Movie review by Greg Carlson

Horror fans who loved director Tomas Alfredson’s terrific 2008 adaptation of John Ajvide Lindkvist’s vampire novel “Let the Right One In” will find much to appreciate about “Handling the Undead.” Based on Lindkvist’s second book, Norwegian filmmaker Thea Hvistendahl’s movie reimagines the slow zombie premise with a seemingly contradictory blend of the elegant and the macabre. An instant classic right at home within the popular subgenre almost single-handedly established by George Romero in 1968, Hvistendahl’s debut feature suggests the work of a veteran visual storyteller with many years of experience behind the camera.

In “Night of the Living Dead,” the reanimation of corpses may or may not be the result of a space probe explosion directing radioactive waves of energy toward Earth. “Handling the Undead” establishes its own mythology via an equally inexplicable phenomenon: some kind of unusual surge of electrical power in Oslo returns the recently deceased to life. In both movies, the cause is unimportant, even inconsequential, compared to the immediate aftermath. In Romero’s film, the unstoppable onslaught of a horde of shambling ghouls fueled the nightmare. Hvistendahl contemplates the equally unsettling ways we might react if our dearest loved ones were resurrected.

Significant similarities between “Night of the Living Dead” and “Handling the Undead” are abundant, but the difference between the two tales might at first be characterized in part as a matter of the external (zombies attacking us) versus the internal (how we reconcile the impossibility of corporeal rebirth). Both movies inspire us to confront our fears about death’s unknowable features and apply some deep thinking to an aspect of existence most people avoid at all costs. Hvistendahl appreciates the power of silence. Key collaborator Pål Ulvik Rokseth’s cinematography complements the style with gorgeous lighting and austere compositions worthy of Henning Bendtsen’s images for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s thematically sympathetic “Ordet.”

Even though Renate Reinsve’s grieving mother Anna might be the first among equals in Hvistendahl’s ensemble, the surrounding actors are fully committed to the movie’s realistic and somber tone. Anders Danielsen Lie, Reinsve’s co-star in “The Worst Person in the World,” confronts disbelief when his spouse (Bahar Pars) begins to breathe again after being killed in a catastrophic car wreck. In a third thread, an elderly woman makes her way back home not long after her own funeral. Unexpectedly, Reinsve and Lie don’t share any scenes, but the commitment to keeping the three stories separate has the effect of compounding the escalating dread and despair.

In his indispensable 2008 study of “Night of the Living Dead,” Ben Hervey wrote that the film’s pleasures center on “destruction: of generic convention, taboo, people, property, the natural order and ‘normal’ life.” Hervey’s words remind us of another way that “Handling the Undead” owes a debt – like all zombie movies since – to the 1968 film. Hvistendahl’s movie dispenses with the exact same kind of grim delights embedded in “Night of the Living Dead,” but its focus on disruption and disorder, like its predecessor, is handled with the highest respect. Given the ongoing popularity of the zombie in film and television, anything that feels like a genuine innovation or new treatment seems rare indeed.

“Handling  the Undead” premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will be released in select United States locations starting May 31.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Now available to stream following a quiet and disappointing North American theatrical release, filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera” should not be missed. Josh O’Connor, whose recent work for another Italian director in “Challengers” has been more widely seen, gives an equally compelling performance alongside a supporting cast worthy of Fellini. Expanding the remarkably personal storytelling developed since feature narrative debut “Heavenly Body” in 2011 – and perfected in 2018’s sublime “Happy as Lazzaro” – Rohrwacher stakes a serious claim as one of today’s most vital auteurs.

Set in the early 1980s in Riparbella, Tuscany, “La Chimera” begins with an enigmatic reverie on a train. O’Connor’s foreigner Arthur, having recently finished serving a short prison sentence for his part in a group of gravesite thieves (known as tombaroli) who loot Etruscan antiquities, drifts in and out of consciousness as he imagines the face of once-upon-a-time love Beniamina (Yile Vianello). More than a bit rough around the edges, Arthur’s somewhat soiled, cream-colored linen suit and slightly disreputable air (not to mention his pungent odor) call to mind the rakish Jean-Paul Belmondo of “Breathless” as he draws attention from curious fellow passengers.

