What I'm Watching: Loki, Hell House LLC Origins, American Symphony, and More
On seven TV shows, five movies, three books, two podcasts, an audio series, and a bucket list assignment.
Ke Huy Quan, Loki, Marvel/Disney+
Here’s a (kind of?) quick rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about last week:
The shows:
Loki is back, and it’s pretty good! The show’s second season leans too far into the mechanics of its own world, devoting an inordinate amount of screen time to people explaining time science to other people, but it also pulls most of what it tries off thanks to a winning cast and a sense of good humor. Here’s my full review!
The true crime series 🎥 Murdaugh Murders on Netflix is a hell of a watch – an uncomfortable and infuriating retelling of one of the weirdest murder sagas I’ve ever heard of. Brace yourself for all sorts of surprises (and some unbearably sad moments) in this harrowing but riveting close look at the slow and steady undoing of a wealthy, powerful South Carolina family.
Stephen King’s 2002 miniseries 🎃 Rose Red is finally streaming (on Hulu) for the first time that I can recall, and I watched it over a 3-day period just like it originally aired. The rare King script that wasn’t originally a book, Rose Red is a mash-up of King’s greatest hit character archetypes, a Winchester mystery house story, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It’s a bit drawn out and has some stupid moments, but in a lot of ways it feels like an undiscovered King classic. If you love the master of horror, it’ll hit the spot.
The movies:
One of my favorite scrappy little horror franchises is back on October 30th with 🎃 Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor. If you haven’t seen the original Hell House LLC, an efficient thrill ride from 2015 about a scare attraction that turns out to be possessed, definitely give that a watch before checking out the latest installment. By this point, the found footage series’ ostensible flaws (some less-than-naturalistic acting, convoluted lore, a clickbaity framing device) all feel more like an endearing feature than a bug, but The Carmichael Manor is also more straightforward and scarier than the past two installments. I had a blast with it!
If you want to watch one of the best documentaries of the year, one that’ll crack your heart open and put it back together again, keep an eye out for 🎥 American Symphony. The intimate and profound upcoming doc follows musician Jon Batiste for a year while he prepares the biggest show of his life and becomes a part of the Grammys conversation. At the same time, his partner, writer Suleika Jaouad, undergoes grueling cancer treatment that makes her world small and painful as his continues to expand in unexpected ways. This is a beautiful movie, but not one you should watch if you don’t have a loved one in hugging distance.
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