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Review by Stephanie Scaife

Warning: Contains moderate spoilers.

Admittedly I was a bit late to the game when it came to The Cabin in the Woods. I’d been intrigued by the posters I’d seen and had heard rumblings of greatness, not least from Britt Hayes who provided a glowing review after the SXSW screening earlier this year (read that here). But then that thing happened where something becomes so overhyped that I just became… sort of over it. Like when everyone was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it took me over a year to pick up a copy purely because I was so sick of seeing everyone else read it and then tell me how good it was. But then I found myself stuck for ideas of how to amuse myself on a grey and rainy Scottish Spring day whilst visiting my grandmother, so I suggested going to the cinema. She wanted to see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, I wanted to see Lockout but somehow the compromise ended up being The Cabin in the Woods.

Luckily I’d managed to avoid any of the major plot spoilers, and the film definitely works better if you go in blind so I won’t spoil the ending, but as it’s been out for a few weeks now I think it’s safe to assume that we all know the basics. Essentially The Cabin in the Woods is a smart ass play on the conventions of the horror genre, and it works to a certain extent. But it definitely thinks it’s cleverer than it actually is and it will only really play to a fanboy audience who already know the ins and outs of the genre, meaning that unfortunately much is likely to be lost on your average cinemagoer who will not understand the in-jokes and knowing nods and winks.

The film starts with Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), two white collar workers shooting the shit by the coffee machine. But what do they do and where do they work? That is the question that is gradually revealed throughout the course of the movie. We then cut to an altogether more familiar opening where we see our five protagonists, all of whom fit their designated stereotype; we have the jock Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his slutty girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), the girl-next-door Dana (Kristen Connolly), the smart sensitive Holden (Jesse Williams) and finally our stoner comedy relief in the form of Marty (Fran Kranz in a scene stealing role). They are setting off on a weekend getaway to stay at Curt’s cousin’s cabin in the woods, but what’s that? There’s a man on the roof of the apartment monitoring their every move and he’s reporting in to none other than Sitterson and Hadley, the duo we were introduced to at the very beginning. Less than 5 minutes in and we already know that something is amiss here. This isn’t your typical slasher film. Even the creepy, drooling redneck at the gas station they pass through is in on it.

Basically this is kind of like Marc Evans’s My Little Eye (underappreciated, in my opinion) meets The Truman Show with a slight hint of Funny Games thrown in for good measure, and the audience is in on it right from the start. The question is; how long will it take our protagonists to cotton on? Sitterson and Hadley are the puppeteers in this scenario and although the free will of the characters comes into play during certain key moments, as soon as things don’t go to plan our guys step in to ensure that the criteria is met (pheromone infused mist to ensure a sex scene, for example). The idea is that the characters are being manipulated into acting in a certain way to meet the audience expectations, it’s clever and it toys with the audience’s knowledge of the genre and raises those all-important questions about why we choose to watch horror films and violence on screen for entertainment. Although it doesn’t so much dwell on the question so much as have fun playing with the answers.

So why is all of this happening? I won’t spoil it for those not in the know, but for me the answer we’re given wasn’t really the payoff I’d wanted or expected. Maybe it just comes down to personal taste, but I’d wanted something altogether more cynical and what I got was something that was actually just sort of silly. It felt to me like Goddard and Whedon had started out with something pretty interesting but had simply made it all up as they went along, going along with every whim, which is rewarding in the sense that the film is amusing; they clearly understand the genre and had a whole lot of fun messing around with it. But the end result contains some rather gaping plot holes and an unsatisfactory and somewhat flimsy explanation that definitely felt sort of thrown together and tacked on almost as an afterthought. It also seemed to me that they were so caught up in cramming as much in as possible that they plain forgot to make anything about the film even remotely scary.

Had my expectations not been so high then perhaps I wouldn’t have dwelt so much on the shortcomings of the film, because – don’t get me wrong – I did enjoy it, and it always makes a nice change to see a horror film that isn’t a remake, terribly predictable or just plain awful. As a fan of the genre I always appreciate the effort to do something different (and the death-by-unicorn scene was not something I could ever have predicted!) Alas, despite some clever moments, snappy dialogue and a few decent set pieces I just didn’t think Cabin in the Woods entirely lived up to the hype. It’s a solid effort that may improve after multiple viewings but for now I’m going to say that for me it was a straight up middle of the road 3 star movie. The verdict of my 71 year old grandmother however, “It was the stupidest and goriest film I’ve ever seen”. I probably should’ve taken her to see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen after all…

Review by Keri O’Shea

Evil occultists are alive and well and residing in good old Blighty, where it seems they enjoy fucking around with unwitting hitmen – at least that’s the case in a couple of instances in the horror  movie universe recently, including The Devil’s Business, an as-yet little known film which I got to see recently during the Bradford After Dark leg of the Bradford International Film Festival. And, I’m pleased to say, this isn’t a bad entrant into the occult horror genre which I love so much. It has a few flaws, sure, but its ambition and sense of earnestness carry it through.

Hardened gangster Pinner (Billy Clarke), accompanied by the eager-but-completely-clueless young recruit to ‘the trade’ Cully (Jack Gordon) is out on a hit; the two men arrive at a deserted property, let themselves in – and wait, for an old associate of their boss, Bruno, one Mr. Kist (Jonathan Hansler). This isn’t going to be a good night for Kist, to put it mildly. Does he deserve it? All Bruno says is that they go way back, and that Kist is into some weird shit. Pinner doesn’t ask questions, and really, really wishes Cully would ask a few less, but by anyone’s estimation, Kist seems like an odd one. A cursory look around his house reveals a lot of books of an occult nature, and a few other things which raise an eyebrow – it’s almost a relief when he gets home, pours himself a drink, and Pinner can get on with what he’s been asked to do. But is it that straightforward? It seems that these two guys aren’t in possession of all the facts about this Mr. Kist, whom their boss was so adamant must die…

