Dumb Waiter

Hokum (2026) - McCarthy Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy's third outing has all the hallmarks of his two very scary predecessors: everything has to do with an elaborate scheme taking place in one isolated location. Once the mechanics of action are laid out- which takes some time, the film begins to click in its scary ways. And as with Caveat and Oddity, Hokum is scary, good fun.

American writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), is visiting Bilberry Woods Hotel for two reasons- to finish the ending of his Conquistador trilogy and scatter his parents ashes in nearby woods, because his parents stayed in the hotel when they were honeymooning. But Ohm is not a friendly fellow. He is arrogant and dismissive. He snaps at the old proprietor (Brendan Conroy) of the inn telling a spooky tale to the local children about how he trapped a witch in his hotel, calling him an old fool believing in superstitions. He admonishes Alby (Will O'Connell), a bell hop who is an aspiring writer, for asking for his autograph, rude to Fiona (Florence Odesh) the barkeep, all at his arrival. He later bonds with Fiona a little bit, because she reminds him of his dead mother.

The rumor has it, there's a witch who is haunting the place and the honeymoon suite is off limits because of that. You know that the suite is going to be opened up and will be the main location for most of the action taking place later on. Ohm is also carrying the guilt of the accidental death of his mother when he was a child. We see the glimpse of her ghost still haunting him and that he is in a depressive state.

Ohm encounters Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in his van and drinking mushroom laced milk in the woods. Taking Jerry as a quack, Ohm dismisses his telltale stories about the witch and haunting of the hotel.

After Fiona and Alby discovering Ohm hanging from the ceiling, from an apparent suicide attempt, Ohm is hospitalized and recovers few weeks later. When he comes back to the hotel to gather his stuff, Ohm finds the hotel is closing for the season and Fiona has gone missing since Halloween night a couple of weeks back. Jerry is a prime suspect in Fiona's disappearance. Ohm runs into him in the woods again and Jerry suggests breaking in to the hotel after everyone clears out. Jerry is certain that they are keeping Fiona up in the Honeymoon suite.

The rest is pure McCarthy - repetition of the elevator and dumb waiter going up and down, the secret corridors in the basement, isolation and suffocation anxiety, the cat and mouse game with folklore tinged supernatural occurances. Plenty of jumpscare and hallucinogenic imagery- reoccuring rabbit creature references throughout his filmography, all mingle perfectly with the tense atmosphere McCarthy creates (out of little to nothing). Adam Scott playing the world-class asshole also helps with absurd humor. All the creepy details McCarthy puts in - the cherubic sculptures, the creepy rabbit mask, Fiona's rabbit costume, the grandfather clock, etc.

Hokum might not be as scary as Oddity, but it shows what McCarthy is capable of with a bigger budget and a Hollywood actor. I can't wait to see more from McCarthy.

Scariest of Them All

Oddity (2024) - Mc Carthy Horror genre is having a good year with many successful releases. Some of them are very good. But I find most of them overhyped and not at all scary. Irish director Damian Mc Carthy, whose sleeper hit debut Caveat (2020), a 'haunted house' genre, was in my opinion, both original and scary horror film in an ominous remote island setting. He comes up with perhaps the scariest film of the year.

Just like Caveat, the location plays an important part. This time it is a big old remote castle. Dani (Carolyn Bracken) and Ted (Gwylim Lee) are in the process of renovating the property that they just moved in. While Ted is at work (he is a doctor at a mental hospital nearby), Dani has to fend for herself at the big, cold, empty castle. As far as atmospheric horror goes, Mc Carthy is very skilled at creating the feeling that something is off. He is very good at not only jump scares, which there are plenty, but the sense of forbodding with startling images.

After Dani gets brutally murdered in the castle by a masked intruder, her twin sister Darcy, a blind clairvoyant who owns an oddity shop in town stops in at the castle, with a hideous housewarming gift, a wooden life-size mannequin with terrifying expression, for Damian and his new, unsuspecting girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton). Darcy suspects it was Ted who arranged Dani's murder. He is doing some insidious stuff in the mental hospital. And he in turn, challenges the notion of supernatural with his daring arrogance: you wanna play with me? I will play with you. Yana finds strange objects in the holes in the creepy manequin's head - a lock of hair, a tooth, a viale of blood and a picture of Dani and Darcy as children. Unexplained things start happening - Yana's car key disappears, the wooden figure changes its positions by itself, Yana gets to see the glimpse of Dani's apparition in the dark. Freaked out, Yana leaves.

