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The Lair of the White Worm – Reel-Time Reaction
A lightly edited live-watch conversation between Rick and an AI research assistant, who was fact-checking the movie and gradually losing its composure alongside him. Rick’s comments appear normally; the assistant’s replies generally begin with an emoji. Spoilers begin immediately.
Normal Visual Grammar Has Been Discontinued
I am watching The Lair of the White Worm. Turns out it’s going to be the next movie on the How Did This Get Made? podcast, and this one is genuinely confusing me on so many levels. First: How did Hugh Grant end up in this movie? And B: Is there even a plot? I’m not understanding anything.
😂 There is a plot. Peter Capaldi’s Angus digs up a reptilian skull; Hugh Grant’s ancestor supposedly killed a gigantic serpent called the D’Ampton Worm; and Amanda Donohoe’s Lady Sylvia is connected to an ancient snake cult. Eventually it becomes Capaldi and Grant versus a sexy immortal snake priestess and a giant underground worm.
It doesn’t feel as though that plot is unfolding because Ken Russell delivers it through camp, hallucinations, religious imagery, sex jokes, and scenes that seem to have wandered in from entirely different movies. Hugh Grant was still six years away from Four Weddings and a Funeral, while Peter Capaldi was decades away from Doctor Who.
This movie is now starting, and it’s not really canon. It is showing Vestron Pictures.
Great big rocky hilltop with a round hole, meaning cave, in it, with Vestron Pictures present lettered over it.
Title sequence: The Lair of the White Worm.
What font is that? Lair of the White Worm Sans? Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, Peter Capaldi, and Sammi Davis as Mary. This is a real who’s who gonna be who.
Okay, this is a real surprise: screenplay by Ken Russell—expected. Adapted from the novel by Bram Stoker—completely unexpected.
Yes, that Bram Stoker. The Lair of the White Worm was one of Stoker’s final novels, published in 1911, fourteen years after Dracula. And apparently Ken Russell didn’t invent this basic premise out of whole cloth. Stoker was already playing with English folklore, archaeology, an ancient monstrous serpent and a dangerous aristocratic woman. Russell just took those ingredients and, well… Ken Russell-ed the hell out of them.
Very short version of Stoker’s novel:
Adam Salton returns to England from Australia to live with his elderly great-uncle in Derbyshire.
He becomes involved with his neighbor Sir Nathaniel de Salis, who knows the local history and legends.
The area is associated with an ancient monster known as the White Worm, a gigantic serpent-like creature surviving from a prehistoric age.
The beautiful and sinister Lady Arabella March is closely connected to the creature—and, ultimately, is revealed to essentially be the White Worm in human form.
Another local landowner, Edgar Caswall, becomes obsessed with Lilla Watford and engages her in bizarre battles of hypnotic or psychic will.
Caswall also has an enormous kite shaped like a hawk, which becomes part of an increasingly strange subplot. Yes, really.
Lilla dies during one of Caswall’s psychic confrontations; her cousin Mimi becomes Adam’s love interest.
Adam and Sir Nathaniel work out what Lady Arabella is and devise a wonderfully understated Victorian solution to an ancient supernatural monster: they try to blow the hell out of it with explosives.
The climax destroys the White Worm and its lair, while Caswall and his estate meet their own spectacular end.
The novel mixes Gothic horror, ancient mythology, pseudo-science, mesmerism, romance and some extremely peculiar ideas about evolution and race that very much belong to its 1911 context.
Focus pushing in on the cave, right before “Produced and Directed by Ken Russell.”
Dirty, weird-looking skull being picked up by Peter Capaldi. We know he’s Angus, and he screams, “Yeehaw!”
Two sisters are joking now: “If that is the primitive man, it looks like a dinosaur sat on him.” So we have Mary here and we have Eve here, both happy as a clam—or two clams, I guess.
Okay, he is digging on the family farm and found this massive skull. Yeah, that’s not weird.
Still playing happy family. “Not since we lost Mum and Dad, no.” Seems like something significant was just said.
That layer of flint is 1,000 years old. It’s the site of an old convent. It had been built when the Domesday Book was written. Doomsday Book?
“I found a couple of coins bearing the stamp of Marcus Crusius.”
Eve and Mary have been invited to a party, and she’s invited Angus along so he can drive them there. No dinner is in the offering at home, but he can eat at the party.
First shot of James wearing his RAF uniform.
Aren’t they too old for the Bronze? James ritualistically kills the great big stuffed worm—kind of like one of those Japanese parade dragons, whatever they’re called—in half with a sword. Barely tapped it; it split automatically. Was not dramatic, but everyone laughs and smiles.
In a great big old Gothic-or-something-or-other castle.
Big honking Gothic castle. Note: The song was performed by a live band inside the big Gothic castle.
This guy rhymed ‘booze’ with ‘cows.’ I never… OMG, singer rhymed “booze” with “cows” (“coose”).
So, turns out Angus is a paying guest of the two girls, not a relative, and they are having some exposition about the D’Ampton Worm and how the Worm is the local hero, evidently.
And James’s full name is James D’Ampton, the landlord of the estate, and he states to Angus, “We are distantly connected. Sir John D’Ampton was a valiant knight who slew the local dragon.” “For centuries, his ancestors have immortalized the occasion with an annual banquet for the locals, usually with tankards of mead and Morris dancing.”
So Angus is an archaeology student who is out here excavating, studying the Romans of Mercia, though it’s never been thoroughly excavated. Evidently, where he’s digging now—which is on James’s property—is the site of an old convent, which is also the site of this ancient Roman civilization, I guess.
And James is basically explaining that “wyrm” might sound like “worm,” but it’s actually more like dragon or snake. Gothic vurm, German vermis—all the same word.
Unnecessary etymology lesson. Pickled earthworms in aspic is the local delicacy. Eeeew.
Big Gothic moon with clouds drifting across it.
Angus walking with Mary, talking about Scotland and other things, and she brings up, “My mum and dad used to come this way home from the pub. It’s a neat shortcut—or was. Nobody uses it at night now.”
Okay, Mary’s just a depressive. Angus is basically flirting with her and asks, basically, if she has a boyfriend. She says, “Not now. Killed himself on a motorbike.” Yeah, that’s a hard no, dude.
He still kissed her, and it was a really awkward-looking kiss—kind of like he smashed his lips on her face and then slid off.
Mary is afraid of this car without headlights. Those look like headlights to me, but I could be wrong.
Those headlights seem awfully bright for ‘off.’ There’s a picture of the two girls and parent-looking people between them. The cop finishes his coffee while looking at the pictures.
The cop has brought her, evidently, a pocket watch. She seems very emotional about it.
It’s her father’s pocket watch, and it was found in Stonerich Cavern.
Mary relates that they saw a car with hooded lights. Says that the car went toward Temple House. The cop says, “I’ll take a look.” then goes, “I guess not an early night for me.”
I don’t know why, but the cop parks outside the gates—which are open—walks down the path, and then jumps off the path to go behind a tree. There’s nothing in sight. Don’t know why he’s doing this.
“Hello, Charlie. Erny here. I’m up at Temple House,” speaking into his walkie-talkie.
Evidently, there’s only one cop car and the only taxi in town. The other cop had arrested him for drunk driving, so Erny is on his own.
Pretty lady in a white coat and a white tricorn hat offers policeman Erny some help with the sprained ankle.
Okay, this is beyond. She’s evidently sucking poison out. Maybe it wasn’t a sprained ankle. Maybe he got bitten by a snake, but… well.
I did not see the date going this way. Policeman Erny was investigating an abandoned house, and yet he’s totally accepted this lady as a valid occupant of this house? Despite the fact that the furniture he is sitting on is covered in sheets, and all the furniture in the room is covered in sheets or drop cloths or whatever. It’s actually very visually striking because all the furniture is covered in white, and she’s wearing white.
Evidently, she is the lady of the manor, because he said, “We weren’t expecting you until the spring,” and she said, “Oh, it is the spring. Look,” indicating something on her blouse.
She asks, “Who reported me?” Erny replies, “One of the Trent girls. Mary.” She responds, “Weren’t her parents supposed to have vanished here?”
Erny brings up the search party happening in the morning because her father’s watch was found. She asks, “Was he at the end of the chain?” and looks very smug.
That car again, and it’s a very fancy car. Maybe much of their budget was spent on this one car. Silver Jaguar, maybe.
The pretty lady, now in brown, is looking at the excavation and has a weird smile on her face. Then she goes in the house.
She goes through the house like she just lives there. Sees a letter, puts it down; sees the watch, puts it back down. Why would such a precious thing be just left sitting on the table unattended?
The lady goes upstairs.
She looks through three rooms, sees nothing of interest, then turns to the open room…
There is this forced perspective thing with the skull in the foreground and the woman all in brown with a hood over her head. She slinks into this room, she looks tiny then gets close to it and this skull is still huge, but she can put her two hands on it and she’s massaging it for no reason, with ecstasy, I guess.
Oh my God, Sylvia , or whatever her name is just grew fangs and spit at a Christ figurine. Then runs out to her car, absconding with the skull.
😂 The hooded woman is Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe)—the woman you’ve already seen acting rather suspiciously around Temple House. The enormous skull is the legendary worm/serpent skull, and the ecstatic skull-rubbing is very deliberately sexual. Ken Russell is not operating with a particularly subtle symbolic vocabulary here.
And that moment actually is plot-relevant. The fangs and her reaction to the crucifix are telling you pretty unambiguously that Sylvia is not merely an eccentric rich woman interested in the local worm legend. She’s physically/supernaturally connected to the serpent cult, and Christian objects are antagonistic to whatever she is.
But Ken Russell apparently decided that simply having her recoil from the crucifix would be insufficient. No, she has to grow giant snake fangs and HISS/SPIT AT JESUS. 😂
Jaguar is light Metallic blue, not silver. As her car passes a road T, James’ car comes into view, turning to the road Sylvia just left.
James and Eve leave the car, she enters the house, he examines the pit Angus has made.
Eve finds the note and her father’s watch, explains to James where it was found.
“Mary and Angus have gone over there, with a search party” “But only nutty potholers go down there. It’s supposed to be dangerous as hell.” “Do you want me to drive you over?” ummm
Eve says she’s going to lie down, James says he might rest, as well, chides her, playfully, for keeping him up so late, dancing. Friends, huh. Then he pulls a carrot out of his pocket and takes a bite. Pocket carrot?
Twenty Two Minutes In. Oh my God. I am 22 minutes into this movie, and it says an hour and 11 minutes, so it’s mercifully short. But I don’t know—this is going to be hard.
😆 One correction, though: The Lair of the White Worm is normally about 89 minutes, not 71. So if your player says 1:11 remaining, that’s the remaining time, not the total runtime. Which means—and I regret being the person who has to tell you this—you probably have about 67 minutes of Ken Russell left, not 49. 😆
😳
😂 I know. You thought you had 49 minutes left. You have 67. That 😳 is the face of a man who just discovered his prison sentence was calculated incorrectly. 😆
Well, at least I got this on Hoopla, which means I don’t have to watch commercials that interrupt this and allow my sanity to return for a brief minute and a half or whatever only to be ripped away again. This is just a sustained vacuuming of my cerebral capability.
😂 There is something perversely appropriate about watching this without commercial breaks. A 90-second ad for laundry detergent might allow your brain to reestablish normal cause-and-effect, and that would only make returning to Lady Sylvia worse. Skull → erotic skull handling → Roman nightmare → Jesus-eating sock worm → flaming transparent head → snake watch → fangs → spit at Jesus → skull theft → onward. No palate cleanser. No pharmaceutical ad. No cheerful insurance mascot arriving to reassure you that ordinary reality still exists.
Well, the blond girl is quite pretty, there is that
😂 There you go. Something comprehensible has finally happened. That’s Catherine Oxenberg as Eve Trent. And yes, she’s striking—she was already known for playing Amanda Carrington on Dynasty a few years earlier. So when the plot disappears again, you’ve at least got one reliable landmark: “I have no idea what Ken Russell is doing, but Eve is pretty.”
But her dress is straight up bonkers. It’s like a layer cake made of fabric.
😂 It looks like the costume designer was told, “English country girl,” and replied, “Excellent, how many tiers?” “Layer cake made of fabric” is dead on. She’s got this exceptionally pretty, relatively natural late-80s look from the shoulders up, and then the camera pulls back and her dress appears to have been assembled by stacking progressively larger tablecloths underneath her.
Eve goes upstairs for her nap, sees the spit stains on the wall, and touches the crucifix/Jesus figure that Sylvia has just spat venom onto, and that triggers Eve’s hallucinatory vision
Eve has this absolutely bananas dream where Roman soldiers are evidently raping priestesses. There’s a Jesus figure getting eaten by a white hand puppet worm, and somebody wearing I guess green screen makeup has flames behind them so the flames are going through their head. None of that made any sense. And eve herself is in a nuns habit praying, though is interrupted by all this goings on. She wakes up from it, pulls a watch out of her pocket, where the second hand is a big ass snake, freaks her out.
😂 That also explains why the vision is specifically a psychosexual war between Christian imagery and the serpent religion. Eve has effectively made contact with Sylvia’s supernatural influence through an object representing the opposing religion. Which means your earlier confusion was partly justified because Russell gives you a genuinely important piece of plot mechanics and then immediately rewards your attention with ROMANS! NUNS! RAPE! FIRE! JESUS! GIANT WHITE SOCK WORM! 😂
The Roman soldiers are raping the nuns, and it what was really funny (yes, funny) is the nudity looks more like they have mole skin covering all the naughty bits.
😂 That sequence has a very conspicuous “stage nudity” quality to it. 😂 What you’re calling moleskin is probably close to what you’re seeing: some combination of modesty coverings/costume pieces and extremely deliberate posing, rather than Russell trying to make the assault look naturalistic.
I don’t know what I was thinking, this vacuuming of my cerebral capabilities has already caused problems.
James returns spontaneously as she wakes up and goes downstairs, carefully, checks the watch and—
SNAKE-SECOND HAND.
😂 At that point the movie has gone from symbolism to Ken Russell standing behind you yelling, “DID YOU GET THE SNAKE THING? HERE IS ANOTHER SNAKE.”
She didn’t remember the dream until she saw the snake hand on the watch, now, She remembers. ”After I passed out, I remember A SERPENT, a horrible thing, towering above me, coiled around a crucifix.” That’s ALL you saw?
The important thing at your exact point in the movie is that you haven’t failed to understand some crucial explanation. The movie is feeding you associations, not information: worm/serpent → pagan cult → Lady Sylvia → sex → sacrifice → Christianity → danger. The actual plot is only gradually going to catch up with the imagery.
Oh my God, this movie is crazy.
😂 The Lair of the White Worm is different because Ken Russell knows he’s making something outrageous. The giant phallic worm imagery, Amanda Donohoe writhing around, the psychedelic religious hallucinations, Hugh Grant wandering through it all looking like he’s accidentally arrived from another film—that’s largely intentional. So “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!” can too easily be answered with “approximately what you’re seeing.”
This also retroactively makes that insane dream slightly more intelligible. All that Christian-versus-serpent imagery wasn’t random—even though Russell presented it like somebody dropped a Bible, a snake documentary, and an acid tab into a blender.
And she stole the skull
YES! 😂 And that is actually a genuine plot development rather than another Ken Russell fever dream.
Lady Sylvia stole the skull because she knows exactly what it is and what it represents. So that earlier scene where she’s practically making love to the damn thing wasn’t merely “eccentric woman really appreciates paleontology.” The skull is connected to the serpent/worm cult she belongs to.
What is that skull made of?
😂 If you mean the actual movie prop, rather than what it’s supposed to be in the story: I don’t know of a reliable production source that specifies its material.
From how it looks and is handled onscreen, I’d strongly suspect a lightweight fabricated prop—something like molded fiberglass/resin or a foam-based construction with a hard painted surface—rather than anything remotely bone-like. The actors move and handle that enormous thing much too easily for it to be a big solid casting.
And after watching Lady Sylvia give it that enthusiastic massage, we have also established that it is apparently load-bearing enough for Ken Russell purposes. 😂
Yeah, my first thought was that it was plaster but like you said it is far too easy for lady Sylvia to pick up so yeah fiberglass seems like a better choice, but if it’s fiberglass, they did a pretty good job. I guess the budget for special effects was generous for this.