It would be disingenuous of me, I reckon, if I went any further without mentioning a certain other British movie which came out quite recently, and which shares a few similarities with The Devil’s Business. Yes, I am of course talking about Kill List, made in the same year and the same country – in which two other hitmen find themselves taking on a job which throws them into sinister circumstances they can’t control and definitely don’t understand. I can only say that I don’t know at all which of these films was written first, or if either screenplay was known to the other filmmaking team prior to shooting, and there’s no point in guessing, but I’ll say this: it must be bloody teeth-grindingly annoying to develop a screenplay, only to see something notably similar come out at more or less the same time. However, if it so happens that Devil’s Business director/writer Sean Hogan was pipped to the post by the appearance of indie sensation Kill List, he can feel satisfied that his movie surpasses Kill List, for this humble reviewer at least. The reason for this is that The Devil’s Business feels like more of a whole movie, where I felt that Kill List comprised two movies linked together rather weakly; there’s a workable back-story in The Devil’s Business, and the presence of the occult elements here feel enmeshed in the plot from the start. It doesn’t blandly spell everything out, it retains elements of mystery (occult means ‘concealed’, after all) but it felt like one consistent narrative.

The Devil’s Business has a very small cast, a challenge for any writer, and my first feelings were that the characters of Pinner and Cully had had their dialogue rather overdone – on first appearances, they came off rather cartoonish, but the script definitely improved as the film progressed, relying less on overblown, self-conscious swearing and allowing the actors to show what they could do. Clarke delivers a brilliant anecdote about his darkest days in the job, for instance, which really humanises his character. Cully stretches credibility in places – that someone like Bruno (Harry Miller) would send such a daft lad to do a job like this seems unlikely – and there are some problems with consistency in terms of, for example, how careful the two men are when they arrive compared to the errors they make soon afterwards, but the steady increase of tension helped to stage-manage this, as did the few moments of black humour, risky to go for, but great if they work. Special mention has to go to the charismatic Kist, though, whose portrayal by Jonathan Hansler is spot-on – a dulcet-toned devil if ever there was one. 

Essentially, The Devil’s Business has the courage of its convictions; it enjoys venturing into the sinister subject matter at its heart, bringing something interesting to the genre as it goes, and it performs some nice tying-up of its plot lines which suggests that Sean Hogan had a good rein on his work here. As a final bonus, it doesn’t overstay its welcome either – you don’t need two hours to tell a good yarn, as this film proves.

Review by Keri O’Shea

“Satan has only the power we give him.”

A highly tense chiaroscuro Confessional gives us the opening scene of The Monk (2011), and introduces us to our main character – the ‘model of rectitude’, Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel), a monk legendary within his order and for miles around his Capuchin monastery, an institution so central to the culture and society of 16th Century Madrid. Once an abandoned child, adopted and raised by the order, Ambrosio has grown into a man of intense faith, and a brilliant orator – certainly not the spawn of Satan he was feared to be, when superstitious monks uncovered the hand-print birthmark on his shoulder and assumed it to be the devil’s mark.

Ambrosio’s piety does not unequivocally do good, however. He shows compassion towards a would-be novice, Valerio, who is so horribly burned that he rarely removes the mask which conceals his face, and is therefore unwilling to eat, or sleep, with the other monks. Although this behaviour is against the rules of the order, Ambrosio permits it. On the other hand, when he discovers a note to a lover in the possession of one of the novice nuns who visits him for Confession, he’s utterly inflexible, and passes the note to her Prioress, unleashing hell for this young woman. It seems that the rules by which he has always lived are coming under considerable strain, and when the head of Ambrosio’s order warns him that the Devil is present amongst them all, Ambrosio gives credence to it. Strange things are indeed happening – duplicity, human weakness and most importantly, lust are soon vying for possession of the man of God’s soul, leading him into an inescapable personal nightmare.

Roughly a century before cinema existed, the nineteen-year old author Matthew Lewis was working on his novel, The Monk (1796). The extreme content of his book shocked contemporary audiences, even whilst impressing them with his skill as a writer – it’s a state of affairs which modern horror fans are no doubt familiar with, as movies continue to appear which walk a fine line between technical prowess and abhorrent content, but perhaps unusually, The Monk’s love-letter to excess has only rarely made it to the silver screen, even though it is in many ways tailor-made to form the basis of a seriously over-the-top screenplay. When I heard about the 2011 movie, I half-expected that this would be the case. However, and although writer/director Dominik Moll has not shied away from many of the novel’s still-shocking plot-lines, this is not an exercise in gratuity for its own sake at all. What we have here instead is a character-driven movie, with the performance of Cassel at its heart; some of the other characters have accordingly been removed, or repositioned around Ambrosio, so that we are given the moral collapse of an individual in remarkable circumstances. This is our focus, and the result is an absorbing, brilliant piece of filmmaking.

As you might expect, it’s all on Vincent Cassel to hold it together, and his performance here is nothing short of extraordinary. He’s magnetic as Ambrosio, always looking like his religious serenity is on the verge of breakdown, whilst communicating a great array of complexities despite little dialogue. You really believe he is battling with his conscience. The way in which many of the shots are framed means that the light frequently catches his eyes in an ominous, otherworldly way, which serves to highlight that there is a darkness to his inner world – this effect is reinforced whenever Ambrosio walks out in the hot Spanish sun wearing his cowl, which shrouds him in darkness, making him look like his own constellation, a character swathed in pitch-black and separate from the people he moves amongst.

Thanks to a lot of the cinema we might associate with ‘Gothic’, it’s easy to forget that the early provinces of Gothic were not the cold, storm-assaulted castles of Northern Europe but the balmy locations of Italy and Spain, and The Monk makes much of the contrast between the bright, hot streets of Madrid and the dark interiors of the monastery, which are lit only by intermittent sunbeams or, more often, moonbeams (much of the significant plot developments occur at night). The film looks beautiful, with care evidently going into each and every shot. As for the camerawork, it is slow and sweeping. This further humanises the characters in the film, by pausing on them, drinking in their postures and looks, and allowing us to see them as people with internal lives, not just bit-part players in an incredible turn of events. The use of a visibly closing aperture in several shots seems to add to the film’s insistence that we focus on certain scenes, and the people in them. It’s an interesting visual tic.

