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Tomb Raider (2018)

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The arrival of this new big screen take on the digital adventures of Lara Croft brings with it mass cries of, “will this finally break the video game movie curse?” Well, not unlike this new live action incarnation of Lara, I don’t really believe in curses. While the good is undoubtedly outweighed by the bad, there have been plenty of video game movies which I’ve enjoyed just fine, even if – in the almost 25 years since Super Mario Bros started the ball rolling – the genre hasn’t yet produced anything resembling a masterpiece. (I’d say there’s a case to be made for DOA: Dead or Alive, but I realise I’m likely in the minority there.) In its earliest days, the format faced similar struggles to the early comic book movies: filmmakers who perhaps didn’t have the best feel for material, and assumed they needed to be as gaudy, ridiculous and nonsensical as possible.

More recent years have seen attitudes change somewhat, and early 2018 is a very different climate in which to be introducing a new version of a female action hero than back when Angelina Jolie originated the role in 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. In those lad’s mag days, the primary concern was on making Lara as sexy as possible and giving it all a bit of post-Matrix flash; the result was a duo of barely coherent, glossy blockbusters which wasted no time getting tedious. Even for those who weren’t devotees of the games, it was a crushing disappointment to see a character with such clear cinematic potential being squandered so terribly.

Fast forward to the present day, and in the wake of 2017’s Wonder Woman, old assumptions about audience interest in female-fronted blockbusters have given way to a demand for as many action heroines as possible. And with the Tomb Raider games having recently gone the Batman Begins/Casino Royale route and rebooted the adventures of Lara Croft in a more grounded and gritty form, so it is that the new big screen reboot has opted to follow suit. The resulting film is hardly earth-shattering, but it’s without question the best Tomb Raider movie yet, not that the bar was too high there in the first place.

Alicia Vikander is our new, younger, more lithe (i.e. notably less curvy and buxom) incarnation of Lara. When we meet her, she seems like your typical MMA fighting, bicycle messenger girl about London, or at least what most people in Hollywood imagine a girl about London to be, what with her cut-glass accent and flawless hair and skin. Since the disappearance of her father (Dominic West) seven years earlier, Lara has done all in her power to distance herself from the Croft family name, along with all its associated wealth and corporate interests. But when she finally concedes to the wishes of her father’s old business partner Ana (Kristin Scott Thomas) and comes into the office to sign the papers declaring her father legally dead in absentia, Lara is presented (by a strangely underutilised Derek Jacobi, who presumably had nothing better to do that afternoon) with an heirloom which leads her to a secret place her father never told her about. Here, Lara discovers his lifetime collection of porn reams of research on an obscure Japanese deity which he believed carried very real powers over life and death.

Lord Croft’s last message demands that Lara destroy all his research lest it fall into the wrong hands, but when Lara sees an opportunity to finally find out what became of her long last dad, she doesn’t hesitate in collecting together all the vital info and heading out to the Far East in search of the little-known island where she might find answers. She enlists ship captain Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) to get her there, although naturally he warns her it’s almost certain to go badly. Even more naturally, he’s soon proven right, as once they reach the island it turns out it’s already playing host to a band of heavily armed men led by Matthias Vogel (Walton Goggins) in search of the pivotal tomb, and they’re not too particular about how many people they have to enslave and/or kill to get what’s inside.

To my mind, the key problem with the earlier Tomb Raider films (apart from their incoherence and overriding air of filmmaking-by-committee) was that they seemed set on sending Lara on James Bond/Mission Impossible-esque globe-trotting missions with a team backing her up. This was a long way off from the video games, wherein she’s mostly fending for herself in harsh terrain. As such, I’m happy to see that director Roar Uthaug’s film for the most part puts Lara front and centre on her own. While there’s a slight goofiness to the London-based opening act, these scenes are important for establishing Lara’s tenacity and skill, without which we’d be forgiven for assuming this city girl wouldn’t last two seconds in the jungle with experienced mercenaries on her tail. These scenes also establish Vikander’s take on Lara as a likeable, relateable character, with clear humanity and vulnerability to counterbalance her strength, which wasn’t necessarily true of Jolie’s Lara.

Like every version of King Kong, Tomb Raider doesn’t really hit its stride until we reach the island. Once Lara’s on the run in the jungle, battling through a series of death-defying, at times literally cliff-hanging mishaps, we find ourselves watching a comparatively family friendly version of Rambo or Apocalypto. Note I do say comparatively: though 12A/PG-13 rated, Tomb Raider is definitely at the harder end of that rating, with a grim tone and some fairly brutal violence. Of course, once we reach the grand finale and the tomb in question is indeed raided, we’re more in Indiana Jones/The Mummy territory, but with a somewhat different approach to the mystical elements.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the final scenes are trying a little too hard to set up a sequel, but it’s not as if a film like this ever gets made today without that in mind. The main thing is that Tomb Raider gives us a solid, self-contained action adventure which doesn’t rewrite the rule book, but is perfectly satisfying in its own right. I certainly hope it leads to more Hollywood work for director Uthaug (whose earlier film The Wave impressed Keri, although I still haven’t it), but there’s no question that the true star of the show is Vikander. While there are always going to be those who object to her casting on the grounds of her a) not being English and b) not having huge tits – and we all know there’s a lot more in the b) camp – I fail to see how anyone can watch her in action without being transfixed. She’s compelling, charismatic, physically remarkable; everything we need Lara Croft to be, even without the tiny short-shorts, lethally pointy double-Ds, and tendency to softly moan “AHH” every time she collides with a wall.

Tomb Raider is in cinemas now.

Keep Watching (2017)

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Taken on their own, the terms ‘found footage’ and ‘home invasion’ have long been enough to send many a horror fan into shivers of despair, not so much because they suggest a truly hair-raising 90 minutes, but rather because they would seem to indicate a been-there, done-that, wasn’t-that-great-in-the-first-place routine which we’ve seen all too often this past decade or more. So – put the found footage and the home invasion together, and what do you get? A new and potent cocktail of tired horror tropes, which gives both subgenres the injection of fresh blood they have long been screaming out for? That might be nice. Unfortunately, in this instance we instead wind up with Keep Watching (for which Don’t Even Start Watching might have been a better choice of title).

Admittedly, a case could be made for first-time feature director Sean Carter’s film not really being a found footage movie: we might call it ‘streamed footage,’ perhaps, given that most if not all of what we’re shown is meant to have been live-streamed on a snuff site. As such, it’s more along the lines of 2002’s My Little Eye and 2014’s Unfriended than Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity. None of this serves to make it any less samey, predictable and tedious.