Carolyn Bracken has a great presence in her double roles while Gwylim Lee is appropriately creepy as smarmy, insidious villain. There are many truly terrifying moments in Oddity. The sense of unease Mc Carthy creates has no equal. It's his effective filmmaking - unnerving framing, sense of claustrophobia and timing that really pays off. His playing with the expectations of the audiences provide many spine tingling moments. Horror fans, watch this movie!

Vampirism Feminism

Byzantium (2013) - Jordan

I can't think anyone more qualified than Neil Jordan to direct a hardcore feministing vampire film. This sumptuous, bloody take on cold blooded, eternal beings is a total antidote to what the genre has become over the last dacade. Byzantium concerns Clara (Gemma Atherton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), a 200 year old vampire mother/sister/daughter team in England's depressed seaside towns, trying to eck out a living any way they know how. Clara works as a stripper and a prostitute to provide for her teenage daughter but seems determined to keep Eleanor out of her profession. Some vampiric men from the old order, under the guise of law enforcement, are after them because Clara defied their every rule, especially the one about creating a female kind. It's brotherhood of the vampires, sisters not allowed. The duo ends up in a small seaside town where Clara successfully seduces a local schlub who owns an old empty hotel called Byzantium. They move in and turn it into a whorehouse. Eleanor befriends a frail local boy Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) who is undergoing treatment for leukemia.

Through the series of flashbacks, the girls plight is revealed: their origins, foes and deplorable conditions they had to endure in the Victorian era.

While Ronan's classical, timeless beauty is perfect for the incorruptible eternal youth, it's Atherton who shows a great range as a tragic figure as a ferocious survivor and a protector that she is much more than a t&a. Too bad about the hunky knight of shining armor saving the day at the end. I would've liked it more if Clara kicked a little more ass. Byzantium could've easily been a not so subtle message film: the old era is no longer valid, the old way needs to be severed in order to move on, etc (it was based on a stage play by Moira Buffini). But Jordan does a terrific job, making it as an entertaining narrative with beautiful visuals. And it's touching as well.

Head Trick

Frank (2014) - Abrahamson

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) really wants to be a musician. He composes music in his head day in and day out during the commute, at work, on the streets, at home. After witnessing a suicide attempt of a man who happens to be a keyboardist in a band, Soronprfbs, he is scooped up as the replacement by the group's eccentric lead singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender). Jon is told that Frank never takes off that big papier mache on his head and nobody has seen his real face, not even Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal, in her possibly the best role), the band's theremin player who worships him and detests Jon's presence. The group retreats to a remote mountain cabin to record their album. Frank is a musical genius and his methods are truly eccentric. They spend a long time to prepare themselves before recording the album. Jon even spends all of his 'nest egg' to provide the group's food and lodging. Everyone believes in Frank and what they are doing is great. Jon, in the meantime, with twitter and youtube, records his dealings in the band like crazy, accumulating a huge following on the internet. But when he announces that they are going to play SXSW Music Fest, everyone's extremely skeptical, except for Frank, who is sold on the idea of having their music listened by more people. So they go to Texas and everything falls apart. As everyone predicted (except for Frank), Jon turns out to be and unbeknownst to himself, a combination of Salieri and Yoko Ono.

So how to describe Frank the movie? Is it a take on eccentric musical genius, the downside of stardom, selling out, childhood trauma, jealousy, hollowness of hipster scene, desire to be loved? By the end, Frank is not about anything. Definitely not about music. But is it not funny? Tons. Fun to see Fassbender in papier mache? Oh yeah. It's a great, unique, silly comedy.

Spy in Our Midst

Shadow Dancer (2013) - Marsh

Shifting loyalties regarding family, cause and country are the basis for Shadow Dancer, a sensitive and affecting new political thriller from director James Marsh (Man on Wire, Red Riding: 1980). It boasts a great ensemble cast that includes Clive Owen, Gillian Anderson, Domhnall Gleeson and a relative newcomer, Andrea Riseborough in the central role. 

Soon after witnessing a senseless family tragedy in 1973 in the Occupied Northern Ireland, we are transported to 1998 London, where a sullen Republican member, Collette (Riseborough) reluctantly disposes a bomb in the tube station stairways. Then, she is swiftly scooped up by two ready MI5 agents and delivered to an interrogation room. The whole wordless botched bombing attempt and following apprehension sequences are tense and swift. There, Collette is given an ultimatum by an MI5 officer Mac (Clive Owen): become an informant in her own community and her family or lose everything and go to jail for 25 years. Fearing her young son's fate with the prospect of her being locked up, and after Mac's pledge to become a protector of her and her son from any harm, she accepts being a mole in her radical IRA household.