Perhaps one of the reasons that the film can successfully focus on one man’s struggle with his morality is because the film’s country of origin, France, is itself a Catholic country, as is Spain, where the film was shot. The Catholicism which was so bizarre and ‘Other’ to Lewis, an Englishman, doesn’t have the same issues in countries where it has so long held sway, and rather little is made of the rituals and beliefs themselves, more looking at how they provide a structure which is jeopardised or found lacking by Ambrosio. Elements of the supernatural present in the novel and film, though again played down in the latter, are also more significant in how they precipitate Ambrosio’s ruin rather than viewed as very important in their own right. Rather, the question of personal culpability – whether some people are fated to sin, or choose their own paths – seems to be central to this version of The Monk. 

Those expecting a high-action treatment of a novel which is peopled with bleeding nuns, wandering Jews and the agents of the Inquisition, to name a few, will find The Monk (2011) a far more sparse, morose and ponderous piece of work, but by no means is it devoid of all of the plot elements which have always made the book so transgressive. The weighty tone of the film may not suit everyone, true, but for this reviewer, this is an accomplished, aesthetically-pleasing film underpinned with good performances and, at its heart, a brilliant performance by Cassel, one of the finest working actors we have. This is a brooding piece of modern Gothic, which deserves not to be overlooked or underestimated.

The Monk is released to UK cinemas on April 27th, from Metrodome.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Sometimes a screener comes along that is so bad that it makes you consider giving up watching movies altogether, so Break was rather apt both in title and tagline. I wanted to take a break from film after watching it and it really was no mercy, just pain… terrible, derivative, throbbing pain.

So let’s get this straight, Break is a German film with a German cast that is shot entirely in Bavaria. However, it pretends to be set somewhere in North America with a script that’s not written in the writer’s first language and a cast reciting said script in a language that isn’t their first language and it really, really shows. It’s stilted, unnatural and full of trite Americanisms that often just don’t make any sense in the context of the dialogue. Why they made this decision and didn’t just set it in Germany is beyond me. Maybe they thought it’d reach a wider audience by being in English, but if that is the case I’m sure there are just as many terrible Z-list English speaking actors willing to travel…

Break is a backwoods thriller in which four holidaying friends are preyed upon by a couple of rapey, murderous local hillbillies. Combine everything you know about this genre and that’s what happens in Break. It is an entirely by the numbers horror film that is so predictable that what you’re currently imagining in your head is so close to what actually happens that you really just don’t need to watch this film at all.

Just in case that isn’t enough of an indication as to the “plot” I’ll give you a quick synopsis; Sarah (Lili Schackert) has just been dumped by her boyfriend – we know this because of the way she is angrily journaling whilst listening to terrible emo music – so her three best friends decide to take her on a girls only camping trip. We are told they are childhood friends but the chemistry between the four actresses is so appallingly bad that it’s painfully obvious that they had never met until the first day of shooting. Anyway, Sarah and her friends head into the woods, flirt with a sexy travelling hitchhiker (who rather amusingly says he’s from Germany, even though they are all clearly from Germany), get drunk by the camp fire whilst toasting marshmallows and enjoy a spot of skinny dipping. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when they come across some guts and human feet tied up in a tree. Of course this is the handy work of two local sadistic rednecks who love nothing more than disembowelling women for shits and giggles. Unfortunately for Claire (Thelma Buabeng), being that she is the only black character; she is the first to go. Soon either Rose or Anna (I’m not sure which is which) is being raped then murdered and Sarah, our forgettable heroine, is out for revenge on the two assailants.

Admittedly there are some nice gory set pieces and for the first 5 or 10 minutes the poor dialogue, abysmal editing, wooden acting and dodgy camera work is actually sort of amusing, but that it literally all this film has going for it. The fact that it’s been knocking around since 2009 and is only just now finding itself on DVD is enough of a warning for even the most diehard horror fan to give this a miss.

Break is out now on Region 2 DVD from Trinity X.

Review by Keri O’Shea

‘Found footage’ is an incredibly popular shooting style for filmmakers these days – now even meriting its own genre – but, whenever you see it used, you know it means a series of trade-offs. Whilst it’s good in that it creates a sense of immediacy, an equality with the protagonists who are on the ground, and provides a cheap, practical framework, it has its downsides. Some of these are just down to how much it’s used, and the anticipation of that familiar nausea from the wildly-veering, shoe-fixated, tripod-less camera. Equally nauseating is the threat of a film which has awarded itself a set of different editing rules; sometimes found footage movies make a good job of these special permissions, whereas sometimes they are stuffed with unnecessary filler to the point that even the characters in the film itself can be heard repeatedly saying, “Do you really have to film everything?” It’s a fair point…

Tape 407 is a found footage movie where the characters ask this very question, and it’s a film which suffers from many of the pitfalls discussed above. Before I’d started to weigh this up, though, the film’s opening premise – of an excitable pre-teen girl, filming every character boarding the flight on which she’s travelling whilst greeting them in the most saccharine ways imaginable – was a fairly effective piece of horror. If I was on a flight like that, I’d be dipping into my hip-flask full of gin before the ‘fasten seatbelt’ light was on. Hell, the whole plane thing is a horror anyway – but I digress. It’s New Year’s Eve, and excitable pre-teen Trish (Abigail Schrader) and her big sister Jessie (Samantha Lester) are on their way home from New York to Los Angeles after a Christmas break. The two girls, and a selection of other travellers including: a veteran wartime photojournalist, a boozy, bald-headed liability, a woman with medical training, a highly professional air hostess and One Spare Brave Dude, have just been invited to celebrate the New Year during the flight (with complementary glittery hats and beads – Ryanair, this ain’t) when the plane hits some bad turbulence. It’s serious, and – with Trish still filming – the plane crashes, leaving those who survive (i.e. pretty much everyone who’s had any dialogue) to contend with something far worse. Something seems to be out there…

