REVIEW: Harpoon [2019]

We need to promise not to kill each other. Writer/director Rob Grant wastes zero time getting us in the right frame of mind with Brett Gelman‘s perfectly sardonic voice narrating an auspiciously violent collision of three close friends caught in a lovers’ misunderstanding. Harpoon‘s first scene provides effect—a stranded yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with “SOS” duct taped to the deck—while the second supplies cause as Jonah (Munro Chambers) gets his face punched in by best friend Richard (Christopher Gray) with the latter’s long-term partner Sasha (Emily…

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REVIEW: Riot Girls [2019]

You feel me, bro? Following her success helming a segment in the well-received, woman-directed horror anthology XX, former Rue Morgue editor Jovanka Vuckovic delivers her feature film debut with the high concept, post-apocalyptic teen actioner Riot Girls. Obviously borrowing from the underground feminist punk movement Riot grrrl for its title (with an appropriate aesthetic and love for Joan Jett), screenwriter Katherine Collins‘ tale of rival gangs also takes many cues from “The Walking Dead” by applying that 90s-era subculture to its social commentary separating humans into two categories: those who…

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