Arthur accepts the warm hospitality offered by Beniamina’s mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini, a living reminder of Italian cinematic heritage), who holds court with her daughters and a curious caretaker/servant/student named, with symbolic gravitas, Italia (Carol Duarte) in a rapidly deteriorating villa. Far from the opulence of the well-kept mansion played by Northamptonshire’s Drayton House in Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” Flora’s once spectacular keep is closer in cinematic presence to London’s Debenham House as immortalized in Joseph Losey’s “Secret Ceremony.” In all three cases, each dwelling serves as a crucial nexus for our understanding of the story. Later, Rohrwacher will relocate her characters to an abandoned train station, underlining her point.

A walking contradiction, Arthur falls back in with the tombaroli even while he begins to develop romantic feelings for Italia. We learn that Arthur has previously studied archeology, although the filmmaker deliberately withholds any clues regarding her protagonist’s moral philosophy with regard to disturbing and profiting from necropolis treasures (beyond hints that the loss of Beniamina has caused a major change). Throughout “La Chimera,” Rohrwacher relies on the brilliant images collected by cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who mixes and matches a variety of film gauges and stocks to capture the shifting moods among the ruins.

It’s tempting and all too easy to thematically reduce “La Chimera” to a fable about the conflict between perceptions of a glorious, elusive past and the harsher realities of a more mundane and cruel present. Arthur’s gifts with a divining rod additionally situate him as a kind of oracular presence who can, in effect, magically sense the empty spaces beneath the earth. In the movie’s most breathtaking scene, the tombaroli locate a trove of artifacts, including a gorgeous statue of indescribable beauty, in an underground chamber. Exposed to moonlight and fresh air, the vivid colors of the long-untouched paintings fade instantly. The statue, and its eventual fate, rhymes with the absence of Beniamina. They are a pair of Eurydices to Arthur’s Orpheus.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The undeniable chemistry between stars Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling in David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy” is a significant selling point in what is surely one of the most heavily marketed movies of the year. A mashup of the rom-com and the action/crime thriller, Leitch’s latest is an inside-baseball wink and a frisky and frolicsome spree that gets a lot of mileage from its additional genre status as a movie-quoting Hollywood metanarrative. Loosely based on the 1981 to 1986 ABC series starring Lee Majors – who appears alongside co-star Heather Thomas in a brief end-credits cameo – “The Fall Guy” ditches the show’s bounty hunter angle to pump up the conflation of on-set and real life stunts performed by Gosling’s Colt Seavers.

Radiating charm, Gosling capitalizes on the Kenergy of his Oscar-nominated performance as a living doll in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” Combining many of Ken’s positive traits with several of private investigator Holland March’s memorable mannerisms as displayed in Shane Black’s “The Nice Guys,” Gosling writes another chapter in the story of his impressive career. As characters, Ken and March are better written, deeper, and more dynamic than Seavers, whose lack of richness Gosling manages to overcome in scene after scene. An equal measure of applause belongs to Blunt, whose camera operator-turned-director Jody Moreno, like Ginger Rogers, matches her castmate, only backwards and in high heels (apologies to Beth Novey).

Filled with a number of showstoppers that take place during the production of Moreno’s feature debut, the “Mad Max”-esque science fiction epic “Metalstorm,” “The Fall Guy” leans on Leitch’s visual sensibilities to overcome the flimsy dialogue and uninspired plotting of Drew Pearce’s screenplay, which is easily the movie’s weakest link. When Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s A-lister Tom Ryder mysteriously disappears, Seavers, previously sidelined by a serious work-related injury, returns to stunt crew duty hoping to rekindle his romantic relationship with Moreno. Instead, Colt quickly becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation. Fisticuffs and car chases ensue.

Anytime Blunt and Gosling interact, including a great split screen scene inspired by “Pillow Talk,” the pulse of “The Fall Guy” spikes with excitement and possibility. The fragile reasoning that keeps the one-time sweethearts apart makes as much sense as the lengths to which producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) goes to get Seavers to locate her missing lead actor. And with the exception of the quiet scenes between Colt and Jody, which are so good that some lines showcased in the trailer didn’t even make the final cut, we’re not supposed to take seriously any of this ridiculousness.