I’ll be honest, the direction of the first-hand trauma of the plane crash was actually very effective and frightening. This is where the simplicity of the chosen filming approach comes into its own. Sound is used very well, and the actors’ reactions to the thumps and crashes of the plane struggling to stay in the air feel good and solid. There’s also something quite creepy about having a first-person view of things like the oxygen masks being released – not a sight many of us would fancy. Post-crash, however, the obvious reliance on ad-lib begins to work against the film rather than support it; again, with editing being out of the question due to the format, what we end up with is squabbling. A lot of squabbling, which lasts for far too long. One thing which Tape 407 has is an absolute abundance of dialogue, and much of it is delivered simultaneously as people shout at each other, over each other, repeat what they’ve just said and wonder aloud what to do next. This is probably exactly how frightened people behave, but it is very damaging for narrative tension, and there’s also a fine line between acknowledging that people do stupid things and a barrage of on-screen decisions which make you scratch your head.

That focus on ad lib arguing is a bit of a poisoned chalice for the actors here, but they do their best with what they have been asked to do. They’re seemingly more comfortable when the movie moves out of the various confined spaces it uses, and into interesting outside locations which render the survivors vulnerable, exposed, and able to act as such. Tape 407 has the sense to make the best of the darkness and emphasises how limited these people are in terms of what they can or can’t see as they make their escape from the wreckage. Again, this is an example of what the filmmakers get right. However, they very nearly throw all of that away whenever they’re tempted to reveal what ‘is out there’, and then they settle into the rut of: action-free lull, then an attack, then screaming, then running away, then rinse, repeat. As for what is out there? I will omit to say, but it didn’t come with a high enough budget to make it scary, and in any case, it raised as many questions as it answered.

I don’t know, perhaps this impulse to record absolutely everything isn’t quite as far-fetched as it seems. I don’t do it, it baffles me, but there are people who are forever peering at the world through a camera lens or a smartphone. They’re out there, usually stood right in front of me at gigs. When it comes to making films, however, I think we’re already well into cliché territory with this format, and it’s starting to dawn on audiences and filmmakers alike that ultimately, you still need all of the things which have always made films effective. Just because something’s relatively new does not mean it’s  a panacea for coping with a low budget or any of the other issues facing filmmakers in a teeming market, and sadly, for all the little hints of promise, Tape 407 will take its place as ‘yet another found footage movie’, with all the faults common to this genre.

Tape 407 will be released to Region 2 DVD on 21st May, from G2 Pictures. In the US it will be available on April 27th on VOD and select cinemas, retitled Area 407. UPDATE: the UK release date has been changed to 2nd July.

Review by Ben Bussey

Ever notice how it never works out for the ones who seem too happy? Art teacher Lily (Kelan Coleman) may be deaf, but she’s young, she’s pretty, she loves her job, and above all she loves her little sister Michelle (Sarah Sculco), whom she has looked after on her own since the loss of their parents. Of course, fate soon descends to take an almighty dump on Lily’s happiness, as Michelle is hit by a school bus and killed. In a bid to move on with her life, Lily applies for an arts scholarship at a college in Cassadaga, a town that is also home to a large spiritualist community. Gradually she adjusts to her new life, gets back into her painting, and starts a relationship with Mike (Kevin Alejandro), father of one of her pupils. However, when a night out with Mike finds them making an impromptu visit to one of those wacky spiritualists, Lily can’t help wanting to communicate with her sister. Unfortunately, it is not Michelle that answers the call, but someone or something altogether angrier, and when the séance ends the spirit does not leave Lily alone. So begins a nightmarish journey in which Lily must solve the mystery that will bring the angry spirit peace, and somehow it involves Lily’s new Cassadaga home, a former student who disappeared four years earlier, and a puppet-making eunuch.

From the premise it might sound like an Argento film that never was – somewhere between the incoherent excesses of Phenomena and Opera – but Cassadaga isn’t quite so flashy and over-stylised as it might have been in old Dario’s hands. Director Anthony DiBlasi is going for something a bit more understated here, with an emphasis on tension and atmosphere, and to a degree, Cassadaga is successful in this, but on the whole it never quite grips the viewer as well as it hopes to. Make no mistake, though; as a product of the generally lacklustre After Dark Originals line, Cassadaga is most definitely a cut above the rest. In contrast with the likes of Husk and The Task, there’s a great deal more here than surface flash. There’s some interesting storytelling, and some decent acting to go along with it, including a small role from Nurse Ratched herself, Louise Fletcher.

Kelan Coleman makes for a charismatic and compelling lead. Refreshingly, her character’s deafness is not made much of an issue, with Lily played as an ordinary human being rather than a magnet for sympathy or issue-based kudos.  Her relationship with Mike may feel like little more than window-dressing – and, as Keri points out in her review over at her blog, it strains credibility somewhat that a teacher would so readily get together with a parent of a pupil – but it is an effective representation of a burgeoning relationship between two single adults, lending a very grown-up feel to proceedings. Keri also mentioned to me on Twitter, “if you’re a legs man then this film already merits an 8/10”; true enough, Ms Coleman’s lower body is on display for much of the film, be she clad in hotpants or a skimpy nightie (as in the picture above). DiBlasi’s camera doesn’t follow her undercarriage with quite the same fervour as Marcus Nispel’s did Jessica Biel, but it’s still pretty darned prominent, which doesn’t hurt in the numerous exposition-heavy, action light scenes. It might detract ever so slightly from some of the big set pieces, however; for instance, in the big finale some viewers may be too busy going “phwoar” to really engage in the drama. But, you know, that’s just some viewers, not me. Ahem.