An opening montage of TV news footage tells us that a mysterious group of Jigsaw wannabes masked killers are on the loose, with a very distinctive MO: they sneak into the homes of their unsuspecting victims, install microscopic cameras all over the place, then strike in the dead of night, playing mind games aplenty before drawing them to their deaths, whilst live-streaming it all. Because their site presents the whole spectacle as if it’s a horror movie, some of their viewers are apparently caught unawares, not realising they’re bearing witness to the real deal.

From here, we meet the next family lined up for the kill: the Mitchells, your classic well-to-do family unit who can’t stand each other, with dad Carl (Ioan Grufford) constantly talking business on his phone, new stepmom Nicole (Natalie Martinez) anxious to establish her place in the household, young teen son John (Chandler Riggs) either playing XBox Live or sharing hot photos of his stepmom online, and older teen daughter Jamie (Bella Thorne) doing the classic woe-is-me, life’s-not-fair routine. Getting home late one night from a family vacation, they’re briefly startled by the sudden appearance of their deadbeat stoner uncle (Leigh Whannell) whose girlfriend has apparently kicked him out; but rather bigger surprises are in store as the night proceeds. Well, surprises for the characters at least. For the audience, not so much.

There are moments here and there when Keep Watching threatens to become something more. The early declaration that viewers of the snuff site couldn’t tell it was for real and not just a horror movie is clearly too on-the-nose to be just left hanging; surely that’s in some way meant to inform what we’re seeing, suggest some wry commentary on media consumption in the Youtube/social media age. Surely the moments in which people turn out to be less dead than we’d thought implies there’s something more going on. Surely those brief but pointed references to Dad’s financial worries have some bearing on it all. Yes? No? Maybe? Alas, it seems the fact that the killers record their crimes using a drone rather than camcorders is about as much breaking of new ground as we can hope for. I’m not sure if it’s so much that Keep Watching lays out red herrings, or if I was just desperately holding out hope that it would prove to be more sophisticated than it seemed, but this might be one instance of a film in which what you see really is all you get.

As I’m sure most seasoned horror viewers have often found themselves pondering when watching the latest example of an over-familiar subgenre, the thought certainly crossed my mind that Keep Watching might have worked just fine if only I hadn’t watched so many similar films in the past. And indeed, it might play okay for a new, younger generation of horror fans who haven’t seen it all before. Certainly the film seems to be made very much with the teen audience in mind, particularly as the cast boasts a few actors who might be classed as contemporary genre icons: Whannell, almost an old-school horror star now thanks to both his on-and-off camera roles on the Saw and Insidious franchises; Riggs, doomed to hear “CARL!” shouted at him wherever he goes for many years to come thanks to The Walking Dead; and above all final girl Thorne, teen icon and scream queen of sorts after her roles in Scream: The Series, The Babysitter and Amityville: The Awakening.

Clearly there were doubts about the selling power of this ensemble, though, given that Keep Watching has bypassed cinemas and gone direct to DVD, here in the UK at least. While I’m not sure it would have necessarily been a box office bomb (ingenuity and innovation are by no means essential components of a hit movie), I can’t say I’m sorry that the cinema-going masses were spared this one. As I write this, a great many horror fans are rejoicing at the fact that Guillermo del Toro has just won two Oscars for The Shape of Water, whilst Jordan Peele has one for Get Out: while I wouldn’t take this as cast-iron proof that intelligent horror is now the norm, it might seem to indicate that the culture is shifting toward genre films which take greater chances, explore more challenging subject matter, and above all else make a bit more of an effort. If this means there’s less of a place for films like Keep Watching, I daresay this may not be a bad thing.

Keep Watching is available on DVD now, from Sony Home Entertainment.

Red Sparrow (2018)

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Depending on how closely you follow the news coming out of Hollywood, Red Sparrow is a film which is pretty much impossible to take entirely on face value. Everything from the premise, to the casting of Jennifer Lawrence, to the tag line ‘Take Back Control’ marks the film out as a thriller with a distinctly feminist edge, dealing inherently with men in high places controlling and abusing women, and women fighting back, in part by utilising their own sexuality. The end result is a rather odd cocktail that doesn’t quite sit right. Though the concept and much of the content feels like pure exploitation, both the lead actress and director Francis Lawrence (reuniting after the Hunger Games movies) seem determined to play it all as straight as possible; an approach which at points comes dangerously close to prompting unintentional laughter. The balance feels off as far as the narrative goes, too, as after a fairly intriguing opening half, it trudges off into rather more dull and generic espionage territory in the final act.

Lawrence (actress, not director) is Dominika Egorova, an esteemed prima ballerina with a major Russian ballet company, whose future is thrown into uncertainty following a career-ending leg injury. Given that the company pay her bills and rent, and her mother (Joely Richardson) is seriously ill, Dominka is in dire need of a new and well-paid job as soon as possible. Her uncle, Vanya Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts) – yes, really, Uncle Vanya – is a high-ranking officer with Russian Intelligence, not to mention something of a lech where his attractive young niece is concerned. Aware of Dominika’s desperation, he talks her into what he promises will be a one-off assignment to get close to  – i.e. seduce – a person of interest in order to help extract information. Needless to say, things don’t go as expected, and in a short space of time Dominika sees too much, leaving her with two options: either be executed, or join a programme to be trained as a ‘Sparrow,’ secret agents specialising in manipulating targets via seduction. Naturally, Dominika takes the latter option, and following an intensive training programme, she is soon sent to Budapest to work her Sparrow skills on Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent believed to be in league with a Russian mole.

There’s been a lot of talk of Red Sparrow (based on the 2013 novel by Jason Matthews) having a bit of Paul Verhoeven about it, and it’s certainly easy to imagine the Dutch provocateur having a great deal of fun with the subject matter; the only difference being, Verhoeven would doubtless have wholeheartedly embraced the potential for camp, excess and unabashed voyeurism, as opposed to playing things as po-faced as Francis Lawrence does. The film is walking a particular tightrope in the training camp scenes (at one point dubbed ‘whore school’), with a stern Charlotte Rampling instructing her young cadets in sexual techniques and demanding they strip naked in front of the class with joyless military precision. The screening I attended was empty of teenagers, but it seems safe to assume these scenes will prompt widespread sniggering among that portion of the target audience.

