movie review

Messy but pulpy Birds of Prey pecks away at comic book misogyny

Clearly, Birds of Prey is attempting to kill myriad birds with one stone.

The movie — which can also be titled Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) — aspires to conquer much in one outing. First off, it’s a stand-alone vehicle for Harley Quinn (played here by Margot Robbie), whom we last saw going bonkers in Suicide Squad.

Here, the Arkham Asylum psychologist-turned-sociopathic moll is out on her own after the Joker, her main squeeze, literally kicks her to the curb. (Don’t even bother looking for Squad co-star Jared Leto to do his glam-punk version of Joker in this one. His manic mug doesn’t even appear in the flashback scenes from Squad.)

The movie also serves as an origin story for the titular crew of DC Comics superwomen who fight crime in Gotham City when Batman seems to be detained. Sadly, founding member Batgirl is nowhere to be found, but we do get Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), seen here as a torch singer with a voice that can apparently obliterate throngs of weapon-wielding men, and Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a socially awkward assassin who returns to Gotham to take out the men who killed her entire family.

Prey doesn’t even try to stick to the DC canon. Director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson have basically taken several female characters — whether they’ve actually collaborated in the DC universe or not — and just placed them together in the same movie.

Also along for this ferociously feminine ride is embittered detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and foster kid/professional pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). All these women eventually become the target of club owner/sadistic crime lord Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, camping it up all to hell), aka Black Mask, forcing them at the end to team up and become a ragtag girl-gang once he sics more bad guys on them.

Naysaying men on Twitter who’ve been predicting Prey’s failure at the box office will likely take issue with how males are portrayed in it. In this version of Gotham, the male population is made up of predators, misogynists, women-hating killers, and men who’ll sell a woman out with no qualms. (The only decent guy is the greasy-spoon cook who serves Quinn a delicious-looking egg sandwich at the beginning.)

To wit: It’s almost like Yan, Hodson, and Robbie decided to use Prey to troll all the dudebros and fanboys who constantly bellyache about women squeezing themselves into their pitifully male, Comic-Con universe. They not-so-subtly give them the business by having Quinn and company go to town on any creepy, pervy dude with which they come in contact.

It’s a shame the movie is too much of a messy pile-on. It’s obvious that the filmmakers threw a lot in here on the off-chance that this kind of cinematic girl-power may never happen again. Prey ends up having an off-kilter rhythm, often teetering between being entertainingly chaotic and tonally clumsy. However, out of all the DC Extended Universe movies, this one looks the most comic book-y, with its deliriously over-the-top action sequences and gloriously pulpy milieu.

And it’s all anchored by Robbie’s foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking anti-heroine.

Chris Messina and Ewan McGregor in Birds of Prey.

Chris Messina and Ewan McGregor in Birds of Prey

Photo by Claudette Barius; courtesy of DC Comics

Chris Messina and Ewan McGregor in Birds of Prey.

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

---

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

Loading...