A Bird in the Hand

Film: Cuckoo
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

There are times when I’m not sure what to think about a movie going in. Cuckoo is such a film. This is a movie with a positive review score from critics and a negative review score from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s below the 3.0 Mendoza line on Letterboxd. But, while that’s true, I heard a lot good about it. It’s a real part of my life now that I find it almost impossible to talk movies with a lot of other people. Most of the time, they have no idea what the movies are that I’m talking about. “What the hell is Cuckoo?” I hear 99% of the people I know in real life saying.

Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has just lost her mother, and as a teen, cannot really be alone, so she is forced to move to Bavaria with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), hrer stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their daughter Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute. The family has arrived there to help build a new hotel, which is run by a man named König (Dan Stevens). Needing something to do, Gretchen takes a job at the front desk, but strange things start happening immediately, including women wandering around half-clothed, multiple female guests vomiting, Alma suffering a seizure that appeared to be triggered by a strange noise, and more. Most terrifying, one night riding her bike home, Gretchen is pursued by a woman wearing a hood, an event that is passed off as a prank by the local police.

I Put a Spell on You

Film: The Love Witch
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Camp, when it’s good camp, is almost always unintentional. Quality camp is something that happens, not something that is specifically created, although there are certainly some exceptions. The Love Witch, from 2016 is possibly an exception to that basic idea, but it may not be. This is a film that is very much an homage to horror films from the 1970s. There’s a lot of The Stepford Wives lurking here, and a good amount of giallo in the mix. As a part of that, a lot of the acting is very stilted, and I can only think this is intentional. While most of the film looks like it’s taking place in that era (including some antique cars and a lot of retro furniture), everyone seems to have a cell phone, so the confusion is clearly intended.

We’re going to be spending most of the movie in the company of Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson), a witch who is both remarkably lucky and remarkably unlucky in love. Recently widowed, and the more we see the more she is clearly implicated in the death of her husband, Elaine moves to the town of Aracata, CA, a place that accepts witchcraft. Elaine is going to set up shop, looking for a new man. She meets Trish (Laura Waddell), who is happily married, which causes some jealousy in Elaine, and yes, that’s eventually going to pay off.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2025 Part 2

While I slacked off with movies in the second half of the month, I watched a ton of television, focusing on shorter shows in general. I finished the rebooted Battlestar Galactica right at the start of the month, and while it’s good, it’s also one of the bleakest shows I have ever seen. I finished The Irrational, a show that really should have gotten a third season, and also completed the fourth and final season of The Righteous Gemstones—the end of this feels like a step down, but it's a solid series all the way through. At the end of the month, I went on a huge TV kick, watching the second season of The Last of Us, finishing the NetFlix series Derry Girls, and watching both seasons of the animated Star Trek cartoons. I’m recommitting to the MCU and watched Agent Carter. Finally, I watched the first season of High Potential, and I’m looking forward to season 2.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2025 Part 1

July was a month of two halves for me. The first half of the month, I watched a lot of movies, but I hit a wall and watched almost nothing in the second half. In fact, I barely looked at this blog (I’ll catch up on comments, I promise). I won’t bore anyone with reasons for this. Ultimately, I just never felt in the mood to spend that much time watching something. I’m at just under 200 movies on the year, which is off the pace I wanted, but I’m deciding that’s okay and I’m not going to pressure myself to catch up.

Not Grabboids, but Close

Film: Grabbers
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Comedies often play into stereotypes as a shortcut to a laugh. What this means is that if we’re going to have an Irish comedy (or horror/comedy in the case of Grabbers), there’s going to be a lot of drinking. In fact, drinking is going to be plot-central for this movie. It’s a film that simply doesn’t work unless the characters are boozed up. Despite the stereotype, it’s also a film that works in large part because of the fact that many of the characters are boozed up through the third act.

As the name of the film implies, Grabbers is also a creature feature. While I have a difficult relationship with horror comedies, I do love a good creature feature. When they’re taken seriously, you can get something like The Host, and when they’re more on the comedic side, you get something more akin to Tremors or Slither. Grabbers is much more on this side of things. This is definitely a monster movie, and it has some clear scares, but it’s also genuinely funny in places.

Ain't They Cute?

Film: Cooties
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

The lesson that I need to constantly relearn in attacking lists of movies is that when I watch something that might show up on a list, I need to review it. I’ve seen Cooties before, but never actually reviewed it, and suddenly it’s shown up on the TSZDT list of zombie films and here we are. I didn’t hate this movie the first time I watched it, but I also didn’t love it, so I figured knocking it out as soon as I could would be a good idea. I don’t like things hanging over my head in the way that I’ll eventually have to rewatch We Need to Talk About Kevin currently is.

With any zombie movie, you either have to do things as perfectly as you can (see: Train to Busan) or do something really different with the subgenre. The X-factor in Cooties is that our zombie plague is only going to affect children. Anyone who has gone through puberty is going to get some flu-like symptoms, but the kids are going to go feral, infect each other, and straight up murder adults and eat them. They are zombies, after all.

A Product of Its Time

Film: King of the Zombies
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

One of the issues with a lot of older movies is that the racism is baked in. With King of the Zombies, the racism isn’t merely baked into the narrative but central to the way the film works. A huge amount of the plot turns on the conventions of Black characters being cowardly and superstitious. It makes this film a difficult watch at times, especially when contrasted with a far more respectful film like I Walked with a Zombie, which came out a couple of years later.

Since this is almost three decades before the seminal George Romero film, you should assume that the zombies in the title are the classical ones, reanimated corpses designed to be servants, created through a magic ritual associated with Voodoo or something similar. What that means is that all of the Black characters in the film are going to be connected to these dark forces in some way, have superstitious beliefs in “haints” and magic potions…and at least some of it is going to be right. Someone much more knowledgeable than I can get into the colonization narrative that is impossible to avoid here; I’m not sure I’m the right guy to do more than point out that it not only exists in the film but is also central to it.