Critic After Dark

Pressure (Anthony Maras, 2026)

2026-06-11T12:23:25.754-04:00

Sunny with a chance of rain

Anthony Maras' Pressure (2026)-- based on a 2014 play by David Haig-- answers a question no one thought to ask before: can a riveting thriller be made out of weathermen? Not storm chasers (looking at you Twister); not disaster flicks involving climate change (You too Day After Tomorrow and Geostorm)-- I mean weathermen, folk who pore over isobaric maps and stare at thermometers and take windspeed readings. The science nerds.

Apparently the answer is yes if-- big if-- 1) We're talking Operation Overlord, 160,000 troops launched on 7,000 ships supported by 12,000 aircraft, arguably the largest seaborne invasion in history; and 2) Landing point's on the Normandy coast in France, at the center of one of the most unpredictable weather systems on the planet.

Also helps that the pivotal figure in the film one James Stagg is played by Andrew Scott, who first made a splash playing an extravagantly sociopathic Jim Moriarty in Steven Moffat's Sherlock, (haven't had a chance to see him in Fleabag and the Ripley miniseries, but I hear good things). Scott plays the unlikeable genius type who eventually wins us over not through charm or wit but dogged commitment to the truth, basically facts as gathered by balloons lifting weather instruments and meteorological stations all around Europe. Heroic loner type, no real surprise or complexity here, but like Stagg himself, Scott commits to the bit with an intensity few other actors can muster.

Opposite him stands Colonel Irving Krick (Chris Messina), a charismatic piano-playing music-loving American much loved by everyone. The moment Stagg walks in and shuts down the merriment you know we're in for a pitched battle between hero and jester a la The Dark Knight ('why so serious?') or-- to cite a superior example-- between corrupt charismatic cop Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) and self-righteous prig Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston) in Touch of Evil ("An old lady on Main Street last night picked up a shoe. The shoe had a foot in it. We're going to make you pay for that mess")

But Krick is basically a straw man; Stagg's real antagonist is General Dwight D Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Expeditionary Force in Europe-- it's Eisenhower not Krick who has power to set Overlord in motion and Eisenhower not Krick who Stagg must convince that June 5, 1944, the day Eisenhower himself chose, would be disastrous for an invasion.

That's the stakes as Haig set them up and Maras resolves in a compact hundred and forty minutes, good ole fashioned Hollywood storytelling at its best-- or good ole fashioned storytelling period, as British production outfit Working Title makes the most out of a modest budget, using archival footage to flesh out the battle sequences, allowing the drama to unfold in hastily converted map rooms and jerry-rigged conference halls. Maras doesn't resort to much visual style beyond the handsome architectural details of Mentmore Towers and chalk cliffsides of Seaford Head, as lit and shot by cinematographer Jamie D Ramsay-- tho I must mention a brief lyrical moment when a weather balloon plunges straight upward through the clouds into the bright airless blue till it bursts in a thousand little plastic shreds. This isn't a comprehensive account of Overlord but of a crucial sidebar, and fulfills that niche purpose effectively.

Pause to note that Brendan Fraser, formerly of George of the Jungle and the Mummy movies, continues to work steadily trying to prove himself a dramatic heavyweight. Can't quite see him as Eisenhower (Robert Duvall gave perhaps the definitive performance) but he's physically large enough-- larger, actually-- for the part, and his bellow is suitably impressive.

Maybe my favorite bit is what gives play and film a little added resonance: the struggle between conflicting viewpoints, one side insisting on the validity of records and consistency of weather systems, the other sending nervy feelers out in every direction, senses in a constant state of tension gazing listening updating, tasting wind currents and air pressures and average temperatures in an attempt to second guess an inscrutable foe. Glamorous forecaster with established track record ('I predicted the weather for Gone With the Wind!') vs. unglamorous data analyst-- who did Eisenhower listen to? And if a similar scenario played out again today, who would our present leaders listen to now?

Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026)

2026-06-05T13:27:34.368-04:00

Labyrinth

Talked about Curry Barker's Obsession and how his premise of the obsessed lover isn't anything new; Kane Parsons' Backrooms is if anything even less new dressed in world wide web clothing.

First to come to mind are the mindscapes described by Stanley Kubrick late in his career-- the vast redcarpeted mansion in Eyes Wide Shut; the urban ruins that stand at the end of Full Metal Jacket; above all the Overlook in The Shining with its infinite corridors dotted with secretive doors, looping on itself again and again like an intestine and lined with a carpet of repeated design dyed that maddeningly distinct burnt orange you see in interiors of the late '70s and '80s. Folks always maintained Jack Torrance was nuts from the beginning of the picture; I think that rug helped him along.

