The Thing (1982)

The proliferation of Among Us over the past two COVID-tinted years has made sussing out malevolent forces in disguise a pop culture punchline, but there will always be something terrifying about a known quantity becoming an undetectable evil. Demonic possession is this; the Yeerks of Animorphs tapped into this as well. There’s no devilish facial hair or broken communication to point out that something is amiss—just the haunting premonition that something could be. 

I’ve watched John Carpenter’s cult classic The Thing before; I thought enough of it that I even watched recommended deep dives on the film afterward via YouTube. The Thing safely falls into the category of horror movies I admire more than love; I unabashedly love what it does and how it does it but, absent the emotional character arcs that elevate two-plane horror cinema like Hereditary, Carpenter’s box office flop-turned-cult classic is great—and especially great at how it does its thing—but always felt a touch small in scope. The compelling paranoia it rides forward impresses and ages remarkably well, but nothing about The Thing haunted my dreams. 

Watching The Thing with friends in a lighted room, snacks within reach, is a very different experience than immersing oneself in it though. With Fathom Events placing the 1982 film back in theaters for its 40th anniversary, I experienced the film in a small theater for the first time this week. Surrounded by darkness, my ears smothered by the eerie score, popcorn-stained fingers and close friends to my left did little to affect the intense atmospheric chill the film unleashes. My hand hovering above my recycled cardboard tray, afraid to make even the slightest scratching sound to secure a kernel let alone risk chewing it, I was never scared but tense. I wasn’t alone in this either: our mostly full theater treated watching as a vicarious experience just like the one at the Thursday preview of A Quiet Place I sat with in 2018. Participation in the film happened automatically. We needed no coaching but the score and story. 

My first viewing was most memorable for the impressive practical effects sprinkled throughout the film. These were zany weird organisms with amorphous canine and human features twisted into grotesque hints of recognition and body parts ripped and torn convincingly. Our big screen showing ended with a short featurette about one of those effects—a compromised crew member rips off some limbs before his head detaches and scurries away. Listening to justifiably-revered makeup effects supervisor Rob Bottin describe the process it required was fascinating and definitely added a new dimension to the film, but it didn’t change how effective the visceral effects were because they always worked. Seeing them deployed on the big screen made my heart skip a beat, but I also felt a giddy rush at seeing the whole mess transpire. 

If there’s one element lacking in The Thing it really is the afore-mentioned absence of well-defined characters. We get enough biography to define roles and general traits for each man on the Antarctic base but, other than Kurt Russell’s main man MacCready, there’s rarely a rooting interest in anyone else beyond the presence of a parasite under their skin. This doesn’t really diminish the film; it excels with a lean runtime that focuses on giving the precise minimal explication needed to invest in the story over exploring any pathos or emotional arcs. Still, there is the awkwardness in finishing the film and only knowing three characters’ names without straining neurons. My friend suggested that The Thing could make for an interesting anthology series, each season swapping out its cast while tinkering with locations and endings, and that definitely piqued my curiosity. But it also speaks to the replaceability of every character present. I definitely enjoyed watching Russell, a youth Keith David, and Wilford Brinkley far more than I felt attachment to any single character. 

Indeed, to watch The Thing is to admire not performance so much as craft. Carpenter paces the hell out of this, slowly ratcheting the creepiness up until the explosive second act sends the cosmic horror and intense paranoia skyward. My friends and I spent a lot of time afterward probing around the logistics of what transpires, trying to nail down a plausible sequence of infections, but we were ultimately rebuffed by the meticulous care by the filmmakers to always give enough for twists and turns to make sense but never so much that we could reconstruct with certainty. There’s a definitive beauty to this: while a film like Inception feels cryptic, there are answers present onscreen to guide us toward a valid (if not flat-out correct) interpretation of events. But here? Carpenter defies the viewer at every turn but also nourishes them; some assumptions can be rebutted but we’re left with a metric ton of unknowability too. That might frustrate some viewers, but I love seeing a four decades old film lead three people who had already seen it to sit in the car and argue about hypotheses and mechanics immediately afterward. 

I hold Ari Aster’s horror films in such high regard because they transfer their dread onto me. Hereditary chased me down a dark Kansas City street and stared at me from the shadowy corners of a hotel room; Midsommar left me woozy and haunted by intense imagery and undulating reality for weeks. The Thing doesn’t do that—watching it is much too fun for that—but I don’t think it tries to do that either. This is horror from a different era designed to be experienced rather than discussed as a cultural talking point, and I might argue that The Thing has become that anyway.

