Old Stories, New Angles

I’m still waiting on Supergirl or Leviticus to arrive, but it’s starting to seem unfair to the other new releases. So let’s just dive into what’s here, shall we?

Let’s start with the ghost stories, because that’s a hook that never goes out of fashion. Like vampires and zombies, ghosts are an endlessly malleable concept, offering near-infinite paths for creative storytellers.

Bretten Hannam’s At the Place of Ghosts is another story about the things we carry with us out of the dark. The Nova Scotia filmmaker works in a singular cinematic space, folding queer themes into Indigenous stories with an understated elegance. Hannam’s latest, like their 2021 drama Wildhood, is a contemplative drama about young people trying to put the past to rest – but this one has a metaphysical angle, as twentysomething brothers Mise’l (Blake Alec Miranda) and Antle (Forrest Goodluck) journey back home and into the eponymous forest, a place where time comes unmoored and a visitor’s earlier and later selves might be waiting for them.

There are many movies about survivors confronting their past trauma, but Hannam wastes no time showing us that Mise’l and Antle are literally haunted by it, and the only way to break free is to face it at its origin. And as At the Place of Ghosts shows us where that is, and where its heroes have to go, Hannam builds an enthralling unreality on-screen, recognizable but just slightly uncanny – with Miranda and Goodluck’s performances, framed by Guy Godfree’s elegant cinematography, doing more to conjure the mood than the subtle visual effects of the unquiet dead.

If Godfree’s claustrophobic frame hints at a much larger universe trying to press in on Hannam’s heroes, At the Place of Ghosts sets further complications at arm’s length, focusing on these two men as they move carefully and deliberately into the miasma of Sk+te’kmujue’katik. The real challenge facing the brothers is remaining open to a world boiling with danger, the better to see their way out – and if they can rebuild the bond between them that was shattered so long ago, so much the better. For them, and for their future.

VVS Films’ Blu-ray offers an excellent 1080p presentation of the feature, with the immersive soundtrack offered in 5.1 Dolby TrueHD. A French dub is also included, though the Mi’kmaq dialogue remains intact, and subtitled, in both. As for supplements, the “featurette” mentioned on the case turns out to be two very brief peeks behind the scenes, each running about a minute and a half.

“Casting” touches on the paradox of casting the film’s Indigenous leads under Canada’s funding regulations – should colonial borders be a consideration when dealing with communities that are older than both the US and Canada? – while “Mi’kmaq” expands on that by exploring the production’s commitment to presenting the language in the film with authenticity, noting that Glen Gould – who plays the boys’ father – is the only cast member who grew up speaking it. They’re interesting enough that you’ll wish for more insight into the film’s eerie texture, and the history that gives that texture weight.

And then there’s André Øvredal’s Passenger, which drifted into and out of theaters in May and now manifests itself on disc in Paramount’s bare-bones Blu-ray. It does what it does well enough, I guess, but it doesn’t do much of anything.

After a prologue that establishes the simple supernatural premise – there’s a ghost on the American backroads, don’t stop or it’ll get you – Passenger pivots to Brooklyn, where we watch attractive young couple Ty (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) say goodbye to their apartment before heading out on the road in a pumpkin-orange Mercedes-Benz van. Six weeks later, with Maddie growing a little less enthusiastic about their never-ending road trip, they take the wrong shortcut and wind up encountering the aforementioned ghost, which torments them in the usual post-Insidious fashion wherever they go.

Melissa Leo turns up as a fellow van-lifer who offers some theories about the spirit’s origin and intentions, but most of the movie is spent watching Ty and Maddie get stalked and scared, over and over again, until screenwriters Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess rev things up for an action-ish climax.

If you like watching people stand around looking worried in spooky forests, spooky parking lots or spooky clearings, yes, Passenger has a lot of that. There are a couple of well-done set pieces involving an empty parking lot and a romantic outdoor screening of Roman Holiday that goes very badly for everyone.

And yes, Øvredal is very good at set pieces, as you may recall from projects like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or The Last Voyage of the Demeter. But as those films also demonstrate, he’s not nearly as accomplished at creating three-dimensional characters to make those set pieces matter, which is crucial to a movie about two people in a van.

For a film paced as deliberately as Passenger, there’s a lot of dead space. I kept thinking of how effectively Alexander Ullom used the limitations of four people and a constantly moving car in It Ends, making us feel his protagonists’ growing desperation to fill the passing time. Øvredal doesn’t give Scipio and Llobell the space to do anything like that, alternating between slow-burning anxiety and frantic panic. But movies like this need a hook to stand out from the pack, and Passenger doesn’t really have one.

