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Review by Stephanie Scaife

It was somewhat of a relief when I sat down to watch The Body as it turned out to be one of those rare instances when a screener you receive actually turns out to be pretty good. After opening Sitges last year and screening at The London Film Festival, The Body has finally made its way to DVD and Blu-ray in the UK. The first feature film directed by Oriol Paulo, whose previous credits include screenwriting duties on Julia’s Eyes, this is a tense and overwrought thriller in the vein of Brian De Palma that twists and turns it way through a gripping, if at times convoluted, plot to its unexpected conclusion.

The film starts well, hooking you in from the get-go as the corpse of extremely wealthy business tycoon Mayka Villaverde (Belén Rueda) mysteriously disappears from the morgue, with the sole witness being a security guard that fled the scene only to be hit by a car. He’s now in a coma, leaving Detective Jaime Peña (José Coronado) and his team to try and figure out exactly what happened, the starting point being Mayka’s young widower Álex Ulloa (Hugo Silva) who seems miraculously unfazed by his wife’s sudden death. The Body takes place over the course of one night and is intercut with flashbacks that gradually offer insight into Mayka and Álex’s relationship; as well as the run up to her death which we learn very early on was carefully engineered by Álex and his girlfriend Carla (Aura Garrido). This revelation early on lets you know that nothing is going to be as you expect with this film. My initial expectation was that it would be a straightforward whodunit, but as the film progresses you realise that all your preconceptions about the genre are being cast aside. This works to a certain extent, especially in terms of holding your interest and continuously surprising you with each turn it takes; however, it does by the end have the faint whiff of perhaps trying just a little too hard, dipping it into the realms of fantasy when sometimes something unexpected becomes something unbelievable.

Belén Rueda (The Orphanage) is fantastic as the overbearing and controlling Mayka, portraying her as both sympathetic and loathsome in a complicated performance that could easily have fallen flat in the hands of a lesser actor. I found myself both rooting for her and wishing for her demise in equal turns, an emotion that surely mirrors the dilemma of her tormented young husband Álex, who himself earns our sympathy in the face of his relationship with Mayka who is domineering and possessive; yet seeking solace in the arms of an attractive young student ensures that he acts selfishly and rashly. I find great enjoyment in a film where the characters are not black and white, as in life there is nobody who is one or the other, and those shades of grey (although perhaps treading into the realms of melodrama here at times) make the characters more realistic and unpredictable due to our familiarity with more straightforward and clear cut narratives.

Where The Body falls foul is in its heavy handed soundtrack that is about as subtle as a flashing sign being brought into frame stating “something bad is about to happen…” And the final few minutes really stretched the realms of what is plausible, even in terms of a genre film, but overall you could do a lot worse than The Body if you’re in the mood for something that’s going to keep you guessing until the very end.

The Body is out now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment.

Review by Ben Bussey

The problem with movies that centre on a big twist is that more often than not that twist becomes the very thing that the movie is sold on, and often not too subtly. Witness the posters and covers that highlight Janet Leigh’s screaming face in the shower, the Statue of Liberty in half on the beach, the wicker man stood on a hilltop. In the case of No One Lives, you might very well go in much as our own Tristan did, not knowing which way it was all going to go – were it not that the promotional material (including but not limited to the rather lazy DVD cover art below) spells it out fairly clearly.

I’ll stop there. If you’re largely in the dark on No One Lives and would rather stay that way, then I’d recommend you go read Tristan’s review – his feelings on the film are largely the same as my own, and he doesn’t give any spoilers. Me – I’m going to spoiler the hell out of this thing. I don’t often do that, but I will today, partly just to diverge a little from what Tristan wrote (as I said, his assessment and mine aren’t too far removed), but also just because it’s sometimes nice to get into the specifics.

So – last warning, spoilers all the way from this point.

It’s a disingenuous title. Two people live, and you can see them on this page already. But let’s not get too pedantic.

