Witchcraft II: The Temptress (1990, directed by Mark Woods)

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The second of the never-ending Witchcraft series continues the saga of William Churchill Adams Spanner.

We last we saw William, he was just a baby and he and his mother had only barely managed to escape from two 300 year-old witches. In Witchcraft II, William is now 18 years old, which leads to some odd continuity issues. Since the first Witchcraft was clearly set in the late late 80s, this would suggest that Witchcraft II is taking place in the early 21st Century. However, judging by the clothing, the cars, and the slang, Witchcraft II is taking place in the year that it was made, 1990. So, I guess despite all appearances to the contrary, Witchcraft was actually taking place in 1972.

(Then again, Witchcraft II is a Troma film so it’s even more probable that no one involved gave it any of that any thought.)

Having been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Adams (two white witches who fled the evil coven), William (Charles Solomon) is now a typical teenager and is obsessed with getting laid. Unfortunately, his girlfriend, Michelle (Mia Ruiz), isn’t sure if she’s ready to do that, which leads to William whining and trying to change her mind be playing air guitar. Yes, air guitar.

While William is playing his invisible instruments, the evil witches are coming up with a plan to bring William back over to the dark side and, not surprisingly, it all centers around William’s need for sex. Elizabeth, who was the main witch in the first film and who apparently didn’t actually die at the end of that film despite the fact that everyone who watched it saw that she very clearly did, has been transformed into Deloris Jones (Penthouse model Delia Sheppard), and she is now living next door to the Adamses. While William has hallucinations of Michelle cheating on him with his best friend, Deloris plans to capture William’s soul (and much more) by leaving strange packages on his doorstep and frequently baring her breasts.

The first Witchcraft was low-budge but it still felt like a real movie, albeit not a very good one. Witchcraft II, on the other hand, is very much a direct-to-video production. It has the look of an amateur 80s music video and the actors struggle with even the simplest of lines. The film’s tone is unexpectedly serious, which makes it even stranger when mysterious pentagrams starts to appear on everyone’s chest.

Probably because of the buxom presence of Delia Sheppard (who was very prominently featured on the movie’s VHS and, later, DVD covers), Witchcraft II was a direct-to-video hit. This, of course, led to Witchcraft III.

Guilty Pleasure No. 46: Spiker (dir by Roger Tilton)

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1985 film, Spiker, is an attempt to make an exciting movie out of the one of the most boring sports in the world, men’s volleyball. Not only does the film attempt to make volleyball look exciting but it attempts to do it on absolutely no budget. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the combination of guts and foolishness necessary to even attempt this is not a real film fan.

Spiker follows a group of college volleyball players as they train to qualify for the Olympics. Or, at least, that’s what I think is supposed to be going on. The plot is really difficult to follow, not because it’s complex but just because it’s volleyball and who cares? We learn that the coach of the team (played by Michael Parks) is a tough taskmaster. We learn that one of the players needs to get his act together and be more mature. We learn that another member of the team has a wife who is jealous of all of his volleyball groupies. Eventually, the team competes in Japan and Poland. In Japan, the teammate who needs to get his act together gets drunk and wanders around with two prostitutes. Poland, meanwhile, is represented by a high school gym and four women doing the polka. One Polish woman asks a member of the team to smuggle out some letters. Which he does. Yay. Exciting.

As I said, there’s a lot of volleyball in Spiker but you’re never really sure if the American team is winning or not. Unless it’s being played on a beach and everyone’s wearing a skimpy bathing suit, volleyball is a thoroughly uncinematic sport. I mean, what do you think of when you think about volleyball in the movies? You think about Carrie White not hitting the ball and then burning down the school. What you don’t wonder is, “I wonder who was winning when Carrie missed that hit?”

What makes Spiker a pleasure is it’s determination. The film is truly convinced that it can somehow make volleyball exciting and you have to admire it for being so sure of itself. It’s kind of like those people who spend night after night in Marfa, waiting for the UFOs to arrive. They may be crazy but you can’t help but admire their dedication, even while you’re laughing at some of the absolutely atrocious dialogue.

