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Rawhead Rex (1986)

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A fairly solid point about Rawhead Rex is made in the accompanying press release for Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition. It’s long been said that Clive Barker, who wrote the screenplay from his own short story for director George Pavlou, was so appalled with the resulting film – not to mention their earlier collaboration, Underworld (AKA Transmutations) – that he decided he would no longer put his work in the hands of another director, and opted to personally take the helm on his next film, 1987’s Hellraiser. And given what a genre-redefining classic that turned out to be, it can be argued that Rawhead Rex is indirectly responsible for changing the face of horror in the late 1980s and beyond.

Of course, it may change things a little that in the extras Pavlou dismisses this as fan gossip nonsense, and that Barker’s plans to direct Hellraiser were already in place; and the timelines would suggest Pavlou’s correct there, given Hellraiser was into production within months of Rawhead Rex’s premiere. But either way, we get the impression that Rawhead Rex ultimately boils down to nothing more than a funny footnote in the annals of 80s horror. This may well be the case; but it’s a very, very funny footnote, never ceasing to entertain throughout every woefully, wonderfully misjudged minute of it. Whether this was entirely the desired effect is another matter, but hey, an enjoyable film is an enjoyable film.

Where Barker’s original tale from Volume 3 of the Books of Blood was set in a village near London, the movie shifts the action to rural Ireland (reportedly for tax reasons). We open on a farmer trying to shift an ancient standing stone from one of his fields. In so doing, he unwittingly releases the monster of the title, a carnivorous beast which has been buried there for untold centuries. Around the same time, American historian Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes) is in the village with his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper) and their two children, conducting research. Hallenbeck suspects the local church was built on the site of a temple venerating something much older than Christ, something which the current clergymen would rather he didn’t find out about – and his suspicions would appear to be confirmed by the sudden emergence of a horrifying flesh-hungry giant terrorising the locals. But things are going to get a whole lot weirder and more personal before Rawhead’s reign of terror is over.

In common with most of the Books of Blood stories (of which it’s debatable how successful any of the film adaptations have been, Candyman aside), Barker’s tale was always going to be a bit of a challenge to bring to the screen. While Rawhead Rex is indeed a hulking monster with an appetite for human flesh, he’s also an ancient, sentient being once venerated as a god, whose desires and fears are dictated by primal sexual impulses. However, as we’ve seen from that other mid-80s UK literary adaptation Lifeforce (based on Colin Wilson’s The Space Vampires), translating such high-reaching literary ideas in a mass appeal horror movie may be easier said than done. Small wonder, then, that – not unlike Lifeforce – Rawhead Rex comes off as high camp B-movie horror with a bit of perversity and blasphemy thrown in just to tart things up a bit. Again, though, that doesn’t by any means render the film lifeless or dull; far from it. In the extras, actors Hugh O’Conor and Cora Venus Lunny, who played the Hallenbecks’ young children, state that even they were aware at the time that it was a somewhat ‘schlocky’ production. The mostly Irish cast reportedly features some of the most esteemed figures from the country’s theatre, and the bulk of them spend much of the film with vaguely bewildered expressions on their faces. No one seems to be having more fun than Ronan Wilmot as the deranged Verger Declan, driven mad by the influence of his new god Rawhead, joyous in his rejection of his old Christian ways. If there’s one scene in the film unlikely to be forgotten, it has be Declan’s – ahem – baptism as a devotee of Rawhead.

Above all else, though, it’s Rawhead himself that is the crux of the film’s appeal. Where Barker may have envisaged a ravenous, spiny, razor-toothed, nine-foot phallus (yes, he’s called ‘raw head’ for a reason – one wonders if this was one of the titles the author dreamed up whilst under the influence of special cookies), what we actually have here is actor Heinrich von Schellendorf (in his sole screen role) snugly squeezed into a rubber suit and mask with a fixed expression, swirly red LEDs for eyes, and heavy metal-influenced hair and dress sense, somewhere between a Power Rangers bad guy and a member of Gwar. Being an 80s horror movie, Rawhead Rex obviously doesn’t favour the less-is-more, keep the monster off camera approach: he’s on screen a lot from early on, and his whole presence personifies the film. He looks utterly ridiculous and clearly not real; but we all knew that as soon as we sat down anyway. Best to just embrace the absurdity and go with it. Again, this certainly seems to be what the cast are doing, and any attempts to inject some real pathos into proceedings (take David Dukes’ cries of paternal despair as he struggles valiantly with a turnstile) only serve to make the whole thing ever more ridiculous. Slap on a healthy portion of equally unconvincing gore and stunts, one of the most flagrantly gratuitous topless scenes from all 80s horror (yes, that’s saying something), and a finale which makes very little sense no matter how heavily under the influence the viewer might be, and it all adds up to some prime Friday night fun.

And now, to cut and paste the same line we’ve been slapping on the end of these reviews for the best part of a decade: it’s another great edition from Arrow Video. The film looks as good as you could hope, and we have a couple of commentary tracks (one featuring George Pavlou in conversation with Stephen Thrower), plus a bunch of interview featurettes with the cast and crew, comics artist Stephen R Bissette discussing an abandoned graphic novel adaptation of Barker’s story, plus the original trailer and an image gallery. The first pressing of the blu-ray will also be accompanied by a collector’s booklet written by Kat Ellinger.

Rawhead Rex is released to UK Blu-ray on 14th May from Arrow Video, and is available now on Arrow Video’s Amazon Prime channel.

Cure (1997)

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The 1990s may have been a boom period for the psychological thriller, but it’s debatable as to just how fitting a description that is to many of the films classed as such. In Hollywood, the bulk of them tended to be half-baked Silence of the Lambs knock-offs or sensationalised Hitchcock updates; in either case, the emphasis tended to be more on stylised scares and theatrics than really incisive drama that got under the skin and into the heads of both the protagonists and the audience. However, Japanese writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film Cure – now getting its first UK home entertainment release thanks to Eureka’s Masters of Cinema imprint – is about as psychological a thriller as you’re ever likely to see.