More problematic are the sequences involving the self-castrated killer. With his welding mask, tools and blood-spattered workplace, and his persistent incoherent mutters that turn into screams, it’s as though Billy from Black Christmas walked onto the set of Hostel.  I shouldn’t think I need to reiterate just how tediously overfamiliar this kind of torture content has long since become, and it sits awkwardly in the midst of what is otherwise a fairly understated supernatural affair. It all rather smacks of pressures to conform to the DVD marketplace; a sense that a horror film won’t sell these days unless it has torture scenes, which I should hope most fans would I agree is not the case (or, at least, damn well shouldn’t be). As such, I find it a little sad that they’ve chosen to sell the film on the human puppet image, and the rather weak tagline “There’s a new puppet master,” as this does not accurately reflect the kind of film Cassadaga really is.

While all in all it falls a little short of the mark, Cassadaga is still an admirable effort to do something a bit different within the realm of glossy, mid-budget modern horror. Anthony DiBlasi may well be a director worth keeping an eye on; I see the potential for something great from him in the future, even if he hasn’t quite managed it here.

Cassadaga is out now on Region 2 DVD from G2 Pictures.

Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

Elfie Hopkins has been a long time coming – finally getting a cinema release here in the UK, it’s a sweet-hearted piece that doesn’t really work as a horror film, but never the less has a massive amount of charm.

Elfie Hopkins (Jaime Winstone) is the local slacker…and wannabe private detective. With her best friend Dylan (Aneurin Barnard) she meddles in the lives of the villagers, much to their annoyance. When new neighbours the Gammons arrive, she’s convinced that she’s finally found a genuine case to investigate. The Gammons are odd – a little too perfect. The rest of the village seems enamoured with them, especially the family patriarch (Rupert Evans), a charming yet sinister travel agent. When people start disappearing, Elfie must pit herself against the murderous and ever-so-insane Gammons in order to protect the people of her village.

Elfie Hopkins might best be described as quirky. At its core, this is a film about an outcast trying to find her place in the world. A traumatic past means she holds people at bay, even the few friends she has. Hardly an original core to a film, but there is a great deal to be said for Jaime Winstone’s impressive turn as Elfie. Elfie’s the sort of waster that, in real life, would annoy the living daylights out of me. Superficially, she has a bad attitude, a lack of sensible motivation and doesn’t care who she irritates to get her own way. However, Winstone imbues Elfie with an inherent vulnerability that is clear even without the script’s more literal moments that spell out her trauma for the viewer.

Equally, the supporting cast help make Elfie Hopkins good-quirky and not annoying-quirky. Aneurin Barnard is, frankly, adorable as Elfie’s enamoured best friend Dylan. Rupert Evans as Mr. Gammon gives a deliciously sinister performance, equally as convincing as the impressive new man in town and as murderous patriarch. Will Payne plays the sociopathic Elliot Gammon with a rage-fuelled glee, and, if I may indulge, is particularly easy on the eye. Most revelatory, perhaps, is Gwyneth Keyworth as the utterly bonkers Ruby Gammon. Now, for the sake of full disclosure: Gwyneth is from the town I live in. Regardless of any regional bias (the film was shot just down the road, afterall), though, her performance as Ruby is simultaneously cute, alluring, and downright psychotic, marking her out as a particularly promising young performer. Rounding off the cast are the likes of Richard Harrington and Kimberly Nixon, who are both memorable but sadly under-used.

Lest I over-saturate this review with the word ‘quirky’, I’d best describe the look of the film as thoroughly…peculiar (thank you, thesaurus). Its production design is a sight to behold. Elfie’s bedroom is a particular delight, a sense of her character is found pinned to her walls and beaming through coloured lamp-shades. The costumes are glorious, particularly the Gammons’ vintage-inspired, part-goth look. The village could be anywhere, and yet, looks as though it exists in a bubble of its own.

Where the film sadly falls down is, perhaps crucially, as a horror film. Elfie Hopkins isn’t really a horror film, as far as I’m concerned, and should never have tried to be one. The entire film lacks suspense, and were it not for the fact that it’s been billed as a horror film, this wouldn’t really matter. However, as it stands, the somewhat corpse-strewn climax of the film feels wholly ineffective, and furthermore unnecessary. It’s perhaps a little remiss of me to say so when reviewing the film for a horror-loving website, but I enjoyed Elfie Hopkins when it wasn’t showing me serial killers and cannibals and attempting to be creepy.

That being said, I still found Elfie Hopkins to be thoroughly entertaining and thoroughly likeable as a film, and would recommend it with the advice that it shouldn’t really be thought of as a horror film. Ultimately, it has what a great deal of modern horror films fatally lack – characters that I actually cared about – and as such is well worth a watch.

Elfie Hopkins is released to UK cinemas on 20th April, from Kaleidoscope.

Review by Ben Bussey

Will the young women of this world never learn? If you need to get away from it all, don’t go to Paris. The only way you’ll get out of it okay is if your dad’s Liam Neeson. Otherwise, your plans of happy-go-lucky frolicking in the so-called city of love will promptly give way to a hideous nightmare of pain, terror and bloodshed. Unfortunately, no one ever said this to Sophie (Karine Vanasse). Bored, lonely and out of work in Montreal, she takes the advice of a new friend and checks out Switch.com, a site that offers customers the chance to temporarily swap homes with other users for holiday purposes. What could possibly go wrong there, right…?

Well, evidently Sophie was also never told the cardinal rule about never trusting anyone or anything which involves interacting with strangers online, as soon enough she’s jetting across to Paris and setting up a temporary base of operations in a luxurious flat in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Next thing she knows, the police are smashing through her door, clapping her in irons and carting her away for the murder of the decapitated man in the spare room. Her arresting officer is Detective Damien Forgeat (Eric Cantona), and as far as he and everyone else making the investigation are concerned, Sophie is not Sophie; she’s Bénédicte Serteaux, the owner of the apartment who has presumably taken Sophie’s place in Montreal. Unable to prove her innocence or her true identity, Sophie does what all suspects must in order to make it a real thriller; she busts loose, goes on the run and sets out to clear her name.

