More Theatrical Experimentation, Please

Plus: ‘Flight Risk’ Review

Teaser trailer screenshot

I just want to highlight, briefly, the news that the reboot of The Toxic Avenger is, finally, getting a theatrical release this year. I say “finally” because the film made the festival rounds way back in 2023, playing at genre-friendly festivals like Fantastic Fest in Austin and Beyond Fest out in Los Angeles. Since then, it has sat on the shelf; I’ve heard that the production label, Legendary, was trying to sell it for a number in the mid-low eight figures, but given the nature of the film that was a tough sell. Words like “unreleasable” were thrown around.

But “unreleasable” has several meanings. There are movies that are so bad they cannot be released, certainly. Given that director Macon Blair’s film is 92 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and got a lot of goodwill from the genre fans at the festivals, I don’t think that’s the issue here. “Unreleasable” is also, often, a synonym for “unmarketable.” And that seems to be the case here: The film is likely too intense—too gory, too provocative—to secure an R rating. Which, theoretically, limits its appeal and makes advertising much more difficult.

Enter Cineverse, the distributor behind the shocking success of Terrifier 3. That film grossed nearly $54 million domestically and more than $88 million worldwide to become the most surprising box office hit of 2024. And it did so despite being unrated and despite very little spent on marketing (just $500,000, according to an interview with Deadline). The buzz for the film was driven both by online virality—if you’ve seen a gif of a clown with a tiny hat and a menacing, black-lipped grin wearing a black-and-white outfit, you’ve unknowingly been exposed to Art the Clown—and a genuinely passionate fan base that discovered the first two Terrifier films via streaming. (Cineverse also owns a horror-centric streaming outlet, Screambox, and a horror website, Bloody Disgusting, helping create a sort of blood-soaked flywheel of the type Disney executives have long championed. Can an Art the Clown theme park be far behind?)

Indeed, there’s a case to be made that Art the Clown is the only real horror icon to hit the scene since the debut of Jigsaw’s tricycle-riding puppet back in 2004. Which is one reason to urge caution for any studio looking to replicate the success of Terrifier 3: Yes, it was unrated and no, there wasn’t much in the way of advertising, but horror fans genuinely love Art the Clown in a way that is hard to replicate. And while Toxie, the mutated janitor seeking to right wrongs in this corrupt universe, undoubtedly has his fans, one gets the sense that the Troma hordes have thinned a bit over the years even as their influence in the form of alums like James Gunn and Trey Parker/Matt Stone has expanded around the entertainment industry.

Regardless, I’m cheering for The Toxic Avenger simply because I think studios and theaters should be encouraged to experiment by reaching out to niche fanbases targeted by distributors with good networks but limited advertising budgets, be they the Indian diaspora, anime fans, Christian moviegoers, or gorehounds. Neither theaters nor movie fans can survive on tentpoles alone.

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On Across the Movie Aisle this week, we discussed September 5, the movie about ABC Sports’s coverage of the Munich Olympic massacre of the Israeli Olympic team by Black September terrorists. It’s incredibly captivating and compelling, considering it’s mostly people standing around talking about work logistics. And it’s also mildly infuriating, a reminder of the constant threat faced by Israel for merely existing and the world’s relative indifference to the suffering of its people. Hope you give it a listen.

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Review: Flight Risk

‘Flight Risk’ (MovieStillsDB)

I love a good January B-movie. It’s frequently a dumping ground for smaller studio fare that no one has much faith in because audiences tend to be lighter in the first month of the year, but you still get some gems. Last year’s The Beekeeper was a perfect little high-concept action movie: sure it’s silly; yes, it’s filled to the brim with puns about the honey makers (one could even call it a bee movie, haha, get it?); no, it’s not that different from so many other Jason Statham projects. But Statham and director David Ayer made the script sing by really leaning into the absurdity of the premise and the awfulness of the villains. It was January done right.

All of which is to say that I had high hopes for Flight Risk. Say what you will about director Mel Gibson, but Apocalypto is a blast of brutal excitement and Braveheart won a ton of Oscars for good reason: the sonofabitch knows story structure. Sadly, Flight Risk proves it deserves its January release date with its shoddy CGI and generally goofy vibe.

Flight Risk has a pleasingly simple high concept: U.S. Marshal Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) has been tasked with transporting mob accountant Winston (Topher Grace) from the Alaskan wilderness back to the continental United States to testify against his former boss. Unbeknownst to Madolyn and Winston, the pilot of their tiny little twin-prop plane, “Daryl” (Mark Wahlberg), is a crazed goon working for the mob boss who plans on flying the pair to a deep, dark part of the frozen wastes and having some fun with them. Murderous hijinks ensue at 3,000 feet.

Wahlberg gives it his all as the deranged Daryl—he even shaved his head rather than wear a bald cap for the killer’s uniquely unhinged hairstyle; you don’t see sides like this on the big screen too often—and it’s nice to see him go completely nuts for the first time in a while. He’s always had a dark, comedy-tinged streak to him, be it as the psycho boyfriend in Fear or the meathead weightlifter murderously searching for the American dream in Pain & Gain; in Flight Risk, he’s crazy-eyed and genuinely terrifying as the psycho killer looking to silence Winston. You believe him when he insinuates he’s going to do awful things to Winston while Madolyn watches.

Unfortunately, he spends much of the movie unconscious and in chains, leaving us with Dockery and Grace who are weak links here. Winston is written to be an annoying character, but there’s movie annoying and then there’s annoying annoying, and Grace just doesn’t have the stuff to maneuver us into sympathizing with him despite ourselves. He’s not charmingly aggravating like he needs to be; he’s just kind of whiny and unbearable. And Dockery is saddled with responding to people on satphones and navigation headsets for much of her screen time, a deceptively demanding task for an actor. Tom Hardy pulls it off in Locke—a movie set entirely in a car with no one but Hardy onscreen, communicating with the world about the perils of concrete pours and family dysfunction as he drives to his destiny—but Dockery isn’t Hardy. Even if she were, Flight Plan’s screenplay, by Jared Rosenberg, doesn’t give her much to work with.

And the production values on Flight Plan are just shockingly low. Bad, janky CGI throughout, from a CGI moose that looked as though its framerate was off in the opening moments to a predictably shoddy-looking final descent as Madolyn gets the plane to the ground. I appreciate that this is a low-budget affair, but try to work around the shortfalls creatively instead of papering over gaps in the budget with work that looks like it was created by Sora. The whole thing looks like something that would’ve quickly fallen out of rotation on Redbox, if Redbox were still around.

All of which is to say that Flight Risk is definitely a January movie. But not the good kind, like you want.