My authority to anoint anything a “classic” is non-existent; I only just started to proofread the reviews I write. But I feel safe echoing what the viewing public already has and calling this a masterpiece of atmospheric horror that still holds up perfectly today. (I can overlook the laughable “computer simulation” if you can.) More than assuring its place in cinematic history, though, John Carpenter’s The Thing is a blast to watch from start to finish. And that’s the thing I appreciate the most. 

Lightyear (2022)

I was in the audience on opening day for Toy Story in 1995. I wore out the Super Nintendo video game, I have Woody and Buzz action figures somewhere in my parents’ garage, and Toy Story 3 taps into something deeply powerful for me on every watch. Although I prefer my Randy Newman in Monk’s theme song, it suffices to say that I love and appreciate Toy Story. 

2019’s Toy Story 4 challenged me though. Undeniably an impressive visual achievement and a good film, I fell into the camp that questioned unraveling the warm closure the third installment had offered nine years earlier. It felt unnecessary at best. Another Pixar sequel looking to make a few million off its finest franchise. Even though the fourth movie had its own story to tell, I couldn’t shake that it felt almost cynical. 

The prospect of Lightyear struck me much the same way. The in-universe origins of the Buzz Lightyear character never interested me that much, particularly as someone who watched a lot of the short-lived animated series about him. There was no wrinkle there that demanded exploration; this was Pixar tapping into the Toy Story IP once more to force Disney to put their work on the big screen. Add in the generic sci-fi vibe and proliferation of familiar catchphrases exuded by the trailers and I was decidedly nonplussed. I made no plans to see it after watching every previous Pixar release since Coco on its opening day. 

But yesterday morning an unsafe panel of sidewalk left me falling—and not in style. Landing hard on my hip and ripping open my knee, I found myself bruised, bleeding, and tremendously sore. I worked through a few chapters of revision at my computer but it was difficult to get comfortable no matter how I stood. Begrudgingly, I bought a ticket for Lightyear to force myself to rest for a few hours and, after napping for twenty minutes as an investment toward staying awake during the film, I drove over to the theater and sat for the origin story nobody needed. 

And I kind of liked it?

Strip the Disney and Pixar branding out of this film and you’ve got an excellent sci-fi adventure. It’s derivative sci-fi, with a bit of Star Trek and Gravity here and a dose of Interstellar and The Martian there, and it’s tame sci-fi distilled to suit a younger audience…but it’s good sci-fi all the same. It looks good, it sounds good, it brings good emotion and a good lesson that resonates, and it’s got legitimately good humor too. This is flat-out engaging, especially once the film lets Buzz breathe a bit and become a character rather than a vehicle to say iconic toy things. That tether to Toy Story never works and is the weakest part of Lightyear, but even that stopped annoying me twenty minutes in. 

Buzz (Chris Evans) and Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) are space rangers exploring a hostile planet. Things go south fast and, in leading their escape, Buzz makes a grave error that grounds their ship and forces them, as well as the colony of cryogenically-frozen crew members, to live on the planet and try to develop the tools to finally leave and complete their mission. Buzz takes full accountability for his mistake, vowing to rectify his error, while Hawthorne deflects his self-incrimination and encourages resilience and steady progress toward their goal. 

Testing out potential tech is slow, though, and there are costs to progress. But worse is the calamitous condition the planet ends up in as it is attacked by a hostile ship of robots. Facing a ruthless assailant, Buzz must protect the planet, preserve some new and viable tech with the potential to finish his mission, and coach up a motley crew of untrained cadets all the while fighting his own demons.

That story plays, as do the characters Pixar’s populates it with. Buzz is a determined and self-reliant leader, quirky (he records Shatner-esque narration for everything) but well-meaning and valiant in a way that Evans perfectly captures. But rather than let him just be that, the script inspects those traits’ toxicity. Unlike Hawthorne, who rolls with the gut punch of a failed mission, Buzz can’t let go and can’t put his faith in anyone else, not even Hawthorne, with whom he shares a convincing friendship. It’s not a spoiler to say that Buzz will have to confront these flaws; this is inevitable. But that growth really lands in the final act and it lands in Buzz’s actions. I might quibble with how often he falls back into his old habits before it finally catches on, realistic though that is, but, like so much else here, it really works—especially because his lesson isn’t limited to “learn to play nice with others.” 

I already mentioned Hawthorne but her character truly is a perfect foil for Buzz. Where her partner keeps dwelling and looking backward, Hawthorne continuously gazes forward. She refuses to see Buzz’s failure as loss but opportunity. And yet she never wavers from supporting, encouraging, and pushing her friend, whose goals match a long past version of herself. Aduba nails every note of her character who feels wholly fresh (if a bit too nuanced for the 1995  childrens’ sci-fi film it pretends to be).

The rest of Buzz’s crew is endearing enough as well. Izzy (Keke Palmer) has the most to do and she voices it well, adding youthful exuberance and reverence alongside heavier emotions as they arise. Kudos to Pixar for giving her an arc as well with a particular phobia looming large; a lesser film would have ignored her for more Buzz. Mo (Taika Waititi) and Darby (Dale Soules) are mostly comic relief but they have funny moments, even if the film dips into their respective gags a few too many times in ways that telegraph too much. James Brolin brings a cagey intensity to Zurg whose story is larger and more clever than I expected. 

The biggest victory, though, has to be SOX (Peter Sohn) an animatronic emotional support companion issued to Buzz by Hawthorne after a rough mission. I caught enough commercials to roll my eyes at the feline robot and dismiss it as a merchandising tool but, like so much else here, it works. SOX functions as a portable and adorable deus ex machina, capable of resolving tough predicaments in visually simple ways, and he also serves as a great source of levity during more intense sequences (there was nary a time when his “bee boop bee boop” processing sound didn’t leave me chuckling). But I also loved how he became the first entity to gain Buzz’s trust while serving as a sounding board for our increasingly lonely hero in the first half. Mostly, though, it bears repeating: SOX is funny. 

All of this comes together into a sci-fi story that hits countless familiar beats and definitely has the Disney markings (plucky side characters, marketable animal sidekicks). Even with Pixar making it look great and the voice acting cast meshing wonderfully, this still might not have been anything special. Honestly: maybe it actually isn’t for a lot of people. But at its core is a message and mindset that I hold dear to. During the pandemic, I designed and explicitly taught a lesson about the message at its heart. It’s a powerful message and a difficult one to internalize, but Lightyear nails this message. Hawthorne’s character, the climactic battle, hell the entire movie: these all land for me because they tap into that lesson. I love that they are distilled so well in this film because it means more people will have that kernel put into their minds. 

This is all to say: I know I’m going to be much higher on this movie than a lot of people. I went in fully cynical with a swollen hip and bloody knee. I didn’t want to like it. But graft a silver linings story onto a sci-fi adventure with sufficient heart and I’m in. Lightyear will be a film that I reference any time I share that lesson and mindset for the rest of my life. That makes it a win for me. 

Is this a great Pixar film? Not even close! But it earned my affection and sometimes that is enough. 

Father of the Bride (2022)

Remaking a good film must be torture for a filmmaker. Expectations rise instantly because there is a direct comparison invited by the process and every decision gets filtered through that lens. A director holding onto an element is unoriginal; a director injecting something new risks alienation. It’s an impossible tightrope: a remake comes complete with a built-in audience…with justifiable cause to be prickly. 

Watching the new take on Father of the Bride last night pressed me into the role of that pesky second-guesser that must be the bane of every filmmaker’s existence. 1991’s Father of the Bride (itself a remake) starring Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, and Martin Short is a beloved film for me, a gentle comedy that introduced me to Martin’s kinetic humor and always played well when I was lying ill on the couch. It’s a film I’ve watched dozens of times; I have asked for the “chipper chicken” and ranted about “superfluous buns” with people who don’t get the reference. I would never call it a favorite, but I think of it fondly and credit it with far too much of what I know and think about weddings. 

I was therefore a skeptical viewer in the early going of this modern update. Inspecting every line and expression delivered by Andy Garcia alongside Martin’s iconic performance, 2022’s was found wanting for long stretches. Martin’s was a heartfelt comedy first; Garcia’s felt like it was channeling only the driest portions of its three decades’ elder.

