Tag Archives: Neil LaBute

Brad reviews FEAR THE NIGHT (2023), starring Maggie Q!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I became obsessed with Hong Kong cinema in the mid-to-late 90s and followed it religiously for at least a decade. I remember when I first heard the name Maggie Q. She was starring in a Hong Kong movie called NAKED WEAPON that was written by Wong Jing and directed by Ching Siu-Tung. These guys are responsible for two of my all-time favorite films. Jing wrote and directed the hilarious GOD OF GAMBLERS with Chow Yun-fat, and Ching directed the classic A CHINESE GHOST STORY, with Leslie Cheung. While I’ve never seen NAKED WEAPON, I took note of her name. Then she started showing up on American movie screens in films like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III and LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. She was also on the small screen in my living room on shows like NIKITA and STALKER. Whatever she appeared in, she was almost always a badass, so I always enjoyed it when she showed up. That’s what piqued my interest when I was browsing recently and came across Maggie Q in Neil LaBute’s FEAR THE NIGHT.

In this film, she plays Tess (Maggie Q), an Iraq War veteran who is having a difficult time adjusting to life back home. She’s also a recovering alcoholic, and her relationship with her sister Beth (Kat Foster) goes from being awkward, to passive aggressive, to just plain ugly. Still, she goes to the bachelorette party for her younger sister, Rose (Highdee Kuan), at their family’s remote farmhouse out in the country. The weekend includes several other women, and while Tess isn’t exactly the life of the party, it looks like they’re going to have a good time. That is, until a group of masked men show up and start attacking the house, and some of the ladies, with arrows. It soon becomes clear that these guys are up to no good, and they’re willing to murder any person who gets in their way. But they didn’t count on a badass like Tess being around, and the job they thought would be easy soon becomes one of the longest nights of their lives.

FEAR THE NIGHT is an enjoyable suspense thriller, but it’s also an extremely straightforward and unoriginal home-invasion thriller. It may not do anything particularly new with the formula, but for me, Maggie Q makes it worth watching. We’ve seen plenty of movies in which unsuspecting victims are trapped in an isolated location with a bunch of morons, only to discover that at least one of them is more than capable of fighting back. I just enjoy watching Maggie Q, who brings the sort of physical presence and action-movie credibility that makes it easy to believe that Tess can hold her own against these guys.

FEAR THE NIGHT does touch on some interesting subjects, including the difficulties Tess faces as she tries to put her military past behind her and rebuild her life. Her crappy relationship with her sister Beth adds another layer to the story, although the dialogue and character development don’t always do these ideas justice. The movie’s heavy-handed approach kind of gets on my nerves, to be honest. LaBute seems to want to say something about the way some men view women, but he doesn’t really handle the situation in a realistic way. The main villain hates Maggie for no other reason than he got insulted at the gas station. The convenience store confrontation is good, but it doesn’t seem to warrant the violent and murderous events that will soon follow!

Fortunately, there’s enough action to keep things moving. Tess is amazingly resourceful, and the attackers quickly discover that their victims aren’t going to make things easy for them. The isolated setting gives the whole thing a claustrophobic feel. It would have been nice if there had been a few more surprises along the way, but Maggie Q makes for an awesome action heroine.

FEAR THE NIGHT isn’t going to change anybody’s opinion about this kind of thriller, and there are certainly better examples of the genre out there. Still, if you enjoy watching a tough lady turn the tables on a bunch of creeps, there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half. It’s not a particularly memorable movie, but I always enjoy watching Maggie Q kick ass on screen, and as far as I’m concerned, that was more than enough reason to give it a look.

Lakeview Terrace (2008, directed by Neil LaBute)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) move in to a large house in the Lakeview Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles.  It’s a good house in a good neighborhood and it’s just too bad that their neighbor, Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), is a corrupt cop who hates interracial couples.

I remember that Lakeview Terrace caused a brief stir when it was released in 2008.  It was hardly the first film about an interracial couple being harassed by a bigot but it was one of the few where the bigot in question was a black man.  Abel hates white people.  He says it’s because his wife was cheating on him with a white man when she was killed in a car accident.  He does not appreciate Chris listening to rap music and dropping his cigarettes on the street. When Abel’s children spot Chris and Lisa having sex in their swimming pool, that’s all Abel needs to justify his dislike of the couple and his feelings that he doesn’t want this couple living next door.  When Chris asks if Abel could turn off the floodlights that shine into their bedroom window, Abel refuses.  When Chris tries to plant privacy trees, Abel cuts them down.  What starts out as a neighborhood feud escalates as Abel orders one of his informants to break into Chris and Lisa’s house.  Unfortunately, that third act twist also signals the moment that Lakeview Terrace goes from being a reasonably intelligent social satire to being a standard thriller.  Neil LaBute is a director who specializes in making people uncomfortable so it is too bad that Lakeview Terrace ends in a way designed to conform to what audiences have come to expect from thrillers.

