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Weird, Weirder and Goofy Stars, Vampires and the Dead Entertain Us
THE LAZARUS EFFECT (PG-13) Raise your hand if you would have guessed that the director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi would direct a horror movie starring Mark Duplass and half gets, and the horror film’s most frightMAPS TO THE STARS (R) In case you needed ening scene, involving a young street urchin Donald Glover. Well, The Lazarus Effect has more proof, Canadian auteur David such an odd pedigree, and it does not help (Milad Eghbali) has no blood at all. Cronenberg’s latest film will confirm that this run-of-the-mill horror flick to stand Even so, writer-director Ana Lily Julianne Moore is our bravest actress (and out from the genre dreck. Amirpour loads her feature debut with of course one of our best). As aging starlet What seems like a Flatliners rip-off ends more style than most films can handle. Its Havana Segrand, Moore spends a lot of up being more like a Stephen King rip-off, black and white cinematography—think the movie acting like a ruined child, clad when it’s really just ticking off the in little more than her delicates (and standard possession tropes. sometimes less than that). Maps to the Stars Some scientists (Olivia Wilde, The desperate actress is clinging Duplass, Glover and Evan “American to the hope of essentially playing Horror Storyâ€? Peters) have created her deceased cult icon of a mother in the formula to bring the dead back a remake of Mom’s Oscar-winning to life, but something happens to the glory. At the same time, she has hired subjects between death and reanimaa strange new assistant, burn victim tion. First, it’s just a super-aggressive Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikowska), who dog, but when they bring back Wilde’s is the estranged daughter of Havana’s Zoe, the situation gets much, much self-help guru, Stafford Weiss (John worse. She has some sort of King-y Cusack, who looks really strange, bortelekinesis-cum-paranormal activity. dering on Nicolas Cage territory). The scares are solely of the jump Stafford’s other offspring is the aggressively spoiled child star, Benjie Ommmmmmmmmmmm‌more Oscars‌ommmmmmmmmmmm‌ variety, which pleases its target teen demographic, but the cast could have (Evan Bird, one of Rosie Larsen’s made much more of these generic boos. New Wave via comic book—is thrilling to brothers from “The Killingâ€?). Edward The flick looks and feels like it’s been seen behold and amplifies Vand’s mysterious Cullen, aka Robert Pattinson, occasionally and done before. Worse horror movies are beauty. She is far from a monster, despite pops by in the limo he chauffeurs between out there, but none are much more boring. her horrific, empowering actions. acting and writing. Screenwriter Bruce For more fun, check out Shakma, the killer I would love to see Vand’s Girl run Wagner (who wrote my favorite Nightmare baboon loose in a hospital “gemâ€? with which on Elm Street; the third, the Dokken-themed into Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton’s the screenwriters of Lazarus clearly had to ancient vampire lovers from Only Lovers Dream Warriors) channels some major be familiar. f Left Alive, just to see what would happen. Chuck Palahniuk. The characters, narrative, tone, everything typify the work of the Fight Club novelist and are better than his own attempt at Hollywood satire, Tell-All. While Cronenberg has seemed to soften since his days as the king of body horror, Maps to the Stars still mines humanity’s strange underbelly. Maps to the Stars would make a good double-feature with Cronenberg’s notorious Crash. Oddly, Moore received a Golden Globe nomination for Maps to the Stars in the category of Comedy or Musical. Yikes! While dark humor hangs around like cigarette smoke, calling Maps a comedy stretches that category’s boundaries more than Cronenberg stretched the human body in his early work. By Drew Wheeler
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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ MARCH 4, 2015
Amirpour is a stunning talent, and her second feature is already intriguing, just based upon her debut.
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (NR) This woman-directed Iranian vampire western is arresting, even as its culturally transgressive early spell gets broken by a narrative thread that snaps in the first act. Sheila Vand mesmerizes as a skateboarding, hijab-sporting vampire haunting the streets of Bad City. The Girl meets the boy, Arash (Arash Marandi), who drives a classic Thunderbird while dressing and acting like James Dean. A surprising, familiar face—Marshall Manesh, who is best known as Ranjit, the driver in “How I Met Your Mother�— appears as Arash’s drug-addicted dad, who is in deep with a local thug. After a quickly resolved clash with said local tough, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night meanders through a ‘60s-influenced go-go movie world in which any “Mystery Science Theater� fan will feel at home. The film portends explicit violence but even seems to lose interest in that angle. An ear-piercing is nearly as violent as the latter