‘Outside’
What if a zombie apocalypse wasn’t even the scariest thing to happen to your family? Carlo Ledesma’s film takes place in the Filipino countryside, where Francis (Sid Lucero) and Iris (Beauty Gonzalez) have fled with their young sons, Lucas (Aiden Tyler Patdu) and Joshua (Marco Masa). They are looking for refuge in Francis’s isolated childhood home, which feels relatively safe from the marauding undead. This is, of course, a fairly common premise but Ledesma puts a dramatic twist on it by focusing on Francis’s unraveling. His relationship with Iris is already on the rocks when we meet them, and he crumbles further into jealousy, paranoia and violence as the pressure mounts.
The evolution feels realistic — not everybody rises to the occasion in the face of danger, and ”Outside” is more psychological drama than point-and-shoot actioner. But in that last department, too, Ledesma adds a fresh spin: His zombies are able to say simple words. Having rotting humans gurgle “Sorry” as they attack is a simple but devastating idea that somehow encapsulates this somber movie.
‘Robot Dreams’
Pablo Berger’s film is set in 1984 New York and features many markers of the city at that time: ads for roommates on telephone poles, pre-urban-renewal Coney Island, VHS rentals and roller dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” in Central Park. But this is also a place inhabited by animals and where a lonely pooch can order a robot after seeing a commercial for it on TV. Thus begins the friendship between the dog and the mechanical buddy, and they will go through joy and heartbreak and joy again through the course of the film.
“Robot Dreams” is one of two standout features this year to be wordless animated tales (Gints Zilbalodis’s “Flow,” about a cat’s journey in an epochal flood, is the other), and Berger displays an uncommon mastery of visual and emotional storytelling — the dog’s East Village apartment prominently features a poster of “Yo Yo,” an eccentric 1965 comedy by the French director, actor and clown Pierre Étaix. The dog, the robot and a raccoon explore all too relatable feelings in ways sweet, tender, funny and touching. By all means, watch this movie with your kids — just know you’ll be the one crying at the end.
‘The Beast’
The French director Bertrand Bonello has a habit of messing with genre, whether he tackles the biopic (“Saint Laurent”), the period drama (“House of Tolerance”), or the tale of youthful rebellion (“Nocturama”). With “The Beast,” he takes a stab at science fiction and, naturally, eschews well-trodden paths — starting with his unlikely source material, the Henry James novella “The Beast in the Jungle.” The main protagonist is now a woman, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux), who bounces back and forth between a sterile, rootless 2044, Paris in 1910 and Los Angeles in 2014: In order to better fit in her artificial intelligence-dominated present, she must cleanse her DNA from the decades-old traumas that “infect her subconscious.” In each setting, she encounters incarnations of Louis (George MacKay, currently in Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End”).
Bonello can precisely, alluringly suggest passion and abandon (his gift for stylish, effortless erotic nightclub scenes is in full display here) but he also always seems to look at emotions with a cool eye. This is perfect for a movie that is suffused by a certain idea of physical and sentimental dislocation — tellingly, “The Beast” starts with Gabrielle given directions while acting against a green screen, with no physical elements to ground her. In this future, we must lose our messy humanity to be perfect enough to compete with A.I. And it still might not be enough for us to make it through.
‘Love Stuck’
Time loops are a beloved trope in contemporary science fiction, so much so that it feels as if this subgenre is engaged in a perpetual circular movement of its own: “Love Stuck” is a Thai remake of the time-loop movie “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” (2021), itself based on a Lev Grossman short story. When we meet Toy (Teeradon Supapunpinyo), he’s an excitable jokester gleefully indulging in outlandish behavior because he knows there will never be consequences: He keeps reliving Dec. 31, which always resets at the stroke of midnight. Then one day he meets the quiet, thoughtful Vee (Plearnpichaya Komalarajun), who is experiencing the same predicament. Yes, they will find a way to break the pattern, but not until they learn a few important things — a development you saw coming because you, too, are in a time loop of time-loop movies.
But “Love Stuck,” which is directed by Chongdol Sukulworaphat, works because its two stars have fantastic chemistry and it’s easy to root for them as they overcome their troubles and reconnect with the normal flow of life — which involves accepting the loss of things, or people.
‘The Fix’
The South Africa–based Kelsey Egan is turning into a director worth following in the world of micro-budgeted science fiction — her films may be uneven but at least she has things on her mind. One of them is Earth’s atmosphere turning lethal. After “Glasshouse” (2022), in which a female-led compound tried to protect itself from outside miasma, Egan is back with a near-future where the vast majority of the population breathes increasingly toxic air, and people walk around with cumbersome respirator masks. For those who can afford it, the pharma giant Aethera claims to have invented a miracle product that neutralizes the airborne toxins.
One night, a model who does work for the company, Ella (Grace Van Dien, the daughter of the actor Casper Van Dien), impulsively downs a mysterious blue liquid she mistakes for a party drug. Body horror ensues — and the situation worsens when Aethera gets involved. “The Fix” nominally touches on corporate malfeasance in a world going to pot, but the movie is more interested in Ella’s mutation into a superpowered being who could hold the key to humanity’s survival. Change or death: The answer here is clear.
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