Abel’s a hateful figure but Samuel L. Jackson is just as charismatic as ever and the passive-aggressive way that he initially responds to Chris and Lisa will be familiar to anyone who has ever had a bad neighbor or who has to deal with a cop having a bad day.  Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington, neither one of whom is really that interesting an actor to begin with, are both stuck in bland roles and struggle to keep up with Jackson.  (Wilson and Washington even get out-acted by Ron Glass, playing Lisa’s disapproving father.)  It throws the movie off-balance.  At the same time, Jackson is such an actor who projects so much intelligence that it’s hard to believe that Abel would make the stupid mistakes that he makes towards the end of the movie.  Lakeview Terrace starts out fairly strong but loses its way towards the end.

#MondayMuggers present LAKEVIEW TERRACE (2008) starring Samuel L. Jackson!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. For tonight, Monday March 24th, Sierra has chosen LAKEVIEW TERRACE starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Jay Hernandez, and Robert Pine. 

The story revolves around the interracial couple Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) moving into their new home in a gated community in California. Their neighbor turns out to be the racist, dysfunctional and abusive LAPD Officer, Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson). Turner doesn’t want them in his neighborhood and proceeds to make their lives a living hell. 

Neil Labute directed LAKEVIEW TERRACE, which is loosely based on real life events, and he knows how to make an audience uncomfortable. Samuel L. Jackson is an incredible actor, so I’m really looking forward to his take on this hideous character. I’m expecting a lot of scenery to be chewed before this one ends. 

So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch LAKEVIEW TERRACE! It’s on Amazon Prime.

Ghosts of Sundance Past: In The Company Of Men (dir by Neil LaBute)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

1997’s In The Company of Men is a film about two guys playing a series of very viscous jokes.

Howard (Matt Malloy) and Chad (Aaron Eckhart) are two mid-level executives who have been sent to work at a branch office for six weeks.  While Chad is talkative and aggressive, Howard is much more meek and often seems to be in awe of the far more confident Chad.  What the two men have in common is a lot of resentment and bitterness towards women.  Chad suggests that they should both date a woman at the same time and fool her into falling for both of them.  Then, they’ll both dump her at the same time.  Chad has even picked out a victim, Christine (Stacy Edwards), a deaf and introverted co-worker.

That Chad would come up with such a cruel scheme really isn’t a surprise.  From the first minute that we see Chad, we think we can tell what type of person he is.  Because this is a movie, we hold on to hope that Chad will somehow reveal that he’s not as bad as he seems but, in the end, the whole point of the film is that Chad is not only as bad as we initially think he is but he’s actually even worse.  Howard, on the other hand, comes across like a rather mild-mannered guy, the stereotypical nerdy mid-level manager who no one ever notices.  Howard could never come up with a scheme like this on his own but, once Chad suggests it, Howard agrees.  Howard is a natural follower.  He looks at Chad and he sees who he wants to be.  Chad looks at Howard and sees someone who he can easily manipulate.

Chad and Howard set their plan in motion and yes, it is difficult to watch as they both pretend to be falling in love with the sensitive Christine while making cruel fun of her behind her back.  Again, we know that at least one of the men is going to have second thoughts and try to back out of the plan.  We know this because we’re watching a movie.  We spend most of the movie hoping that Chad is going to be the one to find his conscience because Aaron Eckhart is the more charismatic of the two men and Chad is the one with whom Christine seems to be truly falling in love.  Instead, it’s Howard who falls in love with Christine while Chad remains as sociopathic as ever.  By the end of the film, Chad reveals just how manipulative he truly is and Howard discovers that Christine was not the only victim of Chad’s joke.

In The Company Of Men is not an easy film to watch.  The comments that Chad and Howard make are shockingly cruel, though one gets the feeling that they’re probably an accurate reflection of what men like Chad and Howard sound like when they’re in private.  Director Neil LaBute doesn’t make any effort to soften or excuse their misogyny.  It’s a testament to the talents of Eckhart, Malloy, and Edwards that we stick with the film.  In the end, In The Company Of Men is an unsettling portrait of misogyny and toxic masculinity, one that is made all the more disturbing by Aaron Eckhart’s charismatic performance as a truly despicable person.  The film uses Eckhart’s middle-American good looks to subversive effect and, even when he’s playing such a hateful character, there’s something undeniably fascinating about him.  You watch his performance of Chad and you’re almost desperate to find some sort of good inside of him.  It’s not there, though.  That’s what is truly frightening about In The Company Of Men.

As the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, In The Company Of Men won the Filmmaker’s Trophy.