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Now Streaming: PINS AND NEEDLES (2024)
The owners are delighted to come home and find strangers on the grounds. What serial killers worth their salt wouldn’t be?
The family that slays together stays together.
PINS AND NEEDLES (2024) / Writer, Editor & Director: James Villeneuve / Cinematographer: Robert Lyte (1.85:1) / Design: Brendan Callaghan / Music: Raja Halder / Acted by: Chelsea Clark, Ryan McMurray, Kate Corbett, Daniel Gravelle, and Damian Romeo / Canada / Distributor: Vortex Media / Not Rated / Length: 82 mins.
Tooling home through the backroads to nowhere, a nerd, a Pez-dispensing walking dispensary, and a diabetic blow a tire outside the only house for miles. And what a house: a sprawling, brutalist-style monolith that looks ill-suited for country living, but is probably ideal for the pair of mad scientists who own it. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Pins and Needles isn’t just the title, it’s that tingling sensation in the lower extremities, the constant state of dread that first-time writer/director James Villeneuve whomps up and holds steady until 82 minutes have passed.
Nerd Harold (Daniel Gravelle, a Chalamet simulacrum) and stoner Keith (Damian Romeo) are a pair of MacGuffins, props to divert attention by raising false narrative expectations. The owners are, in fact, delighted to come home and find strangers on the grounds. What serial killers worth their salt wouldn’t be? Still, if she were really an expert in time-management, dutiful wife Emily (Kate Corbett) would have waited for Harold to finish changing the flat before carving out a slice of his throat. Alarmed, Keith makes a break for it, sprinting just far enough to remain trapped in Frank’s (Ryan McDonald) crosshairs.
As the only one to survive the introductory slaughter, Max (Chelsea Clark) will be the lens through which we watch the rest of the unpleasantries unfold. Seeing as how a good third of the film plays out in silence, Clark is hard-tasked with most of the heavy lifting. Max looks on in terror as Frank slings his arm around Emily’s shoulder as the two stop to strike a loving pose while admiring her handiwork. It's a moment of obvious irony, but happily, the film doesn't jump the tracks and go careening toward Blumhouse. Too many contemporary horror films rely on comedic bits or one-line zingers to help ease tension. All these years later, I’m still thinking a commitment on the part of the filmmaker to maximize tension, not throttle it, is the main reason audiences flock to horror films.
Video:
Trailer: PINS AND NEEDLES
That’s not to say the film isn’t without a few dark rib-ticklers. When an overworked Frank whines, “I would kill for an intern right now” Emily reminds him of the intern they killed last year. Funny, but this bit of drollery doesn't so much relieve tension as it demonstrates character: this is the sort of wry humor these jaded, over-educated body harvesters would find amusing. What’s not funny is Faisal (Ali Kazmi), the Saudi backer on the other end of the speakerphone who has made arrangements to get Frank out of Dodge should the feds get hip to their game. The disembodied voice sounds more like something from The Simpsons than it does an Arabian sheik.
If you were Max, your first instinct might be to simply run away. But what if running away actually decreased your odds of survival? Rather than risk not finding a drugstore within a hundred miles, she must walk back to the house to get the insulin kit that she left in the car. A reel or so later, a similar decision finds her returning to the basement one more time to fetch her car keys. In both cases, Villeneuve’s ability to sustain suspense will leave your fists with a white-knuckled glow.
Villeneuve also displays a flair for using tropes without calling attention to them. Anyone who's seen a horror movie in the past 30 years knows that the first thing a character does upon hearing the killers pulling into the driveway — particularly a so-called helpless damsel, trapped alone in the house — is run to the kitchen and grab the biggest knife in sight. Here, the blade will eventually find its way into Max’s hand, but not before we’ve all but given up on it happening, and the suspense is such that we have much more to fear than a kitchen utensil. It’s only when Frank returns home for his final unravelling that she decides it’s time to pay a visit to the knife block.
As a self-confessed bio-hacker disrupting nature, McDonald’s epic meltdown is a joy to behold, right up there with Terry O’Quinn’s basement breakdown in The Stepfather. SPOILER ALERT… as if you couldn’t guess who lives and who doesn’t. Why didn't Max kill Frank the first time? She had every chance in the world to do so, and instead drove off. In the time it took her to leave and return, nothing of consequence occurred that couldn’t have been dealt with earlier, so why the double-ending? A minor quibble with an otherwise spectacular time at the movies. ****
Feel the tingle starting June 24 at a platform near you.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Now Streaming: PINS AND NEEDLES (2024)
The owners are delighted to come home and find strangers on the grounds. What serial killers worth their salt wouldn’t be?
