Supergirl / Leviticus
Supergirl
1/5
James Gunn represented the hope for a new DC Universe after Zack Snyder’s controversial edgelord take on its classic heroes. Lacking Snyder’s abrasive edge but overflowing with heart, 2024’s Superman was a great inaugural entry in this new DC world. Gunn, a veteran of the MCU—and one of the few to leave the franchise unscathed, thanks, surprisingly, to one of the industry’s fastest cancellation-to-uncancellation turnarounds—was tapped by WB to bring some of that Marvel magic to DC’s classic heroes.
What impressed me so much about Superman was Gunn’s restraint. He established a distinct vision for the character. You can feel the DNA of his Marvel hits like Guardians of the Galaxy, yet he took care to subvert expectations and grow as a filmmaker. Gunn knows how to use a needle drop—see: the opening scene of every GotG movie—which works once but feels less magical the next dozen times. He wisely avoids relying on that device throughout Superman, giving the excellent use of “Punkrocker” during the film’s denouement an even greater impact.
If Superman was an exercise in restraint from a filmmaker who was cancelled and uncancelled in record time, there is some irony in the possibility that the second film in the new DC Universe, Supergirl, could bomb hard enough to kill this iteration just as it gets started. And the killing blow? The total absence of that restraint in Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl.
In what appears to have been a troubled production, WB took over final cut, and the version we see was signed off on by Gunn—hence some of the blame landing with him. This film needed to be at least as good as Superman, if not better. It may instead be the worst DC film since WW84.
It reeks of someone trying to emulate Gunn’s style while learning all the wrong lessons. The film is overstuffed, with some of the worst music choices I have ever heard in a movie. Whereas “Punkrocker” at the end of Superman will have you shedding a tear (complimentary), Supergirl’s closing song will have you bursting out laughing (derogatory).
Milly Alcock is the one redeeming feature, playing a great Supergirl—it is just a shame she is stuck in such a bad movie. Her character is largely incomprehensible, with contradictory motivations that serve to prolong the plot rather than align with any cohesive characterization. Is she good or is she bad? Why are we even asking this question?
Jason Momoa is also fine but saddled with truly terrible material as Lobo. Lobo is completely inconsequential to the film. Half of his scenes are designed to look or sound cool (they do not), and the other half tell the audience how to feel (which is impossible). Krypto is sidelined throughout the film, and I am shocked to say that my favorite part is a glorified cameo from Seth Rogen as a space-bus driver. I, too, wish I had called in sick for this movie.
The action feels like a CGI-slop fest, with all the weight of a cheap video-game cutscene. Every set piece feels the same, populated by totally interchangeable cannon fodder. The stakes feel too low, admittedly a difficult problem in a superhero film but not one James Gunn has not already proven he can handle.
And that is the shame of all of this. Maybe Gillespie was the wrong director, but this failure goes all the way up to James Gunn as the head of the DCU. For a man who has constantly espoused quality over quantity, he certainly failed to achieve it with Supergirl.
Supergirl is not just a failure in its own right but an indictment of the entire DCU project, which, for a brief moment after Superman, appeared to have a bright future. Somewhere, Zack Snyder is probably having a grand old time. He knows better than most that these properties are not easy to lead and manage.
On to this fall’s Clayface, which I now have little faith in after the debacle of Supergirl.
Leviticus
2/5
In our modern horror renaissance—with recent standouts like Obsession, a true box-office phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen since Top Gun: Maverick, and Backrooms, with Kane Parsons making a smash hit at age 20 and forging a new path for the next generation of filmmakers—I am sad to say that Leviticus does not reach the exceptionally high bar set by so many horror films of the past few years.
It is a 90-minute film that feels both too long and not long enough. It drags yet still fails to explore anything deeper or more interesting. There are a number of compelling vignettes, but a hodgepodge of short films does not a feature film make.
It squanders a relatively interesting premise—you actually can pray the gay away, but the reality is more horrific than you could imagine—and fails to carve out an identity for itself. It wears its inspirations on its sleeve, from the teenage sex and STD allegory of It Follows to its LGBTQ spin on doppelgänger monsters. Yet it does not do enough to elevate these familiar themes beyond throwing some gay paint over them and calling it a day.
When the film tries to capture something new and unique, it mostly works. There is simply too little of it, and none of it is explored deeply enough to really affect you. The complicated nature of the hidden relationship between Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) is fraught with tension, especially as we learn that Naim is actually the reason Ryan is forced into a horrific religious ceremony that feels all too real. But that tension never pays off in any meaningful way.
There are some steamy moments between the two leads that capture the shame and guilt of desiring something you have been taught never to want, and this is easily where the movie shines brightest.
Ryan and Naim have great chemistry. They act their age, which means they are clearly still figuring everything out and are bound to make mistakes—mistakes with consequences far larger than usual, though frankly comparable to those of the not-so-distant past. Their love story works, and you will be rooting for them to overcome the evil thrust upon them.
There is one heartbreaking scene in which a friend betrays Ryan while Naim watches in horror, unable to help and wrestling with the fact that his own actions are not so different from hers.
All that said, this is a horror film that sometimes feels unsettling but rarely feels scary. Not every horror film needs jump scares, but it does need to capture some sense of dread or tension; Leviticus lacks both.
Special shout-out to Mia Wasikowska as Naim’s mother, Arlene, who gets too little screen time but seems to ooze a compelling backstory. Was this religious curse inflicted on her?
The film works just fine as an allegory for internalized homophobia and religious trauma, but it fails as a horror film - and is a pass for me.