Also – I’m not sure how big a surprise it is that Luke Evans is in fact the killer. Sure, the opening half hour or so tries to set him up as a relatively meek, mild-mannered everyman, so we’ll be taken aback when he reveals himself to be a homicidal maniac of epic proportions. Does that necessarily mean we’re genuinely shocked when the shit hits the fan? Watch any Bruce Lee movie, and more often than not for the first half hour or so he refuses to fight – but we still know he’s Bruce fucking Lee. The delay makes it that bit sweeter once the can of whoop-ass is finally opened.

Now, Luke Evans sure isn’t Bruce Lee, but when his unnamed anti-hero turns the tables on the gang holding him hostage and lets loose his monster (so to speak), it’s pretty sweet.

It’s curious how No One Lives can feel so very familiar when, to be fair, it does blend a variety of B-movie tropes in a relatively unique way. We have at least one unequivocal villain in Derek Magyar’s sadistic scumbag Flynn, and two true innocents in Adelaide Clemens’ abductee Emma and Gary Grubbs’ good natured motel manager, but otherwise this isn’t really a good guys/bad guys story; more one of varying degrees of badness. Evans in many respects has that same warped sense of honour we get from your typical slasher villain, only taking out those who really deserve it; yet Magyar aside, the same is true of the criminals. I guess the idea was to make things that bit less predictable. I don’t think it worked. You’ll still be counting down the moments between kills for the most part – but that’s not so bad, given how much fun the kills are when they come.

For director Ryûhei Kitamura, it’s very much following on in a similar spirit to his last US effort, The Midnight Meat Train; and it’s interesting to note, considering how that movie underperformed on release – alas, not unlike this one – that the DVD cover makes a point of emphasising the connection. But I guess that’s horror for you, as all the good stuff builds its reputation over the years (and hell, WWE have a sequel to See No Evil in the works, which was a long way from being a hit on release; the passage of time can do a lot). Like Kitamura’s Bradley Cooper/Vinnie Jones Clive Barker adaptation, No One Lives very much aims to augment its carnage with some distinctly oddball sensibilities, and as a result winds up coming off a bit smug, and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. But again, I find myself forgiving that because once the violence hits it’s so agreeably gory and OTT – and, in a happy divergence from Midnight Meat Train, mostly practical, without much in the way of noticeable CG.

In a sense, sitting down to watch No One Lives is like stepping into a modern McDonalds. They’re dressing it all up a bit fancier than they used to, applying a different aesthetic, trying to feign sophistication – but ultimately you’re going there for the exact same trash, and that’s just what they’re dishing up. Meat, meat, meat, and lots of it. On which note – America Olivo. It reached the final act and I was literally just thinking, “hmm, so she’s doing her usual bad girl routine, but generally she only gets cast in roles when they want her to get her tits out. Guess she’s branching out… oh wait.” And along comes the longest shower scene in recent memory, ranking highly alongside the girl from Terror at the Opera putting in eye drops and listening to opera tapes on full-blast as one of the stupidest things for a character to do when they know full well the killer’s still after them. Once again – meat, meat, meat. But hey, we got a bit of similarly gratuitous Luke Evans naked man-ass earlier, so you can’t say they’re not striving for balance.

Still, walnut-cracking buttocks aside, what does Evans bring to the table…? This was clearly intended as a big calling card for the up-and-coming Welshman, and it would appear to have been successful given he’s followed it with Fast & Furious 6, and the upcoming Dracula Untold and the reboot of The Crow. I have to say, though, I’m not sure I can see the appeal. Sure, he’s a classic tall dark and handsome type with good physicality, but he just seems a bit nondescript to me. I’ve discussed this with others recently, and we all seem to agree that we’ve probably seen him in more films than we realise, but he always fades into the background: in The Raven he was totally overshadowed by Cusack’s impassioned Poe; in Tamara Drewe he is a pale memory next to Gemma Areterton’s Daisy Dukes. I’m really not sure he’s got quite the requisite charisma to carry a movie the way he has to here, which doesn’t bode too well for Dracula or The Crow.