😂 Yeah, plaster was my first visual impression too because the surface has that chalky, slightly porous quality. But once Sylvia actually picks the damned thing up, plaster becomes awfully hard to believe. At that size, a solid plaster prop would be heavy and fragile.
Fiberglass over a lightweight armature would make sense, and if that’s what they used, the finish is quite good. The sculpt itself is also one of the more convincing effects in the movie—the irregularities, staining, cracks, and dull finish keep it from screaming “painted fiberglass.”
And this clearly wasn’t a bargain-basement production, despite looking delightfully cheap in certain sequences. The money seems to be distributed very unevenly: a convincing fossil skull and substantial locations, immediately followed by WHITE WORM HAND PUPPET EATS JESUS. 😂
So James sees the second-hand snake as well, and of course, that freaks Eve out and then it switches back. Oy
And Hugh Grant is just Hugh granting
Full snake on a cross mosaic in the pit. Where did that come from? Then go to look at the skull, or more properly, look FOR the skull. Angus and Mary return, looking a bit mussed up.
Eve has now actually told Angus and Mary about the vision, they’ve discovered the skull has vanished, and Hugh Grant’s James has departed in that gorgeous vintage car—which is an extremely Hugh Grant way to exit the current supernatural crisis, and now there’s a big old Boy Scout hitchhiking in the rain,
BIG OLD BOY SCOUT.
That’s Kevin, and honest-to-goodness Boy Scout, and his appearance really does change the movie’s temperature again.
And he’s now talking to Sylvia so of course my mind is going to: Oh, she’s going to eat him.
Your brain: “Well, somebody has just delivered dinner.” 😂
He willingly got in her car and now he’s looking at her thigh. oh boy
😂 Oh, Kevin. Buddy.
“Don’t worry. You’ll leave me well satisfied.”
He’s hearing, “attractive woman is flirting outrageously with me.” We’re hearing, “Ken Russell has placed a large unsuspecting boy in a confined space with a venomous snake woman who just promised for him to leave her ‘well satisfied.’”
Snakes and ladders! She is in lingerie, Sylvia, he is a MINOR!
HAVE YOU REMEMBERED THAT THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT A SNAKE?!
And he’s playing the harmonica as she is dancing. I guess seductively? I’m laughing so hard right now.
Well, he did say in the car something about a mouth organ, but I completely let it pass by without thought. and that’s what you call a harmonica if you’re kind of stupid, mouth organ. She just ripped it out of his mouth and put it on the mantle of the fireplace! I guess from that, I am to assume that she was genuinely captivated by the harmonica playing. Ah la, swami with the flutes and the cobras in the baskets
YES! 😂 It’s “mouth organ”—an old British term for a harmonica.
Oh my God I have a distinct feeling that this would’ve been better stoned.
Current status IQ 82
😂 That may itself demonstrate the problem: The Lair of the White Worm has now vacuumed away enough of my cerebral capability that I’m not getting your jokes.
The Boy Scout and the Bath
Bathtime and she puts him in a great big stone tub while she sits Scantily clad with thigh high latex boots and just sponges him with a loofah? And I’m going to state clearly, you can still be a Boy Scout through your 18th year, so he had to be at least that.
😂 Of course it’s bath time. Why wouldn’t it be bath time? And yes, Kevin is, by decree 18 years old, since breakfast.
Oh, shit just bit his dick! And she JUST said, “Come on, I’m not going to bite you.”
😂 THERE IT IS. Your prediction in the car—“she’s gonna eat him”—wasn’t entirely wrong. You merely had the anatomical location wrong.
“You are a vegetable, metaphorically speaking, The God is not a vegetarian” and now she’s telling him why you must not be afraid to die. Oh my God the laughter is ended, but I’m still laughing anyway.
Oh, she’s going to throw the skull in that big bath and that’ll make the snake rise up – and the doorbell rings. never mind
😂 You: Okay, I’ve figured out Ken Russell. Skull goes into giant stone bath, giant worm rises—
DOORBELL.
Movie: No.
I’m still laughing and she just took her booted foot and pushed his head under the water. That kind of ruins the sacrifice, to be drowned, doesn’t it, lady?
😂 Lady Sylvia, please review your own ritual procedures. She has just spent all this time establishing that the god is not a vegetarian, Kevin is apparently intended as an offering, and death is nothing to fear—and then the doorbell rings and she’s basically: Oh, damn it. Stay here.” BOOT. GLUB GLUB GLUB. Now you’re laughing while arguing with a snake priestess about proper sacrificial protocol. 😆
Having to meet it on its own terms, and it’s killing me.
😂 That’s exactly what happened. You didn’t figure out The Lair of the White Worm. You surrendered to its operating system.
Hugh Grant Conducts a Census
And Hugh Grant. OK I’m back to being confused. He now appears to be a baggage claim officer at her door and asking her why she’s not in the phonebook. Oh my God look at this is what I snapped
I’ve got something in my eye. 😂😂 This is a hilarious picture. That expression on Sylvia’s face is “I currently have a Boy Scout drowning in my bathtub and now Hugh Grant is conducting a census.”
What’s with that hat?
Why is Hugh Grant playing a baggage handler? 😂 That’s James/Hugh Grant wearing what appears to be an RAF officer’s peaked cap—you can see the crown-and-wings badge on the front. So the movie isn’t suggesting that he’s suddenly become a baggage-claim officer. He’s apparently using his RAF uniform/persona as part of his ridiculous doorstep investigation.
At what point in the movie did I learn that he’s in the RAF? I guess now?
I tried on one of those round hats and I do mean round. They have no oval to them at all and I don’t have a round head so it presses abysmally on the front and back and then it’s just gapping on the sides.
That is not a stairway. That is a one-foot climb to the inside of the house. There are no stairs there, that is a ledge.
Evidently there was no budget for an extra step. OK, we have a a multi-million-pound budget, but that leaves no room for building stairs. “You’ll just have to step up.”
Ken Russell, production meeting:
“We’ve got £3.2 million.”
“Excellent. How much for the giant worm?”
“Plenty.”
“Hallucinatory Roman nun orgy?”
“Covered.”
“Snake fangs?”
“Covered.”
“Giant fossil skull?”
“Covered.”
“Thigh-high boots?”
“Obviously.”
“Can we get one step for the front door?”
“…Don’t be ridiculous. Hugh can climb.”
He introduced himself to her as her neighbor, and he’s wearing a full RAF uniform. oh my God. he just “came into his inheritance” and they’re going to drink to that? OK. Is this new information?
😂 James: “I’ve just come into my inheritance.”
Sylvia: “How wonderful. Come inside.”
Audience: HUGH, SHE JUST BIT A BOY SCOUT ON THE DICK. DO NOT DRINK ANYTHING.
There were some language issues too. he said something about “scotch” around outside, meaning to do harm, and she said, “speaking of, would you like some scotch” and that’s why he got invited in. then she asked what your poison, and he said “Brandy” and I’m like what happened to scotch.
I mean, I have heard people call it Scotch Brandy, but I believe that’s a misnomer?
😆 Scotch whisky is distilled primarily from malted barley and/or other grains and matured in Scotland. Brandy is distilled from wine or other fermented fruit. So if James asks for “a brandy,” he has definitely not accepted Sylvia’s implied offer of Scotch.
“My passion is snakes and ladders.” And James says “playing with oneself can’t be that much fun, surely.”
😂 That’s not even subtext. Sylvia says her passion is Snakes and Ladders, a game that normally requires another player, and James immediately fires back: “Playing with oneself can’t be that much fun, surely.” That is absolutely a masturbation joke delivered in Maximum Early Hugh Grant Mode—polite diction, mild expression, filthy implication tucked neatly inside it
He Very politely refuses to play the game with her and then just casually, with absolutely no thought about it, lies down on the pillow she has on the floor, in lieu of actual furniture, as though that’s the most natural thing in the world.
😂 Sylvia’s room has this bizarre “furniture is a bourgeois affectation” aesthetic—vast expanses of floor, cushions scattered around, enormous architectural features, and apparently a front entrance requiring mountaineering. And James accepts all of it instantly.
A multi-million-pound budget, and not a loveseat or sofa in sight
😂 £3.2 MILLION.
Giant worm skull: ✓
RAF uniforms: ✓
Psychedelic Jesus nightmare: ✓
Stone sacrificial bathtub: ✓
Thigh-high latex snake-lady boots: ✓
Snakes and Ladders: ✓
Chair: ✗
Loveseat: absolutely not
Single step at the front door: Are you trying to bankrupt Vestron Films?
OK, they’re referencing some disappearance by the parents of the girls. She is playing it coy, and he is like “I know it was you, woman”
😂 Mary and Eve Trent’s parents disappeared about a year earlier. Their father’s pocket watch later turned up in Stonerich Cavern, near Sylvia’s Temple House, which is why James suspects that the disappearances, the cave, and the worm legend are connected.
With much trilling of the Rs, Sylvia says “to lose one’s parents can be a terrible loss. to lose one’s parent can be considered a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.
😂 Sylvia is doing Oscar Wilde! She’s riffing on Lady Bracknell’s famous line from The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent … may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
And then she points out to him that it was from Oscar Wilde, the importance of being earnest and he just looks like Hugh Grant, morosely.
😆 Not confused. Not impressed. Just that Hugh Grant face that says, I deeply regret having come over for brandy. And meanwhile, somewhere in this house, a policeman is still in the bathtub. 😆
Glub glu….
These two are in two completely different movies. She is playing it to the Hilt. He’s going, yeah, OK sure, why not?
😂 Amanda Donohoe is acting at about 145% capacity: every R gets trilled, every look has venom in it, every line is THEATRE, every movement says I AM THE SERPENT PRIESTESS OF UNSPEAKABLE LUST.
And Hugh Grant is giving maybe 38%: Mm. Yes. Rather. Brandy’s nice. Floor’s comfortable. You’re probably a murderer. Carry on.
Amanda “I am chewing the scenery.” Hugh “Well, I regret to inform you that I am not scenery.”
😂😂 That is exactly their acting dynamic. Somewhere offscreen Kevin: glub. 🫧
Oh my now she is straight up lying to him. “As a child. I was bitten by a snake, was in a coma for 10 days, ever since I’ve had an aversion for them.”
😂 Lady. Your stated passion five minutes ago was SNAKES AND LADDERS. Your house is basically Serpent IKEA. You stole the enormous worm skull. You lovingly fondled it. You have snake jewelry, snake imagery, snake everything, and you just gave a policeman the world’s least reassuring bath. And she’s delivering this to James with the confidence of someone who assumes he has suffered catastrophic short-term memory loss during the brandy.
Meanwhile James’s entire performance remains: Mm. Childhood trauma. Yes. Explains everything. Do go on. 😐
She followed it up with. “I’m also fascinated with them. I’m afraid I’m terribly schizophrenic.” Oh my God! understating, from her?
😂 THAT is her idea of dialing it down!
She just put her board game in the fire
😂 James has apparently made such an impression that she’s gone from seductive serpent hostess to rage-quitting Milton Bradley.
“Rosebud” She literally said “Rosebud” as the board game burned!
😂 ROSEBUD! Citizen Kane: burns Rosebud, symbol of a lost childhood. Lady Sylvia: burns Snakes and Ladders, symbol of… whatever the hell is happening in this house.
They kiss, she passionately, he, oh, was that something on my lips?
😂😂 She is giving him THE KISS—full Lady Sylvia, maximum serpentine passion—and James receives it like someone has accidentally brushed him with a damp napkin. She thinks she’s in an erotic gothic horror. He thinks he’s waiting for the kettle to boil?
And he’s watching, there’s something on TV an old black-and-white with an egg that’s not an egg but a snake made out out of I guess papier-mâché and a big old papier-mâché egg. Oh I don’t know what’s going on.
😂 I know exactly why you’ve reached “I don’t know what’s going on” again. The movie briefly earned your trust and has now spent it all.
Oh, it was a caterpillar, it came back out of the egg, which I now understand to be a cocoon, out came a woman with butterfly wings.
There is no way that Ken found a valid ancient black-and-white silent with that content. He made it and then aged it to look like it was an ancient so that he could put it in his movie.
😂 Ken didn’t fake that footage. You just watched a genuinely ancient movie. It’s from Georges Méliès’s 1901 short The Brahmin and the Butterfly (La Chrysalide et le Papillon d’or).
And now paintings on the wall. there’s a knight cutting off the head of a snake, and he’s dreaming of walking into a straight up roadrunner cave. You know you draw it like it’s a cave and you can walk into it and he’s back in uniform. he was in bed. He’s walking up on the Concorde.
😂 Oh GOD, we’ve entered James’s dream, and apparently his subconscious has hired Wile E. Coyote as production designer.
I think that is Sylvia as the stewardess at the door. oh my God.
😂😂 OH, COME ON, KEN. The fact that it’s Concorde is killing me. A normal airplane simply wasn’t sufficiently Freudian or expensive looking for this dream.
And he’s drawing on the crossword puzzle a snake pattern because that’s what the shape on the puzzle was. he didn’t force it on it. It was actually there as blank space, in a snake figure.
😂 And he’s still Hugh Granting his way through it like, Yes, yes, serpent motif, terribly clever.
And so far, it’s three different actresses as flight attendant two blondes, and one Sylvia. So. Mary, Eve, and Sylvia.
And Sylvia is now giving a drink to an old woman who is tied up in the seat. You deserve a picture
Now serving: bondage class. 😂 James’s subconscious has apparently invented Concorde: Serpent Cult Class.
That’s got to be the woman parent that’s missing it. It’s got to be something on his mind cause that’s what he was investigating.
Oh, I think I’m following A PLOT.
Boom, the father!
Bondage class, part two. We never see this guy again. 😂 And of course Dream Sylvia is still providing impeccable cabin service to the people James suspects she did something horrible to.
Snakes and crosswords? She lifted her hem purposefully, before she sat on the arm of that chair
Coffee, tea, or me… or crossword? 😂 Sylvia: LEG.
James: 🐍 crossword.
Sylvia: MORE LEG.
James: Yes, apparently seven across is serpent.
These two remain committed to starring in completely different films even inside his own dream.
Oh, now he’s got a belt on him and she’s trying to feed him some alcohol and somebody—oh, the second blonde stewardess, Eve—grabbed the drink from her and Sylvia made it spill and Eve is now burning. Evidently, it was acidic, and they’re fighting, and Sylvia has her legs around Eve’s head and he’s got the red pen in his hand, evidently that’s significant, (nope) and they are still fighting. The girls are fighting and the platinum blond stewardess, Mary, is still giving instructions about exits and stuff.
😂
“In the unlikely event of an emergency—” MA’AM. THE EMERGENCY IS CURRENTLY WRESTLING IN THE AISLE.
Jesus, extending one leg out and wiggling it seductively?!? And a RING!
RING! / Significant? / Religious? The ring is significant was what that pose was.
And he got off the plane and was immediately in a cave, and he found the pocket watch again.
😂 considering where you were 20 minutes ago. The movie is still completely nuts, but we’re now actually following its nuts.
His man-servant comes in, makes a lot of noise. “Confound it. You have broken my dream.” “Perhaps it was for the best” “Yeah, I’m not going to make it to the breakfast table, Peters.”
😂 And Hugh delivers that like the dream wasn’t Concorde bondage, acid attacks, serpent crosswords, missing parents, Sylvia wrestling flight attendants, and a magic cave.
“Very well, my lord”, with the thinly disguised contempt of a manservant that was part of a will.
😂 That “Very well, my lord” has layers.
Halfway, halfway through
😂 HALFWAY. That is astonishing. We’ve already had the giant worm skull, venom Jesus, the nun nightmare, harmonica snake charming, Kevin’s catastrophic bath, Wilde quotations, Snakes and Ladders immolation, Hugh Grant’s imperviousness to seduction, a genuine 1901 Méliès film, the Road Runner cave, Concorde, restrained missing parents, acid cabin service, stewardess combat, the serpent crossword, Significant Ring™, the pocket watch, and Peters’ contempt. And Ken Russell has another half of the movie left.
They are now spelunking in the very cave that his ancestors did something with the worm, or did battle with the worm, I think. is what he actually said, but I said did something because well it’s even less specific than did battle with. (My own expressed inner monologue is now as confused as the movie.)
😂 “Did something with the worm” is actually safer wording for this movie, because at this point I would not want to commit to the nature of anyone’s relationship with a giant worm.
