Tag: scary

Villains

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Some films are good, some are bad and some are great, but there are those that can only be described as an utter delight and Villains fits that bill. It’s one of those demented, go for broke horror comedies that doesn’t always add up or coalesce it’s various tones together symmetrically but goddamn of it isn’t a blast of pitch black humour, blessed practical gore effects and four lead performances that truly push the boundaries of the craft of acting into something else. Maika Monroe and Bill Skarsgard play two unbelievably dumb petty criminals, a sort of dimestore Bonnie & Clyde, who run out of gas as they’re on the run after robbing… wait for it… a gas station. Their only option is to break into the nearest, and only, house in the area to look for more options and it’s there they find a five year old girl chained up in the basement, and must contend with the homeowners, a deranged pair of loons played with American Apple Pie hospitality and charm by Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick. These two chipper darlings are as crazy as they come and have soon ensnared the two wayward youngsters in their bizarre antics, while the two race to outsmart them and free the poor mute girl below. The plot can be kind of random and wanton, but the real treasure here lies in the meticulously calibrated, phenomenal acting work from all four and the razor sharp, diabolical scriptwriting to back them up. Monroe is already horror royalty from modern classics like It Follows and The Guest, while it goes without saying that Skarsgard is squarely in the pantheon for his portrayal of a certain evil clown. They work brilliantly together because they both lose their trademark moody, withdrawn and wistful styles of acting for a bubbly, effervescent, mile-a-minute-slapstick concoction that is joyous to watch, and manage manage to find a genuine sweetness and caring for each other that shines through all the more madcap, lurid elements and makes them rough yet lovable and blessedly bumbling characters to invest in. Donovan has slowly been building a repertoire of darkly sarcastic, terrifyingly dangerous villains in stuff like FX’s Fargo, Let Him Go and more, his work here is a class act in balancing insanity, southern charm and sudden bursts of punishing sadism. Sedgwick is a natural beauty who has this spotless Miss America aura to her that she turns on its head and plays to full effect as the mot certifiably bonkers character in the story, she’s at once scary, pitiable, sultry and hysterical. This is one of those specific, special flicks like Raimi’s Evil Dead or Friedkin’s Killer Joe where the story might not always play by the rules or stay on the tracks but you really don’t care because the actors just tear the scenery to shreds, the laughs and violence come fast and furious, there are even a few arthouse flourishes sprinkled in and it’s just such a wild fuckin ride. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Adam Salky’s Intrusion

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Home Invasion thrillers are pretty much their own genre by now, and another has entered the fold with Adam Salky’s Intrusion, a sleek, nerve wracking, fairly predictable yet really well oiled piece that Netflix funded and just added to their lineup last night with little fanfare or marketing. This film doesn’t necessarily spend too much time on the invasion itself, but rather on what comes after and the motivation behind the crime. Logan Marshall Green and Freida Pinto are an affluent yuppie couple who have moved into a swanky post modern home that seems absurdly out of place in the flat, humdrum prairie county they’ve moved to. One night a group of masked men breaks into their house and tosses the place, clearly looking for something. After they are shot in self defence by hubbie, it seems as if the case is closed and it’s time to move on… right? The suspicious local sheriff (always nice to see Robert John Burke) doesn’t seem to think so based on details from the investigation that don’t add up and soon Pinto doesn’t either as she notices her husband’s odd, elusive behaviour and secretive ways. Why did these guys choose their house, and just who were they anyways? That’s the fun, and if the unfolding plot veers frequently into easily predicted beats, that’s made up for with some truly breathtaking tension and innovative camera work, some fluid visual dynamics in shot composition that clearly echo the work of Brian De Palma and add layers of atmospheric dimension to the film. Pinto, beyond being one of the most drop dead beautiful women I’ve ever seen onscreen, is also a terrific actress and owns the role here, never devolving into hysterics or going into stoic autopilot mode and always coming across as a real human being in a terrifying situation. The score by Alex Heffes adds another layer of spooky electronic beats and pulses too, especially in breathless sequences set inside their large, spacious and inherently eerie home. It isn’t anything groundbreaking in terms of thriller material and you can pretty much guess where it’s going midway through the first act but it’s very well executed, slickly produced and suspenseful like nobody’s business.

