Article: Disaster Artistry - Living In Oblivion

Creating art is hard. With that in mind, filmmaking is perhaps one of the most complicated artistic enterprises. Crafting a motion picture is an absolute ball-busting endeavour, often fuelled by chaos, with little fanfare upon completion. At the end of every Filmcast podcast episode, host David Chen remarks that, whether you enjoyed the main review or not, at the end of the day, it’s pretty impressive that a film was made. He’s not wrong. Media creation has become more accessible, but coming up with a feature film from scratch with a full cast and crew that appeals to an audience? There are still a lot of dreamers who pretend it’s easier than it is.

The film Living in Oblivion expertly depicts the frenzied bedlam of low-budget filmmaking. Steve Buscemi plays Nick, a long-haired, wide-eyed director who seems a hair's breadth away from a full-on manic episode. Such is independent filmmaking. As the low-budget project begins to crumble around him, Nick struggles with maintaining on-set equilibrium. The production is riddled with dilemmas that could hamstring a production. Nick valiantly fights to preserve his sanity against a creative world focused on losing the plot, both literally and figuratively.

Tom DiCillo, a filmmaker who studied alongside Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, is the brainchild behind Living in Oblivion. While Jarmusch and Lee are household names among the dwellings of typical cinephiles, DiCillo had a quieter career. It’s not hard to see why, when DiCillo described making a film as “one of the most tedious, boring, painful experiences, and that just when something goes right.” This became the origin of Living in Oblivion, capturing the madness and anxiety of making a film. This is perhaps what makes the film so enjoyable. While many other fictional “filmmaking” movies have an air of notable smugness (are we surprised when they do so well at awards season?), Living in Oblivion captures the worst fears of making a movie, and does so with a charming, offbeat wit, smart direction and stellar performances. One must wonder if DiCillo dislikes the process because he knows how to nail it.

Living in Oblivion accurately pinpoints the calamitous pain of creating with no money. Its opening segment has two crew members debating the freshness of some milk that has been sitting outside for a week. The innocuous conversation kickstarts a series of predicaments that gradually increase in importance, while Nick tries to capture the emotional resonance of a pivotal scene. The scene in question involves an emotional conversation between mother and daughter, played by Nicole (Catherine Keener) and Cora (Rica Martens). Nick envisions one elegant long take drifting between the actors. The reality is very different. The sequence gets spoiled by various mishaps occurring around him. Lights get blown. Boom mics drop into shot. The shot itself falls out of focus. These events lead to both actresses fumbling lines that came to them so well at the beginning. Nick slowly loses his placidness with each slip-up, then suddenly, due to a small gesture of reassurance from Cora, Nicole finds the emotional crux in the scene. The crew are spellbound as the two actresses hit the scene straight out of the park…Only for everyone to realise that nothing was recorded because the cinematographer, Wolf (Dermot Mulroney), was puking his guts out in the bathroom. His illness? Caused by the week-old milk he put in his coffee. DiCillo’s film captures how easily tiny drops of misfortune swell into disastrous calamities on a no-money production.

If Nick isn't dealing with vomiting cinematographers, then he's contending with self-centred leading men. Living in Oblivion's second segment has brash lead actor Chad stumble into proceedings. The intention of Chad? To hog every bit of the limelight at the expense of everyone else. Chad is wildly obnoxious, creatively reckless, and a stunningly accurate representation of the types of creatives who litter the lower end of the humanities. The female crew adore him, but unknown to them, Chad sleeps with co-lead actress Nicole, who bluntly cools things down before they go to work. In retaliation, Chad begins to suggest a series of useless improvisation ideas to Nick. These are not only designed to diminish Nicole's on-screen presence but also inflate Chad's ego.  Quite simply, the guy is an ignorant prig, played wonderfully by James LeGros. Chad's character was assumed to be based on Brad Pitt, who DiCillo had worked with on his troubled debut Johnny Suede (1991). However, DiCillo squashed those rumours, stating an emergency junket for the film Legends of the Fall (1994) stopped Pitt from taking up the role of Chad. While it’s easy to see why people see Chad as a send-up of the future A-lister, LeGros’ performance is more of a composite of spiteful clowns who invade creative projects and make it all about themselves.

Hell is other people. And filmmaking is something that usually pulls in quite a few people for a product to exist. Living in Oblivion enjoys pointing out that while the film should be the end goal for everything, the quirks and agendas which lie in the recesses of each crew member will gladly hamper that objective. Steve Buscemi has stated that Nick is one of his favourite roles, and that’s understandable. In a career full of memorable performances, this hapless indie director is a role Buscemi shares an affinity with as a performer and director. Seen here as often bemused, bewildered or sarcastic, this is the actor at his best. He revels in a role that has him constantly frustrated by those around him. Be it Wolf’s ego and fraternising, which stops the cinematographer from framing the damn film, or Nicole’s bleakly insecure acting. The performer's anxiety is only being accelerated by the needless gossipy chirps which she hears off set. If you’ve ever tried to put on a production of any sort, none of this should surprise you. What makes the film so entertaining is how keenly observed DiCillo captures everything.  It’s funny because you’ve been there.

As a film about a production going awry, Living in Oblivion strikes a perfect tonal balance. It manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and painfully honest about the multitude of predicaments that fall upon Nick's production. To top things off, DiCillo even wraps much of the film in dream sequences. Filtering the indie film world through the subconscious mind of those who live it is an amusing nod to the liberal use of dream logic as a crutch in movies. DiCillo uses a unique conceit on dream logic, with the film narrative fragmenting into the dreams of those who inhabit the world. Dreams are a well-used cinematic trope, and here it becomes a subversive fuel which drives each person on set in one way or another. DiCillo plays this all out Run Lola Run style. Amusingly, the final act is one of a dream sequence being shot. This segment is the movie Nick is trying to make. What came before it? Anxiety nightmares of what could have happened? Future apprehensions of what may happen? DiCillo never lets us in fully. The film that Nick is making? The audience is never given a full description. Nevertheless, Living in Oblivion understands the filmmaking process so well that it does not matter. You only need to know that the crew is so tied to what's being made that you are invested.

We don’t know how good we have it now. Filmmaking is so ubiquitous that influencers are shilling guides to how easy it is to make a film on your own, without a crew. You can bring something together in about a month and probably find an audience soon after. Living in Oblivion is a smart, witty reminder that filmmaking, at one point, is more like herding cats. Creating art is hard, and for many, filmmaking is still an endeavour for the ultra-loopy. But to paraphrase David Chen, as I did earlier, it’s pretty impressive to make a cinematic project that all comes together. It seems it’s even more satisfying when said project is about the absolute madness of filmmaking.

Living In Oblivion can currently be found on YouTube

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Article: Belly will leave you starved

Trying to find the right way to start this revisit of Hype Williams’ gangster rap drama Belly, is difficult. Partly because the film itself has one of the slickest openings for a crime movie of that era. Belly’s opening club heist is an arduous and intimidating piece of filmmaking. Set in the bowels of a New York City strip club, the scene is drenched in glowing, inferred lights and dramatic slow-motion. It is more than just eye-catching. R&B and Hip-Hop culture is fully digested into Belly. One of the more striking examples is its use of Soul 2 Soul’s album version of Back to Life, sung in acapella by Caron Wheeler.  This becomes the sonic backing to what soon becomes a violent holdup. 28 years later, the Mubi Film Podcast notes its use of music as the perfect soundbed for the sequence. They are right. The scene feels like the ultimate primer. Something that’s going to strap the viewer in for an incredible ride.

Unfortunately, once the film’s opening scenes play out, Belly descends into a jumbled mess. Belly desires to be a message movie, a mafioso flick, a music video, and the ultimate declaration of black urban culture. A film made by hip-hop, for hip-hop. Yet this production was plagued by production friction. This is clear from its haphazard screenplay, which bounces from scene to scene with only tenuous connections. The clammy, calculating hand of a studio executive can be felt. But Belly has other issues. Something this writer will look to talk about later in this piece. Till then, let’s start with the good.

Belly is astonishing visually. This is no surprise. The film’s director, Hype Williams, is a pioneer of Hip-Hop and RnB music videos. The memes of 90s rap videos and how they look? It’s pretty much all down to him. Originally a graffiti artist in his own right, Williams’ bold style was influenced by artists such as Basquiat. Taking his visual artistry towards the world of narrative film makes Belly stand out against many of the “hood” movies of the era. Even now, the film feels unique.  In films in which every shot could be a painting, with Belly, many shots could grace an album cover. The strip-club heist takes most of the plaudits. However, more should be said about the scene almost immediately afterwards, set in Tommy’s home. The blacks of the gang’s outfits are contrasted against the whites of the walls. Layered upon this are the black and white paintings of black women, which are hung above the characters. The beauty of the compositions is contrasted against the crass, egoistical exchanges of the men within the scene.

Belly doesn’t muck around when it comes to visual distinction. Tommy’s black and white apartment becomes a great visual representation of how Tommy sees the world at that point. Sincere’s home is gracefully blessed with woody, naturalistic tones which are acutely attuned to that character. Taral Hicks, who plays Tommy’s girlfriend Kisha, is often bathed in electric blue, which could have signalled an emotional resonance to that character, but may only be used because Hicks looks incredibly sexy in that light while wearing only white laced lingerie. Although the treatment of female characters highlights an issue with Belly’s blase attitude towards women. Before Williams, black actors were plagued by muddy representations of themselves on film due to colour tones, and lighting was balanced for their white counterparts. Williams set a precedent in how black skin is captured on film. Utilising items like baby oil to reflect the skin correctly in the highlights. Acclaimed director Barry Jenkins has stated that Belly was a strong influence on how the filmmaker works visually. Williams’ formalism is of high artistry. He knows what looks good. Belly is a perfect distillation of his visual form.

But what of the script? Has anyone noticed this piece has danced around Belly’s plot? Barely offering a small morsel of a synopsis to nibble on? It is the film's screenplay (and the editing of said screenplay) which breaks Belly. Nas plays Sincere, who robs banks with his long-time partner in crime, Tommy Bunds (DMX). After one huge strip club heist (mentioned earlier), Sincere debates whether he wishes to continue living the life. Tommy, on the other hand, has his head turned by a Jamaican gangster who wishes to deal drugs in Nebraska for some reason. Tommy’s blunt view of the world has him up sticks from New York to sell drugs in Middle America, while Sincere begins to flirt with the idea of moving to Africa. Although this dream pops into the film rather suddenly. There are some wispy thin subplots involving the two men’s girlfriends. The film introduces hitmen, espionage and double crossing of some kind. However, much of the film’s narrative is wrapped up in a screenplay that feels both unfinished and gutted. The connective tissue that should guide a viewer is missing, while the film’s visuals seem to be used to paper over the cracks.   

The film suffers from similar criticisms which have been aimed at masterful mafioso films like The Godfather (1972) or Goodfellas (1990). Williams’ film glorifies “the life”, and the visuals are a key part of the seduction. But the likes of Scorsese and Coppola have well drawn and complex plot strands to contrast with the surface glare. Hype Williams can’t plumb similar depths. Late in the film, a newly introduced character performs a literal sermon to another character, set on New Year's Eve 1999, denouncing certain ills of black culture that have been displayed within Belly’s story. It’s out of the packet, on the nose and more than a little naïve. The women in the story are objectified, Drugs and fast cash are embraced, and Black men live the stereotypical gangland lifestyle heard in hundreds of rap albums. Yet Belly’s sudden moral stance on what has happened before is not well integrated into the narrative. Is there anything wrong with Taral Hicks looking stunning in white underwear? Not at all. Especially in the way Williams captures her. But the film does little else but this. It’s a character without agency, seemingly around to be looked at, while her partner cheats on her (in one of many badly developed subplots) before being targeted for Tommy’s crimes. Speaking of which, Tommy shows himself to be a literal predator of minors. Does the film provide any strong commentary on this? Does it truly denounce it? Not really. How it slips by feels sickly when watching with 2026 eyes.