Now Streaming: PINS AND NEEDLES (2024)
The owners are delighted to come home and find strangers on the grounds. What serial killers worth their salt wouldn’t be?
The family that slays together stays together.
PINS AND NEEDLES (2024) / Writer, Editor & Director: James Villeneuve / Cinematographer: Robert Lyte (1.85:1) / Design: Brendan Callaghan / Music: Raja Halder / Acted by: Chelsea Clark, Ryan McMurray, Kate Corbett, Daniel Gravelle, and Damian Romeo / Canada / Distributor: Vortex Media / Not Rated / Length: 82 mins.
Tooling home through the backroads to nowhere, a nerd, a Pez-dispensing walking dispensary, and a diabetic blow a tire outside the only house for miles. And what a house: a sprawling, brutalist-style monolith that looks ill-suited for country living, but is probably ideal for the pair of mad scientists who own it. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Pins and Needles isn’t just the title, it’s that tingling sensation in the lower extremities, the constant state of dread that first-time writer/director James Villeneuve whomps up and holds steady until 82 minutes have passed.
Nerd Harold (Daniel Gravelle, a Chalamet simulacrum) and stoner Keith (Damian Romeo) are a pair of MacGuffins, props to divert attention by raising false narrative expectations. The owners are, in fact, delighted to come home and find strangers on the grounds. What serial killers worth their salt wouldn’t be? Still, if she were really an expert in time-management, dutiful wife Emily (Kate Corbett) would have waited for Harold to finish changing the flat before carving out a slice of his throat. Alarmed, Keith makes a break for it, sprinting just far enough to remain trapped in Frank’s (Ryan McDonald) crosshairs.
As the only one to survive the introductory slaughter, Max (Chelsea Clark) will be the lens through which we watch the rest of the unpleasantries unfold. Seeing as how a good third of the film plays out in silence, Clark is hard-tasked with most of the heavy lifting. Max looks on in terror as Frank slings his arm around Emily’s shoulder as the two stop to strike a loving pose while admiring her handiwork. It's a moment of obvious irony, but happily, the film doesn't jump the tracks and go careening toward Blumhouse. Too many contemporary horror films rely on comedic bits or one-line zingers to help ease tension. All these years later, I’m still thinking a commitment on the part of the filmmaker to maximize tension, not throttle it, is the main reason audiences flock to horror films.
Video:
Trailer: PINS AND NEEDLES
That’s not to say the film isn’t without a few dark rib-ticklers. When an overworked Frank whines, “I would kill for an intern right now” Emily reminds him of the intern they killed last year. Funny, but this bit of drollery doesn't so much relieve tension as it demonstrates character: this is the sort of wry humor these jaded, over-educated body harvesters would find amusing. What’s not funny is Faisal (Ali Kazmi), the Saudi backer on the other end of the speakerphone who has made arrangements to get Frank out of Dodge should the feds get hip to their game. The disembodied voice sounds more like something from The Simpsons than it does an Arabian sheik.
If you were Max, your first instinct might be to simply run away. But what if running away actually decreased your odds of survival? Rather than risk not finding a drugstore within a hundred miles, she must walk back to the house to get the insulin kit that she left in the car. A reel or so later, a similar decision finds her returning to the basement one more time to fetch her car keys. In both cases, Villeneuve’s ability to sustain suspense will leave your fists with a white-knuckled glow.
Villeneuve also displays a flair for using tropes without calling attention to them. Anyone who's seen a horror movie in the past 30 years knows that the first thing a character does upon hearing the killers pulling into the driveway — particularly a so-called helpless damsel, trapped alone in the house — is run to the kitchen and grab the biggest knife in sight. Here, the blade will eventually find its way into Max’s hand, but not before we’ve all but given up on it happening, and the suspense is such that we have much more to fear than a kitchen utensil. It’s only when Frank returns home for his final unravelling that she decides it’s time to pay a visit to the knife block.
As a self-confessed bio-hacker disrupting nature, McDonald’s epic meltdown is a joy to behold, right up there with Terry O’Quinn’s basement breakdown in The Stepfather. SPOILER ALERT… as if you couldn’t guess who lives and who doesn’t. Why didn't Max kill Frank the first time? She had every chance in the world to do so, and instead drove off. In the time it took her to leave and return, nothing of consequence occurred that couldn’t have been dealt with earlier, so why the double-ending? A minor quibble with an otherwise spectacular time at the movies. ****
Feel the tingle starting June 24 at a platform near you.
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