Leitch, a former stunt performer and coordinator who doubled for Brad Pitt five times, incorporates an in-universe plea for a long overdue Oscar category to recognize the work of the talented professionals who risk (and sometime lose) their lives in the course of making films that continue to dazzle and delight viewers searching for the vicarious adrenaline rush of a perfectly executed practical effect. “The Fall Guy” even manages to squeeze in genuine concerns about the encroachment of A.I. and the dangers it portends. Those two considerations, though only fleetingly addressed, land with an explosive bang.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“I’m not a homewrecker,” insists Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan as she prematurely ends a three-way encounter involving doubles partners and best pals Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Tashi’s instincts will hold serve throughout Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, sexy, and ridiculously entertaining “Challengers.” Guadagnino’s fascinating, enviable filmography is stocked with triumphs large and small. From 2009 breakthrough “I Am Love” to critical apex “Call Me by Your Name” (the latter unfortunately stained after the fact by Armie Hammer’s career implosion), the Italian filmmaker explores desire like his life depends on it.

Guadagnino even christened “I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash,” and “Call Me by Your Name” his “Desire Trilogy.” Now, working from a script by Justin Kuritzkes, Guadagnino turns his attention to another kind of triplicate in a sinewy showcase certain to extend the upward trajectory of the no-ceiling-in-sight Zendaya. Presented in a complex series of time-jumps that mimic the give-and-take aspects of a close tennis match (if not the linear chronology), “Challengers” uses the game as an extended metaphor to scrutinize the enigmatic appetite of a young woman who concentrates her considerable acumen to replace the power and control she loses when a career-ending injury forces her to switch from player to coach.

As a symbolic vehicle with which to pique viewer interest, the sport of tennis has been courted (pun intended) in a variety of genres. While Richard Loncraine’s “Wimbledon” parallels several aspects of the game recycled here by Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale,” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” are just a few other films that communicate something beyond the swing of the racket. None of these examples, however, have as sizable an influence on “Challengers” as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train.”

Both “Strangers on a Train” and “Challengers” understand that tennis can reveal class distinctions via the game’s snobbish and elitist jeu de paume and Sport of Kings history; Guadagnino never misses an opportunity to contrast the wealth of Team Donaldson against the sleep-in-your-car scruffiness of Zweig – even if the latter, as Tashi claims, is faking his hardship. Like striving up-and-comer Guy Haines and wealthy, psychopathic schemer Bruno Antony in “Strangers on a Train,” the predictable/dull masochism of Art and the rakish volatility of Patrick invite us to compare the criss-crossed pairs. Both movies pave a path to intense homoeroticism.

In a shot taken directly from Hitchcock, Tashi stares straight ahead from her seat at center court while the faces of all the other spectators swivel left and right, following the trajectory of the volley. In 1951, of course, the onscreen repercussions of toying with any queerness – whether overt or covert – typically resulted, by the final frames if not sooner, in death. This difference is where “Challengers” and “Strangers on a Train” most notably part ways. Guadagnino makes sure that everything, from the pops and grunts on the soundtrack to the balls-eye view of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography to the urgency of another fantastic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, leads to a climactic moment to be savored.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Surely one of the year’s unlikeliest and most wondrous theatrical experiences, “Sasquatch Sunset,” from beloved indie storytellers David and Nathan Zellner, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a range of critical responses that match the breadth of the film’s own expansive agenda. Following a quartet of hairy hominids – of the familiar bipedal cryptid sort that has fueled legends of Bigfoot and Yeti in cultures around the world – the movie communicates every one of its concerns without a single spoken word. Chapters divide the action into the four seasons, and “Sasquatch Sunset,” as implied by its title, tackles ideas large and small under the impending twilight signaled by encroaching humans.

Costumed in shaggy, anatomically-detailed bodysuits and stunning foam latex prosthetics by veteran effects designer Steve Newburn, the principal creatures are played by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner. Each member of the ensemble commits fully to the enterprise, conveying a wholly believable authenticity by balancing vocalized grunts, hoots and physical movements with astonishingly expressive and soulful performing done with the eyes. Personalities emerge, and with them viewers discover the recognizably human in the group’s relational dynamics. As the only female in the unit, Keough differentiates herself by teaching us much about the unique challenges of maternity.