Back home, with the news of The Good Friday Agreement between the elite Republicans and the British Government looming, Collette's brothers, who belong to a more radical faction of the IRA and are frustrated by nimble politicians, plan an assassination of a high level judge. Collette, being under suspicion from the Republican higher-ups and radicals alike after her supposed unscathed escape from British authorities, is once again pushed into taking part in the terror act. Her absolute last minute phone call to Mac results in the death of her brother's colleague and the failure of their plan. The pressure and suspicions mount. Not wanting to harm anyone by her spying activity, Collette wants out, but Mac's boss Fletcher (Gillian Anderson) won't have any of it. Furthermore, she is willing to give Collette to the dogs when push comes to shove. "There are other informants," she coldly declares to concerned Mac.

Even though it's a classic 'pawn in their game' film, with its deliberate pacing and mood, Shadow Dancer never stays too far from its characters. Handsomely shot in grainy, anamorphic widescreen by Rob Hardy (Boy A, Red Riding: 1974, The Forgiveness of Blood, Inni), the camera often lingers on Collette and Mac's anxiety-ridden faces in close-ups. Working from his own novel of the same name, Tom Bradby's script beautifully sketches out sympathetic characters and their dilemmas without ever being sentimental, all the while pointing out the ugly circumstances brought on by years of systematic humiliation.

Not only is Riseborough fantastic as our morally tangled heroine, always dependable Owen also gives a fine tuned performance as an MI5 officer trying to do right by his subject. Domhnall Gleeson (Harry Potter series) turns gritty as Collette's militant younger brother. Most surprising is Gillian Anderson in a small but meaty role. Her double dealing MI5 commanding officer, Kate Fletcher, is an imposing presence in every frame she's in. Ever since re-relocating to London, Anderson is having a sort of renaissance of her career all across the pond - after her critically acclaimed performances in BBC's Bleak House and Great Expectations, she currently stars in an Irish TV series The Fall and NBC's Hannibal. Anderson's beauty is well utilized by Marsh here as a source of intimidation.

I see this film as a perfect antidote for often faceless, visceral filmmaking that has become the standard for today's action thrillers, which I call the 'Paul Greengrass school of filmmaking.' Shadow Dancer is understated, classy, solid filmmaking with intelligence and soul.

Free Like a Bird

Light Years Away (1981) - Tanner 3.5/5






Jonah (Mick Ford), a scrubby 25 year-old bartender in the city has a chance encounter with Yoshka (Trevor Howard), an eccentric old man. He throws a book at the young man and disappears. The old man's name and address are on the book. With some difficulty, Jonah locates Yoshka in the middle of nowhere, living in an auto shop junkyard. Secretive Yoshka works locked in a garage most of the day, while putting Jonah to work on meaningless tasks in exchange for meager meals. Taking the old man as his guide, the wayward Jonah is up for anything. But the old man is real headcase: one day, he emerges from the garage all blooded up, asking Jonah to bury him up to the neck. Three days later, all healed, he is as good as new. After much taunting for not 'getting it' by Yoshka, Jonah finally snaps, sets junkyard ablaze and injures himself. Then the cranky old man finally lets his apprentice in his secret- in his garage, filled with birds, he is building a pair of wings and he will fly away beyond the galaxy. And when he takes off, he will leave everything to the young man.

Yoshka might be a looney but he opened Jonah's eyes to see the spiritual side of things. Light Years Away's free-like-a-bird, society-as-jail message is a bit too esoteric and dated for me, especially it is set in 2000 (I read that Tanner's referencing his 1976 film, Jonah Who will be 25 in the year 2000, about a group of people living in a Swiss commune). But I liked that Jonah is his own man. There are a lot of differences between the two men. Unlike Yoshka, Jonah is still rebellious young man who still wants to emjoy and love life. I loved its melancholic yet warm tone. It also has plenty of hauntingly beautiful images (shot in picturesque coastal Ireland).

I've been riding with the ghost

The Eclipse (2009) - McPherson


A touching ghost story that is miles better than any other recent boo! horror. Michael (Ciaran Hinds) is a sad faced widower with two kids and an old father-in-law in a nursing home in the small gothic town of Cobh, Ireland. There is a literary festival going on and as he always has been for many years, Michael is volunteering for driving writers around town. He meets Lena, a famous writer who writes about ghosts and supernatural encounters. Funny, because he's been having spooky encounters lately, with the ghost his still alive(but for how long) father-in-law.

With blustering Aidan Quinn as a famous writer who has hots for Lena, the acting in Eclipse is superb, so as careful framing and effective steadycam shots- it's all silhouettes and lots of breathing rooms. There are only a handful of ghost sequences and they are truly terrifying. McPherson's ghost story is mature and rings true for anyone who experienced or thought about grief, death and fear of losing the memories of past love. Thanks Ben, for this rec.