No discussion of Escape from Tomorrow can be divorced from the production of the film. Writer/director Randy Moore’s surrealist horror story was shot on location (and without permission) in Disney World. The black and white low budget film is about the real world colliding with the all too polished magic of the Disney World and the tensions that arise from misplaced expectations of escapism. Moore scrambles the geography and style of the theme park into a vision of paranoid terror all without the Disney machine realizing a feature narrative film is being made.
There is an unexpected level of bravery to a guerrilla approach like this. If anything went wrong with production, if Moore and the cast were found out, there would be no film. A well-meaning tourist or Cast Member (as the Disney park employees are called) could have pulled the plug on the story. In fact, if you pay attention, you can see there are quite a few scenes where green screen is used to cover for scenes they couldn’t shoot in the parks.
A knowledge of the Disney World parks is helpful in understanding everything that happens in the film. The first half takes place in the Magic Kingdom, which is geared toward younger guests. You have a couple thrill rides in Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but the rest is photo ops, meet and greets, and the super family friendly rides that don’t get much more extreme than a carousel.
Lieutenant Matt Kowalski is in charge of a five-person mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to install Dr. Ryan Stone’s new monitoring equipment. Everything is going fine until mission control announces that a Russian satellite has blown up and the debris may be heading their way. That is quickly upgraded to abandon the Hubble and flee the scene to stay alive, which is promptly followed by Kowalski and Stone drifting in space in radio silence, the only survivors of a routine maintenance mission to space gone horribly wrong.
Director Kimberly Peirce and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) seem to be at odds over how to handle a Carrie remake. Peirce coaxes a very natural, almost underplayed, beauty from her cast of actors. She downplays the infamous abuse in the White household to turn Carrie into a Greek-style tragedy, with the massive punishment of The Destruction and the catharsis of the final moments. Aguirre-Sacasa lifts most of his screenplay wholesale from the (rightfully credited) Lawrence D. Cohen version and adds in a few cool details from the Stephen King novel. His biggest contribution is finding a brilliant throughline in social media and the pervasiveness of technology when it comes to bullying in modern high schools. Aguirre-Sacasa’s laser vision on the literal text of Carrie gives Peirce the freedom to mold it into biting social commentary through performance and technical craft.
The Awakening is a haunted house film told from the perspective of a skeptic. Florence Cathcart is England’s leading paranormal investigator, debunking the schemes of spiritualists and delusions of regular people alike. In 1921, she is invited to a boarding school where the boys claim to see a ghost. A death happened on school grounds during the fall session and Cathcart is believed to be the last hope to ensure any students return for the spring.
Metallica: Through the Never tries something very unusual for a modern concert film. The band members worked with writer/director Nimród Antal to develop an original story set to their set list to play out during the live concert footage. Dane DeHaan plays Trip, a young roadie sent on an important mission during the concert to retrieve an item for the band. What he wanders into is a world strewn in chaos. It’s as if the music of the band has altered reality, creating riots and nightmarish monsters on every corner. It’s an intriguing concept that breaks up the concert footage very well.
If anyone could make a sensible adaptation out of David Wong’s bizarro horror/comedy novel 