There are many ways No One Lives could have been a stronger movie. A tighter script that kept things a bit simpler would have helped, and perhaps a stronger actor in the lead. But hey, since when was B-grade horror about getting everything perfect? If it wasn’t a little rough around the edges, it wouldn’t have the same appeal. Ultimately, this is a fun bit of action-infused horror that doesn’t outstay its welcome and delivers enough bang for buck to give you your money’s worth. And hey; it ain’t a sequel or a remake. I think we should all be pleased to see such fare coming out of a mainstream production house, and – even though the next two big horror titles on WWE’s roster ARE a sequel and a remake (the aforementioned See No Evil 2, and Leprechaun: Origins) – I think No One Lives is a good indicator that they’re taking on the genre in the right spirit. More of it, I hope.

No One Lives is out on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 23rd September, from Anchor Bay.

Review by Ben Bussey

If this really is James Wan’s kind-of/sort-of/almost-certainly-not-really last horror movie, the director certainly hasn’t shamed himself. We might ponder whether he’s not selling himself short kissing the genre goodbye, however, when his supposed swansong is essentially a direct retread of (arguably) his finest hour.

Yes, I really enjoyed the original Insidious. It didn’t change my life in any way, but I had a lot of fun with it. I liked how it played with my expectations; how it had an understated, slow-burn opening hour, suggesting it was going to be yet another one of those less-is-more ghost movies in which you see nothing and all the scares are fake-outs, sudden door slams etc… but then the longer it went on, the more it turned that expectation on its head with weird ghosts aplenty, all of which you could see, all of whom were clearly actual actors there on set and not wisps of CGI haphazardly painted in afterwards. And then that wonderfully ridiculous finale, wherein it took us literally into the ghost realm, again having the good sense to keep it all somehow tangible and small scale, with a deluge of surreal sights left and right. Was it anything we hadn’t seen already in The Shining, the Phantasm series, or any number of Argento movies we might mention? Probably not – but it was unlike any other horror movie that had made its way to multiplexes in 2011. No, it didn’t rock the world or rejuvenate the genre, but it was a perfectly enjoyable break from the norm.

A bit sad, then, that Insidious 2 falls into the same old sequel trap of retracing basically the exact same steps as before. They grab that old genie by the short and curlies, do their damnedest to shove him back into the bottle, and try to make Rose Byrne go through the same gradual realisation that something spooky’s going on, and have Patrick Wilson do the same “you’re imagining things” routine, only this time they get to regularly say – wait for it – “we’ve been through this before!” To which anyone with the original Insidious fresh in their memory will readily concur.

Even so, the old maxim about not fixing what ain’t broken isn’t without some merit. I’m sure we’d all be hard pressed to count the number of sequels which have basically replayed the original, yet still wound up perfectly entertaining movies. And so it is here. Insidious Chapter 2 is still an enjoyable enough ghost movie, even if it doesn’t stray very far from the parameters set by its predecessor – indeed, at points it directly revisits the original in a nice, reasonably quirky way (I’m not sure if it’s more Back to the Future Part II, or the police station sequence of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure).

And, in common with its predecessor, it’s extraordinarily silly. So stupendous is its silliness, you honestly wouldn’t be surprised for Graham Chapman to wander on in full military regalia and demand, “stop that! It’s silly.”

Wan and writer/co-star Leigh Whannell have long demonstrated clear signs of being Argento fanboys. The flashes of surrealism in Saw – the tricycle riding puppet, the pig mask – paved the way to all manner of irrational sights in the first Insidious, to say nothing of the somewhat stilted dialogue and characterisations (which, I suspect, may well be knowingly so). This time, however, I do have to wonder if they’re just trying a bit too hard, throwing as much shit as they can at the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s almost ironic that, in the midst of their clear eagerness to break with convention, they fall back on one of the most overused staples of horror; the cross-dressing psycho with mommy issues. You be forgiven for thinking every gender-confused person that ever lived wound up on a homicidal rampage, given that’s almost all they ever do in the movies. Pardon my PC-consciousness, but I feel like we should be past this one by now.