OK, they’re out of the cave and Sylvia is in a tree wearing, Oh my God, those are long red leather boots, calling down at Eve.
Those boots are so high that they might be giving her a gynecological exam.
Boots all the way up™ 😂 Those have crossed the line from thigh-high boots into torso-adjacent footwear. At that point the cobbler isn’t measuring an inseam; he’s requesting a medical history and asking whether you’ve fasted. 😆
We now have boobs girl in a tanning booth. It was Sylvia in the tanning booth, and her boobs came out.
😂 THERE IT IS. thigh-high boots → even higher red boots → tanning booth → wardrobe department clocks out entirely. Ken Russell apparently reached the tanning-booth scene and thought, Sunlight? No, no. My snake woman shall be baked artificially. 😆
Sylvia just confessed that she’s immortal and that she knew Eve back in the days of her lover, blah blah blah blah blah so if Eve’s not immortal, she’s evidently a reincarnating soul and Sylvia recognizes her
And evidently, she has mesmerized Eve to tell her to take off her clothes, and Eve’s just calmly doing that no resistance on her face at all
You would think that if someone’s soul is continually reincarnated, they would have a stronger willpower. I mean, that’s what’s bringing them back one would assume, and yet, Sylvia “just do this” “OK”
😂 If reincarnation is the soul repeatedly clawing its way back into existence, you’d expect Eve’s soul to have accumulated at least a few points in Mesmerism Resistance.
Instead:
SOUL: I have crossed centuries. Death cannot contain me. I return again and again.
SYLVIA: Take off your clothes.
SOUL: Well, those are compelling instructions.
This is passive Eve, I think. Very subtle. OK. 😂 THAT FACE.
Mine is bigger than yours. Oh, there’s some contempt! “When your order tried to build a convent on top of my sacred temple” with the rising intonation while she’s holding up a rather threatening-looking, I’m going to guess, sexual appliance.
Sylvia said “that’s enough” because Eve had already taken off everything except the shirt, and she said she doesn’t want her to catch her death of cold. She obviously wants her to catch the death of that huge horn shoved into her, in some fashion.
Plus, she’s the only one that had nudity in her contract.
😆 And that object is so aggressively phallic that I’m not going to pretend Ken Russell didn’t know exactly what visual association he was creating.
Sylvia keeps talking about the Virgins and you know, the Catholic faith so that’s got to be what’s going to be happening. Sexual non-innuendo.
😆 that’s where the scene is pointing symbolically, at minimum. She’s repeatedly invoking virginity, Christianity, and the desecration/replacement of her older serpent religion, while Eve is apparently connected to that ancient conflict through her previous incarnation. So Sylvia isn’t just being sexually threatening for the hell of it. In her own mythology, Eve seems to represent the Christian virgin figure/enemy from the old days, and Sylvia is reenacting or reversing something from that conflict.
This is a question I should’ve asked earlier, but is Eve a nun? Literally, when did that information become part of the movie?
“Virgins… are really… eligible… for human… sacrifice.”
They did not show anything, but she made the motion like she was moving that horn and Eve made a gasp and this is the look on Sylvia’s face
Christmas? For me? “You have been a good girl Eve.” “You will have the pleasure of being sacrificed to Dionin alive now. Where did you tell the others you were going?”
And she just told Eve to make excuses to her sister, that things are too much, and the phone’s on the bar, so, go do that now.
“I’m going to London… for a few days of peace and quiet… on my own.” Eve keeps staring at her ring, which is making me think she’s about to break out of the mesmerism: Oh, what’s going on? I don’t want to die. I’m predicting that part. The ring is where I paused.
She started to say what was really going on to Mary on the phone, and Sylvia came out with the big old teeth, spit at her and now she’s in the middle of another vision.
😂 Eve gets as far as mechanically delivering Sylvia’s cover story, the ring catches her attention, and suddenly the script Sylvia installed starts failing. Eve begins telling the truth—and Sylvia immediately goes FULL FANGS, spits at her, and throws her straight back into Vision Land. That makes the ring even more interesting. We now have two separate moments where the movie has deliberately emphasized it: James’s dream singled it out, and now Eve looking at it appears to disrupt Sylvia’s control. Whatever the explanation eventually is, that is absolutely not incidental jewelry.
Ken Russell Screensaver™
Ken Russell screensaver™. Nuns on spikes, nuns dead, Sylvia giving blow job to big stick thing, bare breasted. Jesus hovering in the middle of the sky
😂 YES. The Ken Russell Screensaver™ has achieved FINAL FORM.
And Sylvia just took the ring off of Eve’s finger and Eve’s twitching like she’s in the midst of a seizure, which I guess she is.
😂 So the ring has now had a very deliberate little trajectory: James’s dream: RING, LOOK AT THIS. Eve under hypnosis: notices ring → starts breaking Sylvia’s script. Sylvia: venom-spits her into Apocalypse Screensaver. Afterward: takes the ring away.
Warning: exposition ahead. Oh, that is Eve’s sister because she’s right by the phone. Logic rules! (Oh no, I’m understanding this movie!)
And look at that guy with the glasses he kind of looks like what Hugh Grant would look like if he tousled his hair and put on glasses
😂 I know we saw this guy before. I think he’s the archaeology student who found the skull originally. (He’s played by Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor!)
“Is that you Ray? yes Roy I, meant Roy. It’s me, Mary Trent at Mercy farm” she’s not smooth
Roy is at the train yard I think because she’s asking him to look at the yard the whole thing to see if his sister’s there
Mary just ran off randomly to go look outside the front door and Angus took over the phone. Roy had no sign of her and was given instructions to call Mercy Farm if news does come.
Angus gave the instructions and was going to give the message to Mary but then Mary came back in and said none of Eve’s clothes are gone.
Right about now I’m realizing the Concord dream was making more sense, the three girls fighting for his soul? Or no, his attention? OK, not sense, but semblance of sense. More so than the rest of the movie.
Angus: “The Romans often assimilated ethnic religions into their own. The skull could’ve been venerated as a sacred object.” Mary: “What’s all this got to do with Eve?” James: “Quite a lot when you consider that hallucination.” A: “Aye, she saw the snake then, right enough.” M: “And a cross, don’t forget that. She doesn’t go to church or any of that stuff, but she’s quite religious is Eve.” J: “It seems to me there’s some kind of conflict going on here. If Angus is right and it’s also the site of a convent then it’s conflict between Christianity and some early pagan cult. Possibly even involving human sacrifice.” A: “The cave drawing would indicate that.” M: “You’re not suggesting…” J: “Which way would Eve have walked home?” M: “Through the Grove, of course it’s the only footpath.” J: “And why is Temple House so called?” M: “Everyone knows that from school. It’s the site of an old temple. It’s obvious from the name.” J: “The same way. It’s obvious that Stonerich Cavern has something to do with the D’Ampton worm.” A: “Maybe there’s a connection.” M: “You’ll be saying there’s a connection between all this and Erny’s snakebite, next.” J: “And Snakes and Ladders.” A: “What do you mean snakes and ladders?” J: “Lady. Sylvia. Marsh.”
Dammit, there is a plot
But there is still no logical reason for those parents who have disappeared if Sylvia is not sacrificing him what is that about?
OK, this is funny. He’s digging through this record collection, and he’s asking Peters. “Well my father had something about the ‘soliloquy of a snake charmer’ and I can’t seem to find it and of course Peters is like dithering, so I’m going to have to guess that Peters is actually a snake guy and he hid that.
Take it back Peters is actually helping. He told him to flip the record over and there was, the snake charmer thing.
Oh, goody! This is evidence that this movie would not work in a modern setting. You can’t flip a CD over, maybe you can flip a cassette tape over, you can’t flip an 8-track over. You certainly can’t flip a Spotify over.
“Put your bicycle clips on, Peters. I’m expecting company.”
😂 But bicycle clips is the detail that kills me. Presumably he’s thinking practical protection against something slithering up the trouser legs, but it sounds like the most aggressively British monster-hunting preparation imaginable.
Is it real, or is it Photoshop? If that is not Photoshop, I’m a monkey’s uncle
😂 Since this is 1988, not Photoshop in the literal sense—but absolutely the analog/video-effects equivalent. Look at those enormous modern red speaker towers planted behind the ancient-looking ruins against that impossibly saturated blue sky. The scale, edges, lighting, and perspective aren’t even pretending they’re sharing physical space.
Why is there a dinosaur?
Dinosaur, basket, why? Why was she in the basket at all?
OK, seriously, why was she in the basket in the first place? Snake: charmed?
OK, I guess this is sexy? She has exited the building following the music and they’re lurking outside going to sneak in while she’s gone. Oh, this is straight up Scooby-Doo now.
If they say Jinkies, I’m gonna screenshot that for you
Scooby-Doo, where are you? 😂 The Lair of the White Worm (1988) An unauthorized adults-only episode of Scooby-Doo in which Daphne became an immortal snake dominatrix and Fred is Hugh Grant with bicycle clips. And they’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling archaeologists and their gramophone record. 😂
There was this long exchange where Angus is looking at this emperor statue and Mary’s like “loads of people have emperors” “Not of this one, this was the great rebel emperor, which of course I’ve never heard of so it’s got to be a movie invention and Lady Sylvia has them in her parlor so yeah, OK significant
😂 They’re talking about Marcus Carausius, a real Roman military commander who seized power in Britain and northern Gaul in the late third century and effectively ruled there as a breakaway emperor. The movie even established Sylvia’s connection earlier when she called Carausius her lover. The dialogue here explicitly connects the statue to the Carausius coins Angus found at the dig.
Dammit. There continues to be a plot.
“What is it?” “It’s a mongoose, traditional enemy of the snake.” they paused very significantly, that’s going to have to come in. That is Chekhov’s mongoose.
Mongoose, natural enemy of the snake—or so we were told. Of course, if Chekhov’s mongoose is just introduced, then this is the beginning of the movie.
😂 ACT ONE, SCENE ONE: Here is a mongoose. It kills snakes. Remember that. Ken Russell: Nah. Give me an hour first. I have Concorde, naked Jesus, Roman nuns, venom hallucinations, Hugh Grant on the floor, and a virginity-testing horn to get through.
Then, with maybe a third of the movie left: “By the way—MONGOOSE.”
Chekhov is sitting in the audience looking at his watch.
OK, very confused. We just saw Sylvia dance out of the house and yet now she is there calmly watching a person giving a blow job using a snake as the dildo on TV.
Whistler’s Sylvia with a TV? Ooooooooh it’s the mom!
Mommy? Uh oh, mom is a big snake woman now and just bit Mary in the neck
😂 OH SHIT. MOM DIDN’T JUST GO MISSING. MOM GOT RECRUITED.
Angus grabbed a stick out of the fire, did not burn himself. His hands flashed it at the mom, and she ran out of the room, then he just tossed it back in the fire. quite efficient and Mary is now having a hallucination.
😆And now Mary is hallucinating, so the neck bite definitely had an immediate supernatural effect of some kind. We’re back in KEN RUSSELL SCREENSAVER™ MODE.
Mary screaming in a psychedelic screensaver 
Face, body, blue… what? And Dudes are running out of that big blue face, it’s just weird
Snake eyes, blue mouth, men coming out of it. OK. 
Hey, we get it: blood, psychedelic visions, blue. 
Ken Russell runs out of ideas and throws all of them at the wall. JESUS CHRIST. 😂😂😂 KEN RUSSELL SCREENSAVER™: DIRECTOR’S CUT.
Well, licking some toads can cause hallucinations, why not snakes?
😂 On the Ken Russell pharmacology scale, it’s practically conservative. At least the movie has now established the rule consistently. Sylvia venomed Eve: Ken Russell Screensaver™. Snake Mom bites Mary: Ken Russell Screensaver™. I cannot believe I’m saying this, but the hallucinations have continuity. 😂
Peters Has Had Enough
He just told Peters to unlock the front door and lock up the chambermaids, look at the look on his face.
Oh, really, sir? This is so unexpected. Thank you. 😂😂 PETERS. Look at him. That is the face of a man whose employment contract has finally exceeded its reasonable scope. James has essentially said: Unlock the front door. Lock up the chambermaids. I’m calling the police about the immortal snake cult. And Peters’s expression is just “Very good, sir. I see the estate has become fucking ridiculous.”😂
“Your father was strange, but he never had me lock up the chambermaids. This might be fun.”
In the midst of calling the police, the power went out in the place, and it’s of course a cordless phone, and it loses connection, because, of course, there’s no battery backup. Oh my God! That’s a huge sword he picked up off the fireplace mantel—and he just chopped the mom snake woman in half.
Boo! Ha ha, you have fallen into my evil plan! 
Big sword, will travel. 
Snake Mom, now in convenient two-packs. he heard the crowing of the woman, he saw the sword sitting on the mantelpiece, put the phone down, picked up the sword she came charging in and, and then chop chop.
’Tis but a scratch. I’m not dead yet. but look at you. You’re missing a leg. No I’m not, just a scratch.
😂😂😂 “I’M NOT DEAD YET!” This is absolutely Black Knight territory now. Look at the frame! Her legs are literally over there, detached from the rest of the woman, and she’s still crawling forward like this is merely an inconvenience.
James: I have cut you in half.
Snake Mom: “I’ve had worse.”
James: You haven’t got any legs.
Snake Mom: “Yes I have.”
The legs are still twitching too
Oh no Peters is dead
Yes, snake bite marks on his face, so obviously mother came in and bit him to death. came after James, got chopped in half. She had an adventurous day too.
Power returns. The phone rings. “Yes, I got her, but not before she got Peters.” But it wasn’t who we were expecting either. Oh my God, her own daughter!”
“Yes, I extracted the poison before it’s any harm. She’s resting now” you know extra extracting poison is a myth unless you have like a syringe the whole cut two lines in it and suck with your mouth. That’s a total myth.
Angus, whatever-his-last-name-is: archaeologist, chemist, snake-vampire hunter. Oh, he knows this by somehow groking the venom. “if the venom gets some metabolizing in the system, they are afflicted by a form of vampirism”
He’s on the phone with Angus and he’s complaining that the power went out and the record player turned itself off automatically. All right I’ll check and he looks over and the record platter is completely empty. “Thanks for the warning. I think we have another reptile loose on the premises.” He’s still in another movie.
😂😂 YES. Hugh Grant absolutely refuses to enter this movie. Everybody else: “THE VENOM METABOLIZES INTO SNAKE VAMPIRISM! MOM HAS BEEN BISECTED! PETERS IS DEAD! THE CULT IS REAL!” James, discovering that the record has mysteriously vanished: “Thanks for the warning. I think we have another reptile loose on the premises.” Sir. 😂
The mother snake just grabbed his ankle and did a growling face at him. It was a quick scene so she’s crawled across the floor with just her arms to get to James, and he’s just like, oh OK.
😂😂 EXACTLY. She has no legs. She has dragged her bisected torso across the estate using only her arms, grabbed James by the ankle, and snarled up at him. And James’s emotional response remains somewhere around: “Ah. There you are.”
This man is aggressively unchewable scenery. Ken Russell can throw snake vampires, severed torsos, venom visions, missing parents, and dead servants at him, and Hugh Grant will not rise above mild concern at an irregularity in the household. The contrast with Snake Mom makes it even funnier. She has had the most exhausting night imaginable. She’s been bitten/converted, attacked her daughter, repelled by fire, killed Peters, been CUT IN HALF, and then dragged herself across the floor by her hands for one last attack. James: “Oh, bother. Another reptile.” 😂
Mary’s in there and now we’re gonna see if she has big old fangs.
No thanks and the door closed automatically so, oh but oh my
It’s not really an owie if it’s two gaping holes in your neck. “We need you to identify the body.” “But why, you’ve known her for years.” “But we have to do it by the book. It must be next of kin.” Oh so evidently James looked at the growling mother and just went oh bother and kicked her in the head till she died. I’m just guessing on that part.
😂 That’s exactly the missing beat! We last saw half of Mom grab James’s ankle and growl at him, and now the police are apparently saying, “We need Mary to identify the body.” So somewhere between those scenes, Half-Mom became Dead-Mom, and the movie apparently decided we did not require the administrative details
. Your proposed reconstruction is entirely compatible with what we’ve actually seen:
Mom: GRRRR!
