The World's End - Movie Review

To say my hopes were high for this one is a bit like saying it's been a tad warm the last week and a half. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz remain two of my favorite movies and are associated with some pretty awesome memories, so the third in the 'Cornetto Trilogy' was always going to be dragging round a weight of expectation roughly the size of the second Death Star.

Not to go on too much of a nostalgia trip, but I saw Shaun of the Dead at the age of sixteen the first time I had ever gone camping with my friends. I went in, having never seen Spaced or anything else Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright or Nick Frost had done. We saw it, cycled back to the campsite, drank a couple of beers and spent the entire night quoting it at one another. Despite the fact that I don't speak to anyone from that part of my life any more, it remains in my memory as one of the most fun nights I had as a teenager.

Hot Fuzz was the opposite. The build-up of excitement had been a slow burn over many months, and being a few years older (and having watched Spaced) it didn't have the same visceral impact, but I enjoyed it. Over the next few years, it grew on me to the extent that I like it as much as Shaun, and there is still a group of people in my hometown where if we get together, within an hour we are trading quotes and laughing at our appalling West Country accents.

This one, however, I saw after several days of sleep deprivation and illness about three days after being really, really hot had stopped being fun. I say this as a declared interest - I wasn't in anywhere near the same frame of mind going into this one as the other two. Whether this has colored my opinions is something a re-watch will hopefully answer, and as a result I will try to keep comparisons to a minimum.

The World's End is a film about five men in their late 30s dragged back to their hometown to finish a pub crawl by one of their number they started at the age of 18. Of course, it's not as simple as that (as anyone who's seen the trailers knows) and eventually the five men (and one woman) must come together to save their old town and possibly even the human race from an alien invasion.

The person who has dragged them all back is one Gary King (Pegg), a truly monstrous creation who saw that night as the last great moment in his life. As someone who knows people like this (as well as the velvety touch of nostalgia addiction myself) he strikes a little too close to home to be really funny, at least for me - his selfishness and his grim insistence on a 'good time' on his terms undercuts the rather pleasant reunion the other guys enjoy, asking about jobs, kids, marriages and so on. He occasionally hits the right note with a genuinely funny anecdote but always overplays his hand. He's an amalgamation of every person you know who can't let go.

Only two others of the 'five musketeers' receive significant development. Andy (Frost) is a businessman who is in many ways the opposite of Gary. He's moved on, but it is frequently implied that he has also seen the consequences first-hand of living a life like Gary's. A payment of £600 made by Gary to Andy at the beginning  has taken on some dark undertones by the end. Andy is probably the most interesting character here - his refusal to drink and his brutal deconstruction of laddy 'drink culture' early on is particularly memorable. 

The other is Paddy Considine as Steven, last seen as one of the 'Andys' in Hot Fuzz, who comes across as somewhere in the middle of Gary and Andy. He embraces the opportunity more than Andy to revisit his younger self, dancing in the car and genuinely pleased to greet his old friends. He is also one of the most level-headed of the gang and most likable (in a film with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost that is no mean feat). Also worth noting is Rosamund Pike as an old flame of Gary's, who manages to avoid being an ice-queen super bitch or a mere love interest and instead comes across like a rather sweet, real person.

I know that I promised to avoid comparisons, but I believe there is one worth making here - while both Shaun and Fuzz had lengthy setups for the inevitable mayhem, it was foreshadowed in a variety of ways. In both you were aware something was going on in each and the joy was waiting for the payoff. Here, the alien invasion, even if you know it's coming from the trailer, comes out of nowhere. The film suddenly changes gear with a crunch and the effect is jarring. Because this one, more than the others, is not based off of a particular genre, the effect is also a feeling of going off the rails rather than settling into familiar archetypes. As a result, the film has to carry all of it's own weight, especially when it comes to suspension of disbelief, and unfortunately for me it never quite did.