I’ll confess to having been unaware of the film before now (surely I can be excused, given the aforementioned lack of UK release before now), although I did see Kurosawa’s more recent film Creepy at Celluloid Screams 2016. It’s fair to say that Creepy plays out in a very similar manner to Cure: very quiet, slow and understated, but with a steadily building sense of unease that reaches levels of remarkable intensity without ever lapsing into melodrama. This being the case, Cure isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste – it certainly pushes me out of my comfort zone somewhat – but if you give it the attention it deserves, you may well find it a very rewarding, unnerving viewing experience.

Kôji Yakushi is Kenichi Takabe, an outwardly calm and collected police detective living under tremendous pressure. At home, his wife Fumie (Anna Nakagawa) is struggling with the onset of early dementia; at work, he has a bizarre series of murders to investigate. The victims and the perpetrators seem to have no connection to one another, yet every murder fits the exact same MO with identical wounds, and in each case the murderer immediately confesses, claiming they didn’t want to do it but had no control over their actions. Takabe’s investigations soon lead him to Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), an emotionally distant young man who seems to be suffering from short term memory loss, but has a strange charisma that makes all those who meet him struggle to resist his manipulations. The question is, can the tough but tormented Takabe hold out against Mamiya’s mesmerism long enough to stop the killing spree?

It’s easy to see from that synopsis how Cure might easily have been an altogether different affair given the Hollywood treatment, but Kurosawa and company handle things in an extraordinarily grounded, almost kitchen-sink realist style. Music is almost totally absent, and noticeable editing is also minimal, with most scenes playing out in single takes without too much camera movement. The performances, too, are very understated; the poker faced interplay between Kôji Yakushi and Masato Hagiwara builds in intensity so slowly, almost imperceptibly, that it genuinely throws you when things get heated. Even today, it’s not commonplace for such inherently pulpy fare to be treated in such a serious, naturalistic manner; it seems likely to have been fairly unprecedented back in 1997.

Again, many viewers may well find their patience tested by the ultra-quiet slow burn approach, but it’s well worth sticking it out. There’s much to be said for cinema that forces the audience to do a bit of work, and you’ll need to do just that with Cure, but it’ll be time and energy well spent, and likely to linger in your head for some time afterwards.

Cure is out now on dual format DVD and Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment.

Cartel 2045 (2018)

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Like most of us who were born into the late days of the 20th century, I grew up convinced that by the time I was an adult there’d be robots everywhere, either serving menial jobs and/or enforcing the law, or overthrowing mankind as the dominant life form on the planet. As with so many lost childhood dreams, there’s an odd blend of relief and regret that none of this has come to pass, even if the role technology plays in our lives has changed substantially. But one thing technological advancements have ensured is that representations of robots in film and TV are more sophisticated than ever.

Brilliantly realised CGI robots are the primary jewel in the crown of Cartel 2045 (originally made in 2014 as Juarez 2045, but only now getting a US release under this new title). First-time feature director Chris Le’s film shows us a world in which military attack droids have revolutionised warfare, but have also significantly changed the face of street crime. Any self-respecting criminal outfit is not complete without droids of its own, and the most feared criminals of them all are the Malvado cartel of Juarez, headed up by the dastardly Angel Malvado (who else but Danny Trejo). The cartel have abducted a high-ranking roboticist and his daughter, forcing him to build Malvado the most formidable weapon the streets of Juarez have ever seen. To this end, the US military, at war with the cartel, re-enlist disgraced ex-Marine Chris (Alex Heartman) to join a unit tasked with rescuing Malvado’s prisoners, and taking his criminal empire down.

One feels an odd mix of admiration and disappointment watching Cartel 2045, as it’s immediately obvious that director Le and his crew didn’t have a huge amount of money to play with, but at the same time every penny of what they had is clearly on the screen. IMDb lists the film’s budget as $1 million, and if that’s accurate it seems safe to say the bulk of that went on a) Danny Trejo and b) the robots. The SFX work here really is quite remarkable, with incredibly detailed and lifelike droids which are on screen for a hefty portion of the running time, interacting with the live action cast so fluidly, you can barely see the join. Even so, it’s hard not to feel some regret, as if they had more of a mid-range budget – say, around the reported $30 million Neill Blomkamp had on his debut District 9 – it would doubtless have looked even more seamless. As it is, while the robots look great, the digital gunfire and blood spray still looks as unconvincing as it usually does in low budget productions.

Presumably it was in the interests of making it look more traditionally cinematic that the digitally-shot film was given the Grindhouse treatment; that scratchy, battered old print look that was briefly popular in the indie scene 5-10 years back. This is an odd move in some ways, as while Cartel 2045 may evoke a RoboCop/Terminator/Predator-esque tone, it doesn’t directly ape a 70s/80s aesthetic. However, this move does mean the film mostly avoids the cheap-as-chips DV look that makes so much of today’s low-budget fare off-putting.

So while it’s hard not to wish that Le and company had been able to secure a bigger budget to really do their vision justice, as it stands Cartel 2045 is still a perfectly enjoyable old-school sci-fi action romp. Danny Trejo is, as usual, Danny Trejo, and seems to be having plenty of fun in his big bad boss man role, but thankfully the cast of comparative unknowns around him also do a fine job; particularly the soldiers, who make for a pretty convincing military unit, and pull off some good action scenes as well as plenty of enjoyable tough guy trash talk.

Cartel 2045 is released to VOD in the US on May 1st,  via Uncork’d Entertainment.

Rampage (2018)

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I know I’m far from the only one delighted to see that giant monsters have at last come back to the forefront of blockbuster cinema – and it’s intriguing to note how much of this is the handiwork of studio Warner Bros. They might still be finding their feet when it comes to their superhero movies, but they’re really getting the job done when it comes to big battling beasts: Pacific Rim, Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, upcoming giant shark flick The Meg (ooh, the crossover possibilities); even the recent Ready Player One found room for a cameo from a kaiju eiga icon. Sure, it’s unlikely any of these will ever be held up as great works of cinema, but they’re all tons of Saturday morning cartoon-esque fun.

Just about the only thing this new wave of giant monster movies has been lacking thus far has been the presence of lead actors who really embody that larger than life sensibility. Happily, WB have recognised this Achilles heel by casting Jason Statham in The Meg, due August; but for right now, we’ve got wrestler-turned-actor and all around Hollywood money printing machine Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in a big screen adaptation of arcade game Rampage, in which a giant ape, giant wolf and giant crocodile smash stuff up in the big city. Sounds like simple, undemanding fun – and happily, that’s just what director Brad Peyton’s film delivers.

Johnson is… well, he’s Dwayne Johnson. Remember how in most old Jackie Chan movies, they just call him Jackie? It really feels like they should just do that with Johnson’s movies too by now, as every single movie he does is a minor variation on the persona that’s made him such a bankable star. But hey, for the purposes of clarity, here Johnson is Davis Okoye, a former Special Forces operative turned primatologist (regular career path? Who knows, who cares, it’s a monster movie). Naturally, he’s The Best There Is in his field, with an unusual ability to communicate with apes; but he has an especially close bond with George, an ultra-rare albino gorilla who he rescued from poachers as a baby (yes, I looked it up, baby is the official title for a baby ape), and has raised to adulthood, even teaching him sign language – but, regrettably, not linking him up to a speaker that interprets signing and speaks it out loud, like in that much-loved 1995 classic, Congo.

Anyway, just when it all seem fine and dandy, the weirdest thing happens: some sort of debris falls from space, landing smack-bang in the middle of George’s enclosure. The next thing we know, George is displaying uncharacteristic aggression, and – rather more alarmingly – he’s significantly increased in size. Davis doesn’t know what’s going on, but the audience has an advantage, as the prologue scene (with a cameo from Planet Terror’s Marley Shelton, and a possible origin story for The Princess Bride’s ROUS) saw some ultra high-tech, ultra-illegal genetic editing experiments released from an orbiting space station. This technology, developed by a shady corporation, is intended to weaponise animals, making them many times bigger, stronger and more violent. George, of course, is not the only creature exposed to this material: debris has also landed in the woods of Wyoming, populated by wild wolves, and in the Florida Everglades, known for their crocodiles. No prizes for guessing what happens next.

Rampage marks a couple of interesting landmarks in 2018 cinema. Firstly, it’s the third major cinema release in as many months to heavily feature sign language (though not nearly so extensively as The Shape of Water or A Quiet Place); plus, it’s the second movie in as many months to feature an oversized computer-generated character flipping the bird (and more than once; take that, Pacific Rim Uprising). In a curious sort of way, this illustrates the tonal dichotomy of Rampage; studious and sensitive, yet also filled with yuck-yuck tomfoolery. It may come as a surprise how straight and dark the film plays at times, with an opening scene that’s straight out of Alien, and an early hunt sequence (with a brief but scene-stealing turn from one of the few contemporary actors to rival Johnson in the big and buff stakes, Joe Manganeillo) clearly riffing on Predator. As those reference points might suggest, these early sequences boast violence that’s surprisingly graphic and bloody for a PG-13/12A. However, while Rampage has its moments of both grimness and goofiness, it never gets too grim or too goofy to keep from being a simple good time.

All of it adds up to a popcorny blockbuster that might easily have seemed a bit samey and forgettable amongst the many large scale cinematic spectacles of recent memory, were it not for one key element: Dwayne Johnson. If you’re not already sold on Johnson as a leading man, Rampage probably won’t do anything to change your mind, but for everyone else his presence makes all the difference. It’s been quite a while since Johnson and his sometime rival/co-star/arch nemesis Vin Diesel first rose to prominence in Hollywood, leading many to declare them the new Stallone and Schwarzenegger – although at the time, the jury was out as to which was which. When 9/11 put the old school action genre out of favour, it took a while for both actors to get back to the gung ho man’s man roles they had always coveted, but now that the dust has settled, it seems safe to say Johnson is very much the new Schwarzenegger. Not since Arnie has a leading man been at once so ridiculously superhuman, yet inherently likeable and relatable, with a knack for lending a sardonic wit to a movie that makes it clear to the audience that they’re in on the joke. (Diesel, meanwhile, clearly fits the Stallone mould, as he struggles to carry much weight outside his signature franchise and takes himself way too seriously.)

Simply put, if you enjoy watching Dwayne Johnson in action, you’re bound to enjoy Rampage; the presence of giant marauding monsters is just the icing on the cake. Naomie Harris provides fine support as the geneticist who teams up with Johnson; but the actors who revel in chewing up the most scenery are Malin Ackerman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. That’s right, it’s a mini-Watchmen reunion, only this time around no one involved appears to be under any illusions that they’re actually making an ‘important’ film; they’re just there to have a bit of fun, much as the audience should be.

Rampage is in cinemas now, from Warner Bros.

A Quiet Place (2018)

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How times change. A decade ago, it might not have come as a surprise to see a horror film which opens on the Platinum Dunes logo top the box office on its opening weekend; but we certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be an all-new original work, much less – gasp – a good film. There’s been a bit of buzz this week over the Michael Bay/Brad Fuller-run production house announcing that they’re done with horror remakes for good, although many years back they had quietly declared they intended to step away from the genre en masse; I wrote a very snarky article on the subject at the time entitled There Is A God: Platinum Dunes Quit Horror (don’t look for it, it didn’t survive the move from this site’s former incarnation Brutal As Hell). However, in the years since Platinum Dunes have brought us the thoroughly enjoyable TV series Black Sails, and – in cahoots with Blumhouse, who have long since stolen their crown as kings of mainstream horror – they’ve co-produced the provocative and often-entertaining Purge series, as well as the two Ouija movies (of which, Mike Flanagan’s second film at least was good).

Just goes to show, even those we might historically dismiss as the worst of the worst can indeed acknowledge they’ve done wrong, and atone for past mistakes, as now, independent of Blumhouse, Platinum Dunes have produced what has to be the most interesting, unusual mainstream horror movie since – watch out, here comes the obvious point of reference – 2017’s Get Out. While director John Krasinski’s film isn’t quite so ground-breaking or powerful as Jordan Peele’s awards-grabbing debut, it is very effective indeed, and really pushes the envelope for what we might expect from a wide release, multiplex-friendly genre entry. Where just about every major horror movie of the past two decades has been marketed as a dare to audiences to test their mettle, A Quiet Place presents an even greater challenge: can a contemporary cinema audience shut the fuck up for an hour and a half?