But Father of the Bride seemed ripe for a truly modern reinvention. When I first heard a new adaptation was en route, I assumed present day conflicts might sneak in. There’s great potential for a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner-style conflict where a biracial couple must convince two entrenched families to come together and close a cultural divide. Similarly this could have fit into a coming out narrative of sorts where the successful oldest child returns home with their partner whose family knew their sexuality, begging questions of trust and inviting a fresh angle for a movie originally written in the 50s. True though it is that both those angles have been done before (and well) in other films, the specific focus on tradition and weddings offered great potential. This was not to be: just as in Martin’s, Garcia’s features two very affluent families. There’s stronger conflict here—Garcia’s Billy started from nothing after leaving Cuba, while his daughter’s new father-in-law built up a brewery he inherited in Mexico—but I couldn’t help but feel like an opportunity had been missed. 

Eventually I got past my preconceptions though, right as the film moved into its stronger second half. I warmed to the film in front of me and watched it tap into many of the same emotions the original does. The sentimentality is far more understated here than in 1991 but still plays and the new arcs it offers give the film some added urgency. There is plenty here that doesn’t land but ultimately I found something sweet and endearing here. 

For those of you with Father of the Bride absent in the fabric of your childhood, a quick summary. Billy (Garcia) and his wife Ingrid (Gloria Estefan) welcome their daughter Sofia (Adria Arjona) home from a few years away at law school in New York. She brings surprising news: she is engaged to Adán (Diego Boneta) and they want to get married soon before moving to Mexico to work at a non-profit. This upsets Billy; Sofi is the apple of his eye, the daughter whose drive mimics his own. He wants her close by and present in his life, particularly because Billy and Ingrid were planning to announce a divorce. He also wants her making money and accruing power. The wedding puts all those plans on pause, though, and soon a hectic and ever more expensive ceremony has conflict brewing and Billy on the edge of breaking. 

The main attraction here is the wedding—just look at the movie’s title—but that focus allows every other issue in Billy’s life to reach a head. Weddings are optimistic events that unify two people, but the impending divorce casts a cynical light on the proceedings. Billy demands traditions from the event as though they offer some security, but, pretending with Ingrid (whom he clearly still loves) all along shakes his foundation. Other conflicts percolate as well. Younger daughter Cora (Isabela Merced, who played the cinematic Dora the Explorer) is doubted by Billy but gets a chance to shine making dresses. Adán is not the alpha-male Billy expects him to be, leading to additional bristling skepticism. Billy’s pride results in an expensive pissing match with Adán’s wealthy father Hernan (Pedro Damián) over the venue and guest list. Every one of these threads revolves around Billy, but these arcs—each one absent from the 1991 film—add dimensions that elevate the proceedings. Many of these threads get forgotten for huge swaths of the story—Garcia’s Billy is the Sun here; everyone else just flies by—but, in a movie about a wedding, I liked that there were greater stakes in place than just that wedding.

With every scene centered on him, Garcia has a lot on his plate and, unfortunately, I found the performance uneven. Even when playing a villain in the Ocean’s films, I find Garcia immensely likable, but, while his Billy is far from one-note, within individual scenes, he was: the wounded grouch, the reflective sentimentalist, and the warm self-deprecating father all appear but never within the same section. This only heightens the lunging leaps of growth Billy undergoes. They work but for their lurching suddenness. 

Estefan is good here—her Ingrid is defeated but looking ahead—although this mother role is far thinner than Keaton’s in 1991, Merced shines in almost every one of her scenes, and I was impressed with Boneta playing such a mellow, wholesome guy after previously knowing him only from Rock of Ages. Agreeable and kind but also with bursts of frustration, Adán feels as fully-realized as any character here. The Miami setting, although green-screened in at one point, has a few moments of vibrancy as well. I’d be remiss to not toss in some praise for Ruben Rabasa as Tio Walter who steals every scene he’s in and almost single-handedly delivers comedic goods.

At the same time, two performances stood out as misfires. The first is Chloe Fineman playing wedding planner Natalie, a vapid Instagram designer who butts heads with everyone while being decidedly incompetent (to be generous). I get what she was going for—Short’s filled this role as Franz in 1991, playing it with an over-the-top zeal—but Fineman is in a different movie than everyone else and grates in every scene as Natalie races through internet jargon and insults people for being out of touch. Unlike Franz whom Martin’s George comes to trust, Natalie does not become a symbol of Billy’s growth. I can appreciate that she, as the only white person present, gets the role defined by stereotypes here. But, in a movie that leans into sincerity, she sticks out in the worst way. 

The other issue is Arjona’s Sofi, not because of performance but character. Every character here gets something to do but Sofi, at the center of all this drama, gets somewhat left in the dust. We see flecks of genuine warmth with her sister and some frustrated fire towards Billy but mostly she feels like the object inspiring action rather than a part of it. This isn’t to say that Sofi doesn’t have dimensions; she is an intelligent lawyer capable of grand things and someone deeply connected to her immigrant family’s story…but we are told this rather than shown it. Surely the cost of fleshing out such a large cast, it’s nonetheless odd that a major player gets so much less to do. This isn’t to say that Kimberly Williams’ Annie in 1991 was as thoroughly-crafted as Martin’s George, but we saw and heard more from Annie throughout the film. Here, we got Sofi disposing of a domino game like a boss in the first fifteen minutes…and then lots of characters talking about how great she is. Arjona is great; they just needed to cede more stage to her character as the film progressed. 

On the whole, Father of the Bride treads such familiar ground that I know I’m failing to fully evaluate it on its own merits. Instead of enjoying the awesome cut-free camera work during wedding set-up, I was shaking my head over the grocery store scene omitting a joke about hotdog buns. I’m too close to Martin’s to be fully objective; I pressed play in HBO Max knowing that, at best, this would feel like an excellent xerox. 

And it does…but it doesn’t settle for being one-to-one with its predecessors. It shows special warmth for its secondary characters, it grafts original arcs onto the story to lend it extra propulsion, and it explores the universal story of a father needing to grow up when his little girl leaves within a new cultural heritage. If I’m honest, 1991’s Father of the Bride is a heartfelt story told by a talented cast reacting to Martin’s antics; 2022’s brings a heartfelt story told by a talented cast reacting to the drama inherent to planning a wedding and adjusting to all the changes it foretells. That’s a subtle difference but I liked it. There’s no replacing the 1991 version for me—watching Only Murders in the Building is basically channeling my love for it—but this one has a live performance of “Caraluna” by Bacilos, offers a great cast too, and ultimately hits every beat such a movie should. 

Is Garcia’s iteration perfect? Nope. But neither is Martin’s. 

Relic (2020)

Watching a horror movie in a darkened theater late at night is naturally a different experience than viewing it from a treadmill during daylight hours. So many films require those looming shadows’ proximity to elevate what appears on the screen that I sometimes feel pricks of guilt for swatting away the atmosphere enhancers they can typically count on. But another part of me justifiably points out that what matters is what the film presents on the screen, not outside of it. Good horror should frighten in any room. 

 

Early on, Relic proved its horror movie bonafides by putting me on edge while sunlight flitted in through the venetian blinds on my left. Nothing present felt truly fresh—murky water, dark figures on the edge of the frame, a dusty home bathed in eerie blue and gray light and stuffed to the gills with candles and curios—but I felt creeped out as the world of the film gnawed at me. Relic takes its time, building suspense and begging questions for much of its run time, so that atmospheric discomfort went a long way toward keeping me invested, particularly with a story that treaded recognizable terrain. 

That story: Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) travel to the country to check on grandmother Edna (Robyn Nevin) who has gone missing. Gran flooded the house the previous Christmas and, since she’s past 80 and struggling with her memory, all parties blame dementia. After a few days searching, Edna appears in the kitchen as if nothing has happened, but not before strange happenings reach the home. Edna suffers mysterious bruises, the neighbor boy is afraid to visit, Kay awakes from nightmares about a forest cottage featuring the same stained glass window as Edna’s house, and there inexplicable pounding and scratching can be heard inside the walls. Meanwhile Kay is researching nursing homes, Sam is trying to strike a balance, and Edna seems to be crumbling into one bizarre act after another. Is it dementia manifested, a malicious lurking spirit, or a mass hallucination caused by mold and rot in the time-worn home? Answers are elusive, especially as the house, Edna, and Kay all seem to be hiding respective somethings. 

Skimming that summary, you and I both surely catch a strong scent of familiarity. We’ve seen creepy houses, we’re no strangers to mysterious noises; even the intersection of mental unhealth and demons has been explored before. All of these are present and done effectively in Relic, but the familiarity of each element undercuts its potency. For two-thirds of the film, things are unsettling for sure but Relic struggles to separate from its genre predecessors. 

In the final act, though, things turn for the better (viewing-wise, at least; Kay, Sam, and Edna would quibble with my analysis). The anti-Encanto house becomes an MC Escher nightmarescape of claustrophobia and menace, Edna’s conflict with her daughter comes to a grisly head, and everything ties together into a wild bow that nonetheless cashes out the film. The ultimate conclusion isn’t grounded in reality per se, but it is grounded nicely within the universe of the film. I tend to prefer a mix of firm answers and open questions in my horror (the latter lends to a good haunting through the credits, if not further) so your mileage will vary here, but I felt that this one actually sticks the landing better than it sets one up. 

