Dust Bunny: Should have been left undisturbed

Dust Bunny (2025) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for considerable violence, implied gore and child endangerment

Available via: HBO MAX

By Derrick Bang

File this one under “Be careful what you wish for ... you might get it.”

 

Writer/director Bryan Fuller developed a reputation in the early 21st century for creating adorably quirky television shows such as Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and — most particularly — Pushing Daisies. He then got more serious last decade, putting his spin on television adaptations of established properties such as Hannibal, American Gods and Star Trek: Discovery.

 

The restaurant setting may be attractively benign, but the barely veiled conversation that
flows between Aurora (Sophie Sloan, left), 5b (Mads Mikkelsen) and Laverne
(Sigourney Weaver) is anything but.

Surprisingly — after all this time — Dust Bunny is his first theatrical feature (although almost nobody noticed its fleeting big-screen appearances last December). It’s quintessentially a work of his wildly outré imagination, but his attempt to blend the whimsy of Pushing Daisies with the brutality of American Gods fails miserably, and succeeds at neither.

Frankly, the result is a mess: a failed effort to re-invent 1994’s Leon: The Professional as an absurdist fantasy.

 

The film begins late at night, as a tiny swirling dust mote grows larger by bumping into other dust chunks, gradually assembling itself into a small, rabbit-shaped dust bunny that scuttles beneath the bed of 8-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan). She lives in a fifth-floor New York City apartment with her parents (Line Kruse and Caspar Phillipson).

 

The dust bunny growls at a volume far beyond its tiny size, prompting Aurora to shriek in terror, waking her parents. She insists there’s a monster under her bed; they naturally don’t believe her.

 

(“Grown-ups pretend not to be afraid,” she later comments, “but they are, all the time.”)

 

Aurora clearly is an imaginative child, sharing her bed with all manner of stuffed critters, in a bedroom that production designer Jeremy Reed clearly enjoyed filling with all manner of not-quite-right accessories: dolls with the heads of animals, clocks that don’t show the time, and other mildly disorienting touches.

 

Cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker amplifies the sense of unreality with all manner of cockeyed, vertigo-inducing camera angles, some shifting in mid-scene.

 

Still frightened, Aurora climbs out her bedroom window and onto the fire escape. A fluttering firefly calls her attention to the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen). She follows when he leaves his apartment, and — wide-eyed — watches as he kills a dragon ... actually killing the members of an armed gang in a dragon dance parade puppet.

 

The following morning, a still-terrified Aurora warns her parents to “stay off the floor.” They ignore her, and — as Aurora listens, from her bed, to the sounds on the other side of the closed door — they’re devoured. By something huge.

 

Frankenstein: Less than the sum of its parts

Frankenstein (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for bloody violence, gore and grisly images

Available via: Movie theaters and Netflix

By Derrick Bang

If this film doesn’t win an Academy Award for Tamara Deverell’s stunning production design, there is no justice.

 

Although initially delighted that he has brought life to a creation (Jacob Elordi, center) 
stitched together from scores of corpses, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) just as
quickly worries that he may have made a colossal mistakes.

And if the Oscars included a category for atmospheric dread, director/scripter Guillermo del Toro also would have that one locked up. He has been unsettling viewers since 1997’s Mimic and particularly 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. And only del Toro could have jump-started the goofy 1950s Creature from the Black Lagoon franchise, and transformed it into 2017’s brilliantly disorienting The Shape of Water, winning Oscars for Best Picture and Director in the process.

All this said, I wish del Toro had matched his new film’s visual dazzle with a similarly exhilarating script. His take has about as much in common with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Gothic masterpiece, as director James Whale’s 1931 adaptation. 

 

Which is to say, del Toro has taken serious liberties with the original plot and character roster. A few high points remain faithful to Shelley’s novel — along with occasional references to Prometheus, as befit the subtitle of Shelley’s novel (“The Modern Prometheus”) — but for the most part del Toro merely borrows the concept of Frankenstein and his monster.

 

That would be fine, if the results were more consistently engaging. At times — and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a del Toro film — the narrative is protracted and boring. As often has been the case with other filmmakers, one must be cautious about embarking upon a pet project which — in del Toro’s own words — has been a “quest” ever since he saw Whale’s film for the first time, at age 7.