The other thing that makes Spiker a guilty pleasure is the extremely intense and almost unhinged performance of Michael Parks at the volleyball coach. Parks plays the coach as being tough-as-nails and always in a bad mood. The film’s best scene features him throwing volleyball after volleyball at a player who has displeased him. Parks does so with a look of grim determination on his face, the sign of a dedicated method actor giving it his best even in a B-movie that he probably agreed to do because he needed to pay the rent. What makes Parks’s performance so memorable is that he never really seems angry. Instead, he just seems to be perpetually annoyed and that makes him all the scarier. Anger, after all, passes. Annoyance is forever.

Spiker is a bad film but it’s endlessly watchable precisely because it so misjudged. You can’t help but find both it and Michael Parks’s performance to be oddly fascinating.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

International Horror Film Review: Deseo Deseo (dir by Eduardo M. Clorio)

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t ever play with mysterious board games, especially if you find them in the basement of a dead person’s house.

That would seem to be the main lesson of Deseo, Deseo.

The other, secondary lesson would be to be careful what you wish for. You might just get it and all that.

Then again, I guess you could argue that the lesson is less about board games and less about wishes and more about the importance of not spending too much time hanging out with your cousins. Because it really does seem as if a lot of the bad things that happen in Deseo Deseo could have been avoided if the cousins involved hadn’t all been so peculiarly close. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I come from a big Irish/Italian/Spanish family and I love my cousins but even I’m smart enough not to spend every waking moment with them.

(Basically, a cousin is a sibling for whom you’re not obligated to buy a birthday present.)

Anyway, Deseo Deseo is a Mexican horror film. (The title translates to I Wish, I Wish.) Though it’s listed on Prime as being a 2020 film, it’s actually been around for a while. It was filmed and started making the rounds on the festival circuit in 2016. It spent four years playing festivals before being “released” on Prime in August. I point this out not to criticize. Instead, I just always find interesting how we’ll refer to a film as if it belongs to the year that it finally got a wide release whereas many films — especially independent horror films — are usually one or two years old by the time they’re finally made available to the viewing, non-festival public. I think sometimes there’s a tendency to assume that a film is shot and then it’s magically released a month or two later. Actually, it takes a lot of work to not only make a movie but also to get it distributed.

Deseo Deseo tells the story of five cousins who visit the dilapidated home of their dead grandmother. Each cousin is a very definite type. You’ve got the fat nerdy guy and the arrogant wannabe rich guy and the awkward virgin guy and the girl who wants to be Salma Hayek and the other girl who is just normal enough that she might have a chance to survive the film. They’ve all got their hopes and dreams, some of which are better than others. The aspiring actress wants to be a star, which is understandable. The awkward virgin guy wants to bang his cousin, which is really icky.

They find a board game in the basement and they make the mistake of playing it. While holding a magical token, each one makes a wish. The game then tells them what they have to do to make that wish come true. (“I want to be a star.” “Cheat on your boyfriend.”) The game also tells them who will be punished if they fail to follow the instructions. “It’s just a stupid game!” the arrogant rich guy says, despite the fact that the game gives some very specific recommendations.

One way or another, everyone’s wish come true. Of course, this being a horror movie, the wishes usually come true in a totally unexpected way that kind of messes up everyone’s life. And, of course, people have to die. Eventually, our five cousins end up back in the basement, trying to wish their lives back to normal which …. yeah, don’t try to trick the demonic board game, folks.

“I wish for this all to end!” someone says.

“Kill them all,” the game suggests.

Seriously, don’t mess with board games!

So, the plot is a bit predictable but honestly, that really didn’t matter. I mean, yes, the board game is obviously bad news and playing with it was a huge mistake but part of the deal that we enter into when we start watching a film like this is a willingness to accept that the film’s characters are going to do dumb things. I liked Deseo Deseo, even if it wasn’t exactly the most original horror film that I’ve ever seen. It was fast-paced, the atmosphere was creepy, and the actors were all likable enough that you at least felt a little bit of regret when they started dying. I look forward to seeing what director Eduardo M. Clorio does next.

Horror Film Review: Population 436 (dir by Michelle McLaren)

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, and welcome to the 100th remake of The Wicker Man.

