Sarah Snook

  • Jessabelle (2014)

    Jessabelle (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) There’s clearly something about the bayous of Louisiana that attracts horror filmmakers, and it’s easy to understand why: any place with trees and no ground seems innately spooky to anyone not used to it. Trotting ground similar to The Skeleton Key, Jessabelle also heads to the bayou and a twisted story of possession from the grave, with anyone’s identities not safe from change. Sarah Snook stars as a young disabled woman who discovers spookier and spookier evidence of past supernatural shenanigans as she moves into her estranged father’s house. Jessabelle is not a particularly sophisticated horror film, but it does keep trying. Taking advantage of its Louisiana atmosphere (including some swimming in the bayou), it also goes for ominous videotapes, twisted family histories and disability-specific scares. Snook is up to her usual standards here, often outshining the ordinary material. Jessabelle could have been better, but it does have its high points, and it ends on a somewhat intense note that forgives a lot of preceding silliness.

  • Predestination (2014)

    Predestination (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) I don’t normally approve of movies changing the title of their literary origins, but considering that Robert A Heinlein’s “All you Zombies” is both an instantly-recognizable spoiler and a strikingly misleading title, let’s see the retitling of the story as Predestination as the first of the writers-directors Spierig Brothers’ many good decisions in adapting this seminal SF short story.  Given that the short story pack a lot of punch in a few thousand words, it’s not entirely surprising that there’s enough material here for an entire film, along with a slight but pleasing coda that brings us a bit beyond the short story without robbing it of its twisty power (and adding an extra thematic layer to it).  Part of the problem in discussing the film is in deciding how much to say – Ethan Hawke is pretty good in the lead role, but Sarah Snook is absolutely spectacular in a far more difficult role.  The film is carefully written and directed, taking place in a slightly alternate world that owes much to the fifties’ vision of the future.  Predestination’s success is even more remarkable considering that the source material couldn’t be trickier to adapt –one wrong decision, and the sheer preposterousness of the entire story would crush it lifeless.  But the result, amazingly enough, holds up –and it also holds up for those readers who know every twist and turn of the original story.