Might mention along the way Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," where postpartum depression prompts the husband to impose on his wife a rest cure guaranteed to make her depression worse not better. And yes we can trace it all to psychological causes but when you think about it isn't the real reason for the woman's eventual crackup that sickly sallow wallpaper?

Beyond that? Citizen Kane, whose digressions and interlocking flashbacks and cavernous rooms of Xanadu (the sprawling life in effect of Charles Foster Kane) Jorge Luis Borges once described as a 'labyrinth with no center,' paraphrasing a line he remembered from a GK Chesterton story ("What we all dread most is a maze with no center."). Beyond even that is strangest of children's writers Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), whose Alice books warned that we fall into rabbit holes and walk into looking-glasses at our peril.

And then there's the Minotaur, a monster out of Greek mythology, wandering its labyrinth as it feeds on young men and women-- and maybe the horror of his circumstance isn't all that carnivorous munching but the sheer dreary repetitiveness of the hallways, one corner after another for the rest of his unhappy life. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

I think it actually helps in this case to know a bit of history (or as much as I can piece together, with reasonable accuracy): "The Backrooms" started with the photograph of an empty yellow-walled room, posted in different message boards from 2011 to 2018, then on a paranormal-themed 4chan board; in 2019 an anonymous user posted a lengthy comment that started with "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms." The comment sprouted stories, the stories formed a fandom, the fandom created lore with differing levels and populated them with entities.

Inspired by the original image, Parson posted his first video in 2022 on YouTube; the Backrooms community resisted then adopted the videos, or at least enough members did that the video went viral, attracted enough attention to fund a film-- and here we are.

Helps to know because the history suggests the abruptness of the film's existence-- like it wasn't there and you turn and suddenly it is. No explanation, and the room's presence (and film's atmosphere) is both new and somehow familiar, an alien space that at the same time recalls any number of images (a hallway; a wallpaper; a cavernous room; a rabbit hole; a Minotaur) haunting the margins of your mind.

That's it, that's the film-- except where Parsons created his images from a 3D software program, production designer Danny Vermette had a budget big enough ($10 million) to actually build the rooms, 30,000 square feet worth, with walls the color of old urine; and sound designer Eugenio Battaglia managed to compose a few heard-round-the-corner noises that recall the subterranean work of Alan Splet.

That initial sense of mystery draws you in but can only do so much without some human drama-- in this case provided by Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clark, failed architect and failing furniture store owner who stumbles through a portal in his store basement. He's followed by his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) and in arguably the most disturbing scene in the film (WARNING: skip the rest of the article if you haven't seen the film!) they reenact a parody of a therapy session where Mary explores the source of Clark's-- frustrations? Failures? Unhappiness? All is as vaguely sketched out as the Backrooms' own backstory (for details you might want to check out Parson's 24 mini-episodes on YouTube), only Ejiofor and Reinsve pour passion and commitment into that scene to make it work: you feel Mary's horror as Clark cheerfully demonstrates the difference between our reality and his, us human beings and the figures he likes to call Still Lifes ("For starters, they don't feel anything...they simply exist. Like furniture").

Ejiofor sketches Clark's unhappy life for us. Unspoken: could these Backrooms be his chance to reset, become the success he never managed to be? Reinsve's Mary hides a childhood trauma that, in several ways, mimics this room she's in right now, tied to a chair; could she be working out issues of her own? If Parsons were a more seasoned writer we'd have some kind of compelling psychodrama playing out in these empty rooms and hallways; as is it's the vaguely sketched parody of a psychodrama, and much of the horror and humor derives from elements that we recognize in that parody (just like much of the horror and humor in Clark's predicament derives from elements we recognize from his everyday life).

At a certain point Reinsve's Mary assumes the role of our subjective consciousness and she's a welcome fit; she wins our sympathies. But you suspect she's overqualified, especially if you're familiar with her performances in Joachim Trier's films (The Worst Person in the World, Sentimental Value) where she's a multifaceted character juggling multiple traumas and motives and needs; running and screaming in a horror flick seems like relatively undemanding work in comparison.

The ending hardly feels like an ending, yet for some reason doesn't leave you unsatisfied. Why, I wonder? Perhaps because Parsons, having started with an enigma, senses he can't afford to end with anything but another enigma-- he has to pivot to an even bigger mystery because he has so much more to tell. Which may be a cop-out, may not; depends on how you feel about the film so far.

