Edward Furlong

  • Below Zero (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2022) This should have been much better. I mean: Below Zero’s premise barely makes sense, but as a dramatic conceit, the idea of an author going to a secluded location to break out of writer’s block is a great one—there have been plenty of decent movies incorporating that idea. But as Below Zero piles up the details, it gets dumber and dumber—the writer locks himself up in a meat locker, he imagines a torture-horror story that merges with real events (mostly) and soon enough we’re in this nightmarish puree of maybe-reality-maybe-fiction spiced with ugly horror clichés both visual and conceptual. Edward Furlong gets a late career starring role(s) here but doesn’t do much with the opportunity, while Michael Berryman does turn in a much better performance. I’m more receptive than most to the idea of fiction bleeding into a writer’s reality, but the way it’s done in Below Zero is completely uninvolving: it just resolves into a big bunch of arbitrary nonsense without much of a point to it. This isn’t worth the trouble: even in the realm of low-budget horror films, there are much better movies about writers looking for inspiration having trouble with intrusive fiction. (It’s a subgenre.)

  • Before and After (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) I get that Before and After is the kind of thriller made to make you question your allegiances between your family and a wider social order. All of the film is consumed with parents reacting differently to their sons being involved in a murder—the father by (incompetently) trying to cover up for his son, the mother by thinking really hard about spilling everything to the cops. It’s quite a mediocre, middle-of-the-road thriller: I doubt it would still get airplay today if it wasn’t for Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson (what a couple!) as headliners—especially given that the film predates the post-Taken rise of Neeson as an action hero. (One imagines that the same film with the same actors would be written very differently today—did anyone say, “Daddy makes police station explode to get rid of evidence?”)  What’s far less than ideal here, even if you buy into the premises, is the very slow pace and the misjudging of the subgenre. At 108 minutes, Before and After feels interminable at times, with the characters making ill-advised decisions over and over again. There’s also a sentiment of discomfort brought by a film that hangs on a “maybe be did, maybe he didn’t” balance later presents a testimony without many questions. Edward Furlong has the added disadvantage of playing a spectacularly annoying character here—a good thing when trying to make a thriller about doubt and protecting a family even at the expense of justice, but not so much when we’re supposed to cheer for the little creep later on. I suppose that viewers here, especially parents, are supposed to empathize and wonder just how far they’ll go in protecting their kids—but Before and After’s distanciating execution makes it far too easy for viewers to say—my kid is PERFECT while yours is a KILLER who deserves to be SENT TO HELL.

  • Pet Sematary II (1992)

    Pet Sematary II (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) The first Pet Sematary managed to blend Stephen King’s unusually bleak novel with a crazy sensibility of its own and if the result wasn’t exactly good, it did hold its own as a decent 1980s horror movie, especially in the King adaptation subgenre. Sequel Pet Sematary II, alas, is crazier but nowhere as respectable, nor as interesting. Once we’ve established at film length that it’s a terrifyingly bad idea to bury people in a cemetery that resurrects them wrong, the follow-up merely piles one dumb character decisions on top of others. The result isn’t a complete catastrophe: At least Clancy Brown has the good sense of overacting throughout his part, making it more fun than the dour plot summary may suggest. Edward Furlong is dull as the lead, but Darlanne Fluegel does bring some redheaded heat to her role, and is a good reason why the beginning and end of the movie are more interesting than anything in between. Still, Pet Sematary II is not much: the plot depends on unbelievable characters, repeating the high points of the original without as much dramatic oomph and with the usual limitations of early 1990s horror movies following up on King’s work without directly adapting them. See it if you must complete a list or two (or if it comes bundled with the original); otherwise it may not be worth the effort to track down.