Reviews
‘Disclosure Day’ Review: Gorgeous Visuals Battle Over-Stuffed Script
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is a film so close to greatness, but one leashed by itself from attaining it. The first science fiction film from Spielberg in eight years has base elements which are truly fantastic. The mystery is compelling, and the performances can be emotionally resonant. And despite how simple and familiar the set pieces and genre tropes it revels in are, Disclosure Day has some of the most thrilling moments audiences will see in a film this year.
But what should be a knockout summer blockbuster becomes bloated. It’s a film that could easily be a perfect score but suffers from its approach. Considerable pacing and scripting issues dial back the appeal of its ten out of ten visuals and leave you thinking about what could have been one of the best Spielberg films of all time.
What Is Disclosure Day About?
As international tensions rise, the world reaches a tipping point. Nations prepare to go to war, and the conflict of nuclear powers threatens to send humanity back into the Stone Age. But an insurgent group hopes to avoid destruction by unlocking a secret chapter of human history and sharing it with the world: the story of humans and their first contact with aliens.
Up against the shadowy government contractor Wardex, a rogue group races to unveil the truth. Caught in the web of intrigue are a hacker named Daniel (Josh O’Connor) and a weather reporter named Margaret (Emily Blunt), whose proximity to the struggle and its origins becomes impossible to ignore. Hunted by Wardex director Scanlon (Colin Firth), the fate of the world hangs in the balance as the duo attempts to give the entire human race full disclosure.
A Balancing Act Between Tension and Wonderment
For the most part, Disclosure Day has Spielberg in rare form. The immediate mental leap that fires off is to try and drive home comparisons to Close Encounters, though that instinct detracts from the unique balancing act on display. The film is able to juggle between evoking a sense of wonderment and a sense of pure dread with just how it’s shot. Crossing the spectacle of psychic phenomena with the tension of a Cold War spy-thriller is something we haven’t seen from him in any one project. It’s a hybrid, and a fascinating blending of genres at that.
This balancing act is primarily driven by an absolutely packed and powerful ensemble cast. Emily Blunt plays Margaret with effortless odd and endearing charm as she gets thrown headfirst into the deep end. The quirks of her character evolve into a fully fleshed out persona that reminds you why Blunt has top billing. Josh O’Connor plays his part as the yin to Margaret’s yang beautifully as well; his sober terror as he finds himself on the run is a fun contrast that, when placed opposite of Blunt, renders great chemistry between the two as they’re magnetically drawn to each other in search of the truth.
Disclosure Day Gives Us One of the Best Sci Fi Villains
Colin Firth’s absolutely nefarious Noah Scanlon is one of the best villains in a science fiction film in a long time, especially during the movie’s most memorable confrontation against Daniel’s girlfriend Jane. His performance is about as finely tuned as it is frightening. And as far as Colman Domingo’s rebel leader Hugo goes, it’s clear why his pivotal dialog was the core of all the marketing material. There’s a steady calmness that could only come from an actor as seasoned as Domingo slipping into his role like a glove. He and Firth are highlights, even if they are delegated mostly to supporting roles. Together, the entire cast moves like clockwork.
Lack of Confidence, Thy Name Is Dialogue
But while the cast feels perfect for the roles they’re given, and they do great with what they can, the nature of so much dialog in Disclosure Day is repetitive and obvious. There’s a wild number of moments that would be truly golden if they weren’t shot down by characters stating not only their emotions but also the obvious things that are happening in front of them.
Some moments should fundamentally feel like characters are having a massive breakthrough or emotional catharsis, but more often than not, it feels more like the audience is having these emotional arcs explained to them. Thematically, the movie is supposed to be about this search for fundamental truths. Truths not just about our place in the universe and in the eyes of God, but about our place with each other. It’s that thematic richness it seeks that makes the bad lines feel like so much salt in the wound. There are moments where these intrinsic questions could be asked with dimension and depth, but instead they’re flattened out by how the characters speak to each other bluntly.
This is the aforementioned proximity to greatness; there’s a hypothetical cut of this film that has so much of this verbal bubble wrap sliced away which would be perfection. But just like on our Earth and the Earth of Disclosure Day, this is not a perfect world. It can only really be chalked up to a diffidence that plagues the writing: a lack of confidence in being able to communicate something subtly, and a simultaneous lack of confidence in the audience to receive that information.
Small Tears in a Sentimental Tapestry
As the film continues with this pattern, the small tears in this emotion driven tapestry become more noticeable. The CGI can be wonky at times. The score can feel leading rather than complementary. The blocking is far from inspired, especially given how many scenes there are of our characters surrounded by a crowd with bated breath; with this many bodies in motion, the way he places his actors and moves through them feels less thought out.
And most noticeable of all, the film’s hefty runtime is paced poorly, especially in its third act. Make no mistake: it’s a final reel that is visually and sonically gorgeous in where it goes. If cinematographer Janusz Kamiński was ever in a flow state, it is here and now with this film. It feels like there was an abundance of footage and no haste to actually edit out any of it. It feels like a director’s cut that just goes on too long, like many scenes in the film. This is especially apparent in a finale that should be awe-inspiring for how incredible it looks, but ultimately lingers too long and overstays its welcome.