Nor does the ‘let’s point and laugh at the weirdo’ stuff end there, thanks to the really rather painful attempts at comedy interplay between Whannel and Angus Sampson as parapsychologists Specs and Tucker. I gather Wan and Whannell were trying to consciously insert a bit of real humour into proceedings this time, mostly via these characters, but deary me – this is some feeble, almost Michael Bay level stuff. They’re either emphasising their nerdiness and physical ineffectuality, or hinting at homoerotic tension between the two of them, all hellbent (no pun intended) on getting laughs. It really takes me aback sometimes how filmmakers working within a genre which is largely defined by its subcultural appeal still fall into the same trap of mocking those who don’t meet the supposed norm. But even if these scenes don’t send you into a storm of anti-conformist rage, there’s no avoiding how juvenile it all is; one big dramatic scene crescendos with a butt joke, for crying out loud. It’s really weak, and given that the ending implies that these guys may wind up the focus on the inevitable Insidious 3, it does make me shudder to think what else we can look forward to.

Still, Insidious Chapter 2 obviously isn’t the first horror movie to carry some unsavoury political overtones without compromising its entertainment value too badly. Again, I should imagine a more common complaint will simply be its silliness, and the fact that it’s pretty much all been done already, but so long as you’re not expecting too much there’s no reason you won’t have a perfectly good time with this movie. Even so, I do hope that James Wan does come back to horror in some capacity in the future, regardless of whether it’s sooner or later. He successfully avoided repeating himself by sidestepping the Saw sequels; it’s a shame that he should wind up doing just that with what looks to be the second major horror franchise he’s kick-started.

Insidious Chapter 2 is out now in cinemas all over this world and the next, from Entertainment One.

Review by Tristan Bishop

I’ll start this review with a warning – A Magnificent Haunting is not a horror film. Yes, it contains ghosts – several in fact – but what we’re dealing with here is a light-weight, low-key comedy more inspired by Almodovar than Insidious. Director Ferzan Özpetek, known for several gay-themed dramas and comedies, mostly set in his home city of Rome, here embraces a supernatural slant on what is otherwise a sweet-natured and easy going tale of a man trying to find himself.

We are introduced to Pietro (played by Elio Germano), an aspiring actor who has moved to Rome, and supports himself by working nights in a bakery. At first he lives with his cousin Maria (Paola Minaccioni), who seems to have quite the crush on him, which is unfortunate, as Pietro is gay. Soon they find a surprisingly cheap, large apartment for him, and he moves in ready to start his new life properly. Of course Pietro is not alone in the house, as it turns out to be haunted by 8 ghosts, members of the Apollonia theatre company, who have been haunting the place since World War 2. Thankfully these ghosts, although initially an annoyance, are friendly, and could eventually prove useful to Pietro’s acting ambitions.

The original Italian title of A Magnificent Haunting is ‘Magnifica Presenza,’ which translates more directly as ‘A Magnificent Presence’, which is a fitting pun on the haunting/acting themes of the film, and the humour contained within is on a similarly refined level – this is no hysterical slapstick, you might raise a smile but you won’t be busting any guts from giggling. The script is fairly sharp, with most of the humour coming from characterisation, and the film itself is warm and charming. Unfortunately it’s also hideously over-long (by a good 30 minutes or so in fact), predictable, and rather dull, and if you can find yourself watching this without checking your watch at the hour mark, you’re a better person than I (or you’ve dozed off already).

One of the most interesting points (and a source of some of that charm) for me about the film is that, although the main character is gay, the film doesn’t make this a major source of drama – Pietro has pressing issues other than ‘dealing with his sexuality,’ and it’s refreshing to see this in a film. Unfortunately, despite this, and the generally likeable nature of the rest of the film, A Magnificent Haunting is a guest that rather outstays its welcome.

A Magnificent Haunting will be released to select UK cinemas on 25th October, before coming to VOD and DVD on 11th November, from Peccadillo Pictures.