As the movie begins, it’s some months after some initially unclear circumstances have resulted in what seems to be the total breakdown of society as we know it. We meet a family (according to IMDb they’re called the Abbots and all have designated first names, though I’m damned if I remember them ever being used in any form) who are on what might have been a routine visit to the pharmacist, except the pharmacy in question is deserted, as is the small town around it; and every step of the way, the family are extremely careful to make no noise whatsoever, to the extent that they walk barefoot. They also communicate by sign language, a skill they had presumably all mastered in years gone by due to the deafness of the eldest child of the family (Millicent Simmonds, a young actress who is indeed deaf). It soon becomes clear why they have to live this way, as roaming the woods nearby are several carnivorous monsters with extreme sensitivity to sound, who attack with relentless speed and brutality whenever a noise reaches them. Living as quietly and simply as possible on their remote farm, the family do their best to get by whilst trying hold out hope that help will eventually come. However, as Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is pregnant, the chances of maintaining silence indefinitely seem very slim indeed.

The concept of a horror movie in which the protagonists can make no sound clearly had the potential to get gimmicky. On paper, it doesn’t feel too far removed from those stay in the light/stay out of the light movies like Pitch Black, Darkness Falls, Lights Out; or, with the need to stay quiet, it might be in a similar vein to 2016’s Don’t Breathe. And again, particularly considering that this is a Platinum Dunes production, we could easily have wound up with something more along those lines. It seems like a minor miracle that they didn’t insist on casting a mini-skirted Megan Fox type as the teenage daughter, and/or heavily sexing up Emily Blunt’s mother.

Thankfully, whether it’s down to director Krasinski, the script he co-wrote with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, or (gasp) Bay and Fuller at last understanding they don’t have to contrive for everything to appeal to adolescent boys, A Quiet Place stands worlds apart tonally. Sorry to bring up Get Out yet again, but it seems clear that this film has at last hammered home that which erudite horror fans have always known: immaturity is not the genre’s default setting. Supernatural beings and the threat of imminent, horrible death are not, and never have been incompatible with sober, level-headed treatment of grounded, character-based drama and existential anxiety, and A Quiet Place balances these elements beautifully.

Sadly but not entirely unexpectedly, this has resulted in the film getting those same utterly bizarre “it’s not really horror” claims that plagued Get Out and It last year. Such claims are, of course, total unmitigated bollocks – and, on a related note, much the same can be said of those declarations that it can’t be real horror because it’s rated PG-13 (although, as tends to be the case with anything horrific, it’s been passed 15 in Britain). While graphic gore may be kept to a minimum, there are some remarkably well-crafted suspense sequences here; indeed, for pretty much the entire latter half of the movie it barely lets up at all, and particularly given that we have young children in peril throughout, it’s bound to cut close to the bone for many viewers. Still, even though we don’t see much blood, this isn’t one of those Lewton-esque efforts that reveals nothing: the monsters get plenty of screen time, and they’re impressively icky.

Box office takings are, of course, a very dubious measure of a film’s overall ‘success,’ but the fact that at the time of writing (after barely a week in cinemas) A Quiet Place has taken almost $90 million worldwide – unusually high numbers for a horror movie – feels like a good omen for the genre. Get Out and It were not anomalies; both the studios and the wider audience seem to be leaning toward genuinely well-made, inventive and hard-hitting horror movies with a brain as well as a pulse. Long may this continue.

A Quiet Place is in cinemas now.

Ayla (2017)

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It may star an actress widely regarded as one of today’s predominant scream queens, and its central character may visit a creepy old house in the woods within the first five minutes, but don’t be fooled: Ayla is pretty far removed from your standard ultra-low budget indie horror movie. Written, produced and directed by Elias, mononymous filmmaker behind 2012’s Gut (which I haven’t personally seen, but was reviewed by our old writer Tristan on release), the film – not to be confused with similarly titled 2017 production Ayla: The Daughter of War – is an abstract rumination on the long-standing impact of grief with a psychosexual edge, thick with incestuous overtones. All this being the case, Ayla is very much intended to push the audience way out of its comfort zone; and while it may be largely successful in this, it never gets quite so deep under the skin as we might hope.

Nicholas Wilder is Elton, a thirtysomething book store employee who lives alone, but is in what seems to be a happy, burgeoning relationship with Alex (Sarah Schoofs, who previously co-starred with Wilder in Gut). Decades earlier, Elton’s little sister Ayla died at the age of four, and it seems he has never gotten over this, as she remains prevalent in his thoughts at all times, to such an extent that he believes she has somehow returned to the world of the living. Via the wonders of modern technology, he’s mocked up an image of what his sister might have looked like in adulthood, and he is convinced he’s seen this woman in the real world. Elton is not entirely discouraged in this belief by his mother (Dee Wallace), a new ager who claims to have ‘spoken’ to her lost daughter in the years since her loss; however, his no-nonsense brother James (D’Angelo Midili) seems anxious to slap him in the face and break his delusion. However, Elton’s obsession grows so intense that, under seemingly inexplicable circumstances, he somehow wills that very woman (Tristan Risk) into being. She seems incapable of speech, yet she seems to know Elton, who is convinced that she is indeed Ayla reborn. Elton is eager to share this miracle with his loved ones, but it soon becomes clear that no one is quite so convinced as he that this stranger is really his sister.

