by ·Comments Off on Faces of Death (2026, Daniel Goldhaber)

Watched this meta-remake because I trust the Pipeline guy, and Director Daniel did not let me down even if Writer Daniel (and his Cam co-writer) strayed increasingly into dumb-ass territory. I find his internet thrillers less compelling – let’s blow up some more pipelines.

Barbie Ferreira of Euphoria is a viral-snuff-video survivor who now reviews flagged violent videos all day for shithead boss Josh (of multiple LaKeith Stanfield movies) until she uncovers a serial killer who’s recreating scenes from Faces of Death (1978). Killer Arthur (a power ranger) takes over the second half, killing her roommate (of Cocaine Bear), as Arthur and Barbie turn the tables on each other repeatedly until his inevitable (captured on video) death.

The roommate has two copies of Independence Day on VHS:

and two of The Sixth Sense:

by ·Comments Off on The Piano Accident (2025, Quentin Dupieux)

Pampered internet-famous masochist flies into a murder-suicide rampage after discovering that she might suffer a consequence for past actions. However, the makeup woman knew what was going on, and shouldn’t have stood under that piano. Adele Exarchopoulos is up for anything, as usual – her little speech mannerisms are the whole movie, more or less. Her long-suffering assistant is comedian Jerome Commandeur, and their blackmailer is Sandrine Kiberlain, who just wants an interview with the press-averse star, who would rather die than participate. Happy ending for the bird, at least! Nothing inventive here from Dupieux, just a misanthropic little comedy.

by ·Comments Off on Unfriended 2: Dark Web (2018, Stephen Susco)

“It’s not supposed to be funny, it’s actually a horror transmedia.” No supernatural activity here, it’s something scarier – darknet internet trolls murdering teens for the lulz. There’s bitcoin, SWATing, pizzagate conspiracies. I dunno about the masked conspirators breaking into houses and doing literal murders, that doesn’t seem the same style as the SWATing, but I had fun. Watched on my laptop – I kept seeing the cursor and touching my trackpad to see if it was mine. Good sound mix, not too realistic.

Matias maybe-steals a new laptop and hangs out with his crew on game night. Nobody dies for an entire hour, then they pretty much all die. The laptop was bait, “we did everything they wanted us to do.” The blu-ray presents four different endings, some real indecision here, including a cliffhanger and one where Matias gets Vanishing‘d.

Writer/director Susco started out writing Grudge and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. Lead dude Colin Woodell was in Searching, weirdly specializing in desktop movies. Somehow didn’t recognize Betty Gabriel (Get Out).

by ·Comments Off on We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021, Jane Schoenbrun)

Casey is eating string cheese in the opening scene, says she’s taking the World’s Fair Challenge. Repeats the words, stabs herself with a pin, then hits play on a video which based on the reflections on her face appears to be the end of Lux Aeterna. Alex G music and Albert Birney video game animation. Abandoned strip mall aesthetic when she goes outside. Multiple creepypasta and Paranormal Activity references. “I love horror movies and I thought it might be cool to try actually living in one.” She’s using Photo Booth app for video recording, I don’t think that’s a thing? Sleep?walks to the shed and admires daddy’s rifle, then watches ASMR videos. Commenter JLB sends her a laughing-clown twisted picture of herself, claims to be “nobody” just wants to help her. We soon see JLB, a bald Tim Roth-ish guy. Then a cheap cinematic adaptation of the same story as an autoplay video. I like that she’s going through all this and her channel videos only have 50 views… but what is she even going through? And what does JLB know, or is trying to help her from? She makes a response video addressed to him, a tarot card reading accusing him of being pathetic. Problem with found footage films is that in seeking authenticity, your movie looks very bad. 70 minutes in the major event that’s happened as a result of her Challenge is that she’s torn up her favorite stuffed animal then cried about it – or maybe this was normal sleep deprivation / moody teen / youtube overdose behavior. “They’re just videos” JLB: Casey… “That’s not even my name” She calls him a pedophile and hangs up. A year later she contacted him and they met up in NY. After Saint Maud this is my second movie of the month that hints at horror but ain’t horror.

by ·Comments Off on Unfriended (2014, Levan Gabriadze)

“What is a troll?”

