THE CLEANING LADY (2018)

Hi friend, I had to stop by real quick and tell you about this movie that I watched a few days ago, and trust me, you do want to add it to your Amazon queue #notspons so please, please promise me you will watch The Cleaning Lady (2018) when you have a chance. What was that? Why am I trying to push it to you so hard? Easy answer, because, in my opinion, it was a really sweet movie with a relatable protagonist and a believable antagonist. I will for sure come back and re-watch it whenever I need some gentle feminine energy around me #wheremygirlsat #COVIDlife.

Let’s watch the trailer first and don’t worry, I will not spoil the movie for you, not today ;)

ALICE is our protagonist and we like her. She is a girl’s girl, sincerely nice, polite, welcoming, and an overall good person. She works from home as a beautician and her business allows her to enjoy a comfortable life in Los Angeles. Alice takes good care of herself with nice home-cooked meals, baths, and pampering beauty treatments, also, she goes to Pilates and group therapy. However, Alice is not perfect as she is trying her best to end a relationship with a married man.

SHELLY is our antagonist and we also like her. She is painfully shy due to her appearance and speaks in a very quiet voice, she makes us feel a lot of compassion for her as we can only imagine all the suffering she had to endure when her entire face was burned; we completely understand why she dresses in baggy clothes, with her long hair and baseball cap covering her face, she may look disheveled but we don’t care, we know she is doing her very best at trying to have a normal life and that’s what matters. Shelly works as a maintenance person at Alice’s apartment building and, by happenchance, ends up getting an under-the-table job offer cleaning Alice’s apartment twice a week.

Alice had this gentle way of behaving around others that came across as genuine and safe, so you can imagine how good Shelly must have felt when Alice asked her to stay for dinner, even if it had been as a last minute excuse to keep herself busy while trying to avoid her lover, or, as she put it, her ‘disease’ (Alice had been struggling with love addiction). Over dinner, Shelly willingly opened up to Alice and shared why she was badly burned, granted, she did not disclose the whole horrendous story, but that intimate moment allowed for both women to trust each other which naturally opened the door for their new friendship.

I feel like I am not doing a good job at explaining why this movie felt so wholesome to me. Mmmh… Was it maybe because it was an indie film with a smaller budget which allowed for more creative freedom and realism? Was it because it was shot in my city and it felt familiar? Was it because the sets were not, how do I say it, elaborate and instead reminded me of real livable spaces? Was it because the work/life situation of the protagonist felt like an actual attainable life? Herself, even, she looked like a regular woman (did she remind me of someone I know IRL?). And what about the antagonist? She was so shy and made herself small so as to not be noticed which was heartbreaking but understandable (was that behavior what made me want to ‘protect’ her?). And her backstory, wow, so much sorrow and pain (was that why I felt compassion for her?). I don’t really have the answers to my own questions, but all I know for sure is that these two women gave me such a vibe, a vibe that felt warm and bright and girly.

But don’t get me wrong, not everything was sunshine and rainbows, I mean, this was a horror movie and a bunch of bad stuff did happen, but guess what, I am not going to mention any of it and, instead, I am going to let you find all about it by yourself. Watch now on TUBI.

“You have to, for yourself.” -Shelly

In Love and Fear (and warm fuzzy feelings),

—Marath

© 2016-2020

THIS FRESH BLOOD: Near Dark (1987)

Hi, hello, how are you, how’s it going, what’s gucci, what’s popping?? Listen, listen, so, do you know how much we love going into Instagram to hopefully find in our feed a good Horror movie recommendation? Well, I hit the jackpot early this morning thanks to today’s prompt [Vampire] for the tag #100daysofhalloweenhappy where a handful of people were posting about their favorite vampire character in a movie and, oh my, who was that dashing fella I kept seeing over and over?

It turned out his name was Severen, from Near Dark (1987), so I proceeded to make a mental note of that and promised myself I would watch the movie after work tonight and, oh baby, I just did and these are my thoughts. (By the way, welcome to another installment of THIS FRESH BLOOD, it’s been a minute!)

*spoilers ahead*

First things first, I would like to confess that I chose to watch the movie only because the Severen dude looked super attractive, I mean, how could I resist a bad boy with a smug attitude and a thirst for blood? So yeah, go ahead, call me basic, there’s nothing wrong with it…

Little did I know Near Dark was not about the cool Severen, oh no, it was about Caleb Colton, a down to earth, family oriented young cowboy who happened to be bitten by a nice vampire girl. But don’t feel too bad for him, it was all his fault after all, you see, Caleb, being the young man that he was in his small town, saw the opportunity of talking to a fresh unfamiliar face and you better believe he took it, the problem was that he was a little too aggressive with his flirting and yada, yada, yada, he low-key threaten the girl, Mae, to not drive her home before sunrise if she did not kiss him (I know!), so Mae kissed him of course (I knooooow!) but not without taking a little sip of that sweet, sweet neck artery blood.

And so Caleb was ‘accidentally’ turned into a vampire and was ‘forcefully’ made to join the traveling gang.

Even though it might seem that I am giving Caleb shit, I actually started rooting for him early on and felt bad for the mishaps he had to go through; from having to leave his family without saying goodbye (and them desperately looking for him), to him trying to escape the group (and failing miserably), to being thirsty for blood (and morally not being able to take a life), to being caught in the middle of the reckless behavior of the other vampires (and being shot by the police in the process), to finally being rescued by his father and little sister (and later on having to fight the disgruntled vampires by himself).

