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Into the Dark: Down (2019)
Stuck between floors
Two people are working late over valentine's day weekend. They get trapped in an elevator on their way out. Everyone else is gone for the day. No help is coming until Tuesday. They are stuck with each other and the meager belongings in their brief cases.
Fortunately these two are young, physically attractive folks of the opposite sex. Hey, they might as well get to know each other better, right? You never know what might happen. A little intimate conversation..., a few spilling of secrets..., it might lead to bouts of nakedness and passionate lovemaking.
Down starts fast on it's evocative premise. The two leads (Matt Laurie, Natalie Martinez) are on the screen for most of the movie. They do a good job as they reveal who they are to each other. They both have an intensity to their character. The tension lessens considerably as the inevitable sexual encounter concludes.
The second half stalls like the elevator they're trapped in. There isn't enough plot material for a full length movie. We guess fairly early that the security guard guy is behind the whole ruse, using his security key to pretend to be stuck. The emphasis is on over-the-top cruelty as they take turns getting the upper hand and torturing each other.
The encounter with the fellow security guard (Arnie Pantoja) is fun and breaks the monotony of the two main combatants punching each other out. It's all too brief. Once the big secret is spilled, that the stalker has set the whole situation up, we kinda know how the rest of the story goes.
Saint Maud (2019)
Maud fraud
My problem with Saint Maud is I was expecting a horror movie and this isn't. Maud is a character study of a young nurse (Morfydd Clark) in emotional turmoil. Saint Maud sets a dour mood. It favors symbolism over hard core action. I'm not saying it's a bad movie. I didn't find enough to hold on to. Details about Maud, the person, are sparse and come too late in the movie. By then I had lost interest.
Maud is a hospice nurse for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer suffering from terminal cancer. She holds to her devout faith with slavish piousness. She left her previous nursing job abruptly, we aren't sure why. She sees things no one else sees that border on the paranormal. She comes to believe she has been sent to save Amanda's soul. Why? I didn't understand why Maud was obsessed with Amanda. The two women didn't really connect and had little in common.
The character of Amanda is excellent, by the way. She was full of contradictions, capable of great tenderness and terrible cruelty. When she is on screen I wanted to know more about her but the focus remains squarely on Maud.
Clark's performance as Maud is empathetic but a bit one note. She too often has a deer in the headlights gaze and seems out of step with the world around her. If that is the intent, Clark did her job well. I wasn't able to connect with the character. She experiences one ominous happening after another, but the action doesn't build to a focused point. I felt like I was drifting at sea watching Maud. She is clearly a young woman full of doubt and conflict. Yet, I wasn't getting to know the real her.
The strange events happening may be real or may all be in the mind of one disturbed individual. We are never given enough concrete evidence to decide. Perhaps that's the point but after a while I felt like I was running on a treadmill. It takes until the last few scenes to move the narrative forward. These scenes are genuinely scary, disturbing and moving. Sadly, the payoff comes too late, in my opinion.
The Heretics (2017)
Fairly entertaing, won't inspire awe
For a movie that doesn't appear to have much of a budget, The Heretics is fair entertainment. It deals with a dark theme, the process of summoning a demon into the body of an unwitting young lady. If you are disturbed by the subject, as my wife was because of real life events, I would suggest you don't engage this movie at all. Otherwise, dive in, but don't expect a reinvention of the whole demonic genre.
The lead character in the movie, Gloria, is portrayed as a beautiful but troubled young adult who is plagued by a series of reoccurring nightmares. Years ago she was apparently kidnapped by a cult and barely survived a strange ritual that left most members dead. She works on her past trauma through a recovery group with the help of her girlfriend, Joan. Gloria is chloroformed and kidnapped by a mysterious, scarred figure, Thomas, and taken out to a shack in the middle of nowhere. He is a former cult member who claims to be trying to save Gloria's soul.