Perhaps in acknowledgment of how forgettable this movie is, Paramount’s Blu-ray doesn’t offer a single special feature – as if the entire cast and crew just want to move on to the next thing. The disc does offer a rock-solid 1080p presentation of the feature, with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack that goes from zero to screamy in a nanosecond … so if you’re collecting clips for a documentary about the decline of the jump-scare movie, it’ll be the best source available.

 Nick Rowland’s indie thriller She Rides Shotgun also seems pretty generic, at least at first: It’s a fugitive movie, starring a jacked-up, tatted-out Taron Egerton as Nate McCluskey, an ex-con on the run with his 11-year-old daughter Polly (Ana Sophia Heger). He picks her up from school instead of her mother, he takes her to a motel and changes her appearance. It looks like an abduction, and Polly is clearly nervous to see the father she barely knows.

But then we find out who Nate is running from, and why, and the story gets a lot more interesting. See, Nate used to be mixed up with the white-power crew Aryan Steel – though it’s more of a cult, really, as an opening voiceover explains – and now that he’s out, its members are coming after him and his entire family. It’s okay, though; Nate has an escape route already planned. And that would be great, except that Polly’s already called the police.

I haven’t read Jordan Harper’s 2017 novel, so I can’t say how closely Rowland’s film follows the original plot. But the director – whose 2019 drama Calm with Horses similarly insisted on finding the emotional realism within its gangland narrative – keeps the focus tight on his actors as they deal with each new curveball of the plot. Heger’s a real find as Polly, and Egerton is terrific with her; he shows us how the girl unlocks a tender, caring side of Nate that he must now struggle to repress if he wants to keep them both alive.

The supporting cast is full of ringers: Odessa A’zion as the one person Nate might be able to trust, John Carroll Lynch as someone he really shouldn’t and Rob Yang as Park, the police detective Polly calls early on. Yang’s patient, compassionate presence keeps She Rides Shotgun from turning into a standard cat-and-mouse story, and the character is also a world away from the hapless FBI stooge the actor played in Furious over the summer. The guy’s got range.

And really, I’m surprised this film didn’t get more traction in its brief theatrical run last year. Maybe critics are still confusing Egerton and Joel Edgerton, and getting annoyed when they go to a movie and the other guy shows up? (I have encountered this before.) Or maybe it needed a festival launch to get audiences to understand it was more than just another genre piece. There’s a lot going on below the surface.

That brings me to Tuner, which is all surface. Making his first dramatic feature, the Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher casts Leo Woodall as Niki, a New York piano tuner whose specific hearing disability gives him an unlikely advantage in his line of work. It also turns out to be very helpful in safecracking, and no sooner does Niki discover this than he’s roped into a security company’s scheme to pilfer from its own clients – which, of course, is the sort of thing that’s easy to get into and very hard to get out of.

But Niki’s aging mentor Harry (Dustin Hoffman) just went into the hospital, and Harry’s wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) can’t pay the bills, so Niki doesn’t really have a choice. But will his illegal activities endanger his budding relationship with the charming conservatory student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu)? I mean, have you ever seen a movie before?

Tuner is pretty enjoyable, for what it is. Woodall and Liu are interesting, appealing actors, the whole thing is beautifully shot by Lowell A. Meyer, the Dolby Atmos soundtrack is one of the most interesting, active mixes I’ve heard all year, and Hoffman delivers a great alte-kocker turn as the deteriorating, prideful Harry.

But the script, which Roher wrote with Robert Ramsey, leans so heavily on coincidences and serendipity, and moves so mechanically through them, that things become frustrating instead of intriguing. This doesn’t make Tuner a bad movie by any means, just one that doesn’t live up to its potential. But it sure sounds good.

Lionsgate’s 4K/Blu-ray combo of She Rides Shotgun offers the film’s theatrical trailer, but that’s it as far as supplements; Elevation’s Tuner has no extras at all. Which is a shame, because I’d have loved to see something on the elegance with which Roher and his crew shoot Toronto for New York; I only recognized one location because I happened to walk through the set that day. Speaking of which, RIP the Patrician Grill on King East. You left us far too soon.

At the Place of Ghosts is available on Blu-ray from VVS Films, and Passenger is now available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment. She Rides Shotgun is now available in a 4K/Blu-ray combo from Lionsgate Home Entertainment, and Tuner is now available on Blu-ray from Elevation Pictures in Canada and Black Bear in the US.

Up next: Supergirl and Leviticus are still on their way, and of course paid subscribers can look forward to tomorrow’s What’s Worth Watching. If you’ve been meaning to upgrade your subscription, just click here! You'll be amazed how easy it is!