It’s understandable that when working with the most influential voice in cinema history, one might be reticent to cut anything. But Disclosure Day’s lack of restraint with how it unfolds exacerbates many small issues that will leave some viewers with regret. Not because it’s irredeemable, or even a movie you won’t enjoy watching, but because it has so much to give and is so captivating in its cinematic vision. And because sadly, that vision is weighed down by the desire to be easily digestible and show all of its emotional tricks. It’s a desire that turns a borderline perfect film into simply another aesthetically pleasing one.
A compliment first: once Evil Dead Burn’s first act ends, the film is cut loose to go wild like Sam Raimi running around with a camera strapped to his head (not a motorcycle, but thanks Bruce, it was a good piece of fake trivia while we believed it). And it’s at that turning point, when the film abandons most of the pretense of its very artificial, featherweight drama, that I started to love Evil Dead Burn. All in all, the film is a seriously entertaining endeavor in its second and third acts for how kinetic it can be.
The cold water second: Evil Dead Burn is poorly edited. But are Sébastien Vaniček and Philip Lozano’s directing and photography good enough to make up for it? Not particularly, no. But, is the story good enough to cover that up? Also no. But does it have great dialogue and humor to make up for it? Again no. But—you see where I’m going with this.
So, I’m sure you’re wondering what I actually enjoyed about this film, if it’s so flawed. And that is one simple fact: Burn is the Evil Dead franchise’s equivalent of a pro wrestling match. And Vaniček’s entry is taking you directly to a deadite royal rumble.
What Is Evil Dead Burn About?
The premise the film starts you off with would obviously never make that apparent. After her boyfriend Will is killed in a horrific car crash, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is in shambles. Their final moments were a blow-out argument in a long string of abusive behavior on Will’s part. And to make matters worse, as she tries to reckon with that painful relationship, she is forced to attend his funeral and stay at his family’s home in the countryside. High emotions worsen tensions, as the in-laws that already ostracized her become even more aggressive.
But Will’s death was much more complicated than anyone knows: the grisly passing was set up to find the Price Family. Because Will’s brother Joseph has tampered with some very special occult items, and in the process awakened the evil dead to search for their personal effects once more. As one might expect from relentless Kandarian demons at this point, they will stop at nothing to find their possessions, even if it means tearing the family apart piece by bloody piece.
The Deadites Are Really Just Here to Put Belt to Ass
The fact of the matter is, Evil Dead Burn only really has enough structural support for its true star: the ridiculously bloody action it has on offer. This is not a ponderous horror film on the nature of trauma, despite its efforts to prod at that. It’s not a surprisingly contemplative film talking about addiction like, say, Fede Alvarez’s 2013 turn at the wheel. It is, however, the cinematic equivalent of that one RAW promo where Triple H breaks into Randy Orton’s house and just starts putting belt to ass.
The film is at its best when it’s simply letting the deadites run roughshod with their host bodies and their human prey. Tossing each other into furniture and running the fade with extreme malice, it’s borderline action horror with how much they throw down. And it looks great too, in no small part to some phenomenal practical gore and physical acting on the parts of both the main cast and their stunt performers.
The Perfect Family (of Horrific Demonic Undead)
Alyssa Sutherland’s deadite Ellie Bixler was like a slinking undead spider, crawling around and waiting to strike when her victims were at their most scared. But the Price family of Burn is more like a herd of bulls rampaging through a hospital and aiming for the patients on life support. I really can’t emphasize enough how much the stunt performers run this film, since their physicality and wild movement is perfectly in line with their fellow lead actors who get to play the deadites.
The undeniable highlight of the film is Erroll Shand. His role as the slimy grieving father Edgar is almost as good as Ellie with how absolutely nasty and demented he gets; he has the particular pleasure of working a true gross-out moment that felt like watching a Brian Yuzna film for the first time, so bravo to him if it goes to anyone. A close second for shock factor is Luciane Buchanan, who gets multiple franchise great moments as Thya. But really, the entire deadite family is fantastic once they’ve shed the weight of the film’s bag-of-rocks dialogue and get to just be sick little freaks.
(All due respect to the sick little freaks reading.)
An Examination of Abuse Deflated by Amateurish Writing and Editing
It’s doubly disappointing that Evil Dead Burn’s script is so bad in places, because the conceit of Alice’s situation is rife with potential for some really emotional scenes. Touching on the complexity of abusive relationships and how people begin to blame themselves for staying in them is inherently intriguing. It’s so perfectly in line with the way deadites psychologically torture their victims that the allegory feels wrapped like a present with a bow. And Yacoub is at the very least competent enough to work with that, she’s very engaging when she grows into full final girl form to fight back.
But the dialog is so aggressively one dimensional and unsubtle in communicating the issue at hand, it converts what could be rich drama into something cheap and flimsy. When the film tries to stoke the dramatic fires of Alice’s turmoil, it starts to feel more like a tone-deaf Lifetime movie where things are so incredibly over the top you can’t take it seriously. It’s just a tonal clash with this film’s better, more chaotic half that I can’t get behind.