Belly’s leftfield turn into moralising doesn’t come from a “holier than thou” place. There’s no egregious academic pomposity here. Belly isn’t just considered a FUBU film for no reason. Its use of rappers and RnB singers as main cast members doesn’t feel like corporate synergy. This is apparent from the film’s opening moments before the iconic heist. This moody intro scene has DMX’s Tommy preparing for the strip club heist. His gravel-laden voice hovers over the images. Narrating some of the film’s themes in rhyme. Vocally, it feels lifted directly from the Prayer skits that appear on DMX’s first three albums. The use of DMX in this opening segment, as well as his overall casting, is a smart decision from Williams. The tragic personal life and desire for redemption bled into the late Earl Simmons’ music. The combination of semi-auto biographical persona and Belly’s attempts at moral convictions gel well. As cliché as this may sound, it’s clear that Williams wants to have “the streets talking” as opposed to any fakery.  The same can be said of the casting of legendary rapper Nas as Sincere. DMX fares better in his performance due to his kinetic energy. Nas looks and feels out of his element as an actor. But one suspects that if you picked any of either artist’s albums, you’d see Williams trying to filter the words they spit on wax and transfer it to screen.

As Iconic as these two legends of hip-hop are, simply having them as leads is not enough to provide the substance which is sorely lacking within Belly. Neither artist carries the film well, while the screenplay lacks the key foundations which would make much of Belly credible. Bunds and Sincere are self-referenced as Butch and Sundance, but rewatch the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You believe the Newman/Redford relationship is not only based on their chemistry, but also because the film spends time with the two of them together. If Nas and DMX were stronger actors, Belly could get away with the two being separated in the film for so long, but it really can’t. The central idea of this duo having such a cemented friendship doesn’t hold water.  They’re apart for too long, and when they do interact, the relationship holds no intimacy.

This coincides with another issue of the film. Belly is neither surrealist nor based in magical realism. There’s no dream logic here. This is a film meddled with by its studio. The cast didn’t help matters. They turned up high, drunk or late. All the while, the visionary director is doing what he can to maintain a semblance of control, working semi-guerrilla style at various points. And it shows. The film feels muddy and jumbled. And the grand statements it wants to express aren’t the reason behind this. Everything comes down to the simple fact that whatever needed to be put in place to make narrative sense is clearly missing. Unlike, say, David Lynch or even Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1997), which the film overtly namechecks, Belly can’t articulate the emotional resonance it desires.  Not because it wasn't aiming to fly high, but because it was clipped at the wings.

Supporters of Belly are extremely passionate about the movie and are snippy about the critical reaction towards it. But I find myself agreeing with what the reviewers saw. It’s the kind of movie that such writers fear from Music video directors: A visually ambitious feature hampered by a cannibalised screenplay and weak performances. Something that plays out like a 90-minute music video.  Williams hasn’t seen a transition or bold composition he doesn’t love, but his visual ambitions continuously stumble upon a quagmire of narrative. The film casts a lustful eye over how things look, but never on how characters and scenes intersect. Williams has not followed Belly with a second feature. This is a shame. One wonders what the man could do without the shackles, less meddling, and a full script.

Article: Thirst Trap left me parched.

