The Foxy Film Fan

The following review of Host  is spoiler free! As the coronavirus pandemic stretches on, filmmakers have found themselves struggling to find innovative ways to continue on in their craft. While movies like Searching  (which is fantastic, by the way) and Unfriended  attempted to provide stories via webcam footage and glimpses of a laptop interface, Host  does it out of necessity rather than due to a stylistic choice. Director Rob Savage uses the pandemic as a realistic backdrop for a relatively simple movie. Due to the technological limitations from actors being restrained to working from their webcams and Host's  devotion to realism, the movie is very brief. It's only 57 minutes long - the length of a free group Zoom call. However, the short length of the movie doesn't hold it back. In fact, it makes Host  a fast and fun horror movie for a season where we can't expect many new films. There's no unnecessary exposition, nor are there lengthy scenes to show us...

Discussing The Lodge  without spoilers is incredibly difficult, but this review will be completely spoiler free. The basic premise of the horror movie is simple, but admittedly a little strange: two children are forced to spend the holidays with their father's girlfriend in the titular lodge during a terrible blizzard. All three of them are unhappy with an arrangement which sounds disastrous from the start, yet the girlfriend and father decide it's simply what they should do. So, we join Riley Keough in her babysitting adventure isolated in a cabin. My biggest critique is that the writers should have decided on stronger reasoning for Keough to wind up stuck with the two children in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps it could have been a situation more like  The Shining  and less along the lines of "your dad said this is a good idea, so it's clearly a good idea." Silly set-up aside, The Lodge  is decent. The film longs to discuss complex subjects like religious abuse, ...

Marriage Story  is a phenomenal and depressing movie. 2019 seems to be, for whatever reason, the year film felt like tackling agonizing and realistic depictions of breakups. From Midsommar 's fantastical take on a relationship's unraveling during cult rituals, to Marriage Story  (which I feel should have been called Divorce Story, since it's a little misleading), film has began agonizing over the details of romantic relationship's downfalls with no hope in sight of any sort of reconciliation.  I would like to begin this review with confessing my adoration for Adam Driver, and admitting that it took Jojo Rabbit for me to realize Scarlett Johansson can act in roles other than playing the silent tough lady. Marriage Story , however, really shows more depth and levels to her acting. It's unfortunate that the infamous fight scene has been circulating the internet as a bit of a meme, since within the context of the film it's heartbreaking and has some of the ...

Ready Or Not  is your traditional wedding story. A woman marries a rich man, and she has to survive until daylight while her new in-laws hunt her down with guns and crossbows. You know, it's just like every other wedding you've been to. There's a lot to say about this movie and it's commentary made on the wealthy privileged elites of society, and there's also a lot to say about Samara Weaving's performance as the bride who just can't seem to catch a break. Class warfare is the most blatant theme throughout Ready Or Not , and it's sort of a play on those stories of the wealthy hunting humans for fun. The family's dysfunction leads to her new husband, Alex, having complicated feelings about the role he's forced to play. Like the wealthy who contemplate whether the role they play in society is truly beneficial or actually actively harms the poor, he sways back and forth from longing to protect his wife and feeling certain that he has a duty to...

Directed by Aneesh Chaganty and starring John Cho, Searching  is a 2018 thriller which was tragically overlooked. It's the first mainstream Hollywood thriller staring an Asian-American actor, and Cho proves himself as a phenomenal actor who is capable of carrying the film entirely on his own shoulders. The directing, acting, and story are all absolutely phenomenal, and I really must urge everyone who reads this to seek this movie out (currently it's available on Vudu and Amazon Prime for purchase, unfortunately I don't think you can rent it anywhere right now). The film has one gimmick similar to that of Unfriended . You know, that awful 2015 horror movie where you watch some rude teenagers get killed off by the ghost of the girl they bullied to the point of suicide? Yeah. Searching  is told entirely through computer screens, webcams, emails, phone calls, and various other types of modern technology. However, the gimmick works in the case of this film. It feels natur...