As should be evident from that synopsis, the star of the show here is very much Pan Am actress Karine Vanasse’s female fugitive, but as she’s considerably less famous here in the UK than former football player Eric Cantona, he takes centre stage in the extremely prosaic and misleading cover art, suggesting he’s about to join fellow ex-footballer Vinnie Jones in the realm of straight-to-DVD action film. However, while Cantona may be famed for his flying ninja kick skills (even someone as apathetic about football as I am remembers that incident), Switch is certainly not an all-kicking, all-punching, guns-and-ammo brawler. Instead, it’s one of those slow-burn Euro mystery thrillers which have grown ever more popular since those books and films about that girl with some tattoo or other who kicks hornet’s nests whilst playing with fire or something. Indeed, despite having an original screenplay, you’d be forgiven for thinking Switch was based on another of those airport novels. It’s got the requisite twisty-turny plot, location hopping action, and plentiful scenes of cops solemnly pacing back and forth talking over the evidence.

There’s a curious tone to these modern thrillers, inasmuch as they’re eager to be all dark and edgy, yet at the same time inoffensive enough to appeal to a mass audience; they’re trying to be all things to all people, essentially. Switch very much follows suit. It’s a bit contemporary and high-tech, tapping into very modern anxieties about identity theft and the abuse of personal information online. It’s also a little bit creepy, with the obvious psychological issues of the enigmatic villainess. Even so, it never gets complex or nasty enough to alienate the grannies in the audience. For instance, while the finale involves a bit of binding, gagging and torture, it feels less reminiscent of the Saw movies than of vintage gothic melodrama; really, it wouldn’t have felt out of place if Karine Vanasse had wound up tied to a railroad track. On top of which, it’s got just enough simple B-movie pleasures to keep us perpetual adolescents interested, including some utterly gratuitous but very welcome nudity from the leading lady, and a couple of decent action scenes, in particular a very Point Break-esque back gardens and alleys chase sequence; just about all that’s missing is Cantona firing his gun in the air and going “ARRGHHH!”

As you’ve probably gathered, there’s nothing in any way ground-breaking about Switch. It’s very much a by-the-numbers mystery with a plot that gets progressively sillier and characters that never get beyond two dimensions. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with it as an undemanding evening’s entertainment. It’s one of those films you’ll most likely forget all about once the credits roll, but for the preceding ninety minutes or so it’s a reasonable diversion. In other words, this is one to get you through a plane journey or a rainy Wednesday night when there’s nothing else on TV.

Switch is available now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment (with English subtitles, unlike the trailer below).

Review by Ben Bussey

Guess what: it’s zombie apocalypse time again. However, this time around things aren’t completely hopeless for the surviving humans, as the government manages to round up the bulk of the zombies and dump them in designated ‘danger zones.’ Alas, for professional stoners Edwin (Mark Wynn) and Tommy (Jy Harris), there proves to be a practical downside to this system. They’ve just happened to discover that, when liquidised into green goo, zombie brains are the world’s most powerful fertiliser, capable of growing, within moments, the most potent weed known to man. However, after taking a few bong hits and body-popping their way through an almost-naked rooftop montage (and not for the last time, I’m afraid) they come to the alarming realisation that they’re all out of green goo. With their town almost entirely cleared of zombies, they decide there’s only one thing for it: to head to the danger zone and score as many zombie brains as humanly possible.

And if that makes this film sound like Cheech and Chong/Jay and Silent Bob/Harold and Kumar meets Night of the Living Dead/The Evil Dead/Braindead (or Dead Alive for the benefit of my American friends)…? Well, that’s not exactly an accident. As to whether Bong of the Dead is as much fun as any of those films; well…

I won’t deny that my heart sank when this DVD landed on my doorstep. While I am not about to dismiss the amount of work that goes into shoestring productions such as this (shot for $5,000 in 15 days, a fact which the publicity will make a point of reminding you), the sad fact is that the vast majority of these films wind up so bad they’re borderline unwatchable. As such, when I say Bong of the Dead is an above average microbudget indie horror movie, this isn’t exactly high praise. If you have a taste for the self-consciously stupid, this movie may well give the odd tickle to your funny bone, but you’re also very likely to find your patience sorely tested along the way.

Things start off quite promising. The opening ten minutes or so illustrates the outbreak of zombie activity from the perspective of an elderly couple who are among the first to get infected, and takes the interesting approach of running entirely without dialogue. That combination of old-fashioned silent comedy and gore obviously evokes Raimi and Jackson, but in a more sophisticated manner than a great many imitators manage. It’s an impressive sequence which would work well as a short film in its own right; and, honestly, I think that might have been the better approach, as what follows is a damn sight less inventive and amusing. Here’s the thing: if the main protagonists are comedy stoners, it might be beneficial if they’re actually funny. And Edwin and Tommy… they’re really not that funny at all. Drawn in such broad strokes as to make any of the aforementioned stoner movie double acts look like the height of subtlety, the joke wears thin very quickly indeed.

A degree of respite is offered with the introduction of a third protagonist midway, namely Simone Bailly’s tough girl loner Leah. Unfortunately, this character quickly turns out to be as much of a two-dimensional cliché as her male counterparts, bonding with them in an utterly unconvincing fashion simply because it serves to move the story forward. Credit where it’s due, though; Bailly, Wynn and Harris are certainly better actors than tend to be cast in microbudget horror movies, but they just don’t have the chemistry they need to make the film engaging. This is all the more unfortunate as they’re on screen for pretty much the duration of the running time, which incidentally is at least twenty minutes longer than it should be. Sure, there are a few decent zombie attack sequences, particularly the agreeably OTT shoot-‘em-up/chop-‘em-up finale, but for the bulk of the film it’s simply these three actors exchanging dialogue, much of which is either spectacularly unfunny stoner jokes, or painfully over-familiar philosophical musings on the zombie apocalypse. If all this could have been pared back, Bong of the Dead might have been a perfectly passable midnight movie. As it stands, it’s overlong, repetitive and excessively self-indulgent.

