Film Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Want to watch basically just a no-stakes, super-long episode of The Mandalorian on a huge movie screen this summer while eating popcorn? You can.

A long time ago (3 years), in a galaxy far, far away (Hollywood)...

Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau had just finished writing season 4 of The Mandalorian TV show. But amid all of the hubbub of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, LucasFilm decided to hold off filming it and instead prioritized making a Mando movie. And that, my friends, is why The Mandalorian and Grogu exists. 

Once you learn this, everything all starts making a lot of sense. Here are the answers to a few questions I know you'll have right off the bat:

• Yes, it's essentially a two-hour episode of the TV show that's released in time for summer blockbuster season. 
• No, it doesn't reveal any interesting lore or invest in heavy world-building.
• Yes, it has the typical Filoni-esque easter eggs, fun cameos and Clone Wars-style easy, clean, G-rated storytelling.
• No, there's absolutely no reason this had to be a movie.
• Tragically no, (for me), the Armorer isn't in it. 

The plot

Our guy Din Djarin is enjoying life as a single dad and contracting for the New Republic. As per usual, he's tasked with a tit-for-tat mission: If he agrees to rescue Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba the Hutt, his aunt and uncle will provide intel on the location of post-Imperial Warlord Commander Coin. 

He finds out that Rotta, voiced by an unrecognizable Jeremy Allan White, is a popular gladiator on the cyberpunk planet of Shakari. The whole plot revolves around Djarin rescuing and/or escaping from various monsters, creatures, and aliens and double-double crossing the Hutt aunt and uncles. 

There's not much to it, though it does get a little convoluted. It's the standard fare of any Mandalorian episode, really. Problem --> learn about McGuffin to fix said problem --> encounter difficulty --> Obtain McGuffin --> Watch Grogu eat something.

What makes a Star Wars movie a movie

Lest it sound like I'm one of those fans who pooh-poohs nearly every Star Wars entry into the canon, The Mandalorian and Grogu isn't a "bad" film, and this is coming from someone who used to post weekly Mando recaps here. There's just...not much to think about. And maybe that's okay! If the goal for LucasFilm was to launch a fun Star Wars movie for the summer that's just a popcorn movie, I have absolutely no qualms with that. There are definitely things to like about it (more below). 

But Star Wars movies, in general, are emotional gateways for fans. Watching Luke stare into the binary sunset on Tatooine, witnessing Anakin and Obi-Wan's final duel on Mustafar, and experiencing Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor's final embrace on Scarif— these are the moments that stick in our hearts and have followed us into adulthood. Even the polarizing Last Jedi had moments of awe, shock, and absolute sadness.

For a Star Wars movie to have no stakes goes against everything we love about the franchise. Djarin and Grogu get into some tough scrapes in this movie, but there is never a single second where you worry about them not coming out on top. There's even a scene where Grogu has to take care of Djarin for a few days as he lies unconscious recovering from a venomous dragonsnake bite (in a great parallel to Pedro Pascal as Joel recovering in The Last of Us — he's always a down-on-his-luck single dad, isn't he?). 

The things I liked

I've probably said this before, but I like any glimpse into the Star Wars universe writ large, and seeing gorgeous tableaus on the big screen is always a delight. I particularly enjoyed:

• The murky, swampy Hutt planet of Nal Hutta, including the rusty towers that folks will recognize from Jabba's palace on Tatooine. That little bit of continuity just hits different.
• Visiting the cyberpunk planet of Shakari was an interesting addition to the Star Wars "clime-as-planet" database. Though futuristic in shape and feel, it was actually inspired by 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. It felt lived in and different from the hyper-modern versions of Coruscant we've seen over the years. 
• Ludwig Göransson, who also does the score for the TV show, really outdid himself with the Shakari theme. He takes the Eastern-style pipe and synth leitmotif we're familiar with and incorporates streaking synths and neon audio bursts that creates a Blade Runner-meets-Star Wars vibe. It's Outrun/vaporwave/synthpop but set in space. It slaps.
• The various monsters and beasts are a blast to watch — but then they better be, as it's the only action/plot device in the film. 
• If you live long enough, you get to watch your heroes become X-wing pilots. Seeing Sigourney Weaver don the iconic helmet and go careening through an alien planet was absolutely Ripley-level badassery.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I went and saw this on the big screen on the Thursday before Memorial Day. It was me and a handful of other hardcore Star Wars fans, and we all laughed and reveled together at certain points. It didn't affect me emotionally at all, but maybe that's not always necessary for a fun movie. Like I mentioned earlier, I appreciate any time spent in a galaxy far, far away.

I just may not be able to convince other folks to go with me. 

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The Math

Baseline score: 6/10

Bonuses: Martin Scorsese as an alien food stall owner; the killer synth score;

Penalties: No real soul; Grogu is experiencing Flanderization; absolutely zero stakes; I cannot take a Hutt with six-pack abs seriously.

Gonk droid count: 0

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Hokum

Irish folk horror and a haunted house full of actual scary moments. (Spoiler-free)

As an avid horror movie fan, it takes a lot to shiver my timbers. When I'm sitting in the dark rows of a cinema during a new release, I sometimes try to view it through the eyes of those who don't revel in scary delights. Regular (some would say normal) people who jump at grotesque faces, get unsettled by hideous screams, and hide their eyes when the blood starts to flow.

During Hokum, I had quite the experience trying to imagine how such folks would react, mainly because I was extremely, deeply unsettled. That doesn't bode well for everyone else. But also, I loved every minute. It's rare to get a scary movie these days that actually delivers honest-to-goodness scares without absolutely wallowing in A24-level trauma dumps that just emotionally punish you for two hours. Hokum achieves this despite having some gnarly generational guilt scarring on the main character, Ohm Bauman. 

