I’ll begin by briefly weighing in on five of the most prominent pieces of the 2023 zeitgeist, at least from where I was sitting. Some cynical vibes ahead, so feel free to skip past this part if you’re not in the mood for negative energy:

• Taylor Swift: Gen Z’s version of Beatlemania is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, since I find Taylor Swift’s music to be entirely unremarkable, but that didn’t stop her Eras tour from being the musical event of the century so far. She clearly represents something significant to an awful lot of young women, and I’m glad they’re having fun, but I wish they could rally around something more iconoclastic.
• Barbenheimer: The internet took characteristically outsized delight in the fact that Barbie and Oppenheimer, two very different summer tentpoles, were being released on the same day. Surprise!: I was underwhelmed by both. This was to be expected on the Oppenheimer side, since I tired of Christopher Nolan’s overwrought shenanigans long ago, and I oppose Oscar-bait biopics on principle. I had higher hopes for Barbie, since I really enjoyed Greta Gerwig’s previous two films, and while its production design is truly something to behold, it’s still ultimately a toy commercial that doesn’t transcend what I recently saw referred to as “the shallow end of the pool most girl-power cultural product is playing in today.”
• AI: Large language models hit the mainstream in 2023, and the people who make them are here to tell you they’re a landmark achievement in human history that will either destroy us or make our lives indescribably amazing. Whether or not these claims are another round of hyperbole from an industry with an undeservedly high opinion of itself, I have absolutely zero faith in that industry’s ability to wield its creation responsibly.
• The war in Gaza: Hamas slaughtered 1,100 Israeli civilians, prompting a disproportionate response from Israel that has so far killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, and the loudest voices in the peanut gallery here in the USA would have you believe that there’s a good guy and a bad guy and the deaths on the bad guy side are entirely justifiable. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have skyrocketed, as have accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia against anyone who dares criticize or support either side in any way, and the decline of our national discourse continues apace. (For the record, I think Hamas sucks and its actions are barbaric, but its constituents aren’t a monolith to be considered complicit in Hamas’s misdeeds; I’m also skeptical of Zionism and think Palestinians have good reason to dislike Israel, and I’m not sure how anyone can say Netanyahu’s noticeably unsurgical strike in Gaza isn’t genocide.)
• That Fucking Guy: The walking bottle of bronzer who we once decided should have the nuclear codes is angling to get back in the saddle, and the four criminal indictments he’s picked up along the way have done little to diminish his momentum. He and the nihilistic circus that surrounds him promise to make 2024 the most miserable election year on record, whether he prevails or not, and the very real possibility of his return to what he perceives as the throne is too disheartening for words.

Projects

2023 was a weird year for me. I continued laying the groundwork for my art practice, doing intermittent freelance design to stay afloat, and I struggled with both the design and the art, dragging out processes and producing little. There’s no flow without ebb, and I don’t know that I was spinning my wheels so much as letting things percolate, so I’m not beating myself up as much as I have in years past, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Nevertheless, I made some things I’m proud of.

Plus Equals

Plus Equals #7 went in several different directions before settling into its final wavy form in the last few months of the year. I fell well short of my goal of publishing four issues of Plus Equals in 2023 (which I’ll aim for again in 2024), but I was successful in taking the project to the people, as I did at five events, in Washington DC, Lancaster, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Philadelphia. I’ve been enjoying discussing my work with people on the art book fair and zine fest circuits, but I have yet to find a way to make them profitable, especially when travel is involved. The vast majority of my sales in 2023 were at these in-person events, but I only made back a little over half of what I spent.

Glenn and the Danzigs

I’ve wanted to front a Misfits cover band for roughly as long as I’ve been alive, and the opportunity finally came my way in 2023. It meant leaving town for Halloween and abandoning the local trick-or-treaters, but it was worth it. My friend Jon and I hope to make this an annual thing in Philly during the spooky season, so local ghouls are encouraged to keep their ears to the ground.

All Day Hey!

Following the one I did the previous year for Beyond Tellerrand, I put together a twitchy opening title sequence for All Day Hey!, a web conference in Leeds. This project let me flex a variety of creative muscles, including coding up a custom transition system, devising a geometric take on animated dust and scratches, and composing and producing a busy, percussive soundtrack.

The Markup

I reunited with my former ProPublica colleague Sisi Wei and some other smart folks to design a new homepage for The Markup, where Sisi now serves as editor-in-chief. This was a whirlwind project with a tight deadline, and my part came together in less than two weeks, which was a great way to jumpstart the new year.

Robtober

For this year’s annual horror movie marathon, I designed and built the Robtober film browser I’ve envisioned for years, and I’m really happy with it. If I can resist the urge to iterate on it next year, reusing it should simplify the design process and let me put the time I save toward more deliberate film research and curation.

