Samara Weaving

  • Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2021) Bringing back a movie franchise after a decades-long hiatus is always a risky prospect, no matter how many commercial imperatives and fannish demands justify it. Bill and Ted being such a creation of their circa-1990 era, bringing them back nearly thirty years later -in an environment saturated with nostalgia—seemed wrong. But Bill & Ted Face the Music isn’t like most thirty-year-later remakes — perhaps the single key difference being that the core creative team behind the franchise is also back: crucially screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (who became a celebrity screenwriter in the meantime), but also Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in the two lead roles. This probably explains why the film is so comfortable taking the story thirty years later, with our visibly aged protagonists having daughters and struggling with a life that has not lived up to their youthful expectations. When further time-travelling shenanigans suggest that the fate of the universe rests on a crucial music performance, it’s off to the races in recapturing the charm of the earlier films. It, surprisingly, generally works: There’s a certain wit to the script, some funny takes on time-travel elements, and the two leads recapture their performances with some gusto. Better yet, the film’s secret weapons are Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, each of them clearly taking after their fathers. Lundy-Paine is particularly amusing channelling Reeves’ specific tics as Ted. The rest of Bill & Ted Face the Music has ups and downs: recruiting past musicians is a good idea, as are the visits to increasingly older and more desperate version of themselves, but some of the other material is more laborious — a subplot involving a terminator robot with serious self-esteem issues sputters as often as it works. Fortunately, it does build to a rather nice conclusion that wraps up Bill and Ted’s story while opening the door just widely enough for the next generation to take over. Not that they have to — sequels aren’t mandatory, after all.

  • Ready or Not (2019)

    Ready or Not (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) While I’m no fan of gory horror in general, I’m quite willing to make exceptions when the film is actually good. Or fun. Or interesting. Ready or Not ends up being all three, and for several good reasons. It’s a kill-the-rich satire, an anti-matrimonial fable, an intense horror film, a funny self-aware genre piece and a terrific showcase for Samara Weaving. The plot has to do with a mysterious rich-family curse that leads them to hunt and sacrifice newcomers to the family through a game of hide-and-seek. Which means that within minutes, our heroine is running inside a vast manor in a wedding dress, trying her best to remain undetected until sunrise. It doesn’t quite work out that way, of course—the set-pieces escalate in intensity with some very welcome comic relief along the way. Nicky Guadagni is a hoot as a mad troll doll, while Andie MacDowell is suitably leathery as the matriarch. It’s all superbly directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett of “Radio Silence” fame. What takes Ready or Not one notch above the usual horror film is a sense of nuance, internal strife and a strong presence of the supernatural, remixed in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s gory and profane, but not unreasonably so given the overall atmosphere of the film. It toys expertly with the audience, knowing what they’ve seen before. As for myself, I did a complete 180 on Ready or Not, from a reluctant viewer of the opening to gleeful enthusiasm at the over-the-top finale. Can we spare a moment of mourning for the maids? The theme song is a powerful earworm.

  • The Babysitter (2017)

    The Babysitter (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2018) If you had asked around 2005, McG would have been identified as an up-and-coming director capable of handling big blockbuster productions: After Charlie’s Angels and its sequel Full Throttle, McG had proven his ability to deliver the kind of action comedy that Hollywood can never get enough. But then his movies got worse. Never a prolific director (one every three years), his career suffered the back-to-back-to-back blows of Terminator Salvation, This Means War and 3 Days to Kill, neither of which were particularly well received nor did much box-office business. So what’s a Hollywood outcast to do? Turn to Netflix, of course, and that’s where we find The Babysitter, a smaller-scoped action comedy in which a teenager discovers that his babysitter leads a demonic cult and intends to sacrifice someone. Like, while he’s supposed to be sleeping. The next hour or so has the predictable running-around-the-house, ganging-up-with-the-neighbour, taking-down-the-Demonists stuff, handled with a nice little edge of self-awareness and fast-paced frame-breaking. The blend of comedy and horror is generally successful, although the film occasionally feels a bit too vulgar and gory for its own good. McG’s fluid direction is a return to form for him, while Samara Weaving does just fine as the titular babysitter. The Babysitter is not a respectable or profound film—but it’s exactly the kind of exploitation horror comedy that popped up in the more self-aware 1980s, and it’s quite a bit of fun to watch.