Movie Nation

In the alternate version of Turkey in “The Antenna (Bina),” a nationwide satellite network scheme promises to united the country and establish “the idea order,” “a single body.”

Only the guy installing the satellite dish at a random apartment complex that’s among the first hooked-up tumbles off the roof to his death.

“That’s a shame,” the locals say (in Turkish, with English subtitles). That puddle on the roof? Think nothing of it.

The dish and its connections ooze black bile that nobody seems to react to with much alarm, even as it swallows, smothers, kills and rots all in its path — leaking out of tubs, shorting out lights, spreading fear, paranoia and madness floor to floor to floor.

Heavy-handed metaphor — repression and oppression achieved through state-sponsored group-think — but we get it. And get it some more.

“The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan prophesied. The medium is the monster, the debut feature of Orcon Behram warns.

Mehmet (Ihsan Önal) is a building supervisor in a Turkey even more repressive than the real one. In this alternate reality, Turkey is installing a nationwide satellite TV network that will, through dishes on every roof, link the nation to government approved weather, quiz shows and “The Nightly Bulletin,” delivered by a dear leader who looks a tad like the fellow running the country right now — Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mehmet has taken to wearing a suit to work to show “I take this job seriously,” even though his boss (Levent Ünsal) knows he snoozes at work.

Mehmet has hopes a repressed, despairing young lady in the building (Gül Arici) out of the country, but no hopes of joining her after she flees. He is what is, and changing locations won’t alter that.

But this guy who fell off the roof? That’s just the beginning of Mehmet’s new horrors. Noises in the walls, flooding in the baseball, and everywhere this oily black ooze — coming out of outlets, faucets, seeping through grout.

We see various tenants watching TV, living their lives and either succumbing to what’s going on, or crying out in alarm.

There are hints of “1984,” “Fahrenheit 451” and “Brazil” in this dystopia, but only hints.

A living nightmare of your home turning on you, and your neighbors, is faced by each apartment individually, families torn by what they can’t articulate or overwhelmed by a threat they didn’t realize was here.

What’s on the screen is more allegorical than interesting, although some of the visuals reach the level of indelibly nightmarish.

Satire and allegory aren’t alien to that corner of the world, but you’ve got to give us a little more than this to cling to and mull over.

MPAA Rating: unrated, disturbing images

Cast: Ihsan Önal, Gül Arici, Elif Cakman, Murat Saglam and Levent Ünsal.

Credits: Written and directed by Orcun Behram. A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:56

“The Devil to Pay” is “Winter’s Bone” with Appalachian folkways and an Appalachian twang, a razor’s edge thriller about old feuds and older traditions, a world unto itself and quite different from the one “down the mountain.”

Veteran bit player Danielle Deadwyler carries it with the righteous fury of a woman imperiled by her geography, her circumstances and her “galivanting” husband.

Damn it’s good. And damn, she’s good in it.

Deadwyler plays Lemon Cassidy, keeping herself and her son fed and sheltered on a hardscrabble mountainside farm with a few chickens, a goat and a lot of okra.

Trouble marches right up to her door in the persons of Wade and Dixon (Jayson Warner Smith and Brad Carter). Her missing husband has a “debt.” She’s confused, “done paid my taxes” and all. But she needs to “Go see Tommy.”

Don’t worry about your little boy. Unless you don’t get that debt paid. “We’re stayin’ til it’s done,” Wade says.

Tommy Runion (Catherine Dyer, excellent) is the matriarch of the age-old Runion clan. She’s always cooking, chirping about “the secret” to mastering this pie or that pan-fried cornbread when she isn’t humming hymns.

Lemon’s husband “has skunked,” and “you know the consequences if he lights out.” Tommy smiles sweetly and holds Lemon’s hand as she purrs, “This is as hard on me as it is on you,” but unless you want her kin to “murder your boy,” well…

Husband and wife filmmakers Lane and Ruckus Skye (“The 7 Sevens”) send Lemon on an odyssey through an integrated, ancient and mythic Appalachia. Lemon’s Cassidy family has been there for generations, where everyone knows to “follow the creed” to survive.

But the two families supervising “the peace” have a Hatfields & McCoys history. Now Lemon’s caught up in it, bartering with the fixit man/shopkeeper Grady (Charles Black) to borrow his ancient Lincoln to hunt for her missing husband, agreeing to deliver his “vitriol” to some newcomers on the other side of the mountain on this “hallowed day.”

Grady’s scared to make the delivery himself. They’re a cult, and “vitriol” is archaic speech, like much of what we hear from everybody in this tightnit gene pool. It’s what people used to call sulfuric acid.

The awful choices and “consequences” of the machinations of the ruthless and well-armed test Lemon, and would break a weaker woman. But she’s got the “mother’s love” — that magic talisman of many a thriller screenplay — on her side.

