Mommy Lightest

It cannot be said, nay SCREAMED, enough.

Judith Light is, and has always been, a national treasure. 

Quick Plot: Because director Bill Corcoran (last seen here with the Tara Reid screamer Vipers) loves us, we open on a sexy closeup of Ms. Light's lips purring out a beautiful first line:

What she doesn't specify is that the object of her affections was Nick, her grown son and only source of joy in Diana's life. She loves this young man so much that she wakes him up with a freshly frosted cake for his birthday. She loves him so much that she attends his court hearing and cheers him on as he loses. She loves him so much that she seduces his would-be landlord so the pending rental agreement can be nullified, meaning Nick has no other choice but to stay in Mom's house. 

It's, you know, not a very healthy relationship.

Furious when he realizes he's stuck at home, Nick packs his bags to crash with a friend, only for Jane to respond with a suicide attempt. She survives, and unwittingly leaves Nick even further away: he strikes a romance with hospital nurse Abby, who, as predicted by the cynical Diana, quickly gets pregnant. 

Diana tries everything to break up the young couple: faking prostitution records for Abby's background, hiring (and stiffing) an unhoused man to annul the marriage, and finally, paying off a pair of goons to just murder the poor girl. 

That wraps us back to the framing device of Diana's narration, coming from inside a jail cell because naturally, she's caught. But sweet Nick can't believe that his mother would do such a thing and in an act of true law and disorder, agrees to represent his own unstable mother in the murder trial of his own dead pregnant wife.

My gosh do I miss the era of making TV movie posters look like VC Andrews' book covers

Don't worry: the film has already established that Nick isn't a very good attorney.

Still, this is a wild, wild last act. Too Close to Home is based on the true story of a case I won't explain in detail as it may spoil the ending. But if this is your kind of jam, then spread it. Spread it well.

High Points

Seriously, I can never say enough good words about Judith Light. This is obviously a soap opera of a TV movie, but Light knows exactly how to command the camera as a juicy, needy sociopath

Low Points

It's inevitable in a movie light this, but there's simply no way Rick Schroder can summon the kind of obsession Diana has for him in Light's hands. Both Ricky and Nick are simply outmatched

Lessons Learned

A good son keeps an 8 x 10 glamour shot of his mother framed on his work desk

In the '90s, collies made excellent police dogs

Most girls don't dream of being proposed to the night that their boyfriends present falsified documentation of their past as sex workers

Rent/Bury/Buy

Too Close to Home is gloriously ripped from the headlines made-for-TV trash. I say that as a compliment. Find it on Peacock when you feel too clean. 

Sharks On a Plane

We've talked about this before. 

Nobody wants to watch an obnoxious film character mistreat a flight crew. 

I don't care if said awful passenger and exhausted flight attendant become friends after working together to survive a plane crash and several shark attacks. We. Don't. Want. This.

But a plane crash + shark attack movie? I'll allow it.

Quick Plot: Ava, the college-aged daughter of a governor, is heading to Cabo with boyfriend Jed, insufferable pal Kyle, and bodyguard Brandon (I can't explain why, but "bodyguard Brandon" sounds incredibly off to my ears). Also on their half-full flight is a happily married couple escorting their grandaughter Rosa and her teddy bear Mr. Tibbs, and the aforementioned putupon flight attendant Danilo.

Yes, there are others in the air, but they're all going to die very quickly in a plane crash that feels very indebted to Alive. 

The plane lands deep in the ocean but follows the The Concord...Airport '79. science of positioning itself in an air pocket. The survivors are temporarily relieved at their luck, but know their oxygen supply is limited, their structural integrity questionable, and most upsetting, some shark attacks imminent. 

That's a great idea for a movie. The final product doesn't quite deserve it, but 90 minutes of being trapped underwater with broken limbs and hungry tiger sharks can't not be entertaining enough.