The intensity of the movie’s environmental message slowly but surely increases throughout the duration of the 89 minute running time. The Zellner brothers, who screened the short “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” at Sundance in 2011 (the contents of which effectively get remade in one of the feature’s tour de force sequences), don’t limit the action to a single theme, and alongside the warnings about consuming and/or mishandling natural resources and the endangerment of species glows a dazzling rainbow of experiences: alarms signaled by rhythmic beating of sticks, shelters built from leafy branches, mushrooms tasted with dire results, sexual intercourse by turns accepted and rebuffed, encounters with other forest-dwelling animals, and more.

The recognition of the boundaries between the unspoiled, primeval range and the presence of modern humans results in some of the film’s most outrageous and hysterical gags as well as some tragic and startling outcomes. The Zellners indulge an absolutely giddy sense of humor that launches a larger than average number of laugh-out-loud moments in scene after scene. Unimaginative killjoys, complaining that behaviors involving urine and feces are merely “gross,” miss the bigger picture. “Sasquatch Sunset” acknowledges the sense of smell so consistently one can practically taste both inviting fragrance and tangy stench.

In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Stanley Kubrick distilled “The Dawn of Man” to a single moment of emerging consciousness via tool use, as Dan Richter’s Moonwatcher weaponizes a bone against rival One Ear. “Sasquatch Sunset” is, in many satisfying ways that imbue the movie with its magnetic pull, “The Dawn of Man” inflection point staged again and again. The best of these signposts is performed by Zajac-Denek, whose Sasquatch externalizes a previously internal kind of conversation or thought process by using his hand, in the manner of Señor Wences and Johnny, to anticipate both a sense of self and the separation of the mind and the body.

In true Zellner fashion, it’s a note simultaneously funny and profound.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s “Spermworld” boasts a killer hook to attract the curious: unregulated sperm donors who use social media to offer services to women unhappy with the options provided by traditional “banks.” The filmmaker’s latest feature was inspired by the 2021 “New York Times” article by Nellie Bowles titled “The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand.” Using a range of techniques that often mirror the way dramatic scenes in fiction films are constructed and cut, Oppenheim introduces viewers to a colorful gallery of characters who, to paraphrase the famous sentiment from Jean Renoir, have their own reasons.

While the first scene in the movie shows a couple preparing to engage in N.I. (natural insemination) through sexual intercourse, the majority of the film’s subjects practice the “artificial” variety requiring fresh and “unquarantined” semen collected in a cup. “Spermworld” is never particularly graphic, but the movie includes several instances in which sperm donors withdraw to the privacy of a bathroom to prepare a specimen, frequently with the aid of stimulating pornography. Oppenheim definitely alludes to the possibility that a selection of men, regardless of the method used, receive some kind of erotically charged pleasure from the transaction.

“Spermworld” tracks a principal trio of donors. Tyree Kelly accepts money for his sperm even as he and his own partner, Atasha Pena Clay, unsuccessfully try to conceive. Mathematics lecturer Ari Nagel, to the great dismay of his mother, lays claim to more than 135 children (and counting). Steve Walker, a lonely sexagenarian relatively new to the donation community, bonds with Rachel Stanley, a young woman seeking to become a mother despite the increasing challenges of her cystic fibrosis. Their stories unfold with a strong sense of cinematic flair that purists may find blurry, as lighting, color and composition combine in artful and stylized mise en scene.

While some detractors have claimed that Oppenheim’s narrative approach negatively criticizes the participants – or at least implies some kind of moral superiority – the director paints complex portraits of people whose desire and willingness to do something outside the gates of typical social convention raise questions for those viewers who might never consider, or need to consider, such a path. Oppenheim has spoken on the record that he tries “to not express any kind of judgment.” The result raises many unanswered questions that some watchers will tolerate. Others may be left wanting information the director is not willing to include.

One of the big themes that looms large and lingers in one’s mind long after the end credits roll is the thin line between altruism and a more self-centered worldview held by donors. As producer Kathleen Lingo said to Nicole Karlis in “Salon,” “One of the things I find so fascinating about this story is the women taking a thing that’s always been mediated through culture, through law, through society — which is who can impregnate them — and taking matters into their own hands. On one side that’s very freeing and empowering, but on the other side, when you decide to go outside the system, there are no rules.” In this sense, “Spermworld” is a worthwhile starting point for a larger and deeper conversation.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Nobody will mistake director Thea Sharrock’s undercooked “Wicked Little Letters” for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1943 “Le Corbeau.” Or, for that matter, Otto Preminger’s “Le Corbeau” remake “The 13th Letter” (1951). The poison pen concept has fueled many film plots, and this latest iteration at least has the good sense (or fortune) to feature first-rate performances by Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, along with a sturdy supporting cast. In 2021, Buckley and Colman played younger and older versions of the same character in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of “The Lost Daughter.” Here, they are next door neighbors whose lives are upended by epistolary scandal.

