almost Skipped past this forgetting, luckily I saw it available just now and came back just to let you know since you put me on to these. Will try to watch tonight or for the weekend.
I've got a backlog of horror building up, but I'm definitely trying to get this in before I make my favorites of the 2025 list. Let me know what you think of it!
I've got a lazy weekend queue'd up, so hopefully I'll have some new joints to shout out for everyone in the thread.
2 recent watches that I thought were pretty good, but I personally wouldn't label as horror and why.
Him
It's more of a really dark comedy than a horror imo. I think a horror movie should have real scare scenes, and this one doesn't have those. It has plenty of disturbing images and dark ideas, but it almost always slips into absurdism and the darkest bits always ended with me chuckling. For example:
My favorite moments were
1. The scene where an incomplete pass means one of the players gets blasted in the face with a point blank football...it's half comedic as a premise, and while it keeps tension throughout, the scene ends with Marlon Wayans like "wtf are you laughing at" to the dude who just got beat up. I laughed out loud, for real.
2. The sauna scene where the crazed fanatic attacks Cam. Cam defends himself, and almost kills the woman. But Marlon Wayans winds up finishing it. But again, Wayans' non-chalant "I'll clean this up, you go ahead" and Cam listening so easily takes the bite out of it.
3. Cam bodying all the owners...some HARSH kills here. But mixed in we have Julia Fox slipping and impaling herself, and Tim Heidecker offering a BJ in order to live...it was comedy.
There are also three or four comedians playing in roles here. Though, Marlon Wayans and Jim Jeffries honestly gave GREAT performances. I just feel like this wasn't horror.
But it was good. I liked the allegories, especially in the first half. The absurdism of the second half kinda lost me, but moreso because it felt rushed and got away from the actual football training scenes that I found most interesting. I get why it's gotten mixed reactions. But I thought it was pretty good as a really dark comedy, and Marlon Wayans really did an amazing job.
The Carpenter's Son
This one's more like a drama imo. It's got really gross scenery, and a lot of dangerous situations. But again, disturbing and gross imagery shouldn't automatically make it a horror movie imo. It's a cool look at Jesus coming to realize who he is, but I feel like it didn't capture the most memorable bits of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas or even the tone I would expect from a movie based on it.
Nick Cage only gets to really let loose once in the whole movie. None of the other characters are very well realized, even including Jesus who gets the lion's share of the scenes. I don't think they could have explored this concept fully with a movie's run time. It would need a 6-8 episode series. But I like that it felt somewhat authentic to the time frame.
I guess I expected BrightBurn but with Jesus instead of Superman. But they made something that I feel wouldn't be pleasing to serious Christians, while still being afraid to risk offending them...and they probably whiffed on both fronts. I'd love to see Osgood Perkins tackle this topic. I'd also love to see someone take liberties with the most interesting apocryphal gospel, if we're going that way (the gospel of Judas).
Anyway, it wasn't bad. It's wasn't all that good either. It's mid.
And on that note....I'm gonna keep using this lazy weekend to catch up on 2025 horror I've been meaning to watch. Speaking of Perkins, I've got Keeper up next.
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