Reviews
WAR NEVER ENDS FOR THE DEAD: A Completely SPOILER-FREE Review of ‘BROOKLYN 45’
I’ve mentioned that Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here is arguably the film that most influenced my current taste in horror movies. It’s a bombshell of a movie that completely sucker-punches you, with a climax that blew my mind when I first saw it. It’s my favorite ghost film of all time and a personal favorite I never get tired of watching. So, you can imagine how excited I was at the announcement of Brooklyn 45, and how worried I was knowing the expectations Geoghegan’s previous film had set. Although it’s an entirely different beast that shares some thematic similarities, Brooklyn 45 is both a worthy successor and just an incredible piece of cinema in its own right.
A Seance Gone Wrong
On December 27th, 1945, a group of lifelong friends who have come home from the war gather to comfort Clive “Hock” Hockstatter (played by Larry Fessenden), a colonel who lost his wife Suzie in a sudden and bizarre suicide on Thanksgiving. In Clive’s search for answers, he turns to the supernatural and requests the group perform a seance with him in a last-ditch effort for closure. When they agree, what answers their call to the afterlife turns a reunion into a fight for sanity, questioning who your friends truly are, with a deluge of secrets pouring out.
It would have been easy to make a pulpy, 1940s horror scenario out of this, something akin to the game Call of Cthulu (if your gm loved black-and-white war dramas). But Brooklyn 45 isn’t just an old-school throwback with some new-school sensibilities and modern special effects as the poster might suggest; it’s a lovingly crafted meditation on dealing with unexpected loss, and the hatefulness that can jump out of you as a result.
Exploring the Dark Power of Mourning
Many complex themes permeate Brooklyn 45’s story, but the most powerful of all is the dark, ugly power of mourning. Not grief, which you feel, but how you mourn to express that grief. There’s something dangerous about mourning and how it can change you: the fearful result of mourning ideals and codes, mourning the ones you’ve lost, mourning actions you’ve taken, and mourning the death of the choices you never got to make. Fans of We Are Still Here will be familiar with how that film deals with grief, given the plot.
But the difference between contacting the dead of an untimely death to contacting the dead of a suicide adds a new hard-to-swallow element that touches you in a way that is not deeper per se, but radically different and painful. That element is how mourning changes into something dangerous, and could change who you are (or who you’re trying to be).
Not all death is equal, and when you convince yourself that the blame falls on you, death can be leagues more devastating than you could ever imagine. The movie delves into the idea that when there’s an enemy, there’s a cause, but when you’re the enemy, the cause becomes much harder to fight for and discern. Mourning becomes less clear, and the fog of war inside consumes your thoughts. And Brooklyn 45 doesn’t just play with that fog; it forces you to investigate it and let it wash over you. You’re sent into an emotional no man’s land, accompanied only by a platoon that feels as likely to put a bayonet through you as they are to mend your wounds.
A Fully Thought Out And Dynamic Cast
And what a platoon it is! The cast here doesn’t just have this endless chemistry; they’re also all unbelievably in sync regarding their character dynamics. It’s one thing to be enjoyable as an ensemble, but to get you to believe these characters are playing out these decades-long relationships is a rare achievement that this film pulls off effortlessly.
Ezra Buzzington is especially enjoyable as Major DiFranco, who plays him with this stony demeanor and firmness of speech that I love, something reminiscent of Garland Brigg’s best moments from Twin Peaks. Archibald (Jeremy Holms) presents himself as all swagger and nice tailoring but slowly becomes the most emotionally complex character. It takes time for Bob (Ron E. Rains), the odd man out of the group being Marla’s husband, to come out of his shell, but when he does, it is glorious and genuinely heartbreaking. And it’s all thanks to Anne Ramsey as Marla that we get the tensest scene in the film, whose performance draws a line between two versions of the same character in an enjoyably dark way.
Larry Fessenden’s Show-Stealing Role
The star of the show is Fessenden, whose performance is uncanny. He shifts through the emotional spectrum in his monologue toward the film’s beginning in a way that makes you wonder how such an incredible character actor hasn’t been given heaps more movies to headline. From start to finish, he is pure dynamite, even with the state he’s in by the end.
