Suspense/Thriller | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF21 REVIEW: The Desperate Hour [2022]

2021/09/132022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

I want this to end. Screenwriter Chris Sparling takes us back to the script that put him on the Hollywood map with The Desperate Hour (formerly Lakewood). Much like his isolated one-man show Buried, this latest focuses on a single character caught in a high-pressure situation with seemingly no way out. Unlike it, however, the real danger is far away from the screen. You see, Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) is safe. She woke up, texted work that she’d be taking a personal day, told the kids to go to school,…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Encounter [2021]

2021/09/112021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Everything I do is to protect you. A meteorite falling to Earth disintegrates into stardust that subsequently permeates everything it touches. It hits the soil, enters a bug, is consumed again, and then injected into human flesh by a mosquito while feeding on a microscopic tardigrade about to explode. This is the computer-generated prologue to Michael Pearce‘s Encounter that sets the table for its forthcoming struggle between man and neurological parasite. Has he and co-writer Joe Barton therefore shown that their protagonist has suddenly been infected while sleeping? Malik Khan…

REVIEW: Prisoners of the Ghostland [2021]

2021/08/312021/09/13 Jared Mobarak

Time for us all to be free. How can someone who just escaped still not be free? It’s a question Bernice (Sofia Boutella) must ask at the beginning of Sion Sono‘s English-language debut Prisoners of the Ghostland without knowing if she’ll ever discover an answer. She and two others fled Samurai Town the night before, shuffling off to the cheers of other abused and oppressed women once the men all turned in. Not knowing what to do next, they get in a car and drive off only for Sono to…

REVIEW: The Night House [2021]

2021/08/252021/08/29 Jared Mobarak

You’re safe now. Beth (Rebecca Hall) is left a widow without warning the day her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) decided to take his own life with a gun she didn’t even know he owned. The boat has been cleaned (he covered it in plastic and took off his clothes before pulling the trigger), but it’s hard not to look at it and think about the horror it witnessed. That’s why their neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) decided to cover it “for the season” and why Beth can’t help lingering by the…

REVIEW: Candyman [2021]

2021/08/242021/08/25 Jared Mobarak

He found me. Despite its earned cult classic status, Bernard Rose‘s Candyman isn’t without fault. His decision to move Clive Barker‘s short story “The Forbidden” from a British neighborhood to Chicago’s Cabrini–Green projects to deal with the racial divide as well as the economical one in the text was as inspired as casting Tony Todd for his titular bee-infested boogeyman running on the fuel of a hive mind’s fear. Yet he still centered it all on a white savior’s shoulders in Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). Rose flirts with the complexity…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Baby Money [2021]

2021/08/202021/08/22 Jared Mobarak

Everyone’s gotta have their moment. The job is simple. Break into an old couple’s home in the middle of the night, skulk around while they sleep to procure a purple metal box, and then just wait for a 4am call on an already supplied burner phone. In, out, and thousands of dollars richer. Saying “No’ isn’t therefore an option for Minny (Danay Garcia) and Gil (Michael Drayer) considering they don’t even have to get their hands dirty as getaway driver and lookout respectively. Having a baby on the way and…

REVIEW: Candyman [1992]

2021/08/192021/08/20 Jared Mobarak

Sweets to the sweet. An urban legend ghost such as Candyman (Tony Todd) doesn’t care about anyone besides those willing to keep his memory alive. His purpose in death is to be remembered through blood—turning his heinous fate from the late nineteenth century into a curse that haunts others into being too scared to naively follow in his own footsteps where it comes to the belief that someone who looks like him can escape the prejudice that targets the color of his skin. So when Chicago grad students Helen Lyle…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Baby, Don’t Cry [2021]

2021/08/182021/08/23 Jared Mobarak

You still have a chance. Baby (Zita Bai) is a seventeen-year-old Chinese immigrant surviving on the fringes of her community. She’s a voyeur—always with camera on to capture the dialogue and actions of others so that she can better mimic how it is that she should act to “fit in.” That she also photographs animal carcasses and death with excitement might make that sort of assimilation tough, but she’s not really interested in those that would dismiss such a thing without context. It’s not until she meets Fox (Vas Provatakis)…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Daewoebi: Gwonryeok-ui Tansaeng [The Devil’s Deal] [2021]

2021/08/172021/08/22 Jared Mobarak

Can’t we live ordinary lives? There’s no way anybody beats Jeon Hae-woong (Cho Jin-woong) in a hometown election because everyone in Haeundae loves him. Walking down the street means shaking hands and bowing to applause because the people know that he will fight for them. He is one of them, after all. Thinking as much only proves naïve if the world in which he exists is corrupt and, according to the President (who is also up for re-election at the same time as Congress), this will be the most transparently…

REVIEW: The Girl Who Got Away [2021]

2021/08/142021/08/20 Jared Mobarak

I’m all she thinks about. Christina Bowden (Lexi Johnson) is an Elementary school teacher with aspirations to adopt. The paperwork is filed, the young teen (Willow McCarthy‘s Lisa) targeted is on-board, and it seems the last remnants of Christina’s volatile past have been repurposed for good. Kidnapped and raised in a shack by her captor (Kaye Tuckerman‘s Elizabeth Caulfield), fate somehow allowed her the second chance her four “sisters” tragically never received. She wants to therefore be a lightning rod for change in the community by using that experience from…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Bull [2021]

2021/08/122022/01/27 Jared Mobarak

Things to do, my friend. It’s been ten years since Bull’s (Neil Maskell) son Aiden was taken from him by his ex-wife (Lois Brabin-Platt‘s Gemma) and father-in-law (David Hayman‘s Norm). Ten years that have apparently progressed with little to no worries for everyone involved but him. Norm still runs the local crew of heavies putting the screws to businesses they need to help move their merchandise and said crew have all started families of their own without a thought of what occurred. That Bull’s return is unexpected shouldn’t be surprising…