Worth Every Quarter

I need to find some kind of term for the kind of "credits heh?" movie that I find so often on Amazon Prime. You know what I mean: you queue up a film you know little about only to say, "heh" multiple times as names you know well show up. It's a positive turn of speech that comes from the top of your throat, not a full-out "wow", more a shortened form of "hey". In the case of 1993's Arcade, which was released by Full Moon right as I stopped renting those movies every weekend, it's a parade of incredibly important '90s faces (at least to young me).

Rayanne!

Ralphie!

OZ!

And of course, LUCAS

Quick Plot: Teenage Alex has had a rough year. It happens when you're the one to find your mother's dead body from a self-inflicted gunshot. Thankfully, she has a solid group of pals and a loyal boyfriend Greg, all of whom enjoy afterschool hours down at an arcade called Dante's Inferno.

One afternoon, the gang is excited to be part of the test audience for the less than creatively named virtual reality game Arcade. Skeptic Nick goes first and falls in love, but when Greg takes up the controls, he seems to vanish. The teens are a little distracted by the complimentary home versions to notice for a while. 

Alex senses something is wrong, especially when she takes a turn and discovers the games seems to know she's looking for Greg. Nick begrudgingly decides to do some research with her, only for them to discover the rest of their friends have been sucked into Arcade. A trip to the development headquarters yields some disturbing answers: in order to keep upping interest from a bored generation of gaming teens, the company has resorted to using human DNA. It goes as well as you think it would.

Full Moon Entertainment was probably the first film studio I knew by logo. To young video store regular Emily, its presence implied killer dolls. Was there anything better?

Released (kind of?) in 1993, Arcade feels like a far more professional production than some of the Demonic Toys offshoots that would come shortly after. Sure, the actual visuals are as dated as you'd expect, but the general video game theorizing still has relevance a lifetime later. Screenwriter David S. Goyer would go on to a far more glamorous career in the DC and Marvel universe, but as someone who usually groans when I see his name above the title, I can say with surprising confidence that this might be my new favorite of his credits. 

It's not the deepest compliment to ever say that this is top tier Albert Pyun (this is the same prolific B-movie maestro who directed Alien From LA). Still, Arcade IS good! Maybe my expectations were low, but this film had a lot of charm. The early '90s aesthetic goes pretty far, plus we have a genuinely strong young cast easily holding our interest. The ending is satisfyingly pleasant, then even MORE satisfyingly winking if you catch the Amazon Prime 'extended' version. All in all, well worth a few quarters. 

High Points

Megan Ward isn't the most dynamic of final girls, but her Alex is a believably hurting teenager, and by the end, I was fully onboard in rooting for her triumph

Low Points

90 minutes is absolutely the right length for a 1993 low budget horror movie about virtual reality gone wrong, but with a cast this stacked, it's hard not to feel like this film deserved a LITTLE more time with some character interactions and development

Lessons Learned

To sublimate is to mess up

Nothing gets executive attention like the threat of a virgin sacrifice

Any Star Trek: Next Generation fan would know: never buy anything Q is selling, even if it's free

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can acknowledge that I'm a VERY particular demographic. Arcade might not have worked for 11-year-old me, but 31 years later, it's incredibly satisfying in a fairly dumb way. Give it a go via Amazon Prime.

Putting the Kill In Your 401K

 

It's shocking to me how rare the horror genre dips into workplace culture. Setting your film in an office opens up such a great opportunity for a diverse mixture of ages and skills, yet it's all too rare to see it explored. For every ten summer camp sessions or ski trips, we seem to get one Belko Experiment.

Like Severance (one of the all-too-rare co-worker slashers), The Conference takes an office team and moves them to a corporate teambuilding excursion. So yes, we get more cabins than cubicles, but it's something.

Quick Plot: Who needs family farmland when you can have an exclusive mall and residential housing for white people? That's the attitude of boss Ingela and project manager Jonas as they take their corporate team out to the woods for a work retreat in celebration of the big upcoming ribbon cutting ceremony to break ground. 

Two things stand in the way: Lina, the rare businesswoman with a conscience who went on sick leave right before Jonas finished some fudgie paperwork, and Sooty, someone who has found the oversized mascot head for the mall and wears it as he machetes his way through the cabin staff and their guests. 

All in all, it's just a hair worse than trust exercises and work-mandated potato sack races.

Directed and co-written by Patrick Eklund, The Conference is exactly what you hope to find in a horror comedy. We get a memorable slasher mask, inventive kills, clever comedy, and biting satire about corporate greed. What's not to like?

High Points

This is a big SPOILER, so skip ahead if that's not your style: The Conference is very much a traditional slasher, but it has a refreshing ending in NOT killing all but our final girl. In my younger years, such an act of mercy might have annoyed me, but today, it feels...nice. Some people deserve to live (or at the very least, to not die horribly at the hands of a vengeful farmer) and it felt genuinely GOOD to walk away from this movie seeing some of the perfectly fine and surprisingly capable characters limp off into the sunset (and hopefully, a very nice severance package)

Low Points

Considering the substantial size of the cast (by slasher standards), it feels like there could have been a little more time spent in introducing the characters and the roles within the company. The ones who DO get that attention (Jonas, Ingela) are clearly established, but as we round the last act, it's a bit frustrating to not necessarily remember some of the last employees standing

Lessons Learned

There's a big difference between goals for the climate and goals for the environment

Charcoal burners were once the proletariat of the forest

There are plenty of white gang members in Sweden (though they rarely make the cut in feel-good corporate video ads)

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had a grand old time with The Conference, streaming now on Netflix. It's a sharp satire with some successful laughs, plus plenty of fresh horror violence, including gore you've never quite seen before. Put on your away message and have a go.

