Butler's Cinema Scene

Left to right: Aiden Tyler Patdu, Beauty Gonzalez, Sid Lucero, Marco Masa

“OUTSIDE” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

142 minutes | No MPAA rating

If Eugene O’Neill had written a horror script it would play like “Outside,” a Philippine production in which family dysfunction is even more terrifying than the flesh-chomping undead.

Think of it as “Long Day’s Journey into Zombie-ism.”

Writer/director Carlo Ledesma wastes no time on preliminaries. The film opens with a much-battered family van (it’s covered in bloody handprints) chugging down a country road.

Inside are father Francis (Sid Lucero), mother Iris (Beauty Gonzalez) and their two boys, teenage Josh (Marco Masa) and little brother Lucas (Aiden Tyler Patdu).

They’re fleeing the city, headed for the sugar cane farm on which Francis grew up.  Once there they discover Grandpa dead from a self-inflicted gunshot; Grandma is a rapidly decaying wraith.

Francis gets to work burying the bodies and turning the farmhouse into a fortress.  There are fewer zombies in the sticks (fewer people, yes?) but they’re fast and hungry and attracted by loud noises.

The problem is that Dad’s idea of a secure space feels a whole lot like a prison.

With his wire-rimmed glasses and soft tummy, Francis is the very embodiment of an unassertive suburban Dad.  But in a weird way the zombie apocalypse has transformed him into an alpha male. Now he gets to call the shots.

Turns out Francis is carrying a whole load of baggage.  As a boy he was frequently locked in a dank cellar and raped by his father, and being back in that environment has set his paranoia to tingling.

And then there’s his relationship with the Missus.  Iris comes off as shellshocked and innervated…it’s all she can do to cook rice for the family.  Later we’ll learn the clan’s darkest secret…Francis is sure the two boys are the result of his wife’s infidelity.

Dad’s rapidly advancing mania (in many aspects the plot echoes “The Shining”) has him rejecting Iris’ and Josh’s pleas to drive north to what is reputed to be a zombie-free zone.  He’s not above sabotage to keep them under his thumb.

Every now and then we get a close call with the zombies, but “Outside”  plays down the usual horror tropes in favor of psychological realism.  

It’s been spectacularly well acted — this sort of subtlety is almost unknown in horror — and the two-hour-plus running time zips by.

Mia Goth (left)

“MAXXXINE” My rating: C+ (Hulu)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The collaborations of writer/director Ty West and leading lady Mia Goth (“Pearl,” “X”)  have been hailed in some quarters as as the new best hope for the horror genre.

I’m not so sure…and “MaXXXine” hasn’t convinced me.

This latest effort finds West working with some really big names (Elizabeth Debicki, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon, Bobby Canavale, Michelle Monaghan, Lily Collins).  But all that talent is frittered away on a cheesy premise.

Maxine (Goth) is a Dixie chick who came to LA and ended up in porn.  Now past 30, she recognizes that her expiration date in the flesh industry is fast approaching. She needs to pivot to a “real” movie with a “real” director.

After giving a killer audition, this tart-talkin’ Southern gal seems poised to realize her dream. But even as she launches her new legit career  Maxine finds herself being stalked by an unseen killer who seems to follow her every move and begins picking off her friends and acquaintances.

Set int the late 1970s, “MaXXXine” is nothing if not ambitious.   West wants to comment on unbridled ambition and the whole star-making apparatus, and much of the movie unfolds on studio back lots familiar from other films. There’s a sequence set in the Bates house from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”; the final confrontation with the mysterious killer unfolds at night at the foot of the famed Hollywood sign.

But it doesn’t add up to much, largely because the character of Maxine feels painfully undernourished.  There’s not a smidgen of humor or even irony in Goth’s joyless performance. Maxine starts out thick-skinned and hard-assed and never evolves into anything more. 

C’mon. Watching a thriller is supposed to be fun, but there’s not much pleasure to be had from “MaXXXine.”

| Robert W. Butler