Ohm is a successful writer visiting the Irish hotel where his deceased parents had their honeymoon, aiming to spread their ashes in the woods nearby and also maybe squeeze in some writing while he's abroad. It's not just anytime for him to be visiting, though, it's Halloween. The creaky old hotel is chock ablock with carved turnips, the OG jack-o'-lanterns whose origin lies in Ireland and Scotland. If you haven't seen one, they are ineffably creepy, and the effect is truly unsettling. Fun fact: During the pandemic, I carved a turnip into one such jack-o'-lantern to see it in person. It is not only difficult to do, as root vegetables aren't soft and full of seeds like modern pumpkins, it's also eerie. Picture for proof:

Baumann, as a deeply cynical author-type who's honestly downright mean, is portrayed by Adam Scott, who's playing against character here. Instead of the usual nerdy and demure guy, he's terse, angry, alcoholic, and absolutely alone in the world.

While at the Irish hotel, he encounters malevolent employees, a locked-up honeymoon suite that's haunted by a witch, a woman gone mysteriously missing, and a local forest man who stays hopped up on magic mushroom milk. It's hard to get too into the plot without giving away the twist, so I'm trying to keep it high level. 

The hotel is essentially another character in the movie, and the camera does a good job of lingering on all the dusty, spooky 1950's accoutrements: vintage clocks, distorted angel sculptures, and countless ringing bells. It's the exact opposite vibe of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, which is large and open and expensive. This hotel is quaint, small, almost claustrophobic. 

Fittingly, the atmosphere that follows you from room to room is dark and foreboding, and the multiple effective jump scares are a feature, not a bug. Some horror aficionados decry the use of jump scares in elevated horror, calling them cheap or gimmicky. But the jump scares in Hokum are earned, and sometimes, you can even see them coming — and even as they slowly approach they still make you flinch. That's how good they are.

Monsters, gore, and humans don't scare me, and fortunately Hokum doesn't rely on these for its scares. Instead, it's all spirits, witches, and demons, and the production design renders them absolutely nightmarish. There's one fiend that resembles the Momo challenge hoax monster that went viral for terrifying kids about a decade ago, all bulging eyes and rictus smile. There's a scene at the end that is reminiscent of the ending of Ghost, where a character is dragged into the afterlife, and I was actually cheering for the divine justice it was bringing to life. 

The most effective part, for me, of the film is how the Irish folklore organically starts to seep into Baumann's defense mechanisms. Early on, he dismisses the conjuring tales and chalk circles for protection as so much hokum, but as he descends into the lair of the witch, he absolutely starts to believe. Watching him search for his magical stick of chalk in his jacket transforms from "Maybe I'll try this!" to "I absolutely have to do this to stay alive."

When you dig deeper into the themes of the film, there's also some good (and not really didactic) lessons about forgiveness, self-compassion, and letting go, and horror can be an especially good vehicle for these.  Ghosts, of course, aren't real, but the emotions that humans leave behind in the living can haunt one for decades, and a tormented spirit can be a regular person struggling with big feelings, not a poltergeist.

What sets Hokum apart from the Weapons and Smiles of the world is that it comes by its themes honestly, and allows for actual character growth. It feels human, and also lived-in in a way that makes you believe everything, despite the folklore freakout of supernatural beings. 

But the scariest part of the entire movie wasn't what was on screen. It was the fact that I was in a matinee theatre all by myself for the first hour. Then, someone walks in with a huge popcorn and soda, and sits down in front of me a few rows. Within a matter of minutes, they then walked out, leaving the snacks behind. It was 100% a ghost. Or maybe it was just hokum.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Review: Stranger Things Season 5 Volume II & Finale

The Duffer brothers stick the landing, bringing a close to nine years of epic storytelling

Volume II of the Stranger Things final season dropped on Christmas day, and when we last left our heroes, we discovered that Will could tap into the hive mind and hijack its powers—Will the sorcerer, indeed! I've now watched these episodes twice,  and simultaneously so much and so little happens in them. The vibe is a little different from Volume I, as somehow there's even more exposition to get through. Rather than go through the plot, I thought I'd go through what really works, and why the epilogue to episode 8 was fantastic.

What works

Discovering what the Upside Down really is

After discovering some of Dr. Brenner's notebooks in the Upside Down version of Hawkins Lab, Dustin pieces together that everything they thought was wrong. The Upside Down is actually a wormhole to  Dimension X, the place Vecna was transported to by El. It was sort of a Chekhov's Wormhole, though, as the crew had discussed wormholes in Mr. Clarke's science class years before. We still don't learn exactly why the Upside Down is the way it is, all decaying matter and dark skies, but ultimately that's less important than just knowing it was never the ultimate bad place. It's just a tunnel to another dimension. On the other side of the gooey, fleshy wall surrounding the Upside Down is sheer space, as noted by Steve's BMW getting sucked into it and vanishing into the galaxy.

Bringing Mr. Clarke into the crew

Everyone's favorite science teacher is recruited to help build a telemetry device so they can locate Dustin and company, and watching him finally join was absolutely heartwarming. Without him, the kids never would have succeeded in the prior seasons, and his reward is getting to witness all the insane things that have led to this point. It's a very sweet payoff, and he adds a lot to the team. Also, I love that Mr. Clarke is always sleeping with a different member of the Hawkins High School staff. 

Karen "Walk 'Em Down" Wheeler proves she's a badass once again

Still recovering from vicious demogorgon slash wounds in the hospital, Karen saves the day yet again when Lucas, Robyn, and Vicki are cornered by demodogs. After ripping her IV out, she deftly places oxygen tanks into huge commercial dryers, triggering an explosion that takes them all out. Moms in '80s movies are rarely given such agency, and watching her stagger down to the basement to take care of the kids is truly epic. In the epilogue, we see a fully recovered Karen at the kids' graduation, her huge scars visible but worn proudly on display in a V-neck dress.