Travel

Apart from the aforementioned art book fairs and my return to Canada for the Ottawa International Animation Festival, I didn’t do much travel in 2023, but here are a few travel-related items:

• I went skiing for the first time since 1995! It was a blast, and I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I got back up to speed. A few of us spent Super Bowl weekend at Camelback, and particularly since the Eagles were playing, lift lines were pretty manageable. I’m hoping to make this an annual thing.
• For the first time in nearly 15 years, I (co-)own a car. Leah and I had a free 2007 Hyundai Tucson with low mileage come our way and we decided not to pass it up. We don’t use it much, and I hate adding another auto to the mix amid Philly’s suffocating car culture, but I can’t deny it comes in handy from time to time.
• I went to the inaugural Kinference event in Brooklyn, which was something of a Brooklyn Beta reunion. I was glad to catch up with some old friends, especially since I hadn’t gotten to say a proper goodbye when I left NYC during Covid, and some of the speakers offered good food for thought, but it was mostly a reminder that I’ve turned a corner and this isn’t really my crowd anymore. I don’t really understand how anyone who’s been involved in the digital product world in the last 10 years isn’t thoroughly disillusioned by now, and the prevailing enthusiasm for blockchain and AI among too many attendees was especially hard to stomach.

Art

Despite a strong start early in the year, I didn’t see as much art in 2023 as I wanted to, and I didn’t write enough about what I saw, but I did still see plenty of great stuff. The highlights:

• Modigliani Up Close (Barnes Foundation)
• Matisse in the 1930s (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Tara Donovan (Pace Gallery)
• Odili Donald Odita: Burning Cross (Jack Shainman Gallery)
• Edward Hopper’s New York (Whitney Museum of American Art)
• “Some Nights” Honoring Martha Groome (Larry Becker Contemporary Art)
• Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection (Hirshhorn Museum)
• Raymond Saá: Tin Tin Deo (Pentimenti Gallery)
• The Mashrabiya Project (Museum for Art in Wood)
• Fallingwater
• The Art and Influence of John Dowell (Free Library of Philadelphia)
• Alexis Nutini: Close Reading (Paradigm Gallery)
• Derrick Velasquez: Close to the Memory Of (Pentimenti Gallery)

Music

At 17 shows in 2023, my concert life continues its return to pre-pandemic levels, though it’s still not nearly as busy as my final two years in Brooklyn. My 2023 shows were mostly bands I’ve seen before, but seeing Kali Malone for the first time proved memorable, as did finally getting to see Unwound.

It was a good year for records. My favorites, in the order I picked them up:

Loscil & Lawrence English: Colours of Air

I still get tripped up trying to talk about ambient music in qualitative terms, but this record was an appropriate soundtrack to many late nights fooling around with acrylics, and, notably, the inspiration for the aforementioned Plus Equals #7.

Hello Mary: Hello Mary

A trio of teenage girls from Brooklyn writing an impeccable grunge album was not on my 2023 bingo card, and what a delightful surprise it was. I missed seeing them not once but twice (once opening for Deerhoof and once headlining), both times due to illness. Here’s hoping for better luck in 2024.

Pest Control: Don’t Test the Pest

There’s not much innovation here, but in thrash, originality has always taken a back seat to effectiveness, and this satisfying and perfectly dialed in set wastes no time getting to its task of removing flesh from bone.

Snooper: Super Snõõper

I can’t wait to see these Nashville goofballs live. I understand there are puppets. All but one of these songs is available on earlier EPs and singles, but the fresh production makes it more than worth buying this whole set of endearingly spastic, spindly punk tunes again.

Slowdive: Everything Is Alive

I’ve tried many times over the years, but I’ve never really been able to get into Slowdive, despite them being very much my sort of thing. Reunion records are so rarely good, I was pretty stunned to find that the two they’ve made—especially this one—have connected with me much more easily than the ones they made in their heyday. Everything Is Alive is probably my favorite record of the year.

Film

I saw about two dozen new films (including miniseries and a couple of standup specials), but nothing really knocked my socks off. Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland came closest, and May December and Showing Up were pretty good too. I probably missed some good awards season stuff towards the end of the year while I was binging Veronica Mars episodes while recovering from Covid. C’est la vie. I watched 150 films in total, nearly a third of them on Criterion Channel and 18 in theaters:

Ambitions for 2024

• Prepping for grad school applications: In the interest of having a stronger foundation from which to create, engage with, and evaluate art, I’ve decided that I want to go back to school to pursue an MFA, so I’ve got plenty of work ahead of me in researching schools and building a portfolio. To that end:
• Painting: I spent some time in 2023 putting together a makeshift painting studio in my basement, experimenting with acrylic techniques relevant to work I want to make, and mixing the palette for the first series of Kalinoscope paintings I’m planning, among others. The intent now is to make a habit of putting down paint on a very regular basis.
• RobWeychert.com V7: It’s now been four years since I began this redesign, and based on the quiet strides it made in 2023 (including some I haven’t written about yet), I’m as confident as I can be that it will finally properly come into its own in 2024.

