Welp, I clearly failed to do the monthly roundup in a timely fashion. While I typically have some excuse that usually orbits claims of being too busy, this time I have nothing to say except pure distraction. Work is one thing, but life is another animal entirely. Though it didn’t bite me too severely, some folks I know are having a tough go. Helping them out when I can hasn’t eaten up too much of my time, but it has made me contemplate a lot of things which drew my focus away from certain tasks. Let’s just say sometimes you have to get lost in order to be found. 

April came in with a horror movie I was excited to see The First Omen. I knew nothing about this going in which is always the best way to see films. That keeps expectations low, and nothing has spoiled what’s about to hit the screen. In a lot of ways, The First Omen is a solid horror movie, but its connection to the prequel is more shackle than building block. Personally, I think it could’ve done better on its own. The movie is also one jarring metaphor about birth and reproductive rights. For more details on what works, what doesn’t, and why it might be worth one streaming – if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you – follow the link to my review.

The First Omen Is a Ghastly Allegory | Film Obsessive

After that I got the privilege of attending the press screener for Monkey Man. Initially, I got assigned the job as a backup. The main reviewer passed the assignment on to me when they couldn’t finish the writeup on time. One thing I like to think I excel at is speedy production. It harkens back to my days writing for BYOT. I’ve always enjoyed the pressure of penning a piece while the door is closing, throwing the pages under the stone barricade about to shut forever. However, I may be getting a reputation for being the guy who can get it done with three hours left. Speedily produced quality articles may make someone a valuable writer but the pressure of such situations can hasten burnout, so I’ve been more cautious lately about accepting similar assignments.

In any case, Dev Patel is a solid performer whom I’ve enjoyed in films such as The Green Knight (2021) and The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019). This step as writer-director into an action role is just another excellent moment in what continues to be a stellar career. Monkey Man has a wonderful energy, slick cinematic presentation, and brutal action. However, it manages to have heart utilizing minimalist storytelling techniques employed by the first John Wick film. In essence, Monkey Man is part of an elevated breed of action films that don’t sacrifice character, knowing that emotions, even if simple, connect the audience and make every moment more impactful.

Monkey Man Mixes Brutal Violence with Emotion | Film Obsessive

After that began a run of documentaries. Fortunately, they were all entertaining. It probably didn’t hurt that all involved the entertainment industry.

The first was Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill. This looked at the tragically brief life and career of a ‘70s singer-songwriter. To say she’s a force of one would be an understatement. This flick is worth watching simply for the anecdotes about her as a youth. This is a person who knew what they wanted out of life and pursued that path without compromise even when it led to ruin. If nothing else, Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill may introduce folks to music that’s always been around yet missing from their lives.

Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill Sings Her Praises | Film Obsessive

Following those flicks I took a moment to put together a retrospective on Bring Out the Dead. It’s not necessarily one of Martin Scorsese ’s best known films, however, I think it’s an underappreciated picture. For one thing, it doesn’t look like any other movie the acclaimed director has done. For one thing, there’s an artistic stretch cinematically. Furthermore, this continues the notion of Scorsese’s tendency to make movies that border on being confessions from broken people. But the details are best consumed in the article as a whole.

Resuscitating Bringing Out the Dead | Film Obsessive

Finally, I closed out the month by getting to review Boy Kills World. This ludicrous action film inspired by side scrolling street brawler video games is a gem. The absolute insanity of the action here is top tier. Narratively, some bits get a tad old. However, the jokes land often enough to keep the chuckles coming between cringes at the shockingly brutal violence throughout. This may be a movie I revisit in the future, exploring the implications of its borderline satirical take on action. And though that risks being pretentious, freelance writers need to pitch articles to earn their pennies. Regardless of what tomorrow holds, Boy Kills World is an action movie well worth seeing. For all the reasons why, follow the link.

Boy Kills World Is Absurdly Brutal Escapism | Film Obsessive

​Ry Barrett as “Johnny” in Chris Nash’s IN A VIOLENT NATURE. Courtesy of Pierce Derks. An IFC Films & Shudder Release. 

In a Violent Nature is an oddly contemplative horror movie. Few films of this kind really offer an opportunity to reflect on the grim events unfolding. For all the ferocity of a Fred Krueger or Vorhees, the kills are quick even when extreme. Here the horror is the time an audience is allowed to wonder just what it feels like to be so thoroughly brutalized. Unfortunately, this meditative aspect is often its undoing.
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The story is a tale almost as old as time. Ry Barret portrays an unstoppable homicidal juggernaut who rises to slaughter teens in the woods. This mute, unflinching force of one kills with extreme brutality. However, the motive is hard to pin down. Regardless of how much this latest slasher variant is moved by campfire origin stories, the reason for the bloodshed seems secondary. 

