Dracula Presents: The Fourteenth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Best Comedy
I say that action was the genre that suffered the worst from the pandemic, and in terms of the projects that got moved out that’s probably true, but in their own way comedy might have struggled even more. More than any other genre, the communal experience is important to comedy, and frankly the fact that I wasn’t watching any of these movies in a room with a laughing audience probably made some impact on how I judged a lot of them.

Bill and Ted Face the Music: It’s kind of weird that Keanu Reeves first came to prominence in a comedy given his future reputation as something of a robotic presence in action movies, but he was interestingly willing to slip back into the role of Ted and Alex Winter seemed to be in good form as well for this legacy sequel that really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but the final movie is kind of a blast. It maintains the continuity and legacy of those first movies and also manages to give these characters some real closure in a satisfying way.

The King of Staten Island: Judd Apatow’s movies have long walked a bit of a line between actual comedy and the occasional sadness of quarter-life ennui, and that tendency gets taken to something of an extreme with his latest film The King of Staten Island. Essentially a starring vehicle for SNL star Pete Davidson, the film looks at a character loosely based on Davidson pre-success who is kind of an aimless loser whose been wounded from a young age by the death of his father, but it looks for the lighter side of depression and Apatow and Davidson do find humor in how this guy lives his life.

Palm Springs: There are a lot of time loop movies, but most of them have existed by applying the formula to new genres, applying it to comedy like Palm Springs does kind of invites comparisons to the granddaddy of time loop movies Groundhog Day. That the movie more or less lives up to that legacy is pretty impressive. SNL alum Andy Sandberg doesn’t quite have the extensive movie career but when he finds the right project he can be a very enjoyable presence and Palm Springs is kind of a perfect for him.

Promising Young Woman: Calling Promising Young Woman a comedy would probably be eyebrow raising among many and when it was submitted as a comedy to the Golden Globes the HFPA disallowed that classification, but I think that was actually a defensible description. At its heart the film is a (very) dark comedy rather than a drama or a horror movie or whatever else you may want to call it. More specifically it’s a social satire and one that has bite. The fact that it’s not exactly trying to make you laugh repeatedly means it’s probably not going to be declared the comedy of the year, but it deserves some consideration in that regard.

Unpregnant: Unpregnant is kind of like the funhouse mirror reflection of Never Rarely Sometimes Always in that both films are about teenagers who need to cross state lines in order to procure an abortion without parental notification, but that movie focused on the sadness of that situation and while Unpregnant is very aware of the same injustices it opts to address them by putting together what could otherwise be something of a light road trip comedy. There are some budget limitations and you can kind of tell its following a bit of a comedic formula, but Haley Lu Richardson and Barbie Ferreira are charming and have good comic chemistry.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Best Horror Film
Unlike action movies and comedies, horror cinema would seem to be something relatively pandemic-proof since they are largely cheap enough to send to streaming (at least when they aren’t A Quiet Place Part II) and they aren’t necessarily improved by being watched with an audience. Sure enough we did get a lot of horror movies this year… at least in terms of quantity… but I think this was still a weak year for the genre nonetheless. That’s partly because of a couple of existing trends kind of going wrong and maybe just kind of the result of a few high profile examples just not quite coming through.

#Alive: #Alive is a fun South Korean zombie movie which kind of gives the Rear Window the zombie treatment as it looks like a young man who finds himself trapped in his apartment during a zombie apocalypse. So… it’s a movie about having to spend the end of world staying inside to keep one’s self from becoming infected with a virus that’s tearing the world apart… it resonated in 2020 for some reason. I wouldn’t exactly call it a particularly scary horror movie but it is a clever one and it was doing some interesting things with some genre tropes.

Freaky: Freaky is almost more of a comedy than a horror movie as it, like its director’s last movie Happy Death Day, looks to turn a classic high concept into a slasher movie… in this case the body swap comedy (the title is a play on Freaky Friday). Vince Vaughn has a lot of fun playing the film’s central serial killer who swaps bodies with one of his victims, thus having him behave like a teenage girl for much of the movie. Unlike Happy Death Day, the film had the green light to indulge in some R-rated gore and while taking potshots at slasher tropes is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel at this point it feels relatively fresh here.

His House: His House is a British horror movie told from the perspective of a pair of Sudanese refugees living in London who find themselves haunted by a strange spirit in their home. That’s an inherently fascinating premise for a horror movie and even if there wasn’t something supernatural going on the film’s depiction of refugee integration would have been an interesting watch in and of itself. Director Remi Weekes brings some interesting visual tricks to bear and sets the film up as a canny metaphor for the baggage people bring with them when they escape from violent situations.