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Petite Maman ★★★★½

Don’t mind me, just starting off the new year with some quiet weeping over here

The Black Phone ★

1. Act 1: Children savagely beating each other
2. Act 2: Children talking to each other on the telephone
3. Act 3: Children using the telephone to administer savage beatings

Assassin 33 A.D. ★★★★

I generally prefer to avoid Christian proselytizing and convoluted sci-fi but apparently if you put them together WE ARE IN BUSINESS

Skinamarink

I only made it through about 20 minutes of this, and I think the filmmaker’s vision is at present too underdeveloped to sustain a feature length, but I’d still much rather see more of this kind of unorthodox exploration than another round of rote Blumhouse banality.

Side note for my fellow graphic design pedants: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone miss the point of dot leaders quite so flagrantly as the opening credits of Skinamarink do.

Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist ★★★★

May we all achieve Bob Flanagan’s level of self-knowledge and self-love, even if it ultimately fails to prepare us to confront death. Bob’s poem, “Why?,” is going to stay with me. “Because you always hurt the one you love.”

Superfights ★★★★½

Like an 11-year-old boy on a Lucky Charms bender scribbled out a screenplay and then picked up the phone and hired legit Hong Kong action pros to make it. If anyone has ever shot anything more entertaining on location in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I have yet to see it (and would desperately love to see it).

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ★★★

with special guest mads mikkelsen as elon musk

Barbie ★★½

It’s all true, obviously, and it saves its best joke for an impeccable closer, and maybe if we’re lucky it’ll be a meaningful feminist Trojan horse for a few people. But the whole thing is just entirely too on-the-nose, and no amount of ostensibly subversive mumblecore cachet behind the camera can outrun the movie’s prime directive of brand rehab for a multibillion dollar toy company.

The good news for Barbie fans is that my opinion of this movie could not possibly matter less.

Ghost in the Shell ★★★

I think this is the first chance I’ve had to see Ghost in the Shell with its original Japanese dialogue track, and watching with subtitles reinforced my previously noted view that this film is way too chatty for its own good.

Talk to Me ★★½

First half rules, second half drools.

Twilight Zone: The Movie ★★

Pretty incredible that the dark cloud hanging over John Landis’s segment (two kids paid under the table to work in illegal conditions were killed during production, as was the star) isn’t the most unwatchable thing in this movie. That would be the insufferably saccharine Steven Spielberg bit that follows it. George Miller and Joe Dante make valiant attempts to right the ship, but their parts still aren’t good enough to justify the whole, and the entire affair was probably cursed before a single camera rolled.

Wolf’s Hole ★★★★

Equally unnerving as both genre exercise and political allegory.

Unfriended ★★★

Completely lazy script, but astonishing execution, which unexpectedly has me wondering if this whole screenlife shtick actually has legs? Next stop: Searching.

After Last Season

This is the most utterly baffling expression of human creativity I have ever seen.

No Hard Feelings ★★★

Incredibly funny until it decides not to be.

Lady in the Lake ★★

This whole thing is shot from the POV of Philip Marlowe, which is a bold choice, but it doesn’t work, especially since this is the most belligerent version of Marlowe I’ve ever seen. Probably my least favorite Chandler adaptation, though the one saving grace is that it lets you spend a lot of time with Audrey Totter staring directly into your eyes.

Roar

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a worse idea better documented.

Leave the World Behind ★½

thanks obama

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I’ve stared so intently at so many rapid antigen tests over the last few years, trying to discern if an impossibly faint second line was present, that I was entirely unprepared for how crystal clear my first positive result would be.

Covid-19 finally came for me on December 2, 2023, with aches, severe sinus congestion, and an obnoxious cough fully materializing three days later. Since all this arrived on the heels of a negative test and another persistent cough that had been badgering me for two weeks, it didn’t even occur to me to test again until after my third full day of symptoms, at which point that unmistakable second line appeared. So I only did two of what should have been five days in proper isolation, and while I didn’t go out and subject the public to my plague, L got plenty of exposure at home, and by the time my symptoms were receding, hers were just getting started. Thankfully she didn’t get hit too hard, and she was feeling better and testing negative again before I was.

Now I’m dealing with a leftover post-nasal drip-induced cough, so today makes five full weeks of coughing, and I’m told to expect a few more. Apart from a cold I had back in April, this is the first time I’ve been sick in over four years, so I wish it would have gone a little easier on me, but especially after reading one person’s devastatingly detailed account of her experience with long Covid, I’m counting my blessings:

• My illness could have been much worse (thank you, vaccines!).
• I wasn’t currently in the middle of any client work, and I finished the latest issue of Plus Equals just before the worst of it.
• L took good care of me, and Veronica Mars kept me company.

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Irvington, NY— Late last year, my friend Jon (without an h) told me his high school buddy John (with an h) was putting together a band to play Misfits and Danzig tunes for Porchella, the annual Halloween band crawl in Irvington, the town in New York’s Hudson Valley where John lives. John on drums and Jon on guitar. Did I want in? As anyone who has ever spent more than five seconds with me knows, fronting a Misfits cover band on Halloween has been a dream of mine for decades, so fuck yes, I was in. A short while later, Mike, another former schoolmate of theirs, was recruited to play bass, and Glenn and the Danzigs was born. With John in Irvington, Mike in LA, and Jon and me in Philly, we practiced separately for months, finally assembling as a quartet in Piermont, across the river from Irvington, the weekend before the show. The full band practiced for two days in an Airbnb walk-in closet.

