Nicole's Viewing Notes: May

What I watched (and podcasted about) this month

I’m assuming that by the time you’re reading this, it’s around mid-to-late-June¹, meaning I have once again posted another Viewing Notes entry long after the previous month ended. I really should figure out a better writing schedule for myself that isn’t waiting until the beginning of the month to sit down at a computer and take stock of all the new movies I saw. That, of course, would require me to quit several things I’m involved with, or for the universe to offer up that eighth day of the week I desperately need. I actually didn’t really go to the theater all that much, so a good chunk of this Viewing Notes round-up is dedicated to films that screened at BUFF and received a theatrical/streaming release in May. BUT I have a really good reason for being egregiously late again that isn’t just because I have too much shit going on.

I moved in with Evan!

Bold of me (a bisexual woman) to start cohabitating with her partner (a heterosexual man) during Pride Month, but if you want to avoid the chaos of the September 1st turn-over in Boston you’ve got to jump on any place as soon as its available to rent. This is obviously a huge life change for me, an opportunity to shed the last vestiges of my twenties and settle into the respectable, relative stability of my thirties as much as any aging millennial can. In other words, I threw away a lot of Anime Boston artist alley prints, donated a shit ton of clothes I’d been hanging onto since college, and parted with several pieces of furniture I inherited from my childhood home. I’m embarking on a new chapter of my life with someone I want to play a major role in it, which is as exciting as it is daunting.

Also, I am now the proud mother who stepped up to two beautiful ladies.

Lilith (a.k.a. Lil, Lily, Lilypad, Lily of the Valley) and Hallie (a.k.a. Hallie Blue, Hallie Blue I Love You, Hallindaise Sauce).

Anyways, enough about me. Here’s some capsules.

Boston Underground Film Festival run-off

Normal, dir. Ben Wheatley

Here’s a bit of “Film Festival Programming 101” for you. Smaller, regional festivals that specialize in genre films like BUFF usually program a few highly anticipated festival favorites to draw out crowds and guarantee ticket sales. Those films tend to be openers — The Surfer (2025) and Immaculate (2024) — and closers — Escape from the 21st Century (2025) and Boy Kills World (2024), the less of which I say about the better — with a few scheduled in between like this year’s Saccharine and Obsession (covered below) to prop up the smaller, director-submitted films in the line-up. It’s the same rationale behind the old tentpole model Hollywood used to abide by before mega-franchises took over the entire calendar year. So if you’re wondering why only a few films in the line-up for the Boston Underground Film Festival were true, undistributed indies, that’s why. Gotta fund these fests somehow!

We had several programming meetings leading up to BUFF where we discussed what our opening night feature would be, but ultimately the slot went to the new Bob Odenkirk geri-action film Normal from gun-for-hire Ben Wheatley and John Wick-scribe Derek Kolstad. It’s a solid 3-bagger as far as these kinds of movies go, described by Kolstad during the post-film Q&A as “Bad Day at Black Rock meets Final Destination” with a dash of Looney Tunes thrown in for good measure. Solid action choreography, plenty of explosions, a sweet little subplot about interim town sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) adopting a nonbinary daughter (Jess McLeod) with a drinking problem, and there’s a scene where an old grandma eats shit trying to protect Yakuza wealth. There’s also a CGI moose and a reference to The Devils Ben Wheatley threw in for me personally. Plus, I got to stand twenty feet away from Bob which was really cool for someone who frequently feels like she’s failed upward her entire career.

Buffet Infinity, dir. Simon Glassman

One of my most popular Letterboxd lists is “‘did this air on adult swim a 4 am’ films” the namesake of which comes courtesy of Rich Evans’ befuddled reaction to whatever the fuck was happening in Christy: Santa’s First Female Reindeer. The Adult Swim/[adult swim] vibe certain movies and ephemeral televisual entities give off is a lot like the barometer for detecting camp: I know it when I see it. But it does encompass certain off-beat stylistic tendencies — analog aesthetics, alt-comedy, experimental animation, etc. — that are generally associated with the late-night network. Closely linked to the Adult Swim house style is a manufactured ambiguity between authenticity and winking-irony (or in Sontagian terms, “naive” and “deliberate” camp), perhaps best encapsulated by the Infomercials series where narrative storytelling is presented in the form of fictious television programming like sitcom openings, instructional videos, and, of course, informercials. A couple of recent features have attempted to apply this storytelling approach to long-form narratives. The hurdle, of course, is that Informercials are at most 15 minutes long. (See also my Arts Fuse review for the bewildering but tedious Dream Team.)