James: “Oh.”
offscreen aristocratic problem-solving noises
Police: “We need the next of kin to identify the body.” 😂The cop did have a really weird look on his face. so, it was one of those, oh I’m a snake guy so I’m bluffing you or something. I don’t know yet.
Let’s talk budget again a VW bug for a police car no lights just a label
😂 That is absolutely budget filmmaking.
😂 A Volkswagen Beetle with “POLICE” slapped on the door and apparently not even a light bar. The production said: “We need a police car.” “How much?” “£0.” “There’s a Beetle outside.” “Paint POLICE on it.”
Anyone got a car?” “I’ve got an old bug out back” “Let’s just put on a sticker. That’ll work”.
Erny looking kinda sus. “Where are you going? This isn’t the way to the police station.” “We’re picking up lady Sylvia Marsh.”
Budget cop car. Policeman had a bandage over his wrist and so Mary just opened the door and evidently knocked him all the way across the space between the car in the house and now she’s running away.
And the gate just closed on her
She runs down some steps on the side of the house. It goes to a passageway. She gets to the end of the passageway. There’s a big snake. She turns around and there’s a cop following her. She doesn’t know what to do.
Snake Cop confirmed
Damn, I didn’t know how right I was. Someone is playing bagpipes.
Angus rocking the tartans and the bagpipes. Angus is a piper?
Ladies and gentlemen… Erny! Raise the roof! He’s got the snake charming going
This actor playing the cop is hilarious. He’s swaying like a snake. He’s prancing around like a snake and his teeth are just out there, and you can tell the actor’s afraid of closing his mouth because he will stab his lower mouth and it would hurt a lot. Oh God, Angus ran out of breath on bagpipes, which makes no sense. And then dropped the bagpipes, and then oh that is the significant thing there? it’s called a compass an, outdoor compass and Angus is going to knock the cop onto it and no more snake cop.
Angus ran out of breath on a bagpipe, which makes no sense because that’s what the bag is for! When you breathe you squeeze the bag, but no, he ran out of breath that broke the music. The cop went after him. He dropped the bagpipes he pushed at the cop; the cop tripped on the bagpipes and fell on the compass.
Oh, Erny, we hardly knew ye. Fortunately, the bagpipes aren’t broken. He’s back to playing them.
He had to sit down, but look, he even dressed up in tartans to match his bagpipes. Now he’s filling a syringe with something amber.
But Mom said she’d pick me up after school. Oh, he’s gonna inject himself with the venom. Oh, this is so bad of an idea.
Maybe he shot the mongoose?
MONGOOSE! 
I’m a snake, see? And she reared back and looked at Angus in the face and he just stood there and then she reared up further then bit him on the leg. and well look at this look. I’ll bet it was anti-venom and he injected himself with it!
Was it good for you, too? Look! Ear plugs!
And she just laughingly took the earplugs out of her ears. She outsmarted him, she thinks.
And he has his face frozen in a rictus of pain and she drags him by one leg into her lair, but I’m guessing he’s acting right now. You know he wants to get to Eve.
Oh, good. A ‘YOU ARE HERE’ marker. I wonder if being blue-painted nekkid pays at a lower rate than regular nekkid. Oh, hello, Mary.
These ‘YOU ARE HERE’ markers are really getting weird. So, uh, budget: cop car zero, snake contacts £12,000,000
😂 The production budget hierarchy of this movie:
Sarah: “Can we afford a cop?”
Production: “No.”
Cop car: “Absolutely not.”
Snake contacts: “How much?”
Production: “Twelve billion pounds.” “Order whatever you want.”
And those eyes! They apparently spent the entire effects budget on one pair of radioactive contact lenses. 😂
And Sylvia has also exceeded any breast budget I’ve ever seen in any movie. She is just out there completely for this half of the movie.
Reptiles don’t have hair. OK, James is up to something with a bunch of cylinders. I don’t even know.
Did they borrow these from Armageddon? Oh, they think it’s a subterranean creature and they will gas or smoke them out because there’s pumps and evidently some kind of toxic gas in those cylinders.
😂 The funniest part is that they’re treating this like a perfectly normal pest-control job. “Yes, there’s a giant supernatural serpent beneath the house. Fetch the industrial fumigation equipment.” 😂
OK now Ken has established that Dionin was the original serpent in the Garden of Eden.
The girls can hear James’ voice through the pit as he’s on the other side of it extolling to the workers with him.
Damn, back to Genesis. Dionin, who came from the darkness,
Dionin, who dwelt in the peace of the Garden of Eden,
Dionin, who gave us the gift of knowledge,
Dionin, who suffered the wrath of the false God,
Dionin, who was driven from Eden by the false God,
Dionin, who was trodden underfoot by the Son of Man,
Dionin, who returned to the darkness,
Dionin, whose kingdom is darkness,
Dionin, who makes safe our darkness,
Dionin, who is darkness,
Dionin the immortal, accept this, our sacrifice.
They’re not even trying for subtle, are they? Not even trying to be subtle with this!
😂 Positioned on the front of her pelvis, emerging from the pubic area, and it looks much more like some bizarre snake/serpent appendage growing out of her pubis. Which raises the immediate biological question: If she’s supposed to be a serpent creature, why does she still have a completely mammalian female body? The movie’s answer appears to be: don’t ask biology questions during the glowing-blue snake-goddess sequence. And the fact that it is specifically coming out of that location makes the whole image considerably more… Freudian than I initially realized. 😳
And Eve is right now saying “OK, exactly how am I being sacrificed?”
😂 Eve has reached the completely reasonable point of the evening: “Okay, you’ve explained the ancient serpent theology, you’ve tied me to a wall, you’ve announced my sacrificial destiny… but could someone perhaps explain the actual mechanics?” And Sylvia is probably about to give her an answer that somehow involves Dionin, darkness, blood, and several more paragraphs of Victorian occult poetry rather than simply saying, “We’re going to kill you.”
At this point Eve deserves a pamphlet. 😂
Smoke, or gas coming up from this pit? James, is that you?
Big honking pit. Sylvia was in pre-ecstatic face and instead went to confused face, and there is now smoke coming out of the pit.
“No time for ritual, no time for ceremony” and Sylvia pulls out a big old knife, and she’s probably going to just stab Eve now.
Using the knife to cut Eve’s ropes free so I guess she’s gonna toss her into that pit
In case you can’t quite tell, it’s a great big snake
The big snake is coming out of the big pit.
Step one: place victim here. That is a spectacular shot: Sylvia, big ol’ pit, big honking snake.
Why did I bring the butter knife?! That knife is not sharp enough. Seems like that should be a minimum requirement for a big honking knife: sharpness.
And now Angus is making his triumphant move. It’s been about 10 minutes, but maybe it took a while for the antivenom to work.
Well, this isn’t going according to plan. Angus first just pushed Sylvia into the pit, she grabbed Eve’s legs, then Angus just pulled out his own dagger and sawed at Sylvia’s wrists that are holding Eve’s ankles. Yeah, cutting a wrist is so much easier than a rope. OK
Oh, big snake on the rise
Wrist severed, Sylvia now gets munched by her god.
Take two and call me in the morning. The rope snapped just as Eve was about to fall. Angus caught her just in time. Sylvia went into the snake’s mouth. Poor Sylvia from snake goddess to snake sacrifice.
😂 SYLVIA GOT SNAKED BY THE SNAKE. She spent the whole movie working toward this grand serpent-sacrifice moment, finally gets Eve positioned over the mouth, and then the rope snaps at exactly the wrong/right moment:
Eve: rescued.
Angus: heroically catches her.
Sylvia: whoops, into the giant snake mouth you go.
That is spectacularly appropriate. She literally spent all that time worshipping the thing and then became the backup sacrifice.
Angus goes down and unties Mary. There we go and honestly, the way he just manipulated that rope, without a knife, and untied her, she should’ve been able to do that a long time ago.
He tells them both to run, but he’s going back. So, I don’t know why he’s going back but he’s going back to do something with the snake, I don’t know.
He has a pineapple hand grenade.
He sees the big honking snake close up, says “holy shit,” pulls the ring out with his teeth, of course, drops it in. Bull’s-eye runs away explosion from the pit everyone’s outside now safely.
Yep, he just explained it all he filled up the syringe and he’s giving her an antidote and they said “what if it won’t work” “it worked on me all right”
OK, we blew up the asteroid. Let’s get coffee. Proof that he’s in a different movie
And he literally said “Next it’s a pint on me at the pub.” So we still don’t actually know what he was doing in the caverns. I’m going to guess he gassed him and maybe that’s what was driving the snake up, but he didn’t communicate that to them, so it works surprisingly well as a coordinated plan that they were not coordinated with.
😂 It somehow becomes a coordinated operation conducted entirely without coordination.
The sequence seems to be: James’s caving/exploration team is down there with the gas equipment, apparently trying to flush out whatever they think is living underground. Angus independently figures out that Sylvia is the real danger, develops the antidote, gets himself bitten, infiltrates the lair, rescues Eve, and blows up the pit.
Neither side appears to have bothered telling the other what they’re actually doing.
Yet the two plans happen to intersect at exactly the right moment.
Then James’s team emerges and he’s basically: “Thanks. Pint at the pub?”
James says he wanted to do something positive like the old man or the ancestors and Angus said you smoked out the snake and did a good job. Thanks so yeah coordination was there unspoken like with real men
Exposition dump: It was the watch since it disappeared from the temple house and reappeared in the cavern, that had to be a connection, etc., so forth.
Angus just got a call from the lab: “You were given the wrong serum. It’s for arthritis.”
So, oh, Angus is now gonna sprout some fangs, I’ll bet.
That is not the face of a confident shaver. OH, THERE IT IS. 😂 That is not the face of a man who received the correct anti-venom. Angus has gone from “I have a cunning plan” to “why are my eyes glowing and what is happening to my neck?”
So the sequence is apparently:
Get bitten by the snake.
Extract venom.
Inject “antidote.”
Rescue Eve.
Blow up the ancient snake.
Discover the laboratory mailed you the wrong serum.
Look in mirror: “Oh, bollocks.”
He was also running his tongue along the roof of his mouth so looking for fangs, I think
In the car, James says “I’m famished why don’t we stop for a bite” and Angus replies “Why not” and then bares his leg where the two bites are and it goes to black
Absolutely insane I made it through
You should hear this song they’re playing as the credits roll.
The D’Ampton Worm
One, two, three, four—
John D’Ampton went a-fishing once,
a-fishing in the weir.
He caught a fish upon his hook; he thought it looked mighty queer.
Now what the kind of fish it was John D’Ampton couldn’t tell,
but he didn’t like the look of it so he threw it down a well,
Now the worm got fat and growed,
and growed an awful size with great big teeth and a great big mouth and great big goggle eyes.
And when at night it crawled about,
all looking for some booze.
If it felt dry upon the road,
it’d milk a dozen cows.
This fearful worm would often feed on cows and lambs and sheep,
and swallow little babes alive when they lay down to sleep.
So John set out and got the beast and cut it into halves,
and that soon stopped it eating babes and sheep and lambs and calves.
So now you know how all the folks on both sides of the weir,
lost lots of sheep and lots of sleep and lived in mortal fear.
So drink the health of brave Sir John,
who kept the babes from harm,
saved cows and calves by making halves of that famous D’Ampton Worm!
No comments on The Lair of the White Worm – Reel-Time Reaction -
Resident Evil (2026)– A Review
★★★★☆ out of ★★★★★
I’m not a big horror-movie fan. I mean, I sort of am, but when you lack buddies to talk about it with afterward, it loses some of its charm. Perhaps dictating my review like this—speaking my truth, if you will—might serve the same purpose. We’ll see.
I did not play the Resident Evil games, so I have no frame of reference there. I have, however, seen the Milla Jovovich versions, and this is a mighty big swing away from that formula.
First, though, a complaint: the opening credits are severely redundant with the producers’ names. This is Bob and Joe*. This is a Bob and Joe* production. Bob and Joe* made this film. I did not appreciate that. It felt like Hollywood glad-handing, and all I could think was, What the hell? And the actual title sequence didn’t arrive until roughly fifteen minutes into the movie!
The movie itself is almost a one-man show. Our hero, such as he is, is Bryan, a hapless medical courier who describes his work as something like a fancy version of DoorDash. His employer appears to be called Right Foot—at least that is what I could make out on the back of his jacket, partially obscured by the carrying straps. Good branding, I guess: put your right foot forward.
We become involved in Bryan’s life while he is arguing with his girlfriend. He seems like a perfectly reasonable yet stupidly selfish kid. For a while, I thought the movie might pull the old trick of making us care about a character and then immediately killing him. Bryan comes very close to dying at the beginning—but he doesn’t, and the movie sticks with him.
After delivering a standard red organ carrier, Bryan is offered one last, top-flight assignment: take a mysterious green carrier to Raccoon City. He protests that he needs to get home, but they offer him double. Nothing bad has ever come from accepting a double-pay offer at the last minute, has it?
The job requires chains or studded tires because it is snowing heavily. Bryan assures them he is prepared. Of course, he isn’t. Off he goes into the snow toward Raccoon City—and, quite frankly, video-game adventures ensue.
The video-game perspective is persistent and appreciated. Bryan picks up guns as he finds them. He has to figure out how to load and use them. He makes discoveries just as I would want to make them if I were playing the game myself. The story progresses in a clear, logical sequence, but Bryan remains hilariously unprepared for all of it. At one point, he reassures himself, “I didn’t shoot a kid in the face. I like kids.” That self-mocking humor works because it also connects to the personal problems waiting for him back home.
Several very distinct forms of zombie are on display. There’s a guy who vomits acid, a zombie tumbleweed that begins with two bodies fusing together and keeps collecting more as the movie progresses—there may be a dozen bodies in it by the end—and a huge, bloated man whose stomach splits open and spills out what look like rats. Players will probably recognize some of the evolutionary bloodlines even when the creatures aren’t taken directly from the games. I just thought they were cool and gross at the same time.
The movie has genuine comedy, but it also has good jump scares—the ones that feel earned, not merely inserted to make you jump. It is visually stunning, and the cinematography is excellent. I did not see it in IMAX, but I can absolutely understand how IMAX would benefit it.
Bryan grows throughout the movie. When he senses what is coming, even as he keeps hoping for something better, he makes a final confession into his phone. He has no connection; he is simply making a recording meant for Michelle, without knowing whether she will ever hear it.
Throughout the movie, Bryan faces setback after setback, but he continues on. He does things he never expected he would be able to do. He keeps going. He learns. He grows. He suffers. He still continues. And then, when all seems lost, he keeps going on.
Bryan. Never. Gives. Up. Until he does.
This movie does not end with a Hollywood ending. It doesn’t even end with a video-game ending. But it does end.
I don’t want to spoil it. This movie is worth seeing. It is a lot of fun, and I think you might enjoy it as much as I did.
It surprises me to say this, but I’m giving Resident Evil four stars. Not because it isn’t a well-made movie—it is—but because, as I said at the beginning, I don’t generally gravitate toward horror movies.
Hopefully expressing all of this now, in the way I am, will prevent the night terrors.
Cast and Credits
- Austin Abrams as Bryan
- Directed by Zach Cregger
- Written by Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten
- Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski
- Based on Capcom’s Resident Evil video-game series
* Not the actual producers’ names. You’ll see it, and you’ll know it.
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In-N-Out Redux – Animal Style
Okay, I finally returned to In-N-Out to try the Animal Style I promised in my last post.
There was a line outside this time. I was there during that period that isn’t quite twilight but isn’t full dark either—the sun had either just gone down or was almost there. The line only filled about half of the outside queue, though, and I was inside in about 15 minutes.
Already almost dark outside, in line and ready This time I ordered the Double-Double Animal Style, the fries Animal Style, and another shake. I went with chocolate because chocolate is naturally less sweet than strawberry, and I wanted this visit to be at least somewhat comparable to the last one. Same basic meal, but this time with the special stuff.
So many workers, busy as bees, and super nice! I waited while they went through the numbers, just like last time. This time I actually remembered to ask for ketchup when I picked up my order, and they were very happy to provide it. I found a seat, took the obligatory picture of my food, and dug in.
If you don’t think this is nummy, I’ve already lost you. So, what does Animal Style actually mean?
A regular Double-Double already comes with lettuce, tomato and In-N-Out’s spread, with onions optional. Animal Style takes that basic burger and changes things up: the patties are cooked with mustard, pickles are added, the onions are grilled, and you get extra spread.
I’ve tried cooking hamburger patties with mustard myself, and it’s actually not super easy. You can’t really do it with a frozen burger, and it doesn’t work nearly as well with hamburger that has been sitting around for a while. You need to fresh-press the patty, mustard it and get it onto the grill.
It’s worth the effort, but it is effort.
Or you can pay In-N-Out to do it for you and ask for Animal Style.
And about that spread: if you’ve never had it, think of something a little like Thousand Island dressing. It’s the same general idea as McDonald’s having its own special sauce—there’s a resemblance to Thousand Island, but ultimately it’s In-N-Out’s own spread, not Thousand Island dressing.
The Animal Style fries are a different matter—and there is a price difference. They were about $2.16 more than the regular fries. The regular fries get covered with melted cheese, grilled onions and that same In-N-Out spread.
And then they hand you a fork.
Trust me. The fork is needed.
It took me longer to eat this meal than the previous one because this one is worth savoring, and you can’t exactly pick up the fries and eat them normally. They’re slathered in all that stuff. Very tasty. Quite rich.
The burger itself was excellent. That is definitely how I’m ordering it every time I go in there from now on. It costs the same as the regular version, and I’m giving the Animal Style Double-Double a 10+. It adds enough flavor that I don’t need bacon. I don’t need mushrooms. I don’t need anything else piled onto it.
It’s great the way it is.
And I was right about the chocolate shake. It wasn’t too sweet. In fact, it was quite good. I suppose I could try vanilla next time, but I suspect it would be super sweet, so…no. I’ll stick with chocolate or get a soda.
I was full when I left, and the entire meal was less than $13.
I am not trying to say that one restaurant is better than every other restaurant. But In-N-Out is, by far, the least expensive burger place I’ve eaten at in the Portland area. That is objectively true.
Don’t troll me on it.
I also took some surreptitious pictures while I was there. You can see those great big safety pins hanging from the employees’ belts, you can see the crowdedness, and you can even see just the general vibe of the place.
Had to get a shot of the safety pins! Then, after I finished eating, I went back to the counter and asked, “How can I buy one of those shirts?”
She told me I didn’t have to get back in line. Since I was only buying a shirt, I could just go to the next open register.
So I did.
I bought the shirt.
It was only $20, and it’s worth it because it’s a cool-looking shirt.
It’s got a Corvette on it.
What’s not cool about a Corvette?
So I returned home and modeled my new shirt, fresh after a shower.
Look ma, stubble… and a new shirt. 
Ok, I’m no influencer, I’m not trying to be. How do they do this? No, I don’t look like an influencer.
I’m not trying to be an influencer.
I’m just telling you what I saw, what I ate and what I really enjoyed.
And there will be a next time.
I won’t claim these are the best burgers ever. I will claim that they are very good and very much worth the price I paid. I’ll be back up there. I might go to a movie early enough that I can have dinner beforehand. I might go to an early enough movie that I can grab a burger on the way home.
Either way, In-N-Out is now going to be part of my plans whenever I’m up in that section of Beaverton.
Next time?
Animal Style Double-Double: definitely.
Animal Style fries: maybe.
Chocolate shake: probably.
Clearly, a good decision -
Practical Magic 2 — A Review
Practical Magic 2 is better than its first movie. A sequel superior to the original after 28 years is certainly not something you can take for granted, because some sequels made decades later are absolute travesties. This one had an advantage, though. It had a solid source book to work from, and it seems to have followed that book much more closely. The first Practical Magic treated its source novel more like an outline than an explicit source, which turns out to be important because some of the things that seem like continuity problems in this movie really originated with changes made by the first one.
I recently rewatched the original Practical Magic specifically to make sure I was ready for this movie, and just days after watching it, I literally forgot nearly everything I had just watched. While it’s a charming movie, it’s not terribly memorable. I actually had to look up bullet points from it just to make sure I knew what was going on.
One thing I did not know going into Practical Magic 2 is that this isn’t simply Hollywood resurrecting a 28-year-old movie. Both movies are based on books by Alice Hoffman. The original Practical Magic was based on her 1995 novel, and Hoffman eventually wrote four books about the Owens family. Books two and three are prequels, while the fourth, The Book of Magic, continues the story and is what this movie is based on. So going directly from books one to four for the two contemporary movies actually makes a surprising amount of sense.
I have not read these books, so let me make that perfectly clear. I’m relying on summaries of them, not pretending I know the source material firsthand. But from those summaries, the books themselves seem to flow pretty logically. The first book does not definitively say that the Owens family curse has been broken, while the fourth deals with finally breaking it. The first movie is where the problem came in because it gave us more of a Hollywood ending where the curse was apparently over. So Practical Magic 2 has to walk that back to get itself onto the storyline of the fourth book. That makes considerably more sense to me than sequel writers simply deciding, “Nope, the curse is back.”
All the original witches are here: Sandra Bullock as Sally, Nicole Kidman as Gillian, Dianne Wiest as Jet and Stockard Channing as Franny. Obviously they had to use different actresses for Sally’s little girls because they’re not little girls anymore. Kylie is now played by Joey King and Antonia by Maisie Williams, and if the two daughters aren’t exactly clones of Sally and Gillian, they’re certainly their spiritual successors. One has the dark hair, one has the red hair, and you can pretty much see what they’re doing.
Not long after the first movie, Sally’s new husband Gary—the man she had basically made impossible to find when she was a little girl—dies, and Sally swears off magic. We know it happens fairly soon afterward because the flashback still shows Kylie and Antonia as little girls. Sally casts a spell that not only prevents her from using magic herself, but also seems intended to suppress her daughters’ memories of the magic they have already seen. They’re standing right there while she’s doing the spell, and they’re certainly old enough to remember what has been happening around them. So Sally isn’t merely refusing to tell her daughters about their magic and the family curse; she is actively trying to erase magic from their lives. The spell is effective in one sense, because the girls grow up without knowing what they are, but ultimately it doesn’t work. Magic—and the curse—finds them anyway.
Kylie has a boyfriend, Gideon, and she has trouble telling him that she loves him. This isn’t because she knows anything about the Owens curse, because Sally has made sure she doesn’t. Kylie finally does tell Gideon she loves him and, almost immediately, just like Sally’s first husband in the first movie, he gets hit by a car. He doesn’t die, but he does end up in a coma, and there’s your inciting incident. Kylie has just discovered in probably the worst possible way that the family history her mother has been hiding from her is very real.
There is an entirely poorly written aspect involving a promise that was made and is then explicitly broken, followed by a child saying she’ll never trust her mother again. It becomes a whole thing, and I think it could have been much better written. The actresses manage to carry it off, but they’re doing more work than the writing is at that point.
Kylie now has to rescue Gideon while simultaneously discovering that she is a witch. She finds a book that essentially has the magical equivalent of a chapter titled “How to Remove the Curse,” and that sends her off to England trying to find some way to break it and save him, even though she has no real idea what she is going to find once she gets there. Tom Lockland is also manipulating her from afar, magically, and this is where the movie loses me a little bit. This guy wants to steal Kylie’s magic because he doesn’t have magic, but he is somehow using magic to manipulate her into coming to him so he can steal the magic he doesn’t have. I don’t know how that works. The movie pretty much waves its hands at that one, and you just have to go with it.
There is a little hand-waving around the money involved, too. Kylie is a college student who can apparently afford to suddenly fly to England, and then everybody else starts following her over there. Sally runs a library. I don’t really know librarians to be that rich, but okay. Maybe there’s some generational Owens wealth they just don’t proclaim. I’ve never been one of those people who can just decide, “My life sucks. I’m going to Europe,” so maybe spontaneous international travel is cheaper and easier than I think it is.
The more I thought about this story, though, the more I realized that Tom isn’t really the bad guy who interests me. He’s the conventional bad guy, but the real bad guy in this entire story—in fact, I’m going to argue the real bad guy in both movies—is Maria Owens. Maria is the ancestor who got her heart broken and cast a spell so that she would never suffer from love again, and that spell became the Owens family curse.
Think about what that actually did to this family. Sally loses two loves of her life, then closes herself off from magic, closes herself off from her daughters and even closes herself off from Gillian. The relationship between those sisters was practically the heart of the first movie, and now Sally has pushed Gillian away along with everything else connected to magic. Gillian goes almost completely in the other direction. She has become the person who only loves them and leaves them. She pretends she has this wonderfully full life, but it’s actually a pretty empty one because she never stays around long enough to really love anybody.
The movie never explicitly addresses that, but it does something much more interesting with Kylie, who is essentially Gillian’s analog in the next generation. Kylie actually gets advice on how to love without really loving, basically how to have the relationship without making herself vulnerable to the curse, and she completely rejects it. She truly loves Gideon, says so, and then goes through all of this because she refuses to accept that loving somebody means eventually having to run away from them.
So generations of Owens women have spent their lives either hiding from love, running away from it, pushing away the people they love or watching those people die, all because one ancestor got her heart broken and decided to solve the problem magically. Maria Owens started this whole mess. Tom may be the guy doing conventionally bad-guy things in this particular movie, but Maria has been screwing over this family for generations.
There is also Ian Wright, who gets to play the part of “Is he a bad guy or is he not a bad guy?” and I think that is handled quite well, although he is considerably more forgiving than I would be. Belladonna gets used again, and this time Gillian evidently gets the dose right because he doesn’t die. If Ian knows these sisters as well as he is supposed to, I would expect at least a little lingering resentment over the fact that they just tried to kill him, but he pretty much lets that go.
And while I’m complaining about things that have very little to do with whether this is a good movie, I’m going to argue against women wearing combat boots. It’s just not an attractive look, and you cannot argue that they’re comfortable because I wore combat boots for roughly a decade of my life and can tell you with no reservation that they’re not comfortable. They’re utilitarian and they’re fine, but if you want to walk a dozen miles in them, you’re going to have blisters. So a girl wearing combat boots because they’re supposedly comfortable does not make logical sense to me. They look ugly. They are ugly. Get over it.
All that being said about Maria, the more conventional bad guy is dealt with and the curse is finally ended in a very satisfying yet heart-wrenching way. Yeah, that’s a spoiler, but you know it’s going to end well. I’m not telling you how, and the how is the important part.
That’s also probably the biggest difference between Practical Magic and Practical Magic 2: this one made me actually care about the characters. I had watched the original only days earlier and had already forgotten huge pieces of it. This movie has better characterization, a stronger plot and a better-organized story, and even when it gets a little hand-wavy about its magical logic, it works. Maybe following The Book of Magic more closely gave the filmmakers a stronger foundation to build on. Whatever the reason, Practical Magic 2 is simply a better movie than Practical Magic, and I’m giving it 3½ out of 5 stars.
★★★½ out of ★★★★★
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Runner — A Movie Review
Runner is one of those movies where you immediately wonder if such a position actually exists in the real world. I mean, you’d think maybe so, but it’s like a super-temp courier job where you speak directly with a dispatcher only through the phone, and then you go and deliver a package, talk to a client, help them unclog a drain—whatever it is.
It seems super unlikely, but what the heck? It’s a fun movie, so you go with it. They carry it off well enough that I will let that question go.
Runner stars Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson. It’s sort of a buddy comedy, but not really. They learn from one another. They interact with one another. There are some tears to be shed. It doesn’t feel entirely manipulative, but that brings me to another aspect of this movie.
If this movie had been made in, say, 1980, it would be fun. It would be explosive, and there would not be any backstory to speak of.
Look at the Dirty Harry movies. We do not care about Dirty Harry’s kids or wife or anything else like that. He simply says punks are bad. I’m going to make all punks pay for their being punks. You know his motivations. You don’t care whether his wife left him.
Runner cares a lot about Hank’s backstory.
Alan Ritchson plays Hank Malone, a former alcoholic and former Navy SEAL. He’s an American operating in Australia, and the reason he’s in Australia is because his ex-wife is Australian.
Okay, fine. Lots of backstory. You get to know his motivations. You get to know all this squishy emotional whatever that makes him tick.
Oh, and let’s not forget: he has basically sworn off violence, of course.
That all being said, it’s a very fun movie.
The action sequences are well-made and, on some occasions, entirely funny, if not exactly obeying the laws of physics. There is a scene in which another car takes off the front of Hank’s car. It peels it off like a hinge. I am fairly certain that the sort of force required to do that would cause such massive injuries that no one would survive, but in this case it’s just kind of funny.
A lot of wit is employed, and Ritchson carries off the role very well.
Owen Wilson plays Ben Bishop. He’s not quite the emotional heart of the movie, but he is the chatterbox who at first annoys and then charms Hank.
Ben is accompanying a donor liver that needs to be delivered from an airport to Gold Coast Children’s Hospital. Hank gets his marching orders from his handler, Iggy, whom we never really see except for one slightly tragic moment. Along the way, Hank has some interesting interactions with a very wealthy ex-couple and a fancy parakeet.
He also meets with his ex-wife, her current husband and their new baby. There is an element of tragedy in the backstory regarding that relationship. It’s all explained fairly well.
I just find it somewhat unnecessary.
This is an action flick and a minor buddy comedy. I don’t care about the backstory, just like I didn’t care when Riggs’s backstory started causing him PTSD in Lethal Weapon. It was good without it, but whatever. People demanded more depth to characters, and I guess this is the answer to it.
There is one factual issue that I have problems with: the organ in question is a liver.
Although I am not a medical doctor, I know that livers are pretty famous because they regenerate, and you only need a lobe or section of a liver for transplantation. So if this liver really is from a blood type this rare, my immediate thought was: why not split it and give part to each recipient?
Now, whether that would actually work with this particular liver and these particular patients is another question entirely. And, of course, one side of this little disagreement is a criminal organization and the other is the legitimate recipient. They’re not exactly going to sit down together and successfully negotiate a liver-sharing agreement.
So we’re going to have to let that go.
The legitimate recipient is a little girl, Ellie Baker, played by Scarlett Crabtree, and she is adorable. I think Crabtree did what she could with the part. They wrote her a little too childish for me, honestly, but she was used as a spice, not a main dish, so it went down fine.
Her mother, Kate, played by Leila George, is absolutely, absolutely great.
She plays the part of a desperate mother perfectly, including the well-expressed version of a mother doing anything to protect what she needs to protect without suddenly becoming Superwoman. She uses her wits. She tries to use her strength. It’s not going to work every time, but she thinks through the problem and accomplishes her goal.
The main antagonist is Damián Zaldívar, played by Rodrigo Santoro, and he is a perfectly menacing bad guy. They throw in backstory for him that makes him really pathetic. You know, he’s a mama’s boy. His mama is stronger than he is, and Hank manages to turn that around toward the end to good effect.
So, like I said, they add a lot of backstory, but they make use of it. It’s not just backstory for backstory’s sake.
And despite my complaints about how much emotional baggage this action movie has to haul along with it, it isn’t overwritten. I enjoyed Runner quite a lot.
My final thought is that this movie is not going to pull its punches. Not everyone is going to survive.
There’s no sequel being built in simply by making sure all the main stars are still alive at the end, and I find that quite refreshing. Sad for the actors, of course, but it gives me hope that this movie is just going to be allowed to stand on its own, without somebody immediately clamoring for a sequel or retaining the IP so that 15 years from now we can all look forward to Runner 17.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Fall 2: Deadpoint — A Movie Review
Better Than Its Predecessor, but Still Falling Short
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Fall 2: Deadpoint is better than its predecessor, but it still has problems with characterization.
When I sat down to watch the movie, one of the first things I saw was the BuzzFeed Studios logo. If you know anything about BuzzFeed, you know they’re all about lists: “The Top 10 Most Dangerous Things to Do in Your Bathroom,” or something like that. Knowing that this was one of the studios behind the film braced me not to expect very much.
It cleared that very low bar, and I enjoyed myself. I’m not going to give it a particularly high rating, though, because the characters are only barely three-dimensional.
The movie opens in the middle of a rainstorm, apparently on the side of a mountain. One man, held at gunpoint by another, is prodded forward along a very rickety-looking series of planks. Then an earthquake strikes, and both men fall to their deaths.
From there, the movie cuts to a young woman named Jax. She turns out to be the younger sister of Shiloh Hunter, the woman who died in the first movie and used the social-media handle “Danger D.” Jax has received her sister’s Ford Bronco from the police and is trying to figure out what to do with it. With her is Luce, who was apparently one of Shiloh’s friends from college.