My Buddy Cop

 

If you needed one reason to watch Split Second, allow me to paint a picture.

Rutger Hauer in his towering 6'1 glory, a toothbrush in one hand and cigarette in the other, as he rinses his Colgate-foamed mouth out with a swish of black coffee.

What a magnificent specimen. What a world. 

Quick Plot: Welcome to the future...of 1992, so in this case, the year 2008! London has become a flooded hell rife with crime and pollution. It's the perfect home for embittered detective Harley Stone, who not only has a great name and is played by the great Rutger Hauer, but is also the kind of grizzled soul who wears sunglasses indoors. 

It's been three years since Stone failed to save his partner Foster from a still uncaught serial killer. According to his exhausted captain, Stone now lives on a diet of "anxiety, coffee, and chocolate." Well, honestly, don't we all?

The killer makes a grand comeback, tearing the heart out of a young woman in a crowded club bathroom. Even though Stone is a lone wolf, he's soon paired with the even better named Dick Durkin, a brainy rookie with more research than field experience.

If you're wondering, yes, Stone's captain begrudgingly pulls a suspended police badge out of drawer, and yes, Stone breathily tries to insist, "I work alone."

I've rarely been so happy watching a movie on Amazon Prime.

The investigation continues as the bodies pile up in gruesome fashion. Stone slowly warms to Durkin while also growing closer to Michelle, his late partner's widow played by the Mannequin herself, Kim Cattrall. It all culminates in a sewer chase and giant rat monster battle, just as you'd expect from the era.

Is Split Second good? That's not the point. It's fun. It's sleazy. It has charismatic actors giving decidedly intense performances, plus a monster design that makes no sense other than being very cool. I don't exactly understand how this creature shared a psychic link with Stone or why this version of the future had to be exactly what it was, but I don't care. It hit all of the cliches you crave while tossing in some grand weirdness at every step. I loved it.

High Points

Could there be a more interesting stud of a leading man than Rutger Hauer? As Stone, he's a hot mess, and that's a compliment

Low Points

Do I fully understand anything about the monster's origin or methods? I do not

Lessons Learned

Even Oxford-educated morgue attendants eat messy sandwiches over corpses

Rottweilers can identify police badges

80% of all accidents are caused by poor visibility (so maybe wearing sunglasses indoors isn't recommended?)

Rent/Bury/Buy

Split Second is a roaring good time for anyone with an appetite for gruff early '90s sci-fi action. It's the kind of movie where you can smell the contents of the rugged hero's refrigerator, and I mean that in the best of ways. 

A Shallow Descent

I like hiking. It's a great way to exercise while taking in the best our planet has to offer. It can make your body and mind feel satisfied in a way that few other activities can. 

It's also filled with wildlife and precarious rock formations and contrary to what many films may think, not in any way a cure for trauma. 

Quick Plot: Joy's boyfriend Derek is an abusive maniac. One night, after nearly strangling Joy to death, he settles for murdering her dog. Six months later, Joy has left that relationship but is naturally still carrying a lot of emotional weight. Her best friend Carmen encourages her to tag along for a wilderness retreat run by Dr. (and you better call her that) Carol Dunnley and populated with a few more wounded women.

As they hike deeper and deeper into the secluded woods, some of the women begin to question their safety. Joy and the twitchy Tara seem to be hallucinating and dreaming about the same humanoid monster, one who might have some Derek in him. Though she puts up a confident front, Dr. Dunnley eventually admits they're lost, only to fall victim to the same haunting voices that want to separate the group. Tough but traumatized army vet Shaina has her own issues, while the steady Carmen begins to doubt Joy's strength in walking away from her abuser.

This is a good foundation for a wilderness-set horror film. Unfortunately, Dark Nature never finds solid footing to really move things into place. It clearly wants to explore PTSD through a decidedly female lens, with a strong cast of women who come at their pain from very different angles. There are obvious similarities to the far more successful The Descent, but the more I think back on what Dark Nature was trying to do, the more I find myself thinking of another wounded-women-exploring-unchartered-territory tale that I liked less than most people: Annihilation. 

One is far more sci-fi and one more horror, but they actually pair well as a set. And both left me frustratingly unsatisfied. 

Director/co-writer Berkley Brady has a lot of confidence behind the camera in her debut. The Canadian mountain scenery is used to tremendous effect, and each member of her cast conveys a deep inner life that the script never fully addresses. There's an intriguing monster concept and design, but overall, Dark Nature just lacks a certain cohesion that keeps everything moving towards one place.

The pacing is certainly slow, which isn't necessarily a problem. On paper, the gradual sprinkles of terror are fine. But the actual tension just doesn't seem to accumulate in a way that puts you all the way over the edge for the finale. Ultimately, everything just feels a little undercooked.

High Points

As I've said before, I can watch Hannah Emily Anderson in anything (particularly indie horror) and it's no surprise that she holds our interest throughout

Low Points

It's a small thing, but such a distracting film trick that I despise so much that I can't ignore it: wet camera lenses. I don't understand why filmmakers think showing drops of water or spatters of blood on the camera is a good idea. All it does is remind the viewer that what they're seeing is actually a camera lens

Lessons Learned

Terrible therapists say things like "risk equals growth" (then send you off to die on the mountains)

The trauma Olympics are way more competitive than glee club

Rent/Bury/Buy

I found Dark Nature to be an adequate way to kill 90 minutes. It clearly shows a fresh and talented voice exploring deep themes, but overall, it just didn't fully come together in a way that really clicked into place. Worth a watch on Amazon Prime with tempered expectations.