Suspense/Thriller | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Dry [2021]

2021/05/142021/05/17 Jared Mobarak

Out shooting rabbits. Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) wasn’t ever planning on coming back. Leaving wasn’t his choice, but at a certain point the present replaces the past. Hearing that his best friend from high school killed his wife and son before turning the gun on himself wasn’t therefore going to change his mind. If anything, knowing that truth and the fact that Luke was gone might have been the final nail as far as never returning at all. But that’s when the card came with a cryptic message more or…

REVIEW: Seance [2021]

2021/05/132021/05/17 Jared Mobarak

Edelvine Ghost, rise up to us. A teenager took her own life two decades ago and the prestigious Edelvine Academy hasn’t yet escaped the cloud formed above its roof as a result. Rumors of the “ghost” run rampant and jokes to scare new students with Candyman-esque rituals bringing her back to haunt them have become a rite of passage. It’s not until the present-day, however, that someone actually conjures her. By speaking the words at the exact time of her death in the exact place she died, Alice (Inanna Sarkis)…

REVIEW: Profile [2021]

2021/05/082021/05/11 Jared Mobarak

All I want is a Kalashnikov. It was only a matter of time before Timur Bekmambetov took the plunge and directed his own entry within the cinematic style he coined (and anecdotally created) as “Screenlife.” Even if we forget how Brian De Palma played with YouTube-style vignettes in Redacted circa 2007, the short film Noah debuted at TIFF a year before Unfriended at Fantasia, and Nacho Vigalondo‘s Open Windows hit SXSW a few months before the latter too, the filmmaker’s claim always remained a bit far-fetched simply because the films…

REVIEW: The Djinn [2021]

2021/05/072021/05/11 Jared Mobarak

You’re perfect just the way you are. There’s a reason young, mute Dylan Jacobs (Ezra Dewey) longs for a voice and it’s not simply an ableist fantasy striving for some misguided ideal of “normalcy.” A bit of that is present (he’s a child seeking friendship and community, after all), but the reality is that he sees his silence as the reason why his mother (Tevy Poe) left. He’s starting over in a new apartment with his radio DJ father (Rob Brownstein‘s Michael) and yet he still can’t forget the night…

REVIEW: Wrath of Man [2021]

2021/05/052021/05/06 Jared Mobarak

We’re all over-qualified for this game. And we all have a history. Fans of Guy Ritchie that wore out Lock Stock and Snatch during the early Aughts will find themselves hard-pressed to take the opening act of Wrath of Man seriously. It’s as though he and co-writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies are trying to re-capture the quick-paced slang that made the dialogue in those films so uniquely fun and of the moment despite being two decades removed in age and culture. Because while talking the talk as a thirty-year…

REVIEW: Silo [2021]

2021/05/012021/05/05 Jared Mobarak

‘They’ say a lot of stupid things. The After School Special vibe at the back of Marshall Burnette‘s Silo isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. Because beyond creating a captivatingly suspenseful premise with which to build a plot, grain entrapment is a significant enough issue to demand a path towards awareness as much as cinematic entertainment. As the text that appears right before the end credits states: one person has been victim to such incidents approximately every fifteen days since the 1960s. That’s a crazy stat and yet those of…

REVIEW: Cliff Walkers [2021]

2021/04/282021/04/29 Jared Mobarak

Everything will be fine when the sun rises. The mission: parachute into Manchukuo (an area of China under the unofficial control of Japan during the 1930s), find escaped comrade Wang, and escort him to freedom. It’s what Communist party operatives Zhang (Zhang Yi), Yu (Qin Hailu), Chuliang (Zhu Yawen), and Lan (Liu Haocun) have trained to accomplish during years spent in the USSR and they’re willing to give their lives towards that goal. It shouldn’t therefore be surprising when a last-minute order necessitates them splitting up into pairs that in…

REVIEW: Trigger Point [2021]

2021/04/142021/04/15 Jared Mobarak

Everybody breaks. Things get off to a pretty rocky start with Brad Turner‘s Trigger Point thanks to a haphazard opening sequence comprised of silencer shots and gun flashes as random bodies fall to the ground. It feels like the cold open to a television show (Turner has worked on the likes of “24”, “Homeland”, and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” amongst many others during his thirty-year career) and thus the precursor to what will ultimately feel like a made-for-TV actioner. That we quickly move to a day in the life of Nicolas…

REVIEW: The Mosquito Coast [1986]

2021/04/052021/04/05 Jared Mobarak

Ice is civilization. Anyone who has lived through the COVID pandemic with a MAGA-touting Trump lover in the family knows Allie Fox (Harrison Ford): a man so crippled by inadequacy and fear that he’ll twist himself into a pretzel to feign righteousness. It’s therefore interesting that this character is both anti-capitalism and anti-God since those are usually the means that facilitate that twist. But you listen to Allie’s opening rant (to his son Charlie, as played by River Phoenix, and ultimately to anyone in earshot of his intentionally sanctimonious shouting)…

REVIEW: Funny Face [2021]

2021/03/282021/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Maybe I have to do more. One person’s garbage is another’s treasure … or something like that. And if Tim Sutton‘s Funny Face is any indication, there’s no place in the world who understands those sentiments more than Brooklyn, New York. Whether we’re talking about rundown homes where impoverished families survive being torn down for a shiny new parking lot or a once great basketball team making you wonder if the owners are lifelong fans of its greatest rivals desperately trying to ensure they never make the playoffs again or…

REVIEW: The Courier [2021]

2021/03/162021/03/16 Jared Mobarak

Sometimes a lie is a gift. There’s a great line about mid-way through director Dominic Cooke and writer Tom O’Connor‘s The Courier wherein Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) are talking about the lies they have to tell to keep their families safe. The latter’s Russian official turned CIA asset is trying to comfort the former’s British businessman turned amateur operative by saying they’re in a similar predicament when it comes to home life only for Wynne to incredulously explain the exact opposite with the words, “Your…