If You’re Doing the Stunts, And I’m Doing The SFX, Then Who’s Editing This Movie?
This is an issue only exacerbated by the film having some seriously inappropriate timing in its editing. Most noticeable are these disorienting cuts across the entire runtime that feel like the film reel skipping. But what really gets me is the placement of these harrowing flashbacks to Alice and Will’s relationship that just don’t work. They get popped in at inopportune times to emphasize how high the stakes are emotionally for Alice. Of course, this only lowers the stakes. In isolation, the footage might have been effective (read in a doubtful tone). But in the context they’re inserted into, it evokes the feeling of someone shoving both feet on the brakes; a jarring stop in the momentum, to say the least.
Is Evil Dead Burn Worth Seeing?
So yes, Evil Dead Burn is a film that is slow to warm with its clammy writing and ice-cold editing. But once things get heated up and the film’s ensemble cast of villains are off their leash, it provides an impressive enough spectacle to keep you surprised at the wackiness and violence it achieves. And that’s saying something given the franchise’s laundry list of grotesqueries and always reliable chainsaw shenanigans. It’s hard to say if this will actually become a fan favorite with its many hiccups, but at the very least it keeps the old adage true: there’s no such thing as a boring Evil Dead film.
I’ve said time and time again that horror comedies/dark comedies aren’t my forte. Filmmakers often don’t find the right balance between horror and comedy, usually resulting in a mishmash blend that feels unfocused and lacking. Moreover, I love ambitious films; horror comedies don’t often lend themselves to ambition. (That’s not a diss by any means.) Films like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, The Draft!, and Chainsaws Were Singing are just a few that really broke the mold for me. Thanks to the lovely programmers at Chattanooga Film Festival, I can now add Frankie, Maniac Woman to the list of exceptional horror comedies.
Frankie, Maniac Woman Delivers a Bloody Twist on Horror Comedy
Frankie Ramirez (Dina Silva) is trying to break into the industry one way or another. Little did she know that her fame would come at a bloody price. Denial after denial, being told she’s not skinny or pretty enough, when enough was enough…Frankie takes her revenge. Can Frankie slash her way to the top of the charts? Or will her path of violence become too much for her to handle?
Co-written by Dina Silva and Pierre Tsigaridis and directed by Pierre Tsigaridis, Frankie, Maniac Woman is truly a sight to behold. Pierre Tsigaridis’ third feature film takes us to a deeper level than we’ve seen before (though that might not be fair to say, as I’ve only seen his first film, Two Witches). But much of the joy from this film comes from Silva’s co-writing and performance. Oh yeah, and the gloriously violent nature of it all.
Dina Silva Creates One of Modern Slasher Horror’s Best Villains
Dina Silva’s occasionally masked portrayal of Frankie brings us one of horror’s greatest villains of all time. Rarely do we see women in horror take the main stage as such a violent force of nature. And what we also see is a devilishly smart script. Silva and Pierre Tsigaridis’ creation of Frankie brings us both a protagonist and an antagonist. Frankie wants this life where she can live as the performer she is meant to be (because Silva’s voice is gorgeous). On the other hand, Frankie’s direct actions will make sure she never has a career, you know, with the slayings and all.
The beautiful nature of Frankie’s character is the moments of realization that she has warped the trajectory of her future with each subsequent kill. She could stop, sure, but what if killing is what she was meant to do all along? Frankie does have an amazing voice, but Frankie is a fantastic serial killer. If only there were a world where she could do both.
Frankie, Maniac Woman Proves Great Slashers Need Great Stories
Now I’m unable to access the screener again, and the IMDb credits do not show the name, so I can’t fully praise the people in charge of Frankie, Maniac Woman’s SFX. A film like Frankie, Maniac Woman shows me just how wrong modern slashers are. Take Terrifier, for example. Terrifier’s story is bland, uninspired, recycled, and lazy. It’s nothing but filler around a series of fine kills. Frankie, Maniac Woman uses its kills to emphasize its incredibly well-written story. A fine film has a story that’s enough to pass the time; a great slasher has a story that uses kills as exclamation marks.
Frankie, Maniac Woman’s kills are punctuation marks that are a level above exclamation marks. Whatever that may be. Frankie is an unstoppable killing machine, until she can be stopped. She’s not this infallible entity who can take six bullets to the torso and keep lumbering on…she’s just a person. A person with feelings, stamina, and brilliant comedic timing. She’s someone you could easily see yourself being friends with (as long as you didn’t know about the killings (hell, maybe even if you knew about the killings if that’s your thing)).
Frankie, Maniac Woman Is One of the Best Festival Horror Films of the Year
Frankie, Maniac Woman is a devilishly stylized slasher that exudes camp and craft. When was the last time a film made you cry from laughter and sadness? When was the last time you watched a film so viciously riotous that you hoped things would just…work out in the end? On top of being funny, brutal, and bloody as hell, Frankie, Maniac Woman is a genuinely ‘G’reat film. It’s one of the few festival films I’ve seen that’s unquestionably Criterion-worthy.
