Jakob’s Wife
4.5 star(s), 98 minutes, streaming
One of the absolute joys of being a film critic, and a diehard movie lover, is seeing actors that you’ve grown up with over decades deliver an awards-worthy performances and shattering any silly notion that genre cinema, horror specifically, isn’t worthy of A-list recognition.
And trust me when I say that there is no actor more deserving than Barbara Crampton, who should be immortalized on the Mount Rushmore of Legendary Horror Heroines with Jamie Lee Curtis and Dee Wallace.
Crampton is proof that talent cannot be contained, no matter the swerves that life throws. After capturing the horror community’s attention in 1985’s “Re-Animator,” although I still remember her too from “Fraternity Vacation,” Crampton became a genre icon with a fantastic nine-year run that included “Chopping Mall,” “From Beyond,” “Puppet Master” and “Castle Freak.” And then she turned her focus to raising a family, while still making an occasional guest appearance on TV or taking a recurring daytime soap opera role.
In 2011, Crampton roared back into horror with a vengeance in “You’re Next,” and over the past 10 years, she has amassed a string of iconic roles, culminating with “Jakob’s Wife,” which very well may be remembered as her best, and rightfully so.
“Jakob’s Wife” is a triumph in every regard.
From Crampton’s turn as Anne Fedder, a meek almost invisible companion to her small-town Mississippi pastor/husband Jakob (Larry Fessenden, also delivering a career-best performance) to the remarkable 180-degree turn by co-writer/director Travis Stevens, who has advanced light years in a very short time since his 2019 debut, “Girl on the Third Floor,” there is simply nothing about “Jakob’s Wife” that doesn’t succeed.
This is a vampire movie that not only rewrites the rules of vampirism for the better, but it presents the idea of eternal life not as a curse, but as a gift, to be given after careful consideration, and for the right reasons, which is especially poignant for someone like Anne who has tamped down her own ambitions for so long that she’s forgotten what it might be like to finally slip free and recognize her true potential.
Kudos as well to Stevens for not just touching on vampire tropes that have permeated horror cinema for more than 40 years, and paying homage (I’m convinced that The Master is a loving nod to “Salem’s Lot”), but for taking our expectations and goosing them with a righteous blast of female empowerment.
“Jakob’s Wife” also is a nuanced, intelligent and wholly authentic depiction of a marriage at a midlife crossroads, and what that means for two people who truly love one another but have slowly drifted farther apart than they realized, until one half decides that she wants more, so much more, than she’s ever dared to acknowledge.
It’s a heartfelt and surprisingly insightful exploration of faith and love, what it means to have one or both not just challenged, but blown up and reconfigured.
And it’s quite honestly one of the goriest vampire films in recent memory with some truly inventive and sure-to-be iconic kills.
More than anything, “Jakob’s Wife” is not only a showcase, but a tour-de-force, for its leading couple, and that translates to nothing short of a magnificent gift for their longtime fans.
Making Monsters
3 star(s), 85 minutes, streaming
Kudos to Justin Harding and Rob Brunner for smashing viewer expectations with their twisty, surprisingly well-thought-out, survival thriller, “Making Monsters.”
I’m willing to bet that almost any viewer, even the most jaded horror fan, will be surprised by the story, which follows a social media celebrity named Chris (Tim Loden) who has amassed 10 million YouTube followers by prank-scaring the shit out of his fiancé Allison (Alana Elmer), who reconnects with an old friend and accepts an invite for him and Allison to spend the weekend at a country estate.
Once there, copious amounts of booze and drugs help fuel a series of increasingly unsettling sequences where Allison believes that she, once again, has been set up as the butt of an elaborate ruse.
Whether she’s right or not is the hook that Harding and Brunner bait, and I’ll be honest, I did not expect the swerve that kicks off the final act, or the adrenaline kick that carries their vision across the finish line. Suffice to say, I was pleasantly surprised, which doesn’t happen as often as one might expect.
