Movie Nation

Terror totes an axe in “Fear Street Part 2: 1978,” the middle film in Leigh Janiak’s homage to horror films and the eras they came from.

Twenty five minutes into “Part 2,” the summer camp slaughterhouse instalment in the trilogy, a rerecorded version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” turns up. Because the Captain and Kansas, Bowie and Neil and Tennille may set up the era, but nothing sets the mood like more cowbell.

That’s kind of the way of this film, entirely too “on the nose” for its own damned good.

The finale to “Part 1” introduced us to a Camp Nightwing survivor of the the long-ago-executed “witch” Sarah Fier, rumored to possess spree killers over the decades in forever-sullied Shadyside. “Part 2” is about C. Berman, aka Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd), at that ill-fated camp where the kids of Shadyside and neighboring, affluent and less crime-ridden Sunnyvale gathered in the summer.

Until, that is, 1978.

Cindy is a goody-two-shoes at the camp. Her sister Ziggy (Sadie Sink) is a hellion, lashing out at their disintegrating home life and shrinking future, on the verge of being “hung” as a witch by the mean Sunnyvalers when saner heads prevail.

But the camp nurse (Jordana Spiro) has been poking around in the past. There’s a map, and a “treasure” at the end of it that might “end this curse” and save Shadyside. As we’ve already seen all hell break loose in 1994, we know better.

“You can’t stop her. Run as far as you can as fast as you can,” the adult C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs) warned 1994’s Deena et al.

It all ties together as one big convoluted and inter-connected and inbred narrative, the future sheriff (Ted Sutherland) and future C. Berman and others struggle to get through one hellish night, the back-story is filled in more, and we hear more of the local murderous nursery rhyme.

“Before the witch’s final break, she found a way to cheat death…”

There’s a perfunctory quality to the situations and performances, the dialogue and the “terror,” cribbed from scores of “kids killed at camp” thrillers. It’s pitiless, but one gets the feeling the actors have seen the films these borrowings came from are just imitating their forebears.

“Part 2,” truth be told, feels kind of gassed after the giddiness of “1994.” The threats, terrors and manipulations are hammered home with a cudgel.

I mean, being chased with a guy with an axe is still seriously harrowing, and Janiak handles the attacks with skill, amped up by the screams and shrieking violins on the soundtrack. But familiarity breeds you-know-what.

Telling us what the future looks like isn’t the “spoiler” you might expect. But as we descend down the rabbit hole with the writer-director, we can guess the real suspense will come from in the third film, set in “The Witch” era — 1666.

How WILL she manage a movie that isn’t stuffed with Foghat, The Runaways, “Carry On My Wayward Son” and more cowbell?

MPA Rating: R, bloody horror violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Sadie Sink, Ryan Sink, Emily Rudd, McCabe Slye, Ted Sutherland, Chiara Aurelia, Michael Provost

Credits: Scripted and directed by Leigh Janiak, A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

Even if Bundy is a serial killer subject who’s been beaten into submission, this August release looks intriguing.

Robert Patrick’s the warden, Luke Kirby is a charismatic but less sexy/cute version of Bundy than we’re used to, and Wood plays an FBI agent hoping to get a few last answers out of a genuine monster before he faces his final justice.

Coming in November.

“How I Became a Superhero (Comment je suis devenu super-héros)” is a French twist on a common Hollywood theme — superhumans, living among us, minor celebrities with all the human foibles.

It’s not as serious minded as “Watchmen” or “Heroes,” not particularly lightweight and cute, either. But like the Russian “Major Grom: Plague Doctor,” it’s a curiosity, an example of how other cultures tackle a genre American cinema has beaten to death.

Actor turned first-time feature director Douglas Attal’s film is more tactile and lived-in than most Marvel or DC movies. It’s basically a police procedural with a superhuman mystery as the subject of its investigation. Occasional burst of effects aside, it doesn’t go full-on superheroic until late in the third act.

Somebody is kidnapping Parisians with powers. And Detective Moreau (Pio Marmaï), long on the job, almost as long on a losing streak, is given the case. He may be saddled with a no-nonsense partner (Vimala Pons) now, but back in the day, he was department “liaison” for the Pack Royal, a team of heroic super-heroes who helped him solve crimes of “supercriminality.”

That’s the sort of “super” folks we see the most of, here. “Mr. Cold? Could I get a selfie with you?” celebrities, convicts, goons and headcases. Moreau will lean on his old friend, time/shifting Monte Carlo (veteran French character actor Benoît Poelvoorde), who had to retire due to Parkinson’s, and Callista, the clairvoyant superhuman (Leïla Bekhti) who runs a sort of after school/keep’em out of trouble program for superhuman teens.

Yes, that sounds a lot like “X-Men,” troubled superhumans causing trouble. But there’s no Professor Xavier here to show them their better selves.

What’s more, the streets are flooded with drugs which give people brief blasts of the bad sort of superhuman “powers.” A string of increasingly-deadly arsons is what our cop duo is investigating — at first. But their main suspects, and other people with powers are disappearing, too.

The cops bicker in the usual ways, and do the “good cop/bad cop” thing as if they think it’ll work, although crooks have seen that in the movies for 100 years.

I found the entire enterprise just a tad above “boring,” lacking much in the way of action or urgency or connection with the characters. But eventually it settles in and we get moments of mild excitement and genuine pathos.

And the film being French, it manages the sexiest superhero scene since “Spider-Man.”

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence

Cast: Pio Marmaï, Vimala Pons, Leïla Bekhti, Swann Arlaud and Benoît Poelvoorde

Credits: Directed by Douglas Attal, script by Cédric Anger, Melisa Godet, Charlotte Sanson, Douglas Attal and Gérald Bronner, based on the graphic novel by Gérald Bronner. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

What’s a stoner comedy without weed? If it’s “Mandibles,” the latest deadpan farce from the French director of “Rubber,” it’s still daft, stoned or stone-cold sober.

“Mandibles” is a shambolic, sometimes funny and always-silly amble through the South of France with a couple of dopes who’ve stumbled upon a gigantic house fly.

They didn’t plan it, although they make lots of “plans” about the big bug the more sentimental of the two, Jean-Gab (David Marsais) promptly names “Dominique.” Something to do with “drones,” maybe, a trained fly that can make them rich by maybe doing what they do, only better.

They’re low rent hustlers. Manu (Grégoire Ludig) is the muscle, a homeless mug and part-time thug given “a mission” by his sketchy pal Raimondo (Raphaël Quenard). Get a car, drive to the chateau of Michel-Michel, pick up a suitcase, put it in the trunk.

As Raimondo finds Manu homeless, sleeping on the beach, that presents several challenges. Got to get a car, first. He breaks Raimondo’s confidence by bringing his hapless filling station attendant pal Jean-Gab along.

But that old Mercedes Manu hot-wired? There’s a noise in the trunk. And it’s neither mechanical nor human.

Writer-director Quentin Dupieux finds a few chuckles in this quirky couple, dimwits who hook horns (with their fists) every time something pays off for them, shouting, “TORO.”

Their simple “mission” is going wrong before they take a look in the trunk (a hot-wired car has no keys, remember). Every DIY challenge they face they solve in the most half-assed manner imaginable.

They stop to “train” the fly, but they need somewhere to lay low. They decide on the camper trailer (“caravan” in Euro-speak) of an old guy Manu head-butts as he robs him. But caravans aren’t fireproof, or nincompoop-proof.

Right in the middle of another sight gag — towing the Mercedes with a unicorn bicycle — they’re stopped and befriended by a gaggle of bourgeois ladies, one of whom is sure Manu is somebody she knew from high school.

And that’s how we meet Agnes, a friend of the family who SHOUTS (in French, with English subtitles) her every rude thought and deranged accusation at them due to a brain injury. “WHERE DID YOU LEARN YOUR MANNERS?” Whatever else “Mandibles” manages, Agnes (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is one hilarious creation.

The picture doesn’t go much of anywhere, but aimless in Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer, La Croix Valmer and elsewhere along the Côte d’Azur​ counts for something, a pretty setting for a seriously deadpan (and slightly icky) comedy about two guys on the lam with a fly.

MPA Rating: unrated, some violence, profanity

Cast: Grégoire Ludig, David Marsais, Adèle Exarchopoulos, India Hair, Roméo Elvis, Raphaël Quenard

Credits: Scripted and directed by Quentin Dupieux. A Magnet release.

Running time: 1:17

Strike while the iron is hot, jefe.

Netflix has this project, which looks cute enough.

“Diets” have been around since the 16th century, but the tie-in to fitness is a more recent phenomenon. In the UK, “fit” became shorthand some years back for someone thin, not heavy, a euphemism for skinny and thus attractive.

That in turned has spawned a smart and sympathetic push-back documentary, “The Body Fights Back,” a film that looks at body dysphoria, body type biases and the ways they’ve worked themselves into the culture and even into medicine.

The cleverest thing about Marian Vosumets’ film is how it pricks the viewer’s prejudices as it introduces us to an assortment of British folk with all-too-typical relationships with food and potentially unhealthy attitudes about body image.

The people we glance at and see “Well, she’s thin” or “She used to be fat and isn’t” or “He’s so fit he’s a walking muscle” aren’t the healthiest folks Vosumets interviews on camera. We learn that this self-described “big” woman is a TV spokesmodel and that “thin” woman has a nearly wrecked body or has been hospitalized with eating disorders.

And that Rory fellow who consumes calories for bulk and muscle building? He’s prone to “last supper” bingeing and gorging. I learned a new word. “Bigorexia” is a catchier way of saying “muscle dysmorphia,” something young men fall into — obsessive working out and dieting to build that “perfect” body.

We hear from experts such as a psychotherapist, a surgeon, a body image researcher, nutritionists and others who talk about the dieting-industrial complex, media image normalizing of standards of beauty and the class divide in terms of the quality of food people can afford to consume.

“You want us to be healthy,” cracks plus-sized model and influencer Mojo, then “why isn’t everything organic?”

An expert opines that “What started out as…let’s just take better care of ourselves really quickly turned into something horribly destructive.”

