Melissa McCarthy’s collaborations with writer-director and husband Ben Falcone have been pretty brutal. Falcone has directed McCarthy in four previous movies. Of those, 2018’s abysmal “Life of the Party” has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score at 38%. Yes I know, review aggregators aren’t infallible and they don’t always represent the quality of a movie. I hate to say it, but in this case they’re pretty spot-on.

The duo give it another shot with “Thunder Force”, a wacky superhero comedy once again written and directed by Falcone and starring McCarthy. This time they’re joined by co-star Octavia Spencer who never seems completely comfortable with her character. Neither of the actresses can bring any sizzle to this fairly one-note comedy that languishes at one speed and struggles to deliver anything more than a couple of passing giggles.

Image Courtesy of Netflix

In terms of setup (not that it matters much), a massive pulse of interstellar cosmic rays struck the earth in 1983 triggering a genetic transformation in a select few of the planet’s population, imbuing them with a range of superpowers. As (bad) luck would have it and for reasons not even remotely explained, these abilities only unlocked for budding sociopaths who became known as Miscreants. So basically it’s a world with villains but no superheroes.

Enter Lydia (McCarthy) and Emily (Spencer), childhood best friends who grew apart after a spat way back in high school. Lydia is an odd one – socially awkward, klutzy, and aggressively unrefined. Basically she’s a typical Melissa McCarthy character. These days she’s a machine operator at a Chicago shipping yard. Emily is given a little more depth. She’s the bookish and brilliant daughter of two geneticists who were working on a formula that would give regular people superpowers to fight back against the Miscreants. Her parents were killed during some Miscreant mayhem while Emily was still a child and she vowed to one day finish their work. Now she’s a scientist who owns her own lab in Chicago and works tirelessly to perfect her parents’ formula.

Lydia attempts to reconnect with Emily by paying a visit to her lab. Hijinks ensue resulting in Lydia being inadvertently injected with Emily’s super-strength formula. But the effects aren’t instantaneous which leads to a series of silly training scenes as Lydia learns how to control her new super-human power. Meanwhile Emily begins treatment of her own which grants her the ability to turn invisible. And just like that Thunder Force is born, the world’s first superhero team. They immediately run afoul of a shady mayoral candidate played by Bobby Cannavale and his goons, a gnarly Miscreant named Laser (Pom Klementieff) and Jason Bateman with crab pincers for arms (yep, you read that right).

Image Courtesy of Netflix

Considering the absurdity of all you just read, you would think the movie would at least have some energy. But neither the story or McCarthy’s act ever gets above room temperature and both eventually run out of gas. The actress does give us an occasional amusing line or a physical gag that semi-lands, but essentially she’s stuck in the same gear for the entire film. Even Bateman, whose signature dry humor is a perfect fit for such an oddball character, is hampered by dull and uninspired material. Character-wise the one saving grace is Taylor Mosby who plays Emily’s daughter Tracy. She isn’t given tons to do, but at least she provides someone the audience can relate to.

As I mine for something positive to say I’ll leave you with this – if McCarthy and Falcone’s other movies have worked for you in the past you might find some entertainment here as well. But if not, don’t expect “Thunder Force” to change that trend. And other than die-hard McCarthy fans, it’s hard to figure out who this movie is aimed at. It’s a little too crass to be a kids movie, too puerile for adults. The one thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t for me. “Thunder Force” premieres today (April 9th) on Netflix.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

Those itching for a new horror movie might find some relief with “The Toll”, a Canadian horror flick written and directed by Michael Nader (his feature film debut). “The Toll” is an exercise in unadulterated love for horror, pulling inspiration from every end of the genre. Nader will have you thinking of everything from “Poltergeist” to “The Slender Man”; from “The Shining” to “The Blair Witch Project”. Seeing those influences on screen is fun in itself. The problems come with the movie’s shaky execution of its own ideas.

Despite some logic-defying cracks the movie’s opening 30 minutes are easily its best. It begins with a rideshare driver named Spencer (Max Topplin) swiping through his Uber-like phone app looking for his next passenger. He passes over a hipster and a middle-aged guy to choose Cami (Jordan Hayes), a young woman at the Detroit airport just off of a delayed late night flight. She’s in town to visit her divorced father and instead of bothering him to pick her up she hops in the car with a strange guy in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe not the best example of decision-making but delayed flight, frustration, exhaustion, all that stuff so we’ll give her a pass.

Image Courtesy of Lionsgate

Spencer swings into the airport, picks up Cami, and then sets out for a long drive to her father’s house well outside of the city. During the drive Nader does a good job making us as uncomfortable as Cami. That’s because Spencer comes off as a creep, making awkward small talk, asking prying questions, and attempting jokes that no socially cognitive person would ever try. At the same time Spencer is never overtly aggressive or threatening. So the question becomes is he really dangerous or is the movie intentionally trying to throw us off.

*Note to all horror movie characters: If you use a GPS expect bad things to happen. That’s definitely the case here. Spencer follows his GPS down a gravel road that winds through a dense forest. Suddenly his phone zaps out and his car dies. An apprehensive Cami thinks it’s all an act while Spencer swears to the contrary. Aside from the eerie things that begin happening in the woods around them, Nader keeps the suspicion and mistrust between his two stranded characters his focal point. At least until a creepy old lady on a tractor pulls up and tells them they have been marked by a schlocky terror called the Toll Man. And the only way off his road is to pay him…in blood.

Image Courtesy of Lionsgate

You would think this would lead to some meaty horror mythology where we learn of the Toll Man, his background, his motivations, etc. But actually we get none of that. Instead we just see the tall, slender, pointy-fingered being with a bag over his head terrorizing Cami and Spencer, mostly through life-like visions that poke at past traumas. Heavy references to suicide, child abuse, rape, and victim-shaming all come up but not in a way that adds much weight to either character. Just as a way to prod Cami and Spencer and drive them to do the Toll Man’s bidding. Meanwhile the poorly defined Toll Man himself is left as this ambiguous nothing. He and his minions have the horror movie look, but I never understood them or their existence.

One thing “The Toll” does really well is create atmosphere. The genre has already established that ‘nighttime in the woods’ is a great horror setting. Nader knows this and utilizes it to great effect. His camera choices and especially his strategic use of lighting give the film an uneasy kick. Unfortunately it’s the story that runs out of gas right when it should be picking up. The intro is tense and suspenseful, but by the end it’s inability to sell or even explain its big baddie left me questioning the point of the entire second half. “The Toll” is now streaming on VOD.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS