“Greenland 2: Migration”
Every January, Hollywood dumps movies in which the studios have no faith, such as this sequel to 2020’s “Greenland” —a generic, end-of-the-world yawner with a meteor (or was that a comet?) and a regular Joe who has to get his betrothed to safety. In the sequel, Joe (actually, John, played by Gerard Butler) now has to get his family out of Greenland, past radiation hell and tsunami-level high water (note to POTUS: are you sure about this place?). John gets his wife (Morena Baccarin, “Deadpool”) and son (Roman Griffin Davis) into a sea capsule and on to Liverpool, which alas is now mostly a pond. Lawlessness, tuberculosis-ridden air and block-destroying lightning storms must be overcome, all in the hopes of reaching a crater in the middle of France where life has started to regenerate. The catch is that this European tour features an obstacle course of factions warring over the narrow pass out, an English Channel converted into a shallow ravine of scree and an Alps-like mountain range. I found myself reflecting that the only reason to make this movie is to give people more reasons to dislike making Greenland a U.S. territory. — Tom Meek
At Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond and AMC Assembly Row 12
“OBEX”
Albert Birney is one of our great junk store fabulists. His films, such as 2021’s “Strawberry Mansion” (co-directed with Kentucker Audley), are as inventive and heartfelt as those of Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry, lovingly crafted on a shoestring budget with hand-made props, rudimentary animation, and other low-rent techniques. In “OBEX,” Birney stars as “Computer” Conor Marsh, a 36-year-old shut-in living in suburban Baltimore. Conor’s only companions are a friendly neighbor (Callie Hernandez) and a faithful dog, Sandy. But he seems content. He’s got a wall of VHS tapes, all the latest gadgets 1987 has to offer, and plies a healthy trade in printing ASCII-art images of his clients’ family photos. One day, Conor responds to a magazine ad for a mysterious sword-and-sorcery computer game, OBEX, which promises to put users inside. OBEX proves to be lame, but once Conor plays it, weird things happen. He begins seeing and hearing things. His dot-matrix printer begins issuing cryptic messages such as “REMOVE YOUR SKIN.” When his dog appears to get sucked into Conor’s computer, he has no choice but to enter the digital realm himself to retrieve her.
The plot loosely recalls the “Tron” films, but no one will mistake Birney’s film for their special effects bonanzas. “OBEX” owes more to the crude “shareware” games that circulated on 3.5″ floppy disks in the early days of home computing. With its grainy, black-and-white 16mm photography, “OBEX” can resemble a sort of suburban “Eraserhead,” the drone of summer cicadas standing in for that film’s industrial soundscape. There are also some terrifying images, such as a field of staggering, naked ghouls in the headlights of Conor’s old car. There’s heart here, too. The deeper Conor plunges into this 8-bit fantasy world, the more we understand the sadness that led him to seclude himself from the real one. As absurd as it all is, we sense that Birney means every word of it. “Avatar” may be this year’s big computer-generated spectacle, but the image of Computer Conor wielding his flimsy sword against a wolf-skulled demon king in an abandoned church will stick with this viewer longer than anything he saw on Pandora. — Oscar Goff
At the Brattle Theatre
“The Mannequin”
Steeped in urban lore and possession hand-waving, John Berardo‘s “The Mannequin” is stylish in its stagings; it also serves up a few good eerie bumps in the dark—especially considering its lo-fi restrictions. But plot-wise, it’s a series of parts that don’t make a comprehensive whole. It begins well enough with some slick, black-and-white backstory about an L.A. photographer (Jack Sochet) in the 50s, 60s and 70s who shoots glam models in his studio loft. Unfortunately for them, he occasionally butchers one by severing off her best parts (legs, arms, head) and reincarnating them as a tall, lithe mannequin.
Cutting to the present day, we meet Sophia Rojas (Gabriella Rivera), an aspiring fashion designer who occupies the studio, still home to those mannequins. One night, a reincarnation looking like Samara from “The Ring” (2002) shows up. Sophia is found dead the next day in a pool of blood and is deemed a suicide. In a twist, Sophia’s younger sibling Liana (Isabella Gomez) takes over the space with gal-pals Nadine (Shireen Lai) and Hazel (Lindsay LaVanchy). Supernatural weirdness ensues, with self-mutilation and stabbings and temporary possessions — or so it seems. We get more of the what-what when Liana’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Peter (Maxwell Hamilton), a paranormal podcaster, decides to try an exorcism. “Mannequin” looks sleek — the use of red for blood (a la “Sin City”) in the 1940s/50s black-and-white shots is a plus. But how is it that Sophia, Liana and friends know nothing about the studio’s bloody history? The hokey exorcism shatters the spell Berardo casts early on. — Tom Meek
Streaming on Amazon Prime and available on multiple VOD platforms.
“Primate”
With this knockoff of “Cujo” (1983) director Johannes Roberts (“Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” “47 Meters Down”) orchestrates a respectable level of gore and tense helplessness. Three college coeds are on school break in Hawaii at the seaside bungalow of Adam, one of their fathers. Adam (Tony Kotsur, Oscar winner from his supporting part in “CODA”) is a renowned and well-paid inspirational deaf writer whose books all have the word “Silent” in their title. His seaside paradise, replete with an infinity pool built into a sheer cliffside, is pretty inviting. He’s also a widower with a pet chimp named Ben who wears a red Mr. Rogers sweater and is treated like a member of the family.
With Adam off on a book tour, it’s an idyll for Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah, “Dexter: New Blood”) and friends Hannah (Jessica Alexander) and Kate (Victoria Wyant). They hang with Kate’s hunky brother Nick (Benjamin Chan) and Lucy’s younger sister, Erin (Gia Hunter) until a rabid mongoose bites Ben and transforms him from cute, furry family friend into a frenzied berserker. The animal caretaker Adam summons to administer antibiotics is the first to meet a fleshrending end. Because their rabid predator is a hydrophobe, the key to staying alive is to stay in the pool.
But this pool party is sheer terror. You just know that a plunge off that cliff-face is in the cards for someone. Other malefactors include a barely functioning/broken cellphone, the frat bros with whom Hannah flirted on the airline flight, and a car key fob in Ben’s hands. Roberts does a yeoman’s job sticking to the lean script while scoring moments of taut edginess that’ll make you squirm in your seat. Movement and mime specialist Miguel Torres Umba does an impressive and convincing turn in a monkey suit as Ben (bonus points for not going CGI, even if the facial prosthetics stand out). If you remember the murderous TV chimpanzee in Jordan Peele’s “Nope” (2022) or the terrifying real attack by a pet chimp that left a women without a nose, hands, or eyesight, brace yourself: “Primate” begins with them and then promptly throws them off the cliff. — Tom Meek
At Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond, AMC Assembly Row 12, Kendall Square Cinema
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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