It’s unsettling hearing healthy, middle class people talk about living in “malnourished panic,” following Rory as he rock climbs, lifts weights and consumes seven tiny meals a day, how he’s made “a religion out of counting calories.”

The film’s shortcoming is brushing past all the “healthy” counter-arguments often shouted-down as “fat shaming” today, the epidemic levels of early onset heart disease, diabetes etc. No, it’s not your job to comment on somebody’s weight and appoint yourself the diet police in pursuit of some unnatural “norm.” But nobody should fool themselves about the risks, lifestyle and lifespan limitations associated with excessive weight either.

Tenisha, a native of Dominica, recalls the culture shock of of moving from the Caribbean, where “the thicker you are, the more celebrated you are,” to an island where “thin is in” has been the rule since Twiggy.

“The Body Fights Back” gets at the psychology of “food as a friend I could turn to that would make me happy,” lets us hear repeatedly from a weeping, guilt-ridden parent who now understands and acknowledges her part in her daughter’s anorexia, and sees people moving on with life with a more positive body images that give their stressed systems a break.

Kind of makes you wonder who “The Biggest Loser” really is.

MPA Rating: unrated, near nudity, profanity

Cast: Mojo, Hannah, Rory, Tenisha, Imogen, Michaela

Credits: Scripted and directed by Marian Vosumets. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:46

There are EIGHT credited screenwriters for “Major Grom: Plague Doctor.” You know what they call that in Mother Russia and its satellite state of Kentucky?

SOCIALISM.

Imagine a “Batman” in which Alfred the Butler is the real caped “crusader,” a masked vigilante fighting the injustice of a corrupt city. Tell that creep’s story from the point of view of the rebel cop, Major Grom, hunting this “villain/hero,” a gadget-loving goon who calls himself “The Plague Doctor,” and you’ve got this two hour and twenty minute goulash of an action comedy.

It’s not credited as a comic book on the disastrously-redesigned IMdb, and I didn’t see Netflix acknowledge that either. But it is. You can tell, and not just from the title, which ineptly suggests the titular “hero” is both Major Grom AND the Plague Doctor.

No. Major Grom is the recurring character and hero. The Plague Doctor is his latest toughest foe. Better translation of title? “Major Grom vs. The Plague Doctor.”

It’s an over-the-top bore about an over-the-top /no-rules cop (Tikhon Zhiznevskiy) who chases down clown-masked bank robbers on foot — they’re in a van, spilling rubles all over St. Petersburg. He almost dies — we think he has — in that opening caper. But inside the coffin or out, he’s got a job to do.

Because SOMEbody is killing off Russia’s legions of unreachable, politically-protected villains — a callously drunken son of an oligarch, a fatcat polluter, rich and corrupt this, rich and venal that. Yes, to the West, THAT guy sounds like the hero.

The Plague Doctor (Dmitriy Chebotarev) posts his executions online on this new, free-speech and privacy-protecting social media site. The twist? He’s the deranged, self-righteous underling of the tech genius (Sergei Goroshko) who founded that social media network. And tech mogul is threatened into silence by that murderous, vigilante underling.

Major Grom has to fend off firing threats by his commissar-sized boss (Aleksey Maklakov), the clinging “trainee” (Alexander Seteykin) who insists “We’re PARTNERS,” and the social justice warrior and rebel online reporter Yulia (Lyubov Aksyonova) whose scoops are making the inept, trigger-happy cops look bad.

The funniest bits are in the police station itself, a milieu where factoids like “one in five people in detention are here by mistake” and one suspect complains (in Russian with English subtitles, or dubbed, “Seriously officer, we don’t go to jail for domestic violence in Russia!”

Hilarious.

The script is otherwise just nonsense-in-motion. The set-pieces are noisy, messy deployments of Bugs Bunny Physics that aren’t the most exciting or visually coherent chases/fights I’ve ever seen. The best of those is a clever montage of Grom kicking down doors all over town in an “I need INFORMATION” fury.

“Who ARE you, a superhero?”

No, just a comic book one. And afairky bland one at that. He is Riggs in “Lethal Weapon” with a cute cap and no edge. None.

In abler hands, this vigilante “Doc” could have been that rarest of creatures, the villain with a sympathetic point of view. Magneto in Russian, avenging himself on a kleptocracy and the Gremlin in the Kremlin who rules it.

But no. Again, eight screenwriters, plus the actor weighing in.

Perhaps the Russians should stick to that which their cinema is famous for — brooding romances, laments for the long lost glories of communism, and fake viral videos. This comic book adaptation thing evades them.

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Tikhon Zhiznevskiy, Alexander Seteykin, Sergei Goroshko, Aleksey Maklakov and Dmitriy Chebotarev

Credits: Directed by Oleg Trofim, script by Vladimir Besedin, Evgeny Eronin, Artyom Gabrelyanov, Aleksandr Kim, Roman Kotkov, Nikolay Titov, Oleg Trofim and Valentina Tronova. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:16

A bucket list inheritance comedy with a twist? July 30.

Dolled up and dead? July 23 this one hits theaters etc.