 

Del Toro has moved the timeline half a century forward, to allow the key players a greater understanding of advances in electricity. The saga therefore begins in 1857, with a prelude aboard the Royal Danish Navy ship Horisont, trapped in arctic ice while hoping to reach the North Pole. While attempting to free the ship, crew members spot a badly injured man, and bring him aboard.

 

He barely has time to introduce himself as Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), before the ship is attacked by a powerful, towering creature that demands Victor be surrendered to him. Ship’s Captain Andersen (Lars Mikkelsen) refuses, and six of his men are killed in the subsequent violent melee; the creature withstands all manner of gunshots and other damage.

 

The calmly resolute Andersen wins the moment only after using his blunderbuss to shatter the ice beneath the monster’s feet. It sinks into the icy waters.

 

“It’ll be back,” Frankenstein warns. “It can’t be killed.”

 

Companion: Insufficiently developed

Companion (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, strong violence and relentless profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing companion piece to I’m Not a Robot, which recently won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

 

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) get a warm greeting, upon arriving at the
setting for their weekend getaway. Alas, a promised "happy outing" soon takes a sinister
turn...

Writer/director Drew Hancock's modest feature takes the core premise into more disturbing territory.  Alas, his film overstays its welcome; it would have made an excellent hour-long episode of the British TV series Black Mirror, but at 97 minutes Hancock flails his way through an increasingly contrived third act.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is introduced while shopping for groceries. Her movements are oddly precise, almost dreamlike ... and, indeed — as we learn momentarily — she’s recalling how she “met cute” with boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). They’re actually en route to a weekend getaway at an attractive home miles off the beaten track.

 

(A bit more opulent than the horror-clichéd  “cabin in the woods,” but the essential remoteness is no different.)

 

Longtime friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) already are present, as is their host: the grizzled Sergey (Rupert Friend), much older than the others, who looks — and sounds — like a Russian mobster.

 

(One wonders how our youthful quintet ever met Sergey, let alone wangled such an invitation ... and Kat’s “explanation” is an eyebrow lift. But we gotta roll with it.)

 

As this first day passes, Iris’ submissive behavior around Josh becomes more obvious, in a Stepford Wives sort of way. She’s beyond submissive; it’s more a case of genuinely worshipping the ground on which he walks. When she describes what it’s like to have made Josh part of her life, she says, “It’s like this piece of you that you didn’t know was broken, and suddenly it’s fixed.”

 

Thatcher’s performance is unsettling and disturbing; is Iris a battered girlfriend?

 

Um ... no.

 

Iris actually is an “emotional support robot.” (This isn’t a spoiler, because the poster art and trailer reveal as much.) Her “love link” has been “established” with Josh, and thus she’s his — well — permanent, no-request-is-too-much girlfriend.

 

These artificial companions can be custom-modified in all sorts of ways — eye and hair color, vocal pitch, intelligence level, and more — via a tablet that Josh never lets out of his sight. Watching several of those options explored in rapid succession, at one point, is a clever bit of special effects.

 

Tellingly, such companions cannot lie.

Nosferatu: It sucks

Nosferatu (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, graphic nudity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Watching paint dry would be preferable to enduring this turgid, overcooked slog.

 

In fairness, writer/director Robert Eggers gets points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke definitely maximizes the eerie settings concocted by production designer Craig Lathrop. (That said, much of the film is too damn dark.)

 

Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) eventually
realize that particularly drastic measures will be required, if they're to have any chance
of defeating the vampire in their midst.

Alas, these opulently sinister backdrops are ill-served by a somnambulant cast that appears to wade through thick glue at all times, delivering lines with breathy pauses in between each word ... particularly true in the case of the title monster, who wheezes through every labored syllable, like he’s battling the world’s worst chest cold.

That affectation undoubtedly was intended to sound scary, but Eggers misses “scary” by a Carpathian mile.

 

His film has an intriguing legacy. 1922’s Nosferatu was plagiarized from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; director F.W. Murnau and scripter Henrik Galeen stole the plot and characters, changing names and relocating the story to their native Germany, in order to evade copyright issues. The ploy didn’t work; Stoker’s heirs sued, and the court ruled that all copies of the film be destroyed.

 

They missed a few, and Murnau’s film now is deservedly hailed as an early silent masterpiece that birthed the horror genre; the appearance of star Max Schreck’s Count Orlok also established a template for vampire makeup. 

 

Aside from the numerous legitimate adaptations of Stoker’s novel during the subsequent century, Nosferatu was remade by director Werner Herzog in 1979, with Klaus Kinski as the title vampire. Francis Ford Coppola’s handling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992, also tipped a fang to Murnau.