Told through a series of commercials a’la WNUF Halloween Special, the analog-horror comedy Buffet Infinity is one of the few films to successfully sustain the Informercial format into a feature-length narrative, presenting a consumerist satire on how the unholy alliance between small business owners, religious leaders, and broadcast television destroy our communities by weaponizing nostalgia like the blunt force object it truly is. The titular Buffet Infinity, a rapidly expanding franchise restaurant that’s essentially a Lovecraftian Cici’s Pizza, is a lot like Blank Street Coffee. If you see one pop up in your neighborhood, your whole community is getting taken over by evil entities (i.e. transplants who want over-priced designer coffee to carry around as status symbols). A Blank Street Coffee is set to open in Allston in the former location of beloved neighborhood staple Twin Donuts, which got priced out of the area because rent in Boston is out of control. Nobody wants you or your watery Dubai-chocolate-Labubu ass “coffee” here Blank Street! Viva la Twin Donuts!

Saccharine, dir. Natalie Erika James

Something you learn pretty quickly in film festival programming is that you’re not going to like everything that gets programmed. I got a lot of (undue, but I’ll take it) credit for shaping the final feature line-up into what it was, pushing to include two Castration Movie-alumni films and underground feminist body-horror gems like Cramps! A Period Piece and Sugar Rot in the festival. Like the other tentpole films we screened, Saccharine was already a festival staple, having premiered at Sundance back in January and screened at Berlin the following month. But unlike the other two feminist body-horror films in the line-up, I really didn’t like Saccharine. Shocking, I know, considering feminist takes on body-horror are kind of “my thing.” In fact, I feel similar about Saccharine the way some women felt about The Substance in that it ended up perpetuating what it was attempting to criticize. Saccharine others fatness in a way I found irresponsible — if not cruel — from a director whose stated intention was to critique the intensely fatphobic diet culture she grew up with in the 2000s. A pithy Letterboxd one-liner like It Fatly Follows is all this movie amounts to.

Were our protagonist Hana (model-thin actress Midori Francis, who spends the first half hour wearing a prosthetic and/or CGI double-chin²) haunted³ by a distorted, fun-house mirror image of herself as opposed to a morbidly obese corpse resembling Brendan Fraser in The Whale⁴ named — I shit you not — Big Bertha⁵, Saccharine could have avoided some of the unnecessary collateral damage it inflicts by emphasizing body dysmorphia’s skewed self-perception and how deeply internalized our own fears of fatness are. Laughably cruel depictions of obesity aside, James’ relatively grounded, realistic approach results in a tonal mishmash that just exacerbates a problem this particular subgenre has had to carefully toe the line on. One particular reason The Substance and The Ugly Stepsister don’t come off as unduly mean spirited to me is because they use camp to satirize the internalized misogyny these topics are burdened with. The knowing wink of camp makes it all go down a lot easier without sacrificing the emotional truth of looking in the mirror and hyper-fixating on every imperfection, every flaw, and every stupid little thing patriarchal beauty standards want you to hate yourself for. Camp lets you to have your cake and eat it too (pun unintended). It’s a stylistic and tonal cheat code, sure, but that’s the function of camp! To exaggerate what is inherently ridiculous so we may see it for what it really is! Saccharine fails because it’s playing all the stuff I relegated to several footnotes as big dramatic moments when they’re all just bafflingly tone deaf.

So yeah, wasn’t a fan of Saccharine! But it did get butts in Brattle seats and sold some tickets to fund the festival. Me and Evan used that screening time to take my mom and sister to Grendel’s Den where they proceeded to tell him embarrassing childhood stories while I drank too much wine.