The Believer
2.5 star(s), 91 minutes, streaming
Writer/director Shan Serafin’s first film in nine years, “The Believer,” is a head-scratcher in the truest sense. Ostensibly, a portrait of a marriage in free fall due to a singular decision, and the damage that causes to both Lucas (Aidan Bristow) and Violet (Sophie Kargman), “The Believer” has a lot more percolating just under the surface than most low-budget, independent films.
I’m still not sure I fully understand what Serafin was going for, but this much I do know: Kargman is exceptionally talented and does a bang-up job portraying a woman straddling the line between narcissistic and sociopathic, and “The Believer” left me feeling wholly unnerved and unsettled.
The Banishing
2 star(s), 97 minutes, Shudder
Writer/director Christopher Smith has made one film in his career that I would hold up as a classic, 2009’s gory time-travel slasher “Triangle,” but that’s enough for me to always take a chance on any new movie that has his name attached.
His latest, “The Banishing,” has received a lot of advance press and buzz for being the British equivalent of James Wan’s wildly-successful “The Conjuring,” as it introduces a character from across the pond, Harry Reed (Sean Harris), an occultist and paranormal expert to rival Lorraine and Ed Warren. The problem for me with “The Banishing” was two-fold: I didn’t find Smith’s film to be scary in the least, and I found Reed’s personality too abstruse, which likely was due to a combination of the script and Harris’ performance.
Hollow Point
2 star(s), 89 minutes, streaming
There’s a certain nostalgia that you get watching an actor who gained celebrity decades ago suddenly appearing in a film in a role that you would never expect.
Much like the shock that many fans felt upon seeing Anthony Michael Hall on screen as a grown man and not a lovable, nerdy geek student, I was not prepared nor did I immediately recognize Jay Mohr (“Jerry Maguire,” “Go”) as a middle-aged man-mountain and urban assassin named Trigger in “Hollow Point,” a disjointed C-grade action flick starring Luke Goss, Bill Duke and Michael Paré.
I’m pretty sure the creative forces, both behind the camera and those responsible for the script, expected “Hollow Point” to come off much grittier and remind viewers of the visceral punch found in a “John Wisk”-style kill-em-all. But the plot about a small team of legal and law enforcement veterans who decide to take the law into their own hands, and recruit the newly-widowed husband of Trigger’s latest innocent victim, never rises above the clichés and tired tropes that movies like “John Wick” or the recent “Nobody” so easily and expertly transcend.
If nothing else, it’s worth watching “Hollow Point” just to see Mohr.
Also available
The Rookies The latest Shout! Studios release, now streaming, pairs Asian action cinema together with U.S. genre action icon Milla Jovovich in a convoluted origin story about a band of disparate anti-heroes that seems to be striving for the greatness of “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” Sadly, despite all the whiz-bang visuals, “The Rookies” fails to captivate.
The Boonies Stop me if you’ve seen or heard this one before: A group of friends take to the woods for an epic bachelor party, only to have their drunken hijinks upended by a local clan of cannibal mountain-folk killers. If you honestly haven’t heard of this before, then by all means check out “The Boonies,” streaming now.
The Voices I tried to watch “The Voices” twice, and I’m pretty sure it’s a supernatural thriller about limbo-stuck spirits that can occupy an embryo just before its born, but honestly, I fell asleep both times well before I got any concrete answers.
Embryo Speaking of possessed embryos, “Embryo” is an ambitious if uneven and ultimately unsatisfying alien-impregnation thriller that tries to mask its half-baked script with some nifty visuals.
Kingsglaive The latest animated “Final Fantasy” videogame adaptation is now on Blu-Ray and 4K Ultra-HD.
Hercules and the Captive Women Cult-classic Italian swords and sandals take on Hercules is now available in high-definition from The Film Detective.
Death has Blue Eyes Grindhouse cinema mash-up from acclaimed genre director Nico Mastorakis.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
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This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2021.