Based loosely on the true events detailed in historian Christopher Hilliard’s 2017 book “The Littlehampton Libels: A Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery About Words in 1920s England,” Sharrock’s movie condenses four criminal trials into a single courtroom showdown and a more streamlined melodrama that surely would have worked better as an incisive character study of either Colman’s put-upon, two-faced goody-goody Edith Swan or Buckley’s fire-breathing single mom Rose Gooding. Hilliard’s interest in the curious ways that working class people used profanity and the written English language at a time when “universal literacy was still a novelty” isn’t fully captured in the movie.

Regardless, “Wicked Little Letters” remains mostly enjoyable. But the conflict that drives the plot – a series of anonymous, handwritten notes charged with colorful expletives and sent through the post in a time when this would be taken very seriously – isn’t meaty enough to draw undivided attention from the viewer. Sharrock uses the period setting to comment on race and gender-based discrimination and suffocating patriarchal injustices, illuminated most directly via Gladys Moss, the suffering constable played by Anjana Vasan. The decision to reveal the “mystery” to the privileged viewer should be accompanied by a more thoughtful examination of Swan’s compulsion as well as the complicated relationship between Swan and Gooding.

Instead, Moss spends time cooking up an elaborate trap to incontrovertibly prove Gooding’s innocence despite the audience being miles ahead. We are left to imagine why Swan would threaten the freedom of Gooding beyond the breadcrumb trail left by the overbearing presence of Edith’s cruel father Edward (Timothy Spall). If Edith is using the letters to break free from or act out against Edward’s iron grip, perhaps to assert herself in the manner modeled by the candid and unapologetic Rose, Sharrock won’t say. Is Edith jealous of Rose’s independence and sexual liberty? Even if the answer is yes, the movie cannot account for Edith’s inhumanity beyond a near-fainting spell before the bench that implies she doesn’t have it all together.

The foul embarrassments, which include fun combinations like “foxy-ass old whore” and “aging, fucking, soft-cock streaks of hot horse piss,” are sure to get a rise out of any pious patrons and genteel ticket-buyers drawn in by a trailer promising such shocking verbal transgressions. Those epithets, along with gems like “piss-country old stinker with shit hair,” conjure smiles but cannot quite make up for the lack of development or understanding that fails to materialize between the two central figures. A more considered exploration of friendship, to the extent it could and did develop between these two seemingly opposite women, slips away.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In Sundance standout “Love Lies Bleeding,” filmmaker Rose Glass improves on all the promises announced in her 2021 debut “Saint Maud.” While “Maud” explored the familiar territory of the psychological horror thriller, “Love Lies Bleeding” mines the fertile grit of the neo-noir. Working with a cast of well-known performers, Glass fashions the story of a menacing criminal’s daughter and her desperate romance with a musclebound bodybuilder into a twisted and captivating diagram of malefaction and malfeasance. By the time the clock runs out, genre fans will be itching to revisit “Bound,” “The Hot Spot,” “Blood Simple,” “Blue Velvet” and other like-minded midnight misdeeds.

Had the screenplay, which Glass co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, been originally conceived as a novel, one could easily imagine it being published by Donald Ellis and Barry Gifford’s Black Lizard imprint alongside classics by Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford and Charles Williams during the late 1980s series heyday. Perhaps the film’s 1989 setting is no coincidence. Willy Vlautin’s comment that the Black Lizard books “were about psychologically damaged people trying to navigate a cruel, cutthroat world that didn’t want them in the first place” perfectly fits Kristen Stewart’s frustrated gym manager Lou and the other characters in her increasingly unbalanced orbit.

Once Lou catches a glimpse of Jackie’s (Katy O’Brian) ripped physique, the humiliation of unclogging toilets gives way to something a little closer to hope, or at least lust. Noir is built on the crescendo of really bad choices, and Lou’s suggestion that Jackie inject performance-enhancing steroids to give her an edge in an upcoming Las Vegas competition is just the first taste of questionable decision-making that will spiral out of control. One of the movie’s sublime pleasures is watching Jackie “Hulk out,” veins popping and biceps glistening, en route to doing things that can’t be undone. Together, Stewart and O’Brian sweat out a pulse-quickening escalation of codependency.

