Dear friend,

I know I can be harsh when I talk about a film, and I feel guilty about judging the work of the many people that put their dedication and effort into it. Things can go wrong in anybody’s job, and for a number of reasons.
In some of these instances, it may turn out that the film is the only one the director, or the writer, ever made. Or the one that ended a promising career. In these cases, I always wonder what happened: did the person realise the job was not for them? Did they keep their passion but frustratingly weren’t given another chance?
Should I give the films I didn’t like another chance?
If I look at my statistics on Letterboxd, I have assigned less than two stars to about 2% of the films I watched. That’s around 60 movies. Some of them I’ve seen quite recently, so I know I wouldn’t change my mind. Some are universally panned, so it’s probably not worth trying them again. But the ones that I watched more than ten years ago, they might be entitled to a revision of the trial. Except for 300.

The Grudge 3, directed by Toby Wilkins, written by Brad Keene, US, 2009 - ⭐⭐

The third American film to feature Kayako and Toshio does everything it can to set aside what made Ju-On stand out and just exist as a generic J-Horror-inspired US movie: gone is Takashi Shimizu, gone is the writer of the previous two American chapters Stephen Susco; the usual non-linear structure is also abandoned in favour of a classic beginning-to-end narration. The actors playing Toshio grow up and must necessarily be replaced, but this one also swaps Takako Fuji with a new Kayako1, and this alone is a strong enough reason for this film to be cursed.
The story picks up from The Grudge 2 just enough to play an Alice-from-Friday-the-13th trick on the boy who lived, then introduces a number of new characters living in the Chicago building where the American part of 2 took place; the building is almost empty now - maybe for renovation, maybe because of pale ghost boys popping on the stairs - except for a family composed of caretaker Max (Gil McKinney) and his two blonde sisters Lisa (Johanna Elizabeth Braddy2) and Rose, who must be eight or nine but has the face of a grown-up woman.
So there’s a male caretaker living in an empty building alone with his family. Can you guess where this goes?
Very far from Ju-On, that’s where.
Luckily, Kayako’s sister (yep) Naoko (Emi Ikehata), who knows how to stop the curse but didn’t bother to show up until the international reputation of her family was compromised, arrives to try and save the day by adding some Eastern credibility and preventing her sibling from turning into full Sadako.
Oh, and there’s also Shawnee Smith, whom I didn’t immediately recognise without her signature reverse bear trap.

The Snowman, directed by Tomas Alfredson, written by Søren Sveistrup, Hossein Amini and Peter Straughan, based on Jo Nesbø’s novel Snømannen, Sweden/United Kingdom/US, 2017 - ⭐

I should have known better, but Netflix lured me with a screenshot of Rebecca Ferguson and it clouded my judgement: how bad could this film actually be?
Well, it’s terrible. Really, really, terrible.
There’s no need to list all the problems this film has, because the production issues are well documented, so I will just say that the only thing I liked are the Oslo landmarks. If it’s not the first time you visit these pages, you know of my fascination towards the Norwegian capital. Maybe I should go back and see Bergen next time.
But this film, never again.

The Wrath of Becky, written and directed by Suzanne Coote and Matt Angel, US, 2023 - ⭐⭐⭐

Well, that’s more like it. As you know from last week, I didn’t love Becky, but still I went back for a second serving because of Lucia Patrizi’s enthusiasm in a recent post - where she also mentioned that the third episode is ready to be released.
The same Becky (Lulu Wilson) returns, but with a completely new set of writers and directors3, and that makes a huge difference. The new creative duo, Suzanne Coote and Matt Angel, must have felt the same way I did, that this character deserved a funnier, more dynamic tone. There are still nasty people doing (but mostly describing) nasty things - this time led by Sean William Scott. But Becky has found her persona and knows how to deal with them, for everyone’s satisfaction.
And there’s a small part for Kate Siegel!
Deborah Logan aka Jill Larson also appears.
The ending is ridiculous but that’s fine - at that point we no longer care about being serious.

Μήλα / Apples, directed by Christos Nikou, co-written with Stavros Raptis, Greece, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ten years after Lanthimos’ first works, the Greek Weird Wave keeps making ripples, and this film is strong evidence.
Released in the year of the pandemic, Μήλα describes a different epidemic affecting Greece: as citizens fall ill of an incurable form of amnesia, the government sets up a program to help those who have forgotten their identity to build a new one. We follow one of the people joining the program, Aris (Aris Servelatis from Kinetta and Alps), as he dutifully performs the assignments given by recorded tapes (possibly a nod to Dogtooth) and documents them in Polaroids, as tangible proofs of his efforts.

It’s very easy to interpret this story as a metaphor about political forgetfulness and the willingness to blindly trust the authorities’ demands, but Nikou’s film turns out to be, above everything else, a human story about the need to move forward when everything seems to be lost. It’s a masterful film where a single scene is able to change your whole perspective.

If you think the female doctor (Anna Kalaitzidou) looks familiar, it’s perhaps because she had a small role in Dogtooth.

  1. That’s not completely true: the film includes flashbacks to the previous chapters, so Fuji is still in, whenever human Kayako Saeki is shown. For the same reason, there are three different Toshios. ↩︎

  2. Who also played babysitter Lisa in Paranormal Activity 3, and that’s enough for me to accept the two sagas share the same universe. And the name of the director of this film is Toby. Coincidence? ↩︎

  3. Who, it turns out, are responsible for Hypnotic, a film that, despite starring Kate Siegel, only got a star and a half from me, and even less from most of my Letterboxd network. I guess I was giving them another chance. And, to be fair, they didn’t write that film. ↩︎