As might be apparent from the synopsis, Ayla very much skirts that fine line between arthouse and grindhouse in the hopes of hooking both sides. The casting of Risk in the title role might reflect this: since breaking through in American Mary, she’s become a frequent and more than welcome presence in ultra-low budget genre fare, and seems to be very much the indie leading lady of choice when the role demands particular extremes. This is certainly the case with Ayla, which not only requires her to appear naked for much of screen time but also to embody, as the film’s marketing puts it, ‘obsession become flesh:’ the literal embodiment of her traumatised brother’s dreams, desires and/or delusions, and subsequently not quite a complete human being. It makes sense, then, that there’s an animal quality to Risk’s performance, but it’s probably for the best that this doesn’t see the film venture into more traditional horror terrain, with none of that come-back-wrong Pet Semetary-type stuff here. Still, on the subject of wrongness, there is of course the aforementioned incestuous angle. It’s clear from the beginning that Elton’s fixation on his lost sister is erotically charged, although their bond is by no means purely sexual; this is merely one aspect of a broader abyss within his being.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that at times Ayla is just aiming at creating shock value for its own sake, and while in part it’s an effective portrayal of the impact of grief, it often feels wilfully abstruse. That said, it comes closest to losing its way in its more grounded and accessible moments, notably a perhaps misjudged, light-hearted cameo from Bill Oberst Jr. All in all though, Ayla is a well-constructed and atmospheric film making good use of a talented cast, and while it’s bound to alienate vast swathes of the audience, it’s also likely to intrigue a great many.

Ayla is out now on VOD in the US.

Acts of Vengeance (2017)

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The contemporary straight to DVD action movie is a fairly odd breed. For the best part of two decades now, the ageing action superstars who previously reigned supreme at the box office have for the most part been ushered to the back of the bus, and with the exception of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the bulk of them now seem to find most of their employment headlining cut-price punch-up flicks shot digitally in Eastern Europe, none of which ever see the inside of a cinema unless someone happens to have picked up the DVD from the supermarket before venturing out to see the latest blockbuster.

In recent years, this has been the place you’ve been most likely to find anything new starring the likes of Lundgren, Van Damme and Seagal; and yet, more and more we see actors who hadn’t been restricted to action in their heyday showing up in similar low-rent, bottom shelf fare. Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, Nicolas Cage; and now, Antonio Banderas has also wound up in that same neck of the woods. I gather Acts of Vengeance is just the latest in a number of DTV actioners that the former Zorro/Desperado star has made of late, though I haven’t seen any of the others; and, on the strength of this one, I’m certainly in no hurry to change that.

As I write this, another film I’m in no hurry to see – Eli Roth’s Death Wish, starring the aforementioned Bruce Willis – is opening in UK cinemas. As ill-advised and unwanted as that remake might seem, that’s nothing compared to how misconceived Acts of Vengeance is on pretty much every level, and how badly it squanders the talents of a leading man who’s worth so much more than this.

I don’t mention Death Wish just for the hell of it, incidentally; as the title might suggest, Acts of Vengeance ventures into very similar territory. Banderas is Frank Valera, a hot-shot big city defence lawyer who we’re told has done very well for himself by getting off criminals on technicalities. Of course, Frank’s professional success means he tends not to have much time for his wife and daughter, and when he’s kept late at the office one evening he misses his little girl singing in a talent show. But just when he thinks that’s the worst thing that’s going to happen that night, his wife and daughter don’t come home at all; it turns out they’ve both been murdered, for no discernible reason.

When the police investigation brings up no leads, it becomes clear that the killer will not be found, despite reassurances from friendly beat cop Strode (Karl Urban). Sinking into despair and alcoholism, Frank inadvertently stumbles into an underground fighting circuit, where he winds up seeking penance, allowing others to beat him to a pulp every night; but when one attempt to do the right thing sends him hurtling through a bookstore window, Frank finds himself clutching a blood-stained copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. The book speaks to Frank, who takes it as a sign that he must seek justice himself, through actions rather than words. And so, he takes a vow of silence, ditches the booze, hits the gym, gets martial arts lessons, and sets out to find the one who killed his wife and daughter, and make them pay.

As I should hope is self-evident from that synopsis, Acts of Vengeance is fairly ludicrous in concept. This would be no problem whatsoever if the film committed to that absurdity, and made a point of going all-out there bananas. Unfortunately, writer Matt Venne and director Isaac Florentine appear to be taking this all entirely seriously, and Banderas – a witty performer at his best – is obliged to be utterly po-faced throughout. The whole thing is made all the more excruciating by a badly over-written explanatory narration, presumably included to ensure we know what’s going on when Banderas, for thoroughly unconvincing reasons, stops talking midway. The sad part is, there might have been the beginnings of a more compelling revenge thriller had it been handled a bit better, but it all just winds up coming off dumb and embarrassing – yet not nearly over the top enough to make for a satisfying Friday night beer and curry film.

Credit where it’s due, there are some decent fight scenes; Florentine has a good track record in this department, having directed a number of movies with Scott Adkins (one of the few real stars to have arisen directly out of the modern DTV action arena). Even if it strains credibility how quickly Banderas’s big city lawyer transforms into a stone cold street fighter, the actor himself does a good job in the action scenes, nor is his co-star Karl Urban – the once (and future?) Dredd – any slouch in that department. Sadly, in this instance maybe 15-20 minutes of solid fisticuffs isn’t enough to make a viewing worthwhile. The cast deserves better, and so do the audience.

Acts of Vengeance is available on VOD and EST on 23rd April, followed by DVD and Blu-ray on 7th May, from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment.

Charismata (2017)

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As I’ve discussed at length in the past, we really can’t overstate the impact of The Silence of the Lambs; a bona fide game changer, it blurred the lines between police procedural and horror story (not to suggest this hadn’t been done before: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, anyone?), setting the stage for the psychological thriller boom of the 1990s, and all these years later its influence can still be felt. The shadow of Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winner hangs heavy over Charismata, a 2017 independent British horror from writer-director duo Andy Collier and Toor Mian. However, where Clarice Starling’s investigations took her to the dark outer limits of the human psyche, Charismata’s central protagonist Detective Rebecca Faraway (Sarah Beck Mather) finds herself assigned to the case of a ritualistic serial killer which comes to have a devastating impact on her own state of mind, leaving her uncertain as to where the line falls between nightmare and reality.

Charismata wastes no time establishing Faraway as a 21st century Starling, as she is the only woman on the case, and it’s immediately clear that her partner, DI Eli Smith (Andonis Anthony), is an old-fashioned chauvinist who doesn’t hold his co-worker in particularly high regard. It doesn’t help that Faraway is the daughter of the Commissioner, leading to suspicions as to just how she got her job; or that, since the recent breakdown of her marriage, Faraway is on medication for her mental health. She finds herself needing those pills even more than usual, as she and Smith are called in to investigate the discovery of a second murder victim in a derelict industrial site, rotting on the floor with a vital organ missing, with occult symbols inscribed on the wall and floor.

