I’m not sure what I expected from Boys From County Hell, probably more than what I got, which was a meagre, serviceable but ultimately forgettable ‘Irish gothic’ monster flick that seems so wrapped in its own Bram Stoker inspired mythology that it forgot to have some good old splatter filled fun. The story sees a dysfunctional road workers crew somewhere in Ireland who accidentally unearth an ancient Irish vampire who has been slumbering for thousands of years, prompting wanton bloodshed. The crew is run by a father and son duo who are constantly at each other’s throats, which adds a well rounded character dynamic and in that sense the film is kinda fun but it fails to present to us a monster that is anything close to memorable or remarkable and worse, the same thing doesn’t even seem to show up much at all throughout the whole runtime. The narrative tries to build this lore around the vampire mythos and do something unexpected with the via some obscure Stoker offshoot story but it ends up just being sort of muddled, forgettable and seriously lacking a vampire that shows up for more than a few minutes at a time.
I love when a horror film hits all the right notes in the aesthetics department of what resonates with me, so listen up if you are into: elemental, esoteric folk horror, lyrical, almost Malick level dialogue and character interaction, eerily hazy home video footage, misty, rugged wilderness cinematography, atmosphere so think you could cut it with an antler knife, demonic pagan deities that live unseen in the natural world and can be summoned by unwitting, weak minded human beings and more. Jordan Graham’s Sator is a stunning, immersive, spectacularly terrifying and absolutely visually gorgeous folk horror that cuts right to the heart of what genuinely freaks me out in the genre: atmosphere, the unknown, being alone, dark forces outside our narrow scope of belief and knowledge and how these forces corrupt, reshape and pervert the human condition to disturbing new heights. The film sees one man (Michael Daniel) alone far out in the remote California wilderness, living in a ramshackle cabin and setting out each day into the territory looking for… something. He has introspective flashbacks to a mother (Wendy Taylor) who went missing years before, a sister (Aurora Lowe) who was on the verge of mental illness, a brother (Gabriel Nicholson) who tried to keep the family together and an ailing grandmother (June Peterson) who spent the last few dementia ridden years of her life chronicling her unsettling internal relationship with a being she calls ‘Sator’, who reportedly talks in her head, dictates books filled with disquieting scripture and seems to have some stranglehold over this family as a group. When he’s not lost in dreamy memory recollection he wanders the perimeter of his property checking on motion sensor cameras he has set up all over the place and trust me you do *not* want to know what he finds they saw. This is a slow burn, arthouse, borderline surreal film through and through, and anyone without the patience for atmosphere, gradually cultivated tension and lyrical storytelling will be lost. There are payoffs and they are huge but first the film asks you to settle, to surrender and be swept away by the sights, sounds and dreamy world it offers before it reveals any secrets. It’s like if A24 did something akin to Blair Witch but with really earthen, nature based lore and a very atmosphere based approach. And as if the film weren’t scary enough, the concept of Sator and all the handwritten lore we see is authentic, very real stuff that actress June Peterson (who is the director’s real grandmother by the way) experienced in real life after a Ouija experience left her in psychiatric care going on about this ‘Sator’ thing for the rest of her life. If that doesn’t stand your hairs directly on end I don’t know what will, because when a film this scary can legitimately claim to be based on a true story in the *truest* sense of the concept, it’s enough to send anyone running for the hills and back again once they find whatever’s really out there. An absolute stunner of a horror film in every sense and one of those rare finds like It Follows, Hereditary, or The Blair Witch Project that successfully do what so many films in the genre promise to yet seldom deliver: scares the absolute fuck out of you. Streaming on Shudder now.
I love being pleasantly surprised by a DTV horror flick because there’s honestly so much garbage out there it can be like navigating a minefield, but Deep In The Darkness is a fun, vicious, well made little folklore shocker that kept me entertained throughout and was legitimately scary here and there. Sean Patrick Thomas plays a big city doctor who moves with his wife and kid to set up his practice in a town so small they “don’t even have cable,” as the stressed out, cigar chomping mayor played by the wonderful Dean Stockwell informs him. He’s met mostly with acceptance and hospitality as a newcomer but it soon becomes clear this town has a very, very disturbing secret underneath it. In subterranean caverns dwell an ancient race of spectacularly ugly, murderous humanoid beings called ‘Isolates’, who pretty much call the shots throughout the county. As the only doctor in the region he now finds himself and his family drawn into a dangerous hereditary power struggle between the isolates, those who have cross-bred (fucken EW) with them over centuries and the humans caught in the middle. These things are a fascinating bunch, all played by real actors with no CGI, absolutely drenched in nauseating, terrifically creative prosthetic makeup and they come across as a less ruthless, more esoteric version of the Troglodytes we saw in Bone Tomahawk. The film is lower budget and naturally has that feel but all of the actors are very good in their roles, particularly Stockwell who gives his tired patriarch genuine guilt and a hint of long dimmed warmth. When the Isolates do show up they are an incredibly fearsome presence full of snarls, blood and fluid, lithe physicality that makes them a memorable antagonistic pack indeed. The story has some twists I didn’t see coming and one kick in the nuts of an ending, a narrative that’s not just full of cheap scares, chases and gore but one that actually feels like a proper story, of the folk horror variety infused with a creature feature aesthetic. Recommended for fans of easygoing, accessible monster horror fare, this can be found streaming on Canadian Amazon Prime!
John Travolta is balls deep in the direct to video phase of his career and sadly can’t quite churn out as interesting, varied and increasingly bizarre entries like his buddy Nic Cage, most of his B stuff is pretty gnarly (Gotti Omggg). However, there’s a few that are somewhat charming and Trading Paint is one of them. Riffing on stuff like Days Of Thunder we see John play an ageing stock car racing guru whose glory days seem to be behind him. His son is into racing but instead of following in pops’s footsteps he’s taken up oaths with a far richer, more well connected racing promotor played by the great Michael Madsen, who is unfortunately a bit of a dickhead. This spurs dad into getting back into the game, and he’s supported by his lovely girlfriend (Shania Twain, of all people), and adorable best friend (Kevin Dunn, most excellent as ever) who he once saved from a fishing related alligator attack that took the poor guy’s leg but gave them their steadfast friendship (no I’m not making this up). This is laidback, low budget, all American schmaltz as only the DTV facet of the US film industry can provide, but you know what it really isn’t that bad when you consider the competition, especially where Travolta’s script choices are concerned. The racing scenes are modest, down to earth and tactile, the narrative and runtime blessedly short and swift. The film genuinely shines in a few specific areas: we get to see a truly captivating confrontation scene between Travolta and Madsen that is very well acted by both and probably the closest thing we’ll ever get to seeing that Vega Brothers Tarantino film we’ve been promised for so many years. Also, the relationship dynamic between Travolta’s self deprecating borderline old timer, Twain’s supportive and absolutely wonderful girlfriend and Dunn’s blustery, salt of the earth BFF is truly, legitimately sweet and endearing and provides the film with actual heart that so many of this type just seem so tone deaf with. It’s not a great film but it’s not a bad one either, worth it for the cast and the leisurely downtime these actors just get to chill and have fun with.
Joe Wright’s The Woman In The Window is one of those big, expensive, star studded thrillers you used to see in the 90’s a lot, ones that would have folks like Harrison Ford or Julia Roberts headlining, always backed up by a galaxy of impressive supportive talent. Here it’s Amy Adams, an actress I’m almost convinced can do pretty much anything she’s so good, playing an agoraphobic ex-psychologist who has been hiding away in her Manhattan brownstone for several months following some vague traumatic incident. She has regular sessions with an unhelpful shrink (an uncredited Tracey Letts, also adapting a screenplay from AJ Finn’s novel) and speaks forlornly with her estranged husband (Anthony Mackie, heard and not seen) over the phone, until her new neighbours across the way give her a real fright when she believes she witnesses a violent murder one night while spying from her window. The frantic husband (an explosively intense Gary Oldman with an accent I’ve never heard him do that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist in the real world) insists nothing happened, his odd wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) looks on, a shady mystery woman (Julianne Moore) lurks about the place, and the cop (Brian Tyree Henry) in charge of helping out doesn’t seem to want to do much of anything. This film is an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and this is apparent in not only the central premise but many of the shots, colour schemes, musical cues and even old school movies that Amy has crooning in the background as she gets absolutely torqued on booze/medication cocktails to drive out the memory of some horrific past. I was more engaged with the narrative when it was about her and this past that has caused her to become such a ragged recluse. There’s a genuine mystery there and it’s shot and presented in a surprisingly artistic, unconventional and kaleidoscopic fashion that shirks the standards of dry Hollywood glossy cinematography these films usually employ and had me thoroughly immersed. The mystery as to what’s going on next door regarding this troubled family is also engaging in a lurid, potboiler kind of way, a bit overblown and melodramatic for its own sake but every plot turn and explanation does eventually check out, even if the road getting there is a bit of a loopy one. The acting is all solid, with Adams going all out for a truly impressive performance, Oldman being the most fired up and scary I’ve seen him since maybe Book Of Eli, which is a nice change of pace from his usual restraint of late. It’s far from the most original thriller out there and feels a bit scattered at times, but there’s a lot to enjoy with standout work from Adams and the trippy, borderline surreal internal world of her mind, with intense visual cues probing at a haunting mystery the film deftly withholds from us for some time juxtaposed against the stark, steep geography of her apartment full of curling staircases, gaunt angles and one hell of a rooftop patio, all brought to life by a creepy score from Danny Elfman, of all people. Fun times, if a bit… overstuffed for a 100 minute film.