To its credit, Relic thrusts generations to the foreground from start to finish. This is a grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter in conflict with one another over the perils of passing time. Sam sees duty differently than her mother does, whose life with Edna shaped her own conflicting views on death and grieving. The rituals of aging and death also loom large here, both with the retirement home-versus-independence subplot but even literally: there’s an argument over a notable heirloom that resonates as well (particularly for me who wrote my creative writing final exam about a similar article of jewelry). Underneath everything that transpires is everyday horror: what happens when age leads our loved ones to death’s doorstep? I’m confident I will reach different conclusions than director Natalie Erika James’ film does, but that real stomach-churner of a question amplifies the less-grounded horror we see play out. 

Performance-wise, I found the cast’s work uneven. Nevin has the heaviest lifting to do and she is more than up to the task, flipping between anguished vacancy, bitter alertness, and a hollow rage that terrifies as much as any component of Relic. Heathcote won me over early, balancing Sam’s informative distance from Kay with earnest compassion without ever becoming above frustration; that is: she felt real. Mortimer, on the other hand, was a distant third for me despite being ostensibly the lead. This is probably a fault of the script—we see nightmares through Kay’s eyes rather than alongside her and she gets trapped a bit by the narrow characterization driven by both her judgment toward Sam’s fluid career trajectory and her cold insistence on a nursing home. I would say that Kay makes sense when everything fades to black, but that doesn’t retroactively change that her role was bland and almost trope-y for most of the runtime. 

I leave the film behind wondering about its titular relic. What was it? The creepy multi-level home with its water-stained walls and fresh locks? The artifact gifted then taken back that leaves a mark on Sam? Maybe it was the stained glass window with a dark backstory or the family photos that meet a disturbing end? Could it have been Edna herself or maybe, more broadly, those generational ties that bind us to those who leave us behind? The question is ultimately irrelevant—I understand that titles are marketing tools—but that curiosity confirms to me that something didn’t fully land for me in Relic. Perhaps I should have indulged in the horror movie vibes and watched under cover of night; I might then have drawn more from this then.

Ultimately, though, it’s fine for some elements of Relic to not quite hit for me. I imagine they could hit older crowds, especially those with an additional decade’s life experience. Sadly, the terrifyingly real horror at the film’s core is far more urgent for them. But Time is undefeated; we all face some true-life analog of Relicourselves someday. 

Red Rocket (2021)

I’m starting this review coming off a run of articles on The Athletic about the Golden State Warriors. One focused on the cost of the roster that just won the NBA Championship, but the other centered on their superstar, Steph Curry, who just took home his fourth championship but first Finals MVP award. A lethal shooter, Curry often gets described as a player with “gravity”; that is, his shooting ability draws defenders to him, pulling them away from teammates and leading to open shots for them. Steph’s gravity is emblematic of his immense skill and how he elevates the teammates around him.

 

Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) also has gravity in Red Rocket. With a fast-talking, rascally charm, Mikey disarms the people around him into missing both his narcissism and that his fingers are plucking bills from both their physical and emotional wallets during every sleazy word. Oozing cheap—but undeniably potent—charisma, he draws people toward him like Steph until they are right where he wants them, his face inches from theirs in an off-brand intimacy while his aw shucks smile hides that he is a cockroach underneath whose psychological persuasion leads them to grin as he calls out “Hold that door, friend!”, scurries inside, and begins wreaking havoc.

A former adult film star who dumped his small Texas hometown fifteen years prior, Mikey returns with a bruised face in 2016 and smooth talks his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrond) and her mother (Brenda Deiss) into letting him crash with them. They resist at first—they know him—but slowly he burrows into their lives with some money here, some lawn mowing and sex there, until they are attached. 

Soon Mikey does the same with their neighbor, Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), who idolizes Mikey and becomes his chauffeur and hype man. When Mikey needs money, he starts selling weed for Leondria (Judy Hill) and her daughter June (Brittney Rodriguez) just like he did in high school, excelling by ignoring their explicit and reasoned instructions to the letter. They don’t trust Mikey at all—only the people of color in the film seem immune to any degree of his gravity—but even they indulge him because he is productive and it’s easier than waging a verbal war against a silver-tongued foe who will always win. 

