Joel Fry-days: Haunting of the Queen Mary (2023)

*Premise spoilers*

I wasn’t a fan of this one. Part of it, I’m sure, is just that I’m not a big horror person in general, but I’m pretty sure it’s also true that this isn’t a very good horror movie. Definitely confusing in places, and its construction leaves me feeling kind of disconnected from the main characters. 

Anne Calder and her ex(?) Patrick come to the Queen Mary with a pitch for a new writing project about the ship’s history and ghost stories. While they’re there, something happens to their son Lukas during a haunted tour. When Anne and Patrick return to the ship, despite warnings from the creepy security guard who calls himself the captain, they’re after something much more important than their project.

I’ll start by saying that I didn’t completely dislike the film. The film jumps between the present day and 1938, and the flashbacks feature some interesting characters—I especially enjoy a sequence between a starstruck young girl and Fred Astaire, both passengers on the fateful voyage. There are some surprising moments of humor—a scene where Anne is scrabbling for purchase as she’s choked by a ghost is intercut with a scene of Patrick straining to reach up into a vending machine, with parallel shots of their hands. I also like that Lukas has dwarfism and, while there are allusions to teasing/trouble fitting in at a new school, it’s not really a “thing” in the story. There isn’t a plot reason for Lukas to have dwarfism, he just does. 

Okay, when I say this is a confusing movie, I’m giving it full leeway for shadowy horror-movie logic. Those elements of the film actually do get decently explained over time, largely thanks to its many jumps between the present day and 1938, when a number of grisly murders happened aboard the ship. Even if it takes quite a while, we eventually find out what happened with the murders and how it ties to the present-day hauntings. Whether it makes sense is still up for grabs, but I do get what they’re going for.

What’s far less clear is the story of the main characters and their reactions to the creepy events unfolding. Let’s start with the relationship dynamics. Anne and Patrick might be exes, or separated, or together but just drifting apart. When he refers to Lukas as their son, she draws a hard line and insists, “My son,” even though Lukas calls Patrick “Dad”—while Patrick isn’t Lukas’s biological father, that’s clearly the position he’s held in Lukas’s life, and whatever’s going on between Anne and Patrick, it feels disingenuous of her to deny that. Anne is resistant to Patrick’s desire to reconcile and settle down together, calling it too “permanent” and telling him, “I just don’t believe in marriage,” but they all have the same last name. So are they married or not? I really don’t know what’s going on with them.

When it comes to their reactions to the ghosts/what’s going on with Lukas, the characters are greatly hampered by a narrative structure that deliberately holds back information to the audience for the sake of dramatic reveals later on. While I don’t mind the 1938 flashbacks, we also return several times to a flashback with Anne, Lukas, and Patrick in the present day. Again, we see this scene nonlinearly so the film can deliver twists, but it obscures what they do and don’t already know. This means that, when Anne and Patrick are on the Queen Mary, their responses often feel underwhelming. For a big chunk of the film, they don’t display much urgency, partly because it has yet to be revealed that they already knew some of this stuff going in. And if they’re not all that freaked out or confused a lot of the time, why should I be?

Naturally, this has an impact on the central performances. As Anne, Alice Eve often comes across as muted and detached, even though she’s a mother who’s had something creepy and distressing happen to her son. Unless she’s being actively chased/attacked by ghosts, she rarely has much of a reaction.

I’ll get to Patrick’s side of that coin in a minute. First, I quickly want to mention some of the other cast. I recognized Lenny Rush, who plays Lukas, from Ncuti Gatwa’s first season of Doctor Who, where he briefly played a young genius working for UNIT. The only other familiar face for me was Angus Wright, a British Hey It’s That Guy! that I’ve seen in lots of different things. Because he plays one of the 1938 characters, Wright doesn’t share any scenes with Joel Fry, but he was in Bank of Dave as Hugh’s boss.

All right, now let’s talk about Joel Fry as Patrick. Like Eve, he’s hamstrung because the film holds back just how much he does or doesn’t know about all the haunted stuff, so his reactions often feel too low-key for what’s happening. He also takes the brunt of the confusing relationship dynamics. We learn that Patrick has conceived this writing project in the hope that doing it together will help him and Anne patch things up. “You and Lukas would come home,” he explains. “We’d be family again.” He’s incredibly focused on this and repeatedly brings it up in moments where there are plainly bigger fish to fry. And yet, for all that he obviously loves Lukas and wants to be with him, he doesn’t seem at all bothered that Lukas briefly goes missing on his watch while they’re on the tour together, insisting to Anne, “We found him, no big deal.”

It all adds up to a lot of internal inconsistency, despite Fry’s efforts to make it all work. There are a few good things here, but it’s an uphill battle. I like how plainly delighted Patrick is to see Anne and Lukas when they first arrive at the Queen Mary. I like his quiet resolve to help Anne when they go back, even though he takes Anne’s distance from him to mean he isn’t “enough” for her. And I really like a scene later in the movie where Patrick and the creepy security guard/“captain” encounter each other in the midst of all the haunted goings-on.

Accent Watch

Generic American. As with American Sweatshop, it’s not outright bad but definitely sounds a bit iffy throughout.

Recommend?

In General – No. There are some interesting ideas here and it could’ve had potential, but the end result is too jumbled and sloppy

Joel Fry – Not a must. It’s a decent-sized role and he’s all right, but the script lets him down. He’s been much better in other things.

Warnings

Violence, disturbing imagery, language, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements (including suicide.)