In this version from 2006, our victim is played by Jeremy Sisto. He’s a good actor but he’s no Nicolas Cage. He played Steve Kady, who works for the U.S. Census Bureau so let’s all take a moment to boo the federal government. Booooo! Steve has been sent to the small town of Rockwell Falls, North Dakota so that he can count the citizenry and I guess help to determine whether North Dakota should get a second congressional district.

Anyway, Steve arrives in town and he quickly meets Deputy Bobby Caine, who is played by Fred Durst. A town where Fred Durst is responsible for maintaining law and order? It’s a madhouse! Actually, it’s a bit of a exaggeration to call the town a madhouse but there’s definitely something a little bit off about it. The people seem to be old-fashioned and very religious. Could it be that they’re Mennonites? If so, Steve’s gotten lucky because we’ve got a lot of Mennonites in Texas and, for the most part, they’re the nicest people you could hope to meet.

Anyway, Steve does some research and he discovers that the town has a long history of losing people to a mysterious fever and that somehow the town has never had more nor less than 436 citizens. It’s almost as if something’s being done to specifically make sure that the town’s population always remains at 436. The people who live there can’t leave without falling victim to any number of mysterious accidents. The people who show up — like folks from the Census Bureau, for instance — are expected to stay. Is it a supernatural thing or is it just an amazing religious-based coincidence?

Steve is going to have to figure it out because he’s falling in love with Courtney Lovett (Charlotte Sullivan) and she apparently doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life in a small town in North Dakota. Also, it turns out that Bobby Caine is also in love with Courtney and he’s not happy about losing her to someone who works for the Census Bureau. I don’t blame him. I guess this where I would insert a joke about some song written by Limp Bizkit but, to be honest, I haven’t thought about Limp Bizkit in nearly twenty years and I’m not going to start now.

Anyway, this is kind of a padded review because there’s really not a lot to say about Population 436. It’s an okay horror movie but it’s not a particularly interesting one. By this point, we’ve seen so many messed up little towns and so many weirdly old-fashioned people with strange religious beliefs that it’s hard to be shocked by any of it anymore. Even the movie’s “shock” ending feels predictable. On the plus side, the film does make good use of the inherent creepiness of living in a state that’s defined by wide open spaces. The town of Rockwell Falls does look convincingly creepy. On the negative side, the film is a bit superficial and never bothers to really explore any of the issues that it raises. It’s content to just say, “Religious people are crazy,” and while many will agree with that sentiment, it’s hardly as subversive a statement as Population 436 seems to think that it is.

Of course, if Population 436 encourages just one viewer to be paranoid about census takers and government bureaucracy, it will have all been worth it.

Horror On The Lens: The Student of Prague (dir by Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener)

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have a film from 1913! A German adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, The Student of Prague is often considered to be the first feature-length horror film. Featuring Paul Wegener (who also co-directed the film) in the lead role, this is the story of what happens when the popular but poor Balduin attempts to get rich by dealing with the dark arts. These things never work out well, as Balduin discovers once his reflection steps out of a mirror and goes out of its way to make Balduin’s life difficult.

Of course, to watch the film today, audiences have to adjust both their expectations and the way that they take in and process cinematic storytelling. As of this writing, The Student of Prague is 106 years old and it’s definitely a film of its time. The camera largely remains stationary and, from a modern perspective, the film is rather slow-paced. And yet, the film’s story remains rather intriguing. Despite the static camera work, the film manages to create and maintain a properly ominous atmosphere and a scene in which Balduin and Margit attempt to meet in a cemetery is effectively creepy. Paul Wegener’s performance holds up well. Largely eschewing the overly theatrical acting style that we usually tend to associate with silent cinema, Wegener gives a nuanced and effectively subtle performance as both Balduin and his doppelganger. When he’s acting opposite of himself, you don’t think about the fact that you’re witnessing an early camera trick. Instead, Wegener creates two separate but believable versions of the same character. The doppelganger represents all of Balduin’s undesirable impulses and everything that has kept Balduin from achieving happiness. By the end of the film, Balduin can’t live with his doppelganger but he can’t live without him as well.

The Student of Prague is an interesting piece of history and one that every true student of horror should watch and learn from at least once.

And here’s your chance!

Enjoy!