The Invisible Man: Attempts to revive the Universal horror icons of old have fallen flat more often than not in the last thirty years, but Blumhouse finally seems to have pulled it off with their adaptation of The Invisible Man even if they’ve only taken the title and basic high concept from the original film. Using the idea of being stalked by an invisible person as an overt metaphor for an abuse victim trying to get away from their tormentor was a very smart move that gives the movie a weight it otherwise wouldn’t have and it’s pretty effective at conveying the terror of someone maybe or maybe not being in the room watching you.

The Wretched: The Wretched is mostly famous for having gone to number one at the box office for five weeks by playing drive-ins at the height of the pandemic while almost everything else was shut down, but I do think it’s a neat (if messy) little movie that probably deserved some of the extra attention it received. The film is about a teenager working in a coastal town for the summer where he ends up contending with a witch who lives next door. It has a bit of a “straight to VOD” budget and its cast isn’t first rate, but it has some nicely nasty makeup and gore effects and the film’s third act is genuinely engaging.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

I think Mulligan just missed it.  I might have a slight bias toward less conventional picks like Elizabeth Moss and Carrie Coon over the people that are getting nominated everywhere.  

As far as the soundtrack, that was close but I think the overall quantity of interesting tracks in Palm Springs kind of pushed it ahead, that and the fact that I'd already honored PYW of the individual track award.

Best Documentary
Over the course of 2020 I watched at least 35 feature length documentaries from the year, which I’m pretty sure is a record. That’s largely a side effect of what happens when the majority of a year’s film watching is done at home and to how widely these things are distributed in the age of streaming. It was sort of a big year for documentaries, but we kind of say that every year so you that little talking point, but there was certainly a lot to choose from even if we aren’t allowing multi-episode docuseries like “Tiger King” and “The Last Dance” in.

76 Days: 76 Days is probably the most purely vérité of the nominees here and also the one that takes on the very specific issues of 2020 in the most head-on way. Set in a hospital in Wuhan right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film looks at the frantic efforts of all involved to contain the virus and also help those who are dying from the disease before anyone knows everything about what’s going on. I might have liked to see more of what was going on in Wuhan outside of this hospital, but as a document of the first 76 days of this moment in history right at ground zero it’s invaluable.

Boys State: The title of Boys State refers to a program that’s put on by the American Legion in each state where a bunch of teenage boys (there are separate “Girls State” events for females) are brought together and asked to put together fake political parties and do a bunch of mock elections and create a faux government and this documentary chronicles a recent Boys State even. I can’t say I fully understood the program itself and thought there were some kind of obvious flaws with its setup, but that’s not really the point, what’s fascinating about the documentary is looking at these kids and how they’re thinking about politics and how they respond to these fake elections in ways not dissimilar from how the real politicians seem to.

Collective: Collective was a movie that delivered what the masses were yearning for: a documentary exposing systemic corruption in the Romanian healthcare system! Okay, so that sounds a bit clinical on its face but make no mistake there’s a pretty gripping story here about how a fire at a heavy metal club in Bucharest exposed through infections after the fact that people were being killed because of hospital disinfectants that had been diluted. We get a view on the ground floor as journalists explore the scandal and also as an incoming minister of health tries to solve it. Not really the story I went in thinking I needed but one that proved quite fascinating.

MLK/FBI: Martin Luther King is currently something of a secular saint in the United States who even has a holiday named after him, but the documentary MLK/FBI is a good reminder of how much King was opposed by the establishment when he was alive. The film is all about the extent of harassment and surveillance that J. Edgar Hoover placed King under and how much they tried to tip the scales against him. The film is almost entirely made up of archival footage and is mostly told through testimony about historians and manages to make its case in a bold but dispassionate way that doesn’t shy away from the fact that this surveillance uncovered infidelity by King and carefully weighs what we’re supposed to make of that. It might be a bit dry and PBS-like for some, but I found it to be refreshing in a year of overheated rhetoric.

Welcome to Chechnya: Welcome to Chechnya will probably always be remembered for its unconventional use of top of the line visual effects but the core documentary beneath that is still a very well made and important piece of work. The film examines the anti-LGBT laws in Russia and the outright violence against those communities that exists, specifically in Chechnya, where hate crimes against gays and lesbians have basically been tolerated by the entire society. The movie looks at a sort of Underground Railroad for LGBT Chechens and this is where the special effects come in as the film use of CGI to give the fleeing refugees new faces to hide their identities through the whole movie, which is just interesting to look at.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Top Ten Reveal Day!
10.

9.

Of all the big contenders this year Sound of Metal has been the one that has stuck with me the most. Really powerful flick.

I liked it quite a bit. Some of the metaphor in the ending is lost on me, but overall it's a fascinating view into neurosis in only a way Kaufman can provide.

I'll probably watch it with Hereditary in the future as part of a Toni Collette doubleheader.

Love it and I'm happy to see it so high in your list. I have a couple of titles left to catch up with but I think that's my favourite movie of the year.