Plot twist! Caleb’s father, Loy Colton, was a farm veterinarian and thanks to his ingenuity he gave his son a blood transfusion which, lo and behold, cured him of vampirism.   

I’m going to say it again. A simple blood transfusion from a non-vampire to a vampire cured the latter from his, ahem, illness??

I don’t think there is anything else for me to say here. I was pretty much done after the whole transfusion debacle as it felt like an easy way out, but don’t get it wrong, I was happy for Caleb in spite of the fact that the story resolution felt like cheating. Oh, shit, wait a sec! Did I mention that the vampire gang easily burned and died by simply being exposed to the sun? And that Mae was turned back into a mortal thanks to Caleb’s blood transfusion magic? Yeah… I kind of wished Severen hadn’t exploded (his death was super extra btw) so that maybe he could have reprised his role as the mischievous lovable bastard we enjoyed watching, because if his character were still alive then maybe that would have made me care for the movie a little bit (and yes, now I understand why all these girls were posting about him this morning).

Forever basic,

-Marath

© 2016-2020

STOLEN THINGS: Who Was Harper Cunningham?

Who was Harper Cunningham? Who was this girl whose rescue was so desperately important to Laurie and Jojo Ahmadi, a relentless mother-daughter duo?

Oh, hi! Today I would like to talk—without spoiling anything—about the 2019 suspense novel Stolen Things by R. H. Herron, but first, confession time: I bought this book mainly because I thought the cover was pretty… no, no, don’t judge me too hard, I promise to you I am not shallow! You see, I was at Barnes & Noble, browsing aimlessly when I saw a pair of white shoes surrounded by a sea of bright pink, so, naturally, I zeroed in on it, walked toward it, grabbed it, and said to myself, I am getting this, whatever this is. Luckily, the synopsis written on the dust jacket (excerpt below) had this amazing pull on me and I was one-hundred percent sold on it, plus, the fact that it was stated by the author, a former 911 fire/medical dispatcher, that the book was “loosely inspired by actual events” made me want to start reading it right there and then!

“Laurie Ahmadi has worked as a 911 police dispatcher in her quiet Northern California town for almost two decades, but nothing in her nearly twenty years of experience could prepare her for the worst call of her career—her teenage daughter, Jojo, is on the other end of the line. She is drugged, disoriented, and in pain, and even though the whole police department springs into action, there is nothing Laurie can do to help.

Jojo, who has been sexually assaulted, doesn’t remember how she ended up at the home of Kevin Leeds, a pro football player famous for his work with the Citizens Against Police Brutality movement, though she insists he would never hurt her. And she has no idea where her best friend, Harper, who was with her earlier in the evening, could be.”

Oh man, the book was such a page-turner thanks to the cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, I mean, without exception, chapter after chapter, cliffhanger after cliffhanger, the story kept getting bigger and more complex, but without being confusing. Also, the fact that each chapter was super short allowed me to maintain a high level of interest in the developments, all of which had a nice flow together.

The story felt plausible, even if at times I found myself saying ‘As if’ or ‘Yeah right’ when it came down to Laurie’s behavior, I even  cringed a handful of times because of her which I thought was fascinating. (I wonder if that was the author’s intention, to make the reader feel uncomfortable with the most mundane of human behaviors.)

The events happened in a period of four consecutive days which naturally added a sense of urgency. From Friday, when Jojo got attacked, to Monday, when, well, you would have to read the book to find out – no spoilers here, not today! The story was told from Laurie’s perspective, as well as Jojo’s, and the narrative had such a satisfying back and forth, from person to person, from experience to experience, from mother to daughter, from real world adult consequences to forgiving teenage misfortunes. There were instances when you, as the reader, had already found a piece of the puzzle thanks to one of the main characters, while the other was still in the dark and you saw her struggle and wanted to shout at them! (This was so refreshing, the author really knew what she was doing with us, making us agonize over things and stuff.)

I found it exhilarating how the tragic events played out, one after another, non-stop. It went from bad to worse to worst, and fast! From a terrifying 911 call, to a kidnapping, to a rescue, to a rape, to a murder, to an NFL player’s arrest, to a missing person, to a heart attack, to sex trafficking, to suicide, to blackmail, to corruption, to break-ins, to coming outs, to first loves, to injustices, to betrayals, to lies, to fights, to surprises, to more tragedies... this book had one suspenseful thing after another and I loved every page of it.

But wait, what about Harper Cunningham? Well, I’ve saved the best for last.

Yes, Laurie and Jojo joined forces to try to find Harper who was reported missing on the same day Jojo was raped. No, the Police Department did not try hard enough to find her and it seemed they were “better off” if she remained lost. Yes, Laurie and Jojo played dirty at times in order to get ahead. Yes, they broke into places and things and little by little realized Harper had two lives, one of which was riddled with sadness and grave consequences. No, they were not ready to face the harsh truths about this very adult sixteen-year-old woman. No, even though we were ~this~ close to the real Harper, we did not find out why she was that way – why was she that way?? Who was Harper Cunningham?

Dear R. H. Herron, I would like to politely request you give us Part 2 of Stolen Things, but now from Harper’s perspective. Please, let us know why she turned out that way. I can almost taste the robust backstory of her childhood, of her adolescence, all predictably traumatizing yet amazing in the most human way… please, tell us who Harper really was, tell us who broke her, I beg you, please, tell us!

Respectfully,

-Marath

P.S. The eerie image of Harper smiling and blowing a kiss with both hands to Jojo is going to haunt me tonight, thank you. I mean it.

© 2016-2020