-Nate Hill

Dominic Sena’s Season Of The Witch

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Dominic Sena’s Season Of The Witch is one of those glossy, noisy supernatural medieval romps that somehow hovers on the line between feeling like a big budget blockbuster and a direct to video outing. It stars Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as two veteran knights of the crusades who become disillusioned with their often brutal cause and the unfortunate civilian casualties that accompany it. They set out on their own as freelance mercenaries and are soon hired by a plague-ridden Cardinal (a near unrecognizable Christopher Lee) to transport a suspected witch (Claire Foy)… somewhere, I wasn’t really paying attention but it involves lots of snowy mountains, dangerous bridge crossings and eventually a spooky old castle for the grand finale. This is pretty run of the mill stuff, the CGI is really weak, the plot is inexcusably thin, historical accents are dodgy and the PG-13 rating pretty much guarantees a lack of genuine bite or edge as far as horror is concerned. It’s mediocre on almost every level but for some reason I found myself enjoying bits of it, despite my best efforts. I think that it has to do with Cage and Perlman, who are both terrific here and really deserve to be in a better film. They’ve never acted together before but they have effortless bromance chemistry here, they take full advantage of the writing and simply seeing them bantering, bickering or slinging tavern pints together is kind of a small delight. Aside from them it’s generic, the supporting cast includes familiar faces like Stephen Graham, Ulrich Thomsen, Rory ‘The Hound’ McCann, Brian F. O’Byrne and Robert Sheehan who all try valiantly to make impressions with… varied results. The problem too is that the film promises us a witch and when it comes time to deliver they reveal that this chick isn’t really a witch at all, she’s something far worse and unfortunately something that the film just didn’t seem to have enough budget bucks to properly present onscreen, and it hurts its chances. Still, it’s worth a look for the beautiful, rugged scenery (filmed mainly in Austria) plus Cage and Perlman, who are legitimately engaging and perhaps someday will get a better film to do their buddy-cop knights edition routine.

-Nate Hill

Larry Cohen’s The Stuff

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The Stuff is all the rage and people can’t seem to get enough lol, in a dusty, hazy old Larry Cohen flick that Shudder has salvaged for a VHS quality transfer. This is a great little schlock flick as long as you ignore the sheer, hilarious lack of a proper beginning or ending, seriously this thing just… starts without any sort of introduction and then when it’s had it’s fun it just… ends, quite unceremoniously as if there were multiple reels missing from the original print. What’s in between is top shelf schlock with bizarrely earnest performances from a terrific cast and some gloriously gooey, visually stimulating practical effects. Hollywood character actor royalty and Cohen regular Michael Moriarty plays some kind of corporate investigator who is mighty suspicious of The Stuff.. what is ‘The Stuff’, exactly? It’s a sentient, gelatinous white goo that literally bubbles up from crevices beneath the earth and has now been patented by a food processing conglomerate and marketed as a tasty ice cream style dessert, to massive popularity and demand from the public. Only problem is, this stuff has a malicious agenda and not only inspires dangerous cravings and maniacal addiction in its indulgers, it takes over their minds and even physically attacks them. As in all Cohen flicks there is deft social satire woven in amongst the slime and there’s something in here about mad consumerism and the unchecked corporate greed that fuels it, brought to deadpan life by some truly great actors having a blast of hammy fun. Moriarty is always on his A game and rocks it here, with a crisp suit and cowboy boots as oiled up as his attitude, while we are treated to great supporting work from Paul Sorvino as an impossibly patriotic army colonel and the late great Danny Aiello as a smarmy company man who gets his just desserts. There’s a genuinely creepy sequence where a young boy’s entire family, now mentally enslaved by The Stuff, cajoles and coerces him into eating it, it’s a terrifically suspenseful midsection interlude that’s most effective in raising tension. My favourite aspect of the film are the effects used for The Stuff, which are brilliantly tactile, wonderfully animate and really do feel like a disgusting 7-11 dessert full of horrible ingredients that has somehow come to life, like they melted down the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters and the remaining ectoplasmic goo started running about the place Terminator 2 style. I don’t know if a Blu Ray or even DVD transfer exists for this but the version Shudder has gotten it’s hands on is so shockingly low quality it’s tough to understand everything that’s happening onscreen but on the other hand it adds atmosphere and ‘lo-fi VHS’ vibes that are appropriate considering the tone of the film. Good Stuff.