The epic Mindflayer kaiju battle

When the team finally makes it to Dimension X, they're set to face off against the corporeal forms of the Mindflayer and Vecna. A lot of folks online complained that the battle was too short, but the team literally spent 5 seasons getting to this point. I thought it was awesome, as it actually felt like watching a D&D game in real time, from Steve and Dustin stabbing the Mindflayer's belly to Nancy leading them into the trap where Robin and Lucas and Will could rain down fire from above. Also, Joyce getting to hack off Vecna's head with an axe was a gift she truly deserved. I don't think anyone suffered more than her throughout every season, given her constant panic and stress.

Being the first TV show to license Prince's music

The two needle drops of "When Doves Cry" and "Purple Rain" were not only incredibly appropriate, the Duffer brothers somehow managed to convince Prince's estate that their show was worth granting the green light—no doubt because of the viral success that seemed all but promised. Having the record literally be the detonation devices for the destruction of the Upside Down is a fantastic choice, and El and Mike's final conversation set to "Purple Rain" is absolutely heartbreaking.

Why I choose to believe El is alive

A lot has been said about El's fate, but I think the Duffer brothers did it exactly right. By leaving El's death open to a different interpretation—namely, that she survived thanks to one final illusion by Kali—it gives everybody what they need. Some people are fine with a final sacrifice by a hero, while others (like myself) can choose to believe Mike's ending, that she escaped and is living far away, safe. I choose to believe she's still alive because it's what her character deserves, and at heart, I'm an optimist. But more importantly, I like that we, as the audience, get to choose our ending. It's like D&D itself! I personally don't need a ton of deaths to make a finale more meaningful.

What didn't work for me

There are too many characters

By season 5, we're dealing with upwards of a dozen folks that we have to check in on (somewhat) equally, and that starts to make things cumbersome. I wouldn't trade Robin and Steve for the world, but the subplot of Nancy and Jonathan's relationship was given way too much screen time for a duo that most folks couldn't care less about. (There's a reason no one was buying the Jonathan Byers Funko-Pop.) Will's coming out scene, meant to be a vulnerable and tender moment for his immediate family and ride-or-ride friends, ends up giving his speech to a room full of people, including his science teacher, his friend's girlfriend he's never met, and Murray, everyone's favorite mean weirdo.

The Marvelification of Stranger Things

Season 1 of Stranger Things was the little show that could, made by an unknown duo of brothers with a super small budget. As the fame of the show grew, so did its budget, and by season 5, we had something that felt visually and thematically more like X-Men or The Avengers. Superpowers, excessive CGI, different dimensions—it all feels a little too much. The grandiose nature of the final season, for the most part, felt light on the nostalgia (the show's bread and butter) and heavy on the special effects. To put it another way: light on the bowl cuts and heavy on the white-out eyes of Will Byers. Vecna is the big bad in Stranger Things, but his motivations aren't entirely clear to me. He was abused, clearly, but he feels more like a Thanos than anything else, unfortunately. By giving him such a broad impetus, I think the show really missed out on a meaningful villain.

Too much plot, too little room to breathe

A product of both the extraneous characters and the Marvelification is the fact that the plot was fairly thudding. In Volume II, nearly every other scene sees characters grabbing objects and telling us the plot, "Imagine this record is Will, and this one's Holly." Everything felt jam-packed, with no room for characters to just be. It's more than just a sense of urgency, though, because it felt like something was missing. I read that most of the episodes went through some pretty extensive scene-cutting, and I think it's definitely apparent. The only time characters really have heart-to-hearts is when they're on the way to a battle. Maybe it's because the show finally lost a bit of the childlike wonder that made it so special, because the kids are all in their 20s now.

Overall

Season 5 is definitely worth watching, and I think it's a fitting conclusion to the near-decade-long run of the show. It suffers from the issues I mentioned (and more), but if you really loved the characters and the story, I think the ending pays off. When I looked up after the epic battle in the finale and saw that there were still 45 minutes left, I wondered if there was going to be another stand-off with Dr. Kay and her army.

Instead, I thoroughly enjoyed the slow, thoughtful ending and watching our kids graduate. The scene of everyone putting up their D&D books on the shelf was heart-wrenching as they literally were closing the book on their childhoods.

Show endings are hard, because not every show knows at the outset how long it's going to last. While not perfect, the Stranger Things finale sticks the landing and leaves the viewer with a tale well told and a happy ending. And that's all we can really ask for.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Stranger Things Season 5: Part One

Hawkins residents assemble! The final season's first part starts off slow but delivers the goods in the form of more needle drops, more character transformations, and more killer '80s vibes. (Spoilers abound below.)

A lot has changed since Stranger Things first premiered back in 2016. America has had three different presidents. A worldwide pandemic happened. And all of these children have grown up. Before I dive into the details of this new season, I'll acknowledge that these kids are all in their early 20s and they look grown as hell. But hey! That's not their fault. And it's not entirely the Duffer brothers' fault either, given the complexities of scheduling shows in the modern age of pandemics, writers' strikes, and other obstacles. I personally think the age thing is easy to overlook if you love the show. If you can believe in demogorgons, you can believe that these grown folks are juniors in high school. 

A brief recap of where we left off in Hawkins in Season 4: Joyce and Murray have rescued Hopper from the Siberian prison, Max is in a coma after fighting Vecna, Eleven got her powers back, and Mike, Dustin and the gang are all back together in Hawkins, which is currently quarantined off from the world after being devastated by Vecna's final attack. 

Season 5 picks up a year later in November of 1987, and our team is still hunting Vecna, who seems to have gone dark. Hopper, with the help of everyone, ventures out occasionally into the Upside Down on military recon "crawls," but nothing seems to be turning up. Things are set into motion when a demogorgon breaks into the Wheeler's house and kidnaps Mike and Nancy's little sister, Holly. 

The first few episodes start off pretty slow, but the time spent with the characters isn't wasted. I'm a true believer in this season, and I've loved it so much. Here's what I think really works. 

The power of radio nostalgia via WSQK

Robin and Steve are working at the local radio station, and in between pop songs they're using a secret code to communicate to the others troop movements and scheduling crawls in the Upside Down. It's extremely clever, and as a former college radio DJ, it sparks all kinds of feels. The station is essentially a character this season, and it plays an important part in both the plots of episodes 1-4 and most likely in the final episodes that air later this year. 

Music and needle drops have always been a core part of Stranger Things, and having the characters literally take the helm at WSQK just feels right. It's hard to explain to younger people, but terrestrial radio used to play an important part in people's lives, and everyone listened to it. Having it be the lifeline for our heroes as well as a cultural touchstone just makes sense. Playing Diana Ross' "Upside Down" as part of their code is just brilliant, too.

As part of the promotion for Season 5, I've been listening to the online version of WSQK, not only for the '80s tunes but also because they have in-world ads for Scoops Ahoy, Palace arcade, and more. It's immersive, fun, and a great way to keep vibing in the ST world. Have I also bought a WSQK t-shirt? Absolutely. (This review has not been sponsored by Netflix, I'm just a real big nerd.)

The big reveal of Will's powers

I will admit that Noah Schnapp's acting hasn't been wonderful this season, but I think that's more a function of having a grown man say lines like "We have to stop Vecna!" over and over again. But I think what people forget (especially after how emo and laid by the wayside he was last season) is that Will is the heart of this show. It started with his abduction in Season 1, and ever since, he's been the emotional core of everything. So yeah, I'm willing to ignore some clunkily spoken lines. 

In the last ten minutes of episode 4, everything comes together truly magnificently for Will. He's been seeing through the eyes of Vecna and various demogorgons, paralyzed by fear and horror at what he's witnessing. Having him finally(!) get some agency and be able to fight back was so invigorating. I was jumping up and down and screaming at the screen. The Duffer brothers' decision to make Will the equal of Eleven, powers-wise, is a twist I didn't see coming, and honestly, the gang is going to need it if they're going to defeat Vecna. I'm so glad Will gets to take part instead of just cowering.

Rewriting queer representation in '80s film settings

As an avid fan of '80s teen movies who happens to be queer, watching them can be a little dicey. On the one hand, they're awesome, but on the other, the frequency with which gay slurs are used is mindblowing. The homophobia was rampant back then. To give you an example, in Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox's best friend is more worried that he's gay than being a werewolf. Yeah.

The world is different today, thank God. And having fully fleshed out queer characters in the form of Robin and Will help rewrite that narrative in the modern age. Robin's speech in episode 4 to Will is a tear-jerker in the best possible way, allowing Will to know that he's okay just as he is. For five seasons he's been tortured, coddled, disregarded, and underestimated. Allowing him to come into his own is super powerful, and the Duffers have done something wonderful for a whole new generation of queer kids looking for representation in the media they love.

The Home Alone-inspired Demogorgon trap

This whole scene is just classic Stranger Things, and it's a perfect example of how they can bring levity to an objectively frightening situation. In order to implant the tracker in the demogorgon, the team sets up an elaborate scheme involving swing-down traps, a rug over a hole in the floor, and our gal Nancy Walk 'Em Down Wheeler doing what she does best — shoot baddies. 

The introduction of A Wrinkle in Time

The entirety of Stranger Things has revolved around metaphors from D&D, the game that Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas were obsessed with. When weird things started happening, it was that vernacular that helped them make sense of the world(s). With the introduction of Holly as a plot-important character, we're also getting language and ideas cribbed from her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time. Even though we're just learning about Henry/Vecna as Mr. What's it, I think time travel is going to play a large role in the upcoming episodes. The Duffer brothers listed The Terminator and Back to the Future among the movies they recommend folks watch to prep for the finale.

Unanswered questions:

• What is Vecna’s end goal with Holly?
• Did Nancy graduate? Is she working? Robin?
• What is the wall of goo/demogorgon flesh?
• Why is Vecna afraid of the rocks?
• Will Robin get to go on that date with Vicki?

Overall, I think this first part of the last season did a good job of setting up what's promising to be an epic conclusion. Every season of Stranger Things improves upon a rewatch, and I watched these four episodes twice. It's different, in many ways, but it also holds up really well. Everyone's forecasting a major death (or even two!) toward the end but I'm hoping that doesn't end up happening. I love all these kids so dang much, and they all deserve the world.

Also, Linda Hamilton as Major General Kay was the icing on the cake these episodes —nobody cocks like a gun quite like her, even after all these years.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Keeper

A slow-burning, dizzying, and surreal descent into folk horror madness

I'm continuing a trend this year where I go into movies absolutely blind, and folks, I can't recommend it enough. Trailers these days tend to give away the entire plot, choice scary bits, choice funny bits, and just generally lessen the film-going experience.

So when I heard Osgood Perkins, of recent Longlegs fame, was directing a new picture, I threw it on the calendar sight unseen. Perkins is divisive to say the least, but I love what he's doing with horror cinema, and I love the way he creates dreadful, brooding atmospheres. His name alone gets me in the theater, and it's fun having a scary-movie director you can count on yearly these days.

Keeper tells the story of a couple, Liz and Malcolm, who have been dating for exactly a year, and they take a trip upstate to spend a few days at Malcolm's family's cabin. Liz quickly discovers that something isn't right with the situation. The cabin itself is sparse, isolated, and none of the windows have curtains or blinds. Malcolm's rude cousin crashes their romantic getaway on the first night, and the next day Malcolm leaves Liz alone to return to work for a few hours. Before he leaves, he insists that she eat a bite of strange chocolate cake. That night, she rises alone and demolishes the rest of it.