Indeed, it is in some ways surprising that Red Sparrow has been passed a 15 by the BBFC, given how forthright the sexual elements are, and how harsh the violence gets, with multiple scenes of torture and rape. I suspect this leniency on the part of the classifiers comes down to the ultimate theme of the exploited woman taking back power, and Lawrence herself – both onscreen and off – being held up as a positive role model to young women in this regard. (Of course, the fact that it’s a big budget studio release always goes a long way to greasing the wheels with the BBFC; a cheaper indie release could include much the same content and wind up 18-rated.)

Alas, Red Sparrow falls victim to that old Full Metal Jacket problem: once the early training scenes are over, the rest of it just isn’t that interesting. As Dominika is assigned to get close to Nash, we gradually spiral down into your standard, over-complicated mish-mash of subterfuge, double/triple agents and multitudinous shady deals. Not only is this all a bit tedious and over-familiar, it’s also a little hard to swallow, given how rapidly the former ballet dancer becomes a master spy despite having had no prior experience. Also, anyone anticipating another Atomic Blonde (or, as has been widely remarked, a variation on Marvel’s Black Widow) may be disappointed, as there’s very little action here, and none of it close to that level of Hollywood flash, with hard-edged realism being the order of the day. Still, while Red Sparrow is wilfully determined to subvert expectations given its representation of sex and violence, it seems content to adhere to cliche with its thoroughly unconvincing love story; Lawrence and Edgerton are both fine actors, and of course fine looking people, but there really isn’t much sexual chemistry between the two of them.

In different hands, Red Sparrow might easily have made for your classic old school erotic thriller, and I’m not convinced that sidestepping this route was necessarily the best move. The result is a film that just comes off as dour, likely to alienate the mass audience it covets, and as a result perhaps less likely to really hammer home its message. Sure, there is much to be said in favour of not giving your audience exactly what they want and challenging their preconceptions. In this instance, though, we’re left with a film that falls between two stools, and seems unlikely to prove entirely satisfying to anyone. As good as its intentions may have been, Red Sparrow just never packs enough dramatic punch to really hit home.

Red Sparrow is in cinemas now, from 20th Century Fox.

They Remain (2018)

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Any film that opens on a title card bearing a quote from HP Lovecraft is guaranteed to get horror fans sitting up and taking notice. Whether the subsequent hour and a half of They Remain will keep them in that upright, attentive position is another matter. Writer-director Philip Gelatt’s film strives to give us an intimate, grounded, character-driven take on your classic descent into madness tale. The end result certainly isn’t a failure, but it’s sadly nowhere near as arresting as we might like.

Based on the Laird Barron short story ‘-30-,’ They Remain centres on Keith (William Jackson Harper) and Jessica (Rebecca Henderson), a pair of scientists in the employ of some unknown corporation, who are setting up camp in fancy looking geodesic tents in a large open field near some woodland. Their job, it seems, is to study the natural wilderness and wildlife activity for several months, in total isolation, with no days off. While the reasons for this study are not entirely clear at first, it comes to light that the site was in some time past home to a religious cult who apparently went insane and slaughtered one another. It seems Keith and Jessica are there to determine whether there might be some kind of scientific reason for the region itself to trigger such activity. Small wonder, then, that after a great length of time out there with no company but one another, Keith and Jessica find their own sanity sorely tested.

They Remain plays its hand pretty early on. What we have here is a two-hander drama with minimal dialogue and exposition, which places greater emphasis on mood than plot, and gradually descends deeper into weirdness until a dark final act which leaves things very much open to interpretation. The Shining in a tent, essentially. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, so long as what little we are told is enough to fire the imagination, and there’s sufficient chemistry between the actors.

Unfortunately, it’s rather debatable as to how well They Remain stands up on those counts. Harper, most recognisable for his role on TV comedy The Good Place (viewers may be surprised to hear him actually saying “fuck” rather than “fork”), is certainly a charismatic leading man, exuding world-weary cynicism and fortitude that is gradually chipped away as things go south. Henderson, however, feels a little lifeless by comparison, although I can see that this may have been intentional; the two are meant to be mismatched, with an awkward relationship, and this does come off well early on. However, the film never fully succeeds in amping up the tension that we’re supposed to believe is building between them; particularly once this tension takes on a sexual bent, which rather feels like it comes out of nowhere.

I think the key problem is that the film’s underlying supernatural threat is just too vague, and overly familiar. As soon as we know that a bunch of people went crazy and killed one another there, it’s no great stretch to guess where things are headed; they almost could have just gone with the old ‘Indian burial ground’ macguffin. While the quieter, dialogue-based scenes are for the most part well-handled, the trippier sequences – replete with flashbacks to topless cult members cavorting in the woods – just feel a bit cliched and obvious, and fail to add up to something suitably interesting. Worse yet, it never succeeds in building genuine tension.

If nothing, They Remain should serve as a decent calling card for Harper, demonstrating that he’s got the makings of a versatile movie star. Beyond this, though, it’s a largely forgettable viewing experience which really doesn’t add anything new to the realm of weird/Lovecraftian horror on screen.

They Remain opens in New York from March 2nd and Los Angeles from March 9th, with a national US release to follow.

Chokeslam (2016)

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Ever wondered what Grosse Pointe Blank would have been like if, instead of the guy being a hitman, the girl was a pro-wrestler? Well, no, I can’t say that’s something I’ve ever given much thought to either. Nonetheless, that’s pretty much what we have in Chokeslam, a Canadian indie rom-com from director/co-writer Robert Cuffley. It’s a tale of lost love, twentysomething angst and small town eccentricity, with a little extra spandex and fishnets thrown in for good measure; and while the results aren’t exactly a TKO, they won’t leave you begging to tap out either. (I am doing okay with the wrestling analogies? I’m not really that well-versed in the subject.)

Chris Marquette (an actor who came close to the big time in the 2000s with Freddy Vs Jason and Fanboys, but sadly hasn’t quite managed to break big thus far) is Corey, a 28-year old who still lives with his mother and works at a deli counter, having singularly failed to do anything significant with his life. He has his reasons, though; his senior year at high school left him a broken man in more ways than one, as his then-girlfriend Sheena (Amanda Crew) left town to pursue a career as a pro-wrestler. Things did not end well between them, Corey didn’t respond to this in the best way, and he’s never quite recovered. However, a decade on Sheena’s not doing too hot herself, after some rather public scandals have seen her brand tainted and her spotlight taken away. Desperate for some good publicity, she agrees to make a personal appearance at the ten year high school reunion – which presents Corey with his first opportunity to see her in all that time. He may hold out hopes that this could rekindle the old spark between them, but is it really going to do anything but open up old wounds?