-Nate Hill

James Wan’s Malignant

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

James Wan has some balls, I’ll say that much. He’s pioneered various chambers of the horror genre several times over in his career so far with game changers like Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring, quickly becoming a household name with the talent, innovation and passion to back it up. If his newest film Malignant is going to have any kind of the same ripple effect then buckle the fuck up because this is one wild, demented, bonkers, stir crazy oddity and the best time I’ve had with a horror this year. This will be one of those reviews where I will mention almost nothing plot related because it’s just too much tantalizing fun unwinding this ball of yarn for yourself with fresh eyes. The film focuses on a woman (Annabelle Wallis) who begins to have terrifying waking nightmares where she observes a shadowy figure committing heinous acts of murder. The rest I’ll leave be, just see this thing and experience its WTF, nonsensical yet balls-out wonderful third act that truly transcends the boundaries of coherency, decency and convention for something so weird you’ll laugh, cry and shit your pants in unison. Wan is clearly well versed and a fan of many sub-genres and in this we see sly, loving nods to many other artists, most notably Dario Argento and 70’s Italian horror, so if some of the acting comes across as campy or silly just know that was most assuredly his intention and simply bask in the nostalgia. Some of the gore is real and some is CGI and while CGI blood is never ideal in my books the melding is done pretty well here, and it’s understandable that given a story with this much movement, commotion and visual kinetic madness it would have been tough as hell to do all the effects in a practical fashion. To cement the retro vibes we also get a showstopper of an original score composed by Wan’s go to guy Joseph Bishara that’s resplendent with shrieks, howls and heart-pounding synth chords that, for me at least, heavily echoed Goblin’s iconic electronic work in Argento’s films. Wan has worked in PG-13 realms quite a bit and been incredibly successful at making effective horror within those constraints, but he’s gone full R rated here, about as far as you can go into R rated territory in fact, for a no holds barred, rip snortin, unbelievable gong show of blood, violence, mayhem, schlock and a third act twist that’s so beyond anything rational or sane that I’m not even sure it makes sense but I loved every minute of and deeply admire the sheer audacity of. One of my personal favourites of the year so far.

-Nate Hill

Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I always appreciate it when a horror film spends like 80% of its runtime lulling you into a trance with slow burn pacing and impossibly subtle advances in plot and then, in the final few minutes just cranks the dial up way past eleven and let’s it’s climax rip for a no holds barred grand finale that leaves you in the dust. Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song does precisely that and is superior quality atmospheric horror that sees a haunted, introverted young woman (Catherine Walker, who has an appropriately angelic presence) hire the services of a jaded, ill tempered occultist (Steve Oram) to guide her through a spiritual summoning ritual, for reasons that she’s.. not entirely honest about. So the two of them rent a small cottage in the remote English countryside (filmed just outside Dublin) and vigorously prepare to summon some otherworldly forces. Now, I wasn’t kidding when I said this is a slow burn, because for literally most of the film we see these two odd characters simply interacting, practicing occult magick, bickering and running about the house looking for signs that their efforts are even doing anything at all. It might feel interminable to an impatient viewer and I wouldn’t blame anyone for giving up at least halfway through. However, if you have the patience to stick it out through this very, very restrained and character based piece and make it to the final ten minutes or so… well, let’s just say you’ll be rewarded with one of the most harrowing, bonkers, surreal, atmospherically disorienting, thoroughly creepy final acts I’ve ever seen in the horror genre complete with a few dark narrative surprises and even a light one. It’s a brave, bold story structure and once the ritual takes hold, the heavens shake and the supersensible realm is made tangible, it’s nothing short of breathtaking and terrifying in equal measures, and all the more effective as a jarring thunderclap in the story after almost an entire runtime of only restless overcast skies. Terrific, unconventional and highly recommended.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Papertrail aka Trail Of A Serial Killer

