Movie Review ~ Resurrection (2022)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Margaret’s life is in order. She is capable, disciplined, and successful. Soon, her teenage daughter, whom Margaret raised by herself, will go to a fine university, just as Margaret had hoped. Everything is under control. That is, until David returns, carrying the horrors of Margaret’s past with him.
Stars: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone
Director: Andrew Semans
Rated: NR
Running Length: 103 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review:  At the Academy Awards this year, Jessica Chastain may have won the official Oscar for her brilliant performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but for my money, the best performance by an actress in 2021 was Rebecca Hall’s in The Night House. The well-reviewed and downright spooky thriller was about much more than you think at the outset. Hall was operating in her typically high-caliber form as a widow searching for answers and finding them in increasingly terrifying ways. Following that up with a much-lauded directing debut for Netflix, Passing, that signaled she harbored a multitude of talents in the industry, and the veteran actress suddenly was getting noticed. Finally.

I’m not sure why many, including me, failed to take note of how significant a force Hall is on screen for so long. A glance over her career has shown all the top-tier filmmakers she’s worked with, so it should come as little surprise. In that work, she’s demonstrated a knack for welcoming in challenging women with prickly surfaces. Unlike men, alienating women can be a complicated role to be pigeonholed into playing, but Hall has nimbly avoided that, and it’s by shepherding much of the works she takes on. The Night House and Passing were huge leaps forward from a critical standpoint, and now with Resurrection, she goes a step further.

Let’s start with what you’ll hear most about Resurrection and what I’ll have to tell you the least about, and that’s the ending. Writer/director Andrew Semans leaves his audience with one of those finales where you’ll be tempted to throw up your hands in frustration…or maybe not. Ambiguity doesn’t have to be bad, though we’ve been trained over time to expect certainty in movies, and that means a definitive end. In fact, unspooling Resurrection means you may have to go back further than those final few minutes and double-check you’ve been following along from the start. 

A high-powered executive working for a nameless biotech company, Margaret (Hall, Closed Circuit) is good at problem-solving. We can tell because she’s got an open-door policy that extends to a young intern (Angela Wong Carbone) speaking freely about her troublesome personal relationship at the film’s start. Maybe Margaret sees a little of her teenage daughter Abbie (Grace Kaufman, The Sky is Everywhere), about to head off to college, or she could be helping another female see a different path to success that doesn’t involve a man. A single mom, she’s engaged in a hush-hush office romance with Peter (Michael Esper, Ben is Back) but keeps him at arm’s length, not just because she’s the boss. On the surface, Margaret wears a shield, but underneath, a disturbance roils.

That protection she has kept close gets a small fissure when attending a local conference where she sees a man from her past, David (Tim Roth, Sundown), and she suffers an anxiety attack. This isn’t your garden variety panic attack, either. Margaret bolts out of the room and runs throughout the city (Albany, NY, looking mighty ominous) directly back to her daughter to check on her safety. Why the alarm bells? Days later, while shopping with Abbie, Margaret spots David in a shopping center and then across a park. This can’t be a coincidence or a dream. Could it? It’s not. Or is it?

Part of the twisty nature of Resurrection is determining where Margaret’s anxiety and paranoia can take her and how much of what she’s seeing we can believe. All of it? Some of it? Semans includes dream sequences and reality, so we can never be too comfortable with what world we’re in at any time. So, it’s up to the viewer to determine how much is in Margaret’s increasingly skewed imagination as she unravels in her personal and professional life. The more we learn about her history with David, the further we see the length to which she’ll go to protect herself and her daughter from memories that gnash at her heels.

Hall’s incredible eight-minute monologue, shot in one interrupted take, is unquestionably the film’s trump card. If you’d been wavering on the picture until that time, it’s motivation to continue to see how things develop. It’s where Hall reveals the kind of information a film would ordinarily save for the final salvo, but instead, Semans unveils at the midpoint because there is so much more to come. Hall moves through the shadows of this speech with such adroit matter-of-factness that the shocking truths land even harder; you come out the other end wondering if Margaret is who you thought she was at the beginning. It’s to Hall’s credit that she can keep the viewer engaged through some bizarre behavior as the film progresses, always being mindful of responding as a human would, not an actor with scripted lines.

While Hall is captivating most every frame of the film, the supporting characters aren’t too shabby either. Roth is undeniably creepy as the mysterious David and while I can’t reveal much about his true nature, what he can do with an overemphasized smile is enough to chill the bones. I liked the sweet, understated sincerity in Esper’s performance as a man interested not just in Margaret’s as a partner but in her well-being as she stumbles. The relationship between Kaufman’s Abbie and Margaret is believably intense. While I’d have liked a few more scenes to establish her character as an individual further, I understand why the movie needed to keep her tethered to Margaret as it does.