 

Eggers’ new film borrows from all of the above, while focusing mostly on Murnau’s setting and characters. Eggers also employs shadows, often of a menacing hand, just as Murnau did. And, as befits our modern era, this film more explicitly emphasizes the lurid sexual eroticism that fuels much of the vampire mythos.

Salem's Lot: Not enough bite

Salem's Lot (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for bloody violence 

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

Film adaptations of Stephen King’s novels have run the gamut, from the excellent — Misery, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and Carrie — to the deplorable: Thinner, Cell, Lawnmower Man and many, many others.

 

With sundown rapidly approaching, the wary vampire hunters — from left, Susan
(Makenzie Leigh), Ben (Lewis Pullman), Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard), Mark (Jordan
Preston Carter) and Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey) — contemplate how
best to invade the dread Marsden House.

Most often, the fault lies with inept directors and scripters. Sometimes, though, the fans who inhabit what King calls Constant Reader Land are upset because a given adaptation changed so much that it “ruined the book.” To those folks, King always cites what James M. Cain said to a student reporter who bemoaned how Hollywood had altered books such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

“The movies didn’t change them a bit, son,” Cain replied, pointing to a shelf of books behind his desk. “They’re all right up there. Every word is the same as when I wrote them.”

 

Director/scripter Gary Dauberman’s respectful handling of King’s famed 1975 novel does pretty well, when it comes to fidelity. He includes almost all the central characters, hits most of the story’s key plot points, and deftly maintains the unnerving atmosphere King established so well, with the juxtaposition of quaintly bucolic, small-town Americana invaded by macabre, old-world Evil.

 

And when Dauberman does slide the story into different territory — notably during the third act — he does so cleverly; the climax is both ingenious, and suspensefully mounted with an assist from editor Luke Ciarrocchi.

 

That said, this film fails in another, equally important manner: overall pacing. 

 

After taking time, during a leisurely first act, to introduce the key players and set up the looming threat, a fleeting second act rushes far too quickly into the aforementioned finale. King’s luxurious attention to detail — the nuances of sidebar characters, and their back-stories — are completely absent.

 

This is particularly egregious with respect to school teacher Matt Burke and local priest Father Callahan (although that’s getting ahead of things a bit).

 

The result is a jarring case of whiplash, as if great chunks of this film had been left on the cutting-room floor. Dauberman has admitted that his first cut ran three hours, which I suspect would have been preferable; director Tobe Hooper’s 1979 two-part TV miniseries, running 183 minutes, was — and remains — vastly superior.

 

Speak No Evil: See no movie

Speak No Evil (2024) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual content and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

A film of this nature requires an unspoken bond with the viewing audience:

 

We play along only if the story’s eventual victims remain credibly oblivious to impending danger ... because, let’s face it: We know where things are heading here, given that James McAvoy’s leering, sinister face looms from all the publicity artwork.

 

Ben (Scoot McNairy), Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler)
initially assume they'll be spending a fun West England weekend with friends met
during a vacation in Italy. Boy, have they got a nasty surprise coming...

(The trailer also gives away the entire film, but that’s a different complaint.)

At first blush, it appears that director/co-scripter James Watkins, along with fellow writers Christian and Mads Tafdrup, understand this bargain. They burden this story’s sacrificial lambs — Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and tween daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) — with plenty of distracting baggage: a frayed marriage, unhappy relocation to London, lost employment prospects, and an overly sensitive and anxious child.

 

A family vacation in Tuscany, although intended as a “do-over,” doesn’t entirely quell Ben’s feelings of emasculation and anger, over Louise’s recent infidelity; she, in turn, is exasperated by his sad-sack failure to re-launch, and his whiny unwillingness to move past her one-time transgression. And both argue how best to parent Agnes, who slides into meltdown whenever separated from her stuffed “comfort bunny,” Hoppy.

 

Their vacation package includes communal dining each evening, during which the Daltons fall into easy company with the gregarious Paddy (McAvoy), his surprisingly young wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their adolescent son Ant (Dan Hough). They’re mischievous and buoyant: just the tonic to lift Ben and Louise’s spirits.

 

Even so, Paddy’s charm seems a bit ... aggressive. But that’s probably Ben and Louise’s imagination.

 

All vacations come to an end, and the Daltons’ return to London revives old wounds. Cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones amplifies this atmospheric shift by replacing Italy’s soft light and warm tonalities with London’s dreary, harsher grays and muted colors.

