Claire (Kate Miccuci) has landed a great new job at a PR company. She lives with her boyfriend, Paul (Sam Huntington) in their new apartment in L.A., but unfortunately Paul is unemployed so they can’t take their relationship to the next level. They’re amazed at the location and the cheap rent at their new place, that is until they find out why.
It turns out that the apartment complex houses a suicide cult whose members randomly break in so that they can kill themselves in their bath tub. Their leader, Storsh (Taika Waititi) committed suicide several years before the couple moved in, yet his faithful followers keep on coming and as Claire and Paul decide to embrace their new living arrangements, their grip on reality goes right along with it.
Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss by Passing Through the Gateway Chosen by The Holy Storsh, (to give the movie its full title) is a dark comedy directed by Vivieno Caldinelli. Unfortunately, this surreal black comedy comes across more like an experimental movie where the writers were given a few topics (suicide cults, unemployment and soulless PR companies) and made a bet to try and make them funny. If this indeed the case then they probably lost because the movie is not funny.
The premise for the movie may seem amusing because it may seem so subversive and it could have been the modern day Natural Born Killers, commenting on the empty lives of suburban living. However, the script doesn’t have that depth. Instead what the audience gets is a series of sketches thrown together which start to make less and less sense as it the movie continues.
Fans of Rick and Morty and Community may love that creator Dan Harmon is a supporting character as the detective investigating every murder/suicide that happen in the couple’s apartment. However, his cliched character just comes across as mean spirited as his sub plot doesn’t go anywhere.
Considering the comedic talents of Micucci, Waititi and Harmon, it’s baffling as to why they were involved in Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss and why they didn’t have anything better to do.
Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) has just moved into a new apartment in L.A., having career aspirations and finally setting out on her own. She’s estranged from her father (Alan Blumenfeld) who calls, belittling her choices and suggests she just gives up on her pipe dream.
Undeterred by her father’s passive aggression, Sarah settles into her new apartment block and even makes a new friend, Lisa (Celeste Sully) at her temp job. Sarah’s also delighted when she meets her new neighbours who are all charming and friendly, especially Miss Stanhope (Susan Davis) and her handsome neighbour, Brian (Giles Matthey). However, it soon turns out that Sarah’s neighbours may not be all that they seem.
1BR is a psychological horror movie written and directed by David Marmor. Setting up what seems to be a straightforward psychological horror, 1BR soon turns into a deep and realistic look at how people are unwillingly pushed into cults. Everything Sarah’s neighbours do to her are not all that out of the ordinary, using techniques that the audience could easily see happening to anyone at any time.
As Sarah’s torture continues, her conditioning takes effect and the bulk of the movie shows what Sarah has truly gotten herself into, whilst continuing its level of realism so that the audience can feel fully immersed in Sarah’s new world.
Bloom does a fantastic job as Sarah is put through the psychological and sometimes physical torture, managing to convey a realistic change when she finally submits to the cult. The rest of the cast are also particularly good at putting the audience into a false sense of confidence as they’re all introduced during the movie’s slow burning first half hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPsvgtmbkXs
However, after everything that Sarah endures and even learning about their beloved leader, the final act is disappointing. It unfortunately throws all of that out the window in favour of a dramatic, climactic ending which relies on horror tropes that it could have done much earlier.
The final twist in the movie’s final moments also seems a little unnecessary as prior to this, the audience may have been taken in and put under the spell of Sarah’s experiences with the cult.
Iris Deerborne (Kara Hayward) is a shy, reclusive girl who can’t say she has any real friends. She’s constantly belittled by her mother, Francie (Jordana Spiro) all the other girls at school make fun of her and even the boys at her school see her as a figure of fun rather than the blossoming young woman that she’d hope they’d see instead.
Then one day while walking to school she is harassed by a group of boys – and that’s when Maggie Richmond (Liana Liberato) turns up and her rebellious, outspoken attitude starts to have an effect on Iris as they become close friends. However, it turns out that both girls are hiding sides of themselves that they wish would come bursting out and with each other’s help they soon start to become the people they always wanted to be.
