Jarin Blaschke – Cut To The Chase

Written & Directed By: Oren Uziel
Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke
Editor: Blake Maniquis

Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, Mark Randall

An inventive crime thriller told backward, reversing day by day through a week following a local sheriff’s quest to unlock the mystery of three small-town criminals and a bank heist gone wrong.

This could have easily been a story for a season-long show BIG SKY. Even though it takes place over and not a few days.

Written and directed by noted screenwriter Oren Uziel. The film has the originality of his usual screenplays. Only here in a little more serious thriller vein. You can see why it was on the black list of 2009 (The Blacklist is a yearly list of the best-unproduced screenplays voted on by script development executives)

The story is told backward over a week. As we start with Friday and go back to Monday to see how a bank robbery affects a small town and its citizens.

The film is better than expected especially as a Netflix original film. Before they got distracted by having big stars and budgets and seemed to still care about storytelling.

As the film is an ensemble film. It’s also a thriller with double-crosses, twists, and backstabbings that once you think you have it figured out. It surprises you again but at least as it goes along it gives you more information to see why certain characters act the way they do or why they make the decisions they do.

It allows for plenty of quirky characters and situations. Though it does rein it in for the seriousness of everything at hand. As well as the overall dramatic implications all over.

We even get to know most of the characters involved in some way. As each day or part of the film that focuses on that day also tends to focus on the character we begin the day with and brings us into the grander puzzle of it all. Half the joy is discovering and witnessing how it all fits together. As well as the reasoning of various characters.

The cast all rise to the occasion to keep the audience riveted and invested. If you pay attention what happens or will happen is spoken of and told in a certain way before it happens. Even though the ending is a little hard to believe. It still works as long as you believe how cold-hearted the characters can be. Even if they show warmth, humanity, and humor before.

Stephanie Sigman as a run-down wife in mourning who can be plain one minute, aggressive the next, and sexy out of nowhere and not really having to really try. She is a versatile actress who needs to work more, especially after her dynamic debut in the movie MISS BALA.

While the film has a lived-in quality. It still lacks a certain depth it needs a little more grit.

Can admit to watching it a second time just to make sure I understood everything. It’s not a long movie but it does pack a jab and enough intrigue to keep you guessing.

Grade: C+

Written & Directed By: Robert Eggers
Cinematography By: Jarin Blaschke
Editor: Louise Ford
Production Design: Craig Lathrop
Art Direction: Andrea Kristof

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Kate Dickie, Ralph Ineson, Harvey Scrimshaw, Julian Richings, Viv Moore, Sarah Stephens

*Please note that some trivia and facts have been republished from imdb among other sources In this
review

New England, 1630: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life, homesteading on the edge of an impassible wilderness, with five children. When their newborn son mysteriously vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to turn on one another. ‘The Witch’ is a chilling portrait of a family unraveling within their own fears and anxieties, leaving them prey for an inescapable evil.

The premise is based on America’s first witch hysteria in colonial New England, set 62 years before the infamous “Salem Witch Trials” which occurred in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

This is one of those films that is more rewarding the less you know about it. So you are free to discover instead of coming in with perceived notions. Stephen King has stated that he was terrified by this film.

This is a film that takes you by surprise. As it is more atmospheric filmmaking. That feels more accomplished than half the horror films that are offered today.

The film focuses more on community and character. So that it stays intimate the whole time.

The film builds itself up. So that you have to pay attention to exactly know and understand what is going on.

The film sets itself up and its own limits. It takes its time, as this is not a film of jump scares and theatrics. It is trying to tell a story so it won’t offer answers immediately that we know and they have to figure out. When it makes a move it is playing for keeps. As the film is more haunting than scary. As it gives you a sense of unease the whole time.

It continuously goes where you don’t expect it. Especially when you believe you have things figured out and it seems it will go that way. If it does get too familiar the film seems to then go to the more physical actions of the characters as they begin to uncontrollably tremble and weep in their weakness that is never clearly defined.

The film is a period piece and as well as sets and costumes even the dialogue is more said in olden speak than natural dialogue. Which only helps the actors as they are so dedicated to their performances. They are so strong you believe them, their situations, and their reactions to them. Even the child actors’ performances are great and feel natural.

Most of the film’s dialogue and story were based on writings from the time. It feels like a film of its time period. This film seems dipped in tradition and truth as it scarily reveals itself and its nature. It isn’t so much thrilling. It is more full of ideas and imagination. The work of a skilled hand filmmaker. That seems more rooted in the type of films of the ’70s that could be ambiguous and make us question more. Then set out to give the audience visceral thrills. The film was mostly filmed in natural and available light which helps give a natural Spookiness to it

This is a film that uses nature more to reinforce the atmosphere and to provide the horrors of the film. That produces a calm whiny film that never settles again after s certain point in the film.

The movie is beautifully filmed on a smaller scale. Though making the simple and expected scary and haunted. While offering many misdirections, but feels immersed In Something sinister. As when all is revealed it feels worse than anything they could have shown us or that we could imagine and not with pyrotechnics or make-up but with hints that seem more plausible and homegrown. Whose reality is easily imagined and can be felt which makes it all the more devastating. This is a film unafraid to go to the places most mainstream cinema wouldn’t or would shy away from.

The Satanic Temple has endorsed this movie and hosted several screenings of the film. Their spokesperson, Jex Blackmore, addressed the film as “an impressive presentation of Satanic insight that will inform contemporary discussion of religious experience.”

The film manages to give a fresh meaning of horror that feels like a festering Underneath its surface.

It also takes a while to get there but once we do, we get the whole scope of events and what they mean.

The film, unfortunately, was a minor hit at first through strong word of mouth, but audiences expected a more traditional horror film and weren’t prepared for this film which takes it times with its horror and fully takes advantage and explores the ideas it spills forth

Grade: B

Tag: Jarin Blaschke

SHIMMER LAKE (2017)

THE WITCH (2016)