Just a few years ago I could’ve never imagined the number of movie and television streaming services I would eventually have access to. In many ways, having media scattered to the proverbial wind is a huge headache. We need websites like JustWatch to keep track of which services offer which content and without shelling out hundreds of dollars a month, you just need to make peace with the fact that you’re probably going to be able to watch all of the movies on that Letterboxd list.
The one thing good to come out of all of these services springing up out of the woodwork is that occasionally you do get that one service that offers a niche library of films on which no other provider would ever waste their budget. SHUDDER is one such a service, amassing quite the impressive collection of off-the-beaten-path horror and genre films in addition to some surprisingly decent original content. I’ve recently spent some time with a couple of buzzed-about films streaming exclusively on Shudder and I thought I’d share what I thought about them.
Anything for Jackson – dir. Justin G. Dyck
In Anything for Jackson, an elderly Satanist couple Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) and Henry (Julian Richings) kidnap a pregnant woman in the hopes that they can resurrect their recently deceased grandson from her unborn child. Rather than play the premise completely straight a la Rosemary’s Baby, the film instead adopts a half-winking self-aware black comedy approach to the story. While the levity was certainly welcome in a film with such a bleak subject, I think more could’ve been done to establish its less serious tone.
The film’s primary source of entertainment comes from McCarthy and Richings’ portrayals of Audrey and Henry as being not quite fumbling, but out-of-the-loop grandparents that struggle with technology and relating to younger generations. They’re clearly out of their depth in dealing with the dark arts, which is why they call in outside help in the form of Ian (Josh Cruddas), a basement-dwelling man-child and practicing Satanist. Following the introduction of this character, most of the enjoyment is sucked right out of the room as the film shifts from being charmingly oddball to being flat-out mean-spirited.
Performances and tonal imbalances aside, as things get out of control for Audrey and Henry so does any semblance of any cohesion between plot elements. Ghosts begin showing up around the house to terrorize the couple and it becomes hard to ascertain what exactly is going on, for characters within the story and audiences alike. It’s almost as if the writer had some spooky ideas for unique ghostly encounters but didn’t bother to have them make any sense within the context of the story. Ultimately, the film seems like a half-baked mishmash of ideas without with only a loose idea of a plot to hold things together.
Impetigore – dir. Joko Anwar
After she is attacked by a psychopath claiming to know her real name and place of birth, Maya (Tara Basro) travels with her friend Dini (Marissa Anita) to find the house in which she and her birth parents once lived. As it turns out, the village in which Maya was born is under a horrible curse that causes all babies to be born without their skin and the inhabitants of said village believe it has something to do with her.
Impetigore is an Indonesian horror-drama that lends itself to being more of a slow burn mystery. The entire core of the film revolves around unraveling the circumstances around this curse and why Maya appears to be at the center of it. Unfortunately, the film’s pacing doesn’t do it any favors. The first half of the film is excellent, building up tension as the important pieces are set into place to finally resolve into the solution to the riddle. This all comes crashing down in the final act of the film as everything is merely explained through flashback without Maya really doing any significant uncovering of secrets. The meaning behind everything is literally just implanted into her head by a ghost and then all is suddenly revealed. It’s extremely lazy storytelling if you ask me.
And let’s sit the entire movie aside for a second and talk about the title. My best guess is that it is a portmanteau of “impetigo” (a type of skin infection common in babies and children) and “gore.” While this movie does have a moderate amount of gore, the connection to a children’s skin condition is tenuous at best as these babies are being born with NO SKIN, not just some kind of rash. And maybe it’s just me, but the name kind of sets up expectations of a certain kind of movie when “gore” is in the title. I certainly was not expecting a slow paced and relatively reserved ghost story about a woman returning to her ancestral home…
Anyway, rant over. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.