Thematically, Thirst Trap is the kind of film that’s right up my alley. Dedicated to the “lost souls of Hollywood”, the film is a low-key thriller in which a failing actress, now a cam-girl, finds herself the target of a sinister stalker who has designs to murder her once the two finally meet. In terms of execution, however, Thirst Trap is a film that says the right things about the trappings of modern-day sex work but is so blunt in its message that it lacks any penetration. Film critic Stephanie Malone’s positive review of the film states that there aren’t enough films that refuse to demonise sex workers, and that films which tackle the world of online sex workers are rare. While it’s true that there isn’t a truckload of such films, the ones that concern online sex work, or have tangential themes, are executed far more substantially. 

Thirst Trap begins like a character piece. Grace Gordon plays Riley Ann, who addresses the audience head-on, breaking the fourth wall, detailing how she operates. Due to her struggles finding acting work, Riley Ann turns to camming to pay bills. She happily obtains the honest bucks from her male followers and fans. Riley's efforts to find acting jobs are highlighted in scenes with dismissive female movie executives.  Her fight to maintain a sense of balance in her work life gets lost as the film breaks off into a more conventional thriller with Riley trying to expose her anonymous stalker who watches her every move. 

While films with online sex work as the focus are perhaps not of the highest volume, that’s not to say there haven’t been entries. Numa Perrier’s Jezebel (2019) covers much of the same ground Thirst Trap touches on. However, Perrier's film uses themes of race and class to give its narrative more sensitivity. Jezebel may not be a genre piece, but it utilises the same subject matter with more earnestness, providing a richer viewing experience than Thirst Trap. King Kelly (2012) has a fame hungry teen Kelly webcamming and filming the extreme events of her life to earn c, while the chaos of her choices explodes around her. King Kelly is not a film for everyone; however, Andrew Neel's film becomes a poignant character piece once it cuts through its anarchy. However, its frantic, filmed-on-a-phone style is the perfect foil for Kelly’s fourth-wall breaking. The chaos the film inhabits quickly ensnares a viewer while also highlighting its protagonist’s troubled friendship and family dynamics. 2020s’ Sweat may not be explicitly about sex work; it accurately nails down the performative nature of social media as well as its under-researched dangers. The psychological thriller Cam (2018), mentioned by Malone in her Thirst Trap piece, is perhaps the feature which gets to grips with the issue of identity and consent around sex work. Isa Mazzei's tac-sharp script and Madeline Brewer’s kinetic performance work well in showing female intimacy and identity being dismantled via big tech and social media.  It also highlights the grind of today’s sex work: a relentless world of hyper-competitiveness and continuous one-upmanship, which gambles high reward on a fragile foundation. 

Thirst Trap wishes to be as effective as other films that have women confined within the world of modern sex work. However, director Chantal Massuh only skims the surface of the industry. While the film should be commended for its grassroots budget (with a chunk of the finance stemming from Massuh’s own cam girl work), Thirst Trap would benefit from a stronger screenplay and deeper characterisation. Massuh is smart enough not to leave Gordon’s Riley hanging out to dry as a piece of female titillation for male viewers to gorp at. Even when Riley parades around in lingerie and swimsuits, there's enough distance between audience and lead to never feel leery or exploitative. 

That said, Thirst Trap never feels strong enough in its conviction. It’s a film that name-checks the male gaze in the same way many on social media have picked up therapy speak. While the film never centres men, Massuh never really gets to grips with anything challenging to say about their supposed omnipresence. A short outdoor sequence has Riley observing a sex worker being abused by her pimp. However, the fact that the aggressor is a woman feels counterintuitive and lacks the contrast to modern cam girls who can often work independently from such men. A later scene has Renee, a stripper friend of Riley's, stay over to escape her current man troubles. The interaction between the two before Riley swiftly convinces Renee into a duo cam role is annoyingly rote. They sigh, tut and eye roll about men, but what is about the problematic men they encounter provides no real provocation. One could see both scenes mentioned being far more effective in other features, with a director like Sean Baker springing to mind. Massuh hints at a more provocative picture, with scenes of Riley fighting the validation that online clout brings, yet it never hits as hard as in the likes of Sweat or Cam. It doesn’t help that the film’s antagonist, as despicable as he soon becomes, isn’t particularly scary. The film never makes him the suffocating personification of the men Riley works to turn on.  