There are so many horror movies set in mental institutions that it’s pretty much a sub genre at this point, and while these days we realize that the aesthetic of presenting that world in such a.. heightened and lurid manner isn’t all that enlightened, we can still appreciate a good entry on its own trashy terms I guess. William Butler’s Madhouse is a gory little diversion with a kind of messy story that it makes up for with some truly unsettling, deeply disturbing visuals that are very clearly influenced by Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder, but such influences on other works are welcome, even if worn shamelessly on their straightjacket sleeves. Joshua Leonard, who comes across as a kind of subdued, less succinct Sam Rockwell, plays an intern taking up residency at an underfunded, spooky asylum run by a head doctor (Lance Henriksen, naturally) who has little interest or compassion for the patients and whose safety protocols and ethical groundwork are, shall we say, questionable. Most of the patients run about willy nilly and the terrifying subterranean maximum security wing is a furnace heated nightmare corridor of leering monstrosities and deliberately grotesque personalities, like the hallway of prison cells from Silence Of The Lambs went to sleep and had a bad dream. There he finds a sort of ‘patient X’, a mysterious mummified individual who tells him a long forgotten tale of a young boy decades before who was mistreated by the asylum staff (you know, more than usual anyway) and whose ghost still runs around at night, and I found it funny how the script acts as if the ghost of a little kid is the *scariest* thing left to run about the place at night when the film has this level of freaky production design and prosthetic soaked extras on hand, which are really quite impressive, even if the story can’t quite get it up. Henriksen does little more than bluster, but his presence is always welcome, the lovely Natasha Lyonne has an extended cameo as a severely distressed patient and that adorable little southern dandy hobbit Leslie Jordan (a frequent staple of American Horror Story) has a nice bit as one of the facility’s doctors who reaffirms our primal fear of being murked while we sneak out to the refrigerator for that 2am snack. Director William Butler has a solid body of DTV horror work including the Danny Trejo/Tom Sizemore vehicle Furnace and while he can’t quite land the narrative here with overall coherence and the twist is felt a mile away, Madhouse has atmosphere in spades, truly horrific gory imagery that borders on the surreal and a very effectively creepy vibe.