When the big night arrived, it quickly became clear that Irvington’s Halloween game is strong. Thirteen bands across seven outdoor locations, impersonating U2, Judas Priest, the Smiths, Bikini Kill, and more. Adults and kids and delinquent teens all over the place, all in costume, ghouls in every form. Lest I ruin my singing voice, I had to stop myself from screaming along with Skooled, the School of Rock all-stars who opened for us, shredding classics from Alice in Chains, Dio, and Thin Lizzy. Given how much more talented they were than us, they probably shouldn’t have gone on first, but as our imaginary rider stipulates, Glenn and the Danzigs don’t play before sundown.

We had a decent-sized crowd of all ages with big smiles who were very vocally supportive, especially the handful of folks who actually knew the songs. The set went surprisingly smoothly, with minimal mistakes. Most fun I’ve ever had on a suburban driveway? Probably!

Fun facts:

• Jon and I put together the set list, optimized for campy scares and catchy melodies normies could enjoy. We originally included songs from both Misfits and Danzig (one or two Samhain songs were briefly considered, too), but one by one the Danzig tunes all fell away, their wild guitar solos unable to compete with the intoxicating simplicity of the Misfits.
• To keep the geographically dispersed band on the same page, Jon made a Logic file of the set that everyone could refer to and play along with, using a magical plugin to split the original Misfits recordings into their constituent parts with remarkable clarity, allowing us to turn instruments and vocals on and off as needed.
• My friend Peter generously lent us a PA and monitors so Jon and I could play together at full volume in Jon’s practice space. Jon also filled out the space with a cheap drum kit, which we brought up to Irvington so John wouldn’t have to be seen in public with his electronic kit, which was decidedly not rock and roll. (At the end of the day, this project effectively gave Jon an excuse to transform his space into a half-decent recording studio.) Brett, an Irvington local, ran sound for us at the show, and his expertise and top-notch gear made us sound better than we had any business sounding.
• I’ve always had trouble with vocal stamina, coming away hoarse from many a karaoke night, but over the months of practicing for this gig, I finally learned how to sing the full set without wrecking my voice, giving each song as much as it needed and not more. At first, holding back made for a lackluster performance, but eventually I learned how to make halfway sound just as good as full bore. It still kind of blows my mind that my voice wasn’t completely worn out for the show after singing for several hours each of the two days prior. Practice makes perfect (or close enough, anyway), who knew?
• We had to change some lyrics to keep things family-friendly, which wound up being a fun in-joke for the Misfits fans in attendance. Unsurprisingly, “Angelfuck” and “Last Caress” had the most noticeable modifications. And for a few songs, I also got to learn some lyrics I somehow never knew before!

Here’s the final set list:

1. Ghouls’ Night Out
2. I Turned Into a Martian
3. Vampira
4. London Dungeon
5. Some Kinda Hate
6. Hybrid Moments
7. Attitude
8. Horror Hotel
9. Halloween
10. Astro Zombies
11. Braineaters
12. Angelfudge
13. American Nightmare
14. 20 Eyes
15. Last Caress
16. Night of the Living Dead
17. Skulls

In conclusion, this was a blast! And now that we’ve laid the groundwork, Jon and I hope to find a local rhythm section and do it again sometime in Philly. So keep your ear to the ground the next time the spooky season rolls around.

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I’ll give Saw a little more credit this time than I did on my first viewing years ago. The basic premise is the stuff of a decent popcorn thriller, Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell are mostly serviceable in their roles, and the central, grimy bathroom set—the only one purpose-built for the film—is a skin-crawling feat of extremely unsavory production design. But ironically, everything gets pretty crappy whenever we leave that bathroom. The cheap, generic sets look like trash, the attempt at a car chase is downright laughable, and perhaps most importantly, Jigsaw’s theatrics are just eye-rollingly dumb. His robe, his pig mask, his stupid little puppet; none of it is remotely scary, and his sociopathic quasi-profundity possesses little of the gravitas its writers seem to think it does. It all feels kind of like a soap opera version of Se7en, which could be fun, but it’s too humorless to embrace its camp potential.

Saw II ★★

Interesting to see what the same production crew from the first film could accomplish with quadruple the budget. It still feels small and stagey, like its two main locations aren’t part of any larger world, and it doubles down on the 1990s David Fincher by way of Spirit Halloween aesthetic, but at least it’s more cohesive. Director Darren Lynn Bousman’s music video experience is in evidence, and I often wondered if the editor was paid by the cut. Speaking of music videos, anyone who’s ever seen a New Kids on the Block video might have a hard time believing Donnie Wahlberg as Saw II’s tough-as-nails crooked cop, but it’s fun to watch him try. And Jigsaw’s games are getting more thematic, but they still feel kinda basic? I imagine things will get progressively increasingly convoluted over the course of the series. Anyway, all in all, this was suitable trash for my sick day on the couch after a covid booster.

