by Audrey Callerstrom, Associate Editor and Staff Writer

Spin Me Round (dir. Jeff Baena)

Do you remember the movie Date Night? If your response is “Yeah that’s the one with Rachel McAdams, right?” No, that’s the superior Game Night. Date Night was a film from 2010, an era when it seemed like an SNL alum was in a new comedy nearly every weekend. Steve Carell and Tina Fey starred as a married couple who go on a date night and things turn awry. It was probably fun to make, and I remember a couple chuckles, but the only reason it seemed like it existed was because Steve Carell and Tina Fey are friends, both alums of Second City. So why not just get together with friends and make a film?

That’s what Spin Me Round is, a completely empty and dull film that takes a lot of familiar actors, many of whom have worked together before, and tries to hash together a comedy. But it’s never funny, because it never has a single element of surprise. It just sort of sleepily coasts along. The premise is that Amber (Alison Brie, plucky and likable), is a manager at an Olive Garden-type chain restaurant called Tuscan Grove in Bakersfield, California. She is given the opportunity to attend the Tuscan Grove Institute in Italy, and learn about Italian cuisine, and find herself in another country. Amber, as well as her friend, Emily (Ego Nwodim, a current SNL cast member) talk like school girls about how Amber is probably going to fall in love on her romantic trip. They say it without an ounce of self-awareness. So… I guess this is Emily in Italy.

Also along for the trip is Molly Shannon, who plays a needy woman in the throes of a midlife crisis; Tim Heidecker, given nothing to do; Zach Woods (Silicon Valley), who manages to elicit some of his awkward charm with minimal screen time; and Aubrey Plaza, writer/director Jeff Baena’s wife, who is an assistant to Tuscan Grove CEO Nick Martucci (Alessandro Nivola). Spin Me Round drags and its attempts at comedy are so minimal that it’s hard to attempt so much as a pity laugh. Early on I had hopes that maybe something truly weird would happen to give this film some energy, some life, but it never does. I struggle to understand why two people would come together and decide this was a story that needed to be told (Brie co-wrote the script with Baena). Was it an excuse to travel? (cough cough, Mike White and White Lotus, cough). If it was an excuse to travel, then why do we never feel like we are actually in Italy? Every scene feels like it’s filmed in rural California. Plaza attempts to breathe life into such a dull film, especially with the chemistry she has with Brie, but it all turns into nothing. Spin Me Round is just a big, bloated nothing.

Slash/Back (dir. Nyla Innuksuk)

The charming Slash/Back is an interesting juxtaposition to Spin Me Round. While Spin Me Round involved a bunch of famous people getting together to make a movie for seemingly no reason, Slash/Back is a labor of love, a debut comedy/horror film from Nyla Innuksuk. Something that instantly breathes new life into the horror genre is when it’s situated in a place we haven’t seen before. Slash/Back was filmed on location in the Inuit hamlet of Pangnirtung in northern Canada, which the locals refer to as “Pang.” Slash/Back is the first movie to ever be filmed in Pang, and it stars mostly non-professional actors.

Slash/Back plays out like a love letter to John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as a coming-of-age tale about a young group of indigenous people, not unlike Reservation Dogs. Slash/Back stars Tasiana Shirley as Maika, the daughter of a man whom Pang refers to as a legendary hunter. But Maika is a teen, and not very interested with hunting. One day her and a group of friends, including Leena (Chelsea Prusky), Jesse (Alexis Wolfe), and sister Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth) take a boat out on their own, hunting rifle in tow. They’re bored and looking for adventure. Life in a sleepy, cloudy, isolated village has made these teens listless. They sit around and stare at their phones, like most teens, but it’s not as though there’s a town over they can go to. They’re boxed in between mountains and bodies of water. While outside of Pang, the girls witness a raging, mutated polar bear charge at them. Even after it’s shot, it mutates more, and attempts to maul Uki. Early scenes show pink beams from the sky shoot down into the Earth, and a geologist pulled into the snow by what looks like a large bug. There’s something afoot in Pang.

The inspiration from The Thing is clear. Alexis even tells everyone about some of that film’s best scenes, as though telling a ghost story. Slash/Back doesn’t have the budget of The Thing (or Stan Winston creating the monster effects), but it’s still a fun, light film. Maika and her friends have to team up to fight the alien as it inserts itself into people and takes over and mutates animals. It’s not that the grown ups are simply all unaware; they’re all getting drunk as part of Solstice Night. “My parents are way drunk by now,” one of them remarks. While grown-ups dance away, Maika and friends team up to determine the weaknesses of the creature. There’s a sweet moment when the friends, preparing for battle, talk about a cute boy in their class, who likes him, and who he likes. There’s another moment when the friends hide in a shipping container, and the younger siblings bond.

Innuksuk really brings you into Pang. You get to see the beauty of the mountains and the colors of the sky on the water at night, and you also get a sense for the day-to-day life of Maika. Maika’s windowless home where she lives with her sister and brother is different, for example, from Leena’s home, where gourmet meals are placed in front of everyone at the dinner table, and her parents pay for her cell phone with unlimited data, which the other girls don’t have. You also understand how Maika thinks about her own culture. At a party, she remarks that illustrations of fish on the wall are “stupid Inuit shit,” that every home has it, and that it all looks the same. “They’re painted by eight-year-olds,” she says. “My mom painted that,” a boy replies. While some scenes mid-film tend to drag and it feels like it’s missing a grand finale, Slash/Black is thoroughly enjoyable.