Comedies involving wrestling don’t necessarily have the best track record (the first one that comes to mind is 2000’s Ready To Rumble, which I haven’t seen since its release but seem to recall being underwhelmed by), so on the one hand we might be forgiven for expecting Chokeslam to be a crass dick-and-fart joke affair, with a side order of voyeuristic sleaze given it centres on a female wrestler. On the other hand, we’ve since seen female wrestling utilised to a slightly more high brow, feminist-friendly effect in Netflix’s GLOW (although, as a 2016 production, Chokeslam predates this), so we might instead anticipate something closer to that. For the most part, though, Chokeslam is something else entirely, a sensitive rom-com that has its share of yucks and belly laughs, but also isn’t afraid to get serious. Happily, thanks to the calibre of the cast and the quality of Cuffley and Jason Long’s script, the more dramatic elements are handled very effectively. At a glance, some might complain of the typical movie double standards as regards the central relationship; no disrespect to Marquette, but the athletic and beautiful Crew is clearly out of his league. However, the couple’s history is fleshed out in a manner that’s believable and easy to relate to, and the actors play well off one another, coming off as plausible ex-high school sweethearts.

In truth, Chokeslam’s main problem may be that the more grounded, serious stuff plays far better than everything else, which might be a bit of an issue given this is being sold first and foremost as a comedy about wrestling. Marquette, to his credit, does a good job of getting regularly knocked on his arse, but many of the supporting characters fall into broader, more two-dimensional comedy tropes. For a while, this threatens to be the case with Michael Eklund as Luke; in a bit of 21 Jump Street-esque device, he’s the former popular jock who winds up unexpectedly becoming best friends with the nerdy loser, and a lot of the jokes hinge on his dim-wittedness. However, here too there are some unexpectedly dramatic developments, and the character proves to be a bit more nuanced than first appearances would suggest.

As for the wrestling scenes: again, I’m by no means an authority on the subject, but they strike me as pretty impressive. Crew certainly looks the part of a contemporary female wrestler, and seems more than up to the challenge physically. Still, not all the fight action – particularly that which occurs outside of the ring – is entirely convincing, either in performance or circumstance. This is especially true of the finale, which I can’t help feeling pushes the old suspension of disbelief a little too far.

When all’s said and done, Chokeslam just isn’t funny or gripping enough to make for really arresting viewing. Even so, I should imagine it will prove agreeable enough for both casual viewers and wrestling fans – the latter of whom will doubtless be keen to see it, thanks to a slight but entertaining supporting turn from esteemed WWE veteran Mick Foley.

Chokeslam is released to DVD, Blu-ray, and digital formats in the US on February 27th. Physical media copies can be ordered here.

Warner Bros Premium Collection: Three Ray Harryhausen Classics

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The sadly missed stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen is one of the most unique figures in film history. The attachment of his name alone tells you basically all you need to know about the film, despite the wide variety of actors and directors he collaborated with over his decades-spanning career. While special effects may have long been a key component in popular entertainment, there has surely never been another special effects artist whose name has become so widely recognised, so synonymous with a body of work. Though he officially retired in 1981, Harryhausen’s influence has been very much in evidence in every large scale creature feature to have arrived in the years since; and that’s still very much the case in 2018 – five years after the great man passed away – with the likes of Pacific Rim: Uprising, Rampage and Jurassic World: Lost Kingdom on the horizon.

Harryhausen fans should be happy to see Warner Bros Home Entertainment honouring his memory with these new Premium Collection editions of three key titles from his body of work: one his first solo work as creator of special effects, another his last, and another from around the midway point making its first appearance on Blu-ray.

First of these is The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, a 1953 low-budget independent production which was ultimately snapped up for distribution by Warner Bros, who quite rightly noted the presence of something special. Directed by Eugène Lourié, the film was Harryhausen’s debut feature as a solo stop-motion animator, the man alone literally being responsible for every frame of the prehistoric beast in motion. The film is also significant for helping launch Ray Bradbury in Hollywood, as the screenplay was loosely adapted from the legendary science fiction writer’s short story The Fog Horn. Given that Bradbury and Harryhausen were lifelong friends dating back to before either of them were famous, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms has a strong sentimental value as the foremost cinematic embodiment of that celebrated friendship. On top of which, it’s long been noted as a key influence on another massively influential monster movie, Ishirō Honda’s Gojira, which arrived one year later.

All that having been said, it’s a little painful to admit that, beyond this clear historical significance, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms really isn’t a particularly great film. While the scenes featuring the monster are undeniably iconic, these only take up a small portion of the running time, mostly in the last 20 minutes or so; beyond that, it’s little more than a deluge of arbitrary waffle, psuedo-scientific ramblings and bland subplots padding things out to an hour and a half, and all of it rather cheap and crude-looking. Sure, this is typically part of the fun with 1950s B-movies, but when Harryhausen’s work displays such genuine artistry, attention to detail and personality, it’s hard not to feel a bit let down by how amateurish everything else feels. Still, it might reasonably be argued that this set in motion the pattern for most of Harryhausen’s career; in most cases, the films overall paled in comparison to the stop-motion creations. This would most pointedly be the case in Harryhausen’s earlier days, when he was more or less a hired gun on the likes of 20 Million Miles To Earth, It Came From Beneath The Sea and Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers.

However, things had changed somewhat once The Valley of Gwangi (the title making its Blu-ray debut here) arrived in 1969. By this point, in partnership with producer Charles H Schneer, Harryhausen had more creative control of his films; since 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts (his undisputed masterpiece), he was credited as associate producer as well as creator of special effects, and the films moved away from contemporary-set spectacles of mass destruction to period fantasies which more closely reflected his own personal interests in mythology and palaeontology. Gwangi was particularly personal as it had been an unrealised project of Willis O’Brien, Harryhausen’s forebear and teacher whose legendary work on King Kong set young Ray on the path to becoming a stop-motion animator. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the plot directly echoes Kong: a band of showmen venture out into unknown territory, stumble upon a place where prehistoric creatures have survived, then unwisely decide to capture one and bring it home to sell tickets, at which point all hell breaks loose.

It’s curious to think The Valley of Gwangi arrived in the same year as Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch et al; this turn of the century tale of rodeo rubes crossing paths with dinosaurs will no doubt have seemed extremely quaint on release, in the face of these groundbreaking, hard-hitting works that would change the face of Hollywood. But then, that’s all part of Harryhausen’s appeal; there’s always an old-fashioned, if not timeless quality to his work which speaks to us on a childlike, fantastical level. As such, there’s an overriding sense of innocence to it all, even when proceedings get comparatively macabre. Gwangi certainly has its grim moments, from its opening scene of an exhausted, blood-spattered man staggering out of the desert, to the fairly gruesome scenes later on in which the dinosaur of the title takes bites out of elephants, horses and other dinosaurs. (Still rated U, though.)