I took a revisit trip to the world of Tron Legacy this weekend and it’s just… even better than I remembered it, and I was already blown away when I saw it in theatres way back when. Front and centre you have all of this ridiculously beautiful technicolor eye candy in the online world of a The Grid, stunning cyberpunk costume design, dazzling ballets of movement all set to the thundering, glorious, hellbent, super sonic galaxy of sound provided by Daft Punk’s unbelievable original score. But beneath that there’s also an incredibly clever, very poignant and intuitive script full of ideas, themes and nuance that I suppose can get lost in the sound and fury of surface level spectacle or just flew over my head (I was only 16 when this came out) at the time, but make no mistake: this film is anything but style over substance. I would almost compare this to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 in the sense that director Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) takes a beloved, dusty old analog classic from the 80’s and not only revamps it in terms of style and technical innovation but blasts open the pod bay doors of world building, thematics and expands on the lore exponentially. Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn has been stuck in the digital matrix of his own making for decades after trying to pioneer it as a new frontier, leaving his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) a troubled orphan and his Vancouver based Encom company in the hands of ruthless number crunchers with former friend and board member Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) powerless to do anything. Sam is eventually propelled into the hypnotic world of the grid to join forces with rogue program Cora (Olivia Wilde) and reunite with his father (Bridges) to fight against his tulpa Clu (a CGI Bridges) who plans to launch an attack on the real world and escape through the one remaining portal with a legion program army. There is an entire universe of visual design, colour scheme and motion on display here as Sam competes in the deadly bike races, lethal ultimate frisbee matches and darts all over the grid’s map from Clu’s thunderous gladiatorial stadium to the dark, mysterious outlands where his father hides out in a tranquil, purgatorial abode high atop a digital cliff. It goes without saying that Daft Punk’s score is some of the most spellbinding, beautiful electronic music ever laid over a film and gives it much of it’s personality. But something I missed before is the sheer imagination, poignancy in the father sun relationship and the immersive nature of this world, not just a kaleidoscopic realm of flash and dazzle, but one with rhyme, reason and genuine inspiration put into the inspired idea of ‘Isomorphic Algorithms ‘, basically anomalous, sentient programs birthed of organic energy independent of human creation, both a ghost in the machine and new race of beings sprung forth from the depths of infinite server space. This concept resonated greatly with me and apparently with Jeff Bridges too, because his line delivery, charisma and energy when describing this miraculous discovery is up there with the best work he has ever done, so too is the character progression from fledgling, prodigious programmer in the 80’s Tron to godlike, pseudo hippie, compassionate father we see here. Tron Legacy is truly a magnificent film on every level, on all fronts and one that shows true artistic inspiration and thematic resonance in striving to pioneer new frontiers and discover new life, put together in one iridescent SciFi action opus that has aged gorgeously and only gotten better with time.
Arthur Hiller’s Nightwing is ostensibly billed as a horror flick about bats plaguing a native reservation in New Mexico and yes it is about that, but it’s less about the beasts themselves in the traditional monster movie sense and more about the very well written characters, the sociopolitical underpinnings and economic issues in the region, the indigenous mysticism and shaman folklore surrounding the situation and the biological threat of very real vampire bats, all coalescing into one hell of an entertaining film. I admire a script and execution that makes room for all facets of a story and doesn’t just opt for a cheesy creature feature with no real narrative or thematic heft. Nick Mancuso plays a sheriff from the Maski tribe who is investigating mysterious human and livestock deaths in his jurisdiction while carrying out the burial ritual of his mentor and local witchdoctor, a man greatly feared by others in the tribe. At the same time a vivacious, worldly bat hunter (the great David Warner) arrives and warns everyone that there may be a massive colony of deadly vampire bats roosting in the canyons nearby, while another opportunistic Maski (Steven Macht) wants to sell mining rights on their land to a nasty oil company and all of the factions get the surprise of a lifetime when the bats start attacking. You also get a cantankerous old Strother Martin as the local general store owner who married into a Maski family and still has the balls to talk shit about them to their faces. I’m not gonna lie, the bats themselves aren’t that impressive overall, they’re just a standard combo of shots of real bats flying and then rubber prosthetics for the actual attacks. There’s a scene inside a makeshift ‘shark cage’ style contraption that generates good suspense and a terrific sequence inside their creepy cave, but they’re not the most memorable monsters I’ve seen. What this film does have is atmosphere, very well written characters and genuine sense of place. It’s filmed in New Mexico and the scenery is breathtaking, brought to life by a wonderful score from Henry Mancini that samples Native instruments and echoes off the canyons eerily. There’s very cool shaman lore and the performances are exceptional, especially Mancuso’s fierce tribal cop, Macht’s slippery, morally secretive entrepreneur and Warner’s bat hunter who makes an almost religious, zen like fervour out of the vocation. Good times.
