Like a lot of Morgan's work, this can be over-the-top gross and disturbing. By now I'm familiar with his atmospheric lighting effects, the skin tone of his characters, and the inventive ways he has with body fluids. His technique and attention to detail here is impressive, and his masterful control of pacing and comic (!) timing elevates this above an exercise in excess. There are surreal explosions of grotesque forms and transformations, with details that one might perversely interpret as "cute". Fascinating.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt 2019
I haven't seen Schramm, so maybe I'm missing crucial references. The technique is impressive, but I'm not sure it holds up as well as some of Morgan's other shorts.
Popular reviews
More-
Level 16 2018
The first half was promising: cold, claustrophobic, post-apocalyptic setting, dominated by a frigid blue-grey palette. (See trailer.) The girls' relationships and horrific predicament were efficiently sketched out.
But despite some stellar visual and sound design, eventually the movie succumbed to the kind of hackneyed thriller mechanics that I have little patience for. The Big Reveal was also botched in several ways. Definitely worth seeing for the first half, but the rest was a severe disappointment.
-
Antlers 2021
Nick Antosca wrote the script for this, and I was hoping for the clever ideas and surprising treatments that we've come to expect from the best of his Channel Zero series, or his fiction. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a rather predictable rural monster flick, complete with moody orchestral swells and wordless angelic chorales. It's technically quite competent, but little that we haven't seen before, many times. And the ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, which I…
