This is January and you know that’s usually not when studios release the most exciting stuff. But still, going to the theater is fun, and I’ve managed to watch three new releases this week, so let’s go through them together in the hope of inspiring you (or not) to go and watch them yourself (or not, I must reiterate).
Wolf Man
After the success of Leigh Whannell‘s The Invisible Man in 2020, Universal had regained interest for adapting “classic monsters” stories, so they invited their biggest stars to pitch them some ideas. Enter America’s sweetheart Ryan Gosling, telling them “I have a project for a new remake of Wolfman“,and because Universal is still trying to make the Dark Universe happen (they’re actually building a Dark Universe land in their upcoming theme park), they agreed. But pre-production took a while and both Gosling and director Derek Cianfrance eventually exited the project, with Leigh Whannell replacing him.
So here we have Wolf Man, a remake of The Wolf Man (1941), who was already remade in 2010 by Rocketeer’s director Joe Johnston in The Wolfman. The differences between the three films run deeper than the simple placement of spaces in their titles, but perhaps the most important thing to remember is that the latest one isn’t very good at all. To be quite honest, I have some trouble writing this because I remember so little from it, and that’s the main issue: it could’ve been written and directed by pretty much anyone, and has less taste and personality than tap water. Its only original idea – letting us see through the eyes of the wolf – is so underutilized and ugly than it might’ve well not be there at all.
The film is about a son who must return to his childhood home in Oregon after the death of his abusive father, and legend has it that the forest surrounding the house is home to a creature that can turn people into a wolf-like creature. This could have been a psychological horror film about childhood trauma or, on the contrary, a gory, fun horror film about a very redneck America, but Whannell chooses not to make a choice, and all along we get the impression of a film that doesn’t know which tone to choose or what it wants to tell. But maybe it’s better that way, because apparently at some point they wanted to make the wolf disease a metaphor for ALS, and… I’m not so sure about that one, fam.
It’s frustrating, ugly (the cinematography is very dark and you can’t see a thing during several scenes), badly acted and – worst of all for a horror movie — boring.
Quiche rating: 1.5/5
Companion
Remember M3GAN (to be pronounced “M-three-Gan” like that teacher from the Key & Peele sketch)? A sorta humorous, tongue-in-cheek, relatively tame horror movie. Now imagine if it was even less good than it already was? Well, that’s how you get Companion, a movie about a weird dude taking his girlfriend to see his weird friends to have a fun little vacation until she murders one of them, with a little twist that is spoiled by the movie poster.
Directed by Drew Hancock, Companion is a conflicted movie. Conflicted between horror and comedy, silly entertainment and the desire to say important things. In the state it’s released in, there’s nothing that works apart from 5 minutes near the end when it finally manages to be a little shocking and impactful on the subject it wants to evoke in a scene that, finally, brings some relatively powerful imagery and made me feel disturbed.
To be really interesting, it should have pushed the envelope on either the disturbing or the gore/catharsis side. I’m not asking every feminist horror movie to be Midsommar, but at the very least be like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. Give me some bad dudes getting gruesomely killed and I’m fine, sometimes that’s all a girl need. But no, here you only have four relatively mild and short kills during the whole movie. Disappointing and boring.
Dialogs are terrible and never sound natural. I don’t blame the actors too much, they’re not great in this, but I doubt anyone could have pulled them off. By the way, coming back to M3GAN, of course there’s a scene here that attempts to create its own viral moment, with a dance to a Seen On TikTok™ music and clearly shot to be appreciated on a vertical screen.
I doubt it’ll work, as most people will likely have forgotten the movie less than 24 hours after seeing it.
Quiche rating: 1.5/5
Better Man
After weeks of controversy about “why did they make him a monkey” and Americans wondering “why did they made a biopic about someone nobody knows“, Better Man is finally out, and I’m both pleased and surprised to inform you that it’s actually really good.
I’m not really a Robbie Williams fan, so I wasn’t exactly going into this with a lot of optimism but, while the story’s structure is the same as that of most biopics, I find that the moments of introspection and the point of view of a living person (rather than a biopic where the living are trying to bring down a dead man or elevate him to the status of a saint) add a very welcome touch of soul. I cared about him, and he even brought me to tears twice.
Visually, it lacks a bit of consistency and overall the non-musical scenes aren’t up to the rest but, damn, when it’s kino it’s ultra kino. All the musical scenes are full of incredible visuals, sets and choreography. I really liked Wicked, but in terms of direction and inventiveness it’s night and day – and one of them talks about magic while the other is a fucking Robbie Williams biopic, it should be the other way around.
As for the monkey, I clearly think after seeing the film that it was a way to get people talking about the project, but if I may offer a more generous (and not necessarily contradictory) interpretation, I’d say it also acts as a mask that allows Williams to be more personal in what he’s telling the audience, in the same way that some singers use vocal filters or auto-tune to talk about more personal subjects. Anyway, I found it less distracting than de-aging or casting to an actor that-kinda-looks-like-the-real-person-but-not-too-much. And it allows Weta to do some incredibly impressive visual wizardry that left me speechless on several occasions.
But most importantly, making the main character a monkey allows for some inventive and powerful depictions of depression, addiction and anxiety. Better Man does not dress a flattering portrait of Robbie Williams at all, but at the same time presents him as a victim of his own demons, which a lot of people will be able to relate to. We’re not all superstars, but most of us have at some point chased illusions and success in the hope that it would heal us.
Michael Gracey did a great job, I wasn’t expecting anything on this level and I think it’s a shame it’s such a flop: even if you take Robbie Williams out of the equation it still holds up very well as a musical.
quiche.cafe 
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