What follows is a gradual descent into madness for Liz. Tatiana Maslany, of Orphan Black and She-Hulk fame, is incredible at capturing fear and paranoia. She sees disturbing spirits and dead women throughout the house, and, while venturing outside, nature and the woods take on an otherworldly quality that's hypnotic.

The first hour of Keeper is glacially slow, with Perkins ratcheting up the tension scene by scene through the use of strange shots. The camera is always peering from behind an object or wall, with 2/3 of the screen obscured by flat color while the characters occupy a mere sliver of it. These scenes are meant to make you feel like you're the obtrusive, evil presence.

If this all sounds weird and boring, you're not entirely wrong. The main complaint I've seen of Keeper is that it's way too long and slow. But don't worry—in the last 20 minutes you get the most surreal, intense, jaw-droppingly messed-up denouement dump I've ever seen.

Like with the villain reveal in this year's Weapons, everything goes back to a witch. Malcolm and his cousin, it turns out, are 200 years old, and as kids, they shot a pregnant woman who was on their property. (This woman also looks exactly like Liz in the present day.) She gives birth to what I can only tell are evil creatures, and these demons make a deal with the cousins: sacrifice a woman to them every year, and the boys can live forever.

It's an Omelas meets Picture of Dorian Gray situation, and for a minute in the theater, you breathe a sigh of relief—Ahh, so that's the hook. But then you realize there's so many questions. Why did the creatures need to make a deal? Why do the boys freeze their age at around 45 instead of 25, the best age that we can all agree would be best to live forever as?

The interesting part comes next, however. Liz, being sacrificed and thrown into the basement to be devoured by the creatures, doesn't succumb. Because she eerily resembles the creatures' long-dead mother, they spare her, imbuing her with evil black eyes and strange powers. Malcolm goes to bed thinking he's made another perfect deal with the devil, and instead wakes up aged 200 years, with Liz now taking the upper hand and killing him.

That's the simplified telling of the ending, and, like with any horror movie (or really any movie in general), describing it succinctly doesn't really do it justice. The scene in the basement where Liz comes face to face with the creatures is where the folk horror heads into overdrive. Splayed up against the wall is some sort of earthy, decaying effigy of the original witch, her head preserved in a vat of honey. The creatures are exceedingly spooky, and the real star of the scary factor of the movie. They're unlike any other demon I've seen (in a good way), and they're deeply unsettling. I like seeing the ways Perkins comes up with frights, and I trust him wholeheartedly to deliver.

Overall, I enjoyed Keeper. It's a twist on the haunted house trope that desperately deserves new life to be breathed into it. The cabin, like in any good horror movie, becomes a character itself and serves as a claustrophobic backdrop for the ever-intruding spirits that are slowly revealing themselves to Liz. It's hard to tell throughout the movie what's real and what's not, but that's part of the fun.

When you finish the movie, the opening scene makes more sense. It's a montage of different women throughout the centuries, and you realize they're all Malcolm's victims. The ending is made that much more satisfying when you realize his reign of terror has come to an end, and Liz is now in charge of the creatures. I can't stop thinking about what she'll do with them. Hopefully, she won't evil girlboss too close to the sun.

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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo Del Toro masterfully crafts a visually stunning, moving adaptation of Frankenstein, full of body horror, epic vistas, and heavy-handed themes.

To start off (for those who are worried), Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein is definitely worth watching. I haven't read the novel since college, when I took a Literature of Horror course, but I won't bore everyone with a scene-by-scene comparison of how Del Toro's version strays from the original text — that's not what's important. What's important is how he's taken this story and made it his own. I saw in an interview that he's spent his entire life, apparently, aching to get this production off the ground. Doing it now, of course, means he's an absolute master of his craft, able to bring all of his considerable powers to bear in getting it done. 

First, let's talk about the mise en scene. Every single still from this film could be a painting, it's so lush and vibrant. You could easily go down a rabbit hole about color symbolism throughout the run time, but I think it's enough to say that nobody does the color red like Del Toro. The bookends of the movie take place in the arctic, and the glaring white and blues are simply divine. As an Arctic history lover, the attention to detail is superb — that's actually a real boat set we see. The Danish sailors are ice-rimed and visibly freezing, wearing Welsh wigs to keep warm. 

When it comes to the story of Frankenstein, everyone knows the drill: A deeply ambitious and cold man aims to create life, then is disgusted by his creation and abandons him. Del Toro's choice for Viktor Frankenstein is Oscar Isaac, and while I love Oscar Isaac in almost everything, I felt he was a deeply silly choice for this role. He's too charming, too attractive, too suave to play a monomanical scientist. With his pinstripe suit, wide lacy shirts, and cocked hat, he runs around Europe looking like Prince. He drinks milk constantly, which is a heavy-handed thematic bit about being a life-creator, etc. But instead of channeling a 19th-century Romantic archetype, I wish he had played like his engineer in Ex Machina — a cold, dispassionate creator of a similar form of artificial life, AI. It's clear that Victor has daddy issues, but Del Toro absolutely nails it out of the park when he cast Charles Dance — the epic Tywin Lannister — as his father. Victor can neither live up to his father nor provide paternal guidance to his own creation. Truly a pitiful man.

Now, let's talk about the Monster. For almost a century, the archetype has revolved around Boris Karloff's green-faced, bolt-necked, flat-top creature, and it's hard to shake that path. Del Toro opts for a more put-together monster, with no visible stitches or mismatched body parts. The creature that gets created is none other than Jacob Elordi, one of the most beautiful men working in Hollywood right now. After he is born, however, he runs around the tower in yellow hot pants and tan bandages, looking for all the world like Rocky from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Here is a list of other characters/people he resembles: 

 

Gotye from the 2012 Somebody That I Used To Know music video

The Engineers from the Alien universe

All in all, Elordi does a good job of portraying a monster created from dead body parts who's rejected by his maker. His eyes are incredibly expressive, dark brown pools of wonder, fear, and hurt. The most striking examples in the movie of artificial life actually come from Frankenstein's early research. There's one scene in which he's lecturing to medical students, and he unveils a head, half a torso, and an arm attached to a piece of wood, reanimating it in a way that's truly frightening and otherworldly. Similarly, he encounters the splayed-out nervous system of a human on a board, and it makes you realize how we're all just hunks of meat protecting a bundle of nerves. It's how the universe experiences itself.