 

A postcard from Paddy and Ciara repeats an invitation, first extended back in Italy: You really must spend some time with us, at our West England farm. Recalling the lift their company provided, Ben, Louise and Agnes impulsively make the long drive.

 

On their home turf, Paddy and Ciara are ... a bit different. His mischievous side becomes bolder, her flirtatious nature subtly threatening: both challenging Ben and Louise’s comfort zones. Paddy plays on Ben’s insecurities; Louise’s rising concerns are dismissed as unwarranted or even rude, leaving her feeling uncertain and embarrassed. Davis plays this aspect of her character very well, whereas McNairy’s over-the-top weenie behavior becomes insufferably tiresome.

 

Alien: Romulus — Been there, endured that

Alien: Romulus (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for gory violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.1.24

This is what happens, when children recklessly steal a spaceship...

 

I greeted this ninth (!) Alien entry with a weary sense of Seriously? Must we do this again? 

 

Needing to reach another portion of this enormous space station, but with their sole path
blocked by scores of adult xenomorphs, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson)
consider their limited options.

This franchise envisions a bleak and depressing future; most characters inevitably die horribly; the eponymous xenomorphs always rise again (if not in a given installment, then elsewhere in the universe); lather, rinse, repeat.

No matter what the set-up, the execution is resignedly predictable.

 

That said, and for the benefit of those who might be approaching this as their first Alien saga...

 

To his credit, director/co-scripter Fede Alvarez delivers a solid first act populated by a handful of reasonably well-crafted characters. (But given that every member of this small cast is in his/her early or mid-20s, one is tempted to re-title this film Alien: 90210.)

 

The second act also features a very clever nod back to the film that begat this franchise, accompanied by several familiar bars of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for that 1979 classic.

 

However ... Alvarez and co-scripter Rodo Sayagues then squander that good will with an eye-rolling third act that piles ludicrous atop preposterous, with a soupçon of ridiculous tossed in for bad measure.

 

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

 

Alien and 1986’s Aliens were game-changing events.

 

This is just a routine horror flick, albeit with impressive sci-fi trappings.

 

The year is 2142, which — in the series timeline — is one generation after Alien (2122) and not quite two generations before Aliens (2169). The setting: Jackson’s Star, a mining colony on a ringed planet with an atmosphere so thick that sunshine never penetrates. The vast majority of the colony’s inhabitants are underpaid laborers indentured to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (the mostly unseen villains throughout this entire series).

 

The corporation has a nasty habit of changing the rules as it sees fit, which Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) discovers, to her dismay. She happily believes that — having served her required contract work hours — she now can travel to a much more hospitable world ... only to be told that her contract requirement has just been doubled. (Given Rain’s obvious youth, and the length of time necessary to hit her initial quota, we’re also clearly dealing with violations of reasonable child labor laws.)

 

Depressed beyond words, she’s susceptible when fellow miner and ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) proposes a risky means of escaping Jackson’s Star. He and three others — his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), fellow miner Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and tech-savvy Navarro (Aileen Wu) — have detected a derelict Weyland-Yutani spaceship in descending orbit around the planet.

 

The hope is that it’ll contain functional cryo-pods, for the suspended animation sleep necessary during a lengthy journey to their desired distant planet. The plan, then, is to “borrow” the Corbelan — one of the mining operation’s utilitarian spaceships — to reach the derelict vessel, transfer its cryo-pods to their ship, and then just keep going.

 

A Quiet Place: Day One — A solid prequel

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for terror, violent content and disturbing images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This film totally confounds expectations.

 

That’s wholly appropriate, since “startling” has been the hallmark of this sharply conceived series. These scripts have teeth ... and not just those belonging to the nightmarish predators that strike victims making the slightest sound. John Krasinski has co-written and co-produced all three, and he directed the first two; he and his co-writers don’t hesitate to surprise and upset viewers.

 

Moving as quickly as possible — without making any noise! — Eric (Joseph Quinn) and
Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) cross an open street while searching for a safe place to hid.

Even so, this prequel moves in unexpected directions, in terms of both plot beats and emotional resonance. 

The setting is New York, roughly a year prior to the events in 2018’s first film. Things begin quietly, as Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) contemplates another dull, grinding day as a terminally ill cancer patient, in a hospice facility outside the city. She’s stuck at anger, in the five stages of grief ... or, perhaps, she settled on anger after dismissing bargaining and acceptance.

