“Remarkably Brilliant Creatures”
Based on the bestselling 2022 novel by Shelby Van Pelt and directed by Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), “Remarkably Bright Creatures” channels Nicholas Sparks by way of centenarian wildlife expert David Attenborough. If that sounds like a lot of tentacles, it should, as the film is narrated by an aging giant octopi named Marcellus. Marcellus lives in an aquarium on the Puget Sound and likes to get out and scamper about at night, which brings him into contact with Tova (Sally Field), a retiree who works the late-night janitorial shift, both to keep busy and to help settle past traumas. One affectionate tentacle touch and Marcellus can tell that there is a “hole” in Tova’s heart. Things get more complicated when Lewis Pullman’s Cameron, a broke struggling musician, takes over Tova’s shift after she twists an ankle. The Sparks-ian angle — human trauma distilled into an airy lite confection — has all three finding closure on that past and healing in the now, through interaction with each other. For the audience, there’s an unsolved mystery to add intrigue.
Marcellus, voiced by Alfred Molina, gives us all the Attenborough octopi factoids we need, and while the film is best when Marcellus is at the center (the FX and such are excellent), Field and her gaggle of aging gal pals — the “knit-wits,” a sewing club with Joan Chen, Beth Grant and Kathy Baker — charm in devilishly understated ways. It’s heartwarming for sure, but never maudlin. Field, a veteran presence, carries the film and knows when to cede the stage to her eight-armed co-star.
Watching “Creatures” sparked the desire in me to go back and watch the Academy Award-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher” (2020), which plays like “Creatures” IRL. It also has me wanting to reread Sy Montgomery’s excellent and emotionally insightful “The Soul of an Octopus,” which, like Tova, is about the author’s interaction with a polypous named Athena at our beloved New England Aquarium. — Tom Meek
Streaming on Netflix
“Obsession”
YouTube horror prankster Curry Barker jumps to the big screen with this debut chiller that became something of a cult staple on the festival circuit last year. In construct, it’s “Fatal Attraction” for the new generation, with flourishes of the occult and more as it dials in on a shy, love-struck millennial with the sheepish name of Bear (Michael Johnston) who can’t muster the nerve to ask winsome co-worker and bar trivia teammate Nikki (Inde Navarrette) out on a date. During one such forlorn evening he stumbles into a tchotchke shop and on a whim, buys a One Wish Willow. A snap of the osier and all Bear’s Nikki dreams come true — and quickly become an endless waking nightmare.
The “be careful what you wish for” effects are a page right out of a Stephen King novel; Nikki is suddenly so into Bear she won’t leave his side. Being in the bathroom too long becomes a matter of door banging, and God forbid another woman sends him a text or looks at him a little too long at a bar. That’s when the jealousy horns come out — and strange gump happens.
Barker, whose YouTube fare is dark and predictable, actually uses his bigger budget to dial up some great eerie moodiness. He also proves surgically adept with his grinding use of aural immersion to drive the mounting tension. His best is an early scene where Nikki, a ghostly silhouette leaning against a wall watching Bear sleep, just lingers there in an ephemeral haze. It’s simple, unshakeable and downright creepy. But as Nikki’s obsession grows and things turn increasingly disturbing and bloody (trigger warning for cat lovers), the plot becomes labored and beholden to form, not character.
Key to the film is Navarrette’s turn-on-a-dime performance, which dazzles as much as it disturbs. No her, no movie. She brings to the part the doe-eyed, girl-next-door presence of Neve Campbell infused with the rage gene Willa Fitzgerald conjured up in “Strange Darling” (2024). It’s an incredible performance in a promising concept that doesn’t quite deliver, but it does manage to get under your skin — just enough. — Tom Meek
Playing at Kendall Square Cinema and AMC Assembly Row 12
“Is God Is”
Adapted from her own stage play, Aleshea Harris’s “Is God Is” is a slow burn of a revenge tale that twists in strange, stylized ways as it follows the travails of twin sisters Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young, the upcoming “I Love Boosters”). The twins, after receiving a letter from their disfigured mother (an unrecognizable Vivica A. Fox), set off on a quest to avenge her by killing their father (Sterling K. Brown, “Moonlight,” “Paradise”). What ensues is something of a lo-fi spaghetti western filtered through the lens of a Greek tragedy with bubbles of Afrofuturist hip — in a loose stylistic sense, think “Sinners” and, to a lesser degree, “Him.”
Of the twins, Anaia is as — if not more — scarred than her mother from the fiery act of cruelty inflicted by Brown’s father—the flashback of which is dark, eerie and hard to watch. The credits list him only as “Man.” Mom is referred to as Ruby God, which, I guess, is what gives her agency to command the act of vengeance from her long-simmering death bed somewhere in the dusty fields of Virginia.
The command that Ruby has over the girls is curious as she has been long absent from their lives — since the incident. They grew up in foster care hell. The two also have a form of ESP, where they can look at each other and communicate in full sentences — for the rest of us it helps that we see them on screen in closed-captioned psychic subtitles.
The violence that comes — and there’s lots of it — is fast, bloody and brutal. It’s also at times comedic, with a touch of mean poetry to it — something Quentin Tarantino elevated to an art form and Harris is not too bad at. The girls’ tools of choice? A rock in a bloody white sock — looking like David’s sling — and a pair of pruning loppers.
As the twins, Johnson and Young are asked much of, and shoulder it well, but the film feels too long for what it is as the quiet moments of talky contemplation before the next, far-too-intimate beat down, often feel flat and don’t add anything new. Brown and Fox smolder in their brief parental parts, and the ever-elegant Janelle Monáe is a portrait of troubled grace as Man’s current wife. “Is God Is” comes out swinging and fierce, but there’s a hollowness to it that resonates more than the searing anger it postures. — Tom Meek
Playing at AMC Assembly Row 12
This story was updated to correct that in “Is God Is,” Anaia is the twin who is fire-scarred.
A stronger
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