Saw III ★

More than its predecessors, Saw III really leans into the torture porn classification, while at the same time somehow managing to be the first in the series to commit the cardinal sin of being boring. Does anyone really give a shit about drama between Jigsaw and his protégé? I genuinely thought they might start splicing in Real World-style confessionals. Also, I know the dude is on his deathbed, but I really wish Jigsaw would SPEAK UP. Meanwhile, in the soft-spoken serial killer’s latest torture dungeon, some poor schmuck is given the opportunity to forgive the people adjacent to his kid’s accidental death, as they’re frozen, drowned in pureed pig guts, twisted into pretzels, etc. These are some of the series’ grossest set pieces so far, but there’s a lot of daylight between the flaccid twist ending they precipitate and the breathlessness of its reveal. Along the way, they retcon some stuff from the first movie, and apparently those flashback scenes were shot on the set built for the Saw parody in Scary Movie 4, which seems appropriate.

Saw IV ★½

There’s something to be said for a series whose primary draw is brutal violence, but whose creative energy is largely spent on byzantine plotting. Saw IV packs in the backstory, expands Jigsaw’s network of accomplices, and has enough twists and turns to make it almost impossible to follow, even if, like me, you’ve watched the previous three films in the preceding 24 hours. The first Saw made it clear that abandoning any expectation of plausibility is a prerequisite for these movies. That priming is useful for watching Saw IV, which is the first sequel to arguably use the overwrought soap opera aspect to its advantage, even if it’s the third to culminate in a “the bad guy was right under your nose all along!” twist ending. It’s not a good movie, but its relentless pace and refusal to let any character be inconsequential give it a certain desperate energy.

Saw V ★

When Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell handed writing duties for the series over to Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan after Saw III, the duo envisioned a trilogy for the next three films, and Saw IV stormed out of the gate laying the groundwork and expanding the mythology. The expansion continues with Saw V, but first-time director David Hackl slows the pace, alternating focus between this episode’s cannon fodder and the origin story of the latest would-be heir to Jigsaw’s legacy. Watching Jigsaw show the ropes to yet another uninspiring trainee is no more stimulating than it was in the dreadful Saw III, nor is the fact that for the first time, his victims don’t seem to have any connection to the broader story (though I have little doubt they’ll be made retroactively relevant in a future installment).

Saw VI ★★½

Halfway through this interminable series, I assumed its best days (which were not great!) were behind it, so imagine my surprise that Saw VI may actually be the high water mark! After editing all the previous installments, Kevin Greutert moved to the director’s chair for this one, and he appears not to have micromanaged the new editor (Andrew Coutts), because the obnoxious, spastic editing style of old has been dramatically toned down, as has the jaundiced color palette. Pound for pound, this is arguably the best-made Saw movie so far: its knotty daytime TV plotting and dizzying array of flashbacks is by now more amusing than annoying, and Jigsaw’s traps and their staging are more considered, all constructed around a unifying statement: fuck the US health insurance industry. Back in 2009, I watched Saw VI on a lark without having seen any of the other films, and I incorrectly assumed they were all similarly heavy-handed polemics. Maybe it would have done them some good? Anyway, I seem to be more entertained by this film now than I was then, which makes me wonder if this week’s steady diet of Saw double features has given me a bit of Stockholm syndrome.

Saw 3D ★

Saw 3D begins with a notable first for the series: a scene shot on location (outside Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto) in broad daylight with hundreds of extras, Jigsaw’s first trap in a public place and built for spectators. After countless hours of watching his victims get disassembled in dim, dilapidated industrial environs (I’ve often wondered about the health of Saw City’s commercial real estate market), this scene is literally a breath of fresh air. But anyone hoping to stay in the sun will be disappointed, as we’re soon plunged back into yet another abandoned factory full of pointy whirligigs. Lionsgate exercised some contractual shenanigans to force Kevin Greutert to direct again, and his lack of enthusiasm for the project is clear: This is without a doubt the most rote and lifeless entry in an already mercenary saga. It ostensibly ties up the series’ remaining narrative loose ends, but there’s little satisfaction to be taken in the nonsense of it all. In a franchise built on lazy flashbacks, these are probably the laziest. I have three more Saw movies to sit through, and I really hope none of them manage to find a lower floor than this one.

Jigsaw ★

In the beginning of Saw V, it’s established that Jigsaw is 52 years old, and maybe the fact that he looks considerably older can be chalked up to his chemotherapy and years of disemboweling people. But at a certain point in Jigsaw, the eighth film in the franchise, we see the character a few years before that, presumably when he was in his late 40s, with no attempt made to disguise the fact that the actor who portrays him, Tobin Bell, is now 75. I know verisimilitude has never been a priority for these movies, but speaking as someone in his late 40s who still gets carded sometimes, it’s hard to get past, especially in light of the misdirection at the heart of this movie’s inevitable twist. Jigsaw is the first Saw whodunit, which might have been a fun way to breathe new life into the series, but it just can’t help being back on its bullshit, and the mystery is as preposterous as can be expected.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw ★★

A second try at a whodunit, and the most competent script in the series to date, though also the most conventional, which makes it pretty easy to solve (I’m not usually good at murder mysteries, but I cracked this one fast). Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson bring some real personality to the franchise for the first time, though the former doesn’t know quite what to do when he’s not cracking wise. This is Darren Lynn Bousman’s fourth time helming a Saw film, and apart from the requisite pig masks and torture traps, his chintzy direction is really the only thing that makes this otherwise stock police procedural align with the rest of the series. But maybe I’m unduly harsh because this is the first Saw film to mildly offend me. Like the others, this one takes place in an unspecified city, and yet multiple establishing shots clearly show it to be my hometown of Philadelphia. And yo, if youse guys ain’t gonna make one of them trap jawns force-feed someone scrapple or wooderboard em with Kenzinger or whatever, pick a more generic skyline.