Not unlike The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi is another film that’s notable primarily for Harryhausen’s effects, and rather less interesting when his creations are not on screen. In this case, though, the creature action is so good and so well spread out over the running time that it’s easy to ignore the filler material. Even so, there’s an undeniable novelty value to a story in which cowboys meet dinosaurs; indeed, for the first 25 minutes or so you’d be forgiven for thinking it was nothing more than a straight western, until the bizarre miniature horse makes its first appearance. James Franciscus (best known for looking a bit like Charlton Heston, and appearing in Beneath the Planet of the Apes) makes for a reasonably engaging leading man, although it perhaps doesn’t help that female lead Gila Golan has so obviously had all her dialogue overdubbed by another actress. Again, though, we might just as easily embrace this as part of the B-movie charm.

Topping off this trio of re-releases is Clash of the Titans. Originally an MGM-UA release in 1981, this was Ray Harryhausen’s final feature as creator of special effects, and sought to revisit the success of Jason and the Argonauts by again venturing into Greek mythology territory, this time with the story of Perseus, Andromeda and Medusa. Though it boasts the starriest cast ever to assemble for a Harryhausen movie – among them Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Burgess Meredith – it isn’t quite so successful as Jason was. Even so, it’s a charming bit of fun whose many obvious flaws are very easy to overlook.

It’s not too surprising that Harryhausen chose to bow out with Titans. Tonally, it’s very much in-keeping with his earlier mythic movies (including the two Sinbad movies of the 1970s). However, with the rise of Industrial Light & Magic, special effects had taken significant leaps forward, and for all its character and personality, the stop-motion approach was undeniably looking a bit too dated to keep up. This antiquated quality extends beyond the effects work alone. The film overall has an awkward, overly twee feel, with much of the cast, even the illustrious Olivier and Smith, seeming ill at ease. Curious, then, that in some parts the film endeavours toward a more mature appeal, with some brief (though non-sexualised) female nudity, and a slightly higher gore quota. Strange also to think that things might have gone even further, as Beverly Cross’s original script called for Andromeda to be naked when offered up to the Kraken, whilst that famed beast would also have bloodily torn apart Perseus’ noble winged steed Pegasus. While my more salacious side can’t deny curiosity about what such scenes would have looked like, I’m sure it’s for the best they were rewritten; such extreme spectacles might have been commonplace in the Greek tales, but it’s hard to envisage them working in a film so otherwise family friendly as this.

The Warner Bros Premium Collection has produced some very nice editions of old favourites that will sit handsomely on any fan’s shelf, and these three new releases are no exception. The films themselves look great and are well packaged, with a small set of collector’s cards in each box. The discs are fairly light on extras, though, mostly limited to one or two short interview featurettes with Harryhausen, all of which date back to earlier DVD editions; in the case of Clash of the Titans, both the DVD and Blu-ray appear to be direct re-releases of the edition which coincided with the 2010 remake, as the disc opens with a short featurette advertising that film. However, there’s a particular appeal to the extras on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, as it features a side-by-side interview of Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury reflecting on their lifelong friendship, and how that film changed their lives. Heart-warming stuff; as, indeed, can be said of all Ray Harryhausen’s work.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi and Clash of the Titans will be released in dual format DVD & Blu-ray on 26th February as part of Warner Bros Home Entertainment’s Premium Collection, available exclusively at HMV.

Flay (2017)

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Once more unto the minefield that is the indie horror scene. Director Eric Pham brings with him a degree of cult cred due to his association with Robert Rodriguez, having worked in visual effects on a number of RR movies including Sin City and Grindhouse; and his lead actor here, Elle LaMont, is also from the RR camp (bit parts in Spy Kids 4, Machete Kills, From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series and the upcoming Alita: Battle Angel). They’ve even drafted in some bona fide horror royalty with a cameo from Phantasm’s A Michael Baldwin. So, with all these admirable associations, we might be forgiven for expecting Flay to be a cut above your average, ho-hum, run of the mill, low budget, direct to the home market schlock horror.

And we’d be dead wrong for thinking as much. Despite an initially intriguing core conceit, Flay proves to be yet another been-there, done-that mish-mash of slasher and ghost story with severely shoe-horned in attempts at a social conscience. Occasionally it threatens to get interesting, but this doesn’t last long, and we’re spiralling off into inescapable tedium in no time at all.

We open on a montage of historical footage, somewhat reminiscent of the prologue of notorious 1976 shocker Who Can Kill A Child in that a) it highlights genuine atrocities from years gone by in a somewhat History Channel-esque manner, and b) it has no bearing whatsoever on the story that follows, and only serves to offer up some pretence of being historically and socially relevant. However, Flay’s opening does establish a couple of significant plot points: there is a set of chains which some evil colonialist invaders slapped on a Native American shaman at the point of his execution (guess what, they flayed his face off). Naturally pissed off by this turn of events, the shaman put a curse on the chains themselves that would see anyone who picked up the chains suffer a fate as grisly as his own.

We cut to the present day, and are introduced to Patricia Crane (Peggy Scott), a middle-aged Texan artist, recovering addict, and evidently a bit of a hippy given that she named her daughter Moon (the aforementioned Elle LaMont) and her son River (Dalton E Gray).  As we meet Patricia, she’s visiting Billy Salcedo (Baldwin), who is… okay, I’m going to level with you, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is or what his relationship is with any of the other characters in the film. I think he’s an art dealer of some sort, although his closeness to Patricia – plus the fact that Moon later greets him as if he’s her long-lost father – suggest there’s more to it than a professional relationship. However, he’s in and out of the film so fast that we never get any sense of what his actual purpose is, other than the time-honoured truth that casting a known horror actor in even the most insignificant of bit parts will ensure the film gets more attention from the horror press. Hoorah.

Anyway, whilst snooping around Billy’s place, Patricia finds herself strangely drawn to an old set of chains, which she intends to use in her artwork. Wouldn’t you know it, she’s found dead in her workshop the very next morning under mysterious circumstances. This prompts the return of Moon, who left home some years earlier out of frustration with her mother’s substance abuse, and an extremely uneasy reunion with her adolescent brother River ensues. While they deal with their grief and struggle to piece together what happened, those curse chains just keep on calling to anyone who gets near them – and once someone has the tenacity to touch them, they soon find themselves experiencing nightmarish visions of being stalked by a big old creepy Slenderman-looking ghoul.