From this exchange, we learn that Jax is considerably more timid than her sister—and that there is evidently a story behind their strained relationship.
Luce finds a journal that is essentially Shiloh’s bucket list. Looking through it, they discover that Shiloh completed only about half of the entries. Luce asks whether she can photograph the unfinished pages, but after giving her permission, Jax tells her to keep the entire book. She doesn’t want it.
Once they go inside the house, Luce gives it back and suggests that Jax complete the challenges Shiloh never got around to. She argues that doing so might help Jax feel closer to her sister. Jax’s response is basically, “Why would I want that? She was a better friend to Becky than she was a sister to me.”
We then see a flashback in which a young Jax is hanging from what I think is some sort of monkey-bar apparatus, repeatedly trying to get her older sister’s attention. Shiloh, however, is too busy talking with Becky to pay any attention to her. From that brief little scene, we’re apparently supposed to go, “Oh, I get it now.”
I will tell you that this moment is telegraphed so heavily that you just know it will become important later—and you would be right.
After some hemming and hawing, Luce manages to prod the timid Jax into attempting the next item on Shiloh’s list: the infamous plank walk of Mount Kwan in Thailand
Evidently, if you reach the end and “meet the dragon,” it will devour all your fear. I don’t know whether the mountain or the trail exists in real life, but the movie presents them as real, and that’s good enough for me.
Jax and Luce travel to Thailand, where a secret phrase written in Shiloh’s journal helps them identify the right man to smuggle them onto the mountain. The trail is closed, and climbing it is illegal.
They also arrive during the rainy season, so climbing the mountain isn’t merely illegal—it is contraindicated by basic common sense. Lots of rain means lots of slippery surfaces. You go onto a mountain with lots of slippery surfaces, you fall down.
Luce, however, is far too invested in boosting Jax’s spirits to let a little thing like mortal danger stop them. The guide warns them that smuggling them onto the mountain will cost a great deal of money, but apparently Luce is loaded, so off they go.
Evidently, Shiloh compiled her list only after doing a considerable amount of research. Jax and Luce, meanwhile, simply take advantage of that research without bothering to investigate the climb for themselves.
They make their way up the mountain and out along its increasingly precarious planks. Then, of course, disaster strikes. Jax and Luce become stranded on a couple of isolated sections of plank with no apparent way down. That is the central premise of the movie.
It is handled better than the predicament in the first film, simply because everything feels more real. This seems like something people might actually attempt. The danger feels genuine, and the views are terrific.
The movie also relies heavily on flashbacks, not just the monkey-bar scene. Each one is triggered by something Jax notices in her surroundings, although I wouldn’t call the transitions natural. The clunkiest example has a ceiling fan prompting her to remember a skydiving experience with Shiloh. Yes, a ceiling fan reminds her of skydiving.
The flashbacks are clearly intended to give the sisters’ relationship more depth, but they never quite manage it.
There are also some identity-related shenanigans. Luce may not be who you think she is, the guide may be up to something nefarious, and eventually we get the obligatory final fight for survival.
Shiloh—or, rather, Virginia Gardner, the actress who plays her—makes several appearances in flashbacks throughout the movie. Becky also appears, first in a photograph and then in person as she checks her old-fashioned, rounded-top mailbox. Inside, she finds an invitation to celebrate Shiloh’s life.
That makes it fairly obvious that we’re getting a third movie. There is nothing after the credits, however.
I’m giving Fall 2: Deadpoint a straight-down-the-middle 2½ stars. You will probably be entertained, but the movie is also easily forgotten.
Cast
- Harriet Slater as Jax Hunter
- Arsema Thomas as Luce
- Tom Brittney as the mountain guide
- Virginia Gardner as Shiloh Hunter
- Grace Caroline Currey as Becky Connor
- Juju Journey Brener as Teen Jax
- Evie Mann as Young Jax
- London Nuovo as Young Becky
- Einar Haraldsson as Joe
- Andrey Kasushkin as the smuggler
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Coyote vs. Acme Review
Rating: ★★★☆☆
I went to see Coyote vs. Acme today. It was OK.
I’m not going to give it a particularly high rating, but I’m not going to give it a low one either. We’re going straight down the middle with three stars.
Before discussing the movie itself, we probably need to discuss how we are able to watch it at all.
Warner Bros. Discovery completed Coyote vs. Acme and then shelved it, reportedly planning to write down approximately $30 million of its roughly $70–72 million production cost. That did not mean the government handed Warner $30 million or purchased the movie. It meant Warner could report $30 million as a business loss, reducing the amount of its income subject to tax.
Nor was the write-down necessarily a permanent death sentence. If Warner later recovered money from the movie, it would have to report that transaction and adjust its taxes accordingly. That is essentially what happened when Ketchup Entertainment purchased the completed film for a reported $50 million. Warner recovered about $50 million of the $70–72 million it had spent, ultimately leaving it with a loss of roughly $20–22 million. Any earlier tax treatment could then be balanced against the newly recovered value.
Ketchup did not have to reconstruct an abandoned production. Coyote vs. Acme was already complete. It needed a distributor willing to buy, market and release it.
That gives me at least a little hope that Batgirl might someday escape the same vault. Warner canceled that approximately $90 million movie in 2022 under broadly similar circumstances, but there is an important difference: Batgirl was not finished. Principal photography had wrapped, but it still required effects work, editing and possibly additional filming. Any company attempting the same rescue would therefore need more than distribution rights. It would need access to the production materials, permission to complete a movie using Warner’s DC characters and agreements with whichever original filmmakers, actors and effects artists were still available.
I doubt that rescue will happen. Coyote vs. Acme was already finished, received encouraging test-screening reactions and still required an extraordinary campaign to reach theaters. Batgirl would require considerably more work, and reports about its test screenings were much less encouraging.
Still, the release of this movie proves that a tax write-down does not make a film legally unreleasable forever. The money can be reported and the accounting adjusted if someone eventually makes an offer worth accepting.
I’m not going to argue over whether Coyote vs. Acme deserved to be released or should have remained on the shelf. It’s out there now, and arguing that it should have stayed buried would just seem mean-spirited.
The movie is based on Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker humor piece “Coyote v. Acme.” Written as an attorney’s opening statement in a product-liability lawsuit, it argues that Acme should compensate Wile E. Coyote for the innumerable injuries caused by its defective products and inadequate warnings. It is an excellent premise for a movie. (Readers without a New Yorker subscription can read the authorized reprint published by the Texas Bar Journal.)
Calling the movie “based on” Ian Frazier’s article is generous. It borrows the title and the central idea of Wile E. Coyote filing a product-liability lawsuit against Acme, but very little else could transfer because the original is not really a story. It is a mock opening statement whose humor comes from describing cartoon catastrophes in perfectly straight legal language. The movie had to invent nearly everything required to turn that joke into a feature—and that is where most of its problems began.
I will say that the resulting movie wasn’t particularly well written. There were plot holes you could drive a cartoon through. The judge, played by Luis Guzmán, was practically a cartoon himself, dismissing arguments whenever the story needed him to. The movie attempts to explain this early on by telling us that Acme had essentially written the laws, so of course those laws favored Acme.
The writers then prevented themselves from using the best part of their source material. Kevin Avery is introduced as a nearly incompetent lawyer who avoids court and settles everything as quickly as possible. That gives him room for an underdog character arc, but it also means he could never convincingly deliver the sharp, meticulously reasoned argument from Frazier’s original piece. A capable product-liability attorney presenting that opening statement might have provided the movie with a genuinely great courtroom scene. Instead, the screenplay makes its lawyer too ineffectual to translate its best piece of legal writing to the screen.
I recently read about how difficult it was for the British government to dismantle the East India Company during the nineteenth century. That company had accumulated so much power that it governed territory, collected taxes and prosecuted its own wars. By the early nineteenth century, its private army contained approximately 250,000 soldiers—larger than Britain’s own army at times—and it repeatedly defeated forces much larger than itself. Britain required legislation after legislation to strip away its powers before finally dissolving it.
The parallel with Acme is surprisingly strong. Acme is not merely a manufacturer defending itself against a product-liability lawsuit. It has accumulated enough political, economic and military power to function like a sovereign state. It writes the laws, influences the courts and ultimately makes war against Wile E. Coyote. That is what the story is really about.
If Acme genuinely possesses East India Company levels of power over both the human and cartoon worlds, defeating it should require more than one favorable court verdict. It should require dismantling an entire corporate government. The movie gestures toward that much more interesting idea, but never really develops it.
Will Forte plays Wile E. Coyote’s lawyer, Kevin Avery. The surname is an obvious nod to legendary animation director Tex Avery, but the reference goes further than that. His law firm is Avery, Jones & Maltese: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese, three giants of Warner Bros. animation. Jones and Maltese were the director-and-writer team most closely associated with creating Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the first place.
Kevin’s legal aide is his niece, Paige Avery, played by Lana Condor. She provides both the legal and moral center of the film, and Condor does a very good job with the role. The other two people working in the nearly bankrupt law office are Sal Maltese, played by Tone Bell, and Dottie Jones, played by Martha Kelly. They are two-dimensional at best—which is particularly unfortunate because they are both live-action.
That historical knowledge is one of the movie’s genuine pleasures. Even when its story doesn’t quite hold together, it was clearly made by people who know the cartoons and understand the history behind them.
I’m not going to say that the voice work is spot-on, but it comes pretty close. The mixture of live action and animation is less successful. It isn’t as smooth or convincing as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, although that remains an extraordinarily high standard nearly forty years later.
Will Forte does have exactly the right voice to sound like a cartoon character himself. I found that interesting once I noticed it. He can share a scene with an animated coyote without seeming as though he belongs to an entirely different movie.
Here Come the Spoilers
Kevin Avery ultimately loses the lawsuit, largely because the judge dismisses the case after another round of animated courtroom shenanigans. Then, through narrative magic, Avery and Wile E. are summoned to testify before Congress.
That may provide a bigger stage for the climax, but it does nothing to solve the problem established by the lawsuit. Congress is not another court. Even if a congressional committee ruled entirely in Wile E.’s favor, it could not award him damages. It could investigate Acme, expose its conduct, rewrite the laws or refer possible crimes for prosecution, but it could not simply order Acme to give Wile E. a million dollars.
That distinction matters because Avery, Jones & Maltese is out of money and preparing to close while Avery is in Washington. Winning the moral argument before Congress would not save the law firm or compensate its client.
Naturally, the hearing does not initially go their way either. Acme has written the laws governing its own conduct, including a particularly grotesque rule allowing cartoons to be tortured because they always recover and therefore supposedly suffer no permanent injury. Acme has not merely found loopholes in the law. It has constructed an entire legal system in which making war against cartoons is perfectly lawful.
But the movie does have a happy ending, and plenty of guest stars show up along the way. Most of your Warner Bros. cartoon favorites make at least an appearance.
One thing the movie happily keeps consistent is that Wile E. never speaks. He communicates entirely through his familiar signs.
The funny conceit is that he has only a limited collection of signs, yet he still manages to say quite a lot with them. Sometimes another character has to interpret what he means, but the movie never gives in and allows him to speak merely because dialogue would be easier.
His reunion with the Road Runner at the very end is somehow both unexpected and inevitable.
Stay through the credits, at least until the main credit scroll begins. Some amusing cardboard-style animated sequences play during the earlier portion.
Ultimately, Coyote vs. Acme is not a bad movie. It is an adequate movie built around a very good premise. If the screenplay had been given another two or three serious passes through a strong writers’ room, it might have become something genuinely good. Instead, it was completed as it was, nearly disappeared forever and has now been released as it is.
Three stars feels exactly right.
Principal Cast
- Will Forte — Kevin Avery
- Lana Condor — Paige Avery
- John Cena — Buddy Crane
- Tone Bell — Sal Maltese
- Martha Kelly — Dottie Jones
- P. J. Byrne — Bill Pellicano
- Luis Guzmán — the judge
- Eric Bauza — Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd
- Jeff Bergman — Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Yosemite Sam
- Bob Bergen — Tweety
- Fred Tatasciore — the Tasmanian Devil
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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma — A Movie Review
I ended up going to Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma during its second week. (Or, if I were to run the title unnecessarily through a thesaurus, as I do, Post-Adolescent Copulation and Demise at Bivouac Pestilential Effluvium.) The only showing available was after dark, which is probably appropriate for this type of movie. That, of course, led to some shenanigans getting home, but that’s not part of this review.
The movie starts with a writer-director, played by Hannah Einbinder, talking with her agent about an upcoming meeting with Billy, played by Gillian Anderson. Billy was the star of the very first Camp Miasma movie, but she never committed to any of the sequels. She did a few small acting roles in other movies afterward, but then basically retired to Camp Tivoli, the original camp where Camp Miasma was filmed. She has become something of a recluse, but she’s not the “get off my lawn” type of recluse. She welcomes people who come to visit her; she just doesn’t want anyone trying to drag her away from the life she has chosen.
Meanwhile, the Camp Miasma movies continued without her. The first one was great. The second one was great. Then they started going downhill. Different writers came in, different people became involved in the production, there were delays, production problems and studio notes, and somehow they eventually ended up with something like 15 movies. They went everywhere: space, a ship, underground, all sorts of increasingly crazy variations. It’s basically an analog of the Friday the 13th franchise, particularly the increasingly ridiculous Jason sequels, where eventually the franchise itself became more important than whatever sensible reason there might be to make another movie.
The two leads also bring very different kinds of acting to the movie. Gillian Anderson is old school, and she is terrific. She’s the kind of actor who can disappear into a role until the character becomes more important than the actress playing her. Billy is a Southern belle, a faded glory, and I completely buy her as that person. Hannah Einbinder is a different type of performer. She brings much more of her own established persona into the character. Rather than disappearing into the writer-director, she feels like exactly the sort of person you would cast because her particular personality fits this particular role. And it does. She is absolutely the right person for this character.
At one point, though, another movie temporarily jumped into my head: Scream. Scream did a wonderful job of defining the rules of the traditional slasher movie while simultaneously making fun of them. You can’t be the single woman alone at home. You can’t have sex. You can’t be the quirky couple. These people are going to die. There is a scene in Camp Miasma showing Billy as a young woman, played by Amanda Fix, and she is about to have sex for the first time. Immediately, Scream started shouting inside my head: Oh, you’re going to die.
Except, of course, I already knew she wasn’t going to die. I had already met Billy decades later, played by Gillian Anderson. So Scream jumped back out of my head, and I kept watching. That may have affected how strongly some of what Camp Miasma was doing worked for me. Horror movies have been examining, violating and making fun of their own rules for a long time now. Simply turning one of those rules upside down doesn’t automatically surprise me anymore.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is very much another attempt to take horror from a different perspective and turn the genre on its head by introducing a new reality. At first, I didn’t really understand what it was doing. As the movie went along, though, it taught me how to watch it. Once I understood the rules it was operating under, I got it. I just didn’t particularly appreciate it.
I won’t give away the conceit of the movie because not everything deserves to be spoiled, even a week after release. I will say that the movie has a very particular twist on what reality is, and I think they carry it off. That’s important. My problem isn’t that the idea doesn’t work or that the movie cheats in order to make it work. Once you understand what it’s doing, it follows through. I just didn’t care for the idea very much. I didn’t walk out of the theater thinking, “Well, that was an interesting conceit.” Instead, my reaction was basically, “Okay. They carried it off. Next.”
But I did enjoy the movie. It didn’t give me any form of nightmare, and I don’t have any particular need to discuss it endlessly afterward. It was entertaining, Gillian Anderson was terrific, the idea worked on its own terms, and I had a good time watching it. Sometimes that’s enough.
★★★½☆ — 3½ out of 5 stars
- Jane Schoenbrun — Writer/Director
- Gillian Anderson — Billy
- Amanda Fix — Young Billy
- Hannah Einbinder — Kris, the writer-director
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day — A Movie Review
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
I’ve seen this movie three times. I could have written this review after the first viewing. I didn’t. I could have written it after the second. I didn’t. It has been three weeks now, so I think it is safe to say that this review is going to contain spoilers. It has been three weeks, after all. Even Marvel won’t come after me now.
