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Review by Sean Boelman
An existential zombie movie from the writer of one of the most humanistic horror movies of the century and starring one of the most exciting new stars of the decade might sound paradisiacal to many cinephiles. While Handling the Undead has an intriguing premise and lots of potential due to the talent involved in the film, it ends up feeling too lethargic to be particularly engaging.
The movie follows three families who go through a flurry of emotions when a bizarre signal causes migraines and brings the dead back to life, including their loved ones. Based on a book by John Akvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), this is clearly meant to be another meditative spin on familiar monster tropes, but it is far less effective. Handling the Undead is weighed down by pacing that is extremely slow. And while a slow burn can often be effective, the moments of excitement in this are so sporadic and few that it fails to draw viewers in. Director Thea Hvistendahl creates a fittingly eerie atmosphere, but creepiness alone is not enough to carry the film. One of the most frustrating things about Handling the Undead is that it attempts to juggle so many storylines. Although any of the three storylines would have been compelling on their own, cutting between them prevents the viewer from ever getting fully immersed in the movie — or feeling the emotional impact it could have had. However, this is a consequence of shortening a book that’s nearly 400 pages into a movie that’s only 97 minutes long. 
It is a shame that the film feels overstuffed, as some truly brilliant performers are in the cast. The movie serves as a “reunion” of sorts for The Worst Person in the World co-stars Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen-Lie. (However, marketing it as such is a bit of a misnomer, as the duo are in completely separate storylines.) Yet, despite the cast having so much talent, they don’t get to do anything because of how thin the script is.
The film does have a lot to say, particularly about the topics of grief and moving on. However, it’s not particularly rewarding or enriching, and it’s hard to recommend sitting through such a slog to get to a purposefully vague and frustrating ending. You have to admire the movie for its ambition and taking such a radically different approach to its genre, but it doesn’t always work. Handling the Undead does have some very impressive technical aspects. The cinematography by Pål Ulvik Rokseth is stunning — almost transfixing enough to make up for how uninteresting the script can sometimes be. Also of note is the makeup work, which is often fantastic, such as the design of the undead son of Reinsve’s character. With the caliber of talent involved in Handling the Undead, both in front of and behind the camera, this should have been absolutely incredible. Unfortunately, sluggish pacing and a thin and disorganized narrative prevent the film from making the impact it could have had. Still, those who do watch the movie will enjoy its visual magnificence. Handling the Undead screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 18-28 in-person in Park City, UT and online from January 25-28. Rating: 2.5/5
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Review by Sean Boelman
For a while there, the film festival circuit was dominated by films shot during and/or about the COVID-19 pandemic, and while we’re mostly past that stage of the film industry, there are a few stragglers. Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions is not what you might expect from that setup, though, using its setting to dive deeper into far more complex themes.
In the film, John Early plays a man in quarantine caring for his 19-year-old model nephew in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as everything around him seems to be going wrong. A lot is happening in Stress Positions, and the amount of energy and hecticness will understandably be off-putting to some. Still, there’s a strangely resonant through-line to be found amidst all the anxiety. The glue of this film is Early, whose performance is incredibly chaotic in a way that few actors could pull off without being absolutely detestable — and thankfully, Early does. Early is just incredibly exasperated for so much of the runtime, and it’s great because we feel like we can laugh at him but feel bad for him at the same time. The rest of the cast also has moments to shine. Hammel herself plays a pivotal supporting role and essentially serves as the emotional counterweight to Early’s wackiness. Qaher Harhash starts as a lovable goof, but by the third act, his performance evolves into something much more subtle and quietly poignant. Finding a film with more esoteric humor than Stress Positions would be hard. There are a lot of jokes and situations that only certain people are likely to find funny. Some are aimed at queer people, others are aimed at New Yorkers, and more yet at multicultural individuals. If you don’t fall into one (or more) of the groups Hammel is speaking to with this film, you might be out of luck. However, the parts of Stress Positions likely to stick with audiences long after the credits roll are not the jokes but the poetic stretches driven by narration split between Hammel and Harhash. Although the film is literally about the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hammel finds a way to spin this universal anxiety into something more specific — namely cultural anxiety and queer anxiety — both of which are expressed more bluntly here than a lot of films have done in the past. From a technical standpoint, the film is exceptionally frenetic and sometimes even ugly. Since Hammel’s goal is to capture the zeitgeist of the moment we felt during a locked-down summer, this sweaty, messy look works quite well. The one thing that doesn’t exactly work is the juxtaposition with some of the film’s calmer moments, which stick out. Stress Positions is not a film that everyone will appreciate, but it’s also not a film that was made for everyone. Unlike many COVID-19 films in the past, Theda Hammel uses this collective anxiety in a way that feels incredibly personal and idiosyncratic, making this stand out far more than some of the pandemic-themed productions we’ve seen. Stress Positions screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 18-28 in-person in Park City, UT and online from January 25-28. Rating: 4/5
Review by Sean Boelman
Jazmin Jones appears in Seeking Mavis Beacon, an official selection of the NEXT program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute. Photo by Yeelen Cohen.
