‘Exhibit #8’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
Ruben Broekhuis’s propulsive thriller mixes documentary and found-footage conventions to tell a sinister and unpredictable story about surveillance and the dark web. The film’s narrative disruptions suggest that he and the screenwriter Sarah Offringa are devoted students of Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games.”
Elias (Claudio Gabriel Magaña Torres) explains on camera that he’s making a documentary about a woman named Aisha (Nastaran Razawi Khorasani), who has lived in the Netherlands since the 1990s, when she and her brother, Adin, arrived there from Bosnia as refugees. The young siblings were in a shelter, about to be adopted, when one day Adin mysteriously disappeared.
When Elias and Aisha arrive at the shelter with the camera rolling, blows are exchanged as the administrators question the visitors’ motives. But then — and here’s where the film made me sit straight up — the camera’s point of view switches. Subsequent twists explain why one of my found-footage pet peeves — a score — has so far underlined the action; I won’t say more, to preserve this film’s many sneaky detours. A knockout final stretch explains most everything, but the film concludes with a too-twisty coda.
An Indonesian all-girls reformatory is the setting for Ginanti Rona’s (not too) dark possession thriller, told from the perspective of young Muslim women.
Yolanda (Aghniny Haque), from Jakarta, is sent to the secluded school, where girls study the Quran under a creepy, handsy headmaster, Jaelani (Omar Daniel) — the kind of guy who keeps his exorcism kit at the ready in case a demon inhabits one of his students. In order to graduate, the girls must take part in a ritual in which they’ll meet a human-possessing jinn, or spirit — an unorthodox task that ends with Yolanda and her classmates meeting hungry hell-dwellers on earth.
With “The Pope’s Exorcist” out now and “The Nun 2” on the way, it’s a treat to watch a possession film from a religious perspective other than Christianity, especially one that takes a feminist approach to fighting demons of both supernatural and earthly origin. The cinematography, by Arfian, is a beautiful blend of lush and spooky, particularly during scenes in which students battle unseen assailants.
‘The Strange Case of Jacky Caillou’
Jacky Caillou (Thomas Parigi, charming) leads a quiet life in rural France with his grandmother, Gisèle (Edwige Blondiau), a healer who mends aching humans and ailing sheep. One afternoon, Elsa (Lou Lampros) shows up looking to be cured of a crusty stain on her back. All goes well until Gisèle unexpectedly dies and a mourning Jacky tries to heal Elsa with techniques he picked up from his grandmother. (Plus, he’s got it bad for Elsa.) But when Elsa’s body starts to grow fur and farmers wake up to slaughtered sheep, it turns out that human hands are no match for poor Elsa’s supernatural urges.
Lucas Delangle’s film is a refreshingly chill werewolf movie: It is mystical, thoughtfully paced, innocently sexual and only mildly scary, with a script by Delangle and Olivier Strauss that favors coming-of-age tenderness over creature-feature terror. If you were a fan of “Teddy,” that other oddball French drama about a young werewolf, you’ll fall for this film’s charms.
‘Family Dinner’
One of my favorite “Twilight Zone” episodes is “To Serve Man,” about aliens who bring about peace on Earth but leave behind a book that doesn’t belong on any human interest shelf. A similar twist lives inside the title of Peter Hengl’s macabre slow-burn drama about a shy German teenager’s rocky entry into adulthood.
The film opens as Simi (Nina Katlein) arrives for an Easter weekend visit with her aunt Claudia (Pia Hierzegger), a wellness author writing a book about ancient food cultures, and Claudia’s husband, Stefan (Michael Pink). Weirdness abounds: Neither Claudia nor Stefan eat much, and Simi’s cousin Filipp (Alexander Sladek), when he’s not mocking Simi for being a “fat cow,” is convinced his mother is out to kill him. All this leaves Simi wondering where her allegiances belong — until she gets an answer, of a diabolical sort, when Easter dinner is served.
Hengl’s script sets an eerie mood that’s more of a stroll than a race, even though its thematic concerns — immortality, bullying, body shame — are ripe with face-punching possibilities. As in the recent film “Piggy,” it’s nice to see a leading young female character who’s not a size 2, but I’m ready for Katlein to lead a scary movie that’s not about the horrors of body shaming.
Irina (Greta Bohacek) and her younger brother, Paul (Claude Heinrich), work in a Dickensian factory atop a lush Greek island making holy soap under the orders of their guru, the dapper Fust (Sam Louwyck). The bars are used in erotic cleansing rituals that Fust believes keep his disciples physically pure.
When Fust asks Irina to move into the adults’ house, she — like any teenager eager to feel grown — agrees, leaving Paul to seethe at his sister’s selfishness. When Paul’s pet pig, Stinky, is killed, it’s the final straw that sets him on a vengeful mission to reclaim not only the sister he loves, but his dignity as a human and a laborer. “Without dirt, there’s no soap,” he tells himself, like a good little Marxist.
The director Nikias Chryssos and the cinematographer Yoshi Heimrath made a disturbing and ambitiously maximalist dark-comedy parable about faith and fanaticism. (It’s in German and Greek.) The story loses focus as it detours through a convoluted plot about a passion play, and farcical moments, like a shining crotch, undercut its sinister edges. Still, if it’s extra you want, I say dive in.
