Summer Stock: Strays, Talk to Me, The Voyage of the Demeter

This summer has provided us with two bonafide hits that are likely to be considered classics sooner than later, and a small percentage of big films that didn’t quite make the splashes the studios were banking on and others anticipated. As with every season, though, there are mid-budgeted films that are outliers, near-misses, surprise hits. Here are three that I liked for different reasons, and that belly up to the bar of satisfaction, with varying degrees of success.

If I ever open a bar, I may call it Satisfaction…or maybe, “The Cusp of Greatness”...I will never open a bar.

In no particular order, I’ll start with Strays. I love stupid and clever and vulgar and potty humor. And when the protagonists are CGI’d dogs replete with dick and poop jokes, I’m in! I knew I was when I saw the trailers for Strays earlier this year. I also know to keep my expectations low because like so many, I’ve been burned. This time out, I figured I was in at least extremely capable hands. 

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who sheperded The Lego Movie and its sequel, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its sequel, and one of my personal faves from this year, Cocaine Bear, into existence are joined by a small army of producers including Louis Letterier (who credit where it’s due, did direct the second movie in the MCU, Fast X, the remake of The Clash of the Titans, and both Transformer movies; maybe not great stuff, but certainly dumb fun enough), and Erik Feig (aside from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I really don’t like the films he’s produced but they’ve all been successful if forgettable summer fodder).

But the sweet sauce begins with the writing by Dan Perrault (and oh what joys are in his wheelhouse: Dickinson and American Vandal are enough for me) and directing by Josh Greenbaum, who helmed Kristin Wiig’s Bob and Star Go To Vista Del Mar, episodes of Fresh Off the Boat and New Girl, and even one of my favorite Bond featurettes, Becoming Bond. I guess what I’m saying is that there are sure hands on the ship’s wheel.

But it’s the voice cast that makes this sing. Will Ferrell in Buddy the Elf mode as Reggie, Jamie Foxx as the Boston terrier Bug, Isla Fisher as Australian sheep hound Maggie, and Randall Park as the well-endowed but highly insecure Great Dane Hunter, a failed police canine turned therapy dog. Reggie is a little mutt cross of what looks like a labradoodle and a pekingese. In any case, it is Reggie who is the focus of a very funny and surprisingly - I’m gonna say it - touching film about abandonment, identity, and friendship, and no lack of big dick doggy energy; you won’t see this kind of action outside of…well, Strays. 

The humans don’t fare as well because, let’s face it, they’re the problem, not the solution. Will Forte plays Doug, Reggie’s loser owner who in a fit of pique refuses to surrender Reggie to his ex-girlfriend but then, finally gets rid of Reggie by dumping the little pup in The Big City, far from Doug’s trailer from which he’s being evicted. The last straw was that Reggie accidentally (of course) knocked over and broke Doug’s favorite bong. The petty asshole blames Reggie for all of his misfortunes and Forte delivers the goods. 

So, too, later in the film does Brett Gelmann as a security guard who is duped into freeing out canine heroes (through a skillful use of dog poo, the like of which I’ve never seen before…I’m pretty sure that no one has, for that matter.)

The flick is episodic as Bug initiates Reggie into the life of a stray and introduces him to Hunter and Maggie. Hijinks include humping garden gnomes, scarfing down stolen pizza slices, peeing on lamp posts, getting doggy drunk on beer leaking from garbage, and tripping balls on mushrooms in the wild. 

Reggie’s moment of enlightenment comes when he realizes - inebriated, heavily - that Doug has tossed away the only thing he loved and needs to pay for that crime. Reggie wants to go back and, uh, “bite his dick off.” And thus begins an odyssey of ribald goings-on, hallucinogenic revelation that results in the flaying of a hapless bunny rabbit, flight from explosions (we humans call them fireworks) at a fair, ambush by a bald eagle, a painful descent from the grasp of the bald eagle, and an encounter with the Devil in the Sky! (This is actually a billboard for the US Postal Service that provokes strong words from all four of our heroes.)

