It’s no secret that the first two months of 2024 have been pretty terrible for movies. The year started with the mediocre Mean Girls musical remake, then went down from there with The Book of Clarence, The Beekeeper, Argylle, and Madame Web. Streaming hasn’t been any better, with original movies like Good Grief and Lift on Netflix and Role Play on Amazon Prime Video debuting and quickly disappearing as critics and audiences rejected them.
March promises to break this vicious cycle of mediocrity with a packed schedule of studio blockbusters and compelling indies that are poised to get you to a theater each week of the month. Dune: Part Two sems sure to draw tons of moviegoers on March 1, so you won’t find that sci-fi epic on this list. Instead, the following three movies are a bit under the radar, but promise to be just as entertaining and memorable as Denis Villeneuve’s much-anticipated sequel.
Love Lies Bleeding (March 8)
It’s been a while since there has been a good crime noir, so when Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it was met with a critical reception usually reserved for past genre hits like Fargo and Bound. The plot is classic noir with a modern twist: Lou, na introverted Las Vegas gym manager, falls for Jackie, a competitive female bodybuilder. When Lou’s father threatens Jackie, Lou vows to expose her father’s criminal past, setting off a chain of events that lead to violence and murder.
The film’s cast includes Oscar-nominated actress Kristen Stewart as Lou, an unrecognizable Ed Harris as Lou’s father, and newcomer Katy O’ Brien as Jackie. Glass, the movie’s director, made the terrific 2019 movie Saint Maude, which blurred the lines between psychological drama and horror, and Love Lies Bleeding promises to do the same.
The Animal Kingdom (March 15)
In the sci-fi fantasy The Animal Kingdom, the world as we know it is over. A mysterious virus has caused some people to mutate into wild animals, which causes fear and panic among the populace, with those whowere changed driven away from society. François, a middle-aged Frenchman, must protect his teenage son, Émile, while searching for his wife, who has changed into one of the creatures.
It’s not common to see an international picture have the size, scope, and budget of a Hollywood movie, but The Animal Kingdom‘s trailer indicates that the film has an epic sweep that could rival Dune: Part Two‘s. The movie, which debuted in France last year, received 12 César nominations (France’s equivalent to the Oscars), so it already has a critical stamp of approval. Fans of such recent hits as Netflix’s Leave the World Behind and the Planet of the Apes remakes should check this one out.
Late Night with the Devil (March 22)
The premise alone is enough to hook most anyone: One night on Halloween 1977, a live taping of a late-night talk show captured a moment of unspeakable evil that caused everyone involved unimaginable trauma. Jack Delroy, the show’s toothy, polyester-clad host, had invited a parapsychologist to talk about her patient, a teenage girl who was the only survivor of a Satanic cult. According to the film’s teaser, what happens next “shocked the nation.”
Presented as a rediscovery of that lost program, Late Night with the Devil, like other similar “found footage” or alleged reenactments of real-life events like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Blair Witch Project, is effective because it gets the details so right. With it’s disco-era music cues and Match Game-like set design, it really does look like a lost artifact from the late 1970s. But what makes the movie really worth seeing is watching David Dastmalchian, a great character actor you’ve probably seen in The Dark Knight and The Suicide Squad, sink his teeth into a rare leading role. Stephen King has been singing the horror film’s praises for almost a year now, so Late Night with the Devil promises to be the next great midnight movie of the decade after Barbarian and Skinamarink.
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