Cyberbullies get murdered by ghost of their victim, five stars. Much of the terror here is in degraded video and waiting for sites to load. Unfortunately when I think of this movie, instead of the cool stuff like the one guy’s suicide by blender, I keep lingering on the last two seconds, which unwisely leave the desktop and show us the ghost. But movie also had positive outcomes, getting me to put the post-it note over my laptop camera again. Fun how the movie sets up Blaire, whose desktop we’re in, as a friend, paints her as a victim, then as her friends turn against each other and die, it’s revealed that she’s just as bad, and finally worse.

Blender boy is Terri from the movie Terri, and two of the girls are TV stars. The director is from Georgia (the country) and his followup was an “animated documentary” about a painter/puppeteer. The writer worked on the Sleepy Hollow series, and the gaggle of producers are the only ones who returned for the sequel.

How did Karl Krumpet’s 25-second vacation video get eleven million views??

by ·Comments Off on Cam (2018, Daniel Goldhaber)

A decent doppelganger thriller with an anticlimactic ending, our lead Alice challenging her alter-ego Lola to a live simon-says, and Alice gets more likes by smashing her nose against a table, so Lola hands over her account password and presumably dematerializes. Kind of a neat creepy concept in the meantime though, combining the phenomenon of “cam girls” (girls with live online video shows, often nude, competing for tips) and the problem of not knowing who online is a fake/clone/bot/ghost. Great music, too.

Star Madeline Brewer is from the Black Mirror episode with military vs. “roaches.” Her lead customer/stalker Tinker (“I can usually tell when a girl’s gonna be copied”) is Patch Darragh, a doctor in The Visit. Her brother Jordan is Devin Druid, Jesse Eisenberg’s younger brother in Louder Than Bombs, and her mom is Melora Walters of Magnolia who I guess I don’t recognize anymore. Watched on streaming, and it was too pixelated, but since it’s a movie about streaming video, I’m going to allow it.

by ·Comments Off on Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018, Rich Moore & Phil Johnston)

Ralph goes online and gets distracted by pop-up ads while Vanellope gets so obsessed with a Grand Theft Auto racing universe (led by Gal Gadot) that she decides not to come back. King Candy is dead, so Alan Tudyk returns as Ask Jeeves, while back at the arcade Felix and Calhoun raise a house full of adopted Sugar Rush racers. Maybe it suffered from high expectations because the first movie was great, and this one is just… cute. Corporate synergy both bad (any Fandango references) and good (room full of Disney princesses).

by ·Comments Off on Summer Wars (2009, Mamoru Hosoda)

A most unusual movie. Katy loved it and wants to see more like it, if such a thing exists. Opens in Oz, which is like a Miiverse Second Life, then quickly becomes the story of Kenji, a student and not-terribly-important freelance Oz coder, who gets talked into joining cute girl Natsuki at a family reunion to pretend to be her boyfriend.

Family reunion conflict:

Oz gets super-hacked, which has real-world consequences because, unlike Second Life or Miiverse, people and companies use it for actual business, and traffic signals and emergency services can be accessed through it. After the family’s beloved grandma dies, they pool their real and online skills to stop the Oz hacker, with some great digital swarm animation along the way.

One of the few movies I’ve watched recently without reading any critic reviews/comments first – just looked interesting when Alamo programmed it last month – and now all I can find is Adam Cook hating on it at Letterboxd. Good thing I didn’t read that sooner, since we’re now looking forward to more of Hosoda’s movies.

by ·Comments Off on The Social Network (2010, David Fincher)

I avoided this because I don’t much care about Facebook, but after it started winning every major year-end award I thought again. Besides, I’ve seen every other David Fincher movie in theaters, so why stop now? And I kinda loved it. What’s strange is that the stylistic flourishes I love in Fincher’s films (didn’t love so much in The Benjamin Buttons) were missing from this one – except in the great scene of the Winklevoss brothers’ big race, a wordless high-energy montage scored to a Reznor version of In the Hall of the Mountain King (better known by me as the Tetris song). Otherwise, Fincher’s style seems to disappear, simply supporting the brilliant writing (Aaron Sorkin, Charlie Wilson’s War) and acting (Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland, Andrew Garfield of Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Justin Timberlake of Southland Tales and Armie Hammer, who recently played Harrison Bergeron).

Timberlake:

April 2024: Rewatched the first 20 minutes while reading Adam Nayman’s Fincher book.

Rooney Mara and her Jack Johnson 2003 tour poster: