By Roger Costa
DEAD LOVER
Drawing influence from Guy Maddin and Tim Burton, this haunting and horrifying love story is the accomplished sophomore work by award-winning filmmaker Grace Glowicki. She also plays the leading role, a lonely and very horny gravedigger who longs for a mate. She smells awful, like the corpses she’s surrounded by and is avoided by everyone, until she meets an unlikely lover (Ben Petrie, who co-wrote the screenplay with Glowicki) who is strangely attached to the way she “stinks”. The pair form an oddly bizarre and kinky relationship, delivering grind and sarcastic exchanges of intimacy and their version of eroticism. When he dies overseas, she goes “full-metal/Frankenstein” and successfully brings him back but in an unusual form: a finger in need of a body. A delightful, utterly irreverent and provocative pastiche, Glowicki achieves a bold and strangely irresistible fable of death, love and horny corpses.
(A Cartuna x Dweck Release. Now Playing at IFC Center).
THEY WILL KILL YOU
Zazie Beetz is outstanding as a badass recently released from a 10-year incarceration who sees herself trapped in a satanic mansion and must do anything to save herself. Fueled by high octane adrenaline, excellent visuals and beautifully choreographed martial arts sequences, director Kirill Sokolov’s Hollywood debut demonstrates the intensity and graphic artistry of his filmmaking. An extremely gore, messy and ultra-violent cat versus dogs survival story, the film blends mysticism, superstitious themes, action and humor with relevant results, but loses its appeal midway through. It becomes incessantly repetitive, despite the talent of a top cast including Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton and Heather Graham, doing their best in many sequences supported by effects.
(New Line Cinema/Nocturna. Opens Friday, March 27th at Regal Times Square).
FORBIDDEN FRUITS
The always great Lili Reinhart leads a fabulous cast in this stylish and unpredictable horror comedy inspired by “Practical Magic” and “Mean Girls”. Here, three young witches who work at a fashion store invite a local outcast to be part of their cult, shaping her into their “rituals”. As their sisterhood progresses, jealousy and competition come along, turning the events bloody and out of control. Making her feature directorial debut, Meredith Alloway demonstrates total command of the material, addressing women’s rivalry, ambition and vulnerability with accuracy and depth while delivering an aggressively funny and enigmatic nightmare.
(IFC Midnight/Shudder. Opens Friday, March 27th at AMC Empire Times Square).
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