Bound to be a dividing experience because of that ending but a slick, slithery mystery up until that point, Resurrection is recommended for Hall’s performance first and foremost. It’s another example of an actress rising to a challenge in a complex role and the filmmakers letting the audience feel their way through a thorny narrative thesis with no easy answers. I doubt two people will have the same interpretation of the end, and you’ll need to discuss it with someone. Make sure to watch it with someone you won’t mind arguing with after. 

Movie Review ~ The Reef: Stalked

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The Facts:

Synopsis: To heal after witnessing her sister’s horrific murder, Nic travels to a tropical resort with her friends for a kayaking and diving adventure. Only hours into their expedition, the women are stalked and attacked by a great white shark. To survive, they will need to band together, and Nic will have to overcome her post-traumatic stress, face her fears and slay the monster.
Stars: Teressa Liane, Ann Truong, Saskia Archer, Kate Lister, Tim Ross
Director: Andrew Traucki
Rated: NR
Running Length: 90 minutes
TMMM Score: (4/10)
Review:  In 2007, director Andrew Traucki delivered the low-budget Black Water, about a gigantic crocodile attacking members of a tiny tour boat. That early film became such an underground success story it provided the funding for Traucki’s next creature feature, 2010’s The Reef. Following a similar storyline of a mammoth shark terrorizing members of a capsized boat, it elicited the same genuine scares by doling out shots of the razor-toothed monster hungry for its next meal. Neither film was great art, but they were a considerate step above the usual fare, sidelining cruddy special effects and practical animatronics to show the bare minimum and let the viewer’s imagination create much of the horror.

A largely uneventful career followed for Traucki until 2020, when he gambled on a sequel to his first film. I didn’t think Black Water: Abyss was half bad, either. It was perhaps a bit too stuck on what worked initially and didn’t do much to move things along. Yet it had a somewhat claustrophobic set-up, decent performances, and a moderately convincing crocodile when it was seen. When that movie was released, it was announced that Traucki would also be getting back into shark-infested waters with another trip to The Reef, and I’ve been keeping my eyes open ever since. 

We all know that I can’t quit these shark movies, no matter how hard I try or how much they continue to disappoint me. I’m trying to be better, though. So far in 2022, I’ve already steered clear of Alicia Silverstone in The Requin and avoided Shark Bait, but The Reef: Stalked was too intriguing to pass up. I was a fan of the first film, and considering the not embarrassing showing of Black Water: Abyss (which, like this, is unrelated to their original entries), I thought that Traucki would show those other fin flicks a thing or two. Sadly, Traucki has adopted an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach for his sequel because while it has one or two good jolts, most of The Reef: Stalked is a stinky as day old chum.

Four women set out on a kayaking trip, making good on their promise to continue a shared passion for exploring the underwater areas around their homes by the Australian coast. For sisters Nic (Teressa Liane) and Annie (Saskia Archer), it’s a way to potentially mend a relationship strained by a tragedy within their family that neither has adequately dealt with. With Annie being less experienced, it’s good that Jodie (Ann Truong) and Lisa (Kate Lister) are along to help because Nic has developed a paralyzing fear of the water, explained in the opening prologue.

They’ll all likely think twice before dipping a toe in a baby pool after encountering an ornery Great White Shark. Latching onto their scent when they are far offshore in kayaks perfect for chomping, the shark is relentless in its pursuit, clearly having nothing better to do than follow the women along the shoreline. Even more incredible, this is after they’ve made it to a nearby island and, get this, gotten back in the water.

Until this point, I was lazily making my way through the movie and batting away the numerous times Traucki had one or more women slowly looking across the horizon line for a shark fin. This was all Shark Movie 101, and they all do it. I’d even gotten the requisite near miss of a leg in the water pulled up as the shark was about to bite. Having the women (the ones that survive an initial tense encounter) make it to the safety of a small island (where there are other people, mind you) and then willingly get back into their flimsy floatie and paddle for sunnier shores was just too much. It worked much better in the previous film when the potential shark snacks had nowhere else to go.

The performances are serviceable at best, with lines drawn in the sand to who the professional actors were and who was hired from the local population. I question Traucki’s taste level with putting a child in harm’s way so violently but then, much of The Reef: Stalked has question marks floating around it. Why make a sequel if you don’t feel compelled to do something interesting with it? Why do we need to give heroines extra baggage to make them fear the water, lining them up to simultaneously hurdle a roadblock and vanquish a beast? Why did no one think to pack a waterproof cell phone? Why was Jaws made nearly fifty years ago with a shark that looks more believable than one made in an era with elaborate films shot on cell phones?

I wish I could find “The One” gem in these sloppy shark films. I go into each one with my fingers crossed that this will be the one that rights all the past wrongs. I’ve got another one in my queue and while I’d like to say the outcome looks promising, too many failed dives to the depths have led me not to get my hopes up. Keep swimming with me, though…we’ll find something fun soon!