BEFORE: I'm totally stressed out because I'm getting on a plane to Las Vegas in under 24 hours, I haven't packed a thing yet, I still have to finish out one more work-day, and since our older cat is sick and shows little interest in eating, we don't know if he'll eat when the cat-sitter comes to feed him, so really, we don't know what condition he'll be in when we get back. Hopefully he'll eat enough to sustain himself, but there are no guarantees in life.
Tye Sheridan carries over from "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse", and you may notice something about that film, this one, and the next three or four - they all feature actors from the "X-Men" franchise. This is why I moved my review of "Dark Phoenix" from June to October, because I noticed that I had so many horror films on my list with those actors, which turned "Dark Phoenix" into something of a hub, like "Avengers: Endgame" was. I had about 47 different ways to link to "Endgame", I just had to choose the ones that worked out best for my chain, because in the end I can only have two maximum, one intro and one outro. Same goes for "Dark Phoenix", which I'll review next week, but I was able to up-end the chain and re-shuffle the films at the last minute, largely because I knew I could use that film as a nexus point. I had five horror films that could connect to it, again, I just had to pick the best two.
THE PLOT: Libby Day was only eight years old when her family was brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Almost thirty years later, she reluctantly agrees to revisit the crime and uncovers the wrenching truths that led up to that tragic night.
AFTER: While this isn't exactly a horror film per se, it is a murder mystery - I'll admit that including this film in the October chain made a lot more sense while I had a few other films about serial killers in the planned line-up, like "The Killer Inside Me" and "The House that Jack Built" - plus I just dubbed "Frailty" to DVD, I've never seen that one either. But I do have a Netflix film about Ted Bundy scheduled for early November, so let's just think of this as a precursor to that one. After two films that were full of jump-scares every couple of minutes or so, honestly this is kind of what I needed right now, just a simple, quiet film about a man who might have murdered his whole family when he was a teenager.
His lone surviving sister is convinced he's guilty - after all, he's never filed for an appeal, and isn't that what innocent people do? But the donation fund that was established shortly after the tragedy is nearly used up, and she gets contacted by a group of murder fans/crime solvers that wants to pay her for an appearance, and then her time for the next two weeks as they review her brother's case. This is a hot new trend, with recent podcasts focusing on incarcerated people who might be innocent, bringing their cases to public attention in hopes of uncovering the truth and/or securing parole for inmates whose convictions might be in need of overturning.
Unfortunately, this is another one of those films that toggles between the present and the past, as ever-so-slowly more information is divulged about what went down back in 1985. The initial questions from the "True Crime" club are quite important, they ask her about key figures in the case, which of course she doesn't really remember, because she was EIGHT at the time. When you're 8 years old, you probably don't pay much attention to the trouble that your older teen brother is getting into, or who he's hanging out with, what drugs he might be taking, or what Satanic death-metal music he may be listening to. At the time, the prosecution drew a portrait of her Brother Ben, and if you can recall the zeitgeist of the mid-1980's, a certain group of people in the U.S. were focused on the link between heavy metal music and Satan worship, then tying that to drugs, violence and even a predilection for murder. It's not too hard to imagine someone at that time getting convicted based on their musical preferences. Bands like Slayer, Judas Priest and Twisted Sister were scaring the crap out of the norms.
As Libby digs into the case, there's no shortage of available suspects - their wayward father, who owed a lot of money to a bookie, or Ben's pregnant girlfriend, who hated his sisters for spreading true rumors about her, or even the parents of several young girls who accused Ben of molesting them. Yeah, we're gonna have to find a way to narrow down this field... It's just a damn shame that the film couldn't do a better job of avoiding the telegraphing of the twist and reveal. There's an art to the building up of suspense, but you wouldn't know it from watching this. Bear in mind this came from the same author as "Gone Girl", and if you've seen that film, then you may know why I'm bringing that up at this point in time.
It's too bad that, as often happens with this sort of film, when you look back on what you knew at the beginning with the knowledge that you get at the end, the beginning wasn't really explained all that well, and in fact makes even less sense than it did when you knew nothing about it. Ya follow?
And with that, I'm off to Vegas tomorrow morning, so no reviews for over a week, not until next Sunday at least. If I'm bored late at night and I need to watch something, there are plenty of comedy specials in my Netflix queue - just gotta keep that phone charged.
Also starring Charlize Theron (last seen in "Tully"), Christina Hendricks (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "The Favourite"), Andrea Roth, Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "Movie 43"), Corey Stoll (last seen in "First Man"), Sean Bridgers (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Drea De Matteo (last seen in "New York, I Love You"), Addy Miller, Shannon Kook, Sterling Jerins (last seen in "Paterson"), Richard Gunn, Dan Hewitt Owens (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis"), Glenn Morshower (last seen in "The Core"), Jennifer Pierce Mathus, Natalie Precht, Madison McGuire, Lori Z. Cordova, Denise Williamson (last seen in "The D Train"), Jeff Chase (last seen in "The Rundown").
RATING: 4 out of 10 prison visits
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