To the Stars is a coming of age drama set in the Sixties that tells the story of two young women looking to find themselves in the world. The hyperreal production values and its generous scattering of clichés all paint a picture of the Sixties, perhaps in a knowing way. Thankfully though, this rose-tinted version of what some people would call ‘a simpler time’ has enough underneath the surface to say more about its characters.
All the cast play their roles very well and despite the feeling that the audience may have seen it all before, To the Stars plays it straight for the most part to lull the audience into a false sense of confidence before its brutal and honest final act.
We think of how things used to be back in a time where we think prejudice and hatred were more prevalent, so having To the Stars be a period piece may suggest that it’s very much of its time.
However, it may just be that the filmmakers are reminding its audience of a time that some either remember fondly or a time that others never experienced, not realising that those days were not as black and white as they have read in books or seen on television. Despite the clichés of the frumpy girl in glasses turning into a beautiful young lady and the reckless jock spiking the punch at a school dance,
To the Stars wants to remind us that however bad we think things may be now, back then there were times where it felt like there was nobody there to support those who felt differently.
To The Stars is available now on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Sky, Virgin and Chili.
Corey (Elisa Lasowski) and Bald (Natasha Cashman) are space hunters who find a rather large ship piloted by Vascan (Anders Heinrichsen) and Lago (Christian Erickson), two overworked and underpaid men astonished to find two women alone on a planet and eager to get to their ship.
However, once they get to work, the space hunters unleash an artificial intelligence which takes the form of a beautiful naked women called Mima (Joëlle Berckmans). So, the ship has to chase this mysterious woman through the depths of space in order to retrieve what they believe is theirs.
Blood Machines is a new short series exclusive to Shudder that showcases the mind of director Seth Ickerman and what his visual effects team are capable of accomplishing. Inspired by 80’s science fiction, Blood Machines harks back to a time where the visuals were stunning, the plot was bizarre and nothing really made sense, but was a lot of fun.
Like those kinds of movies from the 80’s, Blood Machines has a very impressive visual style. The short series reimagines a retro aesthetic, giving it a modern twist so that the audience’s imaginations are fully realised on the screen which was stopped short by budgetary constraints at the time. The thumping synthesiser soundtrack is extremely catchy and although the plot is very thin, the visuals are certainly enough to keep audiences entertained. Even if it’s just to wonder how it was all pulled off.
However, Ickerman’s short film was never meant to be split into three parts and it shows as putting them into this format weakens the already shaky story and a jarring title sequence halfway through the second episode hints at what it should have been.
Also, not unlike most science fiction films of the 80’s, there’s more style than substance and while it may look impressive there really isn’t much that hasn’t been seen before. Whereas the idea was to lovingly and authentically recreate the 80’s throwback style of a science fiction film the audience thinks they remember, Blood Machines is probably the reason those kinds of films aren’t so well remembered.
Being able to put all the elements together is quite a task and the results are bound to please those who share the director’s interests. However, making a psychedelic Lovecraftian Bond title sequence may not be what everyone is looking for.
Keola Racela could very well be a rising star in the director’s chair. Having directed three short films before (having written two of them), all with very different settings, characters and moods it seems that Racela may be able to lend his artistic eye to anything. Now with the help of Fangoria that enabled Porno to have a virtual theatrical release, Porno is Racela’s feature debut, a horror comedy that harks back to a simpler time where a group of teens unleash a succubus that wants to torment them before dragging dragging them to another dimension.
I had the good fortune to be able to sit down for a chat with Keola over Zoom (as is the style these days) and we talked about his influences, childhood movie trauma and even a shared love of an 80’s Peter Jackson horror movie. Although we had a little trouble deciding what it was called.
Ok to start with my favourite question, how did you get involved in making Porno?
(laughs) The writers of the film (Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli) are old film school friends of mine and a couple of years after school they moved to LA and asked me if I wanted to make a movie. They had no idea what movie they wanted to make, they were just going to tell people they were making a movie and ask for money. I didn’t even know if the movie was real, but by July 2017 we had something and started shooting through October/November.
Porno is your first feature length movie, was there anything more daunting to work on a feature rather than a short film?
