BARE BONES: WEDNESDAY (2022)

WEDNESDAY (2022)

Netflix original series from Tim Burton finds a teenage Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) being sent to the Nevermore Academy by her parents (Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones) after getting near fatal revenge on a group of boys bullying her brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez). The academy is filled with supernatural misfits and while there, she is starting to show signs of her own psychic abilities while finding herself embroiled in a murder mystery to solve.

Series from executive producer and director Tim Burton is a fun eight-episode show featuring Addams Family classic character Wednesday as a Buffy/Sabrina type anti-heroine with special powers and working to solve a dark mystery. If you can appreciate the dry, droll humor and a delightfully morbid and twisted tone, then you should enjoy this series a lot. It follows Wednesday as the rebellious teen begins to develop psychic visions and discovers there is a killer afoot at the academy…and a mystery that goes back centuries and involves her own family bloodline. She also reluctantly makes some friends, definitely makes some enemies and even might find a little romance. None of the episodes feel like filler as Wednesday gathers clues and begins to find out about herself and her family history, both near past and distant. Jenna Ortega is simply perfect as a teenage Wednesday Addams and there are some colorful and engaging characters in support. The Addams Family members themselves don’t all fair as well as Guzmán and Zeta-Jones are sadly miscast as Gomez and Morticia. They just don’t work and have no chemistry together. Thankfully, aside from appearances by some familiar faces, it’s Ortega’s show and she takes the Goth ball and runs with it. A school dance sequences is a perfect example of just how well she nails the role. It’s a fun and spooky show to binge on a rainy afternoon and despite the before mentioned casting and some weak CGI, it’s otherwise an entertaining Sabrina-esque series giving a classic character a nice update and a wonderful actress to play her. Wednesday also features Christina Ricci as teacher Marilyn Thornhill, Fred Armisen, clearly having fun, as a visiting Uncle Fester, and GOT‘s Gwendoline Christie as the academy principal Larissa Weems. Currently streaming on Netflix!

EPISODE LIST:

1. “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe” written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and directed by Tim Burton
2. “Woe Is the Loneliest Number” written by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and directed by Tim Burton
3. “Friend or Woe” written by Kayla Alpert and directed by Tim Burton
4. “Woe What a Night” written by Kayla Alpert and directed by Tim Burton
5. “You Reap What You Woe” written by April Blair and directed by Gandja Monteiro
6. “Quid Pro Woe” written by April Blair and directed by Gandja Monteiro
7. “If You Don’t Woe Me by Now” written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Matt Lambert and directed by James Marshall
8. “A Murder of Woes” written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and directed by James Marshall

-MonsterZero NJ

NETFLIX AND TIM BURTON’S “WEDNESDAY” GETS A TEASER TRAILER!

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From the official synopsis…

“WEDNESDAY, an upcoming Netflix series from the imagination of Tim Burton. WEDNESDAY — starring Jenna Ortega in the title role, alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzman, Gwendoline Christie, Christina Ricci and more — is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. Snap snap.“

Coming to the streaming network Fall 2022!

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[outube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAgqRwz-Tg&w=697&h=392%5D

-MonsterZero NJ

Source: Netflix Photos: Netflix and IMDB

HALLOWEEN FAVORITES: SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

This Tim Burton directed classic is another of my Halloween Favorites and I like to watch it every year at this time, when I want a bit of a rest from the more intense horrors, but still want something with plenty of Halloween spirit and all the trappings…and this film has both.

Andrew Kevin Walker’s script, from a story by he and Kevin Yagher, takes a lot of liberties with the classic Washington Irving tale, but is still a lot of ghoulish fun. This version takes place in 1799 and transforms Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) from a meek local schoolteacher to a meek NYC detective with an interest in forensic science that annoys his superiors, who have a much simpler view of crime and punishment. His belligerent attempts at waking his peers up to the new age of police work earns him a trip up the Hudson River Valley to the small, remote village of Sleepy Hollow. A rash of decapitations has the entire town wrapped in a blanket of fear, as they are rumored to be committed by a headless fiend riding an enormous black steed. Upon his arrival, the skeptical Crane not only comes face to face with a very real headless horseman, but witches, black magic and a conspiracy of death and murder. Can Crane get to the bottom of who holds the horseman’s reigns and somehow keep his own head on his shoulders where it belongs?

Despite wandering greatly from the original The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton’s ode to Hammer horror films…with more than a few nods to the Universal classics…is, if nothing else, a stunningly spooky visual feast that oozes Halloween from almost every sumptuous shot of Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography. Burton also brings dollops of atmosphere and a lot of spine-tingling action, with a touch of fairy tale whimsy, as Crane overcomes his own fears to solve the mysteries around him and take on the supernatural head-hunting juggernaut. He also spatters the screen with a generous amount of the red stuff as we get quite a few beheadings, stabbings and slicings, as the undead Hessian mercenary tracks down it’s assigned prey in Terminator-like fashion. The gore FX are very well executed and there are only a few spots of CGI here and there to enhance the live effects occurring on screen. There is a wonderfully spooky Danny Elfman score to add to the atmosphere and it’s all a great deal of fog-drenched, blood-spattered fun!

Burton also has a great cast to help him tell his tale. Depp is channeling his inner Peter Cushing as Ichabod Crane and he is a delight to watch as he takes his arrogant yet cowardly police inspector wading into supernatural territory far removed from the comfort of his science. Christina Ricci is charming and pretty as both love interest and suspect, Katrina Van Tassel. She and Depp have a nice chemistry, though I do feel Ricci could have been a bit livelier at times considering how over the top the rest of the cast is. Miranda Richardson is perfectly cast as Katrina’s stepmother Mary and Michael Gambon is properly bombastic as her father and chief suspect Baltus Van Tassel. We also get Casper Van Dien as Katrina’s jealous suitor Brom, Michael Gough, Jeffery Jones, Ian McDiarmid, Marc Pickering and Christopher Walken as the Hessian mercenary whose loss of head creates a demonic legend. Add in cameos from Martin Landau and the great Christopher Lee and you have an almost perfect cast that gets the tone of the material ghoulishly well.

What can I say, I love this flick. It drips Halloween from every frame and while it may deviate from the classic tale considerably, it is a lot of bloody fun, and it has a good cast that embrace the tone of the script perfectly. It’s a great flick to watch during the Halloween season, when you need a break from the more intense horror films, but still want a movie that has everything you want in a flick for this time of year. A really fun and deviously gruesome treat.

Rated 3 and 1/2 (out of 4) horsemen!

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