The lack of witnesses, CCTV footage or any kind of physical evidence makes their job rather difficult, but it helps that only a small number of people could have had access to the secure location. This leads Faraway and Smith to Michael Sweet (Jamie Satterthwaite), a slimy, silver-tongued corporate big-shot who owns the site in question. With only circumstantial evidence to connect him, they’re unable to arrest Sweet, but Faraway quickly becomes convinced that he’s the killer. However, as her personal life crumbles around her and tensions in the workplace get progressively worse, a simple hunch turns into a dangerous fixation; and, even more worryingly, Faraway finds herself experiencing increasingly bizarre and unnerving visions.

I’ll admit to having previously been unfamiliar with the word ‘charismata,’ which is not, to the best of my recollection, ever uttered in the film; I gather it’s a theological term, basically a plural of ‘charisma,’ referring to a ‘divinely conferred gift or power’ and/or a ‘spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.’ I could cast some aspersions as to how this relates to the film, but the clearest meaning would seem to be that someone – or something – is imposing their influence on Faraway’s mind, leaving her unsure of what is real, or whether or not she is entirely sane. It’s familiar subject matter for horror, no question, but it’s explored effectively enough to keep the film intriguing and compelling. It helps that Sarah Beck Mather is strong in the central role; very much the focus of the film, if I recall correctly she appears in pretty much every scene, and as such the film lives or dies on whether we get invested in her journey, which is happily never an issue. Mather gets solid support from Andonis Anthony, who takes what might easily have been a one-note sexist cop and finds some nuance there.

Unfortunately, the same can’t necessarily be said of the remainder of the cast. It’s apparent from the start that Charismata is a very low budget production, although for the most part this isn’t a problem; it looks pretty good, with decent cinematography and editing, plus some surprisingly effective use of CGI. The supporting performances, however, leave a lot to be desired at times, and rather let the wind out of the sails just when things should be at their most dramatic. 

This isn’t by any means a prerequisite for a film to be entertaining, but even so, it’s worth stressing that Charismata is in no sense a ground-breaker. In story and execution, it doesn’t give us much we haven’t seen before, and not everything it tries to squeeze in completely works: the feminist overtones get heavy-handed, attempts to inject sexual tension feel forced, and the conclusion isn’t entirely satisfying. These minor concerns notwithstanding, this is certainly one of the more enjoyable British horror movies I’ve seen so far this year, and it’s well worth giving a look.

Charismata will screen at London’s East End Film Festival on 26th April; for further detail and/or to book tickets, click here.

Ready Player One (2018)

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I don’t think I ever anticipated seeing the day when the release of a Steven Spielberg-directed sci-fi adventure would be greeted with such widespread disdain as we’ve seen for Ready Player One. Sure, as the king of the blockbuster, more or less responsible for inventing the format as we know it along with George Lucas, Spielberg is always going to be the target of some derision from those of a more high brow and/or anti-mainstream inclination, which may well include a good portion of cult film enthusiasts; but as the director of Jaws, ET, the Indiana Jones movies, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and more besides, the man is responsible for more than his fair share of all-time greats, significantly changing the face of film more than once in the past 43 years. And in some instances, he’s done this with films based on source material which wasn’t exactly earth-shattering; anyone who’s ever read Peter Benchley’s original novel Jaws can tell you it’s nowhere near as well-executed and significant to literature as Spielberg’s adaptation was to cinema, and I daresay the same is true of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

And yet, Spielberg’s decision to bring Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One to the screen has, for a vocal portion of online fandom, proved something of a tipping point. The book has long been divisive; while acclaimed by some as one of the most enjoyable and forward-thinking science fiction novels of recent times, others have blasted it as dim-witted, derivative and sloppily written, with a painfully excessive over-reliance on pop cultural references. There’s a lot to be said for both sides of the argument, but to my mind the key strength of Cline’s Ready Player One is its portrait of a world in which social media and gaming are indistinguishable, and the vast majority of the world’s population seeks to spend as much of its waking hours within the virtual world as possible, because the real world has completely gone to shit. All of this strikes me as an entirely logical, quite feasible progression of online culture as we know it in 2018. The question then becomes, does Ready Player One present its digital alternate universe as a cautionary tale, or every immature man-child’s dream come true?

The year is 2044; the place is Colombus, Ohio. Though home to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, the vast majority of the city’s population lives in poverty. Space is so limited and housing so expensive that most can only afford to live in the Stacks, trailer parks in which the domiciles are piled on top of one another. One such anonymous Stacks resident is Wade Owen Watts (Tye Sheridan), an orphaned teenager living with his largely apathetic aunt and her sleazebag boyfriend (Ralph Ineson cameo ahoy, The Witch fans). It’s a pretty grim existence – at least, in the short amount of time Wade spends without a VR visor and haptic gloves on. See, though Wade may be a nobody in the real world, in the OASIS he’s Parzival, a funky anime-looking digital avatar with blue-ish skin, an old-school jeans vest, and his own personalised DeLorean. The OASIS is kind of like the bastard love child of Facebook and World of Warcraft multiplied by a billion, and filled up largely with obsessive fans like Wade who seek to emulate all their pop culture heroes.

But the biggest hero to them all is James Halliday (Spielberg’s recent go-to guy Mark Rylance), the video game designer who created the OASIS, initially in collaboration with his friend Ogden Morrow (Hollywood’s go-to fanboy Simon Pegg). It’s been several years since Halliday died, leaving behind a video message informing OASIS users that, somewhere within the near-boundless digital universe he brought into being, the designer left behind a carefully hidden Easter Egg which will grant the person who discovers it both the entirety of his immense personal fortune, and even more importantly the controlling share of the OASIS. Wade is but one of innumerable Gunters (egg-hunters) who have pretty much dedicated their lives to cracking the riddles that lead the way to the prize. But of course, it’s not just common gamer geeks like himself on the case; there’s also the unscrupulous corporation IOI, anxious to take over the OASIS in order to monetize it, and their executive Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) doesn’t care how many lives he has to destroy in order to win.