So why does the supernatural antagonist look like the Slenderman, when it’s Native American in origin? Beats me, beyond the fact that the Slenderman angle is also a big sales pitch. And why, when the title is Flay and the opening sequence emphasises this is what was done to brutalised Native Americans, don’t the victims of this supernatural force also get their faces flayed off? Again, beats me. And why, when the film seems to be setting itself up as another commentary on the shame of America’s origins, does it promptly veer off into cookie-cutter teen slasher territory? Once more, your guess is as good as mine; although to me it seems evident that the filmmakers were trying to toe the line between standard commercially acceptable horror and something bolder – but they woefully misjudged the balance.

Flay not only fails to present an interesting story, but also fails to deliver on most of the basic blood-and-thunder pleasures it teases. The stunningly irrelevant title implies something very gruesome, but there’s little to no gore on display; nor is there any sex or nudity, which in an odd way makes the blatant objectification of LaMont and co-star Violett Beane feel even sleazier than it would have otherwise, given its total irrelevance to proceedings.

I suppose the most undemanding of horror fans may find Flay a passable enough way to kill an hour and a half – but we really should demand more, even from disposable fare like this. Still, credit where it’s due, the film’s use of digital FX is more impressive than we typically see at this level; this, I think it’s fair to say, is the director’s real area of expertise, and on this evidence I wonder if he’d be better off sticking to that.

Flay will be available digitally in the US on 6th March, via Distribber.

Are We Not Cats (2016)

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There’s always plenty to be said in favour of taking a distinctly unusual premise and building an unconventional film around it, which challenges conventions about storytelling and character. On occasion, such an approach has resulted in truly striking, in some instances genuinely groundbreaking cinema. However, it can also result in works that simply feel tedious, self-indulgent and ultimately just a bit pointless. I’m afraid to say that, for me, writer-director Xander Robin’s Are We Not Cats very much falls into the latter category.

This is the first feature from US filmmaker Robin, and looking over his IMDb credits I’m not surprised to find that it was originally made as a short back in 2013. It’s easier to envisage the concept working better in that format than it does at feature-length, as – even at only 78 minutes – Are We Not Cats feels unnecessarily drawn out, padded with long silences and extraneous sequences which add virtually nothing to an already insubstantial narrative. That having been said, it’s readily apparent that Are We Not Cats was never intended to be your standard plot-driven film, so it’s feasible that viewers with a greater affinity for mumblecore than myself might find it agreeable enough.

Michael Patrick Nicholson (who also appeared in the original short, but may be better known for We Are Still Here) is Eli, a young man enduring a streak of bad luck; as we meet him, he loses his girlfriend, his job on a garbage truck, and his home, as his parents are selling the house. With his few possessions piled into the back of an old removals truck given to him by his father, Eli starts living on the road, sleeping in the truck, taking on any cash-in-hand work he can find. Circumstances lead him to some place far from home, where he winds up crossing paths with Kyle (Michael Godere) and his girlfriend Anya (Chelsea Lopez). In the days ahead, a curious connection builds between Kyle and Anya, centring largely on an unusual shared habit: they both like pulling their own hair out and eating it.

To acknowledge the strengths first: Are We Not Cats is well acted all around. In addition, Robin and cinematographer Matt Clegg have certainly given us a handsome film, with a gritty and natural look that really conveys the coldness and starkness of the locations. This somewhat bleak visual element, not to mention the sparse dialogue, contrasts greatly with the largely soul-driven soundtrack, adding up to a self-consciously odd, and ever-so indie atmosphere. Once again, if that’s your cup of tea then you might find plenty to enjoy from Are We Not Cats. On the other hand, its art house pretences and featherlight plot might prove off-putting and tedious.

The hair-eating device is largely understated until the final act, when events twist in a vaguely more horror-oriented direction; but given how grounded and naturalistic the action has been up to that point, this is a somewhat unconvincing development, and to me smacks rather of a too-little too-late effort to command the audience’s attention after an hour of self-indulgent meandering. It doesn’t help matters that the character of Anya feels dangerously close to that painfully played-out Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, of which we’ve seen all too much in American indies in the past 20 years, and which lends Are We Not Cats an air of generic indie boy romantic fantasy. Not that there’s necessarily anything inherently wrong with a bit of indie boy wish fulfilment; I just feel I’ve seen more than enough of it.

Those with a particular love for your classic American indie art house might derive some pleasure from Are We Not Cats, but as I think I’ve made abundantly clear, it really didn’t rub off on me at all. And one other thing that’s worth noting: if memory serves, we only see one actual feline for all of a few seconds, so cat lovers might wind up feeling a wee bit cheated too.

Are We Not Cats opens in select US cinemas on 23rd February, via Cleopatra Entertainment.

Winchester (2018)

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With the Paranormal Activity series still fairly fresh in the memory, and the ongoing box office success of the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, the ghost movie has seemingly never been more popular – and arguably never in greater need of a shot in the arm. We all know the routine: dark rooms, lengthy silences, jump scares, initial scepticism rapidly proved dead wrong. It’s been done time and again, and will doubtless continue to be done over and over, so long as people keep paying to see these movies.

Yet for some reason, I found myself holding out hope that Winchester would break with convention in just the right way. Let’s face it, while ghost movies of this nature may be a penny a pound, they don’t typically snare lead actors as illustrious as Academy Award-winning national treasure Dame Helen Mirren. Nor, in recent years at least, do they tend to have a central conceit which lends itself to timely fears and sociopolitical debates. Yet Winchester has all this, whilst also delivering that special detail that the makers of ghost movies seem to prize above all else: it’s based, however loosely, on real-life events.

Sad to say, none of this makes Winchester an above-average ghost movie. In fact, it feels as though the powers that be have done all in their power to ensure it would not be anything more than that, despite the wealth of potential for something greater.

