With that in mind, and with the customary “opening weekend” a rather fluid and ambiguous term as well, below is a rundown of films we’ve caught in the past month, along with information on where you can find and watch them. Some are good, some not so much, but your mileage may vary for each. The important thing to know is that movies are still coming out–just not always in the ways we expect.
She Dies Tomorrow
Although it was released back on Aug. 7, you can still track down this second feature from director-writer Amy Seimetz, who you may also know from her acting work in films like last year’s Pet Sematary remake, 2018’s Wild Nights with Emily, and 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Kate Lyn Sheil (You’re Next) stars as Amy, a young woman and recovering alcoholic who is suddenly gripped with the conviction that she is going to die the next day. But what happens next is even more bizarre: Amy begins to pass her belief along to others, like an infection, with family members, friends, and casual acquaintances all afflicted with the debilitating conviction that they are going to pass away in short order.
Sputnik
There is a long, fine tradition of Russian science fiction cinema that stretches back to the silent era and almost the beginning of film history itself. Along the way, under both Communist and oligarchic regimes, the nation has produced masterpieces like Solaris and Stalker as well as strong recent efforts like Hard to Be a God and the Night Watch films. Sputnik is not likely to be so well-remembered. A clear effort to match the level of Hollywood productions (as far as it can, anyway), the debut from director Egor Abramenko is a derivative tale in which a manned spaceship crashes back to Earth, with one of its two crew members dead and the other infested with an alien organism that extrudes itself from his body only at certain hours of the night. The nature of the parasitic relationship between the alien and the cosmonaut (Pyotr Fyodorov) is complex, perhaps overly so, and much of the film focuses on the dynamic between the creature, the man, and the neuropsychologist (Oksana Akinshina) brought in by the government baddie (Fyodor Bondarchuk) to find a way to separate him and the alien so the latter can be weaponized. All three actors are quite good, and the alien is effectively gross, but Sputnik is weighed down with its own self-importance, even as it borrow liberally from The Quatermass Xperiment, Alien, Species, Lifeforce, and others. Keery provides a partially chilling, partially goofy mix of post-millennial entitlement and white incel grievance to his performance, and Sasheer Zamata is quite good as a stand-up comedian who Kurt picks up and begins obsessing over so he can glom onto her own substantial following. But like the makers of the newly released Unhinged–which also touches on What’s Ailing Our Society–director and co-writer Eugene Kotlyarenko wants it both ways with Spree. He pretends he’s making a satirical statement on social media culture while wallowing vicariously in the blood and violence of a slasher flick. In the end, Spree says nothing we don’t already know about the empty, evanescent nature of social media, and its visual esthetic–the split screens, the narrow phone lens views, the constant stream of comments running up one side of the screen or the other from followers–is exhausting and annoying, like the movie as a whole.
Centigrade
In director Brendan Walsh’s feature debut Centigrade, Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) and Matthew (Vincent Piazza) are a young American couple on a trip to Norway where the eight-months-pregnant Naomi is doing a promotional tour for her new book. Driving at night in freezing rain, they pull over to get some rest–and wake up the next morning to find their car encased in ice and snow on the side of the road, a frozen tomb from which they can seemingly not escape. Neither Rodriguez nor Piazza are particularly remarkable actors, but they both bring enough empathy and raw anguish to their performances, as Walsh wrings maximum dread and suspense out of their increasingly grim situation (which was inspired by several true stories). As both food and patience begin to run out, the couple’s relationship waxes and wanes in realistic fashion and, naturally, a few secrets are forcibly revealed. Centigrade opens Friday, Aug. 28 on VOD, digital platforms and in drive-in theaters.
