Two decades of narrative reclamation haven’t been kind to Mean Girls. That’s not to withdraw the film’s status as the noughties’ seminal behemoth. The film remains the most instantly quotable of the twenty-first century to date. It’s fetch. And yet, as astute as Mean Girls was in its acerbic assessment of clique culture, the aging process has exposed through lines of misogyny, racism and homophobia. To this end, the 2024 do-over can’t help but feel like contemporary sanitisation. The product of a late night spent pouring over think piece assassinations. It’s fun. It’s well cast. It still doesn’t make fetch happen.
Any notion that a more mainstream following, in a post-Favourite world, might have impacted a dampening of spirit upon the vision of Yorgos Lanithimos are quickly quashed by his latest feature. Indeed, Poor Things is a stunningly depraved endeavour. It is a film that renders the quirks of Queen Anne quite tame. Take the plot. Emma Stone plays a woman resurrected from suicide, only to have her brain replaced by the still cooking foetal brain of her as yet unborn baby. The lunacy is better understood in the film’s conceptual context, of course, but proves no less rampantly weird for it. What’s more, one will be hard pressed to uncover a more visually resplendent film all year. A bold statement for January but impudently true nonetheless.
There’s not so much scope for scares in swimming pool horror. Sure enough, the Duffer Brothers more or less maxed out the potential with the upside-downing of poor Barb in the first series of Stranger Things. The short film upon which Night Swim is based might have predated the ‘Justice for Barb’ movement by two years but essentially proved the same point. Kudos then to Bryce McGuire – one half of the original directing duo, with Rod Blackhurst – for his efforts in attempting to extend the mileage. Stick to what you know and all that. Come the closing credits, it’s not entirely clear it worth the bother but at least the definitive proof is finally out there.
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