by Jason Osiason

SANCTUARY: This brilliant film takes on the classic cat-and-mouse thriller genre but combines gripping direction and a hard-hitting script and completely births a new cinematic voice. Margaret Qualley plays Rebecca, a-role playing dominatrix opposite her client, played by Christopher Abbott. She proves she’s growing into our most excellent living actress with her extremely chaotic performance providing a new take on the unreliable narrator narrative trope. On the other hand, Abbott is given his best role in years as an overprivileged nepotism baby whose career is being threatened by his repressed kinks that leave both panicked and incredibly turned on. Filmmaker Zachary Wigon and writer Michael Bloomberg stand out as exciting and fresh original talents. Micah Bloomberg also delivers hard-hitting, well-written, and acerbic writing paired with intoxicating visuals and complemented by an unforgettable soundtrack that hasn’t stunned me since Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds back at Sundance in 2016. The direction also takes clear inspiration from Punch Drunk Love’s hypnotic visuals and spectacular musical score (featuring Shiva Baby composer Ariel Max, a rising talent). The film is twisted and dark, and the chemistry between Abbott and Qualley is second to none. Sanctuary will be long remembered as one of the great debuts of this year’s TIFF. [A-]

V/H/S/99: Midnight Madness this year snuck in the first appearance of the V/H/S franchise, and boy, did it not disappoint. The newest installment single-handedly revitalized faith in the exhausted horror anthology genre, packing it with horrifyingly weirdly and mercilessly fun, standout shorts installments across the board. This included a trip to hell, a retro-punk girl band haunting, sorority hazing, not your average 90s game show, and a seeming girl next door. The latter was the weakest installment primarily due to its low budget restricting the thrills and scares despite a nice setup of its unique play on Rear Window with a Medusa-like twist. The film’s sorority hazing short felt like a near masterpiece though of pure anxiety as a pledge for a sorority is help trapped underground as they recreate an urban legend in the form of a hazing initiation that goes expectedly awry. The movie’s final feature spotlighting two men hired on the eve of Y2K to capture an ancient witch ritual for the devil that transports the duo literally to hell to unexpectedly grand-scale world-building and gleefully riotous results, and was extraordinarily impressive on a low production budget to a point where it could’ve been an exclusive feature with how engaged I was with it. The true standout is Flying Lotus’s titled Ozzy’s Dungeon, following up to his highly underrated feature debut Kuso with his absurdist Eric Andre-like body horror playing up on your classic revenge movie meets your classic 90’s Game show. Both that and the first short featuring punk rock band captures the mood, feeling, and zeitgeist at the end of the 1990s best, transporting us back, but through the lens of horror. Let’s hope this means the whole franchise is back on track. [B+]

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN: Martin Mcdonagh follows up Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri with another profound yet comedic tale about friendship, abandonment, and sudden rejection. The film centers on Colin Ferrell’s character falling out with Brendan Gleeson’s character Colm, his sister, played wonderfully by Kerry Condon, searching for meaning in her life, and Barry Keoghan being the town’s laughing stock town idiot is also a soul-crushing standout. Everyone in this fictional town in Ireland is slowly losing their wits and heads, which entails a superb delight for us, the viewer. It also features probably Colin Farell’s most outstanding performance as the exceptionally stubborn yet well-meaning Pádraic. All the characters in the film are flawed to a degree. McDonaugh is a master of developing his feelings without the need for unnecessary exposition but through rich observation and reflection. Martin McDonagh’s directorial style here is some of his most gorgeous and sweeping yet, and much of the cinematography work utilizes the grand Irish landscapes to its fullest extent. Since his last feature, he’s grown significantly as a visual director, which was once the sole category holding him back. [A-]

SICK: With a story credit by Scream’s Kevin Williamson comes an extremely well-directed pandemic commentary on the home-invasion slasher trope. Like Scream, the writing brings a treasure list of slasher tropes delivering genuine thrills and well-written characters from the start. The pandemic elements are smartly implemented into the plot and delivered in equally surprising ways with brilliant, gore-heavy kills and impressive directorial moments, including one particularly long shot that adds a much-needed visual intensity that sets it apart from other slash fares. The newcomers leading the movie do outstanding work. Still, the moment Jane Adams comes on screen, she delivers unmatched psychotic sadistic fare as a mother torn by familial trauma that I best not spoil, but it’s a very well-earned payoff for audiences. It also brings the most refreshing execution of an overdone genre since You’re Next which I saw at my first Toronto International Film Festival. Director John Hyams is one to keep a close eye on. [B+]  

PEARL: As his last feature, X was a love letter to the gritty slashers of the 1970s we grew up with, T.I West surprises with a character study in prequel form featuring the villain character Pearl that is a sweeping feat of vision and craftsmanship. Pearl is set around a young army wife who feels restricted in her small-town environment and takes her longing to escape it with big ambitious star dreams to bitter extremes. We then follow this titular character as she slowly descends into rage and madness, becoming the elderly murderous sociopath we saw in the film’s first installment. Pearl also playfully utilizes its horror movie landscapes and matches them with a homage to old Hollywood and the tremendous technicolor film of the classic moviegoing era. Mia Goth once again plays Pearl without the old-age makeup this time. She stuns with a performance fixating on her fraught psychological and emotional state and her sexual awakening while her husband is off at war and wants to conquer her dreams of becoming a world-famous dancer. It’s one of the year’s most unforgettable films and features an ending credits crawl for the ages. I’m excited to see where T.I. West’s trilogy goes next. [A-]

EMPIRE OF LIGHT: Sam Mendes’ follow-up to 1917 is one hand, a reliably and handsomely made motion picture, but it is ultimately a directionless story set in the 1980s during the heart of radical racism where Michael Ward’s Stephen joins the Empire movie cinema and is hired by its manager, played by Olivia Colman, who is plagued with schizophrenia and bouts with a nervous breakdown. Colman pours her soul into a woman maddened with mental illness, and those emotional beats ring truest because they are based on Mendes’ mother. Still, despite being a potently personal story, he tackles way too much topical fare with no tale to balanced narrative support and felt like he wrote himself as Michael Ward to tackle the topic of race and a truly forced romance between him and Colman. [C]

THE SON: Seeing your child suffer is a harrowing experience for any parent or guardian. Florian Zeller captures it to devastatingly accurate results in adapting his famous Off-Broadway play featuring the devastating consequences a broken household could have on your child. The film is set around a recently remarried father, played by Hugh Jackman, and his new wife, played by Vanessa Kirby. His distractions at work initially make him ignorant of the obvious signs of depression his ex-wife, played by Laura Dern, quickly notices. Some emotions may ring to saccharine, and newcomer Zen McGrath as the titled son is a bit woodenly miscast, yet spectacular performances are featured here. One in particular by Hugh Jackman in a powerfully devastating performance, another equally great one by Vanessa Kirby as this young second wife forced to take on an easily provoked teen dealing with spiraling depression. It took me a good 20 minutes to compose again from my continuous sobbing. All the parental conversations couldn’t have been more dead-on, and I say this from my adolescent experience with startling personal parallels. [B+]