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

In the realm of cheap, lazy, perpetually nocturnal Seven ripoffs you can do worse than watching Papertrail aka Trail Of A Serial Killer but unfortunately you can also do way, way better. This is a murky, messily plotted, bizarrely acted, clunky, borderline incomprehensible mess that is given the dimmest bit of pedigree from two things: Michael Madsen and Chris Penn. The two have acted together quite a bit over the years before Chris’s untimely death and here they give notably overcooked tough guy turns as FBI Agents stationed in Toronto, one a weary, stressed out one (Madsen) and the other a disgraced unstable one (Penn). The latter is apparently a notoriously gifted asset for hunting killers in the tradition of Will Graham and such and is lured in by the former to track a murderer who has been eluding them for several years. Their investigation leads them to many dimly lit, depressing urban locales and eventually to the therapy group of a mysterious shrink (Jennifer Dale), one of whose patients, it seems, might just be the killer. While we’re on the subject of ripoffs, that idea is a blatant loft from the Bruce Willis erotic flick Colour Of Night, I might add. That’s about the most sense I could make out of the plot, which at best is a lurid frenzy of odd elements parading by and at worst is a flatlining series of WTF plot turns with no real interest. Penn was a genuinely good actor, despite what some people may tell you, and he isn’t half bad here as the near suicidal divorced lawman who is at the hysterical end of his rope. Madsen gives a performance that is just plain weird, he’s fired up and pissed in scenes that require him to be restrained and low key and then he’s oddly relaxed in instances where he should be on edge. It kind of works in a counterintuitive fashion, if you’re willing to overlook credibility and just accept that any Madsen is good Madsen in a film. This is honestly just a shamelessly trashy B grade pile of nonsense that I would never have lent ninety minutes of my time to if it didn’t star these two great actors, and I won’t lie in saying that if you aren’t an avid fan of both, you’re gonna hate this thing and resent giving it a shot.

-Nate Hill

Dark Places (2015)

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Any fans of deep southern gothic potboilers with shamelessly lurid trappings, hectic, labyrinthine mysteries spanning decades acted wonderfully by a massive cast of character versions both old and young should greatly appreciate Dark Places as much as I did. It’s based on a book by Gillian Flynn who also penned the source material for David Fincher’s Gone Girl but for me this was a much, much stronger and more rewarding film. Fincher approached the material with his custom clinical, cynical tunnel vision detachment and meticulously calibrated style while director Gilles Paquet-Brenn adopts a much more sprawling, scattered, rough around the edges vernacular that is more narratively oblong and hazy yet no less compelling and even throws in the faintest glimmer of humanity. Charlize Theron is excellent as ever as Libby, the lone survivor of a farmhouse massacre that left her entire family dead when she was a kid, the killer never found and her left wandering as a broken adult trying to cope. The film intersperses dense, overlapping flashbacks to her difficult childhood life, a troubled brother (Tye Sheridan and Corey Stoll in present day scenes) who was ultimately blamed for the crimes, a desperate mother (Christina Hendricks) and aggressive deadbeat father (Sean Bridgers) who all may have had some hand in the events, although nothing is made clear until you are well beyond neck deep in this tragic, increasingly bizarre small town family saga. Chloe Grace Moretz gives a terrifically creepy performance as her brother’s unstable, untrustworthy teen girlfriend and there’s lots of solid supporting work from great folks like Glenn Moreshower, Andrea Roth, Jeff Chase, Laura Cayouette and Drea de Matteo as a shady stripper with ties to Libby’s past. You know this is a film for true crime fans (even if the story itself is fictitious) when a subplot literally features a club of true crime aficionados led by a twitchy Nicholas Hoult who reach out to Libby in attempts to help her bring the case to a close. There is a *lot* going on in this film, and while not all of it gels into an ultimately cohesive tapestry, the resulting patchwork quilt is beautifully scrappy, full of jagged loose threads and is just an awesome, inky black, deliberately overcooked, chokingly sleazy pit of depravity, hidden half truths, deplorable human beings and even some very well buried pathos that sneaks up out of the slime to surprise you in the back end of the final act. Theron anchors it with her haunted, pensive aura as a fiercely guarded woman who is likely a lot more vulnerable and damaged than she’d care to admit, and the messy, bloody trajectory she must descend down to solve an infamous murder she was unwittingly at the centre of. Absolutely great film.