The core plot of the pub crawl, combined with the alien invasion, is ultimately revealed to be a flimsy device on which to base the action, with the inside of one pub looking much like another (with one or two exceptions) and virtually no sense of danger at any point. The obligatory (at this point) cameos of various stars of the previous films and Spaced are here, but virtually none of them do anything except act as either exposition or a simple "Hey, it's that guy!"

I would say at this point that this is by no means a bad film. It's certainly coherent, and nothing truly maddening or base-breaking occurs. It is simply that one gets a sense of the principles having moved on. The 'Cornetto Trilogy' was begun at the very beginning of the star's respective careers and each has gone on to carve out a unique and respectable niche in the entertainment industry. Ironically, for a film in many ways about the dangers of nostalgia, they seem to have come back to their origins for one last hurrah and made something that disappointed me, at least. If it was a choice between this and them independently going off and carrying on with what they're doing now, the 'Cornetto Trilogy' could have remained uncompleted and I would have been slightly disappointed, but better that than come back for this effort, which seems a little half-hearted in light of the other two. 

The saddest thing, in many ways, is the complete lack of references to other films/TV shows/books in this one. The stated reason from Edgar Wright was that it wasn't something they wanted to keep doing, as they felt they were passed it (I think he thought it was immature). This makes me sad because it suggests they have lost sight of what made Spaced and the films so appealing in the first place. The joke was that we are a generation that is so mired in pop culture that everything is filtered through it - it's an idea that is approached in all sorts of ways in all three, mostly hilariously ("We're not using the Z word!") and to abandon it also abandons a huge chunk of the charm. 

Ultimately it didn't quite do it for me. By all means, go and see it, but this fan was disappointed. 

Finally, the ending. Without spoiling, this seems like it could divide people. I am ambivalent about it, but I will say this: there was more originality, charm and interesting ideas in the thirty second epilogue than there were in the previous hour and a half. 

I am aware this review is completely subjective and I did way more comparisons than I intended, I can only view this film through the same eyes I experience all the ups and downs of the real world and the first parts of the 'Cornetto Trilogy' are tied into my life in such complex ways that I can't even begin to view them objectively - and frankly I don't see why I should even try. Your experience of this film is likely to be completely different from mine, so I am not going to suggest whether or not you should go see it. All I can do is put down my thoughts and impressions and you can take from them what you will.

Andy out. 

Silent Hill - Movie Review

It is almost a universal law that any adaptation of a video game into a film is going to be terrible. The reverse is also generally true (because of the way Hollywood sees games as tie-ins as opposed to something requiring independent development*) but those usually can be safely ignored - but the movies seem to a lot more intrusive, and a lot more likely to rile up fans of that particular game or series.

The list of awful movies based on video games is long, sad and should mostly be ignored (I'm not going to bother even mentioning them) but in this review I want to talk about a film that is almost there for me -Silent Hill.

For those of you who have never played any of the games, Silent Hill is an abandoned, deserted town in which a steady rain of ash falls unceasingly on the streets and seriously weird, aggressive creatures stalk the roads and inside the buildings. Also it occasionally turns into a red industrial nightmare version of itself, with the very walls becoming flesh and even weirder monsters looking to tear our protagonist limb from limb, or at the very least make him change his or her trousers.

This is one of the less disturbing ones

Also, depending on the entry, the monsters are either the delusions of a half-mad telekinetic teenager who's been tortured by an insane cult for seven years or the projections of the protagonist trying to deal with his own guilt, grief and sexual frustration. Yeah, they're kinda messed up.

Taking its cue from the first Silent Hill, but using elements from the second and third, the film initially follows the first game pretty closely (bar the gender of the protagonist) as Rose de Silva takes her daughter to the town after she mentions it a lot while sleep walking, crashes, wakes up to an empty car and goes looking for her missing daughter. This is all packed into the first ten minutes or so, and gets the situation set up and the town front and centre from the get-go. After that, it's only a matter of time before the sirens sound** and everything literally goes to hell - a red industrial nightmare as opposed to the blue-and-grey ash fever-dream that is the town's 'normal' state.

