Star-Studded Casts Produce Big Flops: At The Movies With Kasey
Everyone has bills to pay and that’s the only reason I can think of to explain some of the movies that have come out lately with a stellar cast but little creativity or emotional resonance. After a spate of big streaming misses, it has been refreshing to find smaller movies that provide better performances and interesting plotlines.
One of these movies with a great cast but a shockingly bad screenplay is The Parenting on Max. In the movie, Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) invite their parents—Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, and Dean Norris—to a weekend getaway to meet each other. The house they rented is looked after by a bizarre caretaker, Brenda (Parker Posey), who seems to know something is wrong with the property. A dark force haunts the house and possesses Rohan’s dad before terrorizing the rest of the crew.
The Parenting is unwatchably bad. A horror comedy with the duo of Lisa Kudrow and Edie Falco should have had at least a few funny exchanges, but every bit of dialogue feels forced and tired. I knew that I was in for disappointment when Parker Posey’s zany Brenda turns around to reveal a long grey braid hanging out from the bottom of her short black wig. The gag is unfunny and sloppy, and it portends flat jokes to come.
The plot recycles both romantic comedy and horror tropes from haunted house norms to opposites attracting, but the cast just looks like they are going through the motions. Sometimes, when I watch a bad movie, I wonder if the cast realized it wasn’t going to work while they were filming or not. I think it’s clear here that they knew this movie was bad, down to the terrible title.
The Parenting was written by Kent Sublette and directed by Craig Johnson. It runs 94 minutes and is rated R.
Then, over on Netflix, The Electric State stars Millie Bobby Brown as Michelle, an orphan living in a dystopian version of the 1990s in which her little brother is missing and somehow inhabiting a robot. Robots are the source of the dystopia as they became commonplace and then revolted against humans. To find her brother, Michelle goes on an action-packed adventure with a grumpy drifter, Keats (Chris Pratt). This cast also features Stanley Tucci, Woody Harelson, Ke Huy Quan, Giancarlo Esposito, Jenny Slate, Holly Hunter, Michelle Yeoh, Marin Hinkle, and Anthony Mackie, but with all that talent, there is not an emotionally resonant moment in the whole production.
Millie Bobby Brown does a fine job anchoring the story in the search for her brother, but Chris Pratt could not look more bored to be there. Meanwhile, the special effects vacillate between cool and corny. Like clunky metal parts, so much of the screenplay feels recycled from the 1990s. I am sure this film was expensive to make, between the star power and the special effects, but it just goes to show that expensive is not always better.
The Electric State was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely based on the book by Simon Stålenhag and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. It runs 128 minutes and is rated PG-13.
So, when I finally got to Control Freak, a new Hulu Original film, I was refreshed by how effective this film was with a small cast, few special effects, but a great narrative hook. In the story, Valerie Nguyen (Kelly Marie Tran) is a motivational speaker and author about to embark on an international tour. She and her partner, Robbie (Miles Robbins), are trying for a baby, and the stress of it all seems to be dredging up trauma from her childhood, manifesting in an itch on the back of her head that she cannot stop scratching—to disastrous results.
Control Freak has layers to its story including an angry ghost and secrets closely guarded by Valerie’s father, now a Buddhist monk, Sang (Toan Le). Those elements, however, provide perhaps unnecessary explanations for the itch. Valerie’s scratching creates a constant, underlying anxiety to the story that feels drawn from The Twilight Zone or a classic B-horror movie. As she starts to hallucinate bugs and draw blood from her scalp, it is hard not to feel a little tickle on the back of your own head. That the itching seems tied to her stress raises questions of which came first and highlights the dark side of self-help rhetoric. Kelly Marie Tran does an amazing job of playing a deeply unnerved Valerie and her swings between confidence while doing a speech and despair as she scratches and scratches make the plot all the more upsetting. As Robbie, Miles Robbins gives a character that could have been pretty one-note emotional depth, and at times stands in for the disbelief of the audience.
As a horror film, Control Freak has some nauseating and scary moments, but its biggest asset is Valerie’s itch. It is so simple but becomes more repulsive and disturbing the longer that scratch sound effect appears in the story. It demonstrates how good storytelling and resonant emotional stakes are more important than flashy effects or an A-list cast.
Control Freak was written and directed by Shal Ngo. It runs 104 minutes.
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