#movie reviewsx

[adamwatchesmovies]

House of Spoils (2024)

House of Spoils is labeled as a supernatural horror film. Unnatural events take place, there are scary moments throughout but the conclusion recontextualizes so much of what we saw and is so tonally different from what came before that the label feels inaccurate. I’m not sure if a warning that this does not go the way you expect it to will make things more palatable for the audience but I’m going to try anyway.

Elena (Ariana DeBose) leaves her position as the sous chef in Marcello’s kitchen (he’s played by Marton Csokas) to open a new fine-dining restaurant in a remote location in the countryside. Her first efforts prove fruitless – all of the food spoils immediately. In a desperate attempt to meet the deadline imposed by her patron, Andres (Arian Moayed), she begins harvesting ingredients from the abandoned garden next door: a selection of strange plants the locals say was catered by a witch.

The film begins with a flashback to some time ago. Weird, ominous chants are whispered around a fire while a woman is strapped down and fed a strange little cake etched with a symbol. The mood’s been set. You know those lines mean something. The seemingly innocuous things happening to Elena confirm that by settling down in this area, she’s set herself up for trouble. The food that goes moldy instantly, the neverending bugs and the ghostly visions are not stress-induced; there’s something evil here. It gets you excited the way a good horror movie gets you excited. Our heroine is alone, she’s isolated and desperate. You admire her determination to open up her own business and move out from under the shadow of Andres, who isn’t terrible as far as head chefs go… but does make you wonder why ANYONE would want to work in fine-dining if the environment is that stressful and that toxic. The film successfully showcases “scary” aspects of the business too; the way a single critic can just throw your entire menu into the fire, how a single missing ingredient can derail an entire evening and the challenge of having to come up with a revolutionary menu out of thin air.

Another aspect of this film written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy that’s intriguing is the food. In most dark food/restaurant movies, dishes look simultaneously delicious and grotesque to confirm the malicious environment. As Andres puts it when he sees what Elena and her appointed sous-chef, Lucia (Barbie Ferreira) have cooked up, his stew looks like it's been scraped off of a shoe. It's unappetizing. You know it’s a hint that what he's eating has a sinister origin. Only a spell could convince someone to take a bite.

The film’s scariest moment comes in a claustrophobic scene where Elena, locked in the restaurant cellar, is forced to escape through a tunnel that leads to a makeshift tomb. From there… any horror elements in the film vanish. We learn that while the garden Elena has been picking from was tended to by a sorceress… she was a good witch who healed people. So if there was no evil this whole time, why was the building's previous tenant driven to horrifying madness? Why does the witch’s ghost show up in the middle of the night to terrify Elena? Why all the bugs? Why the mold? This sensitive, female empowerment conclusion doesn’t fit the rest of the movie AT ALL. I suddenly had flashbacks of Andrew O'Hehir's butthurt review of The Conjuring, which complained about the depiction of witches as child-murdering, devil-worshippers. Is it possible the movie started off as a straightforward horror film but the writer/directors had a change of heart and hastily rewrote the conclusion to portray more "realistic" depictions of witchcraft? Maybe it was the opposite; it didn't have ANY horror elements at first, but they were introduced after the producers looked at the script and marked it as "non marketable"? Whatever the reason, this finale is a mistake.

I was enthusiastic about House of Spoils for about four-fifths of the running time. Ariana DeBose is likable. You cheer for her character and you're worried when she gets scared. Even if the conclusion comes out of nowhere, doesn’t make much sense and left me dissatisfied, I’m not sorry I saw the film. The parts that work are highly effective. The mismatched ending also works… just not for THIS movie. (November 15, 2024)

[rundownallstar]

The Conjuring: The Devil made me do it

The Conjuring: The Devil made me do it

2021 R 1:52 Vera Farmiga Patrick Wilson HBOmax On July 18 1981 ed and Lorraine warren are called to do an exorcism of 8 year-old David GLATZEL. I don’t think this was as good as the previous movies with the conjuring title, let alone in its universe. I’m.stuck on what to note about it without ruining anything. Basically same case but there’s more mystery to it. Also if you’ve got 2…

[rundownallstar]

A Dark Song

2017 NR 1:40 from IFC Sophia hires and Occultist to contact her dead son through a series of rituals over a 6 month period. Isolated at a secluded house, the 2 find themselves tested as the days pass and isolation increases. Thank goodness I was checking through notifications on my phone, it was so~ slow…and a total bore. All that and I don’t recall her ever getting to see or talk to her…