The main reason Spielberg’s decision to direct Ready Player One raised so many eyebrows is that Cline’s original novel is absolutely bursting at the seams with 1980s movie references, with Spielberg’s work naturally being a big part of that. Not only that, but 1980s TV shows, music and of course video games are also heavily referenced. The way the novel (and subsequently the film) justifies this over-indulgent geekery is that Halliday, having been a child of the 1980s, was obsessed with its pop culture; and, as such, the Gunters are too. Search Ready Player One on social media and you’ll find no shortage of snarky piss-takes of Cline’s prose, widely derided for reading like it was written by a socially-backward, virginal adolescent with no life outside of his fanboy fixations (of course, the book is written in the first person with a central protagonist who fits that exact description, so I’m not sure how else it could ever have read). The film cuts back on this just a bit, in no small part thanks to significantly changing the challenges Wade and co face to get the keys; let’s face it, re-enacting the entirety of WarGames and playing a perfect game of Pac-Man was never going to make for especially compelling viewing.

The film also makes significant changes as regards Wade’s relationship with the other ‘High Five’ Gunters, most significantly Olivia Cooke’s Samantha, AKA Art3mis. Their awkward love story has been one of the most heavily criticised elements of the novel, and not without some justification; although accusations of flagrant sexism and/or misogyny are, I think, heavily overstating the case. Even so, it’s probably for the best that the film plays things very differently, bringing the characters together outside of the OASIS far earlier, and giving Samantha more vital a role to play in the final act. I expect there will be complaints that Cooke is clearly far too beautiful for a character who’s meant to be something of an ugly duckling; but then, much the same can be said of Sheridan as Wade. The most important thing is they’re both endearing actors, easy to root for. As for the remainder of the High Five: I’m loathe to say much regarding Wade’s best buddy Aech for fear of spoilers (not that the film’s marketing seems too worried about that), but I will say that Daito (Win Morasaki) and Sho (Philip Zhao – not sure why his character’s name has been shortened) remain pretty under-developed, though they do get their moments to shine.

Still, the question of whether Ready Player One: The Movie can win over the critics of Ready Player One: The Novel rather pales in significance next to the question of whether or not it’s going to win over the wider audience. The jury may be out there. For me, it’s one of those that I think I’ll need to see once or twice more before I can fully make up my mind; having read and enjoyed the novel, I spent much of my time noting where it did or did not adhere to the existing story, and the rest trying to keep up with the pop cultural references that made it in, again some of which differ from the novel (Ultraman’s a notable absentee, though he has some laudable stand-ins). Given this site’s genre proclivities, it bears mentioning that there’s a little more horror stuff here than you’d necessarily expect, with one old favourite playing a major role midway, and more than a few horror icons making brief appearances – although for me, the biggest Easter Egg was spotting none other than Hellraiser’s Clare Higgins in a small role.

In this age when new megabudget blockbusters arrive in cinemas week-in week-out, I’m not sure if Ready Player One packs enough of a punch to really stand apart from the crowd. Nonetheless it’s an enjoyable ride, and in many respects an accurate reflection of the current obsessive-compulsive state of fan culture – even if, like the novel before it, it may be a little too content to merely indulge, rather than critique as deeply as it occasionally promises to.

Ready Player One is in cinemas now, from Warner Bros.

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

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In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s been a full five years since Pacific Rim. A lot’s happened in the interim, though: director Guillermo del Toro returned to his signature Gothic territory with Crimson Peak, then bagged a bunch of Oscars for The Shape of Water; and giant monster epics have returned to the forefront of the blockbuster market in the wake of Jurassic World, Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island. Still, while Pacific Rim wasn’t quite the commercial flop or critical disaster it’s sometimes made out to be (personally I think it’s great fun, and have revisited it plenty of times this past half-decade), it’s certainly debatable as to just how much demand there really was for a sequel. Small wonder, then, that director Steven S DeKnight’s Pacific Rim: Uprising goes to great lengths to relaunch the franchise for a new audience – although, in so doing, it may well alienate the comparatively few devotees the original has brought back.

We pick up ten years after the events of the first film. Our original hero – Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh Beckett – is nowhere to be seen. In his place, we have an all-new bad boy born to pilot a Jaeger, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), son of Idris Elba’s martyred Stacker Pentecost, and adoptive brother of Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako – one of the few returnees from the original, along with Charlie Day and Burn Gorman’s scientists Newton and Herman. While the Kaiju war is to all intents and purposes history, the Jaegers still reign supreme, with a whole new crop of pilots being trained up to be the first line of defence should the Kaiju attack again. Having washed out years earlier, Jake reluctantly finds himself recruited back into the training programme along with young amateur Jaeger builder Amara (Cailee Spaeny).

However, it seems as if the Jaegers won’t be in demand for much longer, as an all-new defence project – super-powered, remote-operated drones – is being introduced by a major Chinese tech company for whom Day’s Newton is now chief scientific officer. Naturally, not everyone in the Jaeger team is keen on this idea – but in the wake of an attack on Sydney by an unlicenced rogue Jaeger, some take this as a sign that the drones are indeed just what Earth needs. As the dust settles, Jake and company quickly realise that there’s something very fishy going on – but who’s behind it all? Could the Precursors, the alien race who created the Kaiju, somehow be responsible? If so, how, when the Breach – the wormhole at the bottom of the Pacific ocean, by which the Kaiju invaded Earth in the first place – is now sealed shut?

Pacific Rim: Uprising is a rather different proposition from most modern megabudget follow-ups; the bulk of such films seem primarily concerned with repeating everything that worked about the last one, whilst bringing back as many characters and getting in as many fan-pleasing nods as possible. This is the key reason why the likes of Kingsman: The Golden Circle and the bulk of the Marvel sequels have tended to underwhelm. By contrast, Pacific Rim: Uprising seems to have been made primarily in the hopes of luring in viewers who didn’t see the first one, hence the casting of Star Wars actor Boyega in the lead, and the youth of most of his supporting cast. It also makes a point of addressing the key criticisms of the original. It’s a lighter affair in just about every sense, with a shorter running time, and a much brighter colour scheme; the original took place primarily at night, out at sea in the pouring rain, making the pivotal battle scenes difficult to follow. By contrast, Pacific Rim: Uprising is bathed in sunshine and big city lights, with new, more garish-looking and aerodynamic Jaegers, who spend a great deal more time in action this time around.