Saw X ★★½

Tobin Bell’s lucid stoicism, facile as its moralizing may be, has always been the Saw series’ biggest strength, and after nearly two decades of coolly calculated carnage, Saw X finally puts his Jigsaw front and center with the full antihero treatment. Taking place between the events of Saw and Saw II, this one is uncharacteristically patient and character-driven, and by the time the stage is set for the latest round of mayhem, Jigsaw’s victims seem more deserving than ever. Series vet Kevin Greutert returns with a more mature approach to directing and editing, and in contrast with most of the series, Saw X feels motivated more by storytelling than bloodletting (though it of course doesn’t shy away from the latter). However, some of its attempts to make Jigsaw sympathetic are at odds with what we already know about him (since when is he unwilling to endanger innocents?), one of the central plot twists requires him to make a gobsmackingly illogical maneuver, and the film continues the tradition of misplaced faith in the supposed charisma of one of his acolytes. So yeah, it’s not immune to the boneheaded trappings of being a Saw movie, but it’s nevertheless among the best of them.

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Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

I’ll often use this month as an opportunity to catch up on a franchise, and this year, for reasons surpassing understanding, the new, tenth installment of the Saw series has prompted me to watch every single one of its predecessors. I haven’t especially enjoyed the few I’ve seen before, but maybe this perverse immersion therapy will help me understand the cynical series’ enduring popularity.

Otherwise, the list is made up of some recent films of critical acclaim, a handful of picks from 1994 to start filling out my conspicuously shallow personal horror inventory from that year, some selections from Criterion Channel’s seasonal collections (’90s Horror, Art-House Horror, High School Horror, Hopping Vampires of Hong Kong, Pre-Code Horror), and various other odds and ends, including some of my old favorites at the end of the month.

As always, I haven’t seen most of these films before, so don’t take them as recommendations per se, but none of them were included frivolously. If you decide to watch any, I hope you enjoy. Have a horrific month!

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Short Film Competition Stats

There was plenty of good stuff this year, and more on the higher end of the rating spectrum than the lower, but nothing I felt very strongly about.

The narrative films came out just a bit ahead of the other categories.

I was amazed to find that the United States had only three films in the main competition this year! In years past, it’s usually accounted for 20 percent or more of the films, but this year it was all the way down to just 7 percent, and as you can see from its place in my ratings, I didn’t find that 7 percent to be an especially inspiring crop.

Short Film Competition 1

27

Flóra Anna Buda (Narrative, France, Hungary)

A lusty, blush-inducing rumination on living with your parents as a broke 20-something, and the frustration of lacking autonomy, sexual and otherwise, in the prime of your young adulthood. Great color and design, and its rhythms swivel expertly between unrestrained fantasy, the freewheeling abandon of nightlife, and banal domesticity.

Baby Force

Yuki Kubo (Non-Narrative, Japan)

Apparently an opening sequence for a presumably fictional TV show seemingly predicated on the “adorable badass” anime trope. It’s hard to tell if this is more on the homage, parody, or pitch side of things, but its creator sure seems to enjoy materializing overwrought mecha suits.

Furrie

Lucie Grannec (Student, France)

It seems like this is trying to be a sort of primer on the furry fandom for those of us who aren’t terminally online, and if so, it is far too opaque for the task.

Ikimono-san: Turtle

Atsushi Wada (Narrative, Japan)

A boy and his dog are overjoyed to trade outfits with a turtle. Delightfully absurdist with a perfect final frame.

Silent Labs Launch

Winston Hacking, Michael Enzbrunner (Commissioned, Canada, USA)

Nice enough eye candy swooping through various naturally occurring and human-made things and the microbes that populate them, but I’m not sure how effective it is as promotional material, since I have no idea what Silent Labs is, and a subsequent web search couldn’t tell me either.

Via Dolorosa

Rachel Gutgarts (Narrative, France)

A young woman atones in advance of Yom Kippur by revisiting her youthful indiscretions amid all the cultural baggage of Jerusalem. Feels like an authentic snapshot of a certain segment of a certain generation, one that’s inescapably unsteady.

Vitanuova

Niles Atallah (Non-Narrative, Chile, Mexico, Spain)

A couple days later, I don’t really remember that much about this, except that it made Quay-esque use of dolls and I liked it.