While we’re on the subject of excessive self-indulgence, I’m truly taken aback by the jaw-dropping pomposity of Thomas Newman, the writer-producer-director-editor-visual FX-music composer-camera operator-director of photography-passionate-underdog-dreamer of Bong of the Dead. This is how the man describes himself in the trailer below. Seriously. And not only does he devote more than half of the trailer and the bulk of the official website to emphasising what a hard-working visionary he is (there’s a second trailer as well, with further self-congratulatory superlatives), he also devotes several paragraphs of the end credits to celebrating his immense achievement and the personal victory it represents over all those who told him he could never do it. Okay… once again, far be it for me to dismiss the effort and personal sacrifice solo filmmakers put into their work, but even so… maybe it’s just me, but there is something to be said for humility, isn’t there? Most filmmakers who create zombie stoner movies don’t really believe it makes them Orson Welles, do they…? I don’t know, I suppose it’s possible Newman is being ironic in his utterly ludicrous self-importance, but that’s not the impression I get. Watch the trailer and decide for yourself.

Still, much as I’m loath to give further praise to someone with such an inflated opinion of himself, I must concede that Newman has crafted a slick-looking film that you’d be forgiven for thinking cost a great deal more than $5,000. The photography, music, digital effects and practical gore are considerably better than those generally found in bargain basement horror. If we could only say the same for the plot, dialogue, characterisations and direction, then we might have been onto a winner with Bong of the Dead. Sadly, all we have is another half-baked comedy horror that is nowhere near as funny or enjoyable as it thinks it is, and there are few things more off-putting than that.

Bong of the Dead is released to Region 2 DVD on April 15th from Left Films; alternatively it is available for download now from www.bongofthedead.com.

Review by Keri O’Shea

“There is no clean fight in a war.”

Like many cult movie enthusiasts, I declare myself to be a huge fan of the films of Takashi Miike but in truth, I have only seen a tiny fraction of his work. To be fair, it’s hard to keep up with his output – the guy’s one of the hardest-working filmmakers in existence, often turning around two or three films per year, and many of his films don’t officially make it to these shores at all. So, I wasn’t too surprised that I hadn’t picked up on Crows Zero when it was completed around four years ago – it has already spawned a sequel – and I was quite content to sit down to my screener with no prior knowledge of what to expect. The result? I feel as though I’ve seen something pretty special.

Based on the manga of Hiroshi Takahashi, creator of ‘Ring’ (and where would the Japanese film industry be without the creative universe of manga?) Crows Zero is set at the Suzuran Boys’ School, a violent, hierarchical hellhole where “a man’s worth is proven by his fists”. And yet, new boy Genji Takiya has transferred to Suzuran through choice. The links between Suzuran and a promising future as a yakuza (again, where would Japanese cinema be…?) are manifold; in Genji’s case, his yakuza papa has advised him that, if Genji can take over Suzuran, he can in turn take over his organisation. This is a rite of passage for Genji in a finishing school for crooks, it seems, so he begins to punch and kick his way through all the boys who stand between him and being ‘king of the beasts’, helped by a Suzuran alumni (and associate of a rival syndicate), Ken Katagiri, who has an axe to grind about never making it to the top himself. What follows is an almost military operation, with meticulous planning, strategy, allegiances and counter-allegiances – not to mention a hell of a lot of slugging it out! This is much closer in spirit to Fight Club than the generic martial arts style violence you might once have associated with cinema from this neck of the woods, and it is just as underpinned with some similar themes…

Takashi is an adept filmmaker, and so comfortable is he with his job that he can disrupt the pace and tension for break-out interludes – such as the arrival of a bunch of yakuza on Suzuran campus, who begin hassling and intimidating the boys, before pausing to decide on who is going on a run to the shops. This, but of course, is of no detriment to the film whatsoever, whereas in some hands that would feel too self-aware, too uncomfortable. The impression I got was of a director with the utmost confidence in his abilities. The shifts from ultraviolence to humour (which is often physical) to, and I mean this sincerely – pathos, are cool and organic. Whilst Crows Zero is a much more linear and accessible film than the most outlandish of Takashi Miike’s movies, by the end of the film we can see that it still manages to juggle three separate strands of story occurring in different places, bringing them together satisfactorily and neatly.

There is some innovative editing here too. When Takashi ‘chops’ a scene into a sequence of short, rapid edits – for instance, as someone is knocked backwards by a hefty punch – it really gives the impression of how the scene might appear drawn on a comic-book page. Add to this the use of colour – often stripping the on-screen action down to black, white and red – then you have a really effective marriage of comic and movie, which doesn’t rely on something as extensive as the effects in Sin City to create a crossover, but which looks just as interesting and stylish. This is aided and abetted by this incontrovertible fact: Takashi is an accomplished action director. The fights are meaty, and the quality of synchronicity achieved, even in scenes with around forty participants, was a pleasure to behold.

However, so far I have ignored a key aspect here, and that is the story itself. Genji starts out as a character with almost nothing to say for himself, only a driving ambition to prove his worth in the School of Crows – but there is a system at play in Suzuran, and he needs help to understand it, which brings him to the attention of Ken, a thirty-something who knows what the consequences of harbouring unfulfilled ambitions can do to a person. Theirs is an unlikely friendship, but you know what? It’s believable and warm, not to mention very funny. As well as all the necessary ass-kicking Genji has to do to get closer to his goal, Crows Zero is also a look at the value of companionship. Genji isn’t the lone wolf he first sets himself out to be. Both characters grow exponentially during the course of the film’s two hours, but perhaps it is Ken’s development which is most striking. He begins his on-screen life as a scraping, clownish figure – abhorred by his yakuza boss, taken less-than-seriously by almost everyone else, he’s a man who is living with being second best. By the end of this film, he is something quite different. A strong supporting cast adds credibility to all of this: the violence might be superhuman, but the interrelationships have enough substance to make the character arcs seem real.