A Disclaimer
I’m not a professional reviewer—and by that, I just mean I don’t get paid for it—but I feel I’m a competent one. It was hard for me to write this review after the first viewing, or even the second, simply because I have such true affection for the subject matter.
I grew up with Spider-Man. I collected the comics throughout the ’80s and ’90s, and even into the 2000s, before they eventually dropped out of my consciousness. But I still have very fond memories of the Peter Parker I loved. While watching this movie, I kept saying things to myself such as, “That is my Peter. That’s exactly how I could imagine him.”
Then came the third viewing. That happened not just because I wanted to make sure I got a quote right, but because Regal was offering a lovely poster—which I now have hanging right here:
Slightly askew, figures I like this character, and I like the writers’ take on him. The studio may have made a few missteps with previous incarnations—probably with very different writers, but still under the same studio. Spider-Man 3 with Tobey Maguire comes to mind. It was very hard to remain affectionate toward that character when he went emo. That simply was not the same Peter Parker. Fortunately, he was redeemed in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
You could tell Andrew Garfield loved making his two movies, but they were not as well received as the others, and I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I loved them. Still, his Peter was not quite the super-chirpy, super-quippy guy I remembered, and neither was Maguire’s.
Reviews of this movie have described Tom Holland’s Peter as a very sad person—a down-in-the-dumps kind of fellow. The truth is, I didn’t initially see him that way. I think that is part and parcel of how I view Spider-Man. He still quipped. He still made jokes. He made fun of the awful situation he was in at every opportunity. For me, that is Spider-Man. That is the Peter Parker I grew up with: No matter what was going on in his life, he would still wisecrack his way through it.
That is how this movie truly succeeds. You can see him as sad. You can see him as jealous. You can see him as angry, and you can see him as truly depressed. Yet he is still unmistakably Peter Parker. That is a success right off the top.
Peter Parker, Alone
The movie opens with Peter working on his suit using a 3-D printer—and, frankly, I would love to own that thing. It prints fabric. It prints circuits. It performs fine soldering. It is a pretty awesome machine.
The printer is operated by an AI named Eve, and she is not merely a large language model. She appears to be a true artificial intelligence. Eve is also integrated into Peter’s suit, primarily through the eyepieces, although the circuitry is evidently diffused throughout the entire costume.
Most importantly, Peter makes the suit himself. He is no longer dependent upon Tony Stark.
But I do wonder how he affords all of this. The movie hand-waves that question completely. The equipment in his upstairs apartment would easily have cost a hundred thousand dollars—probably much more. There is no evidence that Peter has any kind of paying job. He calls himself a volunteer for the police, but that does not pay for an attic laboratory.
Perhaps he sells one-off inventions. Maybe he makes deliveries for DoorDash; Spider-Man could certainly deliver an order quickly, although the food might be a little jumbled by the time it arrived. That probably wouldn’t be workable.
My best guess is that Tony Stark established a trust fund for Peter before he died. Otherwise, there is simply no way a barely employed Spider-Man could afford all that equipment.
Yet we repeatedly see him at the local bodega buying flowers. I think the movie takes place over perhaps three days, and he buys flowers three or four times—although he eventually gives one bouquet away. We’ll get to that.
I don’t know whether you have ever tried to buy flowers from a bodega or a 7-Eleven-type store, but they are not cheap. The first time I tried buying flowers from that kind of shop, they cost about $35. If Peter is buying a bouquet every day, he is spending roughly $1,000 a month just to put flowers on his aunt’s grave.
Peter is living alone and isolating himself almost completely. It has been about four years since the events of No Way Home. He follows Ned Leeds on Instagram under the name @TheGratefulNed42, and Ned posts regularly. One post says they are graduating next month, which fits with four years at MIT.
Ned is still very close to MJ, so Peter often sees her in the background of Ned’s videos. Naturally, that makes him sad. You can see a little moroseness on his face—but then the movie immediately shifts to a cheerful Peter capturing a group of thugs, stringing them up and being both quippy and funny about it.
Detective DeWolff, Peter’s contact within the police department, smiles happily when she sees the criminals webbed together and hanging from a lamppost. The expression on her face is pure: “What a rascal. He did it again. Thanks.”
Peter has DeWolff’s phone number, and she presumably has some anonymous number through which she can reach him. But he knows nothing about her personal life. He never asks her questions. She has never seen his face, and he never answers her questions about himself. The movie keeps piling up evidence of his isolation, and it is supposedly that isolation that triggers the physical change everyone else dreads—and Peter dreads most of all.
The Cold Open, the Tank and Director Metzger
The movie’s cold open shows Spider-Man capturing a collection of criminals, including Tombstone, The Scorpion, and the Hand (in their striking red outfits). It also gives us an early action montage full of the Peter Parker personality I love.
The first major set piece involves a tank rolling through the streets toward the Department of Damage Control. This is also Peter’s first interaction in the movie with the Punisher. Frank wants to handle everything lethally, and Spider-Man keeps preventing him from doing so. Their conflict is quite comical.
They repeatedly mention that Spider-Man once saved the Punisher’s life on Staten Island. It did not happen in any previous movie; it was an off-screen incident created for this one. Peter insists he saved Frank from a drug dealer, while Frank disputes his version of events. That disagreement becomes a running joke.
The tank is extremely difficult to stop. Peter does not stop it until it has broken through Damage Control’s outer gates and reached the building. He rips open the hatch and finds an elderly woman inside. She turns out to be a janitor and has no idea how she got there.
At this point, the antagonist is hopping from one body to another, and there is a distinct physicality whenever the transfer occurs. Sometimes a person’s head merely nods. Sometimes the abandoned body collapses like a puppet whose strings have been cut. In one instance, a possessed person thrusts his arm toward someone else, slumps over, and then the other person’s posture subtly changes.
The movie may intend for us to believe Spider-Man’s enhanced senses allow him to detect these transfers. Frankly, though, I simply saw the subtle movements of each affected person. Later, the movie says Peter’s transformation is interfering with his ability to sense the entity inside its host. That is where I wonder whether communication broke down somewhere between the writers and the director. I could identify the possessed person merely by watching the performers’ physical movements, and I do not have superpowers.
After the tank attack, Peter meets William Metzger, the director of Damage Control. Metzger initially appears helpful and friendly, and the two discuss how Spider-Man and Damage Control might help each other.
When Peter arrives for the appointment, there is a funny security scene. He is subjected to a full-body scan, and security tells him he must remove his mask. Metzger intervenes and makes it clear that Spider-Man is absolutely not going to do that.
As they walk down the hallway, Peter sees members of the Hand. Metzger explains that, after Spider-Man brought them in, Damage Control discovered they were essentially just kids who lacked leadership. Now, somehow, they have become an integral part of the facility’s security team. Peter is understandably astounded.
He also sees a technician examining the Shocker’s gauntlets. Peter taps on the glass and says, “Be careful with those.” It is an obvious and unnecessary line, but it is also completely consistent with Peter’s personality, so I cannot really hate it.
Peter and Metzger then have this exchange:
Metzger: “We’re on our heels right now. God forbid, if it were to get in here and find whatever it is that it’s looking for, the consequences could be… unimaginable.”
Spider-Man: “Well, let me guess: Is whatever it’s looking for in that giant vault?”
Metzger: “There are some things, because of the nature of my job, I cannot tell you. But I believe you are our best defense against this. You’re the only one who can sense it. You’re the only one who’s immune to it. I’m counting on you to defeat it.”
Spider-Man: “That’s a pretty good speech, Director. I’ll do everything that I can. Oh, by the way, what do you know about ‘MacGuffin’?”
Metzger: “MacGuffin? I don’t know. Where did you hear that term?”
Spider-Man: “It’s just, you know, the nature of being a superhero… there are some things I just can’t tell ya. Anyway, I’ll see you later. You guys are doing great. Keep it up.”The entire exchange hit me particularly hard because I spent almost all of my post-adolescence in the Army with a security clearance. That was an extremely common sentiment among people working within different compartments:
“I can’t tell you that unless you already know it.”
“I can’t tell you that because of my job.”
“You’re not cleared for that.”
I heard Spider-Man turn that language back on Metzger, and I laughed so loudly that the people around me probably thought I was a little crazy. But that joke spoke directly to me.
The Party and the First Real Crack
During one of Peter’s visits to the bodega, he sees Ned come in to purchase two mini-kegs. As a side note, I am old enough that I do not remember mini-kegs being a thing. I remember full-sized kegs, which are massive and hold about fifteen and a half gallons of beer, and pony kegs, which were roughly half that size. These shiny chrome mini-kegs can be carried in one hand. I don’t drink beer, so I had no idea they existed or that you could simply pick one up. That was a cool detail.
Ned also buys a fictional energy drink called SharkFire because, evidently, that is what everyone at MIT uses to survive final exams. He tells the clerk that the stuff will absolutely kill him and instructs him never to sell it to him again—except for the two cans he is buying right now. After those, never again.
Peter follows Ned home and discovers that Ned and MJ are holding a housewarming party. Since Peter saw the mini-kegs, he could reasonably infer that a party was happening. I don’t think he was creeping so much as seizing an unexpected opportunity.
Peter goes upstairs, encounters MJ and calls himself “Maynard,” which is very funny. He is still carrying the flowers he bought for May’s grave, but he gives them to MJ as a “housewarming gift.” She replies, “Most people bring beer or chips.” And I think she’s charmed, but maybe not. Then he sees another man kiss MJ—and, to be technically accurate, sees MJ kiss him back. That breaks Peter’s heart.
The man is played by Eman Esfandi and is credited simply as “the Boyfriend.” Some open-caption screenings reportedly identify him as Paul, leading viewers to interpret him as a reference to Paul Rabin, MJ’s controversial romantic partner from the comics. The movie itself never gives us enough information to confirm that he is meant to be the same character.
This may be the first point at which I genuinely begin to see the sadness everyone else keeps describing in Peter—not profoundly sad, perhaps, but unmistakably a little sad.
The Metamorphosis That Wasn’t
I remember a storyline in which Peter became Man-Spider. He sprouted four additional limbs—not the mechanical appendages used by the Superior Spider-Man when Doctor Octopus controlled Peter’s body, but actual hairy, spiderlike limbs. It was genuinely grotesque and Gothic.
That is honestly what I expected here, particularly because the characters keep talking about Peter’s metamorphosis. Even the Regal poster I scanned and placed in this article suggests that imagery. The shapes behind him look somewhat like flowing red sashes, but you can absolutely interpret them as four additional legs emerging from his back. I am certain the movie was marketed with that possibility in mind.
But it never happens. Peter does not grow extra legs. His eyes turn black, his senses become extraordinarily sensitive, and he develops organic webbing much like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man—but the transformation goes no further.
The movie gets some comedy out of the webbing. Peter has to give himself a psychological pep talk: “Okay, Peter 2 has organic webs. He’s cool. I have organic webs, so I’m cool.” Then he winces as some of the webbing comes out. If the webbing is not deliberately made to resemble a male bodily fluid in those moments, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
How Eve determines that Peter’s senses are being enhanced and overloaded is slightly hand-wavy. Perhaps she monitors his hormone levels and detects the stress response. Blood pressure rises, heart rate accelerates? Maybe I just talked myself into an explanation.
Peter’s organic webbing is not entirely compatible with his mechanical web-shooters. At first, he cannot activate it at all. Once he does, he cannot control it. His out-of-control powers even cause him to nearly kill a police officer, which terrifies him.
He ends up swinging across New York very inexpertly, firing strands in apparently random directions and somehow surviving long enough to fire another. The sequence reminded me enormously of trying to play a Spider-Man game on the PlayStation 3. That is exactly how I crossed New York: completely at random. His chaotic journey looked so much like my own gameplay that I am absolutely certain the director was going for that effect.
Peter also watches a video about spiders undergoing metamorphosis, reinforcing the expectation that he is about to sprout additional legs. The detail viewers really need to notice is not dynamic at all. It is simply an article bearing the headline, “Why Are Spiders’ Eyes Black?” That is the real clue, so watch for it.
Yelena, Bruce and the Inhibitor
Peter meets Yelena Belova, the new Black Widow, played by Florence Pugh. She is charming in the role and serves primarily as an adviser, helping Peter investigate the mystery and interpret clues. Her “office” is inside a sauna, and the movie gets considerable comedy out of that fact. Near the end, Detective DeWolff mentions having spent time in “her office,” producing a wonderful callback.
Yelena also says outright that Peter is “a sad boy” and terribly lonely. Again, the dialogue explicitly tells us he is sad. Perhaps it is my own personal failing that I do not see him that way. Peter is still maintaining the cheerful front, and I completely believe it. So let’s accept what the movie tells us: Peter must be sad.
Peter later consults Dr. Bruce Banner, who is teaching physics at Empire State University to an audience primarily interested in his Avengers extracurricular activities. Peter asks about the inhibitor Bruce uses to keep the Hulk at bay. The explanation involves mRNA, RNA strands and interfering with the process before something can be transcribed. I barely understood it—and I have actually studied some of this material.
Peter develops an inhibitor for himself to suppress the overexpression of his spider DNA. He then expands the concept into an essentially universal inhibitor. Bruce correctly points out how terrifying that could be. In theory, such a device could suppress selected genetic traits and make everyone conform to some monstrous ideal—making everyone Aryan, for example. It is an extremely dangerous idea.
There was reportedly a scene featuring Claire Temple from Daredevil, but it was removed. I suspect this is where she would have entered the story. She might have referred Peter to Matt Murdock—or perhaps Stick—for help adjusting to heightened senses. But that was a long process for Matt, and following it could have added another hour and a half to the movie. Cutting it probably made sense.
Jean Grey
During the first action sequence, Jean Grey attempts to take over Spider-Man’s consciousness and is roundly rejected. She cannot possess him. The experience confuses her as much as it confuses Peter, but it gives him his first clue about what is happening.
The telepathy is necessarily somewhat hand-wavy. Telepathy does not exist, so the writers can establish any rules they want. At least the rules remain reasonably consistent. They are aiming for verisimilitude, if not actual veracity.
Jean eventually discovers Peter’s apartment and finds the letter he wrote to MJ. That letter is practically fetishized throughout the movie. Peter recites it in voice-over at the beginning. He keeps it inside the coffee cup from the doughnut shop, takes it out to read it and returns it to the cup. Jean finds it there, reads it and learns both his identity and whom he loves.
Jean takes the letter with her. Sitting in the back seat of a car driven by someone she controls, she confronts Peter. He essentially surrenders and asks her only to leave him and MJ alone. As the car pulls away, Eve captures an image of Jean’s face. Facial-recognition tracking reveals her name, although much of her information has been scrubbed by Damage Control.
Eve also analyzes the body movements associated with Jean’s jumps and determines that her ability has a limited range. Peter exploits that limitation and believes he has saved MJ. Ultimately, he has not.
The movie does not explicitly explain why his plan fails, but the mechanics suggest an answer. Jean may be able to jump only between nearby hosts, but she can always disconnect, return to her own mind and begin again from her physical body. Peter isolates one node; Jean simply resets herself at the source. That evidently leads to one of the movie’s most tragic emotional moments.
Frank’s Boat and MJ’s Letter
Peter takes MJ to Frank’s “house,” although it appears to be a massive boat sitting in an enormous boneyard of abandoned vessels near the docks. The imagery is terrific, and Frank has installed some very funny traps.
There is excellent banter about whether Frank could possibly have all the necessary equipment: an antistatic mat, precision tools and various specialized items. Frank insists, “Of course I have those things,” and then MJ supplies the explanation. It is absolutely hilarious.
Peter attempts to solder the inhibitor chip aboard the boat, but the iron does not have a fine tip. He merely hovers it over the electronics and taps at them. I spent approximately eight months working in a soldering job, and he was not soldering. That scene did not pass the accuracy test for me.
MJ’s equally brilliant mind helps him solve a niggling problem with the inhibitor. But the clearest evidence of Peter’s sadness comes when she finds the letter.
Consider its journey: Jean took it from the coffee cup, gave it to the man driving her car, and he returned it to Peter. Peter has it on Frank’s boat and falls asleep reading it while working. He fails to secure it. MJ finds it and reads the entire thing.
She asks, “Did you want me to find this?”
Peter, you and I—and everyone else watching—know the answer is yes. Of course, he says no, and somehow makes the denial believable.
MJ tells Peter she remembers none of what the letter describes. She has absolutely no memory of him. She does not love him. She does not even know him.