Along the way, tempers fray and words are said, particularly when Reggie evinces a sign of rapprochement and begins to blame himself for never hearing the words “good boy.” Nevertheless, as Reggie returns to Doug and his life is imperiled, his three friends come to his aid and Reggie succeeds in the removal of Doug’s member, truly the thing he loved most (early on in the film, Reggie remarks how almost jealous he is of the attention Doug gives his penis.)

This is not a game-changer the way the Lego movies are and I don’t know that I found it as much fun as Sausage Party (the closest tonally I can think of), but they jokes land hard when they land (pretty often) and the resolutions for each of the dogs’ stories are super satisfying. Bug finds a home, being adopted by an eight year old Girl Scout lost in the woods, Maggie is taken on as part of the city’s K-9 Unit for her amazing sense of smell (her former owner was a stuck-up debutante type who is soundly corrected when she refers to Maggie’s uniform as a “cute costume”; small victory but like I say, satisfying.) And Hunter? Why, now he’s free of his insecurity and is able to consummate his relationship with Maggie. As for Reggie; our hero elects to remain a stray and serve as a guide for other similarly abandoned dogs while occasionally playing with and crashing at Bug’s every now and again.

Then there’s Talk to Me. I liked it well enough, though as I’ve stated a fair amount, I don’t respond to horror films much the way filmmakers would like me to. Additionally, more and more frequently, I’m more impressed with how the genre is used to dissect and deal with themes and trauma and for me, it’s more a matter of gauging the intelligence of the film as opposed to its effectiveness (look, I just don’t respond to jump scares that I see coming a mile away, elevated sound design that tells you something is about to happen, or gore and effects that are supposed to be shocking but that only draw my attention to how well or poorly the make-up team has done the job.)

The parentheticals aside, we have a pretty tight film about the disconnect between a parent and a child in the aftershock of bereavement, the use of an occult object and practice as a metaphor for drug use and addiction and what it costs in lives, and in general, the pitfalls of coming of age. All of this the film does well. 

As a first feature for the Philippou brothers Danny and Michael, it’s a strong showing. The script is by Danny with Bill Hinzman and Daley Pearson who has the most extensive CV of the three, As it stands, it’s a tightly written piece and kudos go to a slowburn pace and a truthful evocation of the pitfalls and struggles young people find on their way through tragedy and loss. 

The performances do justice to the script and Sophie Wilde as Mia delivers one of the finest turns of a young woman coming to terms with the loss of her mother, estrangement from her father, and finding solace with her best friend Jade, Jade’s younger brother Riley, and their family. All of this may make this sound more like a Lifetime Movie than a compelling horror film, but trust me, the filmmakers do ratchet up the tension and likely for many, if not me, the scares.

SPOILERS ABOUNDING: YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO OR NOT DO, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THEM (applies to The Last Voyage of the Demeter)

The pivot around which the narrative revolves is a hand - of a sorcerer or witch or some figure of the dark arts - encased in ceramic which when held onto, reveals shades on the other side of existence. The other side is beckoned to enter the hand-holder and the subject is exposed to - well, what specifically, isn’t totally revealed, but we do know that there are entities on the other side with ill will toward the living and the possessed and if contact is maintained for more than 90 seconds, they will enter our world via the host body. 

The sessions with the hand are recorded and posted to social media and have caused a sensation online and pop up around town since the hand is in the possession of Hayley and Joss who play their roles like two pushers with some high-grade scag. That said, they’re not pushers and this isn’t a drug, though the experience of those ninety seconds is shown to be euphoric until it’s not. When Mia overstays one of the sessions by a small increment, she’s convinced that she’s met her mother Rhea and obviously wants to reconnect to get the truth of her mother’s death; was it suicide or an accidental overdose?

Along the way, the collateral damage comes in the form of Riley when Mia allows him to experience the hand. No one so young has done so before and Hayley and Joss are apprehensive and Jade expressly forbids it, but Mia allows it with disastrous results as the spirits consume him and he begins bashing his head on the table. Mia surreptitiously takes the hand, Riley winds up hospitalized, and things rapidly deteriorate with Mia contacting the spirit she thinks is Rhea and following her instructions to kill Riley in order to save him from being forever lost. 