“I always feel disposable in this town”, an angst-ridden Riley explains, and while an obvious statement, it’s a very truthful one. The online world is a cruel and merciless beast, and Thirst Trap shows the grimness of the web melding with real life a couple of times. However, the sense of conviction seen in other examples never comes to fruition. The churn of online sex work is never truly established, with Thirst Trap never really highlighting the toll that such a line of work can take. Massuh knows the uncompromising nature of this life. The low budget has Thirst Trap constrained to one apartment block. Whether consciously or not, this is a strong decision, as it exposes one of the biggest symptoms of working from home: the inability to unplug. But despite this, Thirst Trap never really becomes the struggle that it suggests. Massuh does well not to glamourise a difficult and often misunderstood job, but she never makes it as acutely unsettling as the few other examples in its wheelhouse either. 

Thirst Trap is available to via Prime Video and Tubi

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Article: Procedural - Cure (1997)

Some of the best horror is effective because of how the uncanny quietly seeps into the mundane. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is masterful in injecting the eerie into the everyday. Pulse (2001) prophesies a world of deadly loneliness and makes the loss of connection commonplace, with characters quietly succumbing to the “ghost in the machine” once the internet's grip takes hold. Creepy (2016) has its antagonist distressingly abuse the social contract of neighbours in a manner which films like Speak No Evil (2022) riffed on years later. With Creepy, hidden rooms, sedative drugs and corpses become the order of the day, simply due to discreet manipulation of people’s obligatory requirements of “being nice”. Cure (1997) was released 2 years after David Fincher’s deeply pessimistic Seven (1995). However, Kurosawa’s enigmatic feature plunges us into a discomfort that crawls deeper under the skin. The frostiness which inhabits Cure is illustrated in its “middle distance” visuals. There are rarely any close-ups employed to humanise the story’s characters. Isolation is the name of the game here. Dissociation rips through regular people in Cure with a steeper potency than the deranged pseudo-religious crimes of John Doe. The crimes in Seven can be isolated, pinpointed and despite the repercussions, somewhat contained.  In Cure, it’s suggested that transgressions that occur will have no end. That what conspires may spread like a virus, quietly destroying the unassuming nature of its victims. This leaves them with a terrifying outcome and no idea of how such violence came about.

Kenichi Takabe is a police detective who is balancing his troubled private life while trying to solve a spate of violent killings. The murders are puzzling, as each case has the perpetrators caught close to the scene with no explanation as to why they’ve committed the murders. This is despite freely confessing to their crimes with complete recollection of what they did. Takabe is fighting to crack the case while also struggling to care for his schizophrenic wife, who is slipping away from him mentally. Soon it is discovered that each killer encountered a mysterious drifter named Mamiya. Takabe slowly uncovers that Mamiya, despite his extreme short-term memory loss, is the architect of these crimes. Asking simple questions and triggers actions using the elements. Very soon, Takabe and Mamiya collide, with the mysterious nature of Mamiya’s “mission” gradually taking the detective to breaking point.

You meet an unassuming stranger, who disarms you with a series of innocuous questions which subconsciously loosen your inhibitions. Moments later, you are compelled to murder someone close to you. Something you would never consider when your civility is armoured around you. Everything you do to the person you remember, and while you were shocked at your actions, your intentions suggest it was always at the back of your mind. This hideously simple yet terrifying conceit lies within Cure, a film in which its antagonist quietly fractionates those around him through frustration, repetition, and obfuscation. Cure toys with the idea that people believe they’re more in control than they are. With the thin veneer of polite society as the one thing that stops the chaos, Mamiya’s ability to easily remove that layer of civility makes Cure terrifying. We like to believe that we have control. Even when it’s evident that we don’t. Mamiya's actions are devastatingly simple, and the menacing aspect stems from the fact that he doesn’t even seem to know himself how easy it is to arm multiple timebombs. Lit fuses that are primed for volatility because their courtesy is so neatly removed, and the last thing you would expect to be keeping you from becoming a raging killer. By removing people’s consideration for others, Mamiya unlocks a seething repression that lies within the characters. Cure proposes that this violence is always within us, and by opening them up to this brutality, it purges one's soul. They become vessels for a blank-faced missionary.