In a Violent Nature describes itself as an “ambient slasher” flick. Playing off the predictable nature of such storylines, writer-director Chris Nash focuses on the cinematic effort to present events from the brute’s perspective. This results in minimalist storytelling, counting on audiences to be so well versed in slasher clichés there’s no need for narrative. That expectation permits a cinematic experiment in horror moviemaking that hits as often as it misses.

On the one hand, In a Violent Nature does a remarkable job of making viewers think about its villainous protagonist. The movie is essentially a ride along sitting shotgun during a killing spree. It’s a borderline documentary simply presenting grim events. There’s also a strange way the film shows how close humans are to danger, especially when it comes to nature. Often it seems like people are inviting their own demise by having loud boorish conversations, turning on lights in the dark woods, etc. As such, there’s a minimization of humanity, represented brilliantly when a dead body is kicked down a ridge. The camera is so far back the corpse is easy to lose among woodland debris, and it looks insignificantly small in comparison to the surrounding forest. It sparks the unsettling question if these deaths have any meaning at all.
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Yet, In a Violent Nature can be a bit of a drag. Following the relentless brute powerwalking around the woods can get old. Initially it’s interesting, especially how the film sets up why the slasher chooses one route or another. The quiet forest allows for campfire banter to catch attention and the dark night almost accentuates a small flame in the distance. However, the cleverness falls away after one or two scenes, and any point being made is simply repeated. 

Furthermore, the minimalist story telling loses its luster now and again when In a Violent Nature attempts to establish lore. Granted, the film does an interesting job of leaving the urban legend slightly open-ended. Just because characters express what they think is happening isn’t necessarily the case. I’m sure certain audience members will love speculating on which bits are the real truth. The downside is that these moments become cinematic slogs as one character or another exposition dumps in a monologue. The film is already a crawl, creepy as it may be, but these moments become a legless person with one arm trying to drag themselves across the forest floor.

Of course, no slasher flick is complete without kills. In that respect, In a Violent Nature has some fantastically brutal scenes guaranteed to go down in horror history. Describing any of them would deprive viewers of the singular experience of seeing them for the first time. While the movie is never a bloodbath, there’s an eerie cruelty and savagery rivaled only by the likes of Terrifier 2 (2022).
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Comparisons to other fright flicks such as the Friday the 13th franchise or Hatchet films are inevitable. However, they may miss the point. In a Violent Nature isn’t trying to tread new narrative territory so much as carve out a fresh perspective. In certain ways it echoes the novel Grendel by John Gardner, though the movie wisely never makes its murderer sympathetic. But it does lean into a postmodern appreciation for the tragedy of such an individual: doomed to endless Sisyphean slaughter. 

Still, genre exploration is no excuse for certain imperfections. The dialogue of In a Violent Nature is clichéd to put it kindly. Although that may be arguably intentional it doesn’t improve the quality. And once audiences know the words don’t matter—these are standard slasher conversations moving a parallel plot forward—it just makes what people are saying meaningless to the point of being boring. Worse, most of these conversations occur at a distance so are nearly impossible to hear. Anyone watching this flick on streaming will have to turn their volume to max or employ closed captions. It’s truly frustrating straining to hear dialogue only to realize it’s formulaic to the point of meaningless.

That said, writer-director Chris Nash has paved a new path full of potential for horror movies. Where it leads or how many will follow is a question that only time can answer. In a Violent Nature isn’t perfect, but it feels fresh despite the familiar territory it treads. This revitalization is great, and exactly what every genre needs when things get stale. There’s nothing wrong with plain garlic bread, but that doesn’t mean a bit of gochujang can’t spice things up making the old seem new.

However, those looking for a gory bloodbath full of one kill after the other should measure their expectations. The deaths in this are gruesome, however In a Violent Nature hardly has the body count of films like Halloween Kills with its 31 slaughters or The Summer of Massacre (2011) with a world record 155 kills. The upside, though, is that besides being bloody, brutal nightmare fuel each demise is memorable.

In a Violent Nature can be admired for trying something different. Horror fans will certainly enjoy giving it a go at least once. And with any luck, besides bad dreams, it’ll inspire future filmmakers to follow this trail. 

(L-R) Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine Credit: Courtesy of A24.

I Saw the TV Glow is certainly a nightmare. Though in some respects it stabs at a particular organ, the broad stroke of its aim is a cut across the jugular. Alongside a narrative driven by emotion is an often visually compelling unsettling dream. Even its weakest parts are likely to make audience members speculate about various meanings and implications. However, it seems strange to call it a horror movie since I Saw the TV Glow induces more sadness than scares. Although, that’s the kind of debate that helps cult movies endure.
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The story centers on Owen (Justice Smith). Lost in suburbia, the seventh grader encounters a ninth grader named Maddy (Bridgette Ludy-Paine). The two bond over an increasing obsession with a late-night show called The Pink Opaque. This supernatural program for young adults soon cracks their sense of reality, and as the years go by, terrifying implications about what the show is really about affect the young fans in a way that is either freeing or fracturing their minds. 