Alas, Uprising also deviates from its predecessor in ways which might be deemed to betray the spirit of what came before. For one, as might be apparent from the earlier synopsis, the Kaiju are largely absent until quite late in the day, and – without getting into spoilers – the means by which they return might not go down well with everyone. On a related note, the film’s treatment of the few returning original characters is also bound to be a bit of a sticking point. Not only is the absence of Hunnam’s Raleigh rather glaring (the actor was reportedly unable to return due to a scheduling clash, and DeKnight has admitted they’ve left his character’s fate vague in the hopes that they might bring him back in Part 3), but the choices made regarding those few survivors of the original are not entirely pleasing. Again, I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers, but I will say that while Uprising largely avoids being a bald-faced repeat of its predecessor, it does fall into a few all-too familiar sequel traps.

All in all though, Pacific Rim: Uprising is worthwhile in that it provides firm proof that John Boyega (also a producer) has what it takes to carry a movie. Sure, many of us already believed it from Attack The Block, but given that the wider audience knows him purely as Star Wars’ Finn, his turn as Jake Pentecost may come as a surprise: he’s brash, cocky and arrogant, yet very human and sympathetic. Without someone as charismatic as Boyega heading it up, it’s entirely likely that this sequel wouldn’t have worked it all. It certainly couldn’t have been held up by Scott Eastwood, a firm contender for the single most bland and forgettable actor currently working in Hollywood who somehow seems to keep getting big roles. Still, Boyega does have some nice support from Cailee Spaeny and the other young Jaeger cadets. While some older viewers might complain of the whole teenager vibe getting a bit Power Rangers, the fact is the teen characters and their boot camp camaraderie are far more endearing and watchable than the adults and their tedious corporate subterfuge/scientific blatherings.

And hey – given that last year’s big screen Power Rangers was a bit of a let-down, Pacific Rim: Uprising feels in many respects like the best Power Rangers movie we’ve had yet.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is in cinemas now from Universal.

4/20 Massacre (2018)

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Nothing sells a slasher like a holiday association. You really don’t need me to do the list; if it’s been deemed a day of rest or celebration which is in some way marked annually, then it’s fertile ground in which to cultivate 80-odd minutes of hapless, sinful youngsters getting hacked up by a maniac. Small wonder, then, that someone thought to make such a film set on 4/20, the American stoner day of, erm, more rest than usual which has somehow become a global event in recent years (much to the bemusement of us Brits, who restrain ourselves from complaining, “surely you mean 20/4”).

In getting the date in the title, writer-director Dylan Reynolds has hit upon a surefire way of building interest in his ultra-low budget backwoods slasher flick. What a shame he and the 4/20 Massacre cast and crew didn’t manage to craft a film worthy of such interest in the process.

We open on a pair of comic relief stoner slackers (Insane Clown Posse T-shirt alert), hiking out into the middle of nowhere in search of a bumper crop of guerrilla-farmed marijuana. (Why yes, that was also how the Friday the 13th remake started, thanks for bringing that beloved memory up.) Naturally, things turn out equally badly for these weed thieves, as some sort of feral Sasquatch – or at least, a rather unbalanced individual dressed up that way, despite the apparent heat of the wilderness – pops out of nowhere, leaving one of the thieves dead, another one the run. Meanwhile, a quintet of young women are venturing into this strange and deadly wilderness (why yes, that is also more or less how recent Netflix release Annihilation starts out, and yes, that would be a considerably better use of your time), on a camping trip to celebrate the birthday of Jess (Jamie Bernadette). And, wouldn’t you know it, the day in question is April 20th. While Jess, despite being born on 4/20, does not partake of the herb herself (why yes, that clearly is a final girl signpost you see), her friends do, and it seems the general plan is to mark the occasion by getting shitfaced in the great outdoors. En route, they cross paths with the surviving weed thief, and he dumps what he considers to be a cursed stash upon them; naturally, they think they’ve hit the jackpot. But of course, once the scent of the weed is on them, that means the big hairy guy is on the hunt for them too.

Sure, it’s a tissue-thin premise, but that’s the very nature of the slasher movie, and plenty of greats in the subgenre have come from even simpler beginnings. 4/20 Massacre, however, has no chance of ever being classed among such greats. It just doesn’t have anything like the flair or personality of even a comparatively lesser title like, say, The Burning, the Sleepaway Camp sequels, or for a more recent example even the Sorority Row remake. Such films might be formulaic and derivative, but there’s a certain mischievous joy about them which makes them fun to revisit, whereas 4/20 Massacre is unlikely to be remembered within 24 hours of viewing.

It’s shot in a flat, bland fashion with almost no sense of energy or momentum; there’s no sense of tension or shock, even when the plot takes some ever-so-slightly unexpected turns; and, worst of all when it’s a slasher, the gore is crap, a half-hearted blend of obvious CGI and utterly unconvincing practical FX. A shame, as there are a few reasonably creative gags in there (in particular one involving a bong) which might have been real crowd-pleasers had they been better executed. On top of which, even the weed angle feels entirely wasted, as the film does not in any way evoke a tangible stoner sensibility such as we might find in, say, David Arquette’s The Tripper.

It’s not hard to feel a bit sorry for the cast, as none of them are by any means bad actresses, and Reynolds’ script is clearly making some effort to give them interesting dialogue and character arcs. Some of it, in fairness, is handled quite well; one story thread centred on unrequited love might have been genuinely quite touching under different circumstances. But this is a low-rent slasher movie. Yes, plot and character are indeed important, but there has to be a bit of balance. Nobody picks up a film like this hoping for an hour and fifteen minutes of sensitive heart-to-heart talk, and maybe ten minutes of splatter. And I find it hard to envisage many slasher fans coming away from 4/20 Massacre feeling entirely satisfied.

But hey, I guess anything plays okay if you’re stoned enough…

4/20 Massacre is released to DVD and VOD in the US on 3rd April, via Film Chest.