However, this is where the first of the film's problems appear. The film relies for its effects extremely heavily on CGI - the monsters, the transition between the two 'versions' of the town and especially the chaotic ending have all been made in a computer, which particularly does a disservice to the monsters as believing they are actually there is key to them being scary. Also the monsters are never really elaborated on. Sure, there are certainly theories one could come up with, but ultimately they are just creepy looking monsters - obstacles for the protagonist to get by or escape.

The second problem is that the characters themselves don't even seem that bothered by them. After Rose and Cybil (a patrol cop along for the ride) encounter the film equivalent of the thing in the picture above neither of them takes a moment to even go "What the HELL was that?!" It may be a function of the fact the plot needs to get moving, but the two ladies seem to acclimatize to the town awfully quickly, and recover rapidly from encounters with Silent Hill's less pleasant occupants when not under immediate threat.

This of course takes away the most important thing the games had going for them. At their best, a sense of suffocating dread and doom surrounded you, as you feared to pry open doors or couldn't solve puzzles because you were too disoriented and scared to think straight. Silent Hill 2 is still one of the most intensely terrifying experiences I have ever had. This film has nowhere near that level of sustained, harrowing horror.

The final problem is that the scenes in which Rose's husband and Sharon's father search for them in the non-supernatural version of Silent Hill stop the movie absolutely dead. As much as I love Sean Bean, the film would be better if these scenes were cut completely. It could be done very easily as well with no loss in story - that's how useless they are.

Not necessary

Yet despite these problems (and for most people, they tank the film) I stubbornly return to the fact that I like this film. While it doesn't scare, it does create a dream-like atmosphere all of it's own. The film is about Rose being trapped in a terrifying emotional puzzle box - an alternate dimension in which she must figure out the rules in order to get her daughter back. As a scary horror film, it's a bit lacking, but as a trip into a bizarre world with a radically different morality it works very well.

The film also effectively pillages the soundtracks of the games as well, and combining this with the mostly awesome set design creates a fascinating tapestry on which the events of the film play out.

So should you watch it? Sure. There's enough interesting stuff going on to distract you from how not-very-scary it is and it differentiates itself from the games enough that it's not an automatic either/or thing. The problems may be too much for some and they never completely vanish at any point so complete satisfaction is unlikely, but it's alright. I like it, but then again I like a lot of things.

One thing I noticed on this viewing (and was amazed I hadn't noticed before) was how dominated by women this film is. There are virtually no male roles in this at all (at least no useful ones - see above) - the story is about a mother searching for her daughter with a badass cop who happens to be a woman and coming into contact with various female antagonists. This is a movie that passes the Bechdel Test and then some, which is exceptionally rare when it comes to horror.

In fact, the only useful 'male' character is the creature credited as the 'Red Pyramid'. He has a pointed pyramid for a head, is immensely strong, and assaults women in this film with a massively long sword. Put it this way - he ain't subtle.

"I enjoy my work as a walking rape metaphor"

And even he is shown to be either the servant or created delusion of a powerful female force.

Silent Hill might be the most feminist horror movie ever made. 

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* The exceptions to this rule generally occur are when there is a big enough gap between the release of the movie and the game. The best example is probably Goldeneye.

** I watched this with a bunch of people once before we all went to bed. Next morning at around 7 am me and the guy I was sharing a room with discovered the school bell across the road sounded exactly like the sirens from this. We weren't fully awake, so we both panicked a bit before realizing what it was and then felt a bit sheepish.

The Blair Witch Project - Movie Review

There's somethin' happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear...

After seeing both The Frankenstein Theory and Troll Hunter in quick succession, I decided it was time to fill a particularly glaring hole: The Blair Witch Project. Probably regarded as one of the most important horror movies of the 90s along with Scream. But where Scream looked backwards and simultaneously satirized and borrowed from the slasher films that dominated the horror market, The Blair Witch Project, (made with a very small budget, and marketed with the first truly viral campaign) was going to blow the dusty cobwebs off and revitalize it.

At least, that's the impression I always had. To be fair, I was 11 when it came out.

