The Boogeyman review – deftly made yet derivative Stephen King horror

Host director Rob Savage makes the most of a ho-hum short story from the horror master

The creative constraints of the early Covid era, forcing writers and directors to maximise the minimalism of remote production, led to an inevitable and seemingly inexorable dip in quality. Stories were told on laptops or phones or both at a time when most of us wanted to escape the exhaustion of life lived on a screen, not embrace it, the overwhelming majority offering nothing more than a depressing reminder of how incredibly small our world had suddenly become.

But fresh young British director Rob Savage, using the same base tools as his far more experienced peers, found a way to turn our eyerolls into wide-eyed admiration with his ingeniously effective horror Host. Based entirely on Zoom, it told the story of group of friends who decide to do a guided seance online, and while not a single viewer will be surprised about how this turns out to be a very, very bad idea, the ways in which it descends into chaos do prove at times genuinely unexpected. It was an imperfect film but a perfect calling card, showing how much Savage can do with so little. While his rushed follow-up Dashcam was a total, at times embarrassing, bust – messy and saddled with a wildly grating lead – his closely followed Hollywood debut still arrives with more expectation than most studio horrors despite the conventional packaging.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/VZ8R6FX

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tadej Pogacar completes emphatic debut victory at the Giro d’Italia

Dominant Pogacar wins by biggest margin since 1965 Tim Merlier outsprints Jonathan Milan to take final stage Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar emphatically won the Giro d’Italia on his debut when he retained his unassailable overall lead after the 21st and final stage in Rome on Sunday, winning by the biggest overall margin since 1965. The 25-year-old UAE Team Emirates rider had been in the leader’s pink jersey since winning stage two, the first of his six stage successes, and finished the ceremonial 125km flat run on Sunday safely in the bunch as Tim Merlier won the stage. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/fYFnoe3
Read more

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three. Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/mqu1LFv
Read more

£1 Thursdays review – nightclubbing, sex talk and big decisions

Finborough theatre, London A mix of sweet observations about female friendship and cheeky brazenness about sex, Kat Rose-Martin’s play finds two young women at a crossroads in their lives In the cold air outside a sticky nightclub in Bradford, 17-year-olds Stacey and Jen are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the world they know: the family stress, the looming exams, the pumping pop beats at the club where they’ll reliably pull boys from school. In the other direction lies an uncertain path, and questions of who they are apart from one another, whether they could be the first in their families to go to university, and how to afford it if they do. Constantly on their minds, while they’re drunkenly dancing the nights away, is where they’ll end up, and what to do if they are the ones left behind. Thoughtful if not revelatory, £1 Thursdays covers an uneasy period of big decisions in these characters’ lives, as the gap between them widens. Monique Ashe-Palmer (Six) is ebullient as St
Read more