Movie Nation

This looks handsomely mounted, inventively cast.

It was, in hindsight, probably a mistake to try and send off “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also a mistake for Lucasfilm to migrate the entirety of this franchise from Paramount to Disney, but nobody asked me.

Film festivals, like studio movie junkets (inviting critics to fly in, review a film and interview the cast), are a boiling cauldron of “group think.” And Cannes, famous for going all-in on the artsy, the pretentious and the “single minded vision” of this or that celebrated filmmaker, is rarely friendly to straight-up Hollywood popcorn pictures. That’s been the case with “Dial of Destiny.” The earliest reviews are, to put it charitably, mixed.

Fine. Harrison Ford is very old, and this franchise has been flogged to death. I look at the trailers and know to expect a lot of repetition, and a protracted effort to wring emotion out of our sentimental attachment to the character.

You know going in that this might feel gassed, and that winning over viewers, new ones especially, will be an uphill battle for its distributor. I mean, “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” sucked, after all.

Having a very old leading man — de-aged for flashbacks — means that more of the movie’s action will be in the hands of his “goddaughter” sidekick, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Cool. Women have played big roles in this saga, with Karen Allen‘s Marion Ravenwood setting the too-tough-to-be-a-damsel-in-distress standard, and Mrs. Spielberg being a sort of lone exception to that rule. Sorry, Kate.

But conservatives, smelling a movie that’s going to struggle, a DISNEY movie at that, have decided that “the worst reviewed Indiana Jones movie” is “bad” because it’s “woke.”

That whole “blood in the water,” “take credit for killing something” for political points thing. Maybe prop up Florida’s would-be dictator governor and would-be presidential candidate in his public spat with a publicly-traded company.

It’s all over the interwebs. The wingnutoisie are foaming at the mouth for a Disney flop. Not just the usual suspects. Or the most cynical opportunists. And not just the North American wingnuts. Oh noooo.

The label was applied even before the damned movie was shown to anybody, which has more to do with DeSantis-loving Disney bashers than anything Waller-Bridge has ever said or any film director James Mangold has ever made.

If this sounds like the pushback that’s been going on ever since Disney announced that a Black woman would be starring in the live-action fairytale “The Little Mermaid,” it is. Same crowd. Same “issues.”

One of the most defensible reasons for carrying the Indiana Jones franchise on for over 40 years –on film and on TV — is watching the character do what humans have ALWAYS done — EVOLVE. From his regressive, post “white man’s burden” racial regard for Arabs in “Raiders” and somewhat patronizing treatment of Asians in the early films, he, like most of the world, has been enlightened and changed with the times.

He is, after all, an academic and a scientist. But wait, modern conservatism hates those folks, too. Ask the guy in the white lab coat named Fauci about that, or for that matter the tsunami of scientists who predicted and are now documenting the ever-worsening impact of climate change, which is what they had to re-label “Global Warming” because conservative billionaires smeared that simpler, more direct and bluntly-correct name for it.

By the way, most of these folks buying into the cynical “anti-wokism” trolling of opportunists are just further examples of know how easily led the reactionary are. Even Trump figured that out. This crowd is just looking for someone to validate the narrow-mindedness they refuse to let go of. They stopped going out to movies before Clinton left the White House. So they’re all worked-up about something they don’t have a stake in other than letting us know something else they just “hate.”

If there’s one thing that all these “very fine people, ” none of whom seem very good at defining “woke,” have in common, it’s a hatred for “the other” races and a soul-sucking desire to keep women in their place.

Remember that the next time some Eva Braun blonde on Fox denies she’s a racist, or some middle aged white rabble rouser declares “There’s no such THING as a Republican/Conservative war on Blacks/Asians/Latinos/Gays or Women.”

The actual negative reviews of “Dial of Destiny” don’t typically fault the movie for broadening its canvas or widening its demographic appeal. “Woke” is being attached to those reviews to score political points. I’ve had run-ins with some of the folks doing the sh-t-stirring, and have run into and/or read some of the critics beating this drum about this “element” of this movie. And there’s not a one of them I’d follow over a cliff like Glen Beck’s lemmings.

Deeper into June, other reviews will come out, mine included (updated, linked here). And June 30, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is released. I dare say if it’s got shortcomings, they won’t have a damned thing to do with politics.

