Hayley here, with some hot takes on the films of the summer! I’m back to let you know what I think is worth the watch and what I think is worth skipping from this summer’s box office hits.
“Obsession”
The summer started super strong with Curry Barker’s “Obsession.” I vividly remember leaving the theater bummed that we were on summer break because I could not wait to get writing about this one. Barker is known first for his comedy YouTube channel “that’s a bad idea” that he co-hosted with Cooper Tomlinson, after dropping out of film school. The duo spent years filming comedy shorts and horror short films such as “The Chair” that prior to the release of “Obsession” had been viewed over 10 million times on YouTube, leading to the pair getting noticed and from there they began pitching feature length projects. Eventually “Obsession” got picked up, and if you are anything like me, your summer started with an obsession over “Obsession.”
Starring Inde Navarrette as Nikki and Michael Johnston as Bear, the film follows Bear as he makes the impulsive decision to break a One Wish Willow while saying the words “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the fucking world.” Thus causing Nikki to become uncontrollably obsessed with Bear. The film works on many levels, not only was it full of jump scares, gore and unsettling horror, it also was a psychological horror. The character of Nikki had two roles in this film, to be horrifying but also to be the victim, forcing us as the audience to fear both for Nikki and fear what Nikki may do next.
This movie did so well in box office that the film has been added to this year’s Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. Not only that but Navarrette’s career is getting a major boost as her popularity has grown. Recently it was announced that she had landed the role of Rogue in Marvel’s X-Men reboot.
“Backrooms”
Next on the list is Kane Parsons “Backrooms.” While this may not have made it onto my most impressive list of films this summer, what did impress me was that the director was only 20. If this is where his career is starting I am eager to see where his future films take us. However, this film, despite its intriguing start, ended sort of flat.
The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark and Renate Reinsve as Dr. Mary Kline. Clark, a man recently separated from his wife and living in his furniture store, discovers an entrance into the backrooms within the basement level of his store. He shares this discovery with his therapist who understandably does not believe him until he goes missing, and she goes in search of where he ended up, discovering the backrooms herself. The fear factor for me came from my previous knowledge of the backrooms being an internet phenomenon through the years. Parsons did a great job of capturing the eerie disorienting nature of the backrooms. I also enjoyed the close proximity the setting of this film had to me. The film is set in San Jose in the late 1990s. Knowing the area, being familiar with the street names all brought the film to life for me. However, the ending scare factor fell extremely flat, we didn’t get much of a resolve and the large unseen force, once revealed, was laughable. Its appearance in contrast to the other scary things within the backrooms took me out of the film entirely. This one ended up landing as a miss for me, but still one I would recommend watching from the comfort of your couch at home, especially if you are a fan of the backrooms internet lore, or grew up in the San Jose area.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day”
The long-awaited fourth film in Tom Holland’s rendition of the Spider-Man franchise finally hit theaters this summer. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, this film stars Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Jacob Batalon and Sadie Sink. I had my worries on whether I’d be sick of seeing Zendaya by this point as she’s had a massive run on screen this past year, but I found myself incredibly excited and waiting for her to reappear in her role as MJ.
While the entire cast did a fantastic job back in these roles, I think my absolute favorite role in this movie was played by Sadie Sink, who we all most recently saw in the final season of Stranger Things. Sink had been on quite the press circuit teasing who she may be playing within the Spider-Man and X-Men universe. Once revealed, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the telepathic powers she has as Jean Grey and to those of Eleven and Vecna in the Stranger Things universe. This however worked for me, it was almost comforting to see her in another role that dealt with similar powers, perhaps that is a hot take, but in this case I like the typecasting.
This was a no-brainer must watch, and even re-watch while it’s still in theaters. However, I do recommend rewatching the first three in the series before heading to the big screen.
“Odyssey”
Last on this list is Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey.” This film no doubt will be winning all the awards. To take on Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, is a massive feat within itself. Nolan succeeds in its retelling, hitting most major plot points of the epic and truly encompassing the journey through Odysseus’s eyes.
The cast for this film was stacked, including; Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and Robert Pattinson as Antinous. While all actors did a wonderful job in their roles, I feel like the timing of this film’s release was an issue. I could not shake having just watched Holland play an evolved, incredibly strong superhero Spider-Man, to now portraying Telemachus, son of Odysseus. Telemachus is meant to be a young uncoordinated fighter living in the shadow of his father. It was jarring and distracting trying to separate the two characters. Especially when we also have Zendaya again making an appearance and Bernthal, who we just saw as two totally different characters in Spider-Man, then those they are depicting in the Odyssey. I also was bothered by the lack of accents and plain English that was used in this film. For an ancient Greek time period, I had hoped for more immersion, instead it felt a little too forced to be understandable by anyone watching. I can see for others how this would be a preferred way to get through such a long film, but for me I was hoping for more authenticity to the time period.
What this film did right was the cinematography, the casting of Damon as Odysseus and the soundtrack. The music composed by Ludwig Göransson, added tremendously to not only the ambience of the film but also very similar to a play, the instrumentals worked to help the audience follow the dangers, with certain songs making reappearance to connect various points throughout the film.
All in all, this summer had some major must-watches. The skips were even watches, just not necessarily ones I would find myself racing back to watching anytime soon or seeing twice on the big screen. Stay tuned, as I start watching the up and coming horror films to help you decide what to add to your fall spooky season watch list.