The violence is as potent in threats as it is in actuality. Two mountaineers get a little boy (Ezra Haslam) to help them dig a hole. When the moon is full, it just might be Lemon’s son’s grave.

Deadwyler pulls off this hard woman among hard people with aplomb. Her every action and reaction is defensible, believable and justified. She makes Lemon easy to root for, accepting of the “righteous” nature of the backwoods justice her husband ran afoul of, even as we’re furious and fearful on her behalf.

“It’s a big’ol world,” she lectures her son, matter-of-factly. “Don’t nobody owe you nothing.” Even a break when her husband’s the one who apparently got them mixed up in all this.

“The Devil to Pay” — a great title, by the way — is a lean, mean straight-up genre thriller, leaning into some mountain stereotypes, twisting away from others. Throw in meth labs and kin you can ask for help and it’s “Winter’s Bone” with a mom and not a big sister on a quest.

And Deadwyler makes a grand, gritty heroine, a hard woman whose hard life makes the hard choices she faces now something she’ll just have to live with.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence.

Cast: Danielle Deadwyler, Catherine Dyer, Jayson Warner Smith, Adam Boyer, Brad Cater, Luce Rains, Parisa Johnston and Charles Black.

Credits: Written and directed by Lane Skye, Ruckus Skye. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:27

Maggie Q makes a pretty good surrogate for the audience in the horror tale “Death of Me.”

As Christina, a tourist trapped by on an Thai island about to take a typhoon hit, struggling to get around the not-wholly-hidden agenda of the simple, happy natives, Q (for Quigley) is quick to lose her patience, quick to realize danger if not what to do about it, and quick to anger.

“I’m so sick of this cryptic bull—t!”

Perhaps if this multi-handed script hadn’t been so caught up in rituals, hallucinations and attempts at explaining its illogical “logic,” and just focused on one pissed-off American tourist determined to get away from a deadly “paradise,” this mildly-chilling horror tale would have found its proper thriller footing and sprinted by.

Christina came here with her travel-writer husband Neil (Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam). They wake up after their “last night” there, dirty and confused. They need to catch a ferry, but don’t. They need to remember what happened the night before, but cannot.

In maybe the biggest eye-roller among the film’s too-obvious plot devices, Neil “recorded” everything that happened the night before on his phone. Hours of it.

A willingly-gulped spiked drink, an amulet of local origin, and Christina finds herself puking up dirt and grass in the morning. Because the video showed her murdered and buried the night before. By Neil.

Their quest to flee or find out what’s going on hurls frustrating scenes at them which strip away their sense of urgency, and the film’s. Language barriers, side-eyes from locals who don’t seem intent on “help,” reminders that there’s no typhoon danger here because “no storm hit this island two hundred years.”

Maggie Q gives Christina a nice mania that she lets go of too quickly, as her character’s panic gives way to cool-headed — TOO cool-headed — fury. She takes Neil’s phone, to call her parents, her sister, “the FBI.”

“Who’d the guy in ‘The Wicker Man’ call?”

“Nobody. He got burned to death.”

Separated from Neil, Christina questions everybody and everything. Locals, including the helpful American AirBnB hostess (Alex Essoe) try to steer her clear of…danger? Answers?

“This is the part where I tell you not to go in.”

“This is the part where I don’t listen.”

That self-awareness gives this Darren Lynn Bousman (“Repo! The Genetic Opera,” “Saw II”) film a light moment or two, but nothing more.

The confusion between reality and hallucination absolutely butchers the film’s forward momentum. Pausing to see this grisly vision (Or IS it?) or that one doesn’t fool Christina, or the viewer into believing “It’s all in your head.”

Being told that by a Thai cop, doctor or whoever doesn’t muddy the waters either. That misdirection squanders the film’s suspense and urgency.

Hell, you referenced “The Wicker Man.” Were you paying attention to how and why it worked or more recently DIDN’T work?

MPAA Rating: R for violence, gore, sexual content and language

Cast: Maggie Q, Luke Hemsworth, Alex Essoe, Kelly B. Jones and Kat Ingkarat.

Credits: Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, script by Ari Margolis, James Morley III and David Tish. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:34

This looks lovely, but when I saw the trailer in a theater it reminded me of a “King of the Hill” episode. A lot.

Mike Judge always gets there first. Oct. 9.

Glen Keane, from Disney Animation’s Second Golden Age, directed, and Pearl Studios, aka “Oriental Dreamworks” (“Kung Fu Panda”) did this, which looks several cuts above the usual mixed bag of Netflix animated films.

Coming shortly to Netflix, and to the Oscar race?

