'Bright, creative lights and nowhere to plug in' | July in Review

July's most notable watches ended up having some unexpected themes.

Both Nope and Vengeance are movies I have continued to think about since I watched them, for both good and bad reasons. I was highly anticipating both, both have vaguely western (in the cowboy sense) influences and both were very strong until...they weren't.

Nope was full of four-to-five star ideas and it had a lot of really good things going on. The direction and performances were very good, two elements that are consistent across Jordan Peele's catalog. And some of the overarching themes – people of color finding their place in the lore of the American West, the various ways domestication can play out – were compelling and laid out in a unique way. Peele has a knack for presenting an audience with a concept they've never quite seen before.

But things didn't come together quite as neatly as I expected and the ending left me unsatisfied. I was also annoyed that the film was marketed as a horror film and it absolutely wasn't one. Had I known going in that it was more of a slightly-chilling-science fiction situation, I think I might've liked the finished product more overall.

I was similarly torn leaving Vengeance. I thought about 80-85% of the film was excellent. And full disclosure: I was coming at it from a very biased perspective. I was literally born in a city that one of the characters is named after. But that bias could've also put the odds against the film before it even started.

Folks are wrong about Texas all the time, in real life and in media. That's an entire other blog post I don't have the energy for. But Vengeance got Texas right, from the complexities of the people and the landscape to the fervent loyalty to Whataburger and your chosen college football team (as someone who went to UT but is from Texas Tech country, some of the jokes were something close to traumatizing). The film didn't feel like parachute journalism – or in this case, parachute filmmaking. It felt like B.J. Novak actually spent time in West Texas, as his character does, and it got under his skin. 

Unfortunately, Vengeance also has one of the most self-sabotaging third acts I've ever seen. It truly angered me, not just because what happens is dumb, but because everything that happened before wasn't. I still think it's a film worth seeing, especially if you're from Texas and absolutely if you're from anywhere west of Dallas, but I'm still a little mad about it days later.

Nope and Vengeance weren't the only films I watched in July that I was able to draw a line between, but this next one is a little more abstract.

I watched Cabin Fever for the first time and I absolutely hated it. But I unwittingly made a mistake before I even pressed play: I decided to go into it blind. I assumed I knew the general gist of what it was about, took into account that it came out in 2002 and went in without watching a trailer. This is often a good choice! Not in this case. Horror is rarely perfect, but this was like a greatest hits of its worst tendencies – politically incorrect language, casual depiction of sexual assault – while also being of a subgenre I'm generally not a fan of (infection/sickness horror). There were a few good ideas hidden in the muck, but it wasn't enough to counter-balance. 

Watching the trailer could've spared me.

On the other hand, choosing to watch a trailer can also end up being a mistake, as was the case with Not Okay. If you have watched the trailer for this film, you have seen the film. That's not necessarily the film's fault – I'm sure filmmakers have little say in how their films are marketed – but it still kind-of feels like it is? Your film should bring more to the table than a trailer can get at. This film felt like it had a lot it was trying to say, some of it interesting, but it ultimately felt like it didn't say anything. It felt like a waste of time.

Moving on, also this month in first watches: Unfriended was awful but entertaining; Spiderhead made me yearn for Hemsworth's villain era; and I felt nothing about Dark Skies. Thor: Love and Thunder was deeply disappointing, and Girl in the Picture was sad. 

I also rewatched Independence Day (duh), The Black Cauldron (a childhood favorite that apparently no one else has seen), Romeo + Juliet and Us, plus Hot Fuzz and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which both remain perfect.

I mostly put The Turn of the Key on the back burner this month, in favor of reading The Night Shift by Alex Finlay. It was a pretty familiar plot for me, having read both Final Girls by Riley Sager and The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix, but it still brought enough of its own voice to the table to be enjoyable.