Movie Mentions: The Unwanted, Santosh & The Exorcism
The Unwanted (2014)
Directed by Bret Wood. 1.5/5 stars.
Bret Wood’s The Unwanted is a nearly nonsensical retelling of the vampire tale Carmilla that believes it’s a clever Southern Gothic think piece but is really just plain dumb. What’s intended to be a steamy psycho-sexual lesbian vampire story is instead a toothless mess of poor Southern drawls and completely flat storytelling. The Unwanted has no bite whatsoever, a crime made especially heinous considering the long history of far better works based on the same source material.
Santosh (2024)
Directed by Sandhya Suri. 3.5/5 stars.
I wish American filmmakers could write female characters the way they’re written in Indian director Sandhya Suri’s Santosh. The titular character (played by Shahana Goswami) is as complex as they come – she’s a victim of misogyny, sexism, racism, and the caste system, but she’s also headstrong, intelligent, and full of sometimes shocking flaws. More than anything, it’s these flaws that set her apart from what we as Americans have come to expect from a “strong female lead,” and Suri’s film is all the better for it. Santosh is part police procedural, part mystery/revenge thriller, part examination of India’s deeply-seated flaws of its own, but mostly, it’s about women sticking together despite overwhelming opposition. By the end, you may find yourself (as I did) somewhat appalled by the actions shown on screen, but remember it’s just these kinds of confrontational moments that help create the vast separation between antiseptic mainstream American cinema and its much more daring world counterparts.
The Exorcsim (2024)
Directed by Joshua John Miller. 2/5 stars.
Joshua John Miller’s The Exorcism – about a washed-up actor cast as a priest in a B-movie that features, you guessed it, an exorcism – is simultaneously annoyingly on-the-nose about in its exploration of grief and substance abuse and not clever enough to be artistically allegorical. The whole thing rambles aimlessly while sinking deeper and deeper into predictable clichés. Even Russell Crowe (who I’m glad to see steadily working again and, in all honesty, is pretty damn good in this) can’t save The Exorcism from falling into an unscary and unbalanced hole in the ground. I’m sure the script sounded “edgy” on paper but the bulk of its scares consists mostly of lights turning on and off and the entire cast and crew of the movie-within-a-movie witnessing a demonically possessed Tony (Crowe) and then simply dismissing him as drunk (and arguing about whether they should recast him). Had this been a behind-the-scenes found footage film, then maybe we’d have something, but as is, The Exorcism is a holy disappointment.