As a high-action, darkly comic piece of cinema, Crows Zero is note perfect. It’s loud, frenetic and a lot of fun. It’s just that bit more special, though, because the bonds which the characters form add real backbone to an already visually-spectacular movie. Perhaps there’s an even more serious point behind all this, too, albeit one which Takashi doesn’t need to hammer home at every given opportunity to render it effective: this point is that life is short, and you need to get out there and go for it while you can. This film comes highly recommended.

Crows Zero will be released on DVD by MVM on 9th April 2012.

Review by Keri O’Shea 

Some of the hardest things to watch unfold on screen are tales in which ordinary people – people  who are perhaps only once-removed from being any one of us, thanks to an event in their lives – are propelled into extraordinary circumstances, as they simply try to get by. This isn’t easy to do: underplay the characterisation and the gravitas and the film looks trite; slather on the high emotion, and you are left with sentimentality. So, when these tales are told well, when the pathos and depth of the film provides its audience with a close interest in how the story plays itself out, then there is much to be applauded. The Yellow Sea is one of these films: a massive movie, chaptered into four parts and weighing in at two hours and sixteen minutes (which is actually significantly shorter than the Korean release) it gives a complex, deliberative examination of how the best laid plans can go to waste, and how, for one man, his situation eventually corners him.

The film starts in a location which, I have to admit, I never even knew existed until watching The Yellow Sea: the Yanbian Korean Autonymous Prefecture is a sort of hinterland between areas controlled by China, Korea and Russia – and its capital, Yanji City, is a tough area with lots of hardship (and those who come from there – known as Joseonjok – have to contend with prejudice against their ethnicity). People unable to find work in this area try to find a way to move elsewhere: this is what our lead character Gu-nam’s wife has done. He’s managed to secure a visa for her in South Korea, but Gu-nam (Jung-woo Ha) has run himself into some serious debt with the local gangsters – a debt to the tune of 60,000 yuan, something that an impoverished taxi driver will never be able to repay alone. As for his wife, he has lost touch with her since she crossed into South Korea. No phonecalls, nothing, and certainly no money being transferred to his account. He’s desperate, and worried, but he keeps fucking everything up by gambling what he does have in the hopes of a big win. This is a man at his lowest ebb, and people who frequent the lower depths of humanity can smell out people at their lowest ebb from a mile. His debtors tell him he has a ‘saviour’ – a shady local figure by the name of Myun (Kim Yun-seok). Myun wants someone killed in Korea. Hell, Gu-nam could even try to track down that wife of his while he’s there. Oh, and he has to get the job done within ten days, or his elderly mother and his daughter will be killed.

What follows for Gu-nam is a journey. Not a journey of the type which documentary filmmakers like – where self-knowledge makes someone a better person, or where one’s outlook on life is improved; instead, The Yellow Sea grinds an already unhappy man to ashes as he tries desperately to make sense of the wider picture he finds himself in – a world of organised crime, rival gangs and  ulterior motives. It isn’t just a journey, it’s a pursuit. If that all sounds boringly familiar and rather too similar to the reams of crime thrillers we already have, then I can assure you, the tone and style of this film stands alone.

This is a beautifully made and shot film; huge in scope, it moves through vast vistas in China, Korea and Yanbian, capturing a large background cast of people – thousands and thousands of people, sometimes – all going about their business as our protagonist, in contrast, is shown to be markedly alone against this backdrop. Far Eastern poverty and crime has a jarring look and feel to it, and its cramped, coughing, sickly and smoke-filled spaces look very different to their Western equivalents. Meanwhile, through all of the long shots, we have Gu-nam: with almost no dialogue, he acts his story through his facial expressions alone, and most of the camera time is devoted to watching his face intently. Where he is concerned, there is claustrophobia and unease – captured most perfectly as he is smuggled to Korea by ship, a man alone in a teeming, nightmarish and alien space, his face betraying his confusion, then panic, then the resilience of someone desperate to save his family. Most of the film takes place in shade or outright darkness, too, giving the impression of a parallel world and its players, hidden and only partially-known.

The Yellow Sea works by revealing layer upon layer of human interest, which almost invariably means human suffering (and the fact that it expresses that suffering so well means that the gory sequences are all the stronger). Part and parcel of this is the way deprivation motivates people, and also – to be fair – how stupid people can be, when it comes down to it. I don’t just refer to Gu-nam in that respect; ineptitude figures highly here, be it from the police, who struggle to do their jobs, or the gangsters themselves, who also fail several times to take control of their situations. But then, strolling effortlessly into all manner of chaotic situations comes Myun – the only guy who seems to take stock of everything and see things go his way. Compared to Gu-nam, Myun is the polar opposite – a sort of jovial madman, whose presence in the plot definitely keeps an already-interesting character study even more engaging.

The main issue I had with the film was, simply, its potential to be confusing – it is a long, at times convoluted and maze-like story with masses of characters, interrelationships and interactions. Evidently Korean audiences have less of a hard time with this; as I mentioned, the film has actually been significantly cut shorter for this release, but for me the wealth of details to take on board was a challenge, as was the length of the sitting. This did interfere with my appreciation of the film to an extent, but by the same token, I wanted to unpick the various plot strands. In a weaker story, I would have been more indifferent to it. 

This is a tragic story motivated all the way through by love, with more than its share of blood and high tension, but for me, the strongest feature of The Yellow Sea is the strong writing which allows such poignancy from the main characters. Although Gu-nam is in many ways an ambigious figure, you cannot but empathise with him, and the end of the story? The gut-punch to end them all. This is a dark piece of storytelling from director Hong-jin Na.

The Yellow Sea is released to Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray on 26th March, from Eureka. For more info, visit www.theyellowsea.co.uk.