Ice cream truck scene from I Saw the TV glow. ​Credit: Courtesy of A24

Part of the appeal watching I Saw the TV Glow is seeing where that mystery leads. As Owen and Maddy go deeper down the rabbit hole that is The Pink Opaque, they essentially end up exploring themselves. In that respect, the film says a lot about the pop culture people choose to consume. That in turn allows the narrative to also touch on nostalgia --- the way it warps things positively until the truth triggers crushing disappointment.

There’s a constant sense that nothing is how it’s remembered which makes a lot of the narrative seemingly unreliable. I Saw the TV Glow unfolds as a confessional, breaking the fourth wall as it hopscotches through time. Sometimes this helps summarize what’s happened offscreen in the years elapsed, but too often, it amounts to dumping information in the audience’s lap. Still, it begs the question whether the film depicts events as they occurred or as they’re remembered, tinted by time and madness.
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I Saw the TV Glow is an interesting example of cinematic stream of consciousness. There is an astonishingly superb scene featuring Owen walking down a high school hallway. Words and images appear on screen like doodles in a notebook. All at once the movie coherently conveys how alone Owen is at school, while simultaneously feeding intriguing tidbits about The Pink Opaque. So much is packed into the moment simply through visuals it’s a shame more of movie isn’t like this. 

Ian Foreman as young Owen. PHOTO Credit: By Spencer Pazer. Courtesy of A24.

For instance, there is a monologue at one point that starts to feel like listening to an audiobook. However, the details delivered may not be reliable, so perhaps it’s best nothing is ever shown. What I Saw the TV Glow chooses to show is often as important as what it doesn’t. Though the narrative can occasionally drag, the visuals are never at fault.
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Super saturated 35mm captures an eerie world driven by the dream logic of any David Lynch inspired flick. Meanwhile, fuzzy VHS tapes bring the 1990s back to life through delightfully cheesy clips of The Pink Opaque. Throughout I Saw the TV Glow an original soundtrack featuring tunes from Sloppy Jane, yeule, Bartees Strange, Phoebe Bridgers, King Woman, and Caroline Polachek set a distinct mood. This is a movie with a potent look, sound, and feel that helps drive home the experience. Consider it a multisensory tale of alienation.

What sells that experience best, though, is the emotion at the heart of the story. Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun already showed a marked ability to convey certain feelings with We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021). In many ways, I Saw the TV Glow builds on many of the elements that story explored, though here with a bigger budget and cast. After all, thematically, these are essentially the same movie, both building on notions Schoenbrun first touched on in A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018).

(​L-R) Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman. Photo Credit: By Spencer Pazer. Courtesy of A24.

Justice Smith (Detective Pikachu) provides a heartbreaking display of someone dead inside longing to feel, not to mention connect. Bridgette Ludy-Paine (Bill & Ted Face the Music) is tragically eerie as a young person haunted by reality and untouchable escapism. And Fred Durst is in the movie for some reason, though his presence as well as performance is too minimal to really endanger the film’s quality. Frankly, I didn’t even know it was him until hearing Jane Schoenbrun talk about him at a Q&A after the film.
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Thematically, I Saw the TV Glow is a tale of transgender identity and self-realization. The movie’s multitude of themes and interpretations certainly orbit and come back to that main point, but I Saw the TV Glow is largely about the fictions individuals and societies develop, some of which we never outgrow, in order to “insulate ourselves from reality, to live lives dependent on fictions.” The reasons for which are existential dread, various forms of angst, social expectations, loneliness, isolation, and a profound embarrassment about what we’ve allowed our consciousness to be shackled to.  

 Justice Smith. Photo Credit: By Spencer Pazer. Courtesy of A24

Every few years some fresh filmmaker contemporizes the existential dilemma for audiences. It may not feel fresh to some folks, depending on their personal experiences and level of cynicism; there is a point, after all, when angst driven dramas no matter how well done aren’t stimulating to those who’ve lived through decades of similar cinema (books, music, etc.). However, there is something very vital about these new incarnations of old themes, especially when they inject relatively recent perspectives. I Saw the TV Glow is easy to dismiss as yet another tale of suburban ennui, but that misses the way it showcases pop culture as a modern opiate, and more significantly, how it shares the emotional side of gender dysphoria.
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I have a hard time classifying this film as horror. It isn’t frightening so much as tragic and depressing. Make no mistake, I Saw the TV Glow is an engaging, eerie drama for those willing to take this journey. The trek may be pointedly transgender, but it ably conveys complex emotions many can relate to. Sometimes it does so by outright stating feelings but that may be to ensure audiences get the point: life itself is a nightmare. Likely to join the ranks of Donnie Darko, this is a future cult classic.