366 Weird Movies curates 10 of the weirdest moments from Pi (1998). Did your favorite make the cut?
Apropos of nothing but wanton chance, Penguin Pete is pledging to turn out a new Ten Weird Moments video on this channel for every $100 donated to this GoFundMe campaign he is running on his son’s behalf.
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Alma & the Wolf is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Michael Patrick Jann
FEATURING: Ethan Embry, Li Jun Li, Lukas Jann, Jeremie Harris, Kevin Allison
PLOT: Ren, a deputy in an out-of-the-way town, investigates a dog-killing wolf at the behest of his old high school crush, Alma.
COMMENTS: A word of advice: don’t go into Alma & the Wolf expecting a standard werewolf movie, or any standard horror movie, for that matter. Focus instead on Ethan Embry’s fine portrayal of Ren, a peaked-in-high-school separated dad struggling with a drinking problem. You’ll be much happier with that approach.
“Nothing good ever comes from here, but lucky for the wider world, nothing ever leaves,” Ren says of the rural town of Spiral Creek. Ren himself is a former high school pitcher whose career ended prematurely with Tommy John surgery and whose life has been in a downward spiral since. Now a failed husband and deputy cop who’s been on this rural beat forever without much hint of promotion, he’s pinned all his hopes on his son, Jack, who’s following in his athletic footsteps and has serious athletic prospects. Ren is also interested in Alma, who seems (at times) to reciprocate his feelings, despite being a hot mess alcoholic herself. (This is a very boozy movie). Rounding out the small-town cast are a newbie cop Ren can bounce backstory off, a comic relief sheriff more interested in promoting Buddhist breathing techniques than hard policing, and a handful of colorful, trashy yokels.
As good as the acting is—Embry, as mentioned, is excellent, and the rest of the cast supply no weak notes—the special effects are noticeably poor: the mangy wolf costume is neither realistic nor frightening, there’s a head-on-fire effect that looks like it might have been made in ChatGPT, and at one point the use of rubber glass to substitute for a shattered windshield is painfully obvious. Given that Alma is more focused on drama and psychology than actual horror, these slip ups aren’t fatal, but they do imbue the film with a sheen of cheepnis that’s out of step with the professionalism of the rest of the production.
The first weird thing that happens in the story occurs when Ren suddenly promises to kill the wolf for Alma, despite his obvious reluctance and his warning that they’re a protected species and it’s a “class C felony” to kill one. Then comes his first encounter with the wolf, followed by recurring hallucinations where he glimpses the lupine taunting him. As the movie continues, the weird stuff intensifies, from the relatively subtle (whispering voices) to the elaborate (a well-staged pagan dream sequence in the woods with Alma and the talking wolf at a pagan bonfire flanked by a pair of goat-people). By the time we reach the one hour mark, confusion reigns, as the narrative seems to be spinning out of control, and occasionally contradicting itself.
Alma & the Wolf‘s twist ending turned off a lot of people. That’s understandable for viewers who didn’t go in bargaining for a weird movie: the final act makes some of the events of the rest of Alma feel arbitrary and irrelevant, and if you get invested in certain red herrings, you could feel cheated. But although the movie doesn’t quite stick its landing—it’s not tightly scripted enough, and it could have used more foreshadowing—it’s far from as abysmal as its 4.6 IMDb rating would suggest. I admire the ambition and certain aspects of the execution—specifically the performances—and although I wouldn’t give it a general recommendation, I wouldn’t advise you to steer away, either. If you’re in the mood for a well-acted, modestly-budgeted, artistically ambitious psychological thriller, you could do worse than hunting down Alma & the Wolf.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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Montréal 2025
The Fantasia commercial, about the Fantasia audience, before the Fantasia screening, really spoke to me.
7/16: Fragment
The festival pulled a fast one on me this year, adding a day to the front end. Arriving at the bus depot just after 5 o’clock, I made it first to my hotel, then to the accreditation office around 6:15: just in time to wander into Kim Sung-yoon’s directorial debut. Fragment is a well-acted drama about grief and culpability. A little disjointed at the start (as could well be appropriate, considering the topic and title), it finds its footing as the characters creep toward a reconciliation of sorts with their circumstances. The young leads are all commendable, with a special shout-out to the kid sister. She suffers no nonsense. Fragment is not a film made for me, but nonetheless I must admit it left me touched. (A good touch, that is.)