These actors show off their full potential because of Geoghegan’s clever script, which utilizes a closed space perfectly. We get shocking twists throughout, with jaw-dropping dialogue that makes for some stunning interactions, all contained in one parlor room. Gripping scenes that evoke horror through paranoia and dashes of black comedy that make you jump between “that’s hilarious” to “that’s awful” feel like they’ve translated impeccably from the page of the screenplay.
Brooklyn 45 Is An Immersive Period Piece That Will Haunt You
I’ve talked a lot about how great this is as a dramatic thriller, which it is, but it is also a genuinely scary horror movie. Brooklyn 45 doesn’t fit into a neat genre box (most great horror films don’t), but when it fully embraces one of those genres, it does them perfectly. There’s tension built throughout the movie for the scares, and when they come, they hit hard.
While most of the special effects are simple, there’s an elegant execution to them that leaves a disproportionately massive impact. There are doses of shock throughout it, ranging from your run-of-the-mill frightening to downright horrifying. It’s not for gorehounds—don’t expect blood and guts flying, but it uses its most gruesome moments in a way that made me squirm in my seat. The final practical effect at the climax actually made me turn away from the screen, just because of how it’s shot, framed, and the amount of time you get face to face with it made me uncomfortable. Good uncomfortable, but good lord, that image will be burned into my brain.
Set design as bespoke as the period-accurate costuming makes the film’s vibes immaculate, as does a clean soundtrack that plays its part well. In this séance, all the visual candles flicker at the right time, the house audio rattles on cue, and the phantoms of cinematography come out to play. This is usually the part where I would say the things I didn’t like, but I’m hard-pressed to find them, so let’s get to the
Brooklyn 45 Is a Must-Watch Horror Film
Brooklyn 45 is the kind of film that completely immerses you and keeps you guessing what will happen until the final frames. It’s a haunted house that will have you pounding on the door, begging to be let out—but not for the usual reasons you’d expect. If you’re looking for a simple weekend watch that could be your next favorite, give this a try. It’s what happened to me. Watch it immediately.
Brooklyn 45 is now streaming on Shudder!
A couple of assumptions can be made when a movie has a title like Fuck My Son! The most obvious one is that the title also serves as the film’s entire premise. The second is that it’s probably going to be a raunchy, tasteless, and chaotic affair. Writer-director Todd Rohal’s (The Catechism Cataclysm, Uncle Kent 2) adaptation of Johnny Ryan’s comic of the same name meets both of those expectations. However, it starts out with an unexpected amount of promise before hitting the slippery slope that leads to an unforgettable but underwhelming experience for the audience.
WTF?!
Fuck My Son! starts off with a scuzzy charm that makes you think it might just surprise you. It gives the audience a cute intro (although it looks like AI was heavily utilized) and explains how to use the Perv-O-Vision and Nude Blok glasses that the audience was given on the way in. This is obviously a ploy to throw some naked people on screen and rip the X-rated band-aid off early. While this bit lasted too long, I appreciated having peen on a big screen. As someone who yells into a podcast microphone a few times a year, “I want to see a pair of testies for every pair of breasties,” I appreciated a filmmaker having the balls to have balls on screen.
We soon meet Sandi (Tipper Newton) and her kid, Bernice (Kynzie Colmery), as they are shopping. They have a run-in with a nameless pervert that feels like Rohal might be going for a John Waters kind of sleaze. While having a heart-to-heart about good people versus bad people, they notice an older woman, Vermina (Robert Longstreet), needing assistance. They do not know that this old lady dressed like Mama from Mama’s Family has set a trap for the woman. This soon leads them to a home where Vermina explains that Sandi will have to fuck her son if she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her or her daughter. To make this situation more twisted, her son, Fabian (Steve Little), is a mutant with a mutant dick (once it’s finally found).
We Also Feel A Little Trapped
What comes next is a lot of gross-out humor, repetitive jokes, and the fairly predictable escape to only be brought right back to their tormentors. Fuck My Son! loses all of the goodwill (and steam) we had as it stretches this premise well past the breaking point. There are a few more jokes that land as Sandi and Vermina square off, but not enough to stop the movie from overstaying its welcome. That being said, Tipper Newton understood the assignment and had a standout performance worth noting. She is still compelling enough around the forty-minute stretch when it becomes clear this movie didn’t need to be a feature film.