I wasn’t too nervous as I’d directed before, it was just about figuring it all out. I was lucky enough to have worked in the art department on Prince Avalanche with David Gordon Green so I learnt a lot there too. A short film can take five days to shoot and it took 25 days to shoot Porno and it was all shot in one location, with a small crew. We were only allowed to shoot short films in film school, so it was an amazing thing to be a part of because of the bigger process being so unknown. It made me less nervous because I’d already done things before, it was just bigger.
What’s your favourite horror movie?
The Lost Boys, I watched it as a kid and didn’t consider it to be a horror movie. It’s set in a town called Santa Carla, but it was filmed in Santa Cruz where I went to school and I lived near the Santa Cruz boardwalk, so I knew the location in the movie. I also watched a movie called House and it messed me up. It’s a silly movie about Vietnam vet who’s writing his memoirs that stays at a house that he inherited from his aunt and it turns out that the house is alive. It’s a bizarre amalgamation of post-Vietnam war PTSD and horror, but the creature effects were good. I didn’t even get the connection to the Vietnam war when I was a kid. It was a good time for men with big blonde curly afros.
Roger Cobb in House, a blonde curly afro that was the stuff of nightmares
Which directors do you admire?
I think that when it comes to horror there’s John Carpenter, Sam Raimi and when getting back into horror to make Porno it made me go crazy for their work. Dead Alive (Braindead in the UK) directed by Peter Jackson is another one I loved.
I think there was a weird shift in the 80’s where films like that used to be aimed at children, but changed to appeal to teenage boys. Watching Ghostbusters now you realise that it’s for adults and they don’t really make those kinds of films for adults anymore. My earliest memory in a theatre was watching E.T. being terrified when they find him all white and dead in the river and you wouldn’t see that in a movie aimed at children today.
Spoilers, Christopher Lloyd traumatising children since 1988
There is one particular scene in the movie that will make every male member of the audience recoil in terror, how important do you think gore is in a horror movie?
It doesn’t have to be, but I think that there’s something very visceral about it. I was excited to be working with visual effects, but torture porn movies don’t really appeal to me like the Saw franchise, so I wanted it to be effective rather than it being the focus of the movie. That scene has quite an effect on an audience and many people react in different ways.
I remember seeing Drive with a big audience and during the scene in an elevator where Ryan Gosling stamps a guy to death, the audience burst into laughter. I think people need to laugh to alleviate the tension, horror and comedy go well together in that respect, like a release valve.
Is building tension or creating jump scares more effective in horror?
I think that the best jump scares come from tension and the best jump scares are the fake outs. It’s the worst thing when they don’t work though and just put in when they’re not needed. The Exorcist III has the best jump scare where a nurse opens a door in a hospital and the audience are expecting a jump scare, there’s silence as she goes in and there’s a few seconds before she comes out. Then at the last second the jump scare happens as the audience see her being followed by a ghostly figure. I’ve always loved that one. Though jump scares can be good, I think that tension is all part of building a dramatic story.
A quiet hospital corridor, what could possibly go wrong?
There are some very religious characters in Porno, do you think there are ways in which religion can have a positive effect on people’s lives?
Absolutely, there’s a core set of values, a sense of community and I have friends and family that grew up religious. Although a lot of the characters in Porno have a lot of faith, Matt Black felt it was important not to just dump on religion and there are progressive ideas outside of religion in the characters that show that they’re not as far gone as to not find some level of acceptance. We wanted to play their experiences for laughs, but also have them find growth that comes from that.
If you were in a horror movie, which character would you be?
I don’t know, I think I’m moderately intelligent and not going to risk running off by myself, I think I’d get pretty far. The ones who get killed are the dumb ones or the ones that run into danger without thinking. It also depends on the villain.
Is there anything you’re working on next that you can talk about? I understand life is in hiatus at the moment, so anything at all you’d like to mention would be fine.
There’s not a lot right now, but I just finished a script with Laurence (Vannicelli), a horror that I’m super excited about. There’s a lot of things I’m excited about right now, I just need to dedicate more time to doing them. It’s a difficult time, but your priority needs to be with people right now. Things have changed right now, but people have learnt to adapt. The drive-in movie theatre nearly died out and right now there’s a kind of boom because of what’s going on. A movie called The Wretched is doing extremely well because people can just sit in their cars and watch a movie and still stay safe, that may have not happened before with a small movie like that.