A Cold War period piece starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Bill Camp. Looks delicious.

Read my review of “The Queen’s Gambit” here.

He’s twice her height, but sure, this could work.

Feb. 10, just in time for Valentine’s.

Fight me.

There’s a fast-food analogy for writer-director Andrew Cohn’s “The Last Shift” that’s too obvious to pass up.

It’s gassy, not as nutritious as advertised, and in the end not at all filling.

This is the debut fictional feature for the documentary filmmaker, and he found a little-filmed blue collar milieu and a winning cast to tell his story of marginal lives and “white privilege” at the lower end of the economic spectrum. But he blows it.

Veteran character actor Richard Jenkins (“The Shape of Water,” “The Visitor”) has a rare lead role as Stan, “Stan the Man,” an Albion, Michigan legend at Oscar’s Chicken & Fish.

It’s a regional fast food joint that has held on through decades of challenges by every new chain that’s opened in that “strip” that every town in America has — the highway where KFC, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and their ilk peddle their wares, side-by-side-by-side.

Oscar’s has held on by being cheap and never changing. Who knows how long ago their big illuminated marquee blew out? Never got it fixed.

Stan’s a “legend” because he’s held down the graveyard shift, 10-6, “drive-thru only,” for decades. And now, after 38 years, he’s calling it quits.

Little pieces of his character emerge. He grew up here, went to the high school and isn’t above joshing with the winless football team’s slackers who pull up at his window. He knows everybody.

“I didn’t get this smart by being stupid.”

Everybody laughs, and they’re not necessarily laughing with him. He’s a town character, scraping by on a low-paying job because he’s sort of on-the-spectrum.

He’s not smart, never finished high school, and the fact that he hangs with his old high school buddy Dale (Ed O’Neill), and both of them are well over ’60 tells us they never left town, never outgrew the place and that Dale has a lot of tolerance for Stan’s dopiness.

Hanging out with the guys means beer, but not for Stan. He’s a Diet Squirt man.

Shane Paul McGhie of TV’s “Deputy” and “Greenleaf” plays the guy Stan’s supposed to train to take over. Stan’s boss Shazz (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is adamant about that. Stan may have been there forever, reliable to a fault. But he can be replaced. He’s not so sure.

“Some people turn up their sleeves, and some don’t turn up at all.”

The kid, Jevon, is witty and pretty, dropping droll wisecracks as Stan walks him through “where the magic happens,” and stresses strict separation of chicken and fish prep.

“Separate but equal,” Jevon cracks.

Stan’s got a sixth sense about what kind of dipping sauce people will select at the drive-thru window. He’s “the sauce whisperer,” Jevon offers. Nothing. Over Stan’s head.

But Jevon needs this job more than his careless attitude allows. He’s on probation. He did something stupid, and now he’s got a record. He’s also a baby daddy, which at his age and with his promise, counts as a second “stupid thing.”

Birgundi Baker plays Sydney, his girlfriend — just as smart, and years more mature about what they need to do to fulfill their promise and raise their little boy, Carter. Jevon’s still slacking off, hitting the chronic with his boys.

He can dismiss Stan with an, “If I’m still here at your age, put me in the ground.” But what will he do to change his fate? He can’t even pee in a cup without losing his probation.

Jevon tries to alert Stan to the way he’s been exploited all these years. Stan tries to get Jevon to take the job seriously, read the employee’s handbook and get the details right. Don’t serve an undercooked burger. Do be polite.

Their back and forth gets into race and “privilege.” Stan’s under-developed “future plans” and Jevon’s inability to even think about a future collide. And we’ll see where “privilege” gets either of them.

Cohn brings a documentarian’s eye to this humblest of workplaces, but his character development leaves a lot to be desired. Stan is both a “type” and a clumsily articulated version of that “type.” When you cast a 70something as a still-struggling-to-meet-the-rent fast food worker, you’re looking at a tragedy, not a quirky comedy with a message.

Jenkins is one of my favorite actors, but this strikes me as one he should have passed on.

McGhie comes off better, but his character’s background is sloppily sketched-in. Are we laying his missteps in botching a promising future on pot, self-created “pressure” from poor decisions, or being too clever for his own good?

A little of all that is in play, but it doesn’t really work. We can’t figure him out from watching his family dynamic or the way he relates to Miss All Business, Sydney.

That said, “The Last Shift” is still an intriguing failure, a project that started with good intentions, the KFC Cheeto’s sandwich of indie cinema.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some drug use

Cast: Richard Jenkins, Shane Paul McGhie, Birgundi Baker, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Ed O’Neill

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Cohn. A Sony release.

Running time: 1:30

This fall release covers some of the same ground as “Monuments Men” and the documentary “The Rape of Europa.”

Looks intriguing.