Obsession, dir. Curry Barker

It’s finally time to write about 2026’s biggest horror hit, which I got to see two months early thanks to Boston Underground Film Festival! I remember it just like it was yesterday…

[Arthur flashback SFX as we fade in on me, pleasantly surprised by what I just watched and eager to discuss it with other people, typing out a quick Letterboxd review in the Brattle balcony] “Very interested to see the conversation around this one once it goes wide. … Will be mulling over this one for a bit.” Another solid Letterboxd log Nicole! And just to be clear, when I say that I’m “very interested” in how this film will be discussed, what I really mean is that I hope people aren’t fucking insufferable about it the way they are with every major horror release since COVID. Maybe this time will be different!

[Arthur flashback SFX as we fade back in on me, scrolling through Twitter while making this face]

For fuck’s sake.

I really don’t want to address the Discourse. I hate whenever I have to address the Discourse, which happens more often than I’d like to admit and ideally shouldn’t be a part of anything I do here! If I had the mental energy to, maybe I could write an entire piece on Obsession as it relates to a particular online Discourse cycle wherein horror movies find themselves in the cross section of two factions that are at total odds with one another: your (often too online, in my honest opinion) cinephiles who are primarily interested in having critical discussions on a website that’s hostile to healthy critical discussions, and your passively-consuming horror-stans who treat any kind of criticism (warranted or otherwise) of their new hyper-fixation as a personal attack. To paraphrase an astute observation from Esther, Obsession finds itself at once underappreciated by the former group and overrated by the latter. Again, I do not have the mental energy to tackle every single aspect of the Discourse at the moment, but in short: everyone needs to stop acting like goddamn Barbz about movies (especially if you’re only going to the theater a few times a year) and I really do not like the casually cruel way people talk to each other online and act like it’s a good faith “critical dialogue.” If this is the Discourse cycle every popular horror movie will be treated to then the only solution left is to go back to forums. Abolish Film Twitter. Deport stans to the Hague. Full Butlerian Jihad NOW!

As for the movie itself, I’m going to drop my usual format and break some thoughts down into bullet points for my own sake:

• As a feminist, did I find a film about the casual, impulsive ways in which men violate women’s consent and deprive them of their personhood in pursuit of the selfish wish to be loved to be virulently misogynistic? No, I didn’t. Is it misogynistic to depict a woman whose very deprivation of personhood results in the kind of obsessive psychosis closely associated with how the backlash films of the 1980s (ex. Fatal Attraction) depicted scorned career-women, or does the aforementioned plot of the film necessitate that depiction in order to critique and/or subvert it? I think that’s par for the course. Is Obsession a perfect criticism of the latent misogyny of the male psyche? Of course not! And just to be clear: if you found this film misogynistic or problematic in its depiction of Nikki or fatally flawed in its attempt to criticize date rape/the friend-zone mentality/incel psychology, I’m not going to argue you shouldn’t feel that way. Speaking only for myself here, I find Obsession interesting because it situates you in the perspective of a quote-unquote “nice guy” whose desires annihilate the object of his affection. That its so easy of him — and all men — to do so is what makes the film scary to me. Bear is a monster because he continues to make the worst possible decision at every turn to fulfill that basic human desire for someone to love us unconditionally. That’s the insidious, human nature of misogyny, especially when done without conscious, malicious intent.

• Fair enough that some critics have clocked this movie’s cinematography for being too dark and muddy. However, I’d argue its a thematically motivated extension of Bear’s blinkered perspective and inability to really see anything outside of himself. Plus, it results in what is to me the film’s most striking visual metaphor, rendering Nikki a human shaped void where a woman is supposed to be. Heavy handed perhaps, but its the first thing that won me over considering I went in skeptical about another YouTuber-to-filmmaker horror movie. Maybe if Chris Stuckman lifted some lighting cues from Pulse for Shelby Oaks I wouldn’t have named it the worst film I saw in 2025. Possibly, but not likely. Nothing short of a better filmmaker could have saved Shelby Oaks.

• Inde Navarrette is fucking dynamite. Obsession wouldn’t be half as effective without her performance, her physicality, and her ability to ping-pong between unexpected “what will she do next?” terror and tragic, existential victimhood. Even without awards recognition she’s still getting a jersey hung in the venerated halls of the House of Psychotic Women.