Antipolis

Kaspar Jancis (Narrative, Estonia)

Somewhat reminiscent of the wonderful A Town Called Panic, this surreal stop-motion treat is, oddly enough, one of the more lucid films to come out of Estonia.

Short Film Competition 2

The Beatles “I’m Only Sleeping”

Em Cooper (Commissioned, UK)

The Beatles may be the single most well-worn pop-cultural entity of all time, so I’m not sure why they still need new music videos nearly 60 years after the fact, but this is nevertheless beautifully put together, using what I presume to be the clay painting technique pioneered by Joan Gratz.

Retour à Hairy Hill (Return to Hairy Hill)

Daniel Gies (Narrative, Canada)

A woman watches helplessly as her family turns into animals and abandons her. A pretty straight-ahead allegory for empty nest syndrome, and a bit maudlin for my taste, but distinct and sufficiently affecting.

Foot Print Shop

Gina Kamentsky (Non-Narrative, USA)

Another perfectly acceptable entry in the “I am interviewing my elderly parents while they’re still here” genre, this time through the lens of how our feet can be every bit the unique personal identifier as our fingerprints.

Cyclepaths

Anton Cla (Student, Belgium)

Birds, drones, terrorism, war; this guy has a lot on his mind, and he’s good at crafting an uneasy vibe, but its various parts never really cohere.

The Miracle

Nienke Deutz (Narrative, Belgium, Netherlands, France)

A woman recuperating at a resort struggles with the emotional after effects of her miscarriage. Incredible stop-motion technique with three-dimensional fabricated sets and two-dimensional characters animated on painted cut glass.

Forår (Spring)

Pernille Kjaer (Non-Narrative, Denmark)

This one has enough of the trappings of narrative that it kind of forces you to try to parse the unparseable, which is a bit frustrating, but its animation of richly toned graphite drawings is unquestionably impressive.

Pipes

Kilian Feusi, Jessica Meier, Sujanth Ravichandran (Student, Switzerland)

So a plumber walks into a bondage club… A pretty great juxtaposition of naive cartoon style with gleefully transgressive content and a satisfying ending where everyone wins. Also really great to see something that’s not just monochromatic, but binary black and white, executed flawlessly.

La fille au béret rouge (The Girl with the Red Beret)

Janet Perlman (Narrative, Canada)

A cheerful ode to the pickpockets, performers, people moving furniture, and all the other crazy characters that make up the melting pot that is the subway. A real charmer for believers in public transportation and the adventures and misadventures that come with it.

Short Film Competition 3

World to Roam

Stephen Irwin (Narrative, UK)

The rare portrait of parenthood as ceaseless dread, the impossible task of ensuring the survival of the seemingly suicidal little beings that are small children. Appropriately chaotic and textural, but it can’t help but get sentimental at the end.

Ride on Joyfulness “The Afternoon Tea”

Lei Lei (Commissioned, China)

Some horses drank tea and I forgot pretty much everything else about it immediately.

Obok (Outside)

Izabela Plucinska (Narrative, Poland, Germany)

Crude charcoal lines and a nonverbal soundtrack manage to speak volumes about domestic violence, its prevalance, and the emotional and practical tethers that make it hard to leave.

Starlight Nightcrash

Patrick Buhr (Commissioned, Germany)

I can take or leave the song (kind of a budget Björk), and while its visual vocabulary would sound great if you described it to me, the way it comes together doesn’t quite speak to me.

Fur

Zhen Li (Student, USA)

Accurately described as a “visceral and discombobulating depiction of a classroom crush,” this seems to get at that moment in childhood when you start to realize just how much you don’t understand about the world, and the all-encompassing uncertainty is overwhelming. I appreciate its unsettled atmosphere, but it definitely feels like student work.

Herzog’s Chicken

Lukas Conway (Narrative, Canada)

Werner Herzog’s opinion of chickens, summarized thusly: They’re stupid and they’re easy to hypnotize, and he knows this from experience. One of those great, simple ideas: Minimally illustrate a ridiculous interview snippet from someone famously idiosyncratic, and let their words do the rest.

Aleph

Slobodan Tomić (Non-Narrative, Croatia)

Loosely arranged and largely unparseable visual chaos consisting of composited scratchboard sequences with cacophonous sound design to match. Hard to hold onto but undeniably compelling.

Vanlav (Oneluv)

Varya Yakovleva (Narrative, Russia)

The primal scream of a woman who must endure men. It goes a little too far off the rails for me, but I do love its synthesis of spontaneous line, color, and texture.

Electra

Daria Kashcheeva (Student, Czech Republic)

If Barbie were shorter, far more daring and unflinching, and not a toy commercial, it might have looked something like this. Something about Electra’s very personal story feels both too specific and not specific enough, but I can confidently say I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Short Film Competition 5

Un trou dans la poitrine (A Crab in the Pool)

Alexandra Myotte, Jean-Sébastien Hamel (Narrative, Canada)

A brother and sister’s growing pains are complicated by grief over their mother’s death. Evocative pubescent body horror and some very inventive (if a bit self-conscious) transitions between scenes that reorient shapes and colors in the frame in fluid and unexpected ways.