That is when you can finally see the sadness on Peter’s face.
Hulk, Capture and Betrayal
Peter intends to use his “universal” inhibitor to stop Jean. A facial-recognition alert spots her at Damage Control’s Manhattan facility. He rushes there, leaving MJ in Frank’s care. But she essentially guilts Frank into going along—even though Frank is supposed to remain behind and protect her.
When Peter arrives, he hears tremendous pounding and discovers the Hulk demolishing the building. But Bruce Banner is not in control. Neither is the Hulk. Jean has destroyed Bruce’s inhibitor, forced him to transform and then taken control.
What follows is an enormous set piece involving Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Punisher, and it looks genuinely gorgeous. There is absolute chaos when the Hulk expels Jean from his consciousness. Unfortunately, that means the Hulk is now truly the Hulk—and he very nearly kills Spider-Man.
This raises another point. Spider-Man is not usually presented as having a Wolverine-level healing factor, but he clearly heals faster than an ordinary human. That is worth remembering when considering the extraordinary amount of damage inflicted upon him. Everything Peter endures here would have killed me sixty times over. Easily.
Peter eventually defeats Jean, and she is captured.
End of the movie?
Not even close.
Before losing consciousness, Jean says a single name: “Sara.” Peter questions Metzger, who claims Jean must have pulled the name of a deceased coworker from his mind when she briefly took him over. Peter accepts the explanation.
After Peter takes MJ home, however, she invites him inside. The letter told her Peter and Ned were once close, and she thinks it would be fair to let him meet Ned again. Peter keeps his costume on, so Ned believes he is simply meeting Spider-Man.
The two build Lego together—a funny callback to the earlier movies. Their friendship comes easily and naturally. MJ sketches them, leaves Spider-Man’s mask off and draws Peter’s face from memory. She remarks that they really do look like best friends.
Peter apologizes to MJ for kissing her while Jean controlled her. MJ says it is okay because she remembers absolutely nothing. As far as she is concerned, she was standing in her apartment—and then suddenly lying outside with Spider-Man holding her.
That is when Peter realizes: Holy crap. (My curse, not his) Metzger lied to me.
Peter investigates further with Yelena and discovers Sara was not Metzger’s deceased colleague. Sara was Jean Grey’s sister.
Hard cut to an exhausted Jean restrained in a chair while Metzger tells her she will be very useful to him.
It is a complete heel turn.
The Greatest MacGuffin
This movie may contain the greatest example of a MacGuffin I have ever seen.
Jean is absolutely convinced that “MacGuffin” exists, and obtaining it is her sole objective. Yet nobody who should know about it—not Metzger, Yelena or anyone else in authority—has any idea what it is. Nevertheless, everyone treats it as real because Jean treats it as real.
Through flashbacks, we learn what drove Jean’s search. She believed MacGuffin would lead her to Sara. In reality, Sara was what she had been searching for all along.
I do not want to reveal every last detail, but Jean is never going to find what she seeks—whether it is real or imagined. When the truth is revealed, it is absolutely tragic and completely satisfying.
Metzger begins experimenting on Jean and forcibly activating her abilities. I think his objective is to map them well enough for Damage Control to induce telepathy in ordinary people, although his plan is somewhat unclear and a little mustache-twirling.
Jean finally hits bottom. Her anger and grief cause her powers to expand dramatically, increasing her previously limited range to approximately one kilometer. Her abilities are no longer restricted to telepathy; she develops telekinesis as well, freezing everyone within range and locking them in place.
Fortunately, Frank is just outside the perimeter. He sees something is terribly wrong and begins preparing to solve the problem, his way.
Roosevelt Island
Spider-Man is already inside the Roosevelt Island facility. He warms up by beating up the guards—nonlethally, of course—to gain access. Once inside, Jean activates her amplified telepathy, freezing everyone within range. Peter remains unaffected because, for whatever reason, he is still immune.
He walks among people frozen in place and encounters an entire contingent of the Hand guarding an entrance. Jean’s attention may be divided among thousands of eyes, but she notices the one person moving who should not be.
Jean activates the Hand. Her control here appears to operate more through suggestion than direct puppetry. She presumably does not possess their extensive martial-arts training herself; she unleashes their existing abilities.
And, oh my God, these people absolutely kill it. The choreography is magnificent, and the grace with which they move is genuinely beautiful.
During the fight, Peter exclaims, “That’s so cool!” That is why I love this version of Spider-Man. Even while people are trying to beat him senseless, he can appreciate how impressive they are.
Damage Control has developed weapons specifically designed to defeat Spider-Man. The revelation briefly stuns him, before his reaction becomes, essentially, “Of course they did.” Both of his mechanical web-shooters are torn from his arms. He is battered, beaten and almost defenseless.
Peter removes his inhibitor, allows his eyes to turn black and surrenders to his spider instincts. He defeats the entire Hand without killing anyone. He comes dangerously close to killing one man—but then saves his life. The man’s face shows unmistakable appreciation for that mercy.
Peter finally reaches Jean, who is holding Metzger in an extremely precarious position. He tries to persuade her not to become a killer. It does not matter whether the potential victim is Metzger or a puppy: Once she crosses that line, she must live with having killed someone.
Jean tells Peter she is now powerful enough to enter his mind despite his previous immunity. Peter has just learned the value of surrendering to the spider within him. Now, instead of resisting Jean, he surrenders again and allows her inside.
Grey Meets May
Inside Peter’s mind, Grey meets May.
Aunt May is speaking to Peter, but her message reaches Jean just as powerfully:
“And sometimes, because you’re special, people can do dark, monstrous things to you. But this is what I want you to know: You’re beautiful, and the people who love you—we love you not because you’re special. We love you because you’re you. I want you to remember that.”
Jean hears exactly what she needs to hear: People may treat her like a monster because she is different, but the people who truly love her do not love her because of what she can do. They love her because of who she is.
Jean says, “I don’t have anyone.”
Peter tells her, “You have me.”
It is a simple exchange, but it completes May’s message. Peter does not merely tell Jean she deserves connection; he immediately offers it.
I had to pause my writing there because I was actually tearing up. I saw the movie in a theater; there was certainly no pause button.
It is a very good scene with a very good message. I never felt as though the movie was emotionally manipulating me, but I absolutely felt that moment.
A Very Large Bullet
Unfortunately, Frank has prepared his own solution. He has an enormous sniper rifle. The kind that uses BIG bullets and has long range. He sees the woman holding approximately a kilometer’s worth of people hostage and prepares to solve the problem by shooting her.
That would definitely work.
Peter’s enhanced senses somehow warn him, and he jumps in front of the bullet.
This is where the movie becomes a little hand-wavy. A projectile of that size, even from nearly a kilometer away, should tear an enormous amount of flesh from Peter’s body. Instead, it strikes him in the shoulder. It still causes tremendous bleeding, and Peter appears very likely to die.
We next see him in the hospital while throngs of New Yorkers gather outside, cheering for his safe return. A skyscraper is even illuminated in Spider-Man’s colors.
Peter finally receives the affirmation he has studiously avoided: People care about him. He belongs to this community, and he cannot survive by cutting everyone out of his life.
A Brand-New Ending
We see Jean Grey riding away on a bus.
We see MJ sitting alone on a rooftop she once shared with Peter. Is she trying to remember him? I don’t know.
We see Peter at May’s grave, telling her he is not going to go through life alone anymore.
Then Peter sees Ned in the bodega. Ned recognizes him and says, “You’re the guy from the party.”
Peter replies, “I’m Peter,” and extends his hand.
Peter slowly begins performing the elaborate handshake he and Ned once shared. Ned responds automatically, as though his conscious mind has no idea what he is doing but his body remembers every movement.
When the handshake reaches its final position, a look of wonder appears on Ned’s face.
That moment is priceless.
Elsewhere, Metzger is in the wind, while Yelena works with another government official to uncover everything he concealed, including all the legitimate information he had been redacting. That may become important later.
One Gorgeous but Slightly Hairy Quibble
There is a beautiful shot of Spider-Man sitting on a girder, with the New York skyline upside down behind him. Then you realize he is the one sitting upside down when he turns and launches into the next scene.
But if you think about it for a moment, it gets weird.
In the first movie, we saw tiny, clawlike hairs emerge from his fingertips, allowing him to cling to things. We hand-wave the fact that he wears shoes and his feet still stick, but we can at least imagine those tiny hairs beneath them.
Sitting upside down on a girder with only his butt making contact? I cannot help imagining tiny, spiked hairs growing out of his derrière—and that is just a bit weird, isn’t it?
Still, it is a gorgeous scene.
The Comic Digest I Cannot Recommend
Before finishing, I need to discuss the Spider-Man: Brand New Day comic digest Marvel marketed before this movie came out—and that I willingly paid for. This is not a positive review.
There was indeed an Amazing Spider-Man era known as “Brand New Day,” encompassing roughly 100 issues published from 2008 through 2010, plus specials and spin-offs. Marvel selected a handful of stories from that enormous run, apparently featuring characters we might see in the movie. At least, that was the impression I was left with.
The digest starts with Doctor Strange during a harsh winter. Did Doctor Strange appear in the movie? Nope.
Wolverine appears in the digest. Did he appear in the movie? Nope.
The Punisher? Yes, he appears in both—but the comic has nothing whatsoever to do with his role in the movie. I liked the movie’s version, though.
Jean Grey is in the movie but not the digest. Perhaps including her would have been considered too much of a spoiler. Damage Control is not in the digest either.
The book collects a handful of loosely related stories from a run spanning several years, and the result is disjointed. It has nothing to do with the movie outside the main character’s name and the movie’s subtitle.
If you haven’t picked it up yet, I recommend that you don’t. If you already own the original run, definitely don’t. It wasn’t worth even the $9.99 I paid for it.
Final Rating and the Very Final Tag
I know I had some quibbles with this movie, but I am giving it six out of five stars.
Okay, okay—five out of five.
I love this movie. I saw it three times in three different formats. The first was in 3-D. The movie was not egregious in staging stunts merely to exploit the format, but the 3-D was effective when used. The second was standard. The third was RPX, where the seat occasionally shakes and performs other little tricks. That experience was not worth the added price, but I still watched without complaint.
Admittedly, I chose the third showing primarily because Regal was giving away the poster. But I could have collected it and left. Instead, I sat through the entire movie again.
Well, everything except the end-credits tag.
The tag comes after every single minute of the credits—even after the union logos. You must wait through absolutely everything, and it is not worth watching three times. I left when the credits began during my second and third viewings.
It is simply an animated sequence featuring the Spider-Tracker developed by Ned—because, of course, Ned developed a Spider-Tracker. It appears to locate Spider-Man, somewhere in space.
That seems a little strange. We have already seen Peter Parker go into space during the Avengers movies, so perhaps this is pointing toward Miles Morales or another Spider-Man. I genuinely do not know.
The tag is fine, I suppose, but it is extremely simple and definitely not worth sitting through multiple times.
The movie itself, however, was worth every viewing.
Selected Cast and Crew
- Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
- Writers: Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers
- Tom Holland — Peter Parker / Spider-Man
- Zendaya — MJ
- Jacob Batalon — Ned Leeds
- Sadie Sink — Jean Grey
- Jon Bernthal — Frank Castle / Punisher
- Florence Pugh — Yelena Belova / Black Widow
- Mark Ruffalo — Bruce Banner / Hulk
- Tramell Tillman — William “Bill” Metzger
- Liza Colón-Zayas — Detective Jean DeWolff
- Marisa Tomei — May Parker
- Naomi Watts — E.V. (voice)
- Eman Esfandi — The Boyfriend
- Olivia Booth-Ford — Sara
- Marvin Jones III — Lonnie Lincoln / Tombstone
- Michael Mando — Mac Gargan / Scorpion
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The Finale of the Acorn-Bearer’s Pathway: A Movie Review
(Just my way of being cute, thesaurus version of the title of the movie.)
I went to see The End of Oak Street today, Sunday opening weekend. I’m not a paid reviewer, so I don’t go opening hours; I go when I find it will be best for my schedule.
I sat down, sat through a few of the previews—there are far too many these days—but then it started with the director’s name, David Robert Mitchell, and I will be honest I looked up some of the other things that he’s done and I didn’t like most of them so I went in after this a little guarded.
Anyway, Anne Hathaway is our female lead. Ewan McGregor is the male lead, her husband, and they are shown to have a tense marriage. He is taking gig work during a neighborhood party when he’s supposed to be spending time with the family. There’s a reasoning for that from his point of view, but he’s not telling her what that is, so that’s part of the tension in the marriage. She is in the basement most nights writing a novel. She just calls it a story, but a neighbor who happens to have edited her own husband’s books for thirty years—as pointed out in the text—loves it and sees the parallels between her and the writer, the character and the writer. And she just says, ‘No, it’s just a story, it’s just a story,’ very defensively. But there is imagery in the book about a constantly packed suitcase, and she is ready to leave her family any day now, type of thing from the book, and that comes up later.
There is a teenage boy, played by Christian Convery, and his dog, and he is, of course, acting out because of the tenseness between the mother and father. There is also an older sister to this boy, played by Maisy Stella, who is very intelligent, has read a lot of Carl Sagan’s books, including Cosmos, so she’s going to be the brain reserve, you can tell that right from that.
And then stuff happens: flashing lights, weird stuff. It is something that is definitely handwaved, but basically, wormholes are opening up and it swallowed this entire neighborhood and transported it to, I guess, the Mesozoic era. Because despite everything you’ve been told about Jurassic Park, none of the dinosaurs in those movies were from that era; they were more likely from the Cretaceous era. But anyway, I think these are Mesozoic, funnily enough—or no, “funnily” is not the right word. This director is listening very carefully to his science advisors and the current belief that dinosaurs are feather-covered instead of just bald lizard-skinned, because they have the same dinosaurs as that other franchise, but they have feathers or hair-like feathers on some of them, and that’s pretty fascinating to look at, to be honest.
It’s a tense little thriller where they’re running away from things, they’re dodging things, they’re watching their neighbor get eaten by the flying things. All of that was really well done. The CGI was solid, and the drama behind it all was well written. They are boarded up in their house, tearing down cabinets to board up windows because, of course, glass is easy to get through from all these lizard beings. He is relentlessly optimistic, which makes her mad. He points out that he’s read her novel, and so that is another source of resentment—now he was keeping that secret as well. Turns out he has lost his job, and so he was just doing gig work to keep money going; that’s why he left during the party. It turns out well, anyway.
Then the young boy finally sees his dog, and the dog runs off because he’s being chased. He goes tracking after it. He has a very ineffective recurve bow that he… it’s kind of hilarious. It’s kind of led to think that that is going to be useful, but of course it is not. He’s like a fourteen-year-old, and it’s a recurve bow—it has no power against the skin of these things. But still, he is still being a man at fourteen, and it’s kind of great. He looks for his dog.
There is a sub-thing, a sub-story, another teenager is holding a grudge against our main young boy hero, and catches him and beat him up a little bit. It’s not really a big story, but it leads to one of the funniest lines. He is lying there all beat up, and his sister finds him and she just says, “What happened to you? Your face looks like a pepperoni pizza,” and I chuckled.
The parents are also looking for the kids, and it’s very much a lived-in neighborhood feel. They aren’t looking aimlessly; they are in the neighborhood they’ve lived in for several years, so of course they would go to where they think things are. They know the pathways through this way, through that way; that all felt very real.
And then chaos ensues, they get chased, there’s just lots of action going on, and stakes are real: a neighbor dies, they see other people die, there are a lot of dead bodies on the ground in various scenes. And then the husband dies—his leg is chopped off, and he has died. But because these are wormholes, which transport people through time and space a little bit, they managed to rescue him before he goes through. So it’s high stakes with no stakes ending, which is hilarious.
And if you look at that final scene on the back patio, you will see something truly fun: one of the girls had to go back and rescue her parents, and she rescued herself, so there are two of them. Trust me, it is the height of verisimilitude. I loved it.
I give this movie four out of five stars, and the one star missing is simply because they handwaved the science. Yes, wormholes are theoretically proposed, but why the hell they are there nobody knows; they didn’t try to explain it. I’m okay with it, but at the same time, I’m not okay with it. I enjoyed the movie, and I’ll go again.
Rick’s Reviews
I watched it. I thought about it. Now you get the consequences.
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