It’s 1906. Mirren is Sarah Winchester, aged widow of William Winchester, who left her the heiress and majority shareholder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Prior to her husband’s death, Sarah and William also lost their only child to illness, and the weight of this grief has understandably taken its toll. Allegedly at the advice of spiritualists, Mrs Winchester has taken up residence in what was originally (by super-rich standards) a fairly modest eight-room mansion in San Jose, but over the years she has been developing the property on a constant basis, adding room after room in bizarre formations which, in the eyes of most, defy all sense and reason. This, combined with pressure from Sarah to reduce the company’s emphasis on firearms and start producing more innocuous items like roller skates, has left the Winchester company board members doubting whether she is still mentally fit to be in charge of such a major money-making organisation. To this end, psychologist Dr Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is hired to assess Sarah’s mental health over the course of a week’s stay at Winchester House. On arrival, Price is naturally bemused by the house, as well as being a tad concerned for the well-being of Sarah’s niece and her young son; but the biggest shocker of all is the strange goings on, with an abundance of things going bump in the night. It seems Sarah believes herself cursed, doomed to be haunted forever by all those who lost their lives to Winchester firearms, and has added the innumerable extra rooms in order to house those tortured souls. But as a man of science, Price knows this is nothing but deluded, superstitious nonsense – isn’t it…? (Cue an ominous creak, and a sudden loud jump-scare noise.)

Again, this is by now a very, very familiar set-up, although with a lead as strong as Mirren, and the fairly creative Spierig Brothers calling the shots, there’s certainly cause for optimism going in. And for a little while, it does seem we might have something a bit more interesting than your average contemporary haunter. For starters, Clarke’s Dr Price is set up as a colourful character in his own right, with a more than casual taste for booze, laudanum and women of ill repute. His abstinence from said habits is a condition of his stay at Winchester House, and as such, when he first starts seeing and hearing things it’s naturally suggested it might be a side-effect of the withdrawal. His sessions with Sarah are also clearly intended to present a science-versus-superstition angle, and had the film pursued this more ambiguous, debate-driven path – as, say, Mike Flanagan’s superior ghost movie Oculus does – we might have had something considerably more interesting.

However, any hint of ambiguity on the matter goes out the window before you can say ‘boo.’ There’s really never any question that the ghosts are real, and it’s all just a matter of Price coming around to believing, which the film seems in far too much of a hurry to get to. The editing is way too obtrusive; it feels like every time things start to get interesting, we immediately cut away to something else, regardless of whether the scene has reached a natural conclusion. It all reeks of filmmaking by committee, with more attention paid to test screening scores than actual drama, and a determination to keep the action moving thick and fast for fear of losing the audience’s attention. It’s all pretty insulting, and a tremendous waste of a cast that deserves far better. Oh, and if you imagined that a film centred on the trail of dead left by an arms empire might in some way reflect on the contemporary gun control debate and America’s mass shooting epidemic, you can forget about it; again, anytime the film gets close to making anything resembling a political statement, we cut to something else, because God forbid we alienate anyone watching, right?

It’s all such a shame, because – while I know next to nothing about the real Sarah Winchester, or the Winchester Mystery House – it’s clearly a fascinating subject which lends itself to cinematic adaptation. The house itself is a great setting, and quite beautiful; again, with a little more heart and doubtless a fair bit more money thrown in, we might have at least had a Gothic period piece to match the aesthetic beauty of Crimson Peak. Alas, Winchester never dares to go all out in any capacity, always content to deliver just enough – which, of course, is never enough if you’re trying to make a real Gothic horror.

Winchester is in cinemas now.

The Shape of Water (2017)

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To say that this film arrives with a weight of expectation on its shoulders is putting it mildly. For starters, The Shape of Water is the latest film from Guillermo del Toro, widely regarded one of the greatest, most singular cinematic visionaries of our time, not to mention one of my own personal favourite filmmakers working today, and it’s already landed him a Best Director Golden Globe and a slew of Oscar nominations. After a couple of minor misfires (personally I love 2013’s Pacific Rim despite its many obvious flaws, although I struggle to see 2015’s Crimson Peak as anything but an interesting failure), The Shape of Water sees del Toro back away from the mega-budget realm and return to the comparatively smaller-scale independent arena in which he has arguably produced his best work: 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone and 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. By contrast with those Spanish productions set against the Spanish Civil War, this one is an English language US production set against the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in common with these it blends harsh reality with fairy tale in a heartfelt manner, which seems to have resonated widely with critics and audiences thus far.

It’s a film I’ve been anxious to see ever since it was first announced, and the near-ecstatic reactions online inevitably left me feverish with anticipation… and, alas, these are not always the best conditions under which to see a film. For now, as I reflect on The Shape of Water, I whole-heartedly agree with the consensus view that it’s a beautiful piece of cinema that is very well-acted, with an agreeably optimistic message that might very well be necessary in these increasingly bleak times. Yet even so, I haven’t fallen head over heels in love with the film as so many others seem to have. I found it impressive, entertaining and highly thought-provoking, yet not so deeply moving as del Toro and company clearly intended it to be.

The brilliant Sally Hawkins takes the lead as Elisa, a mute woman who lives alone in a humble apartment above a cinema in Baltimore, next door to advertising illustrator Giles (a very likeable Richard Jenkins). Elisa works nights as a cleaner in a high security science lab, where she is close friends with co-worker Zelda (an endearing, if comparatively under-developed Octavia Spencer). Naturally it’s a pretty dull existence, but one day things get very interesting with the arrival of what they’re told is an extremely rare, valuable and sensitive ‘asset’ – which turns out to be a never-before-seen amphibian man (Del Toro’s go-to creature actor Doug Jones), fished out of the Amazon river. Along with the ‘asset’ comes a wealth of new security, headed up by stern military man Strickland (a wonderfully nuanced and sinister Michael Shannon). Even so, with a little sneakiness Elisa has no difficulty getting close to the enigmatic creature, and with each visit the two find themselves increasingly fascinated with one another. So when Elisa gets wind of plans for the creature to be put to death, she quickly cooks up a plan to free her strange new friend – for whom, it soon becomes clear, her feelings go beyond mere friendship.

As has been noted, it’s curious to think that The Shape of Water is in many respects rooted in del Toro’s own ideas for a remake of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, which he had at one point been attached to. This, of course, is far from the only way in which the film harks back to del Toro’s past; the Amphibian Man (as he is officially credited) is clearly similar, both in his appearance and his fondness for eggs, to Hellboy supporting character Abe Sapien, who was also portrayed by Doug Jones. We might, then, declare The Shape of Water to be pure Guillermo del Toro, a film that only this specific filmmaker could have made which bears his unmistakable signature; and yet, in many respects it’s aesthetically and thematically reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a feeling strengthened by Alexandre Desplat’s enormously Gallic soundtrack (not that Desplat ever scored a Jeunet movie). It feels rather unlike an American film – but then, that’s almost certainly the point. Here we have a film with a largely French aesthetic from a Mexican director, with an English actress in the lead, playing a mute woman whose best friends are an old gay man and a black woman, who ultimately falls in love with a half-man half-fish. It’s screamingly obvious that this is a film about challenging bigotry in all its forms, and communicating across all social boundaries.