7/17: The Wailing [El llanto]
Pedro Martín-Calero, you fiend! There is a great deal to enjoy about this story of the supernatural: an evil presence (creepy old dead guy, from what I could glean) has haunted a series of women in a family, moving from mother to daughter when the former succumbs to despair. This is something of two movies in one, when I feel it should have been three. The chronicles of the characters are all well paced, and the scares are real. (The hook here is: this entity can only be seen through video capture, be that the large camcorder of the mother as a youth, or the ubiquitous smartphones of the latest victim.) Sound design is dead on, with the titular wailing emanating from a tower block whose second story room is always up for sale. The mood is set, details established, and then, BAM: it’s over.
I suppose there are greater sins in filmmaking than leaving me all too curious how this occult situation is resolved.
7/18: “Nyaight of the Living Cat”, Episodes 1 – 4
Tomohiro Kamitani and Takashi Miike, judging from their specially recorded video introduction for the Fantasia screening, are two chill middle-aged guys with a love for cats. Or at least a love of global apocalypses involving cats. Although, perhaps the feline menace is safely Continue reading 2025 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: TRADITIONAL CUISINE, PART ONE
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DIRECTED BY: Juraj Herz
FEATURING: Iva Janzurová, Petr Cepek, Josef Abrhám
PLOT: After their father passes away, leaving the bulk of his estate to his younger daughter Klara, her older sister Victoria decides to murder her.
COMMENTS: When asked to provide a romantic story, director Juraj Herz baffled his production studio’s head by writing a Romantic script, complete with all the psychological Sturm und Drang of the original genre. Instead of a simple love story, Morgiana is The Tell-Tale Heart by way of a mad hatter’s tea party.
After watching Klara inherit their father’s wealth, then stealing the heart of Glenar, the family’s lawyer, Victoria plans to do away with her inconvenient sister. She uses a slow-acting poison to prevent anyone from suspecting foul play, but the nature of the toxin means she can never be entirely certain of its efficacy. While she waits to see if the desired effect will occur (and waits, and waits, and waits), the chemist’s wife decides to blackmail her, and Klara attracts another suitor who’s determined to figure out what ails his fiancée. Under the influence of the poison, Klara experiences rainbow-tinted hallucinations, causing her to suspect her sister. Both siblings end up paranoid and suspicious. The fact that the house is haunted by the ghost of a dancer and by Victoria’s Siamese cat, Morgiana, add to the atmosphere.
Adapted from a novel by Russian fantasy/adventure author Alexander Grin, the production design goes all in creating a Gibson girl-era Grinlandia. The sets, costumes, and giant hats, all elaborately detailed and brilliantly colored, swing between darkly haunting Gothic and ’70s psychedelia. The orchestral score by Luboš Fišer, known for his soundtrack to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, enhances the mood without overwhelming the opulent visuals. But these sumptuous sights and sounds still can’t quite make up for a plot that starts to drag about a third of the way through.
Unfortunately, Morgiana fell victim to a producer who insisted upon changes to the script that seriously weaken the story. Apparently Herz had originally intended both sisters to represent the two sides of a single woman’s fractured psyche. Their obvious good-evil dichotomy would have been more interesting if he’d had his way. Instead, the producer considered such mental aberration a “bourgeois” affliction and made Herz remove all reference to it from the script. This omission leaves perceptible gaps in the narrative.
Even though Janzurová gives a compelling dual performance, subtly modulating both her speech and body language for each sister, the exact nature of the conflict between them never really makes sense (nor does the father’s will privileging one daughter over the other). If Morgiana is a weird film, it’s because of its compromises. A few intriguing scenes seem to be holdovers from the original story. Whenever Klara hallucinates, she sees a doppelgänger version of herself who wears red like Victoria. Early in her illness she describes feeling like she’s changed bodies. A number of shots frame the actress in front of paneled mirrors, or viewing herself from a window, suggesting both the duplication and splitting of her good and evil impulses.
Herz’s producer wasn’t too keen on ghost stories, either, so the haunted house plotline feels truncated, as does the role of the cat. Morgiana, set up to be a significant character in her own right, gets a number of POV shots. Some vague suggestions imply she’s a ghost or possessed by a spirit. This insinuation adds shock value to a surprising scene in the otherwise anticlimactic conclusion.