Written by Andy Mayson (he of many financial officer credits before shifting to producer credits for the related 47 Meters Down) and directed by Hollow Man II's Claudio Fah, No Way Up seems to also follow the Airport school of near incompetence in its first act--ALWAYS SET IN AN AIRPORT--before finding its feet once the plane gets moving. The first twenty minutes saw my finger hover over the 'stop' button on my remote thinking, "I have better things to do with my life than watch mediocre actors deliver genuinely bad dialogue." 

Thankfully, No Way Up improves immensely once its action kicks in. The plane crash is brutal, the looming sharks cheekily intimidating, and the constant threat of suffocation (more in theory than onscreen). Its (unfortunate) central trio of young characters range from bland to irritating, but Phyllis Logan, Grace Nettle, and Manuel Pacific give sympathetic performances that helped keep me somewhat emotionally invested, even if I was still mostly on the side of the tiger sharks. 

High Points

With its brisk running time, No Way Up wisely keeps itself moving. For that we should all be thankful

Low Points

I understand it's a rule of movie young people that every friend group includes one obnoxious asshole, but that doesn't ever mean it's needed or entertaining

Lessons Learned

Never have breakfast at a burger joint with a fitness-obsessed coworker

Sharks hate nothing more than bubbles

Extra fries and exercise are not interchangeable

Rent/Bury/Buy

No Way Up isn't a very good movie, but once it gets going, it mostly delivers exactly what you need from this genre (plane crash + shark, obviously). It's currently on Shudder.

The Title Says It All

Caregiving for an aging parent is a fertile subject for horror. The wonderfully rich Relic did an incredible job of exploring that kind of responsibility in a deep, loving, and also terrifying way. Today's feature doesn't fair so well.

Quick Plot: Louise and Michael return to their childhood farm home to help see their ill father through his last days. Their mother, who has spent the last several years tending to his bedside, is less than thrilled with their visit. After just one day together, she slices off her own fingers as easily as chopping carrots before hanging herself from the barn ceiling. 

The siblings are upset, and also confused. How could their mother do such a thing, both emotionally and physically. Her diary reveals some obsession with demons, while the coroner discovers a handful of crosses in her pockets. Both Michael and Louise's troubles grow worse as they begin to hallucinate horrific visions surrounding their dying father and already dead mother.

What follows is the It school of false scares. Mind you, director Bryan Bertino actually crafts these sequences quite well, but it becomes very clear after the first CGI spider that we're in for a good 30 minutes of characters witnessing something terrifying, screaming, then opening their eyes to normalcy just as another character enters the frame. 

It gets a bit old, especially when there's not much else to hold our attention. Much like Bertino's The Strangers, The Dark and the Wicked is a very glum film. The lighting is dark, the characters are sad, and our never explained demon lacks a shred of a sense of humor. 

I have no problem with a horror film taking itself seriously. I'd much rather a director commit to the genre than undercut their storytelling with tonal shifts. But there's just nothing to really hold onto with The Dark and the Wicked. I found myself thinking a lot about Antlers, a completely unrelated, equally dour film of recent years. Both are decently executed movies about terrible things happening to unhappy people in a miserable place (though the baby goats are very cute). That's fine if the actual scares add up to something effective. For me, they just, well, added up.

High Points

I can't say this enough: The Dark and the Wicked is a good film (even if I didn't like it), and a good chunk of that comes from Marin Ireland's performance as Louise. I wish I knew WHO SHE ACTUALLY WAS as a character by the script, but the actress does a whole lot of work to make up for that

Low Points

I guess this goes into spoiler territory, although there's no actual reveals so is that even possible? Anyway, the more I think about the demon's process of tearing this family apart, the dumber The Dark and the Wicked ultimately feels. This is a demon that makes prank calls to strangers to make Louise feel bad, then uses a simulation of Louise to drive an acquaintance to suicide. It creates an elaborate tableau for Michael so he has no choice but to slit his own throat, and then flicks it away with a job well done. Then it just brutally kills goats on its own (well, in fairness, maybe Bertino just cut a scene where Louise's apparition appeared to a the herd and encouraged them to slaughter themselves). There are no rules, there is no logic, and I'm left feeling if the writer/director doesn't care, why should I?