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: 2024 Comic Relief (2024)

While W1A did a short special over Zoom in 2020, David Tennant wasn’t a part of that one, so we’re jumping ahead to this Comic Relief bit from a couple years ago. Although, when I was looking for this, I found out that there’s a new new spinoff with Ian and Siobhan, and Tennant narrates that one too. Not sure if I’m going to jump right into that show or if I’ll take another short break from this franchise. I guess you’ll find out next week!

It’s Sir Lenny Henry’s last year hosting Comic Relief, and Ian, Tracey, and Siobhan have invited him over to the BBC offices to say farewell, showering him with thanks and telling him how irreplaceable he is. Unfortunately, Lenny shows up late to the meeting, causing it to overrun with the people auditioning to replace him as host.

It’s an 11-minute sketch with essentially one main joke: that BBC doesn’t think Lenny Henry is nearly as “irreplaceable” as they claim. A host of British celebrities pop in and out of the meeting room, most of whom are people I don’t recognize. There are some amusing bits. One guy auditions as one of Lenny’s old characters, and Lenny gripes that another shouldn’t get the job because he’s already in everything—to prove his point, he switches on the TV, where the guy is hosting The Weakest Link. And this bit, from the start of the meeting, made me smile:

IAN: “After nearly 30 years of Comic Relief…” 

LENNY: “Actually, it’s nearly 40.” 

IAN: “Gosh, is it really?” 

At which point, of course, Ian takes the farewell card they got Lenny and writes a heavy “4” over the “3.”

As with the previous Comic Relief special, there’s only a smidge of David Tennant here, mainly just a quick intro at the start of the sketch. I liked, ““It’s Friday, and somewhere—in wherever the BBC is now—some senior executives have gathered together.”

Okay, last thoughts on the David Tennant portion of W1A!

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – A soft maybe. It’s amusing, but it gets too repetitive for me.

David Tennant – Not necessarily. While he does a nice job, it’s not really worth it to watch just for Tennant if you’re not otherwise interested in the show.

Warnings

Language, drinking/smoking, and mild thematic elements.

Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 2, Episode 1 – “Access to Healthcare” (2021)

“Season 2” is a slight misnomer, because Pan y circo doesn’t really have a full second season. By virtue of the simple fact that it’s a show about people coming together around a dinner table, filmed in 2019 but released in 2020, that made it difficult to move forward with a second season. As such, the show has only filmed three further “special” episodes, two in the fall of 2021 and one in the summer of 2022. This first special is really set in the “new normal” era, which makes for bittersweet viewing these days.

Understandably, the topic for the episode spends a lot of time looking back on the early days of the pandemic, examining the present in-between period of vaccine rollouts, and thinking ahead to the future. Diego Luna and the guests are concerned, not just with addressing inequalities in healthcare access during the pandemic, but with improving healthcare access in all areas of life for generations to come. Here are some highlights from the episode.

• Just generally, it’s striking to see the COVID mitigation strategies and considerations in effect here. In Luna’s opening narration, he stresses the work the show has done to ensure that they can film in the safest format possible, we see people wearing masks, and several guests participate over Zoom instead of attending the dinner. It’s thoughtful and inclusive in a way that we’ve since almost entirely lost
• The episode includes both a chef and a restauranteur, the latter of whom supplies the drinks for the evening – He mixes a cocktail using sake from his restaurant, billing it as “Japanese sake with a Mexican heart.”
• The first Zoom guest, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., recites a familiar line that makes me want to weep in the present day – “No one is safe here until everyone is safe.” So much for that!
• The ambassador also explains the progress of attempted reforms within the WHO – “We’re trying to clearly establish that public health issues, once they become global, should be considered issues of international safety.”
• I really like this statement from a political scientist – “I’m troubled by this idea that health is only something that allows me to work. Why do I want to be healthy? To be able to work. Otherwise I can’t support my family.”
• A surgeon shares an excellent, succinct quote with the table – “The pandemic has been a triumph of science and the failure of political leadership.”
• One of the developers of the AstraVeneca vaccine, appearing over Zoom, has this to say (again, I weep in the present day) – “First of all, we need to get populations around the world vaccinated. Because we know that if we allow this virus to continue to spread without check in different countries, more mutations will arise, and then those mutant viruses will start to circulate around the world and possibly evade the immunity that we’ve managed to bring about by vaccination—and make things worse for everybody.”
•  An activist in the group discusses the issue of misinformation, noting that Mexico’s traditionally high vaccine uptake has taken a nosedive since the start of the pandemic – “In a country with so much inequality, with so many living in poverty, with no formal education, we need to find a way for everyone, regardless of education level, to come back to the belief that science is good for us. It’s fundamental.”
• A traditional healer contributes over Zoom by looking at the larger systems in the world that impact health – “Capitalism is trying to finish what the colonizers started. Capitalism doesn’t care about death and destruction or if it causes greater poverty.”
• I like this remark from the surgeon – “Even across party lines, we can agree on what we want. We may differ on how, but if you agree on the what, the rest can be worked out.”

Luna does a nice job with his hosting duties here. Again, it’s something of a balm to see him considering the safety and health of his guests, even as it’s disappointing to think about how much we’ve lost in the last few years. As for the dinner conversation, he tells the guests, “The nice thing about eating is that, while we chew, we have to listen. Unlike social media, where everyone yells and no one listens.”

As usual, Luna takes a light hand in directing the conversation, although he has some longer remarks to make at the end of the evening. I enjoy some of his lighter comments. One guest, the director of the Mexican Social Security Institute, takes issue with the prevailing opinion that the government fumbled their pandemic response and urges everyone to ask people in government about the actions they’ve taken. Not missing a beat, Luna responds, “They won’t take our calls.” And when the surgeon repeatedly grades the meal’s courses, giving everything an A, Luna tells him, “I’m going to invite you for every episode.”