And here’s a news flash. Indiana Jones has ALWAYS been “woke.” He hates Nazis, which is modern western conservatism’s REAL beef with the old man with the whip.

Nazis HATE Indiana Jones, too. As if we needed more proof.

Low stakes, low key, low lighting and generally low energy, there’s not much to recommend the Indonesian Around the World with Netflix offering “Arini by Love, inc.”

Yes it’s quite short, by Western feature film standards. But not a lot happens and none of what does amounts to anything that would hold a viewer’s interest.

We meet Arini (Della Dartyan) as she’s scrambling, with her suitcase, trying to dodge a uniformed guard and street toughs and escape. Something.

But when she stops a cab and climbs in, the sinister woman whose face we don’t see knows her by name.

A flashback to “three years ago” shows us what led up to that escape attempt. Arini enrolls in some sort of total immersion personality-makeover “dating” service, “Love, inc.”

“I want to be happy,” she admits (in Indonesian with English subtitles) upon acceptance.

In a closed campus compound with only unnatural (low) lighting, Arini and other women and men dressed in colorless, shapeless clothes with be put through lessons on everything from table settings (to maximize “emotional intimacy”) to salsa dancing.

The stern Ms. Diana (Marissa Anita) presides over all this, each inmate locked in her or his dorm room, every meal finishing with a (drugged) dessert designed to sedate them for more indoctrination, every lesson aiming to help those there “convince the client that the you role you play is YOU.”

But memories and real identity are what you risk, something Arini picks up from another Love, inc. “customer” inmate, Tiara (Kelly Tandiono). She keeps a book of “memories” that are being erased.

Shades of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Well, except for the romance, the heartache, the humor and the pathos.

This all sounds more like a brainwashing school for spies or (like TV’s “The Prisoner”) ex-spies. But no. This is all about remaking yourself into the most attractive mate possible.

Or so Diana says, insisting that they will merely “feed your mind with happiness.”

Taken at its word, this movie is a laugh-out-loud comment on Islamic Indonesia’s dating scene. Are the Arini/Tiara attempts to get at the truth, to figure out if the guy Arini seems to be set up with is someone he’s met before, and to escape (Let’s crawl into the AIR DUCTS!) an allegory for escaping the trap of the culture and its dating mores?

Possibly. In any event, parable or simple, unlayered linear narrative, the flatlining plot and flat performances of this movie never makes one feel anything save for boredom.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Della Dartyan, Kelly Tandiono, Farish Nahdi and Marissa Anita

Credits: Directed by Adrianto Sinaga, scripted by Adrianto Sinagao and Widya Arifianti. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:12

“There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead.

 “When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.”

But giving her a sequel, the original she won’t equal, wasn’t the cleverest plan.

Where “Becky” was fresh, when ripping bloodied flesh, her “Wrath” I simply must pan.

We all remember “Becky,” the rare villainous turn by Kevin James, the bloodbath unleashed when Becky’s Dad (Kevin McHale) is murdered by Nazi home invaders in search of a mysterious key.

“The Wrath of Becky,” the sequel to that “gonzo” 13-year-old avenging angel thriller, still has Lulu Wilson in the title role, and summons Seann William Scott as the new Nazi, an “insurrectionist” leader of the Noblemen (he’s too buff to be a Proud Boy) and an injured and stolen pet mastiff-looking dog that Becky is hellbent on retrieving.

The filmmakers have changed, if not the star and the movie’s anti-MAGA/Nazi “fake patriotic f—-rs” politics. And expecting to catch lightning in a bottle twice was mostly wishful thinking on the part of everyone involved.

Not Scott. He just seems almost embarassed to be here.

Becky is 16, having fled the foster care system to room with a crusty, kindly old woman (Denise Burse), paying the rent by working at the local diner.

That’s where she runs afoul of three redneck racists of the not-exactly-rocket-scientist persuasion (Michael Sirow, Aaron Dalla Villa and co-director Matt Angel). They mouth off to her, she dumps coffee on Dear Leader (Sirow).

Next thing you know, they follow her home, beat her dog and murder her landlady.

Becky didn’t anticipate this? Oh. Right. “Sixteen.” “Consequences” never crossed her mind.

There’s nothing for it but to DIY gear up, recollect clues to figure out where these female Congresswoman-hating goons were going, fetch her dog and commence to killing.

“To be honest, guns kinda bore me.”

To be honest, this movie kind of bored me. Becky narrates too much. The situations, traps and what not seem obvious or ludicrous. There’s little of the sense of inventively murderous fun of “Becky.”

Perhaps the cleverest line of the gathered Noblemen is one they use to size up the “little girl” they’re facing.

“She definitely still shops at Hot Topic.“

I cackled at a killing, here and there. But the writer/co-directors don’t show any flair for creating moments of jeopardy and logically reasoning/killing one’s way of them. Becky problem-solves like she’s a 16 year-old screenwriter.

(Note to writer/co-director Angel and other director Suzanne Coote, the CIA wouldn’t be involved in domestic terrorism. That’s against the law.).

To further paraphrase the “There Was a Little Girl” poet Becky quotes, Henry Wadsworth, when “Becky” was was good, she was at least funny. But when she made a sequel, she wasn’t.

Rating: R, graphic violence

Cast:Lulu Wilson, Denise Burse, Michael Sirow, Matt Angel, Aaron Dalla Villa, Courtney Gains and Seann William Scott

Credits: Directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, scripted by Matt Angel, based on the character created by Nick Morris, Lane Skye and Ruckus Skye. A Quiver release.

Running time: 1:24

This one opens June 2, and will be wrestling for the horror title with “The Blackening” for much of its run.

Iconic novel, mutli-Oscar-nominated film by Spielberg, Whoopi and Danny Glover and Oprah and yet not widely-accepted Alice Walker adaptation when it came out back in the ’80s.

So let’s take another shot. Is that the new Little Mermaid in this Oprah-Spielberg-Quincy Jones produced remake? Why yes it is Halle Bailey.

Taraji and Coleman Domingo and Louis Gossett Jr. and singer/bandleader Jon Batiste and David Alan Grier are the biggest names in the cast. But then, I don’t know H.E.R.

More musical? More magical realism? Directed by Ghanese filmmaker?

Christmas Day.

“A Hole in the Fence” is an allegorical rendition of how the “elites” get to stay that way, generation after generation. It’s not just money which buys politicians who rewrite tax laws protecting extreme wealth. There’s a veritable cradle-to-the-grave infrastructure designed to breed, train and finance the new leaders in a class war that they pay their media shills to pretend isn’t happening.

Filmmaker Joaquin del Paso, who directed the similarly allegorical “Panamerican Machinery,” gives us a Mexican “Lord of the Flies,” a creepy-as-all-get-out summer camp tale where the children of the rich and powerful are groomed for their roles as the ruling class by professors who teach class contempt and Catholicism, hand in mail-fisted glove.

“Acting in your best interest is the best response to any dilemma,” the martinet Professor Monteros teaches. Empathy? Compassion? They’ll just slow your roll. Stick up for yourself and your own kind is what they’re teaching the Los Pinos boys.

“Remember,” he and his fellow drill instructors intone, in Spanish with English subtitles. “Our creator is always watching!”

The boys have camp labor and Catholic sermons, with a healthy dose of paranoia about the “poor” and “troubled” (crime) part of Mexico where this exclusive experience is nestled.

The 30 or so boys are left to their own devices — somewhat — which leads to the expected hazing, bullying gangs and picking on “the scholarship boy,” working class Eduardo (Yubah Ortega), the “beaner,” “f—–g brownie” in their ranks. He is merely the darkest skinned and the first to be singled out.

The lack of adult intervention in these beatings, homophobic taunts and the like is by design, we gather.

“He who is free from sin may have ice cream!”

There’s a student monitor (Raúl Vasconcelos) who knows first aid, is in charge of making sure the kid with his foot and arm and neck in casts (Eric David Walker) takes his depression meds. Edwin may be taking a special interest in tiny, injured Diego.

And there’s an existential threat. Something tore a hole in the fence around the compound. Gunfire is heard in the surrounding hills and forest. The “locals” are described as “narcos” and worse.

Monteros may preach that he wants to toughen up these boys, that he wants “men with juevos.” But as much time as the kids spend observing birds that they’re told are all male and have managing a monosexual avian culture (Say what?), you’ve got to wonder if that isn’t part of the grooming going on here as well.

This Bohemian Grove for the children of the Mexican oligarchy features tastes of opera for evening entertainment and daytime play/work with axes and shovels mixed with a Darwinian social mix that selects the mouthy, the noncomforists, for beating down as it rewards the bullies.

Jordi, played by transgender actress Valeria Lamm, is the brattiest of the bratty. Joaquincito (Lucciano Kurti) is destined for adult and peer hazing and abuse, but only after they’ve come after poor Eduardo, hammer and tong. Until he fights back.

It’s all so disturbing that the viewer, recognizing the British stories this seems based on, keeps looking around for which kid will snap. We’re almost rooting for “Lord of the Flies” to transition to “If…”

Director del Paso was making a statement about Mexico’s heirarchy, the Catholic faith that rewards the rich by keeping the poor meek. But this story could be set in many places at this point in time.

When you see the brutish incuriosity, the cowardly pack-mentality cruelty and utter disregard for “selflessness” and “compassion,” it’s hard not to see its North American analogs among the most self-serving, system-rigging raised-to-be-authoritarians among us. And pray that they devour each other rather than us.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Enrique Lascurain, Eric David Walker, Diego Lozano, Valeria Lamm, Lucciano Kurti, Yubah Ortega, Charles Oppenheim, Jacek Poniedzialek and Takahiro Murokawa

Credits: Directed by Joaquin del Paso, scripted by Lucy Pawlak and Joaquin del Paso. An Altered Innocence release.

Running time: 1:42

The Argentine farce “The Lulu Club,” titled “Papa’ al Rescate (Dad to the Rescue)” in South America, is a road trip farce that kind of gives up on the farce at the midway point. Because nothing actually funny has happened or been said up to that moment.

So cast and crew go for sentimental, safer ground in a story about a gay father racing across the Andes to take custody of an eight-year old whose mother he impregnated nine years ago.

Mom died. Sad. Dad is about to become half of the first same sex marriage in Chile. Aww. And his pals, his housemates, pile into an ancient, oddly-modified Chevy Nova to accompany on this sentmental journey.

Every now and then, some mishap — with the car (They didn’t call it “No va” in Spanish for a reason.), with a couple of “Jesus is an alien and the rapture will be an alien abduction” cultists, with the border authorities — threatens to almost turn amusing.

And the finale involves a harried chase, a run for the border. Those are worth a giggle. Usually.

But no, not this time, muchachos. No hay risas.

Road pictures are an internationally foolproof genre for comedy and romance or action and thrills. The possibilities of mishaps, madcap chases and giggles abound.

Not here.

Benjamín Vicuña plays Nico, the father-who-was-never-there for little Lulu. Now it is his time, impending, nationally significant marriage or no. So perpetual screwup Fernando (Fernando Larraín), father-estranged-from-his-teen-daughter Raimundo (Jorge Zabaleta) and dopey Mama’s boy Chico (Rodrigo Muñoz) sign on for the trip.

As there’s no room in this unsafe, beater car, let’s assume Nico is planning on flying Lulu home. Maybe the screenwriters assumed that. Perhaps.

The plot’s complications begin with the opening shot, as we’re meant to wonder how this quartet wound up in the high Andean desert in their underwear — one of them colored Hulk-green — with just a vintage Chevy bumper in their possession as they’re shot at.

The estranged Chilean daughter is crossing the border with a friend to march in a women’s rights/abortion rights march in Mendoza, the city where Lulu lives and where UFOs have been sighted.

And the nun at the orphanage (Silvina Quintanilla) is dismayed to learn, from the late baby mama’s pal (Laurita Fernández) that the guy rushing to take custody is gay and about to marry his partner.

So yes, there are complications and no, they’re not very funny, not in the hands of director Marcos Carnevale, probably because the script is mirth free. I always jot down funny lines, in Spanish or Ingles, when I’m reviewing comedies (this one is in Spanish with subtitles). No habia ninguno.

I was so bored I spent more time wondering why that Nova had an early ’60s Impala grill than I did about whether this “Lulu Mission” was going to succeed.

Rating: TV-MA, comic violence, profanity, adult situations

Cast: Benjamín Vicuña, Fernando Larraín, Jorge Zabaleta, Rodrigo Muñoz and Laurita Fernández.

Credits: Directed by Marcos Carnevale, scripted by Sebastián Freund and Rodrigo Muñoz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:42

Some years back, I polled actors, filmmakers and critics for a column I was writing about “a movie that made you cry.”

And a couple of people took me aback when they mentioned “The Little Mermaid.” But they were old enough to have seen the Disney animated classic when it was new, in theaters in 1989. And like me, they were absolutely bowled-over and profoundly moved by the experience.

Disney, the gold standard in film animation, hadn’t made a movie this beautiful, this joyous and this moving in decades. Just the year before, a middling ‘toon titled “Oliver & Company” had tipped us that maybe they might find their mojo again. Then Disney brought in the team that turned “Little Shop of Horrors” into a musical, and composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, with directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and literally changed the world.

We all learned how good that theatrical convention, the “aspirational” first act song of longing, could be.

“I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see ’em dancin’
walkin’ around on those
Whaddya call ’em? Oh, feet…”

Disney animation was saved and transformed, new enthusiasm for new attractions based on new films in the theme parks grew, and even moribund “Starlight Express” era Broadway was revived with The Mouse leading the way.

And to think it all started when Ashman rhymed “sardine” with “beguine.” Because “Darlin’ it’s better down where it’s wetter, Take it from me.”

So it’s no surprise that when Disney continued its practice of turning animated classics into live action (with animation) remakes, director Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Into the Woods,” “Mary Poppins Returns”) and company were a little daunted, no matter how much experience they brought to the production, no matter how many earlier animated jewels they’d turned into live action features.

They couldn’t take any risks with this, the Mermaid Movie that Changed Cinema, revived Disney’s brand, and set the table for Pixar collaborations, a Marvel buyout and world dominance.

And it’s sadly no surprise that the film they made from this frothy delight is stately, slow and almost operatic in its self-seriousness.

They cast a lovely, emotive singer (Halle Bailey) as the new Ariel, and kind of pinned her down in the part. She’s still capable of moving us with “Part of Your World,” but we have to wait forever to get to it while all this pointless backstory is slow-walked across the screen.

It’s not really covering new material. We’re still meeting Ariel’s “sisters of the seven seas” and her disapproving of all-things human and terrestrial father, King Triton (Oscar winner Javier Bardem). It just takes forever to do it.

As expensive as making all this acting and bickering and singing underwater stuff come off was, you can’t afford to trim for pace and time, I guess. Thus, we end up with a “Little Mermaid” over 50 minutes longer than the original.

We don’t hear a song for over twenty minutes at the movie’s opening, and there are similarly long stretches between numbers, making one wonder if they meant for this to be a “musical” remake at all.

One tune was dropped, others (by Lin Manuel-Miranda) added so that Awkwafina, who plays Scuttle — a white diving boobie — could sing and rap something fresh for the soundtrack. Buddy Hackett voiced the original Scuttle, who didn’t sing.

Did we need to give the handsome prince (Jonah Hauer-King) who falls overboard his own number? Sure. I guess. But I’ve forgotten it already.

You remember the story — Ariel collects human items from shipwrecks, detritus that’s fallen overboard and longs to be “Part of Your World.” Her yearning doesn’t move her compliant but fearful fishy friend Flounder (Jacob Tremblay) or her father’s Crustacean advisor Sebastian (Daveed Diggs from “Hamilton”). But saving the shipwrecked prince from drowning cinches it.

She meets her father’s exiled octopi sorceress, “Aunt” Ursula (Melissa McCarthy, who steals the movie), a bargain is struck and she has feet, but no voice, and mere days to win the prince’s love on land before Ursula owns her mortal soul…and voice, etc.

The prince and his court are a multi-racial but bland lot. Look for original Ariel Jodi Benson as a street vendor in town.

Scuttle/Awkafina cracks wise and makes Scuttle” every wrong description of this or that human artifact funny. Sebastian the crab kvetches — “Oh my, what a softshell I am turning out to be.”

And the show stopper, “Under the Sea?” It stops and starts and gets at a fundamental failing of this adaptation.