An interesting thing about this Creature that I guess I didn't pick up on in other adaptations is that he's not only insanely strong, but also immortal. That definitely adds to the untold misery of being an unwanted and rejected being. This also opens the door to moments of some pretty wild body horror. Each time, it's always by surprise, and it always made me wince, it was so graphic. The opening 8 minutes or so, you can barely breathe because of all the action — the Creature emerges from the Arctic tundra and absolutely lays waste to a ship full of Danish sailors, all black cape and mutilated skin and enraged fury as he shouts for Victor.

One thing that wasn't graphic throughout the movie was the horrible use of CGI in a few scenes, especially those in which the Creature encounters the wolves and rats. It takes you right out of the movie, and it's jarring because there's SUCH good use of practical effects elsewhere. You could take the CGI animals out entirely and the film loses absolutely nothing. It's a shame they're in there. 

When it comes to the sets, I had a curious sense of deja vu in the tower where Victor creates the creature. The stairway felt exactly like the one from Crimson Peak, while the laboratory was definitely giving Wicked in a good way.

There's an H.R. Geiger-meets-steampunk aesthetic that I really dig throughout every scene, though. I just wish I cared more about the Creature once we get his point of view. I've talked to several folks who said they felt deeply maternal toward him, which is completely the point! I just never bonded with him in the way that I think Del Toro wanted me to.  Frankenstein is not unlike the recent Nosferatu, I think, in that it manages to succeed in a visual and stylistic way, but somehow misses the mark on characterization and depth. 

Overall, I think this is a great piece of work from one of our best living directors. I just believe that I'm perhaps too uninterested in Victor and the Creature's strange relationship. Victor is just an asshole, and the Creature is unclear in his motivations toward Victor. I never really cared for either person throughout, and when they are in the same room, they just hurt each other. I think what the world really needs is an adaptation of Frankenstein written and directed by a woman. One that doesn't have such heavy-handed symbolism as "Victor drinks a lot of milk because he's a mother figure who creates life." That would do Mary Shelley proud, I think. Unlike ending the movie with a Lord Byron quote! You have an entire novel by Ms. Shelley filled with some of the most mind-bogglingly beautiful words and you picked another dude for the epigraph. Humbug.

Fortunately, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! comes out soon.

Unanswered questions:

• Was the Victor-Elizabeth relationship supposed to be a romance? He seemed like he couldn't stand her, and not in a fun, enemies-to-lovers way
• How did Victor manage to burn down the stone of the tower without managing to catch tons of paper on fire?
• Is the Creature "born" into a mind that's the equivalent of a newborn? Or is it something more akin to a toddler? He can walk, say a few words, etc.
• Does a 4-barreled blunderbuss really exist?
• How did he sew together the Creature without any stitch marks?!!
• Why does Mia Goth with eyebrows look like a) Cole Escola dressed as Bernadette Peters at the Tonys and also b) Lana Del Rey?
• Is the cross-shaped platform on which the Creature reanimates supposed to look like Christ?

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights: Mia Goth both eyebrowless and eyebrowful playing Victor's mom and unrequited love interest; Christoph Waltz as a syphilitic patron of science dazzles in his few scenes; the incredible set design and loving attention to detail.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Queens of the Dead

Tina Romero, daughter of the legendary George Romero, directs a comedy zombie thriller set in a queer nightclub that's all style and no real substance, despite an all-star cast and great vibes.

When I found out that Katy O'Brian was going to be in a new queer zombie movie directed by George Romero's daughter, I could not have been MORE excited. You may remember her and her incredible range from last year's excellent Love Lies Bleeding or opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. 

Alas, not even her incredible biceps (which should get second billing) could save this hot mess of a movie. I do not make this review lightly, as I wanted very badly to love it. I am no stranger to camp, and as y'all probably know by now, I tend to like almost every movie I see. And while I can definitely focus on a few fun parts of this one, I haven't been so underwhelmed at the cinema in a long time. And what's worse is that it's got a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes! What am I missing?

First, a brief plot synopsis: Queens of the Dead asks the question, "What would happen to a motley crew of LGBTQ+ characters if a zombie plague descended upon Brooklyn while holed up at a nightclub called YUM?" They would fight, battle, make up, get resourceful, and even have a craft session. 

If this all sounds incredibly cutesy, it is. And again, normally, I'd be down for this, but something just doesn't work right. It reads as cliché, boring, and very, very low-stakes. I love horror, I love comedy (I still am the only person defending SNL after 50 years), and yet I left feeling deflated. Let's see why.

What works

The casting in this movie is legit insane. Apart from the aforementioned Katy O'Brian, we have Jack Haven (I Saw the TV Glow), Dominique Jackson (Pose), Nina West (RuPaul's Drag Race), and tons of others from TV and Broadway. At one point, Margaret Cho rolls in on a scooter in coveralls, and the theater I was in exploded. Watching all of these people hang out for 100 minutes and throw shade at each other isn't the worst way to spend your time. It just doesn't make for a compelling narrative experience.