She winds up killing her father when Rhea’s voice tells her that the man who is trying to enter her room is not her dad. There’s some very deft editing here that bounces the audience between certainty that the voice is right but then, within a couple of frames reverses that decision. 

Mia heads to the hospital to finish off/free Riley but is intercepted and flees to the highway where she falls into traffic. She returns to the hospital but no one acknowledges her and she realizes she is dead. The film ends with Mia being summoned from our side with the invitation “I let you in.”

Needless to say, that’s a set-up for the sequel (already in production, I think) titled Talk 2 Me. This might be one of the few times when I’m in favor of a follow-up. The Philippous did a fine job of world-building and left enough emotional threads hanging that are gripping enough to warrant further exploration. Plus, Mia is a tragic, flawed character somewhat reminiscent of Rue on Euphoria. She’s nowhere near as complex but the point is that there is this decent, good person beset with demons that are the result of her own actions and the self-made self-perpetuating hell she makes for herself is well-defined enough to warrant a return and expanded voice.

Finally, The Last Voyage of the Demeter. I had - not high hopes - but a curiosity about how this was going to play out. The idea of producing a film based on the voyage of the ship transporting Count Dracula and fifty coffins of Transylvanian soil to Britain to begin his reign of terror, grabbed me as a study in the inevitability of the horror of it all.

The passage in Stoker’s novel is its own self-contained horror story told through the captain’s log. I could see where a suspenseful film could be written around this, accentuating with increasing dread the inexorable fate all onboard were headed toward. This isn’t quite that.

There are elements of all this, but - and to show how naive and trusting I am - I didn’t realize this movie is a set-up for a series. I kept asking myself why introduce these two new people and now I see: because one of them will be in the cast of the next Dracula movie from Universal. 

All of this said, there are some good ideas throughout the film, but director André Øvredal tips his hand and rushes where he should linger, reveals when he should hide, and shifts from moments of genuine suspense to formulaic horror tropes that defeat it all. The wind exits the film’s sails repeatedly. 

As much as we all know that the fate of the ship is to crash on the shoreline of the English coast at Whitby, the voyage should be fraught with what it lacks. This does not fall on the characters or their actors, by the way. In fact, that added to my frustration; the characters are all well-drawn and well-acted but bereft of any genuine sense of threat. Even when the captain’s grandson Toby is about to fall to Dracula’s bite, it’s difficult to not shrug the shoulders. 

The introduction of Clemons (Corey Hawkins) is a sound idea. An Oxford med school grad practicing in Romania, he signs onto the Demeter after saving Toby’s life. Then there’s the stowaway/victim of Dracula’s Anna who Clemons nurses back to some measure of health by a series of transfusions. Some of the crew want to toss her overboard, because a woman on a ship is bad luck and enough strange things are beginning to happen. The livestock are all struck down with severe gashes/bites to their necks and drained of blood. This includes the ship’s dog Huckleberry. Before long, one by one, the crew are picked off - just like in the book! - until it’s just down to the captain on board, Clemons and Anna having escaped and pinned Dracula to the main mast - not like in the book!

Anna, doomed to becoming a vampire from Dracula’s bites, separates from Clemons and pushes herself into the rising sun to burst into flames. It’s a striking image in a movie full of them, but bereft of any impact because, well, see my previous observations.

Clemons survives and we encounter him in London, having vowed to hunt Dracula down and kill him. The Count whispers past Clemons and we see him, less Nosferatu than before. I’m guessing we’ll meet up with the Harkers and Van Helsing in the next entry. Big deal.

The pity of all this is that there is a gripping tale to be told, but it peters out before it begins. All the atmospheric cinematography (compliments of Tim Orr) can’t save the issues with the flabby, dislocated direction and indifferent editing. Individual moments come along that are striking and then vanish with the waves of the ocean receding from this beached craft.

If Talk to Me had a surfeit of excellent ideas that practically demand a sequel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter squanders all its ideas and leaves us wonder what’s the point of this exercise? While I actually like the character Clemons and Hawkins is really good, but all of this feels like so much gilding of the lily. 

I respect the filmmakers’ intentions to try something different with a well-known work and (again) I can see how this could work, but this isn’t the movie to do it.