Brian Yuzna’s Return Of The Living Dead 3 is my baptism into this franchise, so to speak, and while I try overall to not just haphazardly launch into a franchise midway without regard for chronology, this was recommended to me by a friend and it’s one of her favourites so here we are. This was an absolute blast, and although it’s obvious this franchise had reached its ‘weird’ zenith, it’s ‘Jason Goes To Hell’ or ‘Michael Myers is actually in a Druid cult’ area of bonkers sequel writing, I love the ideas, special effects and fresh spin on the zombie genre found here, even if I had no context in regards to the many Living Dead films that led up to this point. There’s an army base where a gruff Colonel (Kent McCord) conducts bizarre experiments on the undead in a world that has been living with the existence of zombies so long they’ve just become like, part of the scenery, less of a novelty threat and more of a given. The general’s kid (J. Trevor Edmonds) is one of those motorbike riding, earring sporting, dreamy 90’s bad boys whose rebellious nature is constantly at odds with the shirt tucking, militaristic nature of his pops, who doesn’t approve of the girlfriend (Melinda Clarke) that he’s clearly very in love with. After a horrific bike accident leaves her on deaths’s door, the kid sneaks her into his dad’s facility in hopes of using the strange zombie necromancy within to resurrect his love. Well.. that just sounds like a recipe for chaos and indeed the film turns the dial way past eleven as some kind of otherworldly magick takes the girl over and she gains these snazzy, Hellraiser style clothes, weaponry and undead powers, with the makeup and costume department making her look fearsome and raw for the latter half of the film. What’s fascinating is that she doesn’t really lose her humanity either and doesn’t become a shambling corpse, she metamorphoses into this mesmerizing amalgamation of a bloodthirsty monster who needs to eat human flesh but with her emotions, drives and her thinking skills of a human being still clearly intact, gilded by these striking costume choices and surgically implanted, jagged looking weaponry. The character is a stroke of genius, actress Clarke sells every facet of it from the longing for her former self and her love for her boyfriend to her burgeoning primordial need to cause mayhem and carnage, she’s one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever seen in horror and I would have loved to see a whole spinoff franchise just about her. There’s a rather silly subplot where a loud, obnoxious Mexican street gang begins to transform into zombie-like creatures as well and it’s got its charms including a neat effect where a detached spinal column terrorizes anyone around it. The film works best when it focuses on the girlfriend and her chrysalis-esque remoulding into this spectacular undead demigod though, and I’d heavily recommend the film just for that event alone. Soon I’ll explore this franchise more in depth and have a better grasp on the world building and storytelling, but if the rest are anything like this, baby I’m sold.
I expected Shadow Of The Hawk to be campy, cheesy or at the very least creaky, but this is a genuinely spooky, effective and quite earnest old school ghost story with three good natured lead performances, absolutely gorgeous Vancouver locations and eerie, atmospheric indigenous mythology. The great Chief Dan George plays a Native elder who voyages from his home in the British Columbia mountains to find his halfbreed grandson (the late Jan-Michael Vincent), to get his ancestral help in battling the ghost of an ancient sorceress who has put a deadly curse on their bloodline. Grandson is less than happy to be pulled into a facet of his life that he’s actively distanced himself from, but has no choice really as the dark magician and her evil minions are plaguing his life too. Together with a helpful reporter (Marilyn Hassett) they embark on a road trip into the sacred lands of BC to contend with these powerful dark forces amassing against them and cleanse their family lineage of this voodoo mysticism. Being an obscure 70’s horror flick theres naturally a touch of camp, most notably in Vincent’s doe eyed, slightly androgynous aura, but for the most part this plays it straight and spooky. The spirit of this witch first manifests as a legitimately terrifying masked phantom that haunts the characters wherever they go accompanied by some sound design that truly stood my hairs on end, then later she shows up in dreamy flashbacks as a snake charming witch-doctor played by Vancouver indigenous actress Marianne Jones. There are very well done set pieces here including a white knuckle suspension bridge crossing, an ongoing car chase between our three leads and a mysterious, supernatural black car that tails them all around the BC landscape. Vincent must fight a bear to death and as if that wasn’t strenuous enough then a Wolf as well *and* some masked cultist acolytes of the sorceress high atop a craggy bluff in a confrontation that has some Last Of The Mohicans vibes. It’s a fun film, with some really engaging visual atmosphere, very frightening score and a neat ‘modern world clashing with ancient spiritualism’ feeling as our characters venture from the cement and glass world of 70’s Vancouver out into the lush, elemental Pacific Northwest wonderland of British Columbia.
Podcasting Them Softly 