The last one sucked violently into Hurricane Mikey is Strawberry (Suzanna Son), the not-quite-eighteen redhead who works the donut store counter. Immediately captivated, forty-something Mikey leans in, sandwiches a dumb joke between a compliment and a probing question, and slowly wraps her around his finger. He sees a future porn star in her and, as he tells Lonnie over and over, she’s in for it—she just doesn’t hasn’t agreed to it yet. Mikey says she’s in because he wants her to be in and, if he just refuses to stop talking, eventually he’ll find the button to get what he wants from her just like everyone else. 

At one point in the film, I asked myself out loud “Does he actually believe any of this bullshit?” Undeniably a ne’er-do-well and self-absorbed man, I began constructing a profile of a man deathly afraid of silence, so desperate for affection and security that he will do anything. The first to call others on their mistakes but Teflon against any incoming criticism, Mikey eventually convinced me of dual selves—one a cunning cockroach, the other a scared little fly trapped in the web of—

Wait. 

Yeah, no. I too caught myself falling victim to Mikey’s gravity.  Once I ordered myself to stop assuming his humanity and decency, I had to search for it, and all I found was not a lizard-brained feral shell of a person but a manipulative monster hunting down his prey with a dopey grin and ten dozen self-aggrandizing things to say, sharpening his gravity like a knife to abuse people in the same way Steph leverages his to demoralize defenders. 

I’ve gotten this far solely talking about the character and story, which says everything about the primacy of the casting here. Rex is Mikey and his performance is phenomenal, exuding the dangerously persuasive charm that sells the film but also flashing mortal fear when the occasion calls for it. Because Mikey’s entire spiel is itself an act, Rex is playing a character who is playing a role as well. The performance hums with perfect pitch. 

But the rest of the cast only enhances the performance by Rex. Populated by actors with short (to be generous) filmographies, Mikey stands out even more. It helps that the script from director Sean Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch makes those in Mikey’s orbit feel real; just like in The Florida Project, there’s a lived in, grimy realism to every person we encounter. Thin roles have depth: Lonnie, Lexi, Strawberry all have demons we get just enough of to understand them and empathize with them, which allows us to see snake charmer Mikey play his magic flute and lead them into the trail of destruction following in his wake. Known names in those roles couldn’t sell this the same way; amid the smoking oil derricks and unfenced yards of dying grass, Rex’s star shines even brighter, strengthening Mikey’s magnetism even more because of how unshowy everything on-screen is.

In a film almost perfectly realized, my one gripe is quite small. The film is set in summer 2016, a fact that we are reminded of by the TV in the background talking Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. I knew going in that there was a connection between the former and Red Rocket, but the constant underlining in the film interrupted my immersion. A lesser film might have needed those arrows; a single instance at the end (instead of four or five throughout) would have sufficed here to draw a potent parallel. But that’s kind of it. Red Rocket meanders through its thoroughly lived-in world but even then it zips forward with an incredible inertia as powerful as Mikey’s selfishness. 

I’ll end this here. A few paragraphs back in my original draft, I referred to Mikey as a “man-child” while describing his behavior. It dawned on me later that, even in criticizing him with that term, I was again falling prey to him. Baker and Bergoch have created a character whose slimy irresistibility erodes objective analysis when left unchecked. Printed in text, Mikey’s words are unquestionably vile and repugnant; we’d react as June does while he narrates the “artistry” of his award-winning scene work. Absent his brash, disarming delivery and boyish grin while bicycling down the street, Mikey is an obvious predator, stalking victims with an unashamed ruthlessness. I’ll go further: he is a monster in the dangerous form of a calculating manipulator. We see this over and over again. Yet I instinctively called him a man-child; yet, while he watches Strawberry sing at her piano, full of youthful promise rips to be undone by him, I searched his face for regret or guilt or even a single shred of conflictedness. I am easily manipulated but still: how impressive is it to craft a film that aggressively and repeatedly underlines “this man is a willful menace” but still pull you into his shot even as you know to defend the pass. 

But that’s thing about remarkable gravity: no different than Steph’s ability to shoot and pass, once you’re in Mikey’s gravity, there are no winners. You’ve already lost. 