-Nate Hill

Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

In The Earth is only the second film from Ben Wheatley I’ve seen, the first being his spunky noir shootout flick Free Fire which seems to be the odd duck out and a far cry from the dark, morose, esoteric folk horror fans are used to from him. This was a very interesting film and while the pieces don’t necessarily all fit together in a way that struck the ultimate timbre with me, it’s certainly a visually galvanizing, stylistically impressive work. As a research scientist (Joel Fry) and a park ranger (Ellora Torchia) trek deep into a wild forest in rural England on some sort of mission they encounter two very different individuals who are both trying to communicate and study some sort of… I dunno, entity or force that hides within the very structure of the natural world. There’s borderline zealot Zach (Reece Shearsmith) who lives as a homeless person would and approaches this being from a folk point of view, offering it iconography in a religious fashion like the pagans who lived in the region eons ago would have. His ex wife Olivia (Hayley Squires) lives in another region of the woods where nary the two stray into each other’s path (like most exes) and her efforts are a lot more scientific but no less bizarre, using complex machinery to reach out to this thing with light, sound and rhythm. The two leads find themselves stuck squarely between two duelling fanatics who are in way over their heads with a force of life neither can comprehend and are both slowly being driven mad by. And that’s as far as the plot goes in the realm of what is coherent and comprehensible anyways. The closest thing you could describe this entity as is a stone monolith punctuated by an opening through which you can view the stars, and nature on its terms but never is it presented as a physical or visible ethereal being beyond hints, abstract hallucinations and sounds out there in the dark. If that’s your thing than cool, I enjoyed the odd, surreal, impenetrable nature of it and recognized the welcome nods to many influences including Alex Garland’s Annihilation, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and even John Carpenter’s Prince Of Darkness in a few brief strokes. Just don’t expect to walk out of this thing with answers; it’s a moody horror SciFi that quickly transforms itself into a wild arthouse romp from which there is no rhyme or reason to be distilled from but what one’s own intuition says.

-Nate Hill

Mark Pavia’s Fender Bender

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The next time you get into a mild vehicular dustup be careful how much of your personal information you give to the other party involved, lest you end up like the unfortunate girls in Mark Pavia’s Fender Bender, a vicious little Grindhouse exercise that doesn’t quite achieve genre greatness but is still good fun. When a teenage girl (Mackenzie Vega, Sin City) is rear ended by a weird guy (Bill Sage, American Psycho) in a mysterious black muscle car she exchanges information and heads home to face the disappointment and subsequent grounding alone at home from her parents for taking the car out, she discovers that that’s the least of her worries for the night. It turns out this guy, beyond just having creeper vibes, is a stalker/serial killer who deliberately causes fender benders and uses the insurance contact info to hunt girls down and murder them, and he’s on his way to her place. This leaves her to fight him off initially alone, and then with the help of two ditzy friends. Now, this is a competently made, atmospheric and very suspenseful piece and while I *usually* am not the type of person to be like “why didn’t this character do this” etc in terms of plot, these characters, including our lead, are especially stupid in their attempts to evade and overpower this guy, to the point where the ‘slasher trope’ excuse just doesn’t cut it. That aside it’s a good time and Sage is wonderfully sinister as this dude, credited simply as ‘The Driver.’ The score is done by an electronic group called Nightrunner and adds a lot of dark sonic synth ambience too, which is always great. Aside from how braindead the lead is in frantic situations this is a nice little retro slasher with tense set pieces and a genuinely memorable killer.

-Nate Hill