Overall, Morgiana never reaches the intensity of some of Herz’s other films. What should have been a trippy Hoffmann-esque tale of a woman losing her mind instead presents a more stereotypical family drama of good versus evil. Stunningly beautiful, with a great cast, fans of Czech cinema from this time period may want to check it out, but serious weirdophiles can give it a pass.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
HOME VIDEO INFORMATION: Recently released on Blu-ray as part of Severin’s “House of Psychotic Women, Rarities Collection Volume 2” box set, Morgiana can be seen alongside Butterfly Kiss (1994), The Glass Ceiling (1971), and The Savage Eye (1959). Special features for Morgiana include an introduction from Keir-La Janisse; audio commentary with Briony Kidd and Cerise Howard; an interview with actress Iva Janzurová; “The Stone Forest,” a short feature about Pobiti Kamani, the Bulgarian shooting location; “Nightmares,” a made for TV “vampire rock musical” directed by Herz; and the short film “Rest in Peace,” made by Rachel Amodeo and Dame Darcy. The film is also available in a Region-free standalone Blu-ray from Second Run, and has been issued multiple times on DVD. There were no streaming options for viewing the film at the time this was written.
![House Of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2 [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/519ubv6ILwL._SL500_.jpg)
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DIRECTED BY: David Wheatley
FEATURING: Caroline Milmoe, Tom Bell, Kilian McKenna, Patricia Kerrigan, Lorcan Cranitch
PLOT: An orphaned girl is sent to live with her brooding uncle, a toymaker who makes elaborate marionette shows to cow and terrorize the members of his household.
COMMENTS: You have to hand it to the Brits; they just do coming-of-age stories a little bit differently. Here in the States, our budding young women are coping with love and loss at the hands of farm equipment or bee stings. But across the pond, the full flower of the newly mature female is as likely to coincide with psychic revenge upon a distant father or the wholesale collapse of civilization. It’s a whole other ballgame over there.
Our heroine, Melanie, is coming into adulthood and knows it. Ogling her own youthful, unblemished form in the mirror and comparing it to Boticelli’s Venus, she observes, “Physically, I’ve reached my peak. From now on, I can only deteriorate.” It’s a charmingly lofty and pretentious declaration that highlights her actual immaturity, given her comfortable home and the security of her parents’ oversight. Naturally, it takes their demise in a plane crash (over the Grand Canyon, an appropriately yonic piece of symbolism) to make her realize just how unprepared she is for the adult world. She and her younger siblings are promptly shipped off to a cramped London flat where her foul-tempered Uncle Philip sells handcrafted dolls and wind-up toys in the front and holds oppressive court in the back, demanding total subservience from his mute wife Margaret and her brothers Finn and Francie. Philip is a petty dictator, issuing his cruelties through rigid house rules and cutting remarks. He’s the sort specifically designed to foster rebellion in the young people he despises, and given that Melanie is just starting to come into her own, their collision is inevitable.
The use of the word “magic” in the title implies a fairy tale element that isn’t really the story’s focus. The toys in his shop promise a level of enchantment that Philip is quick to stifle. His peculiar passion is for puppets, which he brings to life as the expression of his cynical view of humanity. That’s where we see the line between childhood and adulthood, between toys as best companions and toys as childish things to be put away. That dichotomy is the story’s pivot point, as Philip repeatedly denigrates Melanie until he finally comes up with a use for her: to play the lead in a re-enactment of the Greek myth in which Zeus rapes Leda under the guise of a swan. When Melanie comes face-to-face with the mechanical bird, it’s the crucial moment when she has to decide if she is interacting with a toy or with the malevolent soul giving it life.
Screenwriter Angela Carter, adapting her own book, has been seen ‘round these parts before—specifically, her reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood in The Company of Wolves. Magic Toyshop similarly explores notions of burgeoning sexuality, both in Melanie’s unsteady flirtation with the roguish Finn and in the strange abuse heaped upon her by Uncle Philip. It’s a powerful simile (far too overt to be a metaphor), although one that is undercut by its sudden and unsatisfactory resolution. Yes, we get the revolution we expect, but with no follow-through. Melanie, who once declared that she had peaked and could only deteriorate, now looks at the flames consuming her world and says, “Everything is lost now.” It’s as though Carter refused to countenance an ending in which everyone lives happily ever after, but can hardly see a world in which anyone lives at all.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Steve Mobia. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)