Recently watched Skunk, the latest film by Koen Mortier, the Belgian director whose previous film Ex Drummer has been discussed here on a few occasions. The film follows Liam, nicknamed "Skunk", a 17-year old who has grown up in absolutely horrific conditions (as some online commentators have mentioned, it's like the characters from Ex Drummer had a child). Skunk has developed a pretty disgusting defense mechanism: as soon as someone starts messing with, he immediately shits his pants, in the hopes that the aggressor will be so disgusted that he will be left alone. 2/3 of this film is presented as a more traditional realistic coming-of-age story, albeit at times a pretty harrowing one. Towards the end Mortier shifts up a gear or two and things start getting a quite a bit more unhinged much like at the end of Ex Drummer. Out of those two films, I think this is clearly the better one, but if you were drawn to Ex Drummer because of its completele madness and nihilism, you might be bored by this one.
Also watched the much-hyped Longlegs. It is SHIT FROM ASS. This seems to be a trap I fall into on a regular basis: having watched the trailer or just read about some big-money mainstream horror film, I end up giving it a chance in the hopes it won't be quite as crap this time around. And of course it always is. The previous one of this type that I fell for was Abigail. It's a real pity because I actually like Maika Monroe a lot, and she was great in It Follows and the very underrated Watcher (one of the best thriller/horror films of 2022). But this time she just stands around being somehow wooden and brittle at the same time. She plays an FBI agent hunting a serial killer, but hey, she's psychic, so she doesn't actually need to do any investigative work, she just naturally knows everything. This movie is an embarrassing, boring, frustrating, contrived, illogical mess.
Finally, at last I've gotten into the Brazilian "Coffin Joe" series. So far I've seen two of the three "official" Coffin Joe movies, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964) and This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967). I've still to watch the final part of the trilogy, Embodiment of Evil (2008). As an interesting trivia, the 41 years between the originals and the final film was the longest pause between installments in a film series/franchise, that is, until Exorcist Believer in 2023, which is a direct sequel to the original and came out 50 years later.
To be fair, objectively speaking the Coffin Joe movies really aren't that great. The storylines are haphazard and the acting is barely there. But, I can see why they are firm cult favorites, and they have that particular Brazilian combination of disorganized madness and monomaniacal tunnel vision that I love so much. I have an affinity towards Brazilian films in general, having spent my childhood there. José Mojica Marins passed away in 2020, so you can download these films guilt free, if you are interested.
