Susan

I have been to the theater a bunch since I got back, and am going again tonight to see Weapons, so before I build up even more of a backlog, here are my latest watches.

28 Years Later (2025). 28 years after the original rage virus that turns people into mindless flesh-eating monsters, a twelve year old boy named Spike leaves his safely quarantined island community and ventures to the mainland in hopes of finding medical help for his mother.

I have heard very mixed reviews of this movie, things like "interesting but messy." I honestly find this a little confusing, because on the whole I found this movie beautifully executed (it's Danny Boyle, after), emotionally coherent, very well-acted, and with only as many unlikely bits as one gets in any zombie/post-apocalypse movie. It's very earnest; I saw someone call it "sentimental, in a good way," which feels about right. I liked the island community, I liked the complicated relationship between Spike, his mom, and his dad. The moments the movie wanted me to find beautiful and moving generally worked for me.

I didn't love it the way some of my friends did; I think it just didn't have enough of my own personal id-bait in it. I thought it was a perfectly competent post-apocalyptic coming of age story, though.

The one fly in the ointment is the ending/cliffhanger, which feels like a visit from the schlockiest era of Mad Max. It's easy enough to just ignore that scene, though, at least until the second movie in the trilogy comes out. IMO this movie works fine without it.

Together (2025). Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie star as a longtime couple whose stagnated relationship gets more strained when they move to the countryside, and then things get really weird after they go hiking and fall into a weird hole in the ground.

I feel like this movie knows exactly what tone and mixture of horror, humor, metaphor, and relationship drama it wants and mostly succeeds. Unfortunately that tone didn't really work for me, and I found the main couple annoying, especially Franco's character. Meanwhile the movie is NOT interested in the mechanics or backstory of its horror, fair enough, but those are the parts that I would have been most interested in.

The deal with the third significant character is pretty fun, and I appreciate the foreshadowing. I also appreciate that this is yet another horror movie this year with a casual, unmarked queer relationship in it.

Overall, this felt like a perfectly fine movie that was just not for me.

Strange Harvest (2025). A true crime mockumentary about one man's series of ritualistic killings.

If "Lovecraftian serial killer mockumentary" sends tingles down your spine, then this movie is for you. I would not say it does a lot over and above that description, but the slow unspooling of events and the eventual reveals (which mean more to us horror aficionados than to the people being interviewed) are all very solidly written. It also manages to be quite gory, which I feel is impressive given it's literally all shown via photographs and video taken after the fact. There's one particularly grisly kill that is not like anything I've seen before. Plus, you have to be charmed by a movie so indie that the guy playing the serial killer is also the production designer.

Watching this, I wondered why there aren't more horror mockumentaries. They feel like probably just one step up from found footage in terms of budget and complexity (okay, maybe two steps), and they allow for a lot of the same kind of storytelling. I would absolutely watch more of this kind of thing. (Any recommendations? I've seen Lake Mungo, and that's about it.)

Anyway, this movie is a solid example of the kind of thing it is, which happens to be a thing I like. If you watch it, be sure to stick around through the end credits for the little stinger.