This review contains spoilers for the movie Midsommar. Midsommar is a film which I have complicated feelings toward. In some aspects it's perfect. Visually, it's stunning, and the bright flower specked landscapes linger through the horror. I love the concept of a horror movie where daylight is not safer than the darkness, and I love the strange visual effects which make the plants and flowers breathe and pulse slowly. In other ways it feels restrained. The run-time was cut drastically, and it leaves certain aspects feeling underdeveloped (such as the "unclouded" who frantically scribble the community's holy texts). The film was intended to be a full half-hour longer, and I imagine losing that footage is the reason the movie feels rather incomplete. Don't get me wrong, Midsommar is good, but it doesn't feel fully realized. Our protagonist Dani is desperately clinging to a failing relationship after the loss of her family. Her uninterested boyfriend ...

Directed by Alexandre Aja and produced by the legendary Sam Raimi, Crawl  is the first movie to nearly give me a physical panic attack. Kaya Scodelario plays Haley, a swimmer who visits her estranged father (Barry Pepper) during a Category 5 hurricane to make sure he evacuates safely. Her rescue mission turns into the pair swimming, crawling, and climbing for their lives as they dodge the gaping maws of alligators which have made their way into the home's basement. Horror movies which spend the majority of their run-time in a single setting tend to grow old quickly, but Crawl chooses not to waste time (or scares). The CGI alligators have a real presence throughout the film, and with the movie's minimal soundtrack their every splash and snarl reverberates throughout the cavernous basement. I'm not claustrophobic, nor am I particularly scared of alligators (or at least I wasn't prior to seeing Crawl ), but Aja's sparing use of the camera flowing seamlessly unde...

Like many others, I was introduced to Taika Waititi through his satirical vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows  (written and directed alongside costar Jemaine Clement). It was funny enough for me to seek out and watch his heartfelt Hunt for the Wilderpeople starring Sam Neill. I even enjoyed and rewatched Thor: Ragnarok . So, I like Waititi's work, I like his style which emulates Wes Anderson but aspires to much more than settling for the wit and charm of Anderson's work. Waititi's Jojo Rabbit  doesn't just aim to tell a story, it aims to communicate the way a horrific ideology can spread like a wildfire through children. In some instances Jojo Rabbit  gives you emotional whiplash. One moment you're accompanying our clever child protagonist on his adventures around Berlin, and the next you're faced with the horrors of war as a civilian in Nazi Germany. However, this whiplash is crucial to truly understanding how the joy of the privileged in Berlin could...

Disney's vault of animated films are widely renowned classics of a bygone era where children's movies were thought provoking and fun for the whole family. Live action remakes of these classics are shambling hollow shells of what they once were, and Disney's live action remake of Lady and the Tramp  is no different. The real-life dogs used in the film are instantly transformed into horrific monsters dwelling in the depths of the uncanny valley the moment they open their bizarre CGI mouths and begin to speak, and the cats who frame poor Lady for demolishing her family's home are a hideous pair. The original music is left unscathed, save for the controversial Siamese cat song from the 1955 animated version which is replaced with a terrible jazz song that fails to blend in alongside the rest of the film's musical number. In every way imaginable, Lady and the Tramp  (2019) lacks subtlety. From the way the pair of cats demolish every inch and corner of Lady's ...

Stephen King movie adaptations and I have had a tumultuous relationship at best. I like  many of them -  Misery  gave Kathy Bates the opportunity to demonstrate her incredible acting skills (but muddled the creeping terror of the book by introducing a friendly bumbling cop for us to keep up with), Thinner  was terrible, the 2019  Pet Sematary  remake was painful to sit through, It Chapter Two  tricked the audience into watching the same sequence of events over and over again, nobody watched (or liked) The Dark Tower , and Netflix's In the Tall Grass tried its best. Of course there are the classics like Stand By Me , The Green Mile , Shawshank Redemption , and 1408  (I'm kidding, I just have a soft spot for that one in particular). Then there's The Shining . I want to acknowledge something briefly, before I delve into praising this work of art. Stanley Kubrick abused Shelley Duvall horrifically to force her into a deteriorating mental state...