Witchcraft (1988, directed by Rob Spera)

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

In this low-budget movie, Grace (Anat Topol), her husband John (Gary Sloan), and their newborn son, William, move in with John’s mother, Elizabeth (Mary Shelley). It’s only supposed to be temporary but Grace soon comes to feel as if Elizabeth never wants her or her son to leave. Even though John supposedly owns “half of Massachusetts,” he’s clearly not willing to stand up to his mother and, at times, it seems like he’s closer to her than he is to his own wife.

Meanwhile, Grace is haunted by visions of a puritan couple being burned at the stake. When the local priest has a vision of his own and sees William’s crib surrounded by super-imposed flames and he tells Grace that William needs to be baptized as soon as possible, Grace suspects that something strange is happening. When the priest ends up hanging from a tree in the backyard, Grace knows that witchcraft must be afoot.

Obviously influenced by both Rosemary’s Baby and The Amityville Horror, Witchcraft isn’t terrible but it’s not very good either. For a low budget film, the acting is surprisingly adequate and Elizabeth’s creepy mansion is a good location for a cheesy horror movie. The film’s plot, though, is predictable. You will guess what’s going on long before Grace does. What’s strange is that the film is full of references to things that supposedly happened but which we didn’t see. For instance, Grace says that she had a vision of the priest hanging before she actually saw him. That’s the way things usually happen in a film like this but how come we didn’t get to see that vision too? How come Grace doesn’t mention it to anyone until after the priest is actually dead? Did the movie run out of money before they could shoot the scene? Did it just slip someone’s mind to include the scene in the film? What’s going on?

The most amazing thing about Witchcraft is that this forgettable film was a big enough hit on video that it got a sequel. And not just one sequel. As of right now, there have been fifteen sequels to Witchcraft, each one of which is a direct sequel to the one that preceded it. (There are 18 films in the Amityville franchise but few of those films share a direct connection beyond the use of the word “Amityville” in the title.) Compared to the later films in the Witchcraft franchise, the first one is pretty tame. Later installments would play up the sex to such an extent that they became notorious for it. The first Witchcraft discreetly fades to black whenever Grace and John are in the mood.

Witchcraft is forgettable but, as the first entry in an apparently unkillable franchise, it’s an important landmark in direct-to-video history.

Horror on the Lens: Nosferatu (dir by F.W. Murnau)

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Horror on the Lens is a classic film that really needs no introduction! Released in 1922, the German silent film Nosferatu remains one of the greatest vampire films ever made. It’s a film that we share every October and I’m happy to do so again this year!

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Burning (dir by Tony Maylam)

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Among some horror fans, the 1981 film, The Burning, has long had a reputation for being one of the best of the many films to come out of the early 80s slasher boom.

I have to admit that the first time I saw it, my thought process went something like this: Oh great, more campers …. I can’t wait to see all of these people die …. God, these campers are annoying …. Thank God I never went to summer camp …. Wait, is that Jason Alexander …. when is the killer going to show up …. oh hey, that is Jason Alexander …. if I wanted to sit through a bunch of silly summer camp hijinks, I wouldn’t have gone searching for a horror film …. goddammit, was it really necessary for Jason Alexander to moon the camera …. wow, this movie is boring …. I don’t know who said this was scary but seriously …. oh God, now it’s turning into a movie about rafting …. I’ve about had it …. this movie is so bor–OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED! AGCK! THERE GO HIS FINGERS OH MY GOD….

Seriously, The Burning is a film that requires a bit of patience. You got to sit through a lot of silliness before you actually get to the horror but once you do …. oh my God! It’s intense. The killer in The Burning is Cropsy, a former groundskeeper who was set on fire by a bunch of campers years ago. Now, he’s everyone’s worst nightmare — a madman with gardening shears. It takes a while for Cropsy to really get into the spirit of things. In fact, for a good deal of The Burning, no one is even talking about Cropsy, which is always a mistake when you’re trying to make a movie about a killer in the woods. A young camper named Alfred (Brian Backer) keeps thinking that he see Cropsy sneaking around the camp but nobody believes him, largely because Cropsy doesn’t ever do anything to let people know that he’s back and ready to demonstrate how gardening tools can be used as an instrument of revenge.