Takabe is a classic flawed protagonist. His quiet animosity towards his ailing wife, along with his frustrations on the case, slowly blend him into a dark anti-hero, a cop who’s only a couple of degrees from boiling over. The mannerisms between Takabe and Mamiya are in stark contrast, yet the motivations of both pursuer and pursued are muddied and troubling. In the scant confrontations between the two, there’s always the feeling that Mamiya’s quiet manipulation will unlock Takabe’s restrained anger. Mamiya’s mission appears to be setting people free from the restraints of society. Takabe is so tied to society through his wife and job that he’s unable to break free. Yet Kurosawa crafts the scenes of the duo in such a way that we’re never too sure if Mamiya hasn’t infiltrated the fracturing detective’s mind.

Cure plays on the known unknown. Tearing at the fabric of Japan’s well-known social norms of etiquette. Kurosawa primes everything to unsettle, with even the hum of a washing machine becoming something which unbalances the ambience. A familiar appliance which we use for cleaning is now something which rattles the nervous system. While no sequences in the film are executed as grimly as in Seven, the detached way Kurosawa situates his characters manoeuvres Cure into becoming the Yin to Seven’s visceral Yang.

Cure’s ethereal ambiguity and dread make it tough to talk about but absorbing to watch. Every watch gives a fan something new to chew on, yet it never feels possible to get a full handle on the events at play.  Its vaporous nature gleefully rewards you with added strands to any theory you may have, while also obscuring any previous certainty. On a previous watch, I was more certain about the melancholic relationship between Takabe and his memory-depleted wife. This current viewing left me further in doubt, with more reason to question Takabe’s possible malevolence.

Such thoughts bring me to the film’s ambivalent finale, which suggests a possible “passing of the torch” or a previous continuation of events that had never diminished. That the film is happy to leave its conclusion in the delicate hands of its viewer is a strong example of its assuredness. It’s also the best display of the film’s ambiguous power. The final moments remind me of another deeply disquieting thriller: Michael Haneke’s Cache (2005). We’re given a wide shot loaded with information, but no clear explanation of the outcome. If you rewatch both scenes, it’s possible to pick up something deeply unsettling that may not have been considered before.  What makes it more horrific is how easily the threat of violence is lost within a sea of the mundane. Something insidious occurs but is soon lost within a crowd of the everyday, which is how Kurosawa likes it.

 

Cure is available to buy on Blu-ray. 

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Article: Procedural - Longlegs (2024)

I was rewatching Longlegs, and I once again found myself repeating the same two sentences: “Is Nicolas Cage in the wrong film? I think he may be in the wrong film.” I’m not a Nic Cage hater. Francis Ford's nephew is one of the only bankable movie stars still around who is allowed to make big choices in his Hollywood performances. When his performances land, they do so exceedingly well.  However, his distracting performance in Longlegs feels like one of stunt casting. A strange, bonkers performance that feels out of place in the admittedly short amount of screentime that he appears in. Despite this, when my recent viewing of Longlegs finished, I asked myself, “Who else would you put in there? Who would do such a character justice?”

Cage plays the titular Longlegs: a suspected serial killer with a disturbing M.O: The ability to have all members of the families he chooses to be grisly murdered, yet leaving no trace of involvement at the scene of the crime. The FBI are baffled at how a multitude of gruesome killings, spanning over decades, have occurred with not a hint of a solid lead coming their way. Enter Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a dedicated yet knowingly disturbed agent who is recruited on the case due to being “highly intuitive”. This becomes a substitute for being somewhat psychically clairvoyant. Harker’s apparent gift allows the FBI to start making headway into the case. But as Harker delves deeper into the case, a connection between the killer and the agent is slowly discovered.