Gonzo documentaries are extremely difficult to pull off, but they can be incredibly compelling when done well. Well, Seeking Mavis Beacon is not just a gonzo documentary but also an experimental one, at that, and while it’s not perfect, it’s hard not to admire the filmmaker’s vision for this story.
In the film, director Jazmin Renée Jones and her friend Olivia McKayla Ross set out on a quest to pay homage to the ‘80s educational game Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. However, this soon evolves into a wild goose chase to find the Haitian-born cover model who dropped off the grid decades earlier. Although anyone can apply a bit of logic after the first act to figure out where the search is headed, it’s still an incredibly engaging journey. The one thing that can be a bit off-putting about Seeking Mavis Beacon is that it feels, at times, like the filmmakers are trying to protect themselves with the camera. For example, Jones films a disagreement with the landlord of the studio she is working in. It’s one thing to take the gonzo approach of your investigation becoming the story, but it’s another to create extra obstacles for narrative tension that aren’t necessarily relevant to the issues at hand. However, Jones has plenty to explore thematically, so we can forgive some of her indulgences. The documentary starts as an exploration of Blackness, as Jones explains how seeing representation like that in Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing influenced her life. However, it soon evolves into something more complex, addressing themes of feminism and digital rights, the latter of which has hardly ever been more relevant than it is today. 
Jazmin Jones and Olivia Mckayla Ross appear in Seeking Mavis Beacon, an official selection of the NEXT program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute. Photo by Yeelen Cohen.
The critical aspect that holds Jones’s documentary together is her friendship with Ross. Frankly, the story they’re investigating is pretty obscure and doesn’t make much difference on its surface. Yet, Jones establishes this story's personal stakes for her — and her friend — which will keep viewers invested.
Seeking Mavis Beacon also does a better job of exploring the role that documentary ethics plays in gonzo filmmaking than many other films in the style. The entire back half of the movie, as they try to find their “missing” person, Jones and Ross begin to wonder whether this person even wants to be found — an obvious question to ask, but one that so few documentary filmmakers have engaged with in the past. As far as the style goes, Jones clearly knows how to craft an engaging story. The technological aspect of the story plays a significant role in the film’s execution, as many parts show Jones and Ross’s computer screens as they explore new clues in their investigation. Jones also wisely avoids talking heads as much as possible, favoring discussions instead of people talking to the camera. Seeking Mavis Beacon is an excellent investigative documentary exploring a story one might not have expected to be as fascinating as this. Although many might be drawn to watch this movie out of nostalgia, they will be surprised to see how deeply it explores some of its more complex elements. Seeking Mavis Beacon screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 18-28 in-person in Park City, UT and online from January 25-28. Rating: 4.5/5
Review by Sean Boelman
A still from Between the Temples by Nathan Silver, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute. | Photo by Sean Price Williams.
Sometimes, the best humor comes from situations that are incredibly uncomfortable to watch. With turns from Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane that rank among the best work of both their illustrious careers, Between the Temples is a cringe comedy that gets a lot of laughs, but never loses sight of its emotional core.