Lessons Learned

Listen to your mother

Few things are cuter than baby goats

If your week has been filled with hallucinations that are quickly proved to be just that, maybe wait two minutes before making a rash decision based off a visual display that seems incredibly shocking and unbelievable

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Dark and the Wicked is a well-made film. I just happened to hate it. It's cruel in a way I found simply unpleasant, though I could easily understand why this would work very well for many a horror fan. Make up on your own mind via Shudder. 

This Traffic Is Killer

 

They don't make 'em like they used to.

The "'em" in this case is obviously made-for-TV movies. We have LOTS, but there's something about the way 1970s America gave us these overly ambitious, incredibly dramatic and perfectly timed for commercial breaks features that just has an incredible charm. 

Quick Plot: It's a busy July 4th on the titular California Interstate 5. On this particular holiday in 1976, a 39-car pileup will take the lives of 14 motorists. 

These are their stories.

Well, about a dozen of those involved IN said pile-up. After an incredibly impressive opening stunt on par with the opening of Final Destination 2, Smash-Up On Interstate 5 turns the clock back 48 hours to tell us just how we got here, zooming in a few of the drivers who will meet some dramatic fate. It's a very '70s disaster movie collection that includes:

- June (Harriet Nelson) and Al (Buddy Ebsen), an adorable elderly couple trying to make the most out of June's impending cancer

- a gang of bikers who try to assault -

- Erica (Vera Miles), a later-in-life divorcee trying to find her way and stumbling upon a ridiculously romantic doctor-turned-trucker 

- Penny and Pete, a runaway couple who hitch a ride with Lee before turning a gun on him but killing -

- a baby-faced Tommy Lee Jones as Officer Hutton, who widows his young wife just as she gives birth the to child he'll never meet

- his brother-in-law and sergeant Sam (Robert Conrad), who wants to marry nurse Laureen (Donna Mills), who refuses to do so because Sam could die on the road and leave her a widow like her sister

Got all that? 

Based on the novel Expressway, Smash-Up On Interstate 5 feels unusual today, but probably fit quite well in the epic disaster era of its time. It's a star-studded ensemble piece that culminates in a giant action sequence and a surprising body count. To call director John Llewellyn Moxey a television veteran is like saying Cal Ripken Jr. had good attendance. This is a man whose career spanned four decades, including The Night Stalker and EIGHTEEN episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Not all heroes make it to the big screen.

But they can still wear capes

In truth, I'm not really sure what Smash-Up is trying to do as a movie. There's a certain kind of human discovery in getting to know a variety of strangers whose lives will be fundamentally changed (and maybe even ended) in just a matter of hours by a sheer mechanical accident. The day-to-day, how-we-got-here works better for some stories than others. I would have happily watched a full movie centered on June and Al navigating their relationship in the face of disease, while the troubled-runaway-meets-even-more-troubled-murderer did little for me (and this is technically a horror blog). 

So why even write about it here, you might ask? Well, the odds are somewhat higher that I'll meet my fate at the hands of a bad driver than masked machete-wielding supernaturally gifted maniac, so on that front, Smash-Up IS scary. And you know what? So is being a middle-aged divorcee fighting off the advances of Herb Edelman.

High Points

Seriously, Ebsen and Nelson are so touching as a couple with decades of love and the knowledge that things are about to end. It makes you understand why this kind of storytelling was so popular. When it works, it really, really works

Low Points

Maybe it's just the current state of the country, but the cop stuff (which takes up a significant amount of screentime) is far less interesting than the rest. Even the sheer manipulation of a woman giving birth while her dutiful policeman husband is gunned down summoned more of an eyeroll than frown

Lessons Learned

They don't teach screaming in lamaz

Nothing brings a couple back together like a smash-up!

Never accept a ride from Bad Ronald, even if you're fully armed

The Winning Line

[upon hearing hubby Al tapping out some Chopin on the piano] "You played that the first time we made love!"

I knew Buddy Ebsen was talented, but the ability to play a nocturne while having sex? That's coordination!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is far from a classic, but I found it quite entertaining. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.