameos, but this is primarily a showcase for two fresh-faced kid actors and Bacon, newly freed from Fox’s dreadful “The Following.” Even if you don’t quite believe everything that happens, the movie shows real knowledge of the way young boys talk and think. That desolate highway where they run wild is a near-dreamscape, a masculine version of the Yellow Brick Road. Grade: B+
Creative Control…Out of this crop, this is the least conventional “thriller” but the threat of existential death hangs over every scene and the black and white cinematography is adept at layering in an atmosphere of spiritual dread. It’s basically about hipster (neo-yuppie?) scum drinking and drugging themselves into a stupor all while virtual reality begins to spread out like kudzu over lives that barely seem to touch reality anyway. The movie’s ultimate joke may be that in an age this phony, are virtual reality dreams any more real than the “real life” around it? Grade: B+
High Rise…The worst of the bunch by a wide-margin. This thing wants to be “Snowpiercer” set in an apartment building (instead of a train) taking place in the 70’s (instead of the future…for some reason). Given the setting, the movie would already be more stagnant even if the plot didn’t keep overdosing on whimsical horseshit. Any point the movie was hoping to make about class gets buried. Any fun thriller fans might have had is lost. A great example of how you can’t just slap the title of “political” on a film that doesn’t really want to say anything, and hope that qualifies as thought-provoking. Grade: D
Green Room…The creative team (also behind the overrated indie-thriller “Blue Ruin”) must have done a cartwheel when Patrick Stewart agreed to be their antagonist, because he’s the only thing in the movie—about a punk band that witnesses a murder in a backwoods Oregon club, and must try to escape the “establishment” run by neo-nazis—that really, truly works. The only problem? Stewart’s calculating nazi gang leader is such a smooth villain, you aren’t really rooting for the blander-than-bland leads. The crucial first fifteen minutes (before the murder) would have been a great time to get us invested in the protagonists, and tell us why we should care about their fates, but the movie never really connects to them. And I had the same problem with this that I did “Blue Ruin”: it’s a film that only pretends to abhor violence while at the same time clearly reveling in its escalation. The best grindhouse/midnight movies are unapologetic in their love of the darkside, and don’t need to go through the motions of higher morality. Grade: B- [Although Patrick Stewart should absolutely be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.]
The Invitation…A film that starts flow and finishes terrific, and I’ll do my best to review it without spoiling too many of the twists and turns. Much has been written about horror’s newfound “personal” streak, but it’s really more of an anti-personal streak as these movies are typically made by millennials who clearly have issues with relationships (like sexual relationship fears in “It Follows,” or twisted family ties in “The Badabook”) and “The Invitation” is about an awkward dinner party with “friends” you may literally not be able to escape from. The protagonist clearly doesn’t want to be in the home he used to share with his ex-wife and her new husband, but is he a reliable narrator or is there something nefarious going on? Why do they both keep talking in the quasi-Stepford faux-uplift of “spiritual” yoga instructors? Why are all the doors locked for this friendly gathering? This might wind up being the year’s best horror film, and it’ll probably be appealing even to those that don’t like horror movies. Grade: A-