I read one of the must-haves for this movie was that most of the queer characters have to make it out alive. If you know about the #buryyourgays trope, you know that LGBTQ+ folks generally tend to meet tragic fates in films, books, and other media. By subverting this trope — and having the queer people be the heroes — you get a refreshing take that actually feels good. There's even a straight-man character sidekick who, literally, is a straight man from Staten Island.  The team of lesbians, drag queens, transpeople, and non-binary individuals work together to make it out alive, the very opposite of what happens in her father's Night of the Living Dead. It's also a breath of fresh air to see folks come together instead of tearing themselves apart with in-fighting.

The movie is filled with one-liners and sight gags, and given the sheer amount peppered throughout, several really land. I had more than a handful of actual belly laughs, including an aptly placed "death drop" pun by a dying drag queen. But for every one that lands, 5 or 10 more fall super flat. Again, I present to you my credentials: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is one of my favorite films. And you, Queens of the Dead, are no Elvira. In general, the movie starts out strong but sort of just runs out of steam by the end.

What doesn't

Many reviewers declare the movie to be "camp," as if that magical word somehow expands on the film's hollowness. But generally speaking, just because a movie has drag queens and puns, that doesn't make it camp. Susan Sontag, in her essay "On Camp" lays out the groundwork for this phenomenon. Here's where I think Queens of the Dead fails the camp test: 

“In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”

The movie is by turns incredibly disingenuous and then, a split second later, it will be cloyingly saccharine about a friendship breakup or drug abuse. It just doesn't work. It could be because the actors don't have the range to play at this level of theatrics (there's an extended plot line where a character has stage fright, and it goes absolutely nowhere), or maybe it's that worrying about emotions in a time of live-or-die lowers the stakes. 

With pure camp, you're also aiming to make a good movie and it fails. I don't think they set out to make an Oscar-winning film with Queens of the Dead, but neither do I think they set out to make a camp masterpiece. It's complicated, I guess. I just know that I adore honest-to-goodness camp and this one doesn't rise to the heights(or maybe the nadirs) of the likes of John Waters' films, Rocky Horror, and others. 

Another thing that doesn't work is the heavy-handed commentary on club culture and influencers. If George Romero was using zombies as a metaphor that could be read as reactions to the Vietnam War and racism, Tina Romero is addressing the "zombification" of young people due to smartphones and social media. When I say heavy-handed, I mean it: the zombies are literally walking around carrying their phones and live-streaming. It takes you out of the movie, and it's not even funny or thought-provoking! You've got to have at least one of those things to make a real point.

Overall, I think this could have been a great SNL sketch. Or an absolutely FANTASTIC Halloween episode of the late, great Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's just not funny enough to be a true comedy, and it's not scary enough (or at all) to be a horror movie. 

Am I glad it exists? Yes! And I'm very happy for folks online who seem to love it. I just expected a lot more depth, edge, and nuance.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson has made an absolute masterpiece about rebellion, standing up to power, and hope.

I went into One Battle After Another cold, which is an experience I highly recommend. Even seeing the trailer doesn't truly prepare you for this 2-hour and 42-minute magnum opus. It revolves around a modern-day revolutionary sect called the French 75 as they carry out immigration liberation and general anti-capitalist insurgency tactics. Ghetto Pat (Leo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are active leaders in their movement. I don't want to get into a detailed plot summary because a lot happens, but I do want to talk about three things that One Battle After Another does really, really well – and what I can't stop thinking about. 

It powerfully depicts the de-centering of white men in leftist organizations

From the trailer, you'd think Leo DiCaprio would be the brains behind everything in the radical French 75. That couldn't be further from the truth, as he's essentially a bumbling, stoned Big Lebowski-type dude, although he is well-meaning. When compared to his partner and lover, Perfidia, he's all soft and scared, a forever second fiddle to her powerful presence, mastermind planning, and pure passion for the cause. Seeing a woman of color in charge of a paramilitary organization doesn't happen very often, and it's extremely moving. It's very much a "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" viewpoint. Of course, the movie is directed by a white man and features white male main characters, but they're not the emotional or competent core of the film. Those roles belong to Perfidia, Willa, and Deandra.

16 years after he's gone underground into hiding with his daughter, Willa, Bob's forgotten nearly everything he trained for, including much-needed passwords in the case everything goes to hell. There's a brilliant scene in which he spends 10 minutes arguing on the phone with another agent about a codeword, while behind him, the Sensei (Benicio Del Toro) is silently and quickly organizing migrants into a safe shelter to avoid a raid. It's a powerful moment that contrasts chest-beating bravado with the actual everyday work of committing to a cause. In today's political climate, Paul Thomas Anderson is sounding the alarm on performative activism, and it's invigorating to see. 

It forcefully shows the banality — and stupidity — of evil

The central conflict in the film revolves around Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and his quest to join the Christmas Adventurers, a white supremacist secret society. However, Lockjaw and Perfidia have a child together, Willa. If it were to come out that he has a mixed-race child, his acceptance into the CA would be in jeopardy. 

First, we have to talk about Sean Penn in this movie. His performance is absolutely stellar as a pent-up, military-chafing, chauvinistic pig. He's going to win an Oscar for his performance in this, as he's almost unrecognizable. The way he casually throws around racial epithets in his quest to arrest undocumented immigrants is stomach-churning and absolutely classic villain coding. When he meets up with the secret society of white supremacists, they're bumbling buffoons who are obsessed with racial purity, and he desperately craves acceptance into their secret club. These people, of course, are horrible humans, but the way PTA portrays them is to cast a spotlight on their absolute absurdity, down to greeting each other with "Hail St. Nick." Despite all their power and evil machinations, they're deeply uncool, incompetent, and can't even live up to their own self-made, racist expectations (as in the case of Lockjaw).

It brings back a classic cloak-and-dagger feel to film

I love old movies about the secret tactics of the French resistance like Army of Shadows, and One Battle After Another brings that same energy and feel to the modern era. From the complicated cell structure of insurgents to actual secret tunnels under houses and between buildings, the day-to-day work of secret organizations is painted with a masterly brush. I suppose I never really thought about modern organizations doing such cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it makes sense and also really brings it to life. 

