Night Always Comes 2025 * * * Stars

COMES TO GRIEF

Wow, now that's a movie, a real troubled sort of movie. Yeah I'm talking about 2025's Night Always Comes, a type of thriller the Safdie brothers would have done had they made a companion piece to go along with their Good Time from nearly ten years back. "Night", well it's a dream within a dream except it's a nightmare, and it's a nightmare within a nightmare except it's real life. Did you get all that?

Anyway Night Always Comes has a distraught woman trudging through Portland, Oregon as if it's modern day Beirut, robbing and violently assaulting and lying, all the while trying to get $25,000 raised so her family won't get evicted from their home. Vanessa Kirby plays said woman in Lynette and it's a nerve-ending performance. You kind of root for her and feel sorry for her at the same time, something done rather ineffectively with the Taraji P. Henson persona from Straw (reviewed just two weeks ago). 

Night Always Comes, well it's a lucid downer par excellence, benefiting from seedy characters, a lot of danger coming from around the corner, and Benjamin Caron's atmospheric direction, full of tracking shots and interior, car camera shots that make you feel like you're bucking the Tilt-A-Whirl. Yup, it's one of those "race against time" flicks that takes place in um, the middle of the night, frothing and yearning and hoping for debt erasing to come to fruition. "I'm gonna be on the street again, is that what you want?" No, but I'd like to get some sleep so I can stop hallucinating while seeing bunnies. Yeesh! 

Starring Julia Fox, Eli Roth, and Kirby (mentioned earlier), "Night" doesn't just let up on the tension, it sledgehammers it to the point where you end up chewing your fingernails off (that's if I had any and I don't). "Night" capped. 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Weapons 2025 * * 1/2 Stars

IMPERFECT YET LETHAL WEAPONS

"I think it's best if you keep some distance from this place". Oh and keep your distance from the fellow townspeople who trudge along like the walking dead too. Yikes!

2025's Weapons, well it's about a creepy-looking woman who with terminal cancer, decides to possess children (and adults) into brutally harming themselves and each other. Why you ask? Beats me. Hey, as they say I just work here.  

Anyway when said denizens and tykes get bewitched, they gallop "Naruto run" style, with arms outstretched like guided missiles (hence the word weapons as a title). 

Starring Josh Brolin, Amy Madigan, Julia Garner, Austin Abrams and a host of others, Weapons has a pretty unsettling tone and for part of the way, becomes a mere thinking person's horror endeavor. One might even say the vehicle might require repeated viewings, maybe catch something creepily new seeping into frame. 

By the end however, you're left wondering what the point of it all was with the overrated swipe that is Weapons. I sure did. I mean it's like 128 minutes of gore for the sake of gore, modus operandi for the sake of modus operandi, barbarity for the sake of um, barbarity. "I don't understand at all". Me neither boss. Me neither. 

So OK, what's left to truly admire with Weapons? Well despite its fissure snags, there's a solid directorial effort leaking from Zach Cregger, he of 2022's Barbarian fame. Cregger shoots Weapons in a rather effective nonlinear narrative, as the characters in his vignettes steadily bump into each other with total aplomb. His Weapons is well, the Rashomon of scare fests and something Quentin Tarantino might have done had he shamelessly fooled around with the cinematic occult. Too bad Cregger's keen eye behind the camera overshadows his rather slack script and vapid motives. Makeshift "weapon". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Until Dawn 2025 * * Stars

DAWN AFTER THE DEAD

"Every night, something new is trying to kill us." Great. Can't wait to have an old bag with odious teeth suffocate me. 

Based on a video game and starring unknowns Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, and Ji-young Yoo, 2025's Until Dawn is a traditional fright fest until it's not (that's a good thing). Until Dawn is also a very hooky film until its effect wears rather thin (that's a not-so-good thing). I mean why does this flick want to mess with its audience and characters just for kicks? And why do said characters have to bite the dust over and over again, sometimes easily, sometimes with weighted effort (huh?)? 

Only "Dawn's" director (the seasoned David F. Sandberg) knows the answers and somewhere he's smiling, thinking he's made a sprawling masterpiece. Easy there boss! Just because you combine elements of The Evil Dead and The Descent and sprinkle it with the almighty Groundhog Day effect doesn't mean you're the master of Italian giallo. Systematic jump scares from the Takashi Shimizu era and MTV-style editing a great horror pic doesn't make. "Up the road, that's where people get into trouble". Well at least "Dawn's" throng gets to see their worming victims get into trouble, bloody corn-syrupy trouble. 

So OK, here's the thing: helmer Sandberg while not playing cinematic hot dog man, conjures up some ghastly, alarming images with Until Dawn. I mean he can make you wince with the makeup department obviously doing their job too. The problem lies in the repetitive diegesis, something about 5 buddies who look for their friend only to get murdered repeatedly while reliving the same darkened night at some haunting abode. Talk about the zapping of dramatic momentum. By the time Until Dawn's abrupt, pat ending comes into play, you've decided that its personas should be put out of their own dolor halfway into the second act. False "dawn". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Straw 2025 * * Stars

NOT SIPPING THIS KOOL-AID

"Something inside of me broke." Ya think? Getting drummed out, getting fired from your job, losing your child, being wanted for murder, being wanted for holdup. Yeah I'd break too, or find a panacea and a bottle of Scotch to medicate.

Anyway in the tradition of movies like 2002's John Q., Ambulance, and 211 comes Straw, something about a single mom who gets embroiled in a day of crime as she holds hostages in a bank because she can't get her paycheck cashed in order to feed her sickly daughter. Taraji P. Henson as Janiyah Wilkinson plays said mom and it's a raw performance, surrounded by a rather depressing, hovel of a Netflix endeavor. You can savor the ooze and grot as Straw's shooting location ("Hotlanta") feels like well, modern day Beirut. 

So OK, if you choose to see Straw see it for Henson's turn alone, what with all her amazing commitment to the role, her indisposed screen presence, and her rearing fidelity. The movie around her, well it's a mixed bag, a profuse satire, showcasing overly mean-spirited side personas who are unenlightened and bent on making Taraji's Janiyah artificially snap. "I just wanna do what's right for my baby." Of course, but why the need to draw out 108 minutes of Straw's malevolent running time when 70 or so would suffice. 

Straw's director (the incomparable Tyler Perry), yeah he'd rather make an "it's only a movie" movie with implausibility and schlock as opposed to dealing with real-life, personage situations. Putting his subjects in a world sans any speck of empathy, hope, or ease, Perry pushes the envelope as only he can creating something where you feel way too sorry for the main character (Janiyah of course) instead of having the audience root for her to find some volition. "Straw drain".  

Written by Jesse Burleson