Albums de familles (Families’ Albums)

Moïa Jobin-Paré (Non-Narrative, Canada)

A hypnotic moving collage of old family photos. I appreciate its meditation on these images and the variety of visuals involved, but it felt a little too aimless for me.

Zima (Winter)

Tomek Popakul, Kasumi Ozeki (Narrative, Poland)

This one is kind of all over the place, which is appropriate for its confused adolescent perspective, as a teen girl grapples with growing up in a provincial village being dragged into the modern era. Its monochromatic, starkly impressionistic ink wash backgrounds and scratchy character animation are as cold as the title suggests, but an appropriate amount of human warmth still comes through.

Sewing Love

Yuan Xu (Student, Japan)

A phantasmagorical speed run through the wonders and horrors of romantic love, from mutually transcendent adoration to toxic dependency and entitlement, taking literally the concept of “you complete me.” The look and feel of this wasn’t really for me, but I couldn’t help but admire its go-for-broke gonzo flair.

Etoimoi (Ready)

Eirini Vianelli (Narrative, Greece, Belgium)

Absurdist stop-motion featuring parliament employees antagonizing each other in various ways as a comet hurtles towards earth. I wouldn’t have minded something a little more resolved, and pretty much one second longer would have been too long, but it’s not without its darkly comic charms.

Misérable Miracle (Miserable Miracle)

Ryo Orikasa (Narrative, France, Canada, Japan)

Inspired by Henri Michaux’s book of poetry and drawings of the same name, I was initially put off by how disorienting Miserable Miracle is, with English narration over animated French writing, before I realized that was precisely the point. The way the images visualize the words is occasionally too on-the-nose, but overall it creates a rich atmosphere of ideas that defy a single mode of expression.

Living The Dream

Ben Meinhardt (Narrative, Canada)

Wrapping up the festival with a guaranteed crowd pleaser, Living the Dream is a pitch black, if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry ode to life on the wrong side of capitalism. Given his talent and consistency, it’s not hard to see Ben Meinhardt establishing a cult following similar to that of Don Hertzfeldt (and look at that, they both have names ending in “dt”).

Feature Film Competition

Adam change lentement (When Adam Changes)

Joël Vaudreuil (Canada)

A gentle teen soul tries in vain to enjoy his summer as he endures merciless bullying and a plethora of other mundane adolescent indignities. A competent portrait of a sympathetic character with enough quirk to sustain it, but its aesthetic doesn’t much appeal to me, and ultimately its unhurried pace and overly familiar coming-of-age beats are liabilities. (My guy, when the girl of your dreams accepts your pool party invitation, of course she’s gonna bring her boyfriend.)

Müanyag Égbolt (White Plastic Sky)

Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó (Hungary, Slovakia)

To some extent, White Plastic Sky is more interested in the nuts and bolts of its post-apocalyptic scenario—a resigned, utilitarian version on “Soylent Green is people!”—than it is in developing characters. We never really learn anything about the couple at the center of it beyond the salient points most relevant to the plot, and I guess that’s the trouble I have with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy: A fair amount of world-building is necessary for the audience to get its bearings, which may serve a larger theme but doesn’t always leave much room for a nuanced narrative. That said, Zsófia Szamosi’s portrayal of the grieving Nora projects nearly enough gravitas to make up for it, even if she is mostly a ghost. Of course, White Plastic Sky’s most prominent feature is its visuals, and while the seams occasionally show, its overall fusion of 3D-modeled environments and rotoscoped characters is consistently engrossing, with a palette that’s both expansive and cohesive.

Unicorn Boy

Matty Kiel (USA)

Bailed after 30 minutes. Not for me.

Non-Competition Highlights

History, Mystery & Oyssey: Six Portland Animators

Martin Cooper (USA)

This documentary doesn’t have much of a narrative arc, but its portrait of a community of visionary independent animators in Portland—Jim Blashfield, Rose Bond, Joan Gratz, Zak Margolis, Joanna Priestley, and Chel White—is an effective adrenaline shot for anyone on their creative wavelength. What might have been a staid feature-length showreel is elevated by the filmmakers’ frequently eloquent discussion of their work, and it’s a good reminder that animation is a vastly broader and richer medium than its mass-market offerings suggest.

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He does look more at home, though (to the extent that he ever looks at home anywhere), in the suburban Las Vegas locations he’s traditionally used than the alternately lavish and decayed locales seen here. So maybe the ultimate Neil Breen film composites his characters into those more banal Nevada settings via green screen, despite those locations’ availability to him in real life.

That said, there’s a sense that Breen might be getting too good at this. The callbacks to previous films have a whiff of fan service to them, and while those conspicuously static green screen shots aren’t going to fool anyone, they’re still much more impressively executed than any he’s done before. And Cade is, pound for pound, probably the most conventionally entertaining film he’s made to date.

This is not to say it would ever come anywhere near a multiplex; thankfully his writing and editing remain as incoherent as ever, and while Cade’s fight and dance sequences may be engineered cult film crowd pleasers, they retain enough of his unselfconsciously ludicrous sensibility to feel authentically alien.

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