And yet, despite the obvious audacity of its central conceit, The Shape of Water does not come across as an especially transgressive film. It does not set out to shock the audience; indeed, in this it stands apart from del Toro’s earlier films, as even its most violent and bloody moments fall short of the brutality of Pan’s Labyrinth or even Crimson Peak. Nor, beyond one brief scene between Hawkins and Spencer, is the essentially bestial love story ever played for laughs. In common with all del Toro’s most personal films, The Shape of Water is an entirely sincere attempt to evoke the simple, direct approach of fables and fairy tales, with the key message that we should not fear that which is different from ourselves. As such, it’s only fitting that the film treats its central love story – including, gasp, its sexual elements – without judgement. Beyond a few comparatively mild moments in Crimson Peak, Del Toro hasn’t handled sexuality this frankly before, and it’s fascinating and refreshing that these sequences do not in any way come off salacious or voyeuristic. Sex is presented is something entirely natural, even innocent – even when it’s happening between creatures who are not quite the same species.

On paper, it’s very hard to believe such material can be played entirely straight, but it really is. This, perhaps, is where some viewers may struggle to fully embrace The Shape of Water, much as I have. While the film takes place in a version of our world, set against the darkest days of the Cold War, it’s still very much a (for want of a better word) heightened work of cinematic fantasy which does not endeavour to follow real world logic. As such, we have to accept the slightly stilted nature of some of the dialogue and character work; we have to overlook concerns about just how Elisa is so easily able to shirk work and spend time with supposedly the most closely guarded scientific find of the era, let alone how she’s able to smuggle in a record player unnoticed. We have to accept how often the action hinges on convenient coincidences, and the surprisingly whimsical turns taken here and there, most notably with a few impassioned homages to classic musical cinema. We have to accept all this by reverting to a simpler means of comprehension such as we had when reading fairy tales as children, or when watching The Wizard of Oz; we have to keep in this mindset even when the film tackles more mature and realistic subject matter. Some viewers, like me, may have some difficulty getting on that wavelength, although I find it strangely encouraging that I seem to be in the minority there.

I get the feeling it’s going to take another viewing or two for me to fully process The Shape of Water; indeed, I considered delaying this review until I’d seen it a second time, in hopes of laying my uncertainties to rest. While, as of right now, it hasn’t entirely swept me away, I can still happily declare The Shape of Water a triumphant, beautiful film with excellent performances, which richly deserves to be seen and talked about. To my mind, though, Del Toro’s true masterpiece remains Pan’s Labyrinth.

The Shape of Water is in UK cinemas on Wednesday 14th February, from Fox Searchlight.

RIP Jack Ketchum: Remembering a Horror Master

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We are deeply saddened by the news that Dallas Mayr, the American horror novelist who worked under the pen name Jack Ketchum, has died at the age of 71.

While his name has never been as well known as, say, Stephen King, Clive Barker or James Herbert, Ketchum was without question one of the most singular, brilliant writers to work in the horror genre in the past forty years; and his influence on 21st century horror cinema is undeniable.

I’m happy to be able to say that I once met Jack Ketchum, although I’m somewhat mortified to admit I didn’t know who he was at the time; I didn’t even wind up buying a book from him, damn it all. It was at New York Comic Con in March 2006, and he was one among a panel of horror writers, at which I turned out to be the sole audience member. Sportingly, they went ahead and did the panel anyway, and as I was just starting out as a writer with aspirations of becoming a horror novelist myself, it was all very educational and enjoyable. It was only some months later, back in the UK, that I started to see Ketchum’s name popping up more and more, and began to realise he was a big deal. Which, again, left me cursing myself for not having bought a book off him at the time.

Soon thereafter I picked up his debut novel Off Season, a feral backwoods cannibal tale that was reportedly quite controversial on first publication; and I liked it. Not long after that I picked up The Lost, a considerably more grounded horror novel, and loved it. Not long after that I read The Girl Next Door… and I can honestly say, with no exaggeration whatsoever, that no other novel has affected me in so palpable a manner. This authentically horrific tale of a young woman subjected to unspeakable torture, all the more upsetting given that it’s based on true events, left me genuinely shaking, nauseous, choking back tears. We tend to throw around terms like ‘heartbreaking’ or ‘breathtaking’ in reference to works which, if we’re entirely honest, don’t actually inspire a truly physical reaction – but, for me, The Girl Next Door really did. I’ve never read it again and I’m not sure I ever will, but there’s no question that it left me a changed person.

Ketchum broadened my mind as to the possibilities of horror. To this day we often see the mainstream baffled by material which doesn’t seem to fit the standard definition of what the genre is supposed to be, struggling to accept that something can be horror if it feels true to life, if it’s intelligent, if it’s plainly and simply good. Ketchum was a genuinely great writer, and in some ways it wouldn’t have been hard to see his work repackaged and resold to a broader readership as crime fiction or psychological thrillers. I’m glad that didn’t happen; horror is horror, and so far as I can tell Ketchum never had any qualms about his work being labelled as such, nor should he have.

And it was around the same time that I first discovered Ketchum that his work started being adapted for film: The Lost in 2006, The Girl Next Door in 2007, Red in 2008, Offspring in 2009. Good films for the most part, although I’m not sure any of them quite managed to capture the primal strength of Ketchum’s prose. However, Ketchum’s most noted contribution to cinema came in 2011 in The Woman, directed by Lucky McKee and based on the novel Ketchum and McKee co-wrote. Though technically a sequel to Offspring centred on Pollyanna McIntosh’s feral woman, it made a considerably bigger splash following festival screenings, polarising opinion and becoming one of the most talked about horror movies of the time. The Woman remains divisive, and goodness knows it’s not a lot of fun to watch, but I myself was, and remain, hugely impressed by it. Again, I don’t think any film adaptation has quite captured the real spirit of Ketchum’s novels, but to my mind The Woman comes closest. (Here’s my review from FrightFest 2011.)

Ketchum and McKee continued to write together; their most recent collaboration, The Secret Life of Souls, was released in November 2017. Earlier today, McKee wrote on Twitter, “Love you, friend.”

It’s a terrible cliche that great artists are never properly appreciated until they’re no longer with us, but I sort of hope that proves true for Jack Ketchum. While he was revered amongst a comparatively select few, he truly was a master of his craft who deserved to be held in a far higher regard, and we are left poorer without him.