That dollop of synopsis may feel like too much of this police procedural is revealed. There’s more than good heft of the film’s plot found there. Yet Longlegs is a horror crime thriller that manages to be rather straightforward, yet bizarrely obscure at the same time. The film, a box-office hit when released in 2024, polarised audiences, to say the least. Nonsensical to some, yet chillingly atmospheric to others. It’s easy to dismiss, because the film seems uninterested in stitching the narrative fabric into something with more grounded logic. At the same time, Longlegs is compelling because it’s an American thriller that feels closest to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (1997); a film where rhyme and reason are at odds with its stiflingly claustrophobic mood. If the film’s oppressive ambience feels cosy enough for the viewer, they may not be too bothered with how everything is knitted together. 

I’m still unsure if the wool is still over my eyes. Director Osgood Perkins brand of horror is alluring because he has such a tight grip on the film’s environment. For a film which shoots only in wide-angle and medium shots, why do you feel so boxed in? Are the red-eyed film photographs of unfortunate family members a subtle indication of the supernatural bleeding to the surface? Maika Monroe is fascinating as Harker, an FBI agent who is the opposite of Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling. Unlike the diligent, confident Starling, Harker can barely keep things together throughout. The psychological strain is wedded onto her face so tightly that she seems to be humming with anxiety. As the narrative slowly sinks into its themes of Devil worship, sinful mothers and possession, you can sense the FBI agent pulse with tension with every ongoing moment. With Lee Harker, Perkins has added another compellingly troubled yet vulnerable female protagonist to his steadily growing list. Watching Monroe deduce, detect and wander through each meticulously composed frame is as engrossing as it is eerie.

But then there’s the Nic Cage of it all. 

Cage’s performance is so unhinged it destabilises the film's mood. He’s bellowing out T-Rex songs, but the rest of the film doesn’t seem to be harmonising with him. One bizarre scene has Cage’s Longlegs interact with a young shopgirl in a way that’s somewhat amusing yet feels more akin to Perkins’ own The Monkey (2025). Cage’s outlandishness can often be a good fit in off-kilter material. While it’s easy to laugh at the likes of Vampire’s Kiss (1988), Cage’s manic energy is a perfect foil for that film’s tone. The deranged display that inhabits films like Mandy (2018) is another great example of how to utilise Cage rage. But with Longlegs? It’s difficult to see what other casting choices could be slotted in for replacement. However, this Cage performance is like that of his ill-fated turn in The Wicker Man (2006), when you wonder what could happen if someone dialled down his love of scenery chomping. Maybe something more akin to Alicia Witt’s performance as Harker’s mother. It’s startling to see Witt, the once fresh-faced final girl of Urban Legend (1997), slowly move towards unhinged final boss, channelling Carrie White’s mom vibes. But it’s an enjoyable surprise.  

What’s more debatable is the film’s condensed finale. For some, the film's final third is the moment narrative logic cascades in on itself. A film that was steadily unravelling at the tactful pace of all Perkins' movies suddenly unscrambles in a way that feels as if the film doesn’t want you to think too much about the reasoning behind what’s occurring. Basic questions could have been answered, but Perkins is uninterested in spoonfeeding. So, Longlegs ends with a muted, uncomfortable and ambiguous climax that refuses to give typical closure, but in doing so delivers the kind of uneasy tension that horror fans such as myself are often clambering for.  In a film which markedly features images of two American Presidents, both noted for lying to the American people, the final moments of a deranged maniac cackling Heil Satan while our fragile protagonist watches despondently at a violent aftermath that she has seemingly no power to stop, it’s an illogical yet disturbing finish that rings the right note for America’s current despondent and isolated status in the world.  

Longlegs is available to buy on Amazon Video. 

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