• This is an industry-wide issue endemic of how Hollywood reserves a film’s profits for executives, studio heads, and the people who aren’t doing any of the actual labor on film sets, but I think Curry Barker should leverage the astronomical impact of his debut feature and his newfound status as a hot up-and-comer to advocate for his crew getting substantial backpay from Obsession’s massive box office intake. Art director Sally Choi was right to call this shit out, and simply wishing more opportunities come her way is cowardly, especially with all the hate she’s received for going public. And if Obsession did keep its budget under $1 million by being non-union, that fucking sucks and will be the only lesson studio heads will take from the film’s success.

• The dead cat stuff doesn’t really make sense as it relates to Nikki’s progressively troubling behavior (both her making a shrine way too early in the narrative and the sandwich from hell). Yet the dead cat set-up itself is important as it relates to Bear’s character and the headspace he’s in when he makes the wish. A pet loves you unconditionally, but it also largely relies on you for survival. Bear is also trying to fill that void in his heart. Nikki is functionally a pet to him.

• I don’t mind the head smashing. Sucks that Sarah also has to pay for Bear’s sins but once again, I found the meat of the movie to be about how men’s impulsive decisions often result in violence against women. Justice for Sarah though.

In theaters

Backrooms, dir. Kane Parsons

The season’s other massive horror hit from a director who wasn’t even sperm in his dad’s nutsack when the towers fell. I once again find myself at odds with the general consensus of my peers who found this to be the better Gen Z horror film compared to Obsession. That partly comes down to personal taste and what I find scary — I think analog-horror creepypasta about liminal spaces and dank interiors is aesthetically neat and unnerving, yet the loss of autonomy and the destructive nature of male desire is existentially horrific to me as a woman, as outlined above.

I thought Backrooms was okay. It does everything it should as far as adapting a niche internet IP(?) into a feature length film. Looks great, fantastic production design, really shines whenever its just characters wandering through impossible architecture. There’s plenty of room for thematic interpretation: the degenerative nature of memory, the devastating impact of COVID isolationism on Gen Z, how AI repeats and “remembers” things wrong, and everyone’s favorite theme du jour — trauma. I get it, all very clear and apparent to me. But Backrooms feels compelled to explain itself through producer-mandated obligation, because of course we have to have a big climactic exposition dump where failed-architect-turned-alcoholic-furniture-salesman Chiwetel Ejiofor tells his therapist Renate Reinsve — in a moment that’s just the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw — what its all about rather than trusting the audience to come to their own conclusions. Parsons is clearly knowledgeable when it comes to filmmaking and film history, so I don’t want to chalk everything up to the dozens of (very established) producers who had a hand in helping this get made. I’m not a dumb internet conspiracy theorist. I just didn’t find it all that compelling or unnerving, even though I should. All love to Kane Parsons though. Not going to do id-pol privilege mathematics here about how young white men have it easier in Hollywood than women, people of color, or queer filmmakers because DUH, but I think he’s got a bright future ahead of him. Hopefully he can escaper a career trajectory that’ll pigeonhole him as “the creepypasta movie kid” and make something wholly original.

The Sheep Detectives, dir. Kyle Balda

A few months back, Evan woke me up in the morning and asked if we could watch one of his favorite movies together. That movie was Babe, a film I thought I’d already seen that was basically brand new to me given I probably watched it as a very small child if I had. Don’t know if this will come as news to anyone but Babe is fantastic. We both sat on the couch and sobbed together over that little trans pig⁶ voiced by Chuckie Finster. Babe was so effective on me that with a couple of (accidental) exceptions, I haven’t touched pork since watching it. That’s right. No ham. No bacon. No chorizo. No prosciutto. You try getting through the first five minutes of Babe and come away thinking a bacon egg and cheese is worth it!