Bathed in golden hues, The King  tells the story of King Henry V with heavy inspiration from the plays of William Shakespeare. Timothée Chalamet stars as the titular king, and it's a difficult role to take on. Henry undergoes three key internal transformations throughout the course of the nearly three hour film, but Chalamet handles each subtle shift in personality with the dignity the role deserves.  There are brief instances where the film fumbles, particularly in the strangely sanitized way it depicts the future king's reckless lifestyle prior to his position in power. The film shows him hungover, and we see him with a fully clothed woman beside him in his bed on a couple of occasions, but it fails to properly depict him as the failure everyone in the film sees him as. After his newfound role as king there are some slower scenes to slog through, but once France (and Robert Pattinson's performance as The Dauphin of France) make an appearance the film succeeds in f...

I, like so many others, was skeptical when I heard news of the new M. Night Shyamalan film. For years he’s been disappointing film goers of all kinds, and with the release of the likes of The Last Airbender it became questionable who his target audience even was anymore. It almost began to seem as though he had lost sight of who he was, as though he wasn’t even the same director responsible for classics like The Sixth Sense . The announcement of Split failed to excite me, and though the premise seemed fascinating I refused to get my hopes up, especially with a trailer that provided enough room for one to imagine the film hastily devolving into another laughably bad mess like The Visit did. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Split was so good that there were many instances in which I had to remind myself that I was in fact watching a film by the same man who made After Earth and The Happening . The premise to Split is simple and not unlike that of an episode of...

In a genre filled with quick cuts and constant jump scares, The Babadook offers the exact opposite. Focusing on a grieving widow who is struggling to raise her son alone after the loss of her husband, The Babadook  gives a more sincere and heartfelt look into the horror genre than most other films. In fact, one might even say that it offers love and empathy and is straining to comfort its viewers despite the horrific themes and occurrences which take place in its one hour and thirty-five minute runtime. Of course, that isn't to say that the film isn't absolutely terrifying in the instances that it needs to be, while viewers watch the son and mother duo screech and dodge attacks from the terrifying Babadook, a twitching eerie tophat wearing monster lifted from the pages of a horrific children's book which has decided to latch on to and torture this particular family. The film is decent, and I'll admit that the main reason I am so attached to it and adore it so muc...

Starring the always fantastic  (and often eerie) Tilda Swinton, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a phenomenal film based on an equally fantastic novel which presents the difficulty of raising an out of hand child from the perspective of the mother, who sees a terrifying darkness and lack of empathy within her own son which she fears she cannot do anything about. Ezra Miller is wonderful in his portrayal of a teenager brimming with rage and hatred toward the world around him, though one must suspend their disbelief at the notion of him being the son of Tilda Swinton and John C. Riley. Questionable genetics aside, his brooding and angsty performance is almost too good, and it's expertly paired with the sort of haughty arrogance found in most troubled teens. Though the film is a slow burn and stumbles awkwardly through its pacing at time, the movie's narrative is greatly assisted in its frequent usage of flashbacks and flash forwards, which meld together to create ...

Embers (2015) Taking place in a post apocalyptic world in which a disease which makes creating and maintaining memories impossible, Embers  offers a glimpse into the lives of several different people who have their own ways of grappling with the harsh world in which they have no way of knowing who the people around them are. Interspersed between these glimpses into the lives of those too poor to afford a way to escape the disease, we are offered a look at the empty life of a young woman who lives in a shelter with her father, untouched by the disease but horribly bored with nothing to do but test her memory time and time again. With its fascinating premise, beautiful and meticulous camera shots, and slow atmospheric soundtrack, I really wanted to like Embers . Unfortunately, Embers  failed to hold my attention throughout the course of the film, as it wavered awkwardly from scenario to scenario and fell into the trap of repetition as married couples forget one another an...

Starry Eyes (2014) The subject of fame is one often tackled in cinema, partially due to the fact that filmmakers and screenwriters are encouraged to write about subjects which they feel they have a decent understanding of. This leads to a wide variety of films all tackling the subject of fame in some way, but rarely do they aim to do so in a horror setting. Typically, audiences are rooting for someone's quest for fame in a comedy, romance, or drama. In the case of Starry Eyes, audience members are left conflicted as our protagonist goes to increasingly dangerous and drastic lengths as the promise of stardom is dangled in front of her face, forever pushing her to go further and further beyond her moral limits in some vain effort at achieving her dreams. Its a premise we've seen time and time again, typically under the guise of romantic comedies or a heart wrenching drama. Unfortunately for our protagonist, she's not in a comedy where she'll meet up with her future ...