Bob (Leo DiCaprio) and his daughter Willa go into hiding for 16 years, but he never forgets (most of) what they're running from. They, too, have secret tunnels, MacGuffin-type transmitters that glow green when someone trusted is nearby, and rendezvous points for when shit goes down. Bob instills all of this into his teenage daughter, who sort of believes him but also thinks he's just a paranoid, stoner old crank. When the time comes and she's faced with a do-or-die type situation, she calmly accepts the protocol and trusts the other person with her life. It reminds me of Sarah Connor training John Connor all of his life for the day SkyNet goes operational. 

My favorite tiny but poignant moment is when the Sensei is closing up the hatch of a secret tunnel. It's a brief scene, but when he pulls the hatch down on top of him on the floor, a small rug effortlessly and magically unrolls down on it, completely covering their tracks. I don't know why this little flourish is so amazing, but it really captures how detail-oriented a resistance must be if they're to succeed. And in turn, how Anderson really mastered the feel of it via film.

Overall, this movie is incredibly moving, at times laugh-out-loud funny, and occasionally scary in how prescient it is to our current political climate. The run time is definitely long as it inches toward 3 hours, but I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom once. That's how much it enthralls you. I look forward to seeing it again to relive some of the blink-or-you-miss-them, adrenaline-fueled scenes and car chase sequences. 

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The Math

Nerd Rating: 9/10

Highlights: How much Bob and the Sensei drunk-drive with Modelos; Perfidia's one immaculate eyelash, and Lockjaw's mouth gymnastics in any given scene.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: The Long Walk

Brutal, harrowing, and an incredible film that plumbs the depths of violence, despair, and friendship. (Spoiler free)

I read The Long Walk novel a few months ago in anticipation of the movie coming out, so I knew what I was getting into with this. But seeing it the same week in America that multiple acts of gun violence were committed, it was hard. Really hard. I considered rescheduling, actually, given that I wasn't sure I could handle even more violence on screen. 

The film revolves around a dystopian battle royale-type contest: Young adults in an alternate America volunteer for the Long Walk and are drawn by lottery to participate. The last man still walking takes away the prize — untold riches and whatever your heart wishes. If you stop walking below 3 m.p.h., however, you're shot after three warnings by a slowly moving military vehicle that has rifles trained on everyone. 

So, yes, it's like The Hunger Games and Squid Game, in that young people are forced to outlast each other to the death in the face of unspeakable fear and callous violence. But both of those movies feel more removed from our current-day environment, while The Long Walk seems much more realistic in that there's no futuristic capital city, no high-tech arena with sponsored gifts. 

The main characters are walking on screen for the entirety of the film, and as the miles pile up, you can feel their exhaustion, dread, and fear. The first half-marathon's length doesn't seem so bad. Just a long walk, right? But there's no stopping. For anything. Watching the participants begin to stumble is gut-wrenching. When one character gets diarrhea, you see it happen in real time, along with what happens to him when he can't recover. The first death is incredibly graphic, and that's on purpose. I saw in an interview that Stephen King mentioned that he had one condition for making the movie: The deaths had to be shown. Why? To make sure that the audience knew that this wasn't just entertainment, and to show the pointless, absurd violence of the march. After that first death scene, I started looking away. It was too hard for me to watch again and again.

As night begins to fall on the first day, you start physically feeling the tiredness and exhaustion of the young men. No matter what, you can't stop, even if your shoe starts filling up with blood from blisters or you twist your ankle. The fear of being brutally shot reverberates through their young bodies as they march on. Sleep is stolen in small bits while hanging on to the person next to you. Every moment, you're reminded that you will either win the entire thing or you will die. There is no other option. There is no second place.

What prevents The Long Walk from just being torture porn, however, is the incredible performances of the actors who are along for the journey. Much like the bonds and alliances that are made in The Hunger Games, the friendships in this film are its heart, and they're truly impressive. In between moments of heart-shattering violence and long-distance-induced body horror injuries, you have a core group of characters that are slowly but surely making their sacrifices count. When they're not running for their lives, they're talking, laughing, and trying to make sense of the world and how they got to be on the Long Walk. Every few minutes, they experience trauma after trauma as they watch their companions fall. Similarly, every few minutes, I would think about how tired they are, how in pain they must be. Imagine walking as far as you'd ever walked before, then having to keep walking indefinitely or else face death.

Ray Garraty and Peter McVries, our two main characters, quickly become fast friends while walking, and their relationship is truly touching to watch as they traverse hundreds of miles across rural Maine backroads. 

When I mentioned earlier that consuming this movie is hard, I wasn't joking. I'm not sure what to take away from it. The message that violence is wrong is very clear. But I think what I'll take away personally from it is the power of support during periods of intense, overwhelming fear. You're with these characters in essentially a locked room (except the room is always a small piece of tarmac), faced with the certainty that all but one will die. No matter how it ends, it's going to be tragic for nearly everyone. 

I always thought the folks who go on reality shows and say "I'm not here to make friends" were being silly. Of course you're not, you're there to win money. But on the Long Walk, despite offering untold riches, it practically demands friendship to ignite. Why? Because their humanity is at stake. These are young men scared out of their minds, and the other kids aren't the enemy. The enemy is a dystopian system that made them think they had no other choice at a future than to participate in a state-sanctioned murder lottery game. Stephen King wrote the first draft of this story when he was just 19. For context, this was the late 1960s, and it's easy to see the comparisons of the violence in the story to the Vietnam War and the draft. While that was almost 60 years ago, the theme still resonates in the modern era as we face needless violence in other ways. 

I'm not sure I'll watch The Long Walk again, but if I do, it will be to revisit these incredible performances and the story that gives you a little bit of hope in a tale full of death. 

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Baseline Score: 8/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.