Fuck My Son! Tries to stitch a lot of things together that never really add up. For example, Bernice’s meat friends (the animated meat also gives AI), who visit her in times of distress. The movie also never addresses whether Vermina is being played by a male actor for an actual reason. No one is going to see Fuck My Son! for social commentary, and Longstreet does earn a couple of chuckles. However, it feels like another attempt at what passed for humor decades ago rather than putting drag on the big screen with a purpose. This could also be something that I just overthought once the movie lost its way. Much like I wondered why this old lady would have pads on hand when she is well past the point of having a period.
We Used to Be A Society
Some of these gripes could be partly explained by Fuck My Son! wanting to stay closer to the source material than it should for modern audiences. However, the issue of running a joke into the ground is pervasive throughout the movie. Even before it starts reaching for anything that could be even slightly offensive and makes its way to rape jokes and multiple endings. It makes for an overall frustrating experience because we want filmmakers to do something unique and take chances. Just not like this.
Many of us also have a soft spot for sleazy movies from the 1970s and 1980s. I was one of the last people to discover the charming chaos of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case and Frankenhooker. So, I know scuzzy cinema can work, and it can be fun. However, Fuck My Son! is a one-and-done instead of a title that will stand the test of time. It’s a movie you can toss on to laugh at with friends before it becomes background noise. It’s not one that most of us are going to demand a physical release of. Or want to revisit again.
Reviews
TIFF 2025: ‘Dead Lover’ Review
Dead Lover introduces us to a lonely and smelly gravedigger who dreams of being loved. One night, her wish comes true as she saves a man who seems intoxicated by her pungent scent. However, like all gothic romances, theirs is doomed. Her lover dies at sea, leaving the gravedigger upset and alone again, as all that’s left of the man she loved is his finger. This propels her to turn to science to see if she can bring her lover back from the dead using his sole digit. This obviously causes chaos because, as all horror fans know, sometimes things are better left dead.
As a recovering theater kid who supports women’s rights and wrongs, I think Dead Lover is an interesting experiment. It feels like a sketch group has taken over a Black Box theater, and during the Q&A at TIFF, it was confirmed that that was the case. This leads to quite a bit of laughter and a few cheers as you invest in the ridiculousness of this world. Which is great for a movie premiering its Stink-O-Vision at a prestigious festival. However, what stands out the most for me are the themes of longing and basic human desire.
A Smell To Remember
Dead Lover introduces us to a lonely and smelly gravedigger who dreams of being loved. One night, her wish comes true as she saves a man who seems intoxicated by her pungent scent. However, like all gothic romances, theirs is doomed. Her lover dies at sea, leaving the gravedigger upset and alone again, as all that’s left of the man she loved is his finger. This propels her to turn to science to see if she can bring her lover back from the dead using his sole digit. This obviously causes chaos because, as all horror fans know, sometimes things are better left dead.
Director, co-writer, and our leading smelly gravedigger lady, Grace Glowicki, puts forth a world that allows women to be gross. However, unlike most cinema, Dead Lover knows the nauseating and uncouth lead still deserves love. There is no She’s All That makeover or a montage of her learning how to be a lady. This movie gets that people are people, women can be many things, and our dreams should not hinge on how society perceives us. Between the jokes, this film touches on yearning for the life you deserve. While Glowicki’s character yearning leads her to love, the sentiment can be applied to anything. She just happens to think her place in the world is beside the dead love of her short life.
It’s The Ensemble for Me
In addition to Glowicki, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow, and Ben Petrie (who also co-wrote the script) take turns playing an array of zany characters. This allows the world to feel fuller, even if it’s the same two stages reused with the same four actors. It also guarantees the team a dedicated playground to make an impression. Everyone gets at least one character so bizarre that they feel like the MVP of the film. At least until the next one is introduced.
The small ensemble of four performers tackling all the roles is committed to their bits and having fun. This allows Dead Lover to reach for some silly highs and some ridiculous lows as they move through these characters at a fairly rapid speed. This results in more of a Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder energy (with modern sensibilities). Which isn’t something most of us would expect from a body horror comedy.
If you are in the mood for a likable sketch troupe exploring gothic expressionism, then this is your movie. You might even find yourself charmed by the style choices and improv vibes if you’re a theater person.
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