 

Her only friend is her service cat, Frodo, aka — as we’ll soon discover — The World’s Greatest And Most Resourceful Feline.

 

Reuben (Alex Wolff), her care nurse, is impressively patient; Sam, bitter and waspish, is unwilling to “play nice” during group sessions. An outing to Manhattan also holds no interest, until she makes Reuben promise that they’ll stop for pizza at Patsy’s, her long-ago favorite Harlem pizzaria.

 

Unfortunately, the outing is interrupted. Hundreds of massive, meteor-like objects crash into the city — and elsewhere, all over the world — and disgorge powerful, hostile extraterrestrials that attack without warning.

 

Fans of the series know that these creatures have an acute sense of hearing, but are blind and without a functional sense of smell. But the terrified Manhanttanites aren’t yet aware of this, and — with shocking rapidity — people are devoured in mid-scream, or when they slam open a car door, or drop anything ... or even cough or sneeze.

 

Director Michale Sarnoski — who co-wrote this script with Krasinski — doesn’t dwell on these attacks; the PG-13 rating is respected, with a lack of gore. But that doesn’t make the attacks any less terrifying, as victims are snatched out of cinematographer Pat Scola’s rat-a-tat framing shots, accompanied by heart-stopping blasts from Alexis Grapsas’ score.

 

The resulting blood trails also are sufficiently unsettling.

 

Sam is knocked unconscious during the initial chaos; she wakens inside a theater with Reuben and numerous other survivors. Her initial attempt to speak is muted by Henri (Djimon Hounsou), huddling with his family. She gets the point, and is relieved to find Frodo still at her side.

 

(Series fans with recognize Hounsou’s Henri from 2020’s A Quiet Place Part II.)

The Last Voyage of the Demeter: Medium-well stake

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong gory violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is a genius idea for a horror film.

 

Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz’s script expands upon a portion of a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, wherein newspaper clippings detail the strange case of a Russian schooner that runs aground at the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby, during a ferocious late-night storm. The sole person aboard is the ship’s captain, dead two days, and lashed to the wheel.

 

Larsen (Martin Furulund) desperately tries to light a lantern, amid a raging rain and wind
storm. Alas, he won't like what the illumination ultimately reveals...

His recovered log book recounts the strange and ultimately horrifying events that took place on the Demeter, after it left the city of Varna a month earlier, bound for London.

Schut and Olkewicz take us aboard the doomed vessel, granting faces and personalities to the crew — most of them well played by the multinational cast — while, um, taking some license with Stoker’s version of his malevolent vampire.

 

There’s no way this Dracula could subsequently move about London in the guise of an ordinary-looking man. But Schut, Olkewicz and Norwegian director André Øvredal aren’t required to adhere religiously to Stoker’s 1897 classic; their goal is simply to frighten the hell out of us.

 

They succeed, to a degree; the atmosphere, gruesome shocks and period authenticity are excellent. But Øvredal is too self-indulgent; his lethargic pacing works against the story’s suspense. He should have let editors Julian Clarke, Patrick Larsgaard and Christian Wagner do a better job. This pokey two-hour horror flick would have been far scarier if, say, 20 minutes shorter.

 

Instead, each fresh burst of gory violence is telegraphed by a mile (and Bear McCreary’s ear-splitting synth score doesn’t help).

 

The story begins as the Demeter takes on its final cargo: a series of large wooden boxes, one of them bearing a dragon seal that prompts a strong response from a newly hired hand, who resigns on the spot. He’s replaced by Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a well-spoken doctor seeking travel to London. First mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) warns that this “dandified” fellow better pull his weight, but the ship’s captain (Liam Cunningham) has good reason to accept his presence.

 

Once at sea, Clemens proves remarkably capable; he also befriends the ship’s cabin boy, Toby (Woody Norman). These two are by far this story’s most interesting characters, with whom we immediately bond; both are well played by Hawkins and Norman.

 

Among his various duties, Toby has been placed in charge of the ship’s animal cargo (future meals for the crew, while at sea). The boy is assisted by Huckleberry, his faithful black Lab.

The Blackening: Not such a much

The Blackening (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theater

By Derrick Bang

Given the clichés and predictable plot pitfalls into which most modern horror films fall, director Tim Story and his writers — Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins — deserve credit for some cogent social commentary, and for trying to shake things up a bit.