In many a terrific noir, it’s a family affair that forecasts the giant screw-up leading to a bloody, extended showdown. Turns out, Lou is no stranger to body disposal, even if she’s worked hard to wriggle out from under the terrifying shadow cast by her pop Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, relishing the steely hair extensions that frame the deep lines of a gaunt, corpse-like visage). Sister Beth (Jena Malone), whose marriage to the abusive J.J. (Dave Franco) requires extra-strength pain relief, further confuses Lou’s nuclear – in more than one sense of the word – relationships.

Glass fully understands the intimate links between sex and violence. “Love Lies Bleeding” skimps on neither. Depending on your proclivities, you might long for a little more of each, although it is tough to imagine going any harder than the blunt force trauma that serves as the movie’s big turning point. Glass is at her best when at her weirdest. The incorporation of a macrophilia fantasy (which called to mind for Richard Brody the “primordial ‘roid-rage” of James Mason’s Ed Avery in Nicholas Ray’s brilliant “Bigger Than Life”) demonstrates that Glass could be well on her way to something special.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The chief reason to see “The Prank,” a lumpy and unappetizing stew that could use a lot more salt, is legend Rita Moreno. The now 92-year-old phenomenon and EGOT winner (who was also the first Latin American woman to collect an acting Oscar) continues to perform like an unstoppable force. As the last working star who appeared in “Singin’ in the Rain,” Moreno links the present to Hollywood’s shimmering past. In 2021, she was the subject of Mariem Perez Riera’s worthwhile documentary feature, subtitled “Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.” That career retrospective, which acknowledged the often cruel realities Moreno overcame to reach the summit, implicitly argues that the icon deserves to have her pick of projects.

Unfortunately, director Maureen Bharoocha’s movie, limping into theaters after languishing on the shelf since its 2022 premiere at SXSW, will be but a Moreno footnote. In the slight horror-comedy, Moreno plays high school physics teacher Mrs. Wheeler, a sharp-tongued disciplinarian known for her stylish bob, sleek black wardrobe (including ever-present kid gloves) and withering stare. Despite working well past the common retirement age, Wheeler strikes fear into the hearts of students like Ben Palmer (Connor Kalopsis), who is sweating it out over his need to secure a college scholarship. Following a cheating accusation, Ben and his bestie Mei Tanner (Ramona Young) cook up a flimsy plan to accuse Wheeler of murder.

The screenplay by the married writing team of Rebecca Flinn-White and Zak White deserves the largest share of the blame for the movie’s failing report card. Plotted with no concern for even the most rudimentary internal logic, the narrative stumbles and lurches from one incomprehensible sequence to another, ignoring both the rules of coherent storytelling and whatever legal policies and procedures we might expect to be followed by the investigating authorities. Even when the boy-who-cried-wolf “twist” veers into the absurd territory of severed heads in jars, Moreno gamely sticks it out.

The well-established trope of the awful teacher pops up in all kinds of cinematic contexts and genres: Imelda Staunton’s Dolores Umbridge, William Atherton’s Jerry Hathaway and Cameron Diaz’s Elizabeth Halsey are just three disasters who should be kept far away from pupils of any level. Some viewers might remember Helen Mirren’s Eve Tingle, the vindictive history teacher in “Teaching Mrs. Tingle.” And movie and television nerds of a certain age will conjure happier memories of Christopher Lloyd as the nightmarish English instructor B. O. Beanes in the 1986 “Amazing Stories” episode “Go to the Head of the Class.”

“Golden Arm,” Bharoocha’s previous feature directorial outing, was superior to “The Prank” in every category. The ridiculous competitive arm-wrestling comedy, which I argued deserved more attention for the way it grounded its cartoonish subculture in real pathos, consistently piled up laughs that are notably absent from most of “The Prank.” As a rated-R addition to the teen movie pantheon, “The Prank” is also shockingly light on youthful hijinks. Despite the homicidal happenings, few of the supporting characters – including Meredith Salenger as Ben’s mother and Keith David as the principal – express much alarm, even when things start getting strange. Class dismissed.