Review by Ben Bussey

Ever watch a horror movie that felt like it just got that bit too close to the bone? Cheap scares are ten-a-penny; for horror to really have an impact, sometimes it has to come and get you where you live. It has to present a fantasy scenario that the audience can truly relate to, put its characters through circumstances that the viewer can easily imagine going through themselves. Then more than ever, a horror movie can force you to contemplate how you would truly fare in such a situation.

Citadel does this for me in a way few other horror movies have in some time. For one such as myself – a husband and father living on a limited income – the set-up of this movie presents a scenario which is all too easy to envisage.

Moderate spoilers to follow.

To put it a bit crudely, what writer/director Ciaron Foy (making his feature debut) has given us here is a horror equivalent of Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl. I’m not sure if enough people have even seen Jersey Girl for that reference point to really resonate, so I’d better elaborate: it’s a basic nightmare scenario for any new father for his loved one to die in childbirth, leaving him not only having to cope with life without her, but also to raise their child alone. However, where Smith’s film saw Ben Affleck mosey on to his cosy old suburban home with papa George Carlin, Foy’s film plunges new single parent Aneurin Barnard into a living hell of poverty and paranoia.

Crippled with agoraphobia, Barnard’s Tommy is plagued by the feeling that he and his baby daughter are still being targeted by the same gang of hoodies whose seemingly motiveless attack left his wife comatose. He’s torn between a quite understandable desperation to get the hell out of town, and an underlying suspicion that there’s something more to the situation than meets the eye, a feeling intensified by the suggestion that the gruff local Priest (a nice turn by James Cosmo) knows more than he’s letting on. But if Tommy really wants to find the truth, it will mean facing his terror head-on, and returning to the dismal tower block that he and his wife once called home, where the attack took place.

Straight away we’re faced with a plethora of mundane horrors that so many of us must deal with on a daily basis. The constant cries of an inconsolable child. Squalid living conditions. Unreliable power supply. Unhelpful office staff. Bus drivers who clearly see you but drive on regardless. And the perpetual sense of threat from strangers on the street.

But even if this representation of working class existence does not necessarily ring true to everyone, Citadel is a very effective fright flick, for the simple reason that it really is about fear. Tommy is a central protagonist whose defining characteristic is that he is constantly afraid; it is this seemingly insurmountable obstacle he must find a way to overcome, and Foy and Barnard are both to be commended for their thoroughly sympathetic portrayal of a traumatised man struggling to get by in day to day existence.

Where Citadel is liable to prove more divisive is in its midway revelation as to the nature of the threat. Diverging from its hoodie horror forebears – Ils, Eden Lake (or even F, which implied but never explicitly stated that its hooded antagonists were not in fact human) – Citadel reveals that there are bona fide monsters, not just disaffected youths, underneath those sweatshirts. Doubtless this will raise some questions as to just what the film is saying about lower working class children, particularly given the ultimate course of action Tommy and the Priest take to overcome them. Nor is this the only thing likely to bother some viewers, as there are some rather glaring inconsistencies in the behaviour of these phantom chavs – notably regarding the question of how and why they attack.

Blending gritty kitchen sink realism with more fantastical Gothic thrills is always going to be a tricky proposition, and some may feel that Citadel sells itself short by taking that route. Even so, for sheer nightmarish atmosphere, it really can’t be faulted. It’s beautifully shot and edited with a haunting musical score, and the tension barely lets up from start to finish.

All in all, I’m not sure I can say I really enjoyed Citadel – for, as I said, the core conceit just cut a little too close for comfort. But then, great horror isn’t generally too concerned with respecting the viewer’s comfort zone. If you’re anything like me and you feel like your own comfort zone could do with a little challenging, Citadel may well do the trick. It’s the best performance yet on the already respectable CV of Aneurin Barnard, and it definitely marks out Ciaron Foy as a writer-director worth looking out for in the future.

Citadel is released to Region 2 DVD on 30th September 2013 from Metrodome. For another take on the movie, here’s Tristan’s review from Abertoir 2012.