However, once Cropsy actually gets going, he is terrifying! The Burning is a good example of the type of horror movie that was made before the Nightmare on Elm Street series introduced the idea that killers could not only talk but also tell a lot of corny jokes. Cropsy doesn’t speak. Crospy doesn’t joke. All Cropsy does is kill. What makes Cropsy especially disturbing is that — much like the killer in The Prowler — he seems to get a lot of joy out of killing as brutally as possible. He’s not Jason or Michael, killers who killed because that’s all they knew how to do. Cropsy plots and calculates and hides and is basically everyone’s campfire nightmare come to life.

Now, as I said before, it does take Cropsy a while to get started. And we do end up spending a lot of time watching campers do stupid things. Yes, Jason Alexander is one of the campers. He not only has hair but I think he’s supposed to be a teenager in this film. He was 21 when the film was shot and he looks like he’s about 35. He delivers his lines in such a way that it’s impossible not to think of The Burning as being a lost episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza goes camping. On the plus side, he does get some vaguely funny lines, which is more than his co-stars get.

Speaking of co-stars, keep an eye out for Holly Hunter. She was dating Jason Alexander at the time (as well as rooming with Frances McDormand) and she makes her film debut as one of the campers. She gets one line. “What if they don’t come back?” It’s a good question. What if they don’t? (Cue dramatic music!)

Anyway, The Burning is a slasher film that requires some patience but when it needs to be scary, it gets the job done. (The gore effects are by the one and only Tom Savini and yes, they are shocking and a bit disturbing. If you’ve ever wanted to know what losing four fingers at once would look like, this is the film for you.) It’s a bit too padded for its own good but Cropsy is an effective villain and the movie actually catches you by surprise regarding who survives and who doesn’t. Amazingly, there was never a sequel to The Burning. Personally, I don’t think it’s too late. I want to see Jason Alexander return to the camp and finish Cropsy off, once and for all!

Cinemax Friday: Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway (1993, directed by Kevin Tenney)

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Moving out of her boyfriend’s home because he doesn’t support her desire to become an artist, Paige (Ami Dolenz) rents a large studio apartment in Los Angeles. When she finds a Ouija Board in the closet, she plays around with it and is contacted by a spirit named Susan. Susan claims that she used to live in Paige’s apartment and someone in the building murdered her.

The good news is that talking to Susan inspires Paige to start painting and investigating Susan’s death not only brings Paige closer to her cop boyfriend (Timothy Gibbs) but it also allows her to make friends with her landlady Elaine (Laraine Newman!) and a photographer named Russel (John Gatins). The bad news is that Susan is a vengeful spirit and soon people start dying. One man is taken out in a boiler room explosion. Another is taken out by an axe. Trying to drive isn’t easy when Susan decides she wants to be your co-pilot. If Paige solves Susan’s murder, will that bring peace to Susan or is Susan too obsessed with killing to stop even if her killer is brought to justice?

Witchboard 2 isn’t bad. Both director Kevin Tenney and the Ouija board return from the first film and Ami Dolenz does a good job in the role of the naïve young woman who gets possessed by spirits beyond the grave. The daughter of Monkees drummer Mickey Dolenz, Ami Dolenz appeared in several direct-to-video horror films and thrillers in the late 80s and early 90s and she had a refreshing naturalness about her as an actress. She could be both sexy and innocent without ever seeming like she was trying too hard to convince you that she was either. (Everyone who watched a lot of late night Cinemax in the 90s developed a crush on Ami Dolenz at some point and anyone who says otherwise is lying.) Kevin Tenney surrounds Dolenz with an engaging cast of eccentrics, the most memorable one being Larraine Newman of Saturday Night Live fame, who provides the same sort of spacey comic relief that Kathleen Wilhoite provided in the first film.

Though Witchboard 2 is modest in its goals and its execution, it’s still a good chiller for an October night.

International Horror Film: Burning (dir by Lee Chang-dong)

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ll be the fist to admit that it’s probably open for debate whether or not the 2018 South Korean film, Burning, is really a horror film. On the one hand, it could be a murder mystery or perhaps a film about a poor farm boy who meets an upper class sociopath. On the other hand, it could all be a big misunderstanding. By the end of the movie, you’re not even sure that all of these characters even existed. Though there are no ghosts nor any other paranormal monsters to be found in Burning, it’s still a deeply unsettling film. In fact, it’s one of the most unsettling films that I’ve seen in a while. It’s a film that sticks with you, as any good horror film should.

Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is an aspiring writer who makes a meager living by doing odd jobs in Seoul. His family owns a farm and his father has been accused of murder, though the details as to what happened are left deliberately opaque. When Jong-su runs into an old classmate named Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) in downtown Seoul, he doesn’t recognize her at first. She cheerfully explains that she’s had plastic surgery. She also says that she has spent years training in the art of pantomime. She pantomimes eating invisible food and she does such a good job at it that you’d swear she was actually holding something in her hand and chewing something in her mouth. After they have sex, Hae-mi says that she’s going on a trip to Africa and she asks Jong-su to look after her cat. Jong-su agrees.

And yet, we never see the cat. After Hae-mi leaves, Lee goes to her apartment and searches for the cat but never finds it. He finds evidence that the cat does exist. Food is eaten. The litter box is used. And yet, the entire time that Jong-su is supposed to be taking care of it, the cat is never seen. Jong-su spends so much time searching for the cat in that apartment that it’s hard not to wonder if the cat even existed. For that matter, Hae-mi’s story about going to Africa is remarkably vague. Why is she going to Africa? Why has she entrusted someone she barely knows with taking care of her cat? Are the cat and the visit to Africa just another pantomime, something that seems real yet only exists in Jong-su’s mind?

When Hae-mi finally does return from her trip, she brings with her a story about being stranded in the Nairobi Airport for three days as the result of a terrorist attack. Returning with Hae-mi is Ben (Steven Yeun). Ben is a handsome and rich and confident and everything that Lee is not. Ben alternates between being superficially friendly and chillingly cold. At one point, he suggests that he at least cared enough about Hae-mi to be jealous of her relationship with Jong-su and yet it’s hard not to notice that Ben always seems to be slightly annoyed with her whenever they’re together. When the three of them go up to Jong-su’s farm and a stoned Hae-mi dances in the night, Jong-su watches enraptured while Ben smirks. (It would be easy to assume that Jong-su is the good guy while Ben is the bad guy if not for a scene where Jong-soo angrily reprimands Hae-mi for her behavior around other men, showing that Ben is not only person in the film with control issues.) At one point, Ben casually tells Jung-so about his interesting habit. He sets fire to greenhouses. He destroys the beauty that others have grown. He tells Jong-su that he’s noticed a lot of greenhouses near his family’s farm….

Burning is a deeply unsettling film. It’s not just that Steven Yeun gives a chilling performance as a man who appears to have no soul. (The film makes very good use of Yeun’s natural likability so show how someone like Ben can not only survive in the world but also thrive in it.) At the same time that we’re trying to figure out Ben, we’re also struggling to get a read on Jong-su as well. We spend a lot of time with Jong-su and yet, by the end of the movie, we’re still not sure that we know him at all. He says he wants to be a writer and speaks vaguely of Faulkner and Fitzgerald but it still seems as if he’s hiding secrets of his own. It’s tempting to read a lot (perhaps too much) into Jong-su’s admiration of Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Faulkner wrote novels that took place in the heads of his characters, much as how Burning, at times, seems to be taking place completely in the head of Jong-su. Fitzgerald’s best-known novel was about a man who was obsessed with money and a woman whom he had idealized beyond reality. Jong-su, at one point, refers to Ben as being Gatsby but we’re left to wonder if perhaps it’s the other way around. Perhaps Jong-su is Gatsby, the poor man who is constantly trying to reinvent his reality.

It all leads to a mystery that may not be a mystery and clues that could just as easily by coincidences. It also leads to an act of sudden violence, one that leaves you wondering whether or not we knew any of these people. As I said, it’s a deeply unsettling film but, at the same time, it’s not one that can be ignored. It has a 148-minute running time and it’s deliberately paced and yet, due to the strength of the performers and the intriguing enigma of the plot, you don’t get bored. You don’t look away. You watch this story and you search for answers that you know you’ll probably never find.

Burning is on Netflix right now so be sure to watch it before they drop it to make room for another season of American Horror Story.