Off-brand Tarantino may as well be a genre of its own at this point. When Tarantino turns in something less than his highest standard it's still better than your typical Hollywood fair. When a filmmaker turns in a somewhat lackluster work that is Tarantino-esque its mediocrity is much more pronounced. Drew Goddard's triumphant return to the big screen, Bad Times at the El Royale is not damningly mediocre, but it's discount Tarantino vibe looms ominously over the nearly 2 and a half hour behemoth.

A series of arresting visual and sonic landscapes, Mandy often feels like a 2 hour trippy music video you'd see playing on a computer desktop in a darkly lit room through a cloud of smoke, lit by a blacklight. In such a setting, under the influence of any number of substances, it's easy to see the appeal. Stone cold sober Mandy may only be accessible to a very specific audience that's forgiving enough to overlook its masturbatory vibe.

Right off the bat, let’s get something out on the table. Horror movies have a complicated history when it comes to the portrayal of women. The genre is rife with tropes that flatten women to wholly two-dimensional people. Like many other genres and mediums, women were often allowed to be an archetypal virgin or whore. Women who own their bodies and sexuality have often been treated as disposable at best and villainous at worse, while women who are allowed to survive and thrive have often done so by following the genre’s unspoken rules about drinking, drugs, and premarital sex.

Placing children, particularly babies, in peril in any genre tends to be overtly manipulative. Sure, there's a subsection of audiences who don't have the same emotional connection to the fictional well-being of the young, and it's likely that cross-section would have no interest in Brandon Christensen's Still/Born. But those inclined to worry immensely about the safety of little ones are in for 90 stress-filled minutes.