She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

One of my favorite book series has to be the Thursday Next series from author Jasper Fforde. Following a former soldier who becomes a detective in literature crimes—that is: crimes that take place inside books—they are endlessly funny and entertaining, even for someone who misses many of the literary references. I bring this up here because, near the end of the series, there is a subplot in which a villain tortures a character with a mindworm, implanting the idea that the character has a daughter. The fictional daughter’s absence is constantly distressing and, in a series I otherwise think about for its whimsy and inventive plots, that mindworm is truly, hauntingly terrifying.

 

I can’t explain what happens to Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) in She Dies Tomorrow without thinking of that mindworm. One minute Amy is on a weekend trip with her boyfriend; the next she is slammed with an alarming but unavoidable truth: she is goes to die the next day. Relapsing into a drunken fugue state of sorts, she calls her friend Jane (Jane Adams) for support…but the initially skeptical Jane soon realizes the same thing: her death is 24 hours away as well. Slowly this urgent tragic fact swings through a string of contacts via Jane and Amy as the night approach midnight and all brace for that frightful arrival of tomorrow. 

As someone who often struggles with warping his own reality, She Dies Tomorrow spread its fugue-like state through the TV to me: on numerous occasions I found myself gasping to take in breaths because I had been too absorbed in the film to bother with respiration. It helps that the film is suffocating in its focus, featuring long close-up shots of faces as they crumble under the onset ting knowledge of their own finity. There are these flashing multi-colored lights and a chorus of mostly indecipherable whispers that accompany many of these shots; they shouldn’t be frightening but they unsettled me enough that I actually averted my eyes during the second half. Woven in too are images from cellular slides under a microscope and, particularly post-COVID, they delivered a mesmerizing menace to the film. Is the clearly contagious condition biological in nature? A psychological issue? Something extraterrestrial, or maybe even celestial or divine? 

Much slower than the onset of this mortal awareness arrives a disconcerting realization: the reason why, the rate of spread, the origins, even the ultimate outcomes for each character’s respective tomorrow are irrelevant. If you know you are doomed to die tomorrow, you can’t waste time investigating how you came to that conclusion and you can’t throwaway time nursing possibilities for the next day. You will be dead. You know this. How do you live in that state if heightened awareness? It’s just like Fforde’s character with the mindworm: if you know you have a daughter and your family is in trouble, you will desperately look for her. The love is real, even if the object isn’t, just as imminent death is real for Amy, Jane, and company, even if it conceivably maybe isn’t. 

Assuming you are suffering from psychosis or a mass delusion is a gamble. If you know your death is tomorrow, are you willing to gamble those final hours away? Director Amy Seimetz wisely grounds this film in a narrow corner: for these characters fated to die, there is no room for concern about the world beyond them. “It doesn’t matter,” one character says in the second half. “Not any more.” I’d like to argue with them but I can’t. These are their last hours of life. Who am I to say what is important for them? 

The cast of She Dies Tomorrow sells the collective psychosis and thrive in those tight shots that Seimetz employs. We can see the wide spectrum of emotions in their eyes with heartbreaking clarity. I watched this on the treadmill, a few feet away from the large screen, and I’m glad I did as anything less would have obscured the momentary twitches of eyes and the subtle circling of lips. Sheil and Adams in particular underline everything great about the film, Sheil by racing through a casserole of emotions within single sentences and sporting resigned and fatigued body language that conveys her inner turbulence and Adams with a haunting glazed-over look of wonderment that accompanies every line of fatalistic dialogue. We learn a ton about these two across the film’s lean 90 minute runtime, but those profiles do nothing to repair the central dilemma. Both are going to die. Soon. They are certain. There’s no time to mask anything. 

The critic whose praise motivated my viewing described She Dies Tomorrow as a psychological horror film but I might submit that this landed for me like a sharp horror film would. By mid-movie, I became aware of sounds around me, I began glancing at the door and hallway in search of approaching shadows; I was in threat-detection mode, my senses heightened by the hypnotic fear in the film. Unlike some of my favorite horror films, though, She Dies Tomorrow refuses to indulge in any closure or rationality that lets the viewer off the hook. Will Amy and Jane and Jason and Susan and Brian and Tilly and Madison and Beardo die tomorrow? I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but the films ends with an explosive cut to black that left me staring at my own warped reflection for a few stunning moments. Even if I think I know what’s going to happen (and I do), there’s a terror in the question Seimetz begs in her film—and it’s not “What happened to them?”

It’s “What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?” I don’t know that I’m going to die tomorrow. (Not right now anyway. Gulp.) But the question is a terrifying mindworm for me all the same.