VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) on Demand This Week

This week’s fringe VOD releases explore the angst of motherhood as horror and comedy, the love life of a disabled man, and the music-fueled revenge of a trio of cursed brothers.

Clone Cops (VOD and select theaters January 31): Director and co-writer Danny Dones’ debut feature peaks early, with an amusing parody of corporate training videos that promises a sharper dystopian satire than what Dones and co-writer Phillip Cordell deliver. Clone Cops lurches awkwardly from outlandish humor to gritty violence, aiming to emulate the wry social commentary of sci-fi action movies like RoboCop and The Running Man but settling for weak sketch comedy and weaker battle sequences. At first it’s not quite clear what the mass production of the title characters (all played by Cordell) has to do with a group of criminals hiding out in a warehouse, but the two elements eventually connect via a deliberately annoying live-stream broadcast. Dones and Cordell have nothing new or interesting to say about media depictions of violence or the self-determination of synthetic beings, and the attempts at pathos among the criminals fall especially flat. Once the characters turn off that opening video, the audience might as well turn off the movie. Grade: C

The Devil and the Daylong Brothers (VOD January 31): There’s no lack of ambition in this Southern gothic Western revenge thriller musical, although fitting those disparate pieces together is not always within writer-director Brandon McCormick’s grasp. The unwieldy, long-winded result is equal parts bold and messy. As a musical, it’s full of catchy blues-rock songs, and Keith Carradine channels a bit of vintage Nashville energy in his one big number, a slow-burn lament. The songs don’t always connect to the action, though, especially when the characters are literally singing them during car chases and shootouts. Brendan Bradley, Nican Robinson, and Jordon Bolden play the sons of Carradine’s Nehemiah Daylong, who sold their souls to Satan before they were born. The logistics of their curse aren’t always clear, and the motivations of the sultry Frankie (Rainey Qualley), who claims she can help them locate Nehemiah, are even murkier. The actors affect exaggerated hillbilly accents to deliver McCormick’s tortuously folksy dialogue, which can be exhausting — like everything else about this alternately frustrating and exhilarating movie. Grade: B-

Good Bad Things (VOD February 4): It’s impossible to fault the intentions of this mostly bland romantic dramedy, about a man with muscular dystrophy opening himself up to love. Newcomer Danny Kurtzman (who co-wrote the story with director Shane D. Stanger) plays Danny, a wheelchair user who lives a pretty sweet life but still keeps his emotional guard up, thanks to past bad experiences with people taking advantage of his disability. When his marketing company is pitching a collaboration with a dating app, he signs up and matches with Madi (Jessica Parker Kennedy), a bubbly, attractive, able-bodied photographer. She’s little more than an idealized fantasy with virtually no internal life, and their perfunctory third-act conflict is easily and predictably resolved. Good Bad Things is more effective as a character study, especially in the relationship between Danny and his best friend/roommate/business partner Jason (Brett Dier), but Stanger rarely gets below the surface, and Kurtzman’s performance is shaky in the more intense scenes. Those are only fleeting moments in what amounts to a glossy, forgettable rom-com. Grade: C+


Mom (Select theaters February 7; VOD February 11): When frazzled new mother Meredith (Emily Hampshire) returns home with her newborn son, she starts losing time, seeing strange apparitions, and hearing spooky voices. Is her house haunted, or is she experiencing postpartum psychosis? Don’t expect Mom to answer that or any other question in a satisfying or coherent manner, although director Adam O’Brien gets by for a little while on standard-issue creaking doors and flashing lights. The elliptical story keeps circling back to a handful of repetitive images and sounds, which don’t take long to lose their meager creepiness. The horrors of new motherhood are well-trodden cinematic territory, and while Hampshire is convincingly haggard, that’s apparently Meredith’s only personality trait. There’s a shocking development at the halfway point that seems to move the plot in a new direction, but it just offers a slight variation on the same ideas and motifs (and many of the same scenes) as in the first half. Motherhood may be a tiresome slog, but so is this movie. Grade: C-

Suze (VOD and select theaters February 7): After her excellent supporting turn in Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings, Michaela Watkins gets a welcome lead role in this Holofcener-esque dramedy from writer-directors Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart. She plays a divorced mother who has poured all of her emotional energy into her ungrateful teenage daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass). When Brooke leaves for college, Watkins’ Suze has no idea what to do with herself, and she reluctantly agrees to watch over Brooke’s slacker-doofus ex-boyfriend Gage (Charlie Gillespie) as he recovers from a suicide attempt. Both feel abandoned by Brooke, and they gradually grow closer despite their polar-opposite personalities. Clark and Stewart go a bit overboard with Gage’s himbo obliviousness and Brooke’s entitled rudeness, but Watkins keeps things grounded as a woman slowly realizing that she has an entire new phase of her life to look forward to. Gillespie gives Gage further layers over time as well, and the stars create a believable and affecting intergenerational bond. Suze is a low-key charmer, just like Watkins. Grade: B+

Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He's the former film editor of 'Las Vegas Weekly' and has written about movies and pop culture for Syfy Wire, Polygon, CBR, Film Racket, Uproxx and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.

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