With nearly 15 years distance on it, however, we can see that things didn't exactly pan out that way. The 'found footage' genre went mostly underground until the emergence of Cloverfield in 2008. As such, it seems to stand alone, an odd relic.  So how does it stand up today, to a completely fresh viewer, devoid of it's marketing campaign?

(First off, I would like to say that I went into it knowing nothing of the background or the 'mythology'. Cardinal Rule of Movies - It has to stand on its own.)

If you don't know the plot, it's very straightforward. Three young filmmakers invetigating the legend of the 'Blair Witch' hike into the woods she supposedly haunts and are never heard from again. Their footage is found a year later. This is the footage.

Two things struck me straight off the bat. Firstly, this is very much a product of its time. It seems odd to say that about a time I actually remember, but there are little things that pin it down in the same way the mall is unmistakably from the 70s in Dawn of the Dead. All the protagonists smoke, for instance. They also reference pop culture that is rapidly going out of date (Gilligan's Island, anyone?). I imagine that diminishes it's impact slightly with a modern audience, as they are no longer Just Like Us. 

The second is that this is far more dedicated to the 'found footage' being presented as actual found footage. Most (including the two I mentioned at the start of this review) stretch the boundaries a little, allowing for voice overs, location shots and enough suspension of disbelief that the people would still be filming. In this, there are fights for the camera to be turned off at critical moments, no external exposition is provided and what you see on screen is pretty much what you're getting.

Which leads to a problem. There is no doubt at all that this is a very effective movie. It is exceptionally creepy at several points and the plight of our dynamic trio elicits sympathy, as they slowly get more and more lost, hungry and terrified. It is implied that the woods are rearranging themselves in order to keep them lost, although they do fail to do one or two incredibly obvious things (like follow the river or climb the nearest hill). 

The problem is one William F. Nolan described - nothing is as frightening as what is behind the closed door. Or out of shot with one of the protagonists yelling "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" and never seeing what 'it' is. The trouble is, eventually you have to open the door, not enough that the monster is fully exposed and rendered harmless, but just enough to hint at what is behind it. H. P. Lovecraft at his best is the absolute master of this technique, and he only gets it right about 25% of the time.

Or to put it another way, implication trumps explanation.

The challenge then, is to give juuuust enough away for the reader to draw their own conclusions about what is behind the door. Too much information renders something harmless. It's a problem many films suffer from. 

This film has the opposite problem. I'm sure if you had seen all the trailers, the faux-documentaries, the website links, the ominous piles of rocks that appear overnight around the tent at one point will seem incredibly sinister and threatening. As it stands, it's creepy and, well, vague. What are they being menaced by? "I have literally no idea" is not the greatest of answers to give, as someone like me who is trying to puzzle out what's going on is only doing that and not engaging with the characters or being scared silly. Vampires and zombies can still be scary now (when done well) because we know exactly what they are going to do to us. The 'Blair Witch' is an unknown quantity. It's sinister, but not horrifying. Scary, but not terrifying.

These, however, were terrifying

I'm sure if I wanted to I could delve into the mythology and find it creepier the second time around, but I shouldn't ever have to. As it stands, The Blair Witch Project is a fascinating ur-example of the 'found footage' genre, a triumph of low budget film making, and certainly worth seeing, but for me it worked on the same level as a haunted house ride. Kids go into the woods, sinister stuff happens, I get creeped out, film ends. I felt like I had just been on a rollercoaster, not watched one of the scariest movies ever made. 

It sounds like I am bashing this film. I am not. It is excellent, and definitely worth seeing. Just don't expect something mind-blowingly incredible.   

Troll Hunter - Movie Review

As I said in my review of The Frankenstein Theory, I am usually not a massive fan of found footage films in the same way I'm not fond of the feeling I get when I try to read in a car. But after enjoying TFT I thought I would check this one out for two reasons: 1) This was the film that The Frankenstein Theory was most often compared to in other reviews, most probably because it has the same combination of frozen wilderness + potential monster and 2) I'm a sucker for anything Scandinavian.

