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Review: ‘Look Away’ Has Strong Ideas, But Loses Sight of its Identity
Written and directed by Assaf Bernstein (Fauda, The Debt), Look Away follows a timid social outcast, Maria (India Eisley, Underworld Awakening), who is constantly degraded by her peers at school. Her own father regularly chastises her social habits and appearance with no thought as to how it could negatively affect her.
Maria gets little support from her chronically depressed mother, Amy (Mira Sorvino, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion), or her childhood best friend, who seems to see Maria as more of a burden than a bestie.
During an emotional high point of teenage drama, Maria discovers that her mirror image is an independent, sentient being who calls herself Airam. Airam convinces Maria that if they switch places, Airam can solve all of her problems.
Of course, it’s never that simple.
Airam takes the lead on Maria’s life, seducing, hurting, and killing as she pleases. She’s driven purely by her base desires and she’s in no rush to give up control.
Right from the beginning of the film, Maria is regularly bullied by a group of rowdy teenage boys who are determined to publicly embarrass her at every turn. But, admittedly, there’s something about the casting of a conventionally beautiful actress in the role of Maria that makes the whole thing fall a bit flat.
We feel true, relatable sympathy for Maria when she faces passive-aggressive criticism from her own parents. Her father, Dan (Jason Isaacs, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), needles at her confidence as her mother tries too hard to stay positive. Both are harmful in their own way, and both parents are earnestly unaware of how their efforts are more harmful than helpful.
All this is to say that, yes, Maria is in a crummy situation, but, she gives up her power to grow stronger by handing the reins over to a sinister wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Maria tries to hide from her pain, much in the way that Amy completely shuts down in the depths of her depression and willfully ignores her husband’s infidelity. They both choose to “look away” from the things that hurt them, but this doesn’t stop the pain from being there.
At its roots, this is actually a pretty interesting concept to explore. And perhaps because the stakes for Maria weren’t particularly high to begin with, this adds to the tragedy of the inevitably violent outcome.
At different points through the film, the role of the villain is filled more by Maria’s father than Airam. Dan is not a violent man, but his passive, judgmental, dismissive nature does lasting harm. Airam crashes like a wave, leaving destruction in her path. Dan is the rising flood that causes long-term damage, drowning those who cannot to move to higher ground.
That element of the film is one of its strongest, yet it is not explored as much as it should be. It’s a planted idea that doesn’t get enough attention to fully bloom.
There’s untapped potential with the finale as well. The somewhat ambiguous ending leans on symbolism and stylized camerawork to provide a conclusion. This is in no way a bad thing, but its execution is not particularly satisfying. Perhaps it just feels out of place, given the fairly conventional way that the rest of the film is shot.
If there were more dramatically stylized shots throughout the film, this final take would provide an excellent guided point of emphasis. But as an isolated effect, it’s more of a distraction.
Look Away is a decent teen horror with a sharp dramatic edge, however, these elements tend to clash with some of the film’s more mature ambitions. As a whole, it has some great ideas in the air, but fails to really stick the landing.
“Look Away” is now available On Demand.
For more memorable moments in horror cinema, check out our list of our Top 5 Chilling Moments With Iconic Villains
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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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