There is a literal monster in Scott Cooper’s Antlers, namely the wendigo: a mythological spirit from indigenous American lore that craves human flesh, sprouts horns and possesses people. But as with the best horror storytelling — think Poe, think Shelley — the supernatural element is an offshoot of prosaically human conditions like greed, abuse and theft. The wendigo is a … [Read more...]
‘Game Night’ has a monopoly on other people’s ideas
While enjoying, to a point, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Game Night, I spent much of the picture wishing it had gone in a completely different, and subtler, direction. It’s easy to imagine some other project titled Game Night gestating and then languishing in the primordial muck of preproduction: a lo-fi, low-budget, semi-improvised mumblecore ensemble about a … [Read more...]