I like it; I feel I got my money's worth, but can't predict how another viewer might react. I do know I like that final image, which functions much like a Mandelbrot set: the further you pull out the more things remain the same, an ever-corrugating pattern looping into itself in endless iteration like (when you think about it) a labyrinth with no center.

First published in Businessworld 6.5.26

I Love Boosters (Boots Riley, 2026)

2026-05-28T20:32:16.172-04:00

Marximum overdrive

Boots Riley's I Love Boosters is a truckload of fun. Gang of shoplifters (The Velvet Gang-- Corvette (Keke Palmer), Mariah (Taylour Paige), Sade (Naomi Ackie)) prey on a chain of fashion stores (Metro Designers) owned by ultrarich Christie Smith (Demi Moore); they're joined by Chinese factory worker Jianhu (Poppy Liu) and her band of laborers: high-style hijinks ensue.

And when I say 'high style' I don't exactly mean 'high style.' Riley does show us the more traditional notion of the image as incarnated by Christie's stores: monochromatic (each branch a different primary color); tasteful (if sleekly elegantly provocative); expensive, with every detail including the employees (who are asked to purchase their own constantly updated uniforms) production-designed within an inch of their lives.

The Velvet Gang give us the alternative, wearing audacious clothes that reflect their personalities: Corvette is an ambitious if not unreflective designer; Sade seeks direction (hence her susceptibility to pyramid schemes) but is warmhearted; and Mariah is a rebel. Their respective outfits when out on prowl are loud to declare their presence, and cheap (day-glo colors and budget-friendly synthetics) to identify their economic status (struggling). Jianhu's clothes tell a more interesting story: having originated from a workplace with mandated identical wear-- the traditional factory jumpsuit-- suddenly being in the United States liberates her, but she still hasn't found her voice so she triesone bizarre ensemble after another, at one point wearing what looks like Kermit the Frog's mutated snake fur wrapped around her upper torso.

Have not been a fan of Demi Moore's humorlessly inexpressive 'look at me I'm gorgeous' style of acting for most of her career but loved her vulnerable turn as fading celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle in Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (even if I didn't love the movie itself) and love her turn here as fashion mogul Christie Smith, where 'humorlessly inexpressive' is the performance. Dressed in handsome understated business suits she radiates Serious As Shit vibes, to the point that her monomania affects the world-- Riley underscores this by locating her executive office in a skyscraper with a decided 17 degree tilt (inspired by San Francisco's Millenium Tower); Christie is hellbent on expansion, and everyone must to struggle to cope with that bias. Call her a female Elon Musk if Musk were actually good looking.

Riley reflects his heroines' haphazard largely hand-assembled aesthetic by resorting to haphazard largely handcrafted effects-- Christie's tilted office is yes actually tilted; a lot of the sudden appearances and disappearances and transformations (holding your breath to appear whiter comes to mind) are achieved through editing; and some of the more bizarre sequences-- a three-vehicle chase down the tilted streets of San Francisco involving skinless prominent media figures-- are created through classic stop-motion photography, in the grand tradition of Ray Harryhausen (an inspiration to Riley) and his sword-wielding skeletons. All this egged on by a music score from the band Tune-Yards, which has the bright toon quality of Danny Elfman on hiccups.

Throughout the film Riley champions the cause of Marx, not Groucho, and through Jianhu's stolen device the principles of dialectical materialism. Leftist coworker Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez) explains all this in the kind of headlong breathless delivery Ken Russell adopted for his actors when shooting Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States, the lines given the treatment and respect they deserve, tossed out for the audience to accept or reject as they like. I can see audiences flinching from this fastpaced maximalist (Marximalist?) approach but it's the rare film that struggles with a surfeit as opposed to a shortage of ideas, and I love that Riley leans into that, makes the flaw an integral part of his style.

Also note that Riley has a curious approach to wrongdoing: Boosters are felons especially when the item being boosted costs over $500 (depending on the local law); but the title pretty much states his position on the crime. Yes he's a leftie but also something of a utilitarian, a 'by any means necessary' sort of guy. Corvette, Mariah, Sade-- and likely Jianhu for her defiance-- are criminals but criminals by necessity, against a system built to keep them oppressed, and must resort to whatever they can for their survival (as opposed to Christie, who just keeps going because-- well what keeps all these billionaires going? "How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?" as a certain naively bitter private investigator once asked), and again Riley's filmmaking reflects this attitude: he may break the laws of commercial or even coherent storytelling but you get something you never saw before, possibly may never see again (hopefully not; hopefully the musician turned filmmaker has a few more films left in him). You accept or reject him as you like it.