As the movie progresses, they are some minor twists in the road but we can see the curves ahead of time. There are no earth shaking surprises. Thomas initially appears to be the heavy but we can quickly deduce he is sincere. We figure out Joan is very involved in the cult through her increasingly psychotic behavior. The dialogue is not particularly clever or original.
Through all of this, The Heretics remains a watchable film. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding. The music is ominous. There is not an over-reliance on jump scares or a CGI blood fest and body count. Tension is maintained. When we do finally encounter the appearance of the demon it is dark and a bit unsettling.
The acting of the two main characters is good. Gloria seems genuinely baffled at her deterioration from beauty into a disgusting creature. Joan is menacing in her emergence as a remorseless cult leader.
My only problem comes with the actor who played Thomas. He keeps a bug-eyed wonderment on his face for the entire movie. It's almost as if he is playing the character for laughs. He reminds me of David Arquette's performance in the "Scream" series. I just never took him seriously.
Aside from that, The Heretics is a decent scare. There are worse ways to spend an hour and 27 minutes of your life. It only drags a little at it's worst and makes your skin crawl with the creeps at it's best.
Under My Nails (2012)
Smoldering and ominous
I've never written a movie review on IMDb before but I'm stunned that no one has written at least a few words on behalf of this entertaining movie.
I watched it today on the HBO SG (asia) channel, coming across it quite by accident. I admit my initial intentions were salacious. The synopsis was along the lines of a young woman experiencing an awakening of dark sexual desires with a dangerous neighbor. I decided to watch for a few sexy scenes and perhaps move on but I stayed for the entire movie because it captured my interest and didn't let go. The movie doesn't rush itself but moves along at a steady and logical pace.
The movie centers around a young Dominican woman living alone in a small new york apartment. She works in a nail salon, lives a rather solitary existence and is haunted by childhood memories of losing her father. I was dazzled by the performance of the young star, Solimar (Kisha Burgos). I've never seen or heard of this actress before. She is hot and sizzles in sex scenes, whether alone or with her partner Roberto (Ivan Camilo). Yet she is entirely believable as a lonely, isolated person leading a somewhat drab existence.
Solimar's life is altered when a new couple move in next door. The woman, Perpetune (Dolores Pedro), is from Haiti, the man a fellow Dominican. Roberto's somewhat overbearing mother moves in too and is never very far from Roberto's side. Solimar can't help but hear the noisy couples' fighting and lovemaking through the thin walls. She becomes a voyeur, living a vicarious sex life through the couples sexual escapades. One night as Solimar listens into one of their fights she hears a loud thump and then silence. Perpetune abruptly disappears from the movie. Solimar imagines the worse.
With Roberto's interfering mother being the catalyst, Solimar and Roberto meet and eventually begin an affair. Solimar is drawn in by Roberto's macho, direct personality. At the same time she is repulsed by the thought he might be a murderer and pulls away from him as she looks for evidence of his guilt. The tension maintains throughout the movie. Under My Nails doesn't let you go or falls into a predictable movie convenience. The outcome could swing either way up until the end.
Ivan Camilo is very good as Roberto. He is a violent predator and at the same time he seems filled with self loathing and tries to move away from Solimar. Their explosive chemistry together won't allow the other to escape. The sex scenes in the movie are brave and a bit unseemly. These uneasy partners are driven by lust while their personalities continually clash. Nothing is glamorized.
Much of the movie bounces from Spanish to English. Perhaps I was softened by my two years of Spanish in school but the subtitles didn't bother me at all. It felt natural for the bilingual characters to move back and forth between languages as their moods and comfort levels varied.
I don't know anything about cinematography but all the production values of Under My Nails seem high. It looks like any medium sized budget movie coming out of Hollywood. The script is not weighed down by too many words. We see as well as hear how the characters develop.
The ending was somewhat a let down for me because of it's non-action and non-resolution. Yet I think the ending works. We leave the movie wanting to know more and see more and that's why I think Under My Nails is successful and a worthwhile way to spend an hour and a half.