Watching: Beware the weremom
Dear Watchers,On this Genre Movie Wednesday, female characters are at the center of two movies that deal with primal behavior in very different ways. The first is a Canadian thriller in which a woman must contend with men whose toxic behavior gives way to sinister acts. The other is a comedy in which a mother develops canine qualities. Both include compelling lead performances, and both pack a lot of bite into their relatively brief narratives. Read below what our horror expert Erik Piepenburg has to say about each, then head here for three more of his picks. Happy viewing. 'Hunting Daze'
Where to watch: Stream "Hunting Daze" on The Roku Channel or Plex. In French, this film from the Canadian writer-director Annick Blanc is called "Jour de chasse," or "Hunting Day." It's a more precise name than the silly English title that makes this provocative and intensely entertaining thriller sound emptier than it is. Nina (Nahéma Ricci), a sex worker, becomes stranded on a rural road on her way home from entertaining a bunch of bros at their hunting cabin. To her rescue comes Kevin (Frédéric Millaire-Zouvi), one of the nice guys, who takes her back to the men's cabin, where she is told she can stay — if she agrees to be hazed. The seen-it-all Nina powers through, but unexpectedly into the picture comes Doudos (Noubi Ndiaye), a Black man whom the dudes put through an even more life-threatening hazing. It's then that Nina grasps that she and Doudos are not exactly welcome in this house of white guy horrors. Blanc's film takes place in a naturalistic setting, but the action unfolds in a conceptual sphere that's both a homoerotic play space and a hellscape. Like the neo-Nazi dark comedy "Soft and Quiet," this film has a message about hate and tribalism that is far from subtle. Yet its violent thrills, nasty twists and moral quandaries kept me hooked, and guessing, throughout its brisk 79 minutes. 'Nightbitch'
Where to watch: Stream "Nightbitch" on Hulu. I wouldn't say that this magical-realist film from Marielle Heller, which she directed and adapted from Rachel Yoder's novel of the same name, is a werewolf story — even though it is about a human who morphs into a dog. But it does share many werewolf movie conventions, including macabre physical transformations and a troubled protagonist who struggles to understand her origin and purpose. What differs is the thing that makes this darkly comic parable worth watching: Our leading character is a mother, not the usual wolf man, who finds self-determination and liberation in her metamorphoses. In a beautifully focused performance, Amy Adams imbues this character with shifting measures of tenderness, anger and pathos, even when the script makes the subtexts obvious. The movie has divided audiences over its depiction of motherhood as a vampiric career sucker. I think it takes guts for a director to make a mommy a monster, even more so when the creature is a frolicsome, cutie-pie pooch who proudly answers to "Nightbitch."
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