The film follows a recently widowed cantor in a Jewish temple experiencing a crisis of faith who has an unexpected change in perspective on life when his music teacher from grade school enrolls in his bat mitzvah class. Silver and C. Mason Wells’s script has quite a few elements we have seen before, but not exactly in this combination, making the film feel pretty refreshing. At first, Silver’s decision to shoot the film on 16mm feels slightly off-putting. It gives the film (what seems to be) a needlessly retro vibe, contrasting with some of the more modern elements of the story and humor, such as mentions of Jdate. However, in the final act, when sweetness gives way to anxiety, the aesthetic choices begin to make a lot more sense. For the first hour or so of the film, it moves along leisurely, taking several tangents that seem only to delay the inevitable. Although the film threatens to go entirely off-course a few times, it’s easy to be drawn back in by its lighthearted charm — that is, until the time bomb finally explodes in a hilarious climax that is one of the funniest scenes you will see all year. Whether or not you find Between the Temples enjoyable will depend on how funny you find cringe comedy. The first two-thirds have a good laugh here or there with an uncomfortable situation, but in the final thirty minutes, if you find awkwardness funny, you’ll laugh incredibly hard while covering your eyes out of secondhand embarrassment. Jason Schwartzman has hardly been better than he is here. Thanks to his work with Wes Anderson, cinephiles are probably most used to seeing deadpan-style humor from the character actor. And last year’s Anderson film, Asteroid City, allowed him to tap into his more vulnerable side. In Between the Temples, Schwartzman shows that vulnerability while also showcasing a more oafish type of humor than usual — and yet, he’s as charming as always. Carol Kane is so well-cast in the film that it feels like the role was almost written for her. She’s the epitome of lovable, but she also has the quality of a live wire that this role calls for. The one casting that feels a little off is Dolly De Leon, who feels entirely underused in a role that doesn’t have much humor or screen time. For much of its runtime, Between the Temples is a charming and funny little film, but in the third act, it turns into something gut-bustingly hilarious. Offering both humor and heart in spades, Nathan Silver’s latest is a can’t-miss — so long as you have a stomach for incredibly awkward situations. Between the Temples screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 18-28 in-person in Park City, UT and online from January 25-28. Rating: 4/5
Review by Sean Boelman
A still from The Moogai by Jon Bell, an official selection of the Midnight program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Australian horror is experiencing a renaissance after the breakout success of last year’s Talk to Me, so don’t be surprised if more spooky flicks from Down Under start popping up on the festival circuit. Jon Bell’s The Moogai, adapted from his short of the same name, hopes to cash in on that success but is unfortunately far too bland to make much of a splash.
The film follows a young couple who, having just welcomed their second child into the world, begin to suspect that there may be an ancient spirit trying to take their baby from them. As is the case with many feature films adapted from shorts, The Moogai really struggles to expand upon its concept in a compelling way. There are some interesting themes in the film about the colonial past of Australia and how many Indigenous Australians have felt pressure to assimilate into modern society and abandon their cultures — and superstitions. However, these feel somewhat underdeveloped, with the film instead leaning on more generic themes surrounding trauma and motherhood. Surprisingly, Bell’s script does a very good job of getting the audience to side with the protagonist. Of course, the nature of the story is that she does some really terrible things due to the hallucinations she is experiencing. Yet there’s still such a sense of sadness and regret to the character that the audience never loses sympathy for her. Unfortunately, while the characters can be compelling, the acting is pretty subpar across the board. Shari Sebbens plays the lead role in a way that feels entirely lacking in authenticity, and while Meyne Wyatt is meant to be a very supportive partner to Sebbens’s character, he plays it aloof in a way that creates an awkward distance. Bella Heathcote also has a supporting role in the film, but it’s so insignificant that it feels like she was cast simply to raise the film's profile. Where Bell shoots himself in the foot, though, is the pacing of the film. It’s never scary, and while the film is constantly building to an explosive end, the conclusion we get feels mostly anticlimactic. The entire third act is so rushed, in fact, it almost feels like they ran out of money and had to cut several scenes. From a technical standpoint, the film has the qualities of a particularly cheesy studio horror flick. The score is overbearing and generic, trying so desperately to ramp up the tension in scenes that don’t deserve it that it’s frankly embarrassing. The visual effects aren’t very good, either, including the creature design that feels utterly generic. The Moogai isn’t a terrible film by any means, and there are enough interesting things to be found in it to make it watchable. In terms of quality, it’s basically on the level of a low-to-mid-tier Blumhouse project. But as far as Australian festival horror goes, it’s definitely more Run Rabbit Run than Talk to Me in terms of breakout potential. The Moogai screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, which ran January 18-28 in-person in Park City, UT and online from January 25-28. Rating: 2.5/5 |