The original number was a riot of fish and sea creatures, everything Sebastian names in the song, crammed into the frame, layered on top of each other. Here, “even the sturgeon and the ray” and “oh that blowfish blow” get their own moment in the frame alone. In digitally recreating real fish, and a real crab for Sebastian, they’ve taken away ALL the sight gags the characters had, gags that gave the comedy that extra boost.

The riotous, frenzied fun that Disney animators would repeat with “Be Our Guest” in “Beauty and the Beast” and “Never Had a Friend Like Me” in “Aladdin” is gone.

Anybody worried that Bailey (“A Wrinkle in Time”) wouldn’t measure up as a singer and empathetic actress is proven wrong. And McCarthy not only sings, her Ursula is the stuff of many an eight-and-unders nightmare, a tentacled terror bathed in gloom and menace.

Long before Disney took “Beauty and the Beast” to Broadway, they’ve been a corporation that knew how to find ways to wring more cash out of intellectual property they already owned. Of course they’re going to remake their greatest hits. And even with all the animation and digital trickery it took to make “Mermaid,” isn’t the most pointless of these “live action” remakes. That title still belongs to “The Lion King.”

But this “Mermaid,” weighted down with expectations, responsibility to the corporate bottom line and what feels like fear that “We’re going to screw this ‘sure thing’ up,” sinks and rarely swims, an epic that impresses when it’s under the sea, but never really moves us. And when it’s on dry land, it could not be more bland.

Rating: PG, scary images, scenes of peril

Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy and Javier Bardem, with the voices of Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay and Awkwafina.

Credits: Directed by Rob Marshall, scripted by David McGee, based on the 1989 Disney animated film, adaptation by Ron Clements and John Musker, and the book by Hans Christian Andersen. A Walt Disney release.

Running time: 2:15

A lot of thrillers are undone by my least favorite convention of the genre — over-explaining. When this happens in a horror movie, one that traffics in the supernatural, it just seems worse.

Yeah, that thing that the natural world and natural laws say could never happen TOTALLY makes sense now. Thanks!

That plays a role in the undoing of “Cracked,” a generally solid, creepy thriller from Thailand about “haunted” paintings and what happens to those who own them.

The matched set, “Portrait of Beauty,” parts one and two, look like posters from the James Bond movies of the ’60s — a scantily-clad model in an erotic pose.

But Ruja, the daughter of the painter, is told they have great value. As this widowed Thai-American (Chayanit Chansangavej) has flown home from Chicago after getting the news of her father’s death mainly to get the cash to save her little girl’s vision, that’s what matters to her.

The “old friend of your father” (Sahajak Boonthanakit) who fetched her may give her the creeps. The “story” of the paintings inspiring spree killings is unsettling. And dang it, they need restoration to get top dollar at auction.

Let’s move on from the nightmares that return for Ruja and which seem to be visiting her daughter (Nutthatcha Padovan) now that they’re back in her family’s Thai mansion. Let’s pay little heed to how creeped-out the old housekeeper seems about the sinister, supernatural goings-on associated with the place and the paintings in the studio out back.

Snakes — including cobras — abound in the gloom. A red sash that must have belonged to a victiim — perhaps used to strangle her — plays a part.

Ruja is at her wits end when the kindly “cute” restorer Tim (Nichkhun) shows up, pooh-poohing any idea that the paintings are “haunted.” But something has been painted over which the cracks start to reveal.

Chansangavej makes a properly stricken heroine, desperate to save first her daughter’s sight, then her daughter’s life. And Nichkhun manages the “cute” and “skeptical” paint restorer who has to be “convinced” that something sinister is up.

Director and co-writer Surapong Ploensang does well enough by most of the genre conventions, building suspense in the early acts. But “Cracked” hits a wall in its repeated moments of “Little Rachel is in PERIL” and seems to have maxxed out its possibilities before all the “explaining” starts.

Which is why the “explaining” starts, I suppose.

It’s always interesting to see how another filmic culture approaches a genre much of the rest of the world has already beaten to death. Here, Ploensang, making his feature filmmaking debut, trips over the same thing that a thousand others have stumbled over before him.

Leave a little mystery. Leave the “explaining” to the viewer.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Chayanit Chansangavej, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Nutthatcha Padovan and Nichkhun

Credits: Directed by Surapong Ploensang, scripted by Ornusa Donsawai, Pun Homchuen, Eakasit Thairaat and Surapong Ploensang. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:32