Yes, Troll Hunter (known in Norway as Trolljegeren) is a found footage film with subtitles, just like the half-decent Spanish film Rec. The fact that it's been somewhat successful means it will probably get a remake, but then again, I'm cynical.

The film opens with a trio of young filmmakers (that sounds familiar) talking to a licensed bear hunter who believes that another man known only as Hans has been illegally shooting bears. Our intrepid scooby-gang decide to follow this poacher and question him about his activities, as well as his odd nocturnal habits, but he pretty much tells them to go away please and leave him alone.

Or words to that effect

They don't, of course, and instead decide to follow him into the woods at night, where several flashes and mysterious roaring fill the night sky, followed by a wild-eyed Hans stumbling upon the group yelling "TROLL!!"

Yep. Trolls are real, and they live in Norway.

Having established his credentials as a troll hunter/non-poacher, Hans then invites the group to accompany him on his various troll-hunting expeditions. That's basically the plot, with troll action a-plenty. A lot of the trolls are based on Norweigan folk tales, lending this an air of regionalism that will probably be lost in a remake (grumble) and there are moments when obvious cultural jokes and references are lost, either in translation or simply not being from Norway. However the film is good enough and funny enough to transcend these, and they are minor distractions rather than driving the plot.

So what about the trolls themselves? They come in lots of different varieties and we see plenty of them (including one 200 foot fella who really makes the movie's third act) and the effects are uniformly excellent. We get a (very) brief 'scientific' background for them as well as names for the different sub-species. They are pretty 'balanced' as monsters go as well: large enough to be threatening and scary, without feeling insurmountable and yet not feeling like pushovers despite a set of known weaknesses.

So what's wrong with the film? The trolls themselves never really transcend being big and smashy monsters, with no real personality or sense of life-cycle except exposition and a scene down a mine shaft. The overarching plot (something to do with trolls breaking out of their territories and being infected with some sort of disease) is a very loose thread on which the film hangs and stops making any real sense before the end. The ending leaves a lot to be desired as well, with the 'found footage' concept limiting the outcomes as well as leading to some strange behavior from some characters.

Overall though, the film is a lot of fun. You should probably give it a go.

TROLL!!!

The Battery - Movie Review

Wow. Just wow.

After watching the lackluster effort The Facility and the awful Survival of the Dead (the rather pathetic latest entry in George A Romero's Dead films) I wasn't feeling that great about modern horror and was about to retreat into the safety of the 70s when the guy who recommended The Frankenstein Theory put me onto this little gem.

Made for a ridiculously small amount of money ($6,000) and starring the writer and director (Jeremy Gardner) it follows the aimless wanderings of two former professional baseball players* through New England as they fish, play catch and club the reanimated dead with baseball bats. Yes, it's a zombie film, but completely unlike any I've ever seen before.

These two (probably the most interesting pairing in any zombie film, hell, horror film I've seen) have survived the initial collapse of civilization and now scavenge the remains of the old world. Their enemies are less the zombies themselves at this point, and more boredom, nihilism and an attachment to the old order. The latter is more of a problem with Mickey (Adam Cronheim), who has trouble abandoning his old life and habits and frequently clashes with Ben (Gardner) who the apocalypse has turned into a ruthless pragmatist. 

This is the kind of film I want to say so much more about, but I wouldn't want to spoil one of the most perfect cinematic experiences I have ever had. The only thing I will add is that the soundtrack (a mix of indie and country covers) is one of the best of it's kind. Anything else will be a spoiler, or won't do it justice.

You may not have the same reaction I had, but you will see something unlike anything you've seen before. This is not my usual GO SEE IT for films I like - this is a serious recommendation that if you are a lover of film you need to see this. 

Here is the trailer:

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* The principals are a pitcher and a hitter, which together are known as a battery, apparently, hence the title.

The Bard Subs for Andy's Lack of Editorial Satisfaction

I have been writing some stuff for here, but I can't get it to come together in a way that is satisfying for me, so instead have some late-night Shakespeare:

No matter where. Of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors and talk of wills;
And yet not so—for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's.
And nothing can we count our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?

- Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2

The Facility - Movie Review

I have a bit of a bias towards old horror. Going through my old posts, I thought I had a good mix, but then realized that the 5-part Hammer Horror behemoth tipped the balance somewhat heavily, putting the average age of the movies reviewed on here somewhere around 1975. Ah well.

The reasons for this are many, but the main one is to do with filtration. I'll explain:

1. Most film reviewers, including several high-profile ones, don't really approach horror very well. I have no idea why, and it's just my opinion, but there we go.
2. As such me finding stuff I would like relies on (a) word-of-mouth (or rather, word-of-internet), (b) working my way through a director's back catalog and (c) wild stabs in the dark. 
3. The longer a film is out, the better (a) works, which is the best of the three.

This review is of one chosen through option (c).

Saturday night I was at my parent's house for Father's Day the next day, when myself and my girlfriend found ourselves unexpectedly alone and with access to my sister's collection of schlocky, modern horror. We selected The Facility based on the premise, which sounded intriguing enough (human guinea pigs test new drug, bad things happen) and watched the theatrical trailer:

Looked serviceable. So we watched it.

Hmm. First the positive.

The first thing to say about this is that it is clearly low budget and very stripped down. There's one location: the facility itself (thank you, Captain Obvious), which might have been used for interiors as well from the look of it and nicely coveys a sense of both isolation and claustrophobia. It also doesn't make the mistake a lot of these sorts of films make - the building exterior, nor any of the rooms inside actively look evil. You ever see a film with one of these "let's gather strangers together" premises where any sane person with working eyes would have walked after five minutes? Yeah, this one doesn't do that. It's refreshing.

The cast are redshirts to a man, and there's only about ten people in the film altogether. They're an interesting enough bunch so you can tell them apart when bad stuff goes down, but not a lot more than that. The doctor and nurse seem sympathetic and friendly, the test subjects alternate between anxious newcomers and grizzled veterans (literally, in one case), there's a bloke who wants to break all the rules, etc. etc. They're all cut from 100% horror archetype cloth, but at least you know where you stand. and the slow realization that the staggered injections mean that they are all doomed in turn does make them all somewhat sympathetic in their plight. 

They are all, of course, complete morons in the other great tradition of horror, leaving doors open all over the place, discovering a CCTV system then not using it to track where the crazier members of the party have gone, not taking one of the many, MANY opportunities to escape and go get help, but these are people who have signed up for a medical trial for two weeks. They went in expecting to essentially sit around for two weeks. It's not that surprising that they continue to do so when the proverbial hits the fan.

So what about the negative? First off, the nature of the trial itself seems a bit off. Sure, you can buy into the idea that it's all hush-hush and the trial was supposed to go 'wrong' but I'm not sure what a medical trial with only seven people in it is supposed to tell anyone. I suppose if you got a good mix, but still. Also, what the drug is supposed to be doing is not made clear. Is it an anti-psychotic? A painkiller? No idea.

I could forgive all that, however (movies and science, especially medical science, is always a bit hit-and-miss, or rather miss-and-bigger-miss) if it wasn't for this movies other problem, which is that it is boring. That trailer? That literally is all of the scary bits in this film. Stretch them out over 80 minutes and add in a LOT of talking and that is the movie. It's not scary enough.

The third problem is that it keeps setting up sub-plots that go precisely nowhere. There's a journalist investigating The Facility. One character finds out he's in the clear. One of the staff survives long enough to get in radio contact. The CCTV, which I mentioned. The film ends, abruptly, leaving many threads hanging and onscreen text that doesn't exactly wrap things up, instead going for an "aren't pharmaceutical companies EVIL" vibe instead. 

But surely the nail in the coffin of any horror picture is it not being scary. If it doesn't make you at least jump, it's not really worth the time. 

The Facility is not offensively bad, nor is it so-bad-it's-good. It won't do you any harm. It's just dull.