Anika Begay
The release of Go out in 2017, it rocked Hollywood—not just the box office but, for a brief moment, the entire horror genre, which had long been the industry’s most consistent moneymaker. The film grossed 56 times its $4.5 million budget and was less of a breakthrough than a victory lap for Blumhouse, the studio that for nearly two decades has championed low-budget scary movies in the hopes of a big return.
In part, Go out was exceptional: not the first film in which the real horror was racism, but one that balanced terror with humor and absurdity. Eager to repeat that success, Hollywood greenlit a series of horror films about racism. Many of them were disappointing and, in some cases, frightening. Above all, it was exhausting to see so much repetition in a genre that thrives on novelty. But at least these films were From something. Now we are on to the next wave of horror films, which have tended to be about nothing.
The three biggest, relatively highbrow, low-budget horror films of this summer: Maxxina, Long legsAND Cuckoo —represent a passage toward big moods rather than big ideas. They also represent a wasted opportunity. All three traffic in atmosphere rather than real scares. A horror film doesn’t have to be clever to be enjoyable, but is it unfair to ask them to at least not be so dark?
(Minor spoilers follow.)
Of the group, MaXXXina comes closest to having an idea. Closing the film by director Ti West X trilogy, Mia Goth, who stars in all three, plays an adult film actress who lands a role in a Hollywood movie. The best scene comes early on: After being threatened by a man in a dark alley, Maxine pulls out a gun and reverses the power dynamic. She forces the would-be assailant to strip, then crushes his balls with a stiletto heel, rendered briefly on screen as grotesque and violent as anything you’ll see all summer. The theater gasped, groaned and laughed. It really was the stuff of great horror movies. But more than that, it also suggested MaXXXina would go in a fascinating and transgressive direction: that perhaps this kind of absurd brutality could be justified in the moral universe of the film.
Unfortunately, it quickly runs in another direction. While the first two films of the X series find their thrill and creativity in budget containment, MaXXXina It’s a high-production affair, with much of that money apparently going to remind you that it’s set in the ’80s. But gone are the charming homages of X or the strange turns of Pearl. MaXXXina it shys away from the concept it seems to want to establish in its first act: true ambition as ferocity. Unfortunately, after the ball-smashing scene, the rest of the film is figuratively bloodless.
(If you think I’m too harsh, I offer you a review of MaXXXina from my colleague Charles as a counterpoint.)
In the meantime Long legsa surprise box office hit (and Neon’s biggest opening ever), it doesn’t even bother talking about anything. Even with a simple setup about an FBI agent chasing a serial killer, the film’s best attempts at narrative tension amount to incoherence. Characters say things like, “You’re not afraid of a little darkness because you are the darkness.” Come on.
To his credit, Long legs is the most beautiful film of the bunch. Melancholy and at times eerie, director Osgood Perkins certainly knows how to compose a shot that makes the air seem thick. But he uses his runtime to hint at themes (parenthood, trauma, maybe 9/11?) rather than explore them, and several disparate plot elements (Satan, a bunch of handmade dolls, a main character with ESP) never intersect in a way that bothers to make sense.
There are things you like Cuckoocoming out this weekend, set in a remote ski resort in the German Alps. It relies on familiar tropes: a girl in a new town (Hunter Schafer), strangely behaving locals, a seemingly friendly scientist type (Dan Stevens). Schafer and Stevens seem to be having a blast racing around a saturated set, and there’s at least one clever scare involving a bike chase. But even when the film reveals the mystery behind its namesake, a twist that, without giving anything away, is somehow predictable and otherwise vague, it’s clear that even two strong performances can’t make up for characters who have little motivation and stand for anything. Instead, CuckooPleases MaXXXina AND Long legsThey are ideal as cinematography exercises.
I recently came across a miniseries by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for two horror masterpieces, Impulse AND TreatmentThe show, PenanceIt was released in Japan in 2012 and is now streaming on Mubi. Although I knew little about this film, other than the pedigree of its director, I was stunned by its appearance. Impulse AND Treatment are meticulously filmed; the emphasis on dark, deep shadows, especially in interior scenes, creates a claustrophobic atmosphere for the characters and viewers. PenanceInstead, it’s shot like a low-budget soap opera, with bright, dim lighting, that unpleasant patina of a high frame rate. It’s pretty ugly to look at, but still so disturbing. Through careful framing and tight editing, Kurosawa is able to oppress the viewer with so much terror even without the spectral lens of his films.
But more than this, Penance leans heavily on its conceit: a young girl is murdered in a small town, and the four friends who encountered the killer can’t remember his face. The mother tells the friends she’ll never forgive them, and each episode jumps forward 15 years to see what happened to each of their lives. Kurosawa’s miniseries always aims for a single idea: can a person ever escape their guilt?
Although it is irregular in some places, Penance always seems structurally and thematically coherent, while this summer’s horror film schedule — MaXXXina, Long legs, Cuckoo —they have nothing to say because they never started with a real question. You might have fun at the movies, but very few of those movies will stick in your mind.
