Jared Mobarak

You quickly discover that even Soisson’s best intentions are ultimately hampered by half-baked execution throughout. So intent on providing red herrings, he never allows us to know anyone other than through two-dimensional labels like “soon-to-be-victim” and “potential killer”—sometimes simultaneously.

It’s a stylish debut from an artist with a keen sense of visuals, music, and feeling — a finger firmly on the pulse of now.

There’s just one thing missing from Zhao Liang‘s visually masterful documentary Behemoth: a before image of what this wasteland of coal and rock used to be before God’s beast was unleashed.

I feel like Day could have made three documentaries out of his footage: one about Greif’s journey, one about street artists, and one about the art world’s old and new guard.

Sadly The Bye Bye Man lacks both surprise and intrigue despite possessing some promise via a wild opening.

Credit is due to Marson for staying objective in how she tells Hurwitz’s story so it can transcend his individual experience within this complicated landscape.

Thankfully Bousman’s endgame does deliver the supernatural slaughterhouse of the title to great effect with inspired spectral victims looped in suspended animation. It’s so memorably jarring that you wonder if the whole was just sloppily reverse engineered from this massive undertaking.

Besides an unnecessarily indulgent epilogue, the film’s good versus evil dynamic is successful at extricating itself from any mainstream trappings while also nicely serving its audience.

All mood, atmosphere, and mystery with our own confusion about the action mirrored in those onscreen.

Atmosphere is paramount as it should be, but sadly it’s created almost solely from jump scares the prologue quickly numbs us towards as soon as things get going.

Maybe Fenn’s treasure will one day change someone’s life in a material way. Maybe it won’t. In the meantime, though, it’s calling us to awaken and explore.