I’ve never really eaten lamb or mutton, but The Sheep Detectives had the exact same impact on my dietary choices. It also made me cry just as much. This was another film Evan wanted me to go see with him.⁷ If you couldn’t tell by now, Evan is a big softie when it comes to animals. It’s one of the many things I really love about him and that we deeply bond over. You probably already know by now that The Sheep Detectives isn’t your run-of-the-mill, low-effort family film by the number of people you’ve seen and heard say, “No, seriously!” online, myself included. Not only is Sheep Detectives the increasingly rare family film that has the decency to respect both the kids and the adults in the audience, it’s also a great mystery movie, a great ensemble film, and a tender, moving story about accepting and processing the death of a loved one. That all might be beside the point because where Sheep Detectives really got me was with teeny, tiny Winter Lamb, a little guy who all the sheep are SO MEAN to because I guess there’s intracommunity prejudice towards sheep born during the winter season. Sounds stupid! Sheep racism is stupid! And every time the sheep tell Winter Lamb to fuck off or that the other lambs should stay away from him because he’s cursed or something I wanted to put my fist through dry wall. The movie also does that thing where an actual small child voices the character and you really might as well just rip my fucking heart out. My maternal instinct went into overdrive whenever Winter Lamb was onscreen. Left the theater misty eyed because of that little dude. Winter Lamb I will love and protect you with my life!

Director Kyle Balda’s previous credits include directing a bunch of iPad baby Minions movies. Screenwriter Craig Mazin is best known for writing Chernobyl, two Hangover and Scary Movie sequels, and directing Superhero Movie. There is absolutely no reason The Sheep Detectives should be as good as it is and yet here we are! The most unexpectedly wonderful film of 2026!

On the pod

Excalibur

Another “they don’t make them like they used to” banger. You probably don’t even realize that Excalibur is one of the most influential movies of all time.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Praise be, we got another 3-star movie in the mix. I know our bread and butter is superhero shit, but 2023 was a flop year for both Marvel and DC, so we’re padding things out with other film trends that were rearing up to step into its cultural footprint.

Akira (+ an extra bonus episode on the many, many failed attempts to make a live-action adaptation)

We’ve programmed a lot of our Patreon-exclusive bonus episodes this year as WSE (Watch Something Else) counter-programming for whatever movie we’re covering on the main feed. Akira is “the anime of animes,” one of, if not THE, finest achievements in the history of animation save for maybe like Snow White. I also recorded both of these episodes back to back while my old bedroom was 90 degrees. I am Marvelous!’s strongest soldier.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (feat. Kyle Amato)

My Boston film critic comrade-in-arms Kyle Amato of Boston Hassle made his pod debut to help us talk about stomping on koopas and why Illumination needs more French perverts on their animation staff.

1. At the time of writing this footnote, it is currently June 19th.

2. This actually fucked me up really bad. I spent the next two weeks after watching my screener copy hyper-fixating on my own chin in the mirror, convinced I looked like fat-Midori Francis in this film. Certainly didn’t help that my Instagram algorithm kept sending GLP-1 advertisements my way. So yeah, Saccharine aggravated my own body dysmorphia. Thanks a lot! Go see Maddie’s Secret in theaters instead.

3. There’s a scene were the ghost that haunts you fatly for taking unethically sourced diet pills starts throwing candy and treats and snacks at Hana like its Poltergeist. Maybe a scene that works if you’re Divine and you’re in a John Waters movie. But it sure as hell doesn’t work here.

4. Spoilers I guess, but there’s a big reveal midway through that the reason Hana has such an unhealthy relationship with food is because her father (Robert Taylor) is literally Brendan Fraser in The Whale. I’m not joking. Robert Taylor is wearing a Fat Bastard fat suit and I’m supposed to find this sadly illuminating and tragic. This is the exact moment I completely hopped off the movie.

5. This is a bad enough run-on sentence as it is, so I’m relegating even more details of this particular plot to the footnotes section. We eventually learn the real name and backstory of the corpse cruelly referred to for most of the film as Big Bertha. And then everyone in the movie — including the protagonist and her mandated “fat friend” (Danielle Macdonald, wasted) — just continues to call her Big Bertha anyways!

6. Trans pig? Trans sheepdog? Did I float a trans reading of Babe to Evan where Babe is an allegory for loving and accepting trans youth? Dumber things have happened!

7. WARNING! INCOMING COUPLESLOP MOMENT: Evan had already seen The Sheep Detectives and wanted to bring me for round two so I could meet a very special little guy. But I mostly just wanted to make a brief aside here about the lovely little date we went on before the movie. We got up early and made a trek over to the North End for breakfast sandwiches at Sunny Girl (so good), then walked to Boston Common and strolled through the Gardens where Evan took this cute picture of me.