 

With no clue where their attacker might be hiding, Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) arms
herself with a heavy wooden candle holder ... and lots of prayers.

Alas, “trying” is as far as they get. At the end of the day, this becomes just another tiresome example of the “idiot plot” … which lurches forward, from one moment to the next, solely because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.

On top of which, these are insufferable chatty idiots.

 

Not even halfway through this increasingly tiresome flick, one wishes everybody would shut up for 5 minutes, so that Story and editor Peter S. Elliot could generate some actual tension.

 

The setting is ye old cabin in the woods (although, as one character points out, it’s more a good-sized house than a cramped cabin). Lisa (Antoinette Robertson, a plucky heroine) and her long-unseen college friends — King (Melvin Gregg), Allison (Grace Byers), Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, badly overplaying his role), Dewayne (Perkins) and Shanika (X Mayo) — have gathered for a Juneteenth reunion. The sole items on the agenda: recreational drugs, too much alcohol, a bit of sex and a weekend-long Spades marathon. 

 

(The card game, of course.) 

 

(But yes, that choice is a bit on the nose.)

 

Pretty much before anybody can blink, they all wind up trapped in the “Game Room,” which features a game called The Blackening. The game board’s centerpiece is an offensively retro, three-dimensional, minstrel-style face … which talks. 

 

It instructs them to play the game, which consists of Trivial Pursuit-style cards designed to test their knowledge of Black culture: “Name five Black actors who guest-starred on Friends,” “Recite the second verse of the Black National Anthem,” and so forth.

 

Within 60 seconds, for each question. 

 

Failure to play along … will result in death.

 

What this septet doesn’t know — what we’ve already seen, during the story’s prologue — is that the first two guests, Shawn (Jay Pharoah) and Morgan (Yvonne Orji), arrived earlier, and immediately ran afoul of a hulking thug in a blackface mask, wielding a wicked crossbow.

Renfield: It'll take a bite outta you!

Renfield (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for appallingly bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and brief drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.14.23

“Tasteless” isn’t nearly strong enough to describe this deranged little flick.

 

Deplorably, gratuitously tasteless comes closer. 

 

But — forgive me — it’s also hilarious. And quite entertaining.

 

Every time Renfield (Nicholas Hoult, right) tries to show a bit of independence, his
master, Dracula (Nicolas Cage), reminds him — quite painfully — that his fate has
been sealed for a long, long time.

Nicolas Cage has again revived his moribund career, this time by making the extremely risky decision to lampoon himself: a choice that merely accelerated the decline of lesser film stars. But Cage actually has a talent for self-ridicule, as demonstrated by last year’s unexpectedly droll The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

And, let’s face it: Who better to sink his baroquely overacting teeth into a modern-day incarnation of Count Dracula?

 

Director Chris McKay, teamed here with writers Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman — the latter primarily responsible for the Walking Dead franchise — have orchestrated a cheeky, relentlessly profane and gory take on everybody’s favorite vampire.

 

That said, the infamous Count isn’t really the focus of this tale. That honor belongs to the title character: Dracula’s loyal lackey and aide-de-camp, better known as a “Familiar,” and played to British stiff-upper-lip perfection by Nicholas Hoult.

 

And ya gotta love the premise: Robert Montague Renfield is introduced as a member of a support group for victims of abusive partners, friends and work associates.

 

His presence is twofold. Ostensibly, but without going into detail, he admits to being hyper-controlled by an impressively “toxic boss” (as glaring an understatement as one could imagine). But he’s also on the prowl for fresh victims for ol’ Drac, reasoning that the best way to prevent human monsters from abusing their prey, is to, ah, “introduce” them to his own monster.

 

Since such two-legged blood bags rarely come to Dracula’s lair of their own accord, Renfield is able to, ah, “persuade” them via his own impressively agile and hyper-strong talents, courtesy of just a “touch” of Drac’s powers, which the count bestowed eons ago.

 

These talents kick into gear whenever Renfield eats a bug. (Bram Stolker’s Renfield notoriously ate flies and death’s-head moths. But wasn’t granted super-powers.)

 

Unfortunately, this particularly section of New Orleans — where Dracula and Renfield have set up headquarters in the basement of a long-abandoned hospital — is in thrall to a drug-running crime family run by the ruthless Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her feckless son, Teddy (Ben Schwartz). When Renfield’s newest, um, “acquisitions” happen to be in the Lobo syndicate’s cross-hairs, all hell breaks loose.