Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we stand on the cusp of a new anime season, an occasion which always prompts a grateful “thank fuck I’m not writing for the preview guide anymore.” Instead, I can calmly peruse the seasonal selections, cheerfully note that Spy x Family is returning, and otherwise pay no attention whatsoever to the absurd glut of productions currently overworking the industry. That said, it’s likely also time to start munching through the year’s overall top prospects, which in 2025’s case means… CITY, The Summer Hikaru Died, Shoushimin Series, and I’m frankly not sure what else. Folks seemed somewhat down on both GQux and Lazarus by their conclusions, but their directors are so accomplished that I’ll have to check them out for myself regardless. Plus there are obviously some films and shorts to get to… anyway, busy times ahead, but for now let’s run down some fresh cinematic selections. On to the Week in Review!
Having burned through the entirety of Black Clover over the last few weeks, my housemate concluded his binge with the tie-in film, Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King. The film is one of those temporally ungrounded escapades that doesn’t really fit within the show proper’s timeline, centering on an assault on the capital by four former wizard kings (the hokages of Black Cloverdom). With the city imperiled, Asta and his many companions will have to grit their teeth and push beyond their limits, before reasserting those limits and returning to the canon timeline.
Sword of the Wizard King is not particularly impressive as a supplement to the Black Clover canon, and of no interest to anyone who’s not already invested in Asta and his companions. Nonetheless, the film basically demonstrates all the same strengths and weaknesses as the show proper. On the negative side, Black Clover’s world is seriously ungrounded, with the allegedly sprawling scope of its conflicts often grating against the lack of thought put into this world’s setting and history. Additionally, the narrative itself lacks much substance; any given conflict basically falls into a training arc setup and a succession of isolated arena fights, without much variation in the style of challenge.
Those are some debilitating weaknesses, but the franchise is fortunately blessed by a relatively strong ensemble cast, particularly by shonen standards. The characters are largely likable and possess a wide array of distinctive relationships, a strength that bleeds over into the interplay of their magical abilities. Characters actually team up and play off each other in combat, emergent combos between untested allies often proving the key to overcoming some powerful opponent. Neither Black Clover at large nor Sword of the Wizard King specifically are particularly innovative, but they’re persistently grounded in relationships worth caring about and fights worth watching, putting the show well ahead of much modern shonen.
Next up was The Visitor, an utterly bizarre ‘79 take on The Omen plus Rosemary’s Baby plus aliens. A group of interstellar overseers watch over the earth, attempting to identify and extract the spawn of “Zatteen,” a space criminal who impregnated a whole bunch of earth ladies. Their current subject of fascination is Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail), a Zatteen descendent who apparently inherited a recessive satanic gene. However, her daughter Katy is a full-on antichrist-in-training, and her satanic new boyfriend Raymond (Lance Henriksen, who is truly slumming it here) is determined to help her make another one.
The film itself is sadly nowhere near as interesting as that preposterous explanation might imply. The narrative progression is as scattered as the film’s mixture of satanic and scifi influences; there is little sense of continuity or progression between scenes, and not much plot beyond the continuous harassment of our devil gene-bearing heroine. Space Jesus surrogate Jerzy (director John fucking Huston, another inexplicable presence) mostly just wanders around looking grave and ponderous, and the ending seems to arrive only when they’ve run out of film stock to squander. That said, Barbara’s eight-year-old satan spawn daughter is clearly having a lot of fun, and uh, the late-70s decor is charmingly ridiculous? I dunno, not much to recommend in this bizarre yet somehow dull production.
We then checked out The Queen of Black Magic, a 2019 Indonesian horror film directed by Kimo Stamboel (who’s worked frequently with Timo Tjahjanto as The Mo Brothers) and written by Joko Anwar (writer and director of the immaculate Impetigore). The film concerns a pilgrimage made by several former inhabitants of a remote orphanage, now returning to see their old caretaker before he passes. However, dark secrets lurk in the halls of their old home, and the old friends soon find themselves trapped in the spell of a vengeful witch.
Given its creator pedigree, I’m sure it’s no surprise that Queen of Black Magic is an engaging, confident feature with more than a little horrific violence. If anything, it might be a touch too confident; the film holds its cards so closely across the first half that it feels a bit lopsided, and the reveal of its true villain comes too late to really elaborate on their story. Nonetheless, the performances are strong enough to sell the oft-tested bonds of its lead players, and the rolling catastrophes of its second half build on each other quite effectively, creating that distinct sense of a slow drowning, as one setback after another draws escape further out of reach. That plus the distinctive brutality of its body horror make for a fine entry in Indonesia’s fast-growing horror pantheon.
With the remake now in theaters, I then checked out the original The Naked Gun, starring Leslie Nielsen as our stalwart lieutenant Frank Drebin. The film’s plot concerns a nefarious scheme to kill Queen Elizabeth during her trip to America, but like most films by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, Top Secret!), the alleged narrative is really just a thin scaffolding on which to hang ten thousand incidental, lunatic gags.
Also much like their other films, it’s absolutely fucking hilarious. The ZAZ crew definitely favor quantity over quality in terms of jokes, but honestly, the hit rate of this feature is just as laudable as its preposterous density of bits. As in Airplane!, Nielsen perfectly compliments the insanity by refusing to acknowledge it; he is the unerring, preposterous straight man in a completely ludicrous world, always ready with a sober-faced response to an extended dick joke. Apparently ZAZ intentionally employed non-comedic actors so as to construct the film around its theoretical dramatic timing, rather than the pacing of the gags themselves; as a result, bits come and go in